Hostage Heart (8 page)

Humiliated, Lark bowed her head, feeling her cheeks burn as never before, feeling Matt’s eyes scalding her. Her fingers trembled as she picked up a cloth, preparing to cleanse the wound.

“For being half white, you sure as hell act like a shy Apache woman.”

Lark lifted her chin, furious at his grating comment, prepared to do verbal battle with him. When she realized there was no condemnation in his gray eyes, she was momentarily at a loss.

“I’m half Apache.”

“You’re also half white, if I recall.”

Bristling, Lark gingerly washed around the wound with warm, soapy water. She felt him stiffen and took almost savage pleasure in giving back some of the pain he had caused her. Almost…

Matt saw the anger burn in her eyes like blue cobalt. He tensed, locking his hands into fists as she gently dug the old poultice out of the wound. Sweat beaded his drawn brow and a curse hissed from between his clenched teeth. “You have a hell of a way of getting even,” he rasped, sweat dribbling down his temples.

“I’m not getting even! Your wound must be cleaned before I can put on a fresh poultice.”

“Why the hell didn’t you get me a doctor from Prescott like I asked?”

Stung by his ungrateful attitude, Lark stubbornly set her lips and replaced the poultice. “No doctor would come out here, that’s why.”

“You can’t be more than forty miles from Prescott. Or didn’t you even try, thinking you could kill me with your chants and that smelly green stuff you’re jamming into my leg.”

The man was insufferable! Lark washed her fingers and gently laid a new dressing over his leg. “We’re twenty miles from town, Mr. Kincaid. Very few whites ever come to the Gallagher Ranch.”

The throbbing pain began to recede and Matt slowly let his muscles relax, feeling suddenly shaky in the aftermath. In all fairness, Lark’s touch was anything but painful. She was expert and quick about changing the dressings. With maddening ease, he found himself perversely enjoying prodding and poking at her. The anger in her eyes only made her appear that much more desirable.

“Why don’t whites come here?” he goaded.

“Because the whites of Prescott hate us. We are the wrong mix of color and belief for them.” She flashed an angry look toward him. There was a contemptuous smile on his unshaven face and Lark wanted to slap it off his features. He was a rude and obnoxious guest. But what else did she expect? He was a
pindah
.

Maria came in and silently began picking up the pieces of broken pottery and mopping up the water.

“Don’t they respect your white half?” he drawled.

“Not any more than I respect them,” she replied between set lips. Carefully Lark rolled clean strips of white cloth around his thigh, covering the poultice.

“Maybe if you’d dress like a normal white woman, someone might take you seriously and quit treating you like an Injun.”

That did it! Lark sucked in a swift breath, her hands stilling on his leg. Her eyes narrowed in blue fury. “And if I tended you in a dress instead of in these clothes, would you treat me any differently?”

“Might.”

Her nostrils flared. “Then you’re as blind and insensitive as all the other
pindahs
I know! Clothes do not make a person. At least the Apache judge one another on far more important considerations than that!”

Matt grinned lopsidedly, thinking how fiery and untamed she appeared in that molten moment. He longed to reach out, slide his fingers through that ebony cascade, and find out how just how soft and silken it was. “What do Apache judge another person by?”

She forced herself to finish the bandaging, her temper stealing her ability to think clearly. “Apaches celebrate the good in another person, their wisdom, physical strength, industriousness, and, most importantly, their generosity with food and gifts to those who are less fortunate than themselves.” She nailed him with a glare, knotting the cotton savagely and then standing up. “Clothes mean nothing to us. They are practical, that’s all. Which just shows me how shallow you
pindahs
are. Why should I claim my white half when I’m ashamed of how they act?”

Matt scowled, watching as she stood stiffly before him. “So where are you going all dressed up?” he asked sarcastically.

Bending down, Lark helped Maria retrieve the last shards of the bowl. “I’m going into Prescott. Not that it’s any of your business.”

“Then bring a real doctor back with you. I don’t want my leg to fall off.”

Fury boiled through her. Her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “If I could, I would. If I was allowed, I’d dump you into
pindah
hands and have peace once more on the ranch.”

