The Savage

by Nicole Jordan

  “You rode all the way to Indian Territory alone?”

  “No. The Comanche still lived in Texas then. They hadn’t been run out of the state yet. But I didn’t know where to start looking for my father’s band. Didn’t know anything about him except for what little my mother had told me. But I’d heard talk about a man named McTavish who’d spent time with the Comanche, so I headed north to find him.”

  “Your friend at the trading post…Deek?”

  “Yes, only he wasn’t my friend at the time. I stopped there for supplies, but I didn’t have any money to pay for them. I’d stolen a horse just to get that far.” Lance chuckled as if remembering something amusing. “I made the mistake of trying to lift a gun off Deek, and he caught me at it. Nearly skinned me alive.”

  “He didn’t hurt you?” Summer asked, concerned.

  “Not really. Tore a strip off my hide, that was all. Then he found out what I meant to do and put a stop to it fast. Wouldn’t let me set out on my own to find my father. He even offered to help.”

  “He must have known the danger involved.”

  “Yeah.” She heard the reluctant smile in Lance’s voice. “I didn’t want to listen to him. Didn’t want his help, either. I figured I had only myself to depend on, and I was determined to prove I didn’t need anybody else. I was a hardheaded, fool kid back then, but Deek managed to knock some sense into me that time. Locked me in his storeroom and kept me there till I agreed to let him help. He probably saved my life. I likely would have died out here on my own, or at the very least been taken captive by another band. Deek found my father’s camp without much trouble.”

  “And your father took you in?”

  “Yes. Kills Something accepted me as his son. Children are cherished in the Comanche culture, especially boys. As long as I was willing to adopt their ways, they were willing to let me stay. In fact, my father was glad to get me back. He was away from camp hunting buffalo the day the white soldiers came—most of the village was, or I never would have been taken from him.”

  “That must have been when the frontier regiment rescued you and your mother.”

  “Yeah,” Lance said dryly, “they rescued us, if you could call it that.” His tone turned grim. “The soldiers destroyed the village, killed dozens of women and children. They would have killed my mother, too, except they saw her blond hair and figured she might not be a Comanche. Real smart of them.”

  “It must have been terrible for you.”

  “I don’t remember anything about it. I was just a baby then. All I know is what Ma told me—and the stories I heard later from my Comanche kin. They had a bad time of it that winter. With all their stores and shelter destroyed, they nearly starved. My father had his revenge on the white man in the next battle, but he never forgot what they’d done. He never forgot me, either. He said he looked for me every time he went on a raid.”

  She caught the wistful note in Lance’s voice and frowned. “You sound almost as if you regretted being rescued.”

  “Maybe I did. At least I would have belonged somewhere if I’d grown up Comanche. The whites sure as hell didn’t want me back. And it might have been easier on my mother if we’d never returned to civilization.”

  “Easier?” After experiencing life in a Comanche camp, Summer couldn’t believe anything could be more difficult than living as a Comanche captive. “You can’t mean that.”

  “No?” He gave a bitter laugh. “The Comanches weren’t any crueler to her than the whites were. In fact, her own people hurt her worse. At least my father took her as his wife when she got pregnant with me. He didn’t have to do that for a slave. Her people only turned their backs on her. Made her into a whore.”

  Summer turned her head sharply to stare over her shoulder at him.

  “You look shocked, princess. You didn’t know my mother was a whore?”

  “No,” she replied unevenly, disturbed as much by Lance’s accepting tone as the revelation itself.

  “No, I guess you wouldn’t have been told. It wasn’t a tale fit for a lady’s ears.” Lance pulled the brush through a lock of her hair with more force than necessary. “But it’s true. It was the only way she could support herself and a half-breed kid. She tried to fashion bonnets for sale, take in laundry and sewing and such, but nobody would give her work with me around—and she had to feed us. But she wouldn’t give me up. She paid a steep price for keeping me.”

  Summer found herself trying to swallow a sudden ache in her throat. “She…must have been a brave woman.”

