The Darkest Heart (24 page)

He had been a fool to think she would stay with him. Damn her! Why did he have to keep thinking about how she looked, how her eyes flashed when she was angry, how they glowed when she was aroused, how they softened when she smiled? How she felt, beneath him, sheathing him, how she responded to his passion in a way that no other woman had, and never would … how when they were together, there was something so fulfilled, it was beyond the actual physical act of copulation, giving her a part of himself, and becoming a part of her.…

His body moved of its own volition. It wasn’t until he stepped out of the shack and onto the dusty street that he realized he was barefoot and wearing only his pants—not even his gun.

Candice sat alone on a bench at the stage depot, right across the street. His gaze moved over her. She was dressed for travel in a blue serge jacket and skirt, a matching bonnet in blue straw. The outfit revealed rather than hid her lush curves, and he felt the stirring of forbidden desire. Her hair was out of sight, except for golden wisps that escaped the bonnet and drifted around her face. She was dark—golden-tanned from all the time she had spent in the sun without protection, much darker than when ne had first found her on the desert, dying. For a brief instant he was brought back to that time, when it had all started.

She sat stiff and straight and did not look like Candice. Where was Kincaid?

Jack was halfway across the street, mindless of passersby, when she saw him. Their gazes locked.

He stopped by her side, smiling mockingly. “Well, well,” he drawled. “If it isn’t
Mrs. Kincaid
. Going on a trip,
Mrs. Kincaid?”

“Jack!” She was staring at him, her face paling, her eyes huge dark pools, and something in their depths, something
he hadn’t expected to see, struck him, pulled at him. Why was she sad? Surely his eves were deceiving him. He shook off the compassion—he didn’t care.

“Where is Kincaid?” he taunted, pulling her to her feet.

She didn’t shrink away from him, even though he knew his grip had to be hurting her. Instead she stared into his eyes, searchingly. He tightened his hold until she grimaced.

“Aren’t you going to beg me to leave you alone?” He sneered. “Aren’t you afraid of being seen with me in public? What’s wrong, Mrs. Kincaid, has the cat got your tongue?”

He yanked her. Still, she didn’t protest, didn’t cry out. “Well? Are you happy now, Mrs. Kincaid, with your white husband?” His face was very close to hers. Why did she just stand there and take his abuse? “Can you even tell the difference in the dark?” He threw her off.

She stumbled against the post, then straightened. Her eyes never left him. “Jack, you don’t understand …”

“Oh, I understand, Candice, I understand perfectly the bigoted little bitch that you are,” he said disgustedly, grabbing her shoulders again.

She whimpered.

“Get your hands off my wife!” Kincaid rasped, striding down the street toward them.

Jack dropped his hand and stepped aside instinctively to move away from Candice, so she wouldn’t be hurt in the gunfire that followed. His hands were already tensed at his sides when he realized he had no gun. Not even his knife.

Which was unfortunate, because he itched to kill the man who was Candice’s white husband.

“No, Virgil,” Candice cried with panic, rushing to him, grabbing his arm. “He’s drunk. We were just talking. Please.”

“Is this the one?” Kincaid demanded, livid. “Is he the one?”

“No!” Candice lied, clinging to him. “No, I swear it, no!”

“Step aside, Candice.”

“No!” Candice shouted.

“Get away,” Jack said to her, fighting to clear his head. He wasn’t frightened, but he knew he was in trouble. He was hung over and drunk, and Kincaid could kill him with such
an advantage. He fought to sharpen all his senses, concentrating with an effort fed by adrenaline.

“Virgil, he’s drunk and unarmed.” Candice clung to him. “Virgil, please.”

Jack watched as Kincaid glanced at her. She was pressing against him, her breasts crushed against his side, one of her hands on his chest, her lips parted, her look partly seductive, partly pleading. She lowered her voice and was speaking rapidly. Jack strained to hear her words. He knew he would have been able to discern them if he weren’t so numb from alcohol. And then Kincaid relaxed, placing his arm around her, and with a last warning look, he pulled Candice away.

Not once did she even look back.