At that moment, she looked to Matt like an Apache war chief. Her head was high, her chin thrust out, her shoulders proudly thrown back with her booted legs slightly spread for good balance. She was part woman, part savage, and part beautiful animal. Her long, black hair hung almost to her waist, cloaking her in an ebony sheet that enhanced her natural Apache wildness.

“Then take me along with you,” he said. “Anything’s better than staying here.”

Maria glanced apprehensively at Lark, then at Kincaid, and then excused herself.

Lark wrestled with her temper. She placed her hands on her hips, a distinct Apache gesture that meant to warn the other person that she was in a joking or teasing mood. She had done it unconsciously. “If you want to risk bleeding to death over a bumpy road for five hours, I don’t care. If dying is suddenly more important to you than living, that is your choice. I have no men here to help carry you to the buckboard, so if you want to go with me, then get up!”

Matt didn’t believe he would bleed to death. He tried to sit up—three times he tried. Sweat stood out on his brow as he struggled. Glaring at her, he saw amusement etched clearly in Lark’s narrowed blue eyes. She was laughing at him. Damn her! He wanted to strangle her. As he lay back, breathing hard, Matt knew that wasn’t true. No, he wanted to take her down beneath him and feel her body move sensuously below his, like a big, golden cat being stroked by her master. A flash of desire snuffed out his anger.

“Looks like you win this round,” he gritted out. “I’m still your prisoner.”

“You are a guest here, not a prisoner.” Lark allowed her hands to slip from her slim hips, suddenly feeling drained by their confrontation. She walked around the bed to the dresser and pulled out the honed steel blade of her bowie knife. It was a beautifully balanced weapon, one that Cochise had gifted her with many years before. Slipping it into the scabbard she carried low on her left hip, Lark turned back to Matt. He was watching her with a strange expression on his face. Was it admiration or disgust? She was too exhausted to care.

“Wait,” he called as she walked toward the door.

Lark barely turned toward him. “I want no more words with you, Mr. Kincaid. I am not your enemy. I never have been. If you hate me and my people, so be it. While I’m gone, I ask that you treat Maria and Ny-Oden, the old shaman, with respect. If you hate Apaches, then take it out on me when I return, not on them. They only want you to get better and live. They don’t deserve your rudeness.”

His mouth softened as he heard the infinite weariness in her low voice. The change in Lark was startling; one moment she was a fiery hellion, the next a woman who carried too many heavy responsibilities on her young, inexperienced shoulders. He vividly recalled the conversation earlier between Lark and Maria about the dangers of going into Prescott alone.

“Look, I didn’t mean to get carried away,” he muttered, coming as close to an apology as she was ever going to get from him. His heart wrenched as he saw the corners of her once tense mouth relax into a vague smile. It changed her entire face, and a keen need for her swept through him with unexpected force.

“You’ve been gravely ill. I didn’t mean to get angry or short with you, either. It’s just that I…well, I’ve had many burdens to carry of late.”

Moved by her halting apology, Matt felt the last of his anger dissolve. She was right; she didn’t deserve his hatred. He liked her strength and her vulnerability. In that poignant moment, as she met and held his gaze, he wanted to reach out and protect her. He cleared his throat. “When will you be back?”

Lark noted the change in Matt and was warmed by his sudden concern. “It is a five-hour ride to Prescott. I will try to get a doctor to come out, but I cannot promise you anything. There is other business I must also attend to. Perhaps by moonrise I’ll return.”

“I see.”

“Before you sleep tonight, Maria will change the poultice once more.”

“You won’t be back in time?”

Lark shook her head. “Tomorrow morning I will tend you.”

Matt stared after her as she left the room, excruciatingly aware of the loss of her vibrant presence. Was Lark really in danger by going into Prescott alone? Dressed like a damned Apache, she was certainly going to draw plenty of attention to herself. He strained to hear the voices of Lark and Maria outside the room, but it was impossible. When the two burly brown mules drawing the wagon walked by, Matt was able to get one last glimpse of Lark as she sat on the seat of the buckboard. Frustrated, he lay back down, filled with guilt and anger.

