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.”