When I looked back at the bank again, Mark had gone, and Monique, completely at ease, began to dry her hair, still naked.
After a while, because there was nothing else I could do, I followed her example.
“Never mind,” Monique whispered to me later as we scrambled up the steep bank. “Tonight, you will be consoled, yes?” She shook her head as if torn between amusement and anger. “That Mark! I knew he would watch us, of course—didn’t you? But to expect that we would put on an exhibition for him, like two poules… when such things happen between people it must be in their own time and setting, don’t you think so?”
Again it was my desire not to appear ingenuous that made me shrug and agree that she was right. How much had Mark told her of me—and how much else had he implied?
That night, as we took our meal some distance apart from the rest of our party, Mark acted as though nothing had happened. He had discarded his usual dark jacket as a concession to the heat, but his white linen shirt was immaculate—his manner towards me as devoted and attentive as ever.
“I ordered some wine chilled in the stream—I thought you might care for some, my love.” He filled our glasses and toasted us both. “To two beautiful and elegant women!” He put his arm around me, drawing me close so that I was forced to lean against him. “And my compliments to your chef, Monique. It’s hard to believe that he contrived such an excellent dinner over an open fire.”
“Oh, Henri can cook anywhere—and over anything. He’s a Cajun, from Louisiana.” She smiled, and added, “Like myself.”
I listened quietly while Monique and Mark began to discuss our ‘arrangements’ for the night and for the real journey which would begin tomorrow.
“I doubt if there’s a chance of an Indian attack tonight, and especially with Fort Craig close by. But in any case the men will be taking turns as sentries. I have them posted around the entire perimeter of our camp tonight, so that you ladies will be able to get a good night’s sleep without any apprehensions.” Mark’s manner sounded completely self-assured and almost arrogant, just as if he had been used to giving orders all his life. And again I found myself thinking how much like his uncle he seemed at times.
“You’re not nervous, are you, my darling?” He smiled down at me, and under the shawl I had thrown about my shoulders to keep off the night chill his fingers began to caress my breast, slowly and intimately, as if he wished to remind me I was his possession now, and subject to his wishes. It was all I could do not to flinch away, but I could feel the color rise in my face, and Monique’s amused look told me that she knew very well what was happening.
“Oh, you two lovebirds!” she said teasingly, and then, frowning inquiringly, “but where is my gladiator tonight? I was thinking that while you two are saying your good-nights he might take me for a short stroll before it’s time for bed.”
For an instant, I felt Mark’s fingers press into my flesh, and then he gave a contemptuous laugh.
“Oh, you mean my wife’s half-breed bodyguard? I sent him into San Antonio with some of the other men, to see what information they could pick up. I hope you don’t mind, my love? He seemed glad to go—I’ve heard there’s a cantina there that boasts of very bad liquor and extremely pretty girls.” With hardly a change in his voice he went on softly, “Rowena has such lovely breasts—they are perfectly formed, you know—and so quickly excited…”
“And now you will make me jealous—especially since you’ve seen to it that I’ll have no cavalier to tell me the same thing tonight!” Monique pouted, and then shrugged. “But there will be other nights, I’m sure.”
I kept my mind closed—my face blank. If I had looked into a mirror now I knew that my eyes would have showed no expression at all—they would be wide, staring, the eyes of the stranger I had seen so often in the mirror.
He held me against the wheel of the wagon in which Monique and I were to sleep afterwards, and his ardent kisses covered my face and bosom.
“How shy you are, Rowena! It never fails to surprise me. But we are in the shadows now, sweetheart, and no one can see us.” I had to suffer his fingers against my skin, as they unfastened my gown and then roamed at will. His whispers, that told me of the nights we were to share later. I sensed that in some strange way he enjoyed the thought that only the wagon separated us from the campfire and the men who still sat around it, their voices carrying to us clearly.
Even when, finally, he let me go, and I climbed back into the wagon still shaking with reaction, his words kept echoing in my mind.