Lark tried to ignore the malevolent stares of the people of Prescott as she drove the buckboard down the dusty main street. Two years ago, her father had begged her to come to town with him so she could try again to adapt to the white world. Since her humiliation by the school children when she was twelve, she had never wanted to return to the place that held only painful memories for her. At sixteen, she had reluctantly joined her father on his monthly trips. He had wanted to show her “his people” and had tried to tell her that there were kind white people, not just bad ones like Cameron and Shanks. She remembered with mortification that the trip had only multiplied her pain. Although she had worn a dress like a white woman, the children had taunted her when she walked down the wooden sidewalk from the bank to the dry goods store, calling her a breed and throwing rocks and clods of dirt at her. Finding safety in Abe Harris’s store, Lark had thought she was finally safe, but she had been wrong. Bo Shanks had ambled in and caused her the worst embarrassment of her life. Lark slammed the door shut on those memories, concentrating instead on the present.

The children were in school now, so she was saved from their revilement. Fleetingly she saw the white women in all their finery and remembered Matt Kincaid’s words about dressing as they did. Wearing a white woman’s dress did not guarantee her acceptance by them, as Lark had already discovered.

She passed Madam Bouchard’s Dress Shop and saw in the window a dress made of blue silk with a violet sheen to it. The cloth took her breath away as she stared at the confection. But her momentary awe was squelched when an obviously wealthy patron emerged and spotted her. The woman raised her nose daintily into the air and pressed a lacy handkerchief to her face, disdain evident in every line of her aristocratic features. Her lips set, Lark forced herself not to react to the woman’s rude behavior.

Why Matt would want her to acknowledge her white heritage was beyond her. Did white men want their women merely as pretty baubles? The Apache were the opposite; they applauded a woman’s strength, intelligence, and ability to fight at her husband’s side.

The three-story brick building owned by Jud Cameron loomed ahead. Lark’s fingers tightened around the worn leather trace reins. Nervousness rose like stinging bile in her throat as she pulled the buckboard to a halt. Tying the nearest mule to the hitching rail, Lark girded herself for the confrontation with Cameron.

She had no more than pulled open the glass-and-brass door and stepped inside when two women who were doing business with tellers turned and ogled her. Lark froze, staring back at them. It was noon and the bank was filled to capacity with customers; at least ten people were present. Her mouth went dry as she saw two men automatically scowl in her direction. A third man whispered, “Apache squaw.” Everyone in the bank fell silent, their eyes focused on Lark.

Squaring her shoulders, she walked to the first teller. “I’m Lark Gallagher and I wish to see Mr. Cameron. I have business with him.”

The clerk, who was no more than seventeen, with a hint of acne on his pale face, gave a jerky nod to the left, as if seeking approval for her request.

A shiver of warning rippled up Lark’s spine. She barely turned her head. Standing in the background was Bo Shanks, his tall, lean body slouched against the wall, his guns worn low on his narrow hips. His eyes focused intensely upon her. They were the eyes of a coyote. All her senses shrilled in warning, but she refused to react to the twisted smile on his full mouth. He chewed on a toothpick like a cow chewing on its cud, his arms across his chest. Silence built to a brittle crescendo as they locked stares.

Bo Shanks eased from his position, spitting out the toothpick on the highly waxed tile floor. He grinned as he walked with the ease of a predator who knew he was master of his territory. As he approached Lark, his smile reflected barely veiled insolence.

“Roarke Gallagher’s breed daughter, eh?” he said in a soft, sinister voice. “Well, what do ya know…”

Lark stood her ground. She was as tall as the gunfighter and refused to look away from his amber eyes. Her heart beat hard in her breast as his scalding gaze traveled upward from her booted feet, lingered hotly at the apex of her thighs, then moved on to where her breasts were thrust against the shirt she wore, the soft cotton emphasizing their fullness. Finally his gaze swept up her neck to her face. Her nostrils flared as she registered his sour, unwashed smell. His sandy hair was parted to one side and slicked down with grease, emphasizing the long lines of his face. He was in his early twenties, yet his face looked unduly aged due to bouts of hard drinking. Lark doubted the lines in his face had come from an honest day’s labor. Everyone knew Shanks was Jud Cameron’s hired gun even though he was supposed to work as a drover on the banker’s ranch.

“What’s it been, Lark? Two years since I last saw ya?” He grinned, his uneven teeth exposed as if in a snarl. “You’ve changed,” he added with more than passing interest.

