Chapter Fifty-Five
Candice heard the door opening and looked up, smiling. “You’re just in time.” Seeing Jack’s grim expression, her smile faded. “What’s wrong, Jack?”
“I just heard some news,” he said grimly. “There are troops up at Apache Pass way station under siege, along with two stages full of passengers. Two men have been killed, and more are wounded. The rumor is Cochise has taken three Americans prisoner.”
Candice paused, carving knife in hand, the succulent roast chicken forgotten.
“Apparently,” Jack said, “Cochise has gone on the warpath.”
She searched her husband’s smoky gaze. “Are you all right?”
“I’ve heard that Oury’s going to rendezvous with troops from Fort Breckenridge at Ewell Springs. They’re rounding up volunteers in Tucson. They also sent soldiers to Fort Buchanan for medical aid and supplies.” Oury was the agent for the Butterfield Overland Mail.
“How did this happen?”
“Remember the kidnapping of John Warden’s boy this fall? The troops were sent to find him.” Jack sat down and stared at the fire.
“I heard you say a long time ago that Cochise didn’t take the boy,” Candice said, sitting also.
“Warden says he did.” He briefly met his wife’s gaze and was struck by the compassion he saw there. She couldn’t know what he was going through.
“Jack?” Her voice was high and uneasy. “Is this war?”
“Yes.”
Jack’s face was expressionless. He knew, without having to be told, that if white men had been killed and taken prisoner, it was war.
And the only thing that would make Cochise break his word was betrayal.
Cochise betrayed would be a warrior who would wreak devastation the extent of which no one could imagine except for himself. He was grim and pensive. And afraid.
“Do you want to eat?” Candice asked gently, thinking fearfully about her brothers and father. They had never been at war with the Apaches, not since they had moved to the Territory almost eleven years ago. Raids and skirmishes were one thing. But war? God, no.
“You eat,” Jack said. “I’m not hungry.”
He walked outside, alone—but not to do chores. He mounted up and rode out of town, giving the black his head, thinking. His thoughts were dark.
He respected and admired Cochise above all other men.
He was proud that Cochise had given him his childhood name, and had been proud, too, to ride with him and be held in respect by the Chiricahua chief.
He understood what was happening better than most men, white or Apache.
Cochise had sought to make peace with the white man to insure the survival of his people.
The Apaches were few, the white many, their ways superior, more powerful—ways built on wisdom and technology.
The whites had guns, cannon, glasses, maps, supplies, and, most important, endless numbers.
Only in peace could the Apache hope to survive, by living side by side with the Americans.
The war would be one of survival … freedom … life and death.
Jack knew in his heart that the war was lost before it had begun.
Cochise knew it too. It was why he had wanted peace with the white man, why he had hung on to it so tenaciously in the face of contempt from the Mescalero, the other Apache chiefs—Mangas Coloradas, Geronimo—and dissent even from his own warriors, who ached to fight for their way of life, their land, and their freedom.
How would it end? For how many years could the Apaches hold off the whites? Already, as Cochise had pointed out, many Tonto and Coyoteros had been herded like animals and confined to reservations. Not a bodily death, but a death just the same. A death of a way of life. Of a people.
Jack knew as he rode back to town that there was only one decision to make.
He had no choice. He untacked the black, then rubbed him down, giving him grain and lingering —to put off the inevitable.
Finally he turned and went into the house.
Candice was throwing another stick of wood on the fire.
He looked at her in the pink lace nightgown with the thin silk wrapper and felt an overwhelming need for her—a need that went beyond mere desire.
He wished, in that instant, that he could take back all the walls of silence between them, redo and relive every moment he had ever spent with her.
“Come on,” he said softly.
“What is it?” she asked with worry, as he led her across the room.
He didn’t answer. Standing so close to her that his thighs touched hers, he stared at her face, flushed from the fire, and thought: I don’t want to leave her, I love her.
How come I’ve never told her that? His hands went to the belt of the robe and loosened it. He slid the wrapper from her shoulders.
“Jack?”
He couldn’t smile, not when this was good-bye.
“Jack?” she asked again, this time with panic as his arms drew her against him.
He was thickly erect already, the aching need coming from desperation. He kissed her softly, tenderly, his mouth slanting over hers, ignoring her stiff, unyielding form and her hands on his chest. Again, in a more panicked voice, she said, “Jack?”
And then she melted. Her arms went around his neck, fingers threading through his hair. Her response, wild and instinctively urgent, displaced the soft tenderness of his kisses, turning them hard and insistent and demanding.
He turned savage. The urgency in his heart overtook his body, and he grabbed her hips, pulling them against his long, hard arousal, rubbing against her. He invaded her mouth with his tongue, seeking, frantically seeking. He needed her, now.
It might be the last time.
They fell on the bed together, and she was caught up in his urgency and passion, tearing at his clothes.
Within a moment they were naked, and he thrust into her, hard, and she cried out in surprise, but was wet and ready and eager.
