Callie had to force herself to look away so she wouldn’t reach up and touch his face.
“Yellow Girl isn’t going to dump us in the dirt,” he said. “She’s only teasing. She’s come a long, long way in these last few days.”
His satisfaction-filled voice made Callie smile again. How curious that she was no longer jealous of the filly when she sat in Nick’s lap.
She leaned against his hard-muscled arm.
“This filly is smarter than most people,” he bragged. “And she’s got the heart to try anything.”
“You should get a good price for her.”
He was silent for a minute, as if he hadn’t thought of that.
“I don’t know that I’ll sell her.”
It was her turn to laugh.
“Nick, how can you make a living out of horses if you don’t sell them?”
“I’ll sell most of them.”
His tone was so confiding, so leisurely, it was as if they were friends, all of a sudden. It felt strange and incredibly satisfying after seven days of avoiding each other, of eating their meals quickly so they could go about their separate tasks and be apart, so they could escape the pull of these feelings that were winding around their hearts.
Now, neither one of them was trying to escape. Her pulse quickened, her breath came shorter still.
What would happen? Would Nick kiss her again?
She wanted him to. She was afraid for him to. Oh, Lord, she should’ve clung to the fence with both hands—she should never have let him pull her down onto this horse with him!
Yellow Girl slowed and then stopped. Callie gasped as Nick tightened one arm around her and reached for the gate latch with the other.
“A trip to the pond and back ought to be about right,” he said, his voice low and rough.
He was feeling the same desire she was. It wasn’t just in his voice but in his body, in every inch that was touching her. Her heart thundered in her chest.
Oh, dear God, another kiss would only make them want a whole lot more.
He pressed his leg against the filly’s side, and she moved sideways through the gate. Nick left it open and turned her toward the pond, then pulled Callie closer against his chest.
“We’ll let her out a little,” he said, and Callie thought she felt his lips pressed briefly to her hair.
She was afraid to turn and look at him for fear of offering her mouth up for his kiss.
They began to fly instead of float above the ground, and she loved it. She wasn’t even afraid. She let her body melt against Nick’s.
He bent down and pressed his mouth to her ear.
“You could learn to ride this mare,” he said. “I’ll teach you.”
She nodded. He laid his cheek against hers for the space of a heartbeat.
Soon, way too soon, she felt the filly begin to slow and realized that they were almost to the pond. They rode into the trees on its west side, and when they reached the water Nick signaled Yellow Girl to stop. She stood quietly, blowing a little.
“Callie,” he said. “Look at me.”
Her blood raced as fast as Yellow Girl had carried them, but her breath came slow, too slow. She didn’t have enough air and she couldn’t seem to get any more. She turned and looked up into his burning gray eyes, powerful as stars against his coppery skin.
He tilted her face upward with the tip of one finger and started to lower his mouth for a kiss. Suddenly he stiffened.
“Listen!”
Dimly, she understood what the word meant; finally she managed to use one of her senses for something besides being with him. She could hear hooves striking rocks, branches breaking.
“Horses coming up the draw,” he said, speaking low but in a voice as hard as stone. “Get down, Callie, quick. Whoever it is, I’ve got to keep them from seeing my set-up.”
“No. I’ll go with you.”
He was already lifting her out of the saddle, though.
“Damn!” he muttered. “Double damn! And me without a weapon.”
He set her to the ground in an instant, at the side of the filly.
“Over there,” he said. “In that thicket of cottonwoods. Don’t make a sound. If they’re dangerous, I can’t protect you against that many.”
Callie was as befuddled as if she’d just waked from sleep, with his arms gone from around her now and her blood roaring with wanting them back again.
“They’re close,” he said, his voice cracking like a whip. “Go!”
She turned and ran for the trees and he rode toward the mouth of the draw.
Nick rode out and stopped the intruders before they got to the pond. Callie watched through an opening in the brush and tried to catch her breath.
Nick had more nerve than anyone she’d ever known. He sat the yellow filly with the air of a king in an old story song and faced down six riders—to her best count, but there could be more behind them. The evening was growing dusky dark, so the yellow filly was the plainest thing she could see at this distance.
“You’re under arrest!” one of the strange men boomed.
“What the hell for?” Nick shot back, using his tone of voice as the only weapon he had.
“Robbing the bank in Santa Fe,” the man answered. “We done found the money where you dropped it at the edge of town, but I aim to make an example of you.”
“Who are you to make such a brag as that?”
“Sheriff Cap Williams, duly appointed until the e-lection.”
“When was the robbery?”
“This noon—as if you didn’t know. We got a witness seen you; he knowed where your claim was.”
“Your witness is mistaken.”
“Description fits you to a T. Big black stud horse, fine-tooled saddle.”
“Does this look like a black horse to you?”
His accuser gave a short laugh.
“Same saddle.”
“I haven’t been to Santa Fe since last week.”
“Yore name Nick Smith?”
“Yes. Who’s your witness?”
“Man name of Baxter.”