“You’re mine, Rowena, mine at last. No one else shall have you, do you understand me?”
“So, you’re back at last.” Monique’s voice sounded drowsy. “There’s nothing like putting a man off, is there? It makes them all the more eager and appreciative later.”
I felt, rather than saw, her stretch as she turned on her back.
“Wear your prettiest shift, Rowena. Or better still, wear nothing at all. I do not think it will take your husband long to fall asleep tonight. I had Henri mix a little sleeping draught with that last glass of wine.”
I felt that my nerves had turned into taut wires that would snap far too easily. Monique appeared to be my friend and ally, but how far could I trust her? It amused her to play procuress at the moment, but I had already learned how her moods could change. “My gladiator,” she had called Lucas. I had heard the story, on our journey here, of how she had deliberately arranged for two other men who also wanted her to become angry enough to fight him—and all because he had refused to demonstrate the Chinese style of unarmed combat he had learned.
“Joe and Magruder were both such big dirty-fighting Irishmen. But Lucas… ah, I have never seen anything so exciting in my life. Yes, John was right—it was like a Roman circus that day. I have never seen anything like it—so primitive, so fierce… and I made myself the prize…” I had not asked her if the victor had claimed his spoils or not. But now I wondered if Monique’s love of intrigue and excitement might not lead her to betray us—merely to see what would happen.
Tonight, I deliberately feigned indifference.
“Well… perhaps he’ll find those señoritas in San Antonio far more enticing than another man’s wife…”
Turning my back on Monique, I stripped off my clothes, pulling a plain cotton chemise over my head. I heard her chuckle lazily.
“Oh, he’ll be here. I do not think Lucas is as disinterested as he seems. Perhaps you are a challenge to him, for the moment.”
“And for the moment, perhaps I find myself challenged by him,” I answered perfunctorily, turning on my side.
I could not sleep, of course. I stayed awake, listening to the sounds of the camp die down, until there was only silence, broken by the faint sounds of coyotes howling in the distant mountains, and closer by, the stamping and whickering of horses. I even imagined that I could hear the angry noises that the fire made, as it subsided sullenly into itself, to leave only a glowing bed of coals.
Where was Mark—where was Lucas? Perhaps, learning of the guards that had been posted, he had decided that it was too risky to attempt a clandestine meeting with me.
I started when I felt a sudden draft of cold air fan my face. I should have remembered that Lucas could be as silent as an Apache when he wanted to be.
I snatched up a blanket to wrap around myself, and heard Monique whisper, “Try to get back before it’s light, you two. And enjoy yourselves!”
And then I found myself embarked on a journey that was to change my life forever, although I couldn’t have known it at the time—and would not have turned back, even if I had. For I had learned, by then, that happiness must be paid for, and the price is often pain, but I was ready to risk anything for happiness with Lucas.
What I remember most about that night, though, is the feeling of relief I experienced when I realized that Lucas had come for me after all: the sensation of being swept up into his arms and carried, my face against the curve of his neck and shoulder.
He knew, of course, where each of the guards were posted, and even with my weight in his arms he was able to travel on foot further and faster and more quietly than he would have done if he had set me down.
We came, at last, to the place where he had left the horses, and a pack mule.
“The ponies are desert-bred—an’ that old mule once belonged to the army. It’ll make for faster traveling, at the beginning, and we can pack supplies. Water an’ food…” an infinitesimal pause and then he went on in the same expressionless voice, “an’ a rifle and some extra ammunition.”
We would be followed, of course. Mark might have my money, but he wanted me too. The runaway wife… and because of me, we would both be in danger—Lucas more so than I, for I felt that Mark would want to get me back alive.
I remember that all these thoughts ran through my mind as I stood there, straining my eyes to see the expression on Lucas’s face. A premonitory shiver ran up my spine, and the blanket slipped from about my shoulders.
