The Renegades: Nick

by Dellin, Genell

  That surprised her. Somebody here must be mightily concerned about law and order.

  There was also a horrifying number of saloons and what must be brothels, all crowded together. This must be what the Pecks had called Hell’s Half Acre. Probably the jail was already a necessity.

  The other surprising thing was that Joe and Judy had begun walking docilely through the mixture of buggies, freight wagons, horses, and people hurrying along the main street of Santa Fe. It was a great relief to the sod-cutting blisters on her palms not to have to pull on the lines so much.

  Then she saw what had to be the Land Office up ahead at the far end of the street: a small, rough shack with a long line of people snaking along for what seemed a mile. Callie stood up from the seat and, sure enough, saw a sign tacked above the little porch that proclaimed in large, crooked letters “land office.” Her heart sank. There were so many claimants waiting to register that she’d never get back to her place tonight.

  But suddenly, that wasn’t the main reason her stomach tied itself into a knot. Was Nick standing in that line? Or had he already been here on another day?

  She dropped back down onto the seat with a thud of disgust. Why did she keep on thinking about him, day and night?

  Well, at least she had stopped thinking about his kiss.

  Almost.

  She had nearly forgotten how he’d kissed her with such a wild sweetness, how they’d shared that awful fear and the danger of fighting the flames, how they’d looked into each other’s eyes and told each other secrets neither would say to anyone else. By the next time she drove into town, she would have completely forgotten all that.

  Nickajack Smith meant nothing to her, and he shouldn’t. She had come all this way to homestead in Vance’s memory, and that was exactly what she would do.

  Yet she ran a sharp eye over the line of claimants as she passed them, even looking over her shoulder as her wagon rolled in front of the soon-to-be two-story building. Nick wasn’t there. No matter how big the crowd, he would’ve caught her eye in a heartbeat. Every part of her listened to the little voice of truth inside her that said that.

  So she made her head turn and her eyes fix on the frame of the big two-story building going up only a few yards past the land office. Carpenters swarmed all over it like bees in a hollow tree, their hammering and sawing and shouting floating out to join all the noises in the street. It would seem really strange to come in to a brand-new town for supplies, a town that would make Pine Forks, Kentucky, seem two hundred years old.

  She drove on past the construction with its sweet smell of new wood and its atmosphere of competence to turn the team under the neatly lettered hanging sign that proclaimed LIVERY STABLE AND WAGON YARD. This Would be a safe place for her to sleep in the wagon, if it turned out that she must stay the night.

  She made the arrangements to leave her team and wagon there all day and overnight, if necessary, took the small jar of water she’d stowed under the seat and put it into her reticule, removed her certificate permitting her to be in the Run so it wouldn’t accidentally get wet, and hurried to the Land Office to stand at the end of the line. She had bread and ham in her pockets, so she would stay until she registered, if it took all day and into the night.

  Dora was the one she needed to be looking for, not Nick. She examined the line again. Dora had promised to come help with the birthing, and Dora was the one who was her friend.

  Yet her gaze stopped on the back of every tall man. None had shoulders wide enough.

  A small group of people stood talking directly in front of her, gathered in a loose knot while they waited in line. Two couples, one a man and woman about the age of the Pecks, old enough to have grown children, and a man and woman about Callie’s own age, were listening to a single man of about thirty who was holding forth in a lecture about the best methods of raising corn. The younger couple exchanged an amused glance as he drew a quick breath and rushed on to the next point of his spiel, then their eyes held and the look turned tender and hot.

  It filled her with a throbbing ache.

  For Vance. She missed him, still, more than words could say. She wanted Vance. It was Vance to whom she’d given her heart.

  Staring off across the dusty street, Callie tried to see his face but it refused to come to her. Tears stung her eyes. Surely she couldn’t forget him—she had to remember, so she could describe him to the baby!

  “Well, well, if it ain’t the little missus who ain’t a missus after all!”