“He’s a lying son-of-a-bitch,” Nick said. “He’s wanted this claim since the Run.”
“We’re taking you in,” Cap Williams ordered.
Guns drawn, the men surrounded him.
“No!” Callie screamed. “Listen to me!”
She ran, crashing through the dry leaves and twigs, darting in and out through the brush, fighting it away from her face with both hands. Nearly breathless, she burst out of it closer to the band of vigilantes that had taken Nick, but they were already riding away.
“I’ve been with him all day,” she yelled. “He hasn’t been to Santa Fe.”
“Yeah, sure,” Cap Williams called, barely turning in his saddle to take note of her. “Next time, get you a man who won’t drop the money in the road.”
All of them guffawed at that.
They urged the horses toward the mouth of the draw, moving so fast Callie soon couldn’t see them in the dusk—not even Nickajack’s pale shirt above the yellow mare.
Callie drove up to the small limestone building marked jail shortly before noon the next day, parked the wagon, and wrapped the lines around the brake handle. She’d never imagined, when she saw the little place last week, that she’d be rushing to get to it today with her heart in her throat.
She climbed down over the wheel and stood for a moment, brushing the dust from her person. If she looked as nice and as respectable as possible, Williams would take her as seriously as possible. Surely he would, despite the way he had treated her the day before.
Also, she wanted to look nice for Nickajack—to help give him hope.
It would show him, too, that she was capable and self-sufficient and not falling apart without him. That would keep him from worrying about her.
She practiced smiling a time or two, wishing she had a mirror so she could tell whether she was succeeding. But never, since they brought her the news of Vance’s dea
th, had she felt less like smiling. Ever since she’d risen from Nick’s bed before first light, she’d had that shivery, scared feeling all the way into her bones that she used to get whenever Mama woke her in the middle of the night for the start of a journey or to harvest the oats ahead of a rain.
But this time there was no excitement or anticipation underneath the uncertainty, no deep security of kinfolk surrounding her. Only fear like she’d never known.
It wasn’t worry for herself, though, that had kept her awake all night. It was worry for Nick. She was going to get him out of this jail if it was the last thing she ever did.
She crossed the short distance to the door, which stood open as a concession to the heat of the day, and stepped into the one small room. Nick sat behind a row of rough iron bars that reached from the wood floor to the low ceiling, his long legs stretched out before him on the narrow bed, his hands clasped behind his head, looking as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
His eyes told a different story, though—she caught a glimpse of mute despair before he saw her. His eyelids half-closed and his lips curved in the ghost of his rare smile.
The look made her heart ache and her blood run hotter.
“You don’t appear surprised to see me.”
“I knew you’d come,” he said, in a low voice that touched her, deep inside. “After all, ain’t you the buggy boss of that whole country out there around Chikaskia Creek?”
He got up and walked to the row of bars that divided the small room in half.
“No-o-o,” she said, moving to meet him as helplessly as a moth to a flame. “I drive a wagon.”
That made him actually smile, although barely.
“Wagon boss is another name for it.”
“Well, I’m not any kind of boss at all or you wouldn’t be … in there.”
She, who was so blunt by nature, couldn’t bring herself to say “in that cell” or “behind bars.” It physically made her heart hurt in her chest to see him helplessly trapped, when he should be astride his big, black horse riding freely across the vast prairie.
“I’m furious Williams wouldn’t listen to me when I told him you hadn’t been to town yesterday.”
“He thinks you’re my wife, so you’d lie for me.”
His gaze held hers.
“I would lie for you,” she said, “but he won’t even believe me when I’m telling the truth.”
“Like the truth that you were with me all day yesterday?”
That made her smile.
“Yes. For all the good it did.”
“Exactly,” he said, his voice suddenly sharp with worry. “I told you to stay hidden.”
His gaze lingered on hers.
“I couldn’t,” she said, lifting both hands to wrap them around the bars, wishing she was strong enough to rip them out of their sockets. “Where’s the High Sheriff?”
“Across the street to get my breakfast. Said he can keep an eye on the door from there.”
“As if you could break these bars. Or go through those thick stone walls.”
She glanced around, aching to get the feel of those words off her tongue and the sound of them out of her head. He followed her gaze. Despair for him filled her, for he hated to be inside, much less locked in. It was already hot as sin in there.
“Another irony of the selling of the Strip,” he said dryly. “This is an old line cabin of the Circle N, the outfit that leased this graze. I used it some when I rode for them.”
Callie tried to imagine that.
“But it surely didn’t already have bars across it?”
He gave a bitter chuckle.
“Nope. But Cap Williams gets things done, even if the town is only three weeks old. He’s a lawman on fire to lock up the bad men, so he’s gotta have a cage to put ‘em in.”
He sobered and looked at her straight.
“He’s a good politician, too, is our Cap. You better be gone before he comes back. Running out of the trees to defend me last night and now, hanging around the jail talking friendly with the big bandido, might be enough to keep you out of your school.”