“Jesus, Ro!” His voice was half-amused, half-exasperated. “Seems like you’re always half-naked when you start runnin’ off somewhere. A good thing I thought to bring some clothes with me.” It was as if, in silence, there had been an exchange of some kind between us. There was no more asking each other if we were sure, if we trusted. Words like ‘do you love me? How much? Will you love me and take care of me always?’ no longer needed to be said, for at some point, without words, we had progressed beyond such preliminaries, and everything had been decided.
I had crossed the Jornado del Muerto before, and that on foot, but this time there was an urgency that was missing before, when we had chosen our own pace.
We traveled on without stopping for the rest of that first night. The miles we put between ourselves and the camp, and the fact that Lucas knew this desolate country as well as any Apache, would be our only advantage during the long and grueling hours that lay ahead. I realized this as well as he did, and I vowed to myself that I would show myself to be as stoical as an Apache woman. Lucas would not find me a burden, slowing him down in our headlong flight.
For flight it was—and we were the hunted, although we were not certain until sometime in the morning of the second day we spent traveling across the desert.
My mind prefers to dwell on the time before that, when it seemed as if we were completely alone in a vast, primeval wasteland, and I felt like an explorer on a voyage of discovery. It was not only the desert that I began to understand better—it had its own life cycle, I found, and long ago the Apaches had discovered how to survive here, living only on what the desert itself provided. More important, now that the barriers were down between us, Lucas and I learned more about each other.
“I felt I knew you even before I had met you. Only then it was a story, something I might have read about. Mr. Bragg tried to warn me about the feud, but it did not seem real.”
We had stopped to rest in the shade of some gigantic boulders, and he turned, running his finger from my temple to my jaw, as if he traced the outline of my face.
“You didn’t seem quite real either. I couldn’t believe that you’d come all the way out here, fresh from England, knowing nothing, caring nothing about any of us. An’ when you did come, I didn’t think you’d stay. Rowena—even your name sounded grand, and different.”
“And when you met me?”
His laugh sounded free, and young and open—no longer the bitter laughter I remembered so well.
“I was of half a mind to rape you. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Lucas!”
He mimicked me teasingly, rolling his body over mine.
“Lucas! I kinda like the way you say my name, all cut off short at the end. If I’d known you were a witch-woman, I’d have kept my Henry rifle and let Julio buy you that night.”
His lips, coming down hard over mine, muffled my angry retort, and after that, for a long time, we didn’t talk at all.
During that first day and a half we didn’t speak about Mark, and there was still some secret fear, buried deep in my mind, that kept Elena’s name from my tongue. It was enough that Lucas and I were together. We would go to Fort Selden first, since he insisted upon it; and I would speak to Mr. Bragg and learn the truth that I had already begun to suspect. Because it had to be Mark all along. Only Mark was clever enough, devious enough, patient enough. Lucas had a temper, and he was capable of violence, but not of the kind of guile that Mark had shown. And after I had spoken to Mr. Bragg? I had already resolved that Todd had to be warned. As much as I disliked the man, he deserved that much at least. Mr. Bragg would see to it. And then—I didn’t know, I had not asked where Lucas intended to take me. But my finest and most expensive jewels hung from my neck in the chamois leather bag that was stamped with my initials in gold leaf.
Lucas had only raised an eyebrow and said: “Your medicine pouch?” I found that he was more curious about me than what I wore.
And I looked like an Apache woman again, in the skirt and high-necked blouse that Lucas had found for me—moccasins on my feet and my hair braided and tucked under a wide-brimmed hat. What did it matter? I told myself that I could turn my back on civilization, on everything I had known before without a qualm, as long as Lucas continued to want me. This was the kind of peace I had been seeking in the ashram I had run away to after my grandfather had died. A small hut, open on four sides, in the mountains of India. A place where I had been told, gently, that it was necessary to detach oneself from worldly possessions in order to find the freedom of the mind I looked for. Even then I had not been sure what I wanted from life, or what I searched for. And then, on another mountaintop, I had found it and turned my back on it. It seemed to me now that I had been trying to escape from the fact that I was born a woman.
