Chapter 5
"Alice, Joseph is asking for you," Gene said diplomatically. They withdrew, Gene with his arm around Alice's shoulders.
Aislinn wished the proverbial hole would open up and swallow her. "I th-thought since you're only half Indian … I mean…"
"Well you thought wrong." Greywolf dropped into one of the chairs at the table. "What are you still doing here anyway? I thought that by now you would have wheedled Gene into taking you back to civilization."
"He's got better things to do, like taking care of your grandfather."
Balancing his chair on its two back legs, he looked up at her tauntingly. "Or maybe this life of crime has proven to be exciting. Maybe you don't want to go home."
She gave him a fulminating look. "Of course I do. It's just that I'm not as shallow and unfeeling as you seem to think."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that I sympathize with you and your mother. Instead of terrorizing me, holding a knife on me and tying me up, you could have told me why you escaped prison. I would have helped you."
He uttered a sound that could have passed for a laugh. It wasn't a jovial sound, but one laden with skepticism and rebuke.
"A nice, respectable, law-abiding WASP like you, giving aid to an escaped convict, an escaped Indian convict?" His tone was derisive. "I seriously doubt that. Anyway, I couldn't gamble on your kindheartedness. I've learned to be distrustful." The front legs of the chair hit the floor hard, as though punctuating his statement. "Is there any more of that soup?"
As she dished up a bowl of soup from the pan that simmered over the smoky fire, she realized that the identity of his father was still a mystery. Apparently his Anglo blood wasn't a topic open to discussion, which only made her more curious about it.
He wolfed down the steaming soup. Without his asking, she poured him a fresh cup of coffee. While hours ago her sole desire had been to put distance between herself and this dangerous man, she now sat down in a chair across the table from him. He looked up at her with an inquiring tilt to his eyebrows, but went back to eating without offering a comment.
He no longer seemed so ferocious. Was it the hushed atmosphere or the limited confines of the hogan that had mellowed him? It was difficult to feel terror for a man who would kneel at the bedside of his ancient, dying grandfather and speak with such gentleness.
Greywolf hadn't changed physically. His hair was just as jet black, just as rebelliously long. His eyes were still as cold as a pond glazed with morning frost. The muscles in his arms still rippled with latent violence beneath the sinuous, coppery skin. His expression remained just as aloof.
And yet he was different.
He wasn't so much frightening now as he was intriguing, and so very different from the men her parents often paired her with. They were cookie-cutter replicas of each other. They wore conservatively tailored suits that only varied in their shades of gray. All were upwardly mobile executive types who conversed at length on subjects like market analyses and growth indexes. Their idea of spicing up a conversation was to talk about their tennis game and the expense of maintaining a foreign sports car. So-and-so's recent divorce and so-and-so's hassles with the IRS could always be counted on as good cocktail-party topics.
How boring they all seemed compared to this man, who wore one silver earring and gulped down canned soup as if it might be his last decent meal for a long time, who wasn't embarrassed by sweat and dirt and the fundamentals of life, like dying.
Quite frankly, she was fascinated by Lucas Greywolf.
"You didn't tell me you were a lawyer." He wasn't given to chitchat. Aislinn knew no other way of commencing a conversation with him than to jump in feet-first.
"It wasn't relevant."
"You might have mentioned it."
"Why? Would you have felt better knowing that the man holding a knife on you was a lawyer?"
"I suppose not," she said wearily. He went back to eating his soup. Conversation closed. Information would have to be pulled out of him like a deeply rooted bicuspid. She tried again. "Your mother told me you went to college on a track scholarship."
"That must have been some conversation you two had." He finished the soup and pushed the empty bowl away.
"Well, did you?" she demanded impatiently.
"Why the sudden interest?"
She shrugged. "I just … I don't know. I'm interested."
"You want to know how a poor Indian boy bettered himself in the Anglo world, is that it?"
"I should have known you'd take umbrage. Forget it." Angrily she scraped her chair back and stood up, but when she reached for his soup bowl to carry it to the sink, his hand shot out and captured hers.
