The Renegades: Nick

by Dellin, Genell

  “We will,” he promised.

  They trotted slowly alongside the rocky creekbed with an easy silence between them. They passed the low-water pond and the treed pasture where Nick had some horses, then rode up the slope into his front yard, and across it to the barn.

  “It seems a hundred years ago that we ran out through that doorway with the sacks tied onto our saddles,” Callie said. She stood in one stirrup, held onto the horn while she kicked free of it, and half tumbled, half slid to the ground from Fast Girl’s back. “Doesn’t it?”

  Nick had already dismounted and was coming back to help her. He was too late.

  “At least you’ve learned to dismount,” he said. “We can skip at least one of your riding lessons.”

  “Only after I’ve had a little more practice,” she said, “or grown longer legs. I could break my neck if I don’t do better than I did just now.”

  “Have you ever thought about a mounting block?”

  His voice was dry and teasing.

  “Thanks so much for the useful suggestion,” she retorted in the same tone. “I’ll just carry one around on the back of my horse, and if I need to get down and fight a fire or go into a store in town or anything, I can lower it on a rope.”

  He laughed. “Think about it. It might slow Judy down if she had to carry the extra weight.”

  Callie grinned at him, suddenly feeling very close to him again.

  “You’re just trying to think of reasons for me to keep Judy,” she said. “You’re scared you’re going to end up as her next proud owner.”

  “It’ll never happen,” he said, looking down at her with that slow smile she loved. “I’d have to be dead drunk, or she’d have to be the last piece of horseflesh in the Strip.”

  “I wish I had a barrel of Uncle Jasper’s white lightning,” she said.

  “It would do you no good,” he drawled. “I’m foolish, but not foolish enough to let any woman, much less you, fill me full of liquor.”

  He grinned at her, then turned to start unfastening the cinch on his mount.

  “Wait in the shade,” he said. “I’ll take care of the horses.”

  “I’ll help. That’ll get us into the water that much quicker.”

  “Aha,” he said. “You still don’t believe there really is any cool water.”

  “I’ll believe it when I feel it running over my skin.”

  “Go ahead,” he said, over his shoulder, “the water’s here. Start taking off your clothes.”

  “Nick!” she squealed in surprise.

  Then she imitated his voice.

  “I’m foolish, but not foolish enough to take off my clothes in front of any man, much less you.”

  He laughed.

  “Well, at least we know we don’t trust each other.”

  “Except with our lives in a prairie fire.”

  He turned, his head cocked to one side to study her. They exchanged a long, straight look.

  Finally he narrowed his eyes and gave her the barest nod, an incisive gesture that somehow affirmed her words more emphatically than a shouted agreement would have done. Then he went back to work.

  Now that they were no longer riding, the heat was worse. Every square inch of Callie’s skin itched, and the smells of burned grass and charred earth filled her nostrils with every breath.

  “Soon I’ll be begging you for directions to your waterfall,” she said, imitating him to unsaddle her own mount. “You’d better be telling me the truth, because right now a cool bath would be heaven on earth.”

  She pushed her bedraggled hair off her face and pulled her saddle off the mare, then started to carry it into the barn. Nick took it from her and carried one in each hand, as easily as if they weighed nothing at all. After he put them on their racks, he went back outside, stripped the bridles off, and slapped the horses on their rumps, sending them thundering away.

  “They can stay in the pond the rest of the day if they want,” he called to Callie over his shoulder. “They’ve earned it.”

  “So have we—I mean the rest of the day in the waterfall,” she said, “but I’ll go to the pond with the horses if I have to.”

  He laughed.

  “Go with ‘em now, if you don’t trust me.”

  “Now, Nick, you know I trust you,” she said lightly, “even if you are a flatlander.”

  “Only because you have no choice,” he said wryly.

  He came back into the homey barn to put up the rest of the tack. Callie watched him hang it neatly in place, then looked all around at the old building while she breathed in its rich aromas of horse, leather, hay, and manure. A person could live in here and be perfectly happy—it was more orderly than lots of people’s houses.

  “Oh, Nick, I’m so thankful this barn isn’t a pile of ashes right now. You didn’t want to, but you saved a lot of people’s stakes today.”

  “Thanks to you.”

  “Well, yes, I did get you to the fire. I’m known for my persuasive powers,” she said lightly, “for talking folks into doing things they don’t want to do—like learning multiplication tables and practicing penmanship …”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  He stiffened where he stood and turned to look at her, his gray eyes blazing like stars in his dark face.

  “I froze,” he said simply. “If it hadn’t been for you, everything and everybody on the Chikaskia could be ashes by now.”

  It cost him a lot to say that, she could see. But at the same time, she could tell that he couldn’t keep from saying it, that he needed to talk about it with her.

  “How did you know?” he said. “And how’d you know what to say to jar me out of it?”

  “It was the look in your eyes,” she said slowly. “I could tell that whatever you were seeing off in the far distance was too much for one person to face.”

  “But how did you know that?”

  She lifted her hands, palms up, and shrugged helplessly.

  “I just did.”