  Cold fear shot through her as the familiar voice brought her whirling around on one heel. Baxter. With a sneer on his face that would be enough to rouse her fighting spirit even without the taunting remark.

  Fear grew alongside her anger. He had walked up behind her with her totally unaware.

  “My marital status is none of your business,” she said.

  The garrulous man fell silent and the two couples listening to him also turned toward Callie and the brewing confrontation.

  “Here to try to register my claim, are ye?” Baxter said. “Well, I aim to counterfile.”

  “Get in line,” Callie said. “And get yourself a lawyer.”

  Then she turned her back on him.

  A man strode around the corner of the frame of the two-story building next to the Land Office. For an instant, she thought she’d imagined him.

  Nickajack.

  A huge relief filled her, much to her chagrin. She would not depend on anyone, especially not Nick, since she could easily fall into the snare of wanting to do so all the time.

  She ought to turn her back on him, too, and not watch him.

  But he moved like the mountain lion she’d seen up close that time on Old Baldy, as if he ruled every inch of the earth he set foot on and every mile of it he could see. He was coming toward her with the balls of his feet barely brushing the ground and his long, beautiful thigh muscles flexing against the worn cloth of his Levi Strauss pants.

  And he had seen her already. There was not the slightest indication in his face or manner, but she knew it was true from something shimmering in the air between them.

  Foolish as that was. She’d probably hurt his feelings so much that he wouldn’t look at her, either.

  Then something above him caught her eye, and she looked up to glimpse a thick board beginning to fall from the second story directly above his head.

  “Nickajack!” she shrieked, cupping her hands at her mouth to try to make the sound carry over the noises of the carpenters and the street. “Look out! Nickajack!”

  She started running toward him, as if she could reach him in time.

  He whirled on his heel to look behind him instead of up, but he did take another step and it carried him out of danger. The board struck earth at his feet in an explosion of dust.

  Callie kept running—somehow she couldn’t stop until she reached him. The other end of the board landed in the soft dust and he looked down at it, then up.

  Callie raced up to him, grabbed his huge arm and held onto it, even though she couldn’t reach all the way around the hard muscles. Her body contracted deep inside.

  “Sorry, partner,” a man’s voice called down. “It just slipped out of my hand. Glad it didn’t hit you.”

  He was young and worried, peering down at them through the scaffolding, his hat pushed back on his sweaty hair to see them better, his blue eyes as sincere as his tone had been. Nickajack dismissed him with a nod and turned to Callie, who was still holding onto his arm.

  She forced her fingers to uncurl; her arms to drop to her sides.

  “I … I was scared you—”

  “Hey, Nick-a-jack!” Baxter shouted. “I was wonderin’ where you was when I seen yore woman standin’ in line all by her lonesome.”

  Nickajack threw Callie a glance she couldn’t read, then strode toward Baxter, escorting her swiftly with one huge hand at the small of her back.

  “Shut up about me and the lady, Baxter.”

  “I got jist as much
right to speak my mind as you.”

  “Do it someplace else.”

  “You and whose army gonna make me?” Baxter said. “And don’t try t’ tell me one more damn time that you two ain’t together.”

  A clutching fear took hold of Callie’s stomach. They would never be rid of this obnoxious man, and now he was making a scene in front of a hundred people.

  “Watch your mouth,” Nickajack snapped. “There are ladies present.”

  Some of the other men murmured agreement. Baxter wasn’t daunted in the least.

  “Listen to you,” he drawled insolently, loudly, looking around him in hopes of drawing a crowd. “Protect the little redhead’s dainty little ears, protect her claim, stand there with yore arm around her and then tell me again you ain’t …”

  Nick’s face turned so fierce that Baxter did bite his tongue and hush.

  Then a sneering smile spread over his mouth.

  “Oh … Nick-a-jack!”

  He spoke far more loudly than necessary, in a voice as full of taunt as a schoolboy’s.