“And you haven’t, Shanks.” Her voice vibrated with hatred. “Now let me pass. I have business with Mr. Cameron.”

“And if I don’t, breed?”

Lark remembered with humiliating clarity how Shanks had once grabbed her in Abe’s store and mauled her playfully, unmercifully. His long, skinny hands had roved across her breasts and she had frozen in shock and pain. Then, gathering, her wits, she had fought back. The proof of her attack, four long scars, lay like dull pink slashes along Shanks’s left cheek where she had raked him. As he had backed off, he’d sworn he’d have her someday—his way. At the time she had been too young to realize what he meant by his threat. Now she understood completely.

Lark checked her anger, feeling all eyes upon her. Automatically she placed the palm of her left hand over the butt of the knife that rested in the scabbard. “I’m taking care of my father’s banking business now. Let me pass, Shanks,” she said in low tones.

Shanks snickered and took a step back. “Yeah, I heard yore old man took a bullet in the back. Ya oughta be careful that yore not next.” He threw a look at the nervous young teller. “Willy, tell Mr. Cameron he’s got a visitor. A
Miss
Gallagher,” he emphasized, grinning.

Jud Cameron had just raised his shot glass full of mellow sipping whiskey in a toast to Colonel Parker Morgan, commanding officer of Fort Whipple, when the knock interrupted him. With a scowl, he ordered, “Come in.” Damn, he didn’t want to be disturbed, and Shanks knew that. What the hell was going on?

“Willy doffed the green visor he wore over his eyes. “Sir, Mr. Shanks says to tell you a Miss Gallagher is here to talk business with you.”

Morgan shot a wry glance at Cameron. “That Apache half-breed daughter of Roarke Gallagher’s?”

Jud smiled as he rose, tossing the whiskey down his throat. It burned pleasantly all the way down. “The
late
Roarke Gallagher.” He turned back to his clerk. “Take her to my other office, Willy. I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”

Jud waited until the door closed before speaking. “This is the beginning of the end for the Gallagher Ranch,” he announced. “And don’t say I didn’t tell you so.”

Morgan shrugged his broad shoulders and poured himself another whiskey. “I didn’t think you could get Gallagher, but I was wrong. What’s next in your campaign to get the water rights to that ranch?”

Jud rebuttoned his paisley velvet vest and shrugged into his gray business coat. “I’ve told Sheriff Cole to tell Lark Gallagher that an Apache shot her father outside of town. Of course, he’ll blame it on Ga’n since he’s been keeping the area a hotbed of problems for the U.S. Army. Now she’s by herself. No woman can run a ranch on her own. I plan to offer her cash to sell it. In her present position, I’m sure she’ll accept.”

Morgan’s fleshy features broke into a smile and he lifted his glass in another toast. “I’ve got to give you credit, Jud. You and the Ring have certainly brought more government funds to the Arizona Territory, more than I ever dreamed possible. Your idea to keep the damned Apaches stirred up and force the government to bring in more troops has been a brilliant success.”

Jud checked the time on his gold watch before placing it back in the side pocket. The Tucson Indian Ring had been created ten years earlier by some very astute businessmen in the Arizona Territory who saw a way to make huge profits. Jud was in charge of the northern area. He bribed men like Morgan, Cole and Shanks to bend or ignore the law completely. Yes, he liked greedy men; they were easy to control. The Ring’s power and influence was building yearly, their coffers filling with more money than he’d ever dreamed existed. Now the Ring’s influence reached clear back to Washington, D.C. Cameron felt the keen edge of power, and he savored the sensation. It was simple arithmetic: keep the whites and Indians at war with one another and the government would keep sending more money and troops.

Jud looked over at Morgan. “You’re building a nice little nest egg, too, don’t forget. Just keep turning your head the other way when I send Shanks and my boys out to raid an Apache rancheria, and when Ga’n and his renegades attack the settlers.”

“We need to talk about tactical raids along that line, Jud.”

He raised a well-manicured hand. “This won’t take long. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes to discuss the Ring’s next series of raids. In the meantime, enjoy this good whiskey.”

Lark looked up as the door to the office opened and closed. She held the voucher tightly in her hand, along with the bankbook to her father’s savings account.

