“Only cure for a hysterical bitch,” I heard him snarl, and then Lucas, who had remained impassive, up until then said: “Send her back. She’s got nothing to do with the hate that’s between us, Shannon, and you know it.”
“Is that why you run off with her—an’ had to kill my nephew to make her a widow?”
No—even now I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to and I must, Lucas and I. Each of us suffered a different form of agony, on that hot afternoon, when we all waited.
My hysteria and grief had turned into a kind of numbness. I had talked until my throat ached; trying to explain to Todd what Mark had really been like and what he had planned to do, but Todd would not listen. So now, when he handed me the canteen and untied my wrists, I said nothing more, merely looking at him with hatred in my eyes. He seemed to find this amusing.
“Go ahead! Mebbe you should rightly be the one who makes the choice whether your lover dies from strangulation or them cactus spines pushing their way into his flesh. Get up close an’ watch him suffer—I want you to carry that picture with you for the rest of your days, you treacherous, murdering bitch!” I said nothing—I told myself that if Lucas could be silent and stoical, then I could too. And I promised myself that I would kill Todd Shannon. Yes—suddenly I could understand why blood feuds could come into being!
They had stripped off his shirt to crucify him against that giant cactus, and beads of sweat stood out on his brown torso. His arms were tied above his head, and blood from the rawhide that had already cut into his wrists slowly trickled down them.
His eyes were closed, and I could see the corded muscles stand out as he fought for breath against the strip of rawhide that was tightening around his neck. I couldn’t help whispering his name. His eyes opened and looked into mine, but he didn’t know me.
I remembered Todd Shannon’s jeering voice when he had told me that I could make the choice—a slow, agonizing death, or one slightly less slow and almost as painful. God, God, how strong was I? How much could I stand? I heard a gasping noise escape from Lucas’s throat, and I couldn’t bear it. Not yet, I thought. Not like this, his life choked away with agonizing slowness while I was forced to watch.
I lifted the canteen, careful not to lean against his taut, strained body and poured most of the water on his neck, saturating the strip of hide that was strangling him with the life-giving fluid. Only a deferment…
I suddenly felt my arm seized and the canteen snatched away as Todd Shannon, coming up silently behind me, said harshly: “That’s enough! I don’t want to make it easy on him.” He began to drag me with him, laughing when I made a grab for his gun.
“Still got some fight in you, huh? I must say I didn’t figure on you having this much guts.” And then, his voice hardening, “Did he tame you? Too bad he ain’t gonna last long enough to see how tame you get when I’m through with you.”
He held my wrists in a cruel grip, obviously enjoying my struggles to get free.
“Ever seen such a wildcat, boys? Half-Apache herself, seems like—it comes from associating too much with Injuns, I guess. We’ll have to teach her how to act halfway civilized again, won’t we?” One of his men laughed, but the others, all standing by their horses watching, seemed unusually silent. I think they were remembering that I was after all a white woman, and still half owner of the SD, now that Mark was dead. Perhaps they were thinking of what might happen afterward.
I was never to know exactly what they thought, for at that moment, putting his face close to mine, Todd growled: “Only regret I got is that Elena Kordes ain’t here to watch her oldest cub die!” And the import of his words hit me like a blow, making my face stiffen and my struggles cease so suddenly that I fell against him.
“Lucas is not Elena’s son!” I think I whispered the words at first, and then I almost screamed them at him. “He’s not her son, do you hear me? Is that why you’re killing him, to punish her?”
His eyes, like green glass, bored into my face as he shook me violently.
“What the hell kind of story you got thought up this time?”
“But it’s true—it’s true! Even my father knew it, at the end—it’s all written down in his journals for you to read, unless you don’t want to accept the truth!” I looked wildly into his face, bending over mine, his red blond hair bright in the sun, and suddenly I felt a strange, terrifying sense of premonition as the numbness in my mind seemed to fall away.
“He—he doesn’t even look like her!” I gasped. “He doesn’t look like any of them! His hair has blond streaks in it, and his eyes… Lucas was adopted by the Indians—he isn’t one himself! He looks—he looks…”
I thought I was dreaming when another voice, familiar and yet unfamiliar, finished my half-formed sentence, and put the incredible, stupefying thought that had suddenly come to me into words.