  “Only other man I ever knowed with that name was a red-skinned Cherokee back in the Nations.”

  Some of the noises of the land office crowd lessened, Callie realized, and a few people walking by stopped to listen.

  Nickajack glared at Baxter, watching his gun hand, but he kept it still and away from the handgun he wore in the waist of his pants. Nickajack’s was in a holster at his hip.

  Baxter took a belligerent step toward him.

  “Let me tell you something, Blanket,” he said. “You ought to’ve got you one of them Indian allotments, ‘cause you ain’t gonna get one meant for a white man. I aim to counterfile agin’ you and your woman both.”

  “Go ahead.”

  The implied threat in Nick’s level tone of voice made Baxter hesitate with his mouth open to speak. Then he recovered.

  “She,” he said, flicking his eyes at Callie, “ought not have no second claim of her own, and you ought have none at all. The U. S. Government paid you Cherokees good money for this land, and it’s white settlers they bought it for.”

  Nick stared at him, his right hand hovering over the gun he wore. Callie’s breath caught and wouldn’t come out of her throat.

  “I’ll see about this whenever it’s my turn to register,” Baxter bellowed, but he held his gun hand hard against his belly, clearly afraid to draw against Nickajack. “I’ll get a lawyer if I have to.”

  “Go ahead and hire one,” Callie said. “I intend to. I’m not about to give you my claim without a fight.”

  Baxter glared at her.

  “You didn’t stake that claim, Missy. He did,” he said, jerking his thumb toward Nickajack. “And he already had one staked that he has no right to. My quarrel is with him.”

  “Not if you’re talking about my land. This man is not my husband and my claim belongs only to me.”

  “There’s no connection between us,” Nickajack said, and a weird feeling shot through Callie, as if he’d betrayed her. “Leave her alone. If you want to counterfile, do it against me.”

  “I will,” Baxter said nastily. “And my brother will counterfile against her.”

  Nickajack stared at him until Baxter turned and walked away.

  The older man in the group ahead of Callie in line called to Baxter.

  “You’re a fool, man! He ain’t no Indian; his eyes is as gray as mine.”

  “You never seen a blue-eyed Indian?” Baxter shot back, and marched indignantly on down the street.

  Callie resumed her place in line, Nickajack right behind her. Her heart was beating a hundred times too fast and the same number of emotions pulled her heart in every direction.

  “I told you,” he muttered, in a low tone to the top of her head, “not to let anyone else know my name.”

  She whirled and glared up at him.

  “You were about to be knocked senseless. How could I think?”

  His gray eyes held hers. He was truly angry!

  “Well, it’s your own fault!” she cried defensively. “What are you doing following me around, anyhow?”

  His scowl grew terrible.

  “I have every right to come to town,” he said, in a still quieter tone as if trying to make her lower hers.

  A man’s voice interrupted from behind her.

  “This little lady’s a hero,” he said. “Ma’am, may I be so bold as to introduce myself? I’m Roger Timmons, your sincere admirer.”

  Callie turned to see the young man who’d been teaching about raising corn bow to her, sweeping off his hat.

  “May I commend you for your quick action,” he said with a reproving glance at Nick, whose look grew even blacker.

  Callie couldn’t suppress a sudden grin.

  “Why, thank you, Mr. Timmons. My name is Callie Sloane.”

  Then she added mischievously, “This gentleman is Mr. Smith, my neighbor.”

  Somehow, she still didn’t trust herself not to say “Nickajack.” That name seemed the right one for him.

  “We’re the Fletchers,” the man who had called out to Baxter said, as Mr. Timmons’ former audience moved up to join in the socializing. “And these are our neighbors, the Sumners.”

  Nick shook hands with the men.

  “Whereabouts is your claim, Miss Sloane?” Mrs. Sumner asked.

  “Over in the Chikaskia Creek country.”

  “Oh! And ours, too!”

  “We’re all neighbors, then!”

  “What great fortune that we’re all here on the same day!”