  He searched her face, her eyes, as if she might be hiding a better answer there. She told him silently that she knew no more.

  Finally she spoke. “What were you seeing, Nick?”

  At first she thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he made a little gesture to say that she should come with him, and turned to leave the barn.

  They started walking toward his cabin.

  “When I was called Goingsnake,” he said, in a voice so profoundly sad that it instantly took over her heart, “I rode all over the Nation trying to rouse feelings against the sale of the Strip. A bunch of boys began to ride with me. Two of them were killed—for no other reason than because they were doing what I told them.”

  The air went out of her in a quick, short rush.

  “And you were afraid somebody would be killed in the fire? Doing what you told them to do?”

  He gave a brusque nod.

  “What I was seeing was those two fine, young bodies sprawled on the grass, bleeding.”

  Slowly, they walked on in silence.

  “We rode into that ambush because of a woman.”

  His tone was studiedly neutral, but he gave her a slanting glance.

  Callie caught and held it.

  “You were thinking that you were at the fire because of me.”

  “I guess. I guess I was thinking that it was all about to happen again.”

  “Then how in the world did you ever …”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “You did it. Whatever it was.”

  “Did she persuade you to go there? Into the ambush? That other woman, whoever she was?”

  “Matilda,” he snapped, his tone full of bitterness. “Matilda, who was considered the most beautiful woman in the Nation. She told my enemies what route I would take to the meeting of the Board of Governors.”

  They walked into the front yard of the cabin, its sunburned grass covered with withered leaves, fallen early because of the drought. Callie could hardly hear them crackling beneath her
feet because her ears were filled with his voice, which was pure tortured regret.

  He was seeing it all again, she could tell by the faraway look in his eyes—no, he was living it all again, and it was unspeakable. She couldn’t bear to feel the pure pain emanating from him. It made her hurt for him and it stirred her own soul-searching sorrow.

  She grabbed at the first topic that might distract him, even a little bit.

  “What enemies did you have who were so dangerous?”

  “Many. The Board of Governors wanted the money from the sale of the Strip for the People; some of the powerful tribal leaders believed it was the only way to keep the Nation itself from being opened to settlement; and some people thought I had no right to meddle in political decisions since I’d lived in the Strip nearly all my life.”

  “But that gave you more of a right!”

  He shrugged. “That’s what I thought.”

  He walked across the side yard and past the back of the cabin. Callie stayed beside him to a cut in the canyon’s side where a spring came gurgling out, up above Nick’s head. It ran down to the pond in a fairly strong stream.

  “So this is the reason the pond isn’t as dry as the creekbed and all the rest of the land,” she said.

  “Yes, but it’s slowing down,” he said. “Another moon with no rain and it’ll be gone, too.”

  Nick picked up a piece of wood standing against the trunk of one of the cottonwood trees that grew along the water’s edge. He stood on tiptoe and wedged the board into a slot dug in the earth beneath the spring, so that the water fell with more force after coming over its curved surface.

  “If you’d rather go to the pond with the horses, you can,” he said, with a fleeting ghost of his grin. “But this water’s cooler.”

  Callie stepped beneath the water and closed her eyes as it washed over her like a cool, liquid blessing.

  “I’ll go to the house and get you some dry clothes—”

  “No!”

  “Callie,” he said patiently, “I don’t intend to get bold with you or take advantage of you in any way—”

  Her cheeks flamed hot despite the cool water pouring over them. Looking up into his face, tilting her head out of the water so she could hold her eyes open, she said, “I know that. I know you, Nick.”

  His gaze burned into hers for a long minute, his face inscrutable.

  “My real name is Nickajack,” he said. “I want you to know that, too.”

  “Nickajack. I’ve never heard it before.”

  It felt good on her tongue.

  “It’s a common Cherokee name.”

  He had trusted her with his real name. It made her want to tell him her secrets in return.

  “Nickajack,” she said quickly, “I’ll not need dry clothes. These need to be washed as much as I do, and they’ll dry on me in a heartbeat.”

  I need my clothes on for my armor—for something to protect me, to stand between us in this closeness with you.

  She needed to be far away from him, for her own good. She needed to flee back into her loneliness, much as she hated it, or she’d be wanting to be with him all the time.

  Instead, she reached out and pulled him into the falling water. It was only to distract him from his memories, yet she had to force her hand to fall away from his arm.

  “Let the cool water wash the worry out of you, Nick. There’s nothing you can do now, so it’s better not to think about the past.”

  Politely, he ignored that foolish remark. There wasn’t much room for them both to be beneath the water, but she stood apart. If she touched him again, she’d throw herself into the comfort of his embrace. As it was, she was letting water run into her eyes so she could look at him.

  “My name,” he said. “Don’t let anyone else hear it. Some white man would challenge my claim.”

  She nodded, then turned her back to him, afraid she couldn’t keep fighting the urge to reach for him again. Guilt ran in her, just as it did in him. In the impossible advice she’d just given him she’d been talking to herself, too, hoping her own guilt would flow away in the spring’s stream.

  “I know exactly how you feel,” she said, loud enough to be heard over the sound of the water.