“Strikes me that we’ve all been blind. He looks a lot like Alma did, Todd—and a little like you in the eyes an’ jaw.”
Todd flung me away from him and I would have fallen if a pair of blue-clad arms, appearing from nowhere, hadn’t caught me. And I was looking into a face I hadn’t expected to see again. Elmer Bragg’s—looking grayer, and just as enigmatic as always.
But he wasn’t looking at me, he was looking at Todd—and Todd had whirled around and gone to Lucas, and there was a knife in his hand.
Colonel Poynter, sitting stiffly on his horse, seemed frozen, as did Todd’s own men and the troopers who had appeared so suddenly.
“Bragg—you’ve always been a nosy, interferin’ bastard! But this time justice is going to be done. Any of you make a move, an’ I’m goin’ to slit his throat, you hear? That you dare use Alma’s name…” Todd’s voice was hoarse, I had never heard it shake with rage before. Even his eyes had a wild look to them.
Of us all, only Elmer Bragg seemed completely unconcerned. He shrugged.
“Always did think you were a blind, pig-headed fool, Todd Shannon. Just don’t want to admit you’re wrong, do you? Well—go ahead, if you must. Play right into her hands. It’s what she always intended, you know. Brought the boy up to hate you—she hoped that one day he’d kill you or you’d kill him—and then she’d have the ultimate pleasure of telling you you’d killed your own son.”
“You’re lying! You’re trying to trick me, all of you! Trying to save a murderer who just killed my own brother’s son!”
“Just as your own brother’s son planned to have you killed, and even—I’m sorry, Lady Rowena—made sure your own partner died conveniently of an overdose of his sleeping medicine? No, Todd—no one’s lying except you, to yourself.”
Todd had his fingers in Lucas’s hair, the knife edge against his throat. But he hesitated. I remember praying, although I cannot remember the words I used.
Remarkably calm, remarkably controlled, Elmer Bragg’s voice cut again through the silence that had seized us all.
“If he killed Mark, he’ll have to stand trial for it in any case. And if they find him guilty of murder, he’ll hang. But are you going to take the chance of never knowing, for sure? Or finding out the truth too late? Use your brains, man! Think! Did you ever find Alma’s body—or the boy’s? No—you were told that her brother had taken them both for burial. An old, dying man told you he saw your wife fall with an arrow through her breast, still carrying her child. That Alejandro ran forward with a cry of grief. Think, I tell you! What happened after that? Suppose the child lived? You remember when Elena came, to offer you your son—did you let her finish what she had begun to say? Didn’t you jump to the conclusion that it was the child she was carrying that she was talking of? But how could she have known her child would be a son? And another thing I learned from the shaman of that particular band of Apaches, who is Elena’s grandfather—why did Alejandro Kordes himself tell Lucas that he had been responsible for his mother’s death? Evidence, Todd Shannon. This is what the shaman told Guy, and this was one of the reasons that Guy had to die before his appointed time—before he could warn both you
and Lucas. And if you need more evidence I suggest that before you cut your son’s throat you look in the medicine pouch he carries about his neck. In it you’ll find the silver medal he was wearing when the Apaches took him, the medal you had given to his mother.”
There was such a terrible uncertainty in Todd Shannon’s eyes and in his voice when he spoke that I could almost feel sorry for him. But he remained unconvinced of the truth—or seemed to be. I think for the first time in his life Todd Shannon was afraid; that he had found himself backed into a corner, faced with one shocking fact after another, and didn’t know what to do.
He cut open the medicine pouch, and the battered silver medal fell into the palm of his hand. He looked from the medal to the face of the son he had denied all his life, and had almost killed, and wept.
How dispassionately I can write all this down as I come near the end as I know it. I say “as I know it” because it is not yet finished, and I must wait, with uncertainty gnawing at my brain and only my writing to keep me busy and take my mind off what may be. The trial must be almost over now. There were reporters there, I was told, from as far east as Boston and as far west as San Francisco. And for that matter the whole of the Territory has. Everyone in Sante Fe heard or read the story. I have been praised and vilified—my pregnancy (which can no longer be hidden) and the parentage of my unborn child—the circumstances under which the man who had been my husband died—all these have been discussed and speculated upon for weeks now.