  Lance’s fierce gaze softened, grew distant. “She was the bravest person I’ve ever known, man or woman.”

  She watched him for a moment, groping for something comforting to say. “I can only imagine how difficult her life must have been.”

  His mouth curled at the corner. “No, you can’t, princess. You can’t begin to imagine. You never had to face one tenth of the hardships she had to.”

  Lowering her gaze, Summer turned back around. He was right. She’d never experienced anything like the difficulties Charlotte Calder had endured.

  “I hated the whites who’d forced her to live like that,” Lance went on in a low voice, remembering. “Hated myself for being the cause of her shame.”

  “But you were just a child,” Summer murmured. “Surely she didn’t hold you responsible.”

  “No,” he agreed. “She didn’t blame me.”

  Lance fell silent as memories of aching loneliness washed over him. He could still hear his mother’s voice trying to soothe his youthful fury, trying to calm his hatred. Don’t you worry for me, my love. I chose you over respectability, and I’ve never regretted it for an instant. Not for a single instant. He tried to shrug off the memory.

  “I guess after a few years it got a little easier for her. She took up with a ranger and became what they call a ‘kept woman.’ You knew Tom Peace. You thought him a fine, upstanding citizen.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t know…” Summer faltered.

  “No, his choice of mistresses wasn’t something that would be talked about in polite company. And that was before he moved to Round Rock. But my mother was his woman for years. I guess she was thankful to have to service only one man instead of countless strangers. And she was grateful that he put up with me.”

  “Did he? Put up with you, I mean?”

  “Yeah. He taught me how to defend myself from people who wouldn’t let me be. How to use my fists and shoot a gun. That’s all I ever let him do for me. I didn’t want his charity.” Lance’s fingers tightened around the brush as he recalled those early years. Tom Peace had tried to be a father to him, but he’d been a wild kid hell-bent on self-destruction and revenge.

  “I hated him,” he said softly. “More than anybody else. I never forgave him for not doing more for my mother. He could have saved her a lot of grief by marrying her, but he was too damned proud to marry a whore, too worried about what people would say. He loved her, but he wouldn’t help her when she needed him.”

  “Perhaps he regretted it,” Summer offered.

  Lance made a scoffing sound deep in his throat. “Sure he did. After she died. It wasn’t till then that Peace decided he was sorry he didn’t do right by her. Too late to do her any damn good. He felt guilty enough to offer me a home when she died, though.”

  “Did you take him up on it?”

  Lance gave a harsh chuckle. “Hell, no. No way was I going to let him ease his conscience. He deserved to suffer a little bit. Course, it probably hurt me more than it hurt him. No doubt I was biting off my nose to spite my face. But right then I didn’t give a damn. I was hurting too bad from losing Ma.”

  “How did she die?” Summer asked, hearing the pain in his voice even now.

  “A wasting disease of some kind. Peace paid for doctors, but they couldn’t do anything for her except try to ease her suffering.”

  “It must have been difficult for you to see her so ill.”

  Lance nodded silently. It had nearly killed hi
m to watch his mother die, to watch her take her last painful breath. And in the end he’d gone half-crazy. “Ma, don’t go!” he’d screamed, clutching her ravaged shoulders as tears poured down his face. “Don’t leave me!” He’d held her to him in a fierce grip as he rocked her lifeless body—even when Tom Peace had tried to pull him away.

  “Come on, son. She’s gone.”

  “Get your hands off me, you bastard! And her! Don’t touch her, God damn you! God damn you to hell!”

  He’d struck out at Peace with his fists and managed to inflict some damage—a split lip, a bloodied nose—for even at twelve, he’d been wiry and strong. But Peace had grabbed him and held him tight, subduing his struggles while he sobbed out his grief. He’d hated Peace even more because of that. Because he’d dared to offer comfort. It was only years later that he realized Peace had been hurting, too.