  “Don’t tell me that,” he said sharply. “How could you?”

  She whirled to face him, wanting him to know she wasn’t speaking lightly. His eyes pierced her to the core, then he tilted his head back and let the water stream through his hair and over his set, hard face turned up to the sky.

  Now he was gone far away from her—and she couldn’t stand that any more than she could his closeness.

  “I was the cause of Vance’s death,” she said. “He wouldn’t have died if I had agreed to run away with him penniless.”

  The muscles in his jaw relaxed a little bit.

  “Because I thought we should have money to buy our homesteading outfit, Vance was working all the time at every job he could find,” she said. “On a logging job, he slipped in the mud and a tree fell on him and killed him. I might as well have pushed him—it never would’ve happened if he’d been rested and not in such a hurry.”

  Nick looked down at her, water pouring off his chiseled cheekbones, his aristocratic nose, his square, strong jaw. His wet shirt clung to his skin and showed every muscle along his shoulders, across his broad, hard chest.

  God help her, she wanted to throw her arms around his neck and glue herself just as tightly to him as that cloth. She wanted to kiss him again so much that her lips actually hurt. She must be a horrible person. How could she feel that way at the very same time she was mourning Vance?

  And her the cause of his death!

  “So that’s why I can never love any other man,” she said, looking up into Nick’s gray eyes.

  She dragged in a deep, full breath of air that smelled sweet and good and clean from the water passing through it.

  He had told her his real name—which she immediately knew he told to very few people.

  His kiss had shifted the very heart inside her breast, as Vance’s never had done.

  And now he was looking at her as if he and she were soulmates. His heavy-lidded gaze drifted to her mouth.

  This had to stop.

  “I gave up my whole family for Vance, and my leafy, green mountain home,” she said impatiently. “The reason I’m going through all this misery out here is to fulfill my and Vance’s dream. He’s the only man I can ever love.”

  His look didn’t change.

  “Now I know exactly how you feel,” he said, and lifted his face to the sky again. “I’ll never trust another woman after Matilda.”

  She couldn’t feel anything but desire and the fear of it. He wanted to kiss her, too, that much was plain.

  This was misery, standing so close to Nick and not touching him. Looking into his eyes and wanting to kiss him so bad that her lips ached.

  One thing for sure, though—the misery would be worse if she kissed him again, because another kiss would just make her want more, much more.

  She turned her back to him and stepped out of the water.

  Too late. Too late.

  The words sounded over and over again in her head.

  What she and Nickajack had already shared was more intimate than anything physical ever could be. This talk, and his name, and that moment when, frozen in the face of the fire, he couldn’t speak.

  How had she known that and known what to do to bring him out of it? Already, there were far too many deep feelings flowing between them to suit her.

  She and Nick had better stay far, far apart.

  Chapter 8

  Callie drove into the raw, new town—called Santa Fe, like the old one in New Mexico, but named for the nearby railroad—with a great sigh of satisfaction. Alone, with nobody’s help, she had hitched up her team and driven them straight from her claim to town, following the directions she’d asked from the Pecks yesterday.

  It had been a godsend when they’d stopped by on their way home fro
m registering their own claim, even if one part of her had been bitterly disappointed that they weren’t Nick. She must, absolutely must, quit thinking about him. Any man who could go to the extreme of sneaking into her camp like a thief while she was away cutting sod did not want to see or talk to her.

  And whose fault was that? Her own. She’d caused Nick to behave that way, because she’d insisted on coming home as soon as she got out of the shower and had barely talked to him at all on the way. He’d led Judy so she wouldn’t run away again and made sure everything was all right at her camp before he left her there.

  Nick didn’t see or talk to her when he brought back her wheel and repaired her wagon, because he thought she didn’t want to see or talk to him. That was for the best—and she was glad he’d decided to accede to her wishes.

  It still made the bottom drop out of her heart, though, to remember coming back to the wagon to find it sitting on four wheels. Had she offended him so much that he’d never speak to her again?

  She sighed again, in resignation this time, and made herself look around her. The Pecks would be her friends, and she might make more friends here today. And when the baby came it would be her constant companion. She had come out here to be independent and prove up a claim and she would do exactly that.

  Santa Fe seemed like a metropolis after nearly a week alone on the prairie, and she’d started looking for the Land Office. She hoped that horrible Baxter hadn’t somehow laid claim to her land—if only she hadn’t taken so long at making a show of possession before she came to town!

  She sat up straight, pulled on the lines to show her recalcitrant team that she was still there, and started searching the new buildings for signs. No Land Office yet, but there was a tent with a cross on it for a church, several tents with lawyers’ shingles, most advertising skill in land disputes (which she might need, according to what Baxter did), a mercantile in a tent, and, farther down toward the east end of the street, the frame of a two-story building rising into the air.

  There were lemonade joints, restaurants, cafes, dance halls, blacksmiths, and a livery stable in a wonderful spot beneath a big cottonwood, one of the few trees in sight. All were tents or rickety structures thrown together with an assortment of boards and canvas, except for one small building made of limestone which looked to have been there for awhile. It bore a crudely lettered sign, obviously new: jail.