The Wildest Heart

He said it flatly, without expression, and I found myself wondering if this was what my father had meant when he referred to Luke’s “sullen, closed look.”

“You can hardly blame me for it, can you?” I said coldly, and saw him shrug.

“I guess not. But it was the only way I could think of to get to see you without Shannon’s men findin’ out.” He gave me a twisted kind of smile. “Left my horse some distance off. Walked the rest of the way. I learned to walk an’ run for whole days at a time when I lived with the Apaches. A man on foot, who knows where he’s goin’ and what he’s doin’ can hardly be spotted—especially not at night.”

I looked at him haughtily, mostly to cover my self-consciousness at my state of dishabille. “You certainly have strange notions of the way to pay a call on a lady you don’t even know!” I said scathingly, and again one corner of his mouth lifted in a mocking smile.

“Ain’t hardly a gentleman, am I? Did you expect me to come callin’ all formal like Mark Shannon does? Or send you an invitation to dinner like his uncle? My brother Ramon, now, he’d know how to go about it the right way. He’s the educated one of the family. Me, I’m here partly because you cottoned onto that sign I left for Flo. Mostly because that Pinkerton man told me you was here, and I should talk to you.”

“Mr. Bragg? What has Mr. Bragg got to do with your coming here?”

He shrugged again.

“Elmer Bragg is an old fox. But he ain’t stupid-old yet. I was in Mexico when he tracked me down. You might say I was kinda anxious to leave, at the time.” The cleft in his cheek deepened, and I had the impression he was laughing at himself. “Pinkerton man can be mighty persuasive when he holds all the aces. So here I am.”

I eyed him narrowly. “You’re talking riddles again. You came here to meet Flo.”

“An’ you’re talkin’ like the prosecutor at my trial. Already had me guilty an’ hung before I got tried.”

I found that I already disliked Lucas Cord immensely.

“But you left that signal for her. You saw her.”

“Why not? We had things to talk about. Nothin’ to do with you.”

“You’re insolent…”

“That mean I don’t show the proper respect? I sure am sorry. From knowin’ your pa, I expected a warm, generous woman. Thought you might take after him. He used to talk about you a lot, about how he hoped you’d grow up. But then, he was the kind of man who saw the good in everyone. It’s a shame he didn’t get to meet you.”

He looked at me with as much dislike as I felt for him, and this made me angrier than ever.

“This discussion is getting us nowhere. I think you had better leave the way you came.”

“Sure. An’ if I were you I’d get it nailed up. Might have visitors who ain’t as backward as I am, seein’ you in bed an’ all.”

He was tall enough to reach the trapdoor leading to the roof that I had completely forgotten about.

It was only after he had gone, catlike and silent, that I remembered we had not settled anything at all. I had not even found out why he had come to see me.

Hardly thinking of what I was doing, I jumped out of bed, seizing my robe from its peg on the door. He couldn’t have gone far. I pushed open the door that led out onto the patio.

“Lucas? Luke Cord, where are you?” I hissed, and heard only silence.

I fumbled with the bolt that fastened the door leading from the patio to the cleared space outside. Where had he gone? Surely he couldn’t have gone far, he had to get from the roof to the ground, and then—a grove of trees hid the bunkhouse. Not there! He had to have gone in the other direction.

I ran, stumbling over the hem of my robe, and risked calling his name out loud.

“Lucas? Oh, damn you! Where are you?”

Without warning an arm clamped around my waist and I found myself thrown to the ground with a force that knocked the breath from my body.

“What the hell are you up to now? Want to get them all down on us?”

“Us,” he had said, as if I had already thrown in my lot with his. But for the moment I felt as if I was hunted myself, when I heard the voices of some of the occupants of the bunkhouse who were early risers.

“Did you hear something, Pete?”

“Ain’t certain. Thought I heard someone call out…”