Jack stroked her rapidly, his mouth on hers, harder and faster, holding her, lost in this one moment, making this one memory …
“What is it?” she whispered afterward, looking up at his glazed face.
“Sshh,” he said as he kissed her.
He rolled to his side and held her, but did not relax, did not close his eyes. Instead he studied her face, drinking in her flushed beauty, the dark fans of her long lashes, the smoothly sculpted planes of her face, the swollen, red lips, now slightly parted. He leaned forward to kiss her lightly.
Her gaze became focused and worried. Jack, what is it?”
“Sshh, shijii, not now,” he hushed, his mouth covering hers again. Tonight was theirs, and nothing could change that.
The next morning Candice awoke to the unfamiliar sounds of Jack moving back and forth across the room. She sighed, stretched, and instantly remembered last night-Jack’s urgency and insatiability. She was immediately awake, sitting, the fear rushing back.
Jack was standing in the center of the room, fully dressed -and fully armed, right down to the crossed ammunition belts.
On the table were his saddlebags and an extra change of buckskin clothes.
Completely frozen inside, she watched him toss a cloth headband and lus warrior’s necklace onto the pile.
“You’re leaving,” she stated flatly.
He looked at her, and his gray eyes were luminous with something akin to pain. “I’m riding up to Apache Pass,” he told her.
She stared. Her heart began to thud wildly and hurtfully. “Please don’t go.”
He had flint, his loincloth, some jerky, and an extra blanket in his saddlebags. He rolled up the clothes, then donned the necklace, tucking it beneath his shirt. “You don’t understand,” he said levelly.
“Why are you going? she said. “What are you planning on doing? How long will you be gone?” Her voice cracked.
He tied on the headband. “I’m going to see Cochise.”
She gasped. “It’s too dangerous! Are you crazy? Please—Jack!”
He faced her squarely. “You don’t understand, Candice. Cochise has been betrayed. I am riding with him.”
She stared, thoroughly stunned.
He came to her and sat on the bed, touching her arm-she pulled away violently. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish there was another way.”
“You can’t do this!” she cried. “What do you mean? You’re going on the warpath with Cochise?” Her voice was shrill.
He nodded.
“You can’t—you’d leave me here, pregnant, to go ride with those damn Apaches?”
He almost flinched. “I have no choice.”
“No choice?” she shouted. “Every man has a choice!”
“God!” he cried. “Candice, I have no choice—it’s my duty—there’s honor and loyalty involved.”
“Honor and loyalty?” She gasped. “Duty? Your duty is here—with me!”
His expression hardened. “I’m taking you back to your family.”
It took a full second for the import of his statement to sink in. “No. No, I won’t go. Jack, don’t leave, please, there’s nothing you can do up there.”
“I have to go, Candice, don’t you understand?” He pleaded.
“No! I don’t understand! You’re my husband and I’m having your baby! We need you here!”
“That’s why I’m taking you to the High C”
“No!” she cried. “No, Jack, I won’t go!”
He took her cold hands in his, his eyes searching her face. He couldn’t help the bitterness in his tone. “Afraid to face them while you’re carrying my child?”
“Yes!” She flung back the truth furiously, hoping to devastate him. “Yes, I’m afraid to face them, afraid of what they’ll say, what they’ll think—damn you!”
He stood up, his expression as hard as granite, and moved to the table where he began packing his things in his saddlebags.
He heard her muffle a sob. He hefted the bags onto his shoulder.
“I’ll have the Santana boy see to your heavier needs.
Here’s forty dollars. It will hold you for a few months if I can’t get back sooner. ”
She said nothing, staring at the sheets, twisting them in white hand, tears falling. He waited for her to look at him, and when he realized she wouldn’t, he walked to the door.
She reached him at the door, grabbing his arm and hanging on desperately. “Don’t go—I need you here!”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can, and as often.” He tried for a reassuring smile and failed miserably.
“No,” she cried, but it was half a wail. Her eyes were filled with horror.
He paused and kissed her, but she was frozen into immobility, her lips like stone. He didn’t look at her again as he walked out the door, leaving her standing there naked and shocked.
Candice closed her eyes. What if he was killed? God, I love him, and he’s leaving me—what if he’s killed? What if I never see him again?
She shrugged on her wrapper, not even bothering with the nightgown, sick and hysterical because her world was falling apart and the man she loved was riding off to war—against her own people.
And then she was flying as fast as she could outside, barefoot.
He was leading the black out from the corral, and she cried out his name, running across the yard.
He hesitated as she came, then swung into the saddle.
“No!” she cried, grabbing his ankle. “Jack, don’t go! You can’t!”
“I have to.” He looked down at her, but his face was masked. “Get back inside, Candice, before the neighbors see you.”
She stood, tears streaming down her face. “Don’t go, Jack, damn you, don’t go!”
He closed his eyes briefly. “I love you,” he said softly, then urged the black into a trot, breaking free of her.
She clung to the fence, weeping, watching his shadowy figure until the night swallowed him up.