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.