Traveling by stage was endless. The first day Candice sat numbly in the crowded coach of the Butterfield Overland Mail, which ran a semiweekly service from Tipton, Missouri, to San Francisco, by way of Él Paso, Tucson, Fort Yuma, and Los Angeles. The stage covered only fifteen or twenty miles a day in this kind of country. At times the trail wound across rocky, flat, mesquite- and sage-studded valleys, rimmed in the distance by brown, jagged mountains. At other times the trail became difficult if not treacherous, winding up in soft, dry arroyos as they made their way through rocky mountain passes where juniper and pinyon cast great shadows and the air grew slightly cooler.

At the worst of times, all the passengers had to get out, the women walking as the men pushed the stage when its wheels sank into sand or got caught on rocks or in ruts. For Candice, walking was a vast relief. The wagon bounced incessantly, until her back was stiff and her neck paralyzed, and it was not and malodorous in the coach from the clustering of unclean bodies. The conversation was idle and monotonous, yet no one slept throughout the long day—no one dared. he fear of the passengers bordered on the psychotic. It was contagious.

Apaches
.

Candice did not care. She was devastated, and not just because of Kincaid’s abuse. Her heart was broken, and the pain she was feeling vanquished all other considerations. She was wondering more and more if she was in love with Jack. She knew Jack had to become a part of her past—her forgotten past. She couldn’t be in love with him, because it would be hopeless. There would be insurmountable problems, not the least of which was her family, and they would surely disown her. She wanted to cry but it was pointless. Savage’s hate-filled words and his hate-filled eyes, his cruelty—
“bigoted little bitch
”—kept haunting her, torturing her. He had meant every word. He hated her. And the worst part of it was that he was right.

Then there was Kincaid.

He was ruthless. She did not doubt for a second that if she tried to escape or betray him, he would come after her—and then punish her. The other day he would have murdered Jack in the blink of an eye while he was too drunk to defend himself, if she hadn’t stopped him. She had no doubt. And she knew there was only one solution.

She would have to bide her time and wait for the perfect opportunity to kill him.

She had almost murdered him once. This time she would have to succeed.

At times this cold, deliberate scheming, mixed with the pain she felt over Jack, kept her from thinking about last night, about Kincaid’s brutality, about the horror of rape. At other times the horror resurfaced, making her tremble, making her feel sick. All she wanted to do was close her eyes, find sleep, and escape reality.

Because there were five other passengers besides herself and Kincaid, he treated her courteously and did not assault her at night, where the sleeping arrangement were communal. Yet she was always aware of his too-intimate touch and his hot eyes—his lust. She dreaded reaching their destination—which was, after all, El Paso—not San Francisco, as Kincaid had told Maria and everyone else. He hadn’t even let her wait to see her family.

At least for now she had a respite. If he fondled her occasionally when no one was looking, or stole a hot, hard kiss, it was better than being raped.

On their fourth night they camped at the way station at Apache Pass. By this time the only other woman on the stage was a zombie from fear, and nothing her husband could do could take away the corpselike pallor of her skin or still her trembling body.
Apache Pass
. It was almost eight treacherous, narrow, rugged miles long, and every inch of the way afforded the Apaches the perfect opportunity for an ambush. Tiny gorges and arroyos and canyons fell off the pass, and in one of mese canyons, to the north in the Dos Cabezas Mountains, it was rumored that Cochise often camped with his warriors.

The pass cut through the Dos Cabezas Mountains and the Chiricahua Mountains, connecting the Sulphur Springs Valley in the West with the San Simon valley in the east. For
as long as settlers had been using the pass, and the trappers and trailblazers before them, it had been a dreaded place. Its name, Apache Pass, was synonymous with death. Apache attacks, murders, massacres

Now, of course, Cochise protected the stage and the whites traveling through the pass. If was not unusual for Chiricahua warriors and squaws to trade at the trading post established at the way station. Still, everyone knew about the other murderous Apaches, just east of the pass, led by Mangas Coloradas, and that other crazed warrior, Geronimo. And even Cochise could not be trusted. He was Apache—wasn’t he?

The station consisted of a stone corral built in an L-shape. At the southwest corner of the corral were the kitchen and sleeping quarters. At the west end, built on the inside of the corral, were the storage rooms for grain and food, firearms and ammunition. The springs, which were the reason Indian and traveler alike used the pass, were located about a quarter mile east of the station. The station was located halfway through the pass, on the north side of Siphon Canyon.