  When the excitement had died down, Mr. Fletcher looked down his long nose and fixed his blue eyes on Callie as if she were a possibly naughty child.

  “You’re a woman alone? To prove out a claim?”

  Callie decided that Mrs. Fletcher’s questioning look must be caused by her years of marriage to an overly inquisitive man.

  And Timmons was another one.

  “Miss Sloane, are you aimin’ to farm?” he said.

  She made her tone very firm and confident.

  “No, I’m proving out a claim and building a house on it, but I plan to be a teacher.”

  And if that were to come about, she’d better make one thing very clear.

  “Also, it’s Mrs. Sloane. I’m a widow.”

  “Sorry for your loss,” Mr. Fletcher said briskly, “but I reckon a widow can be a teacher same as an unmarried lady, ‘specially out here, where we’d feared there’d be no teachers at all.”

  A great flurry of talk rose all at once, since all of them except Mr. Timmons had children—three in the Sumner household and nine in the Fletchers’—and were eager for a school.

  “But ma’am, you’re no bigger than a cricket,” Mr. Fletcher said. “Can you make the big boys behave?”

  “Yes. I raised seven brothers while my mother and Granny cooked and kept house, and I’ve already taught school a year back home in Kentucky.”

  That pleased them even more, and a few more minutes of conversation had Callie feeling that all she had to do to be a teacher was drive straight out to her claim and ring the bell. Mrs. Sumner began counting all the children she knew would be living on the nearby claims.

  “Do you have any children, Mr. Smith?”

  Nick, who had been silent throughout the discussion, waited a long moment.

  “No, ma’am,” he said finally. “I’m a bachelor.”

  He spoke absently, glancing at a man in a white shirt with gartered sleeves who was working his way down the line with a handful of papers. Callie looked at the man in horror. Obviously he was an official of some kind. Had he been out here all the time? Had he heard Baxter call Nickajack a Cherokee?

  “That’s the clerk,” Mrs. Sumner said. “He comes out every so often to hand out the numbers that mark our place in line.”

  “I’m sure the officials will be happy to see us all registered at the end of the day,” Callie said.

  “Oh, they won’t register us today,” Mr. Sumner sa
id. “All your number will get you inside is another paper telling you when to come back. They’re trying to scatter us out some.”

  “Too many of us here at once,” Mr. Timmons announced pompously. “We can’t all register on the same day.”

  Callie stared at them in disbelief.

  “You mean I’ll have to make another trip? I won’t be done today?”

  “Nope. You’ll have to come back on whatever day they assign you during the next three months.”

  Furious disappointment bloomed inside her, taking up every inch of space inside her skin. Blast it all! She had driven those monster animals of hers all this way, only to have it to do over again!

  The clerk reached her, silently handed her a square of paper with the number 144 written in wide pen strokes, passed on, and gave 145 to Nick. Instinctively she swung around to watch, and thought she saw the clerk give him a strange look—maybe an appraising look for Indian blood.

  As soon as Nick had his number in hand, he strode toward the Land Office as if it were a ticket to get inside. Several people muttered their surprise, and all of them watched him. The sun beat down on Callie’s head like a hammer on a nail.

  Where was he going? And what did she care? Hadn’t he just spurned her after she’d saved his life?

  Yet the sight of his snug, weathered cabin and the sweet-smelling barn flashed across her mind. He had lived there with his parents. That was his old homeplace. He loved that piece of land like she loved the mountains. What if she had caused him to lose it to that awful Baxter?

  Nick took the three steps up to the Land Office porch in one leap and cut through the people at the head of the line like Moses parting the Red Sea. He disappeared through the door.

  “Wonder what he’s up to?” Mr. Sumner said.

  Everyone seemed to wait for Callie to answer, so she did.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Well, I have an idea,” Roger Timmons said, looking around the little circle of neighbors. “Why don’t we all drive home together? That way, we won’t have our single lady going alone.”