The Wildest Heart

“No one is blaming you,” I said, more gently. “But Marta, don’t you see? I must know what is going on. If Mr. Shannon should ever find out, the whole ugly business could start up again. And what is more, I’d be involved in it too.” My lips tightened. “Lucas Cord! I’d turn him over to the law myself, if I ever found him on my land!”

But Marta, it seemed, had a sneaking fondness for Luke. She looked at me with apprehension in her round face. “Señorita! Surely you would not? He is not all bad, that one. Wild, yes, but not evil. Your father used to say so. It was not all his fault. I remember when he would have nothing to do with her, that blonde one, and she would not leave him alone.”

“It seems to be the other way around this time, doesn’t it?” I said coldly.

I decided that I would have to speak to Flo. Whether she hated me all the more for it or not, I would say what I had to say. And as for Luke Cord, when Mr. Bragg finally decided to show up, he would know how to deal with the matter, I was sure.

Having shooed Marta back to the kitchen, I turned to my father’s journals, frowning. How could he possibly have taken such a liking to such a wild and reckless person as this Luke Cord appeared to be? Apparently the years and his imprisonment hadn’t changed him. It seemed to me that he deliberately courted trouble.

I was supposed to read the journals in order, but I flipped through the closely written pages, putting aside one volume to take another from the desk until I found the entries I was interested in.

Brought Lucas back to the house with me today. Elena’s son, who might have been mine. It is difficult to communicate with him, but I think he has begun to trust me. He knows that I loved his mother, and that alone forms a kind of bond between us. He adores her. The only times I have seen his face soften is when he speaks of her. He says she is still young-looking, still as beautiful as ever…

So my father’s quixotic action had been for this mysterious Elena’s sake, after all! I skimmed through various entries, turning the pages quickly.

I have turned professor! We started by playing chess together, and now I am teaching Lucas the rudiments of reading and writing. I was horrified when I discovered he could do neither, but what, after all, should I have expected? He was brought up to be an Apache warrior. He tells me that he learned to draw and fire a gun accurately before he was ten years old. This knowledge, of course, came from his wanderings with the comancheros.

A few pages further on, I read:

I had not realized how lonely I was before. It is good to have the companionship of someone young, and eager to learn; although I fear that Lucas’s thirst for knowledge is in part motivated by his burning desire to be revenged, ultimately, upon my partner. He is all Apache in this respect, although he seems to want to adjust to living as a white man in a white man’s world. Such stupid discrimination! If the color of one’s skin was all that mattered, Lucas would not be taken for one-quarter Indian.

I have tried to talk philosophy to Lucas, but he is not yet ready for abstractions.

Lucas told me today that he fixed the shoe on Flo Shannon’s horse. She was almost thrown while riding. It was on the tip of my tongue to warn him against seeing her again, but I kept silent. He would have looked at me with that cold, closed look that, thank God, he does not turn on me as often any longer. He would have thought I had spoken only because of his Indian blood…

My eyes, skimming impatiently over yellowing entries, stopped suddenly.

I shall always blame myself for not having guessed what was happening. Marta and Jules both knew, but they confessed they were afraid to tell me. I was young once—why didn’t I think? Flo Shannon, for all of her youth, is an empty-headed flirt. I have always thought so. Haven’t I seen her make calf eyes at my cowhands?

God help me—I could almost wish he had not come back. But he has grown to trust me, and he had given his word. He came to tell me the truth, he said. I could see from the old, sullen look on his face that he knew what would happen. “White man’s justice!” he said bitterly to me, and there was nothing I could say to refute it. Hate breeds hate. I tried to tell Todd that, but his own hatred has made him blind to everything else.

I have written to the commandant of Alcatraz prison. Perhaps it will help. For the first time, I am glad of the friends I have made through the years, and for the first time I will try to use whatever influence I have. It was not justice, but prejudice that sent Lucas Cord to jail for life…

Abruptly, I closed the leather-covered book. I would read no more for now. My father had believed in justice, he had believed Luke Cord’s story. But Luke Cord was no longer a youth; he was a man. Bitter, hardened, and hating, no doubt, as hard as Todd Shannon did. Had my father been prejudiced in his favor merely because he was Elena’s son? That small piece of red silk had ruined my whole day, and thrown me into the middle of an unpleasant, dangerous situation. My instincts told me that he was using Flo as an instrument of his revenge, and she, poor fool, was too vain to see it.

I thought grimly that I would dearly like to meet this Luke Cord, face to face, and tell him what I thought of him.

Ten

I went to bed early that night, still feeling confused and uneasy. Jules had returned from the palacio wearing a grim expression. He had handed my note personally to Todd Shannon, but the patron had barely glanced at it. From the subdued atmosphere and guarded faces of the SD hands, he had gathered that the patron was in an ugly mood. Had he said anything? Jules had shaken his grizzled head. Nothing at all. He had heard from one of the men that a fence had been cut and a few head of cattle were missing. No doubt that was what made everyone so preoccupied. Still, it sounded rather ominous, and I wondered if Luke Cord had had anything to do with the cut fence and the missing cattle. A ruse to keep Shannon and his men occupied while he kept a secret rendezvous with Flo?

I had half expected Mark to come, but even he stayed away, and in spite of my determination to have a talk with Flo I could hardly send Jules back to the big house again with a note for her this time. We were hardly friends, after al

l! In the end I realized that there was nothing I could do but to wait until the proper opportunity presented itself. And meanwhile, I was tired, both physically and mentally.

I ate at six, and by seven-thirty I was in bed, too tired and too lazy once I had pulled the covers up to climb out again and extinguish the small lamp I had left burning on my dressing table.

Never mind, I remember thinking drowsily, there’s not much oil left in it, and it will go out by itself… and then I must have fallen asleep, too weary even to dream.

I could not remember, afterwards, what woke me, forcing my eyelids open. Some slight noise, perhaps? The brightness of light against my closed lids?

I remember thinking, still half-asleep, that the lamp had become brighter. But how could that be? It had been going out. How could it be that there was a strange man in my bedroom, leaning against the wall, watching me? It was he who had turned the lamp up.

He had seen my eyes open and widen, and he straightened unhurriedly, still watching me with a wary, brooding gaze. “No need to scream. I ain’t here to do you no harm, but this was the only way I could get to see you alone. You awake enough to understand?”

He had a quiet, husky voice, with a note of urgency in it at the moment. Still blinking against the light, I thought irritably that he was not at all as I’d pictured him in my imagination.

I had not expected that he’d be tall, nor that his thick, dark hair would be shot through with bronze glints as it caught the light. I had thought his features would be flatter, darker, like the Mexican and Indian faces I had seen, but instead he had the straight nose of his Spanish ancestors, and a hard mouth that curved grimly, if rather mockingly, up at one corner when he became aware of my scrutiny.