"Sit down and I'll tell you all about it, since you're so curious to know."
She couldn't possibly win an arm-wrestling match with him, not the way his fingers were biting into her flesh, so she sat back down. He stared across the table at her for several moments before he finally released her hand. His eyes smoldered with contempt. The degree of it made her squirm uneasily.
"I graduated from a school here on the reservation," he began. His lips were held in a firm, grim line which barely moved as he formed words with them. "I got the scholarship because an alumnus who scouted for the coach had seen me run in a track meet. So I went to Tucson and enrolled in the university. The athletics was easy. But I was woefully ignorant compared to the other freshmen. Dedicated as the teachers on the reservation had been, I wasn't prepared for college by any stretch of the imagination."
"Don't look at me like that."
"How's that?"
"Like I should feel guilty over having blond hair and blue eyes."
"I know someone like you will find this hard to understand, but when you're the outcast to begin with, you'd better be damned good at something. That's the only way you even come close to being accepted. While you and your crowd were enjoying the fraternity and sorority parties, I was studying."
"You wanted to excel."
He scoffed. "I wanted to stay even. When I wasn't in class or in the library or on the track, I was working. I held two jobs on campus because I didn't want it said that I had gotten a free ride just because I was an Indian and could run fast."
He folded his hands on the table and stared down at them. "Do you know what a half-breed is?"
"I've heard the word, yes. It's an ugly word."
"Do you know what it's like to straddle a line like that? That's a rhetorical question. Of course you don't. Oh, I earned a certain celebrity from track. I could run," he said reflectively, as though he could still hear the cheering from the stadium fans. "By the time I graduated with honors—"
"So you did excel."
He ignored her. "My name was so well-known that they even wrote an article in the newspaper about me. The slant of it was how commendable my accomplishments were … for an Indian." His eyes speared into hers. "You see, there's always that qualification: 'For an Indian.'"
Aislinn knew that he was right, so she said nothing.
"I went straight into law school. I was eager to set up practice, to help keep the Indians from being exploited by mining companies and such. And I did win a few cases, but not nearly enough. I became disillusioned with the legal system, which I found out is as political as anything else in the world. Justice is not blind.
"So I began playing dirty ball, too. I became much more outspoken and critical. I organized the Indian protesters so they would have a louder voice. I staged peaceful demonstrations. My activities only served to win me a reputation as a troublemaker who bore watching. When they had the opportunity to arrest me and lock me up for a long time, they did."
He sat back in his chair and eyed Aislinn stonily. "So there. Are you satisfied now? Did you learn what you wanted to know?"
It was a lengthier speech than she could ever have imagined him making. The missing pieces were easy to fit in. He belonged in neither society, being neither wholly Indian nor wholly Anglo. She knew the slurs he must have been subjected to. Words like "breed" would have been intolerable for a headstrong, proud young man.
He was smart and physically superior. No doubt other Indian discontents looked up to him as their leader and rallied to his side. He became someone the Anglo community feared. Still, she thought, most of Lucas Greywolf's hardships stemmed from his own deep-seated bitterness and stubbornness.
He could have saved himself years in prison by naming the guilty parties. Aislinn could just imagine the granite hardness of his jaw when he refused to answer the authorities' questions.
"You've got a chip on your shoulder," she said candidly.
Surprisingly he smiled, though it was a chilling grin. "You're damned right I do. Now. Not always. When I left the reservation to go to college, I was full of naiveté and high ideals."
"But society did a number on you."
"Go ahead, mock me. I'm used to it."
"Did you ever stop to think that the reason you weren't included wasn't because you are Indian, but because of your less-than-charming personality?"
Again his hand lashed out and caught her wrist. "What do you know about it? Nothing," he growled. "Even your name reeks of your pure Anglo-Saxon blood. Have you ever been invited to a party and plied with liquor just so the others can see how much alcohol an Indian can really tolerate? 'How drunk will he get?' 'Maybe he'll put on a war bonnet and do a dance for us.' 'Where's your bow and arrow, Chief?'"