“I’m here to talk to him. To tell him that we’ve been together for the last week, and that I know where you’ve been and that you couldn’t have robbed the bank.”
That brought a glint of amusement before he gave her a stern, warning look.
“Then you really won’t get a school. Surely you don’t think he’d believe I’ve been living alone in the barn for a week.”
His sleepy-looking lids lowered, and his eyes told her he wished he hadn’t been. For a minute, that look held her and she wished the same. The feel of his arms around her aboard the yellow filly flowed through her. When he got out and came home … if he still looked at her that way …
“You might as well be whistling “Dixie,” anyhow, Callie. The man’s happy as a hyena about catching himself a bank robber. He won’t take anybody’s word to let me go.”
“Then I’ll find somebody to contradict Baxter! You know he can’t be the only one who saw the robber, right here in town!”
“You go register your land description, is what you do,” he said fiercely. “Of all days for me to be locked up! I could kill the claim-jumping …”
“I brought your permit,” she said, opening her reticule to take out the folded paper and pen and ink she’d wrapped together. “I thought if you’d sign it, they might let me register for you, too.”
A bleak hope flashed in his eyes.
“Give it here.”
As he took it, he gave her a slow grin.
“Going through my papers again, hmm?”
She felt herself blush a little.
“How’d you get a permit, anyhow?” she asked, to change the subject while she held the ink for him to dip the pen. “A bribe?”
“A visit to a registration booth,” he said, with a chuckle, “and then a ride back home, keeping to the draws and off the ridges. I saw several other Sooners on the way.”
He motioned for her to turn and let him prop the paper against her back. One of his big hands held it flat, feeling like a brand to her skin. She wanted it to stay there forever. What if he could never touch her again? What if she could never touch him again?
“If they won’t let you do this, don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll try again when all this is over.”
Her heart dropped again.
“How will you ever get out?” she whispered.
“I may have to break out,” he said. “If I hit the owl-hoot trail, stay at my place and take care of my horses.”
“I will.”
After she said that, her voice was gone.
“Try to go to the bald-headed clerk that took my bribe,” Nick said, and touched her shoulder so she’d turn to face him again.
She did, fighting tears with all her might.
His light gray eyes blazed at her from his dark face.
“Callie …”
He put his hands on the bars then, too, over hers, and the heat they held shot through her whole body. It was a thrill and a comfort, both. It gave her strength and took the very starch from her bones at the same time.
She waited, holding her breath.
“… Be careful.”
It wasn’t what he had first meant to say, and she knew it. But another moment and she’d be sobbing like a child, trying to separate the bars to get to him, never mind letting him out.
“Go,” he said.
Slowly, he removed his hands from hers and let them fall to his sides.
She tore her gaze from his, turned, and ran for her wagon.
It was only after she’d driven all the way through town, past loud saloons and rearing horses and a fight or two, and had left her team and wagon at the livery stable, that she could even think about anything but Nick. The registration. Today was the day he’d paid good money to get, and she couldn’t let that go to waste. The line was already more than a dozen people long, even with the method of assigning days. She must g
et this done, and then she’d try to find someone else who’d seen the robber running from the bank.
“Hey, there, home-steadin’ widder-woman!”
The shout stopped her in her tracks because her body recognized Baxter’s voice before her mind did. She turned to see him crossing the street, waving at her, hurrying to get to her before a line of freight wagons reached him.
Her fear of him didn’t even have a chance of overcoming her anger. He’d lied about Nick and tried to ruin him, he accosted her every time she came to town, he—
But wait. He was just the man she needed to see.
She pretended to ignore him and walked on to take her place in line at the Land Office, which had become the most significant spot in her life. Well, today would be the last time because she—and Nick, she was determined to believe—would be registered and she wouldn’t have to come here for another five years, when she’d proved up her claim and earned final title to it.
This slow-moving line at the Land Office would be dear to her heart forever, if she could gain Nick’s freedom here. If she could challenge Baxter and then bribe him to change his story, this ugly Land Office shack would even be beautiful.
“Well, well,” Baxter called, gaining her side of the street, “my reckoning was you’d be coming to town to see about yore man.”
“No,” Callie said sweetly, turning on her heel to face him, “I came to town to see you, Mr. Baxter. And you certainly cannot be called ‘my man,’ “
She held herself to her full height and waited for him to come to her. Frowning, he did so, his eyes glinting bright as they bored into hers.
“Then you found me, little lady.”
“You know you lied about who robbed the bank,” she said. “Mr. Smith wasn’t in town yesterday.”
“Wal, now, I’ll grant you that if anybody’s liable to know where that Injun’s at, you’re the one,” he said, “but I can’t deny what I seen with my own eyes.”
“But you can deny that the robber was Mr. Smith if you think it over and realize that you were mistaken.”
He shrugged.
“Tall man, well built,” he said flatly. “Black hat, big black stud horse.”
Every word he spoke in that self-righteous tone and every satisfied look he gave her fanned the flames of her fury, but she refused to let him see that
The Renegades: Nick Page 17
