The Darkest Heart (4 page)

“I sleep with one eye open, one ear listening. It’s the Apache way. Lie down, go back to sleep. And don’t try anything so foolish again.”

She rose and turned to move away, back across the fire. He grabbed a hank of her long hair, stopping her. “No,
inlgashi,”
he said softly. He gestured to where he had been lying on the ground. Her eyes went wide.

He used her hair as a leash, pulling her close then pushing her down. He slipped down behind her, forcing her onto her back and throwing one arm over her waist. She was holding her breath—not that he cared—and he closed his eyes. Sleep, of course, would not come.

He would have to take her back.

He imagined the reception she would receive and almost felt sorry for her. But he cut off his sympathy. There would be a lot of talk about her being rescued by a “breed.” He couldn’t spend his energy worrying about that—better to worry about his own reception. Of course, he wasn’t going to harm her, but that didn’t necessarily preclude danger to himself from the bigoted whites. He didn’t feel like facing an angry lynch mob.

Carter, however, did have a reputation as an outstandingly fair man. And there had been little trouble between the Carters and the Apaches. Just the usual winter raiding, which was actually for subsistence needs—an occasional, minor fray. Carter seemed to understand that the theft of a few head of cattle every year was not war, but a way of life for the Apache.

He decided he could risk bringing her home.

Home. He was close to his own home, and after three years his feelings were mixed and strong. On the one hand,
he thought of seeing his mother again, his brother, his clan. God, it had been so long, and he had missed them.

On the other hand, he had decided to leave three years ago, and going back would only stir up old feelings. He had become used to the path of his life—one he walked alone, torn between the two cultures.

He had left after what was, for him, his last raid as an Apache warrior. He had been twenty-one years of age. A small raiding party of twelve warriors had gone south, looking for cattle to see them through the hard winter months. They had found three steers bearing Pete Kitchen’s brand and had slaughtered them on the spot. They were butchering the carcasses when a dozen of Kitchen’s hands had ridden up, taking them by surprise. A full-scale battle had ensued.

And he had killed his first white man.

They had been in hand-to-hand combat, and afterward—the man’s blood on his hands and face—Jack had gotten sick, retching violently. No one had seen, no one had known. That didn’t matter. He knew.

He knew he could not ride with the people who had raised him and war on the people whose blood also ran in his veins. That night he told his wife, Datiye, that he was leaving—and he hadn’t been back since.

The first town he had come to was Tucson. He had been called a breed right to his face, and he had pulled his knife furiously on that man—a white—and flipped him, prepared to cut his-throat. Usen, the Life Giver, did not preach “love thine enemy” like the white God, and his instinct was to kill. He was alone, in hostile territory. He realized this in time and caution intervened. He released the man.

He had gone to the saloon—a one-room adobe shack with straw on the floor, a few broken stools and tables. An old Spanish woman refused to serve him whiskey until the hard look in his eyes compelled her to change her mind. Later he rode out—and hadn’t been back since.

The adjustment had been slow and painful. He had left the Apache, yet the white people shunned him as a half-breed. Jack had always been proud of who he was—one of the fiercest warriors in the Territory—and now his pride became a hard and angry mantle that he wore defiantly in the white man’s world.

One day in that first year he was pushed too far. He was referred to as a savage, almost but not quite to his face, and it was one time too many. The man who had defamed him quickly repented—at the feel of Jack’s knife against his throat. Moments later the saloon girl he was with asked him his name. With an amused, mocking smile, he had said, “Savage. Jack Savage.” And he had been going by that name ever since.

As he drifted he gradually changed a few details of his dress—wearing a Stetson hat, exchanging the buckskin shirt for a cotton one, even trying to wear the white man’s boots, as painful as they were. Without the moccasins with their distinctive Apache style, he found he encountered less bigotry and hostility.

He rode the Chisolm Trail, joining the cattle drive. He was a man, with social needs. At first he did not find any camaraderie among the crew. Their ostracism was blatant, as was their fear. Jack knew nothing about punching cows, yet he learned with fierce determination, and quickly. He worked twice as hard as any man there. Shortly after his first week on the drive, as he came in exhausted, covered with dust, slipping off his mount at the edge of the camp, prepared to eat alone, the ramrod came up to him and handed him a mug of coffee. It was a turning point. He had gained the boss’s respect, and that of the crew followed. While he hadn’t exactly made friends, and nor did he expect to, he was finally accepted.