"Stop it!" She tried to pull her arm free but she couldn't.
Both had stood, though neither noticed. He had her bent at an awkward angle over the table. His teeth were clenched, and though his voice was as smooth as honey, it carried with it a terrible malice. "After you're subjected to that kind of ridicule, you come back and tell me all about that chip on my shoulder, Miss Andrews. You—"
"Lucas!"
His mother's sharp reprimand ended Greywolf's tirade abruptly. He stared deep into Aislinn's eyes for another heartbeat before he dropped her hand and spun around. "He's calling for you," Alice said. Her beautiful eyes sawed back and forth between her son and his captive, as though wary of the sparks she sensed crackling between them. She took Lucas's arm and led him back to the cot.
Aislinn watched them. The top of Alice's head barely reached his shoulder. The arm he settled across her narrow shoulders as they approached the sickbed conveyed affection and tenderness. She couldn't imagine him experiencing those natural human emotions.
"You have to forgive Lucas." Gene Dexter's quiet voice coaxed Aislinn out of her musings.
"Why should I? He's a grown man, accountable for his actions. Bad behavior is inexcusable, no matter the cause of it."
The doctor sighed and poured himself a cup of coffee. "You're right, of course." As he sipped his coffee, he, too, watched the mother and son kneeling at the bedside of the dying man. "I've known Lucas since he was a boy. He's always been angry. Bitter. Alice's mother was Navaho, but Joseph is Apache. Lucas inherited that warrior spirit."
"You've known them that long?"
He nodded. "I came to the reservation fresh out of my year of residency."
"Why?" She blushed when the doctor looked down at her, a smile curving his lips. Good Lord! Was Greywolf's rudeness rubbing off on her? "I'm sorry. It's none of my business."
"That's all right. I'm happy to answer." He drew his brows together, collecting his thoughts, carefully choosing his words. "I felt a 'calling,' I guess you might say. I was young and idealistic. I wanted to make a difference, not a lot of money."
"I'm sure you have." She paused before adding, "At least in the lives of Alice and Lucas Greywolf." When she dared to glance at him from the corner of her eye, she saw that he wasn't fooled by her subtle probing.
"I met Alice when she brought Lucas to the clinic with a broken arm. Over the next several weeks we became friends, and I asked if she would be willing to lend me a hand at the clinic. I trained her in nursing skills. We've been working together ever since."
His feelings for Alice Greywolf ran much deeper than those of a doctor for his dedicated nurse, but Aislinn didn't have the opportunity to press him on the issue. Just then Alice turned toward Gene, her lovely face stricken with alarm.
"Gene, come quickly! He's—"
The doctor rushed toward the cot and shouldered Lucas and Alice aside. He placed his stethoscope against Joseph Greywolf's bony chest. Even from where she stood near the table, Aislinn could hear his rattling, struggling respiration. It sounded like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together. The abrasive sound didn't cease until daybreak.
When it did, the sudden silence was louder than the racket had been. Aislinn covered her trembling lips with her hand and turned her back to the three keeping vigil at the cot, affording them a modicum of privacy. She, being the outsider, didn't want to intrude on their grief. She sat down in one of the chairs and bowed her head.
She heard the shuffle of feet on the packed-dirt floor, the quiet sound of Alice's weeping, whispered murmurs of consolation. Then her ears were met with the heavy thud of boot heels. The front door squeaked as it was shoved open. Aislinn raised her head and, through the door, saw Lucas stalk off down the rocky path.
His powerful body was as fluid and graceful as ever, but the sinewy muscles were stretching his skin, straining it. He seemed able to hold himself together only by sheer willpower. Since his back was to her, she couldn't see his face, but she could imagine it—tense, hard, unrelentingly stern.
Aislinn watched him stamp past her car and the four-wheel-drive truck she assumed belonged to Dr. Dexter. With that same determined stride, he crossed the floor of the canyon, then took a rocky, uneven path up the side of the hill.