  “Peace didn’t want to stay in Austin after that. He worked a stock ranch there, but he sold it and moved to Round Rock to start a livery. Offered me a job and a place to live if I wanted to come with him, but I wouldn’t take it. I didn’t want anything to do with him—or anybody white, for that matter.”

  Summer caught her lower lip with her teeth, more affected than she cared to admit by this unexpected, vulnerable side of her husband. She could picture Lance as a boy, alone, afraid, the one person in his life who had loved him, dead. And even then, he’d been too defiant, too proud, to accept help or comfort, or even simple human warmth.

  “That was why you went in search of your father,” she prompted gently.

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you enjoy it, living with the Comanche?”

  “Parts of it. I liked the feeling of belonging. The Comanche eventually accepted me as one of their own—although after all the scorn and insults I’d suffered from whites, I guess I would have taken acceptance anywhere I could get it. It was harder than I expected to become a warrior, though. I had a lot of catching up to do. I didn’t know the first thing about what a Comanche considers important. I had to bear the taunts of kids half my age until I learned to hold my own. But my father and Fights Bear taught me, and they were the best. Nobody better.”

  “But if you wouldn’t take help from anyone else, why would you accept theirs?”

  “I guess because I wanted their respect. And it was a matter of survival. I’d thrown in my lot with them, and I was going to become a Comanche or die trying. Literally.”

  “Did you? Become a Comanche?”

  “No. Not fully.”

  “Why not?”

  His hand stilled in her hair, but for a moment he didn’t answer.

  “If you enjoyed living with them,” Summer pressed, “then why did you leave?”

  “I didn’t fit in after all.” Lance let out his breath in a long sigh. “Not like a true Comanche. I couldn’t stomach the killing. You heard about that battle when my father was killed? We were on a war raid…my first. Some white settlers died. I helped kill them.”

  Summer clamped her lips together, trying not to exclaim in horror. Knowing that Lance had participated in the terrible atrocities committed against the Texas settlers—the kind of depredations her sister had suffered—appalled her. And yet he said he’d regretted it. He’d repudiated that life, which meant he wasn’t beyond redemption.

  She took a deep breath. Lance had gone still, as if waiting for her reply, yet she couldn’t trust herself to make one. For a span of several heartbeats she thought he might say something more—perhaps to try and justify actions that couldn’t be justified—but thankfully he didn’t.

  “My father had died by then,” Lance added finally when she didn’t speak. “There didn’t seem to be as much reason for me to stay.”

  Summer swallowed, trying to keep the revulsion from her voice. “Short Dress…said your grandmother gave you her blessing when you left.”

  “Only because I’d had a vision. The Comanche put great store in such things, and she knew I couldn’t go against it.”

  “And your brother? What did Fights Bear do?”

  “He tried to persuade me to reconsider, but he couldn’t change my mind. He felt betrayed when I left. He only had hatred for a Comanche who would fight with the white man against other Comanches. I promised him I wouldn’t, though. I couldn’t choose sides, anyway. I was too much a part of both.”

  And not enough of either, Summer thought silently. “What did you do then?”

  “I took the job Peace had offered me, working at his livery.”

  “You had forgiven him by then?”

  “No, I still hated him, but I figured he owed me for what he had done to my mother. I worked for him for three years—you saw me when you used to come to town, remember?” Lance laughed humorlessly. “It didn’t go so well. Peace and I still had bad blood between us, and the good citizens of Round Rock didn’t care too much for having a half-breed in their midst, you may recall. I got out of there as soon as I could. Went west and broke mustangs…used the skills I’d learned from the Comanche. I did that for a few years, until I hired on at your ranch.”

  Summer shifted uncomfortably, not knowing what to say.

  “After your pa kicked me off his place, I swore I’d never return to Round Rock.”

  “But you did. You came back after Tom Peace was killed in the war.”

  “Yes. Peace left me his livery in his will. Just to spite me, I’ll bet. I’d told him often enough I didn’t want his damned charity.”