In Texas he did a brief stint as a scout for the army in their campaign against the Comanche. It was not uncommon for Indians of other tribes to be used as scouts against their traditional enemies. Word of Jack’s skill as a tracker spread rapidly. He was working closely with an Irish sergeant named O’Malley. O’Malley’s feelings for him changed instantly one day when they encountered a war party and became engaged in vicious combat. Jack fought tirelessly at O’Malley’s side, then risked his life to drag a young, wounded soldier to safety, getting shot himself in the thigh in the process. After that, O’Malley became his first real white friend—they shared many evenings together in the local cantina—and Jack’s reputation soared throughout the fort and among all the troops.

Although he was living somewhat successfully on the fringes of the white man’s world, he was always aware that the
respect he gained for his skill and courage and intelligence was always accompanied by uncertainty and fear.

He might have white blood flowing in his veins, but it meant little to anyone except himself. To the world he was an Apache breed. Just like he was to this girl, Candice Carter. He turned his head to look at her.

She had fallen asleep. Her full lips were parted slightly, and a graphic image rose to mind-his mouth on hers, thrusting his tongue into her while he drove himself deep and thick and urgently inside her. His loins stirred again. It had been too long.

But he could never touch her.

They would hang him if he even tried.

She blinked into bright sunlight. Candice was instantly aware that she was alone—that he was gone. She sat abruptly upright, blanket in hand, her heart thudding with the possibilities.

“Good morning.”

She gasped, twisting to see him near a stand of ancient saguaro. Then, noticing where his hands were—fastening the drawstring of his pants—she went red. And looked away.
How am I going to escape?

“Are you hungry?”

She looked at him again, and to her relief, he was finished with what he had been doing, standing very relaxed not far from her. In the bright desert light, she was struck by many things at once. His hair wasn’t black, but a rich, dark sable; in the sun it glinted with warm highlights. His eyes were paler than any she’d ever seen, a silvery gray. His features were even finer by daylight—as if sculpted by an artist. His torso, still bare, was just as carefully sculpted, but with hard sinew, not bone. When he shifted, his wet muscles gleamed and rippled. The buckskin pants were indecently soft. They molded powerful, near-bulging thighs. They also cupped his prominent sex. If he wasn’t a half-breed he would be considered a stunning man. Candice glanced away. Her face was warm.

“You have hungry eyes,” he said, low. He was stiff, tense—and angry.

“What?”

“Are you as hungry as those eyes of yours?”

“I don’t understand.” Candice drew back.

“No? Maybe you don’t.” He stared at her.

“Wait!” She cried. “Where are my clothes?”

For a moment he just looked at her, then he nodded to his right. She followed his glance and saw her things hanging to dry on boulders and two cactus arms. Seeing her lacy pantalets and the sheer chemise made her blush—it was indecent. She didn’t want to look at him again, didn’t want his unsettling
attention, but she had to know. She just had to. “Did—did you …?”

He
had
been looking at her undergarments, as if reading her mind. Now he gazed blankly at her. Her color rose. “Did you?”

“I have no idea what you’re asking me.”

Her heart picked up its tempo. Everything was bad enough … being stripped naked, forced to remain that way, having her intimate clothes hanging out … his looking at her as if he could see through the blanket she was wearing, then looking at her clothes as if he could see her in them. But not knowing what she was asking? Was this a poor attempt at a joke? “Did you—while I was unconscious—did you—” she choked. “Did you ravish me?”

His expression went black.

She could barely look at him.

And then she had no choice, because he pounced on her, grabbed her bare shoulders, and snarled into her face. “I think you have one hell of a preoccupation with my raping you,”

She blinked. His breath was warm on her face, and her heart was beating thickly.

“Does it excite you, the thought of my raping you while you slept?” He shook her once. “Does it?”

“No,” she whimpered.