My concentration on all these things is an excuse to postpone the inevitable, of course. We had formed the habit of traveling fastest and farthest at night, and resting during the hottest part of the day. That particular morning, when we first discovered that we were being followed, and by whom, is one I would forget if I could. But my mind keeps returning to it.
That morning. After the coolness of the night, the renewed heat each day seemed even more unbearable. The sun reflected off the stones and the dust and even the boulders.
Last night we had traveled more slowly than we should have, for Lucas said safer to cross the dreaded malpais, or lava flow, in the daylight, and the land that lay ahead of us now was truly a desolation. A river of liquid fire, it must have been once, and now, hardened, the fire had turned to rock, twisted into weird shapes and formations, its surface a mass of knife-sharp pebbles and smaller rocks. And beyond, the towering bulk of the Fra Cristobal mountains. I saw Lucas look up at those jagged peaks, frowning.
“It’ll be faster going around, but I ain’t certain.” I thought that he spoke almost to himself, eyes still squinted against the reflected sunlight. “I have a real funny feelin’…” in that moment he was all Apache, acting on his instincts alone.
He said sharply, when I made some movement, “Stay here, Ro. Undercover. I’m going up there to check on our back trail.”
I had learned not to ask questions, so I did as I was told, while he took the field glasses and went easily up a slope formed by an ancient rockfall. I had dismounted, and I waited as quietly as I could, resting while I could, trying not to think that he had been gone a long time—almost too long.
I held the gun that Lucas had given me across my knees and tried to stay alert, but even so I did not hear his return until he was almost on top of me.
“Lucas! I had begun to—” and then, seeing his face I broke off sharply. “Something’s wrong. Isn’t it?”
“You’re beginning to read me as easy as a book, seems like!” He hunkered down beside me, eyes narrow and bleak. “Listen, Ro—it’s worse than I thought it might be, or maybe your husband’s just a darn sight smarter than I had him figured, which makes me plain stupid, I guess.”
“We’re
being followed? But you were expecting that we would be…”
“Not by them. Damn! It don’t make sense, or else he was just plain lucky. Apache scouts—White Mountain, from the look of them. An’ if anyone can pick up our back trail, they can.” Lucas rolled a cigarette, something I had not seen him do since we had started out together, and each movement was almost vicious. “Your husband’s with them,” he added conversationally. “Didn’t expect that either, but I guess he figures a woman like you is worth riding through hell for. An’ that’s somethin’ I can hardly blame him for.”
“Scouts? You mean army scouts?” My mind was still trying to register the shock of his first statement.
“Apache scouts,” Lucas said patiently. “They work for the army, sure—General Crook had a bunch of them working for him. But it ain’t normal to find them up this far north, an’ as far as I’d heard, they didn’t have any working out of Fort Craig. Only thing I can think of is that some of them were sent up here on some special mission—maybe there was trouble on the Warm Springs Reservation. An’ if they were gettin’ ready to head back at just about the time your husband rode into Fort Craig all wild-eyed an’ upset.”
I remembered Mark’s boasting of all the important people he knew, and I could almost see it happening, just as Lucas had described.
“He’d have told them that you took me away by force,” I said slowly. Yes—that was exactly what Mark’s pride would have made him say. Unthinkable to have anyone know that his bride of only a few weeks would run away from him with a lover. “And he probably told them that these were part of the reason.” I touched the pouch that hung so heavily between my breasts. “My jewels. I thought they might come in useful.”
“Your—” and then the corner of Lucas’ mouth twitched in an unwilling grin. “Trust a woman to think of everything.”
Looking back, it seems incredible that we could sit there so calmly, talking of what might have happened, with our pursuers coming closer every minute. I think now that Lucas deliberately gave me time to digest the news he had just given me, and to become calm.
The Wildest Heart Page 56