Candice ate in silence and retired for the night. She was aware of Kincaid’s hateful presence on the pallet next to her, but he left her alone, and she fell into a sleep brought on by emotional exhaustion. The nicht passed uneventfully, and the stage set out at the first light of morning.

It was still early, and just warm, but soon it would be stifling hot, and the narrow, rocky, rutted descent from the pass was barely behind them. They were emerging from Siphon Canyon, and ahead of them stretched out a sea of brownish grass, gnarled mesquite, and yucca trees. The mules plodded steadily, untiringly. They were a little over halfway to El Paso.

The attack came with no warning.

At one moment everything was calm and peaceful, and there was nothing but the sound of idle conversation, the squeak of wheels, the jangling of harnesses. And then the air was split with that wild, weird Apache war cry—a cry Candice had heard not too long ago and that even now filled her with terror.

The stage was stopped as the Apaches rode at a gallop
around and around it, firing, at random, both bullets and arrows. Candice was on the floor, having been yanked down by Kincaid, who was firing back through one window. But she had seen one of the drivers tumble from his seat above the stage, and she had seen the painted, frenzied faces of the warriors before she was pushed down.

“How many are there?” the passenger Davis said tensely. He had taken up a position on the opposite side of the coach from Kincaid.

“Maybe twenty,” Kincaid replied, as another bullet tore into the coach. “Wilson’s shot.”

“Where’s Harris?” Davis was asking about the other driver as he carefully fired out the window.

“He’s safe—beneath the coach.”

Candice recovered her wits and sat up. “Virge—give me a gun.”

He glanced at her briefly, then fired again.

“Here, lady, take this,” Davis said, grabbing a frightened passenger’s derringer from him as he lay huddled on the floor.

Candice took it, checked to see it was loaded, met Kincaid’s glance coolly, and carefully crawled up onto a seat, inching toward the window. Her heart was pounding and she was terrified, but she had a weapon—and she knew how to use it.

“Use your ammunition carefully,” Kincaid told her.

She nodded, fired, and missed. “Damn it.” She wouldn’t miss again. And she didn’t.

Ten, fifteen minutes passed, and the Apaches were tireless, seeming to come from all directions, unyielding and almost erratic in their onslaught. Two other men and a woman rassenger huddled on the floor, whimpering in fear, while Davis, Kincaid, and Candice took careful shots. It was difficult to hit the Apaches. They would come in for a shot hanging over the far side of their horses’ bellies, shooting from beneath the neck. It was a losing battle, only a matter of time, Candice thought, before she and the rest would run out of either ammunition or courage.

Davis screamed, and Kincaid and Candice turned as one to see him being pulled out of the other door of the stage by a painted warrior, his throat slit and blood pouring out of his
carotid artery. Candice screamed, but Kincaid was fester, firing at the warrior, who either ducked or collapsed simultaneously.

And then she felt hands clasp her from behind, as she was pulled out of the coach from the door on her side. She staggered as the slim warrior pulled her into the battle. The noise was terrifying. There was the sound of more firing, the pounding of galloping hooves, and the never-ending war cries, but the din had escalated by many, many levels. Candice realized she held the derringer in the folds of her skirt, and she raised it and shot her assailant in the back of the head. She ran.

There were no longer twenty Indians, but hundreds, and she had no idea where she was running, but she heard Harris cry “Cochise!” although it didn’t register. There was no escape—there were Indians everywhere.

She stumbled between racing, plunging horses and warriors and fell to her knees, her breath coming in gasps, before she realized some of the Indians were fighting each other. And then she saw the Apache riding at her, his lance poised, a second from running her through. She froze, still on her knees, clutching the gun tightly in her hand, hiding it in her skirt. Time stood still. He came closer and closer. It was like a dream, in slow motion. And still closer. He was upon her. She could make out his harsh features. She could see his eyes, and the jagged design of the red and white paint. She could see sweat on his brow. She raised the gun steadily.

Before she even fired, the warrior collapsed on his pony’s back and tumbled to the ground, shot from behind.