Todd is at the trial, and so is Mr. Bragg. I have been told that even Elena Kordes left her secluded valley to travel to Santa Fe. Lucas and I were quietly married by Colonel Poynter only a week before he had to leave for Santa Fe, but as usual, when I hear Elena’s name, I am afraid. What will they say to each other? He told me only that they quarreled when he learned of the trick that she and Montoya had played. That he left the valley in anger. But that, as Montoya himself had reminded me before, was not the first time they had quarreled. “Always, he goes back…” Why do I have to think of that now?
Just as I wrote those words, I felt the stirring of my child within me. Mine—I am almost afraid to call it ours, in case… why must I think of that night with Ramon?
Lucas will not let me talk about it. “The child you have will be our child,” he said firmly on the last occasion we were together, and stopped any further protesting on my part with his kiss.
Too many doubts, too many fears when he is not here, especially when Elena is where he is and I am not.
Marta comes in, looking worried—tears coming to her eyes when she sees them in mine. How easily I cry these days. It’s my condition—God, I’m tired of hearing them all say that!
What will we do after the trial—if there is any afterward? Lucas will not speak to Todd—he told me, sullenly, that it isn’t easy to get rid of a hate that has lived with you for years. But Todd has—hasn’t he? Todd wants an heir, of course; he wants a son to inherit the SD, his kingdom that so many have lusted after. But Lucas won’t have it. “After it’s over—if they decide not to hang me after all—you can choose between staying here or coming with me—wherever I might feel like going.” When Lucas said that, he sounded like the suspicious, hard-faced stranger I had first known. What am I going to do? Oh God, I’m so tired of journeying!
That is where I ended my journal yesterday, just before I decided that in order to keep myself busy I must change everything around, dust and polish the furniture, sort out all my father’s journals and papers.
Today—today I have found the missing codicil to his will, fallen behind the drawer where he kept his journals. This is what Mark looked for, knowing what was to be in it. Perhaps it is another one of the reasons why he put the overdose of laudanum in the half-empty bottle of brandy that always sat at my father’s elbow… and paid a hired killer to murder Mr. Bragg in case he had found it. Just as he paid Pardee to kill Todd—
But instead, it was I, tugging angrily at the drawer which was stuck, who found the folded piece of paper that my father must have carelessly pushed into it—perhaps when he felt himself becoming sleepy.
I have read it over and over again. How much agony and heartbreak would have been saved if only I had discovered it earlier! My father had indeed learned from the shaman that Lucas was Todd Shannon’s son—but he had been sworn to secrecy. I could easily guess who had spilled ink all over the vital parts of his journals, even tearing out some pages—leaving only those entries which sounded particularly damning where Lucas was concerned.
Of course he must be stopped from killing his own father! And there was Elena, whom my father still loved, in spite of all the disillusionment of learning what she had done.
He spent some time explaining his motives in changing his will—for my benefit, of course. He begged my understanding. For I was not to inherit half of the SD after all; but this share would go to my husband if I married either Lucas or Ramon—with a large bequest of money to the one I did not choose. If I decided to marry neither one, then my father’s half of the ranch was to have been divided equally between Ramon and Lucas—his way of righting old wrongs, I supposed!
And Elena—yes, my father knew Elena! Perhaps he had tried to end what he saw happening between her and Lucas.
“To Elena Kordes, with my undying love and devotion—fifty thousand dollars and a reasonable income for life (I leave this to my daughter’s discretion) on condition that she leave New Mexico Territory forever…” He had added—for her I think—“A jewel needs a setting worthy of it. I think you will take Europe by storm…”
There were other, smaller bequests. A deed to some fertile land in the mountains, for Julio—money to buy horses and cattle. Legacies to Jules and Marta, and one to his old friend Elmer Bragg.
So this—and I felt I had rediscovered him—was the man who had been my father! The man I was cheated of seeing, but who I have come to know through his writings as my children some day might want to know me.