He tilted her chin up until it touched his. His beard was rough and scratchy. His lips, up close, were beautiful. “Does the thought of a half-breed taking you, driving his shaft into you, deep, hard”—his hand slid into her hair and anchored itself—“does that excite you?”

“No.”

He abruptly released her and stood. “When are you going to figure it out?” His tone was disgusted. “This breed isn’t going to rape you, and he’s not going to scalp you, and he’s not going to kill you.”

She sat trembling, still feeling his hurtful touch on her bare skin, the tingly warmth of his breath. When she looked up, he was gone.

Stunned, she sat very still, then carefully looked around. He was gone. She choked on a sob—of rear and despair. Then she hugged her arms tightly over her bosom. He had
said he wasn’t going to rape or kill or scalp her. That should have been reassuring. It wasn’t.

What ugly things he had said.

Her heart still hadn’t slowed its tempo. If he wasn’t going to use her or kill her, then what did ne have in store for her? She froze up thinking about her only other possible fate. Maybe, being a half-breed, he was one of those men who sold white women to the Indians, into slavery. It really didn’t matter that he himself wasn’t going to rape her; what mattered was that if he wasn’t going to kill her, it meant he was going to pass her along—in one way or another. She thought of the woman who had had four half-breed children. She would die before bearing a half-breed, or any bastard, for that matter. She would die before submitting to multiple rape.

A horse snorted.

Candice whirled to see his stallion nosing the dry gama grass, hobbled with twisted rawhide. She couldn’t believe her luck.

She yanked on her clothes frantically, as fast as she could, stumbling over her pant legs. She shrugged on the boots and ran to the black horse, breathless, managing to restrain herself when his head shot up and his ears went back. The whites of his eyes showed. He bared his teeth.

“Shhh, shhh, good boy,” she crooned softly. The stallion seemed to have the same temperament as his owner. Like his owner, he was also big, and although Candice was an expert horsewoman, she felt a shiver of apprehension. She ignored it. She reached her hand out slowly to stroke the thick corded neck. The stallion swung his hindquarters away, moving awkwardly because of the hooble, but then he began to relax.

“Good boy,” she whispered. “Good, good boy.”

She grabbed the red saddle blanket and swung it on, then the forty-pound saddle. The stallion had lost interest in her, fortunately, and was nibbling on the grass as she cinched up the girth. She was panting from her efforts, from the hurrying, from the fear. She threw the reins over his neck, crooning nonsense softly, and bent and untied the hobble. She tossed it aside, threw a nervous glance over her shoulder. Thank God,
he
was nowhere to be seen. She lifted one leg to put one foot in the stirrup and swing up.

“Don’t get on that horse,” Jack warned from behind her.

Her foot found the iron, and Candice grabbed the pommel desperately. His hands closed around her waist, and she felt a vast despair. He set her on the ground and she twisted around, furious with frustration, her fists coming up to bang against his chest. He grabbed her hands and stilled them. Behind him, the stallion shifted uneasily.

“Are you a horse thief, too?”

“I wasn’t stealing your horse!”

He yanked her hard, pulling her up against him, thigh to thigh, chest to breast. “On, I see. You were in the mood for a ride in the park?”

“Let me go!” she choked.

“What kind of woman are you? Last night you were going to bash me over the head with a rock, kill me if you could; today, steal my horse, leave me stranded in the desert. And to think I bothered to save your ungrateful neck.” His pale gaze scorched her.

Candice was shaking, desperate yet strangely angry too. “What am I supposed to do? Wait for … wait for …”

“I’ve told you I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You’re going to give me to your Apache friends,” she flung.

“What?”

“Like that woman, the one who was captured by Comanches.” Her breast heaved.

“I don’t know what in hell you’re talking about,” Jack said.

Calming, she became aware that he still held her wrists in an iron grip, that her back was against the stallion’s barrel, that his thighs pressed hers. A shudder swept her, her heart quickened its beat. As if discerning her thoughts, he released her, stepping back a slight distance. “She was a slave,” Candice said. When he showed no sign of comprehension, she wondered if he was dim-witted. “They used her, all the men. She had four half-breed babies.”