Jud Cameron reminded her of a snake. Although he wore only the finest clothes, although his black hair was neatly cut and his thick mustache trimmed, he was the most poisonous kind of
pindah
. Again she had to endure from him the kind of torrid inspection she had come to expect from white men. As Cameron stripped her naked with his cool green gaze all her muscles tightened with wariness. She stood without speaking, her eyes blazing with distrust.

Finally Cameron came forward and sat down at the massive maple desk. With a flourish he gestured toward a leather wing chair. “Sit down, Lark. How long has it been? Almost two years since I last had the pleasure of seeing you?” He smiled to himself: she was a breathtaking creature, a wild, untamed golden savage. Just her proud, silent stance fired his blood. By the age of thirty, he’d sampled just about every kind of female there was, but he’d never had a half-breed Apache woman, and he savored the thought of having her.

Lark sat down on the edge of the chair, the voucher clutched in her hands. “I’ve come to take over my father’s business with the Prescott Bank, Mr. Cameron.”

Jud steepled his long, slender fingers in front of him and leaned back in his chair. “Yes. I heard about your father’s untimely death. My condolences to you, Lark. It was a shame. He was a respected man here in Prescott.” Respected for the quality of horses he raised, Jud amended silently, and endlessly gossiped about because of his squaw wife and breed daughter, plus that menagerie of coloreds, greasers, and God knew what other half animals he had working for him at his ranch.

Lark inclined her head. “I bring an Army voucher to place in our account, Mr. Cameron.” She stood and laid the voucher and book in front of him. Swallowing her pride, she admitted, “I’m not familiar with how to bank. If you will show me…”

“Of course, Lark.” He studied the Army voucher, some of his smile slipping. That damned Frank Herter was giving her top dollar for the offspring of that red Kentucky Stud! The U.S. Army had commissioned Herter directly as supply officer in charge of buying horses for the forts in the northern Arizona Territory. Because of that, Colonel Morgan couldn’t control Herter’s dealings or what he paid for a particular ranch’s animals. Jud had wanted Herter to buy his own stock at top price, but Herter had claimed the Gallagher stallion sired better foals. Clearly, he needed that red stallion. Well, it was just a matter of time and he’d have him.

Cameron fingered the thick, heavy paper with Herter’s signature on it. Herter was due to retire shortly. Soon they’d be rid of that bastard, who had stood like a wall between the Ring and Gallagher’s Ranch.

“Before I can take this,” Cameron said, “you must sign it. Can you write your name?”

Lark held his gaze. “Yes, I can. I also speak three languages fluently.” Lark couldn’t read or write well, but she relied on her memory, which had never failed her.

Jud placed a pen and ink pot in front of her. “I’m impressed,” he complimented her smoothly. “After I heard you quit school, I lost track of your education.”

She signed her full name across the back of the voucher. “My father became my teacher,” she explained tersely.

Studying her neat penmanship, Jud smiled. “And quite a good one judging from the flourish of your handwriting.”

Praise coming from a snake was still venom in disguise as far as Lark was concerned. She ignored his compliment. “I want six hundred dollars put in this,” she said, pointing to the green bankbook, “and I want four hundred dollars in cash.”

“First you’ve got to pay up on this month’s mortgage, Lark,” he said, shaking his head.

Lark’s mouth fell open. “What? My father paid this month’s mortgage already!”

“Do you have any proof that he did? My teller always gives him a payment slip confirming that the mortgage was paid on time. Do you have it?”

Her head swam in confusion. When Father Mulcahy had brought her father’s body back in the buckboard, all his money and his gold watch had been missing. There had been no payment slip in the bankbook she had retrieved from his shirt pocket. “But he was killed
after
leaving Prescott. That means he stopped here at your bank and paid the money we owed, then got supplies and had a drink over at the saloon before he left.”

With a lift of his shoulders, Jud said, “I’m sorry, Lark, but there’s no evidence he paid the one hundred dollars he owes the bank this month.”

She sat down, dazed. If only she understood math and banking! If only she wasn’t so poor at reading and numbers. Anguished, Lark knew her father had already paid this month’s mortgage. She looked up at Cameron’s smiling features and hated him even more, knowing she would have to pay two months’ mortgage. Education was power, she was discovering.