I fold the codicil away and wait. It’s time. Marta, standing by me, follows the direction of my eyes to the clock, and puts my half-frightened thoughts into words.
“The trial, it must be over now. Have faith, patrona. You will have your husband back soon.” And the silver medal of St. Christopher that Todd once gave to Alma and Lucas gave to me hangs coldly between my breasts—as cold as the hours that must still pass before I will know.
Epilogue
Silver City—1878
They might have been any prosperous rancher and his wife—their blond-headed son sitting between them in the buckboard, hardly able to keep still for excitement. And yet the sight of them together, and in town, was always enough to set the gossips’ tongues wagging.
Madame Fleur, standing talking with a customer in the doorway of her small establishment, gave a gasp as she saw them pass on their way to the State Depot.
“Oh my! Did you see them? And he, the other one, is already at the Depot!”
“You mean Mr. Shannon? Mr. Todd Shannon?” Mrs. Vickery, whose husband owned the local dry-goods store, echoed the plump milliner’s gasp. “My goodness—” her voice dropped. “Is it true…?”
“All true, all of it! Ah, such a scandal it was! I remember her—she has not changed much. There was always an air of—such haughtiness in her. And she has it still.”
“But—”
Madame Fleur was determined not to have her story spoiled by interruptions.
“All you have heard is the truth,” she repeated. “One of my customers went all the way to Santa Fe for the trial, and she told me everything. They acquitted him in the end, and everyone expected him to come back and live on that ranch—but instead he went off into the mountains, and his wife, she followed him. I’ve heard they own a small ranch there, but just where nobody knows for sure. Of course…” and Madame’s voice became a whisper, “he was brought up by the Indians, you know. And it is true that he has been in prison, and was an outlaw.”
It still felt strange to be riding
into a town quite openly like this. And towns, especially bustling, brawling ones like this, always had given him a closed-in feeling.
Lucas met his wife’s raised eyebrow and grimaced.
“I still ain’t sure how in hell you talked me into this. I don’t even know these friends of yours.”
“Corinne and Jack are nice people,” Rowena said evenly. And then, smiling faintly: “Besides I’m proud of you. What’s wrong with a woman wanting to show her husband off to her friends?”
He looked into violet blue eyes, shadowed by the longest, blackest lashes he had ever seen, and suddenly he was remembering her at other times—sitting up in bed, staring at him—brown-faced, with braided hair, eyes spitting hate at him. And still later, her warm, sweet lips; her voice calling his name…
It was the last thing he could remember before the pain, and the terrible choking as the breath was slowly, very slowly strangled in his throat. And after that there had been more, worse pain, making him clamp his jaws together so that he wouldn’t cry out—and crying out anyway and finding his voice only a whisper. And Rowena’s tears falling on his face, her voice saying his name again, over and over.
He couldn’t talk above a whisper for weeks afterward. Lucas thought later, wryly, that it was just as well, maybe. Else he would have done a lot more arguing, and a lot more swearing. And there had been times when he didn’t want to talk to anyone at all, not even to Rowena, until the day she came storming into his room, calling him a selfish bastard, reaching out to claw at him before he grabbed her wrists.
The colonel had married them two days later, and two weeks after that they took him to Santa Fe to be tried for murdering Mark Shannon.
It was strange, Lucas thought, how suddenly some little thing could bring back a whole flood of memories, flashing across the mind in just the short time it took to maneuver the buckboard around a wagon that almost blocked off the street.
A hat in a window, and two women, turning to stare. The hat reminded him of Elena—and that thought was still pain, although it was fading. Elena, the dream every man has and clings to. Smiling, beckoning, giving just enough to make him keep wanting her, and in the strangest way, hating her at the same time. But Elena was over and gone forever, and in her place Ro, who was flesh rather than substance: strength and sweetness and giving. Following him into loneliness in the mountains and facing the ghosts in the house in the valley. Having her child there, with only him and an old midwife to help her—and in the end he’d sent the old woman out of the room and done everything that needed to be done himself, remembering everything she had told him before. Hot water, clean sheets, everything boiled that would touch her or the baby, even the knife.
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