  “If you considered it charity, then why did you accept it?”

  Lance gazed out at the horizon. “I guess I’d smartened up some by then. Enough to swallow my pride, at least. And it didn’t look so much like charity by then. I’d always wanted a place to sink down roots, a place to call home. I’d never really had anything I could call my own. And I thought…maybe it would help me become part of the white world.”

  “Yet it didn’t, did it? You weren’t really accepted by the white world, either.”

  “No.”

  There was a wealth of pain in that single word; she could hear it—although she doubted Lance was aware of it, or that he would be pleased to know she’d noticed. Summer glanced over her shoulder at him, fighting the urge to touch him, to offer comfort for his nameless hurts, knowing that he wouldn’t accept comfort from her.

  How long had it been since anyone had touched him with kindness? He’d had to make his own way in a tough, unforgiving world, enduring experiences that had scarred him deeply. His past had left him hard and bitter to his very soul. But he was a survivor. He’d lived through trials that would have broken lesser men.

  “It must have been lonely for you,” she observed quietly.

  “You don’t know the half of it.” He was silent for a moment. “Do you know”—his voice dropped, becoming so low, she could scarcely hear him over the ripple of the creek—“what it’s like, always being dirt beneath a man’s boots? Being spit on and shunned by folks because of who you are, no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try? Can you imagine what it feels like?” He suddenly looked at her and laughed softly. “No, of course you can’t, princess. You’ve always had everything you’ve ever wanted.”

  “Not…everything.”

  “Close enough. Your pa always shielded his little princess from the darker sides of life. You never had to hear your ma crying because she had to lie beneath some rutting bastard in order to put food in your belly.”

  Summer knew he had a right to criticize the proud, pampered belle she’d once been, but her life hadn’t been all roses, either. At least not since the war began.

  She raised her chin. “No, I don’t recall ever hearing my mother cry at all. She was killed by the Comanches before I was old enough to remember such things. Your mother paid a terrible price, but at least she lived to do it. Mine paid with her life.”

  She regretted the words as soon as she uttered them. A shuttered look slammed down over Lance’s features, abruptly ending the quiet intimacy between them. Even befor
e he looked up at the sky, measuring the position of the sun, and announced tersely that it was time to go, Summer knew the interlude of sharing confidences was over. What she’d said wasn’t really so bad, yet she hadn’t needed to remind Lance of the vast gulf between them, or to say it in that accusing tone, as if he’d been responsible for her mother’s death.

  Suspecting he might throw an apology, no matter how heartfelt, back in her face, though, Summer did as she was told and finished braiding her hair while she watched Lance gather up their things.

  Yet she wished she could take back her thoughtless comment. This afternoon she had felt closer to Lance than she’d ever dreamed possible. He had shown her more openness than she’d ever expected, telling her things about himself and his past that she never could have learned from anyone else. He was unlikely to share more of himself anytime soon, she knew. And he probably thought she didn’t fully appreciate what he was doing for her sister. She was grateful to him, more than she could ever say.

  Summer gazed wistfully after him, her thoughts full of regret.

  Lance felt similar regrets as he collected their gear and tied it on his pinto. He’d been a damn fool, baring his soul to her—even though that was mainly the reason he’d brought her out here. Summer had begun to relax around him the past few days, and he’d thought maybe it would help the process along if they could have some time alone together, if they could become better acquainted. He knew it would take her time to get used to the idea of being his wife, and she never would as long as she saw him as a stranger.

  But his plan had backfired. He’d wanted Summer to realize he wasn’t the savage she feared, but all he’d done was confirm it, telling her about killing Texas settlers. And he’d succeeded in letting her probe old wounds as well. She’d dredged up hurtful memories he had done his damnedest to forget.

  Lance wrapped his fist around his horse’s reins as he recalled those times. The pain hadn’t lessened much over the years. Summer was right. All his life he’d been lonely as hell. Lonely, empty, angry. Moving from one battle to the next without having anything to show for his efforts.