She never remembered moving. She didn't consciously make up her mind. She simply stood up and rushed toward the door, some subconscious area of her brain directing her. She quickly glanced at Alice. Gene Dexter was holding her in his arms, crooning words of comfort into her midnight-black hair.
Aislinn ran through the door and out into the still morning. Dawn light was just peeping over the ridge of the mountains that ringed the hogan. The air was considerably cooler up there in the mountains, particularly at that time of day, when the sun hadn't had time to bake the rocks to a grilling heat.
Aislinn noticed nothing, not even the gorgeous, ever-changing violet hues of the eastern sky as the sun rose higher. Her eyes were trained on the man who was no more than a rapidly shrinking speck against the rocky terrain as he climbed, seemingly without effort, higher.
Her progress wasn't as rapid. The boots he had chosen for her came in handy now, but the borrowed skirt kept getting snagged on brush and wrapped around her legs, impeding her efforts. Innumerable times she skinned her knees; her palms bled from stinging scrapes.
Before she even reached the halfway point to the summit, she was winded and laboring for every breath. But she kept climbing, driven by an emotion she didn't stop to contemplate. It was something she simply had to do. She had to get to Greywolf.
At last the plateau, which formed a tabletop crest to the rocky incline, no longer seemed unreachable. She took heart and began climbing faster. Looking up, she could see Lucas standing at the summit, his body a dark, lean silhouette against the cloudless lavender sky.
When she finally reached the top, she virtually crawled the remaining distance. Once there, she slumped down on the level rock and hung her head in exhaustion. Her breath soughed in and out of her body. Her heart was beating so fast that it actually hurt. She stared down at her hands in disbelief. Rocks had been cruel to her palms. Her nails were broken.
Ordinarily, she would have been horrified by such injuries. Now, the pain meant nothing. She didn't even feel it. Its significance was reduced to nothingness when measured against that of the man.
Greywolf remained motionless, his back to her, staring out over the opposite cliff. His feet were braced a shoulders' width apart. His hands, bailed into fists, were held rigidly at his sides.
As she watched, he threw his head back, squeezed his eyes shut, and released a howl that echoed eerily off the walls of the surrounding mountains. The animal wail came straight from his soul. It was an outpouring of grief, despair and frustration, so profound that Aislinn felt his pain as her own. Tears coursed down her cheeks.
Leaning forward, she stretched out a hand as though to touch him, but he was standing several yards away. Her offer of solace went unseen.
She didn't know why she wasn't repulsed by his soul-rending display of emotion. In her family such exhibitions were forbidden. If one felt sadness, rage, even joy, demonstrations of the emotion were kept restrained and refined. Self-expression, just as everything else, was governed by rules. One kept one's feelings bridled. To do otherwise was considered bad taste and vulgar in the extreme.
Never in her life had Aislinn witnessed such an honest, boundless expression of emotion. Greywolf's raw cry opened up a secret pocket of her heart and left a wide and gaping wound. A spear couldn't have pierced her more thoroughly. The impact was that jarring, that sharp, that deep.
He sank to his knees, bowed his back and hung his head low, covering it with his arms. He rocked back and forth, keening and chanting words she didn't comprehend. She understood only that he was a man totally disconsolate, made alien and alone by the measure of his grief.
Still sitting, she inched her way over to him and touched his shoulder. He reacted like an injured animal. His head snapped around and he made a snarling sound. His eyes were tearless and icy on the surface, but the black centers burned from within like the fathomless pits of hell.
"What are you doing here?" he asked disdainfully. "You have no place here."
Not only was he implying that she didn't belong on this wild plateau with him, but also that she couldn't begin to understand the depth of his grief and that he resented her thinking she could.
"I'm sorry about your grandfather."
His eyes narrowed dangerously. "What could you possibly care about the death of an old, useless Indian?"
Tears smarted in her eyes at his harsh words. "Why do you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Cruelly shut other people out, people who are trying to help you."
"I don't need anybody's help." He looked at her with open scorn. "Especially yours."
"Do you think you're the only person on earth who has ever been disillusioned, or hurt, or betrayed?"
"You have? In your ivory palace?"