The Renegades: Nick

by Dellin, Genell

  She smiled. Yesterday at dawn she had been scared half to death that she could never get him out of jail and he’d be hanged. Today she rested, peaceful, in his arms.

  Well, that just went to prove a person shouldn’t faunch and worry about what might happen, because there was no way of knowing. Never, ever, not even at noon yesterday, had she dreamed she’d wake up married to him this morning.

  Why in the world had she done such a thing? She could’ve scrabbled out a living in town somehow. She could’ve left the Cherokee Strip, for that matter! After all, she didn’t have a claim anymore.

  But, like a stranger to herself, she had married Nickajack. It wasn’t all for the baby’s sake, she didn’t think.

  It was because she’d been so lonesome. Probably because she needed to be kin to someone, since she’d never been away from kin during her whole life. Yes, it was the comfort of being tied to someone, even if it was only temporary, to salve the awful wounds of the heart she’d carried away from Kentucky.

  She idly stroked her palm against Nickajack’s warm skin, let it slide up and over his shoulder.

  No, she had married him for some more mysterious reason.

  It came to her with the gray light in the sky turning to rose. She loved him. She was still the same person, no matter how far from home, and Calladonia Sloane would never marry a man she didn’t love.

  Nickajack Smith had been a part of her blood and her breath since the minute he rode up to her on the day of the Run. That was why that passion had always been there, lurking, ready to reach out and pull them together at the slightest provocation.

  Loving Nick was the reason Vance’s memory had slipped away from her. One reason she had been trying so hard to hang onto it was so she wouldn’t love another man. Look what loving Vance had done to her: it had hurt her like poison when he died, it had destroyed her whole life, it had scared her all the way to her soul to be alone in the world with the baby and without him. Something in her had been afraid of facing all those dangers again if she loved a man and lost him.

  Against her will, Nick had made her trust him. And love him. She loved him with all her heart.

  She had Nick back here at home now, and she would never lose him.

  She smiled as she drifted back to sleep, her hand over his heart as if she were staking her claim. She’d never known what passion was until Nick—and the same was true of love.

  Nickajack finally brewed some coffee, just to have something to do with his hands besides start stroking Callie’s porcelain skin and making love to her all over again. It wouldn’t be fair to wake her up when she was sleeping so soundly, her face open and innocent as a child’s.

  Plainly she was exhausted, and who wouldn’t be? Yesterday had been a day for the tally book.

  He sat on his haunches, opened the door of the old cookstove, and punched up the fire under the coffeepot. Yet it’d be such a wonder and a release to him if he could just go crawl back into bed with her and hold her, just hold her, and tell her that he loved her.

  It felt so strange, so unlike his usual self, to be bursting to tell his feelings to someone else. He couldn’t help it, though—it seemed like such a miracle. He had never told any woman that he loved her, and now he knew that if he had, it would’ve been a lie.

  He heard the coffee begin to boil, closed the stove, and crossed the room to the open front door to lean against its frame. The chores were done, the horses shifted from one pen to another; it was time to ride. The sun was halfway up the sky.

  But he couldn’t make himself get to work, couldn’t make himself leave the cabin. Not until he saw Callie awake this morning.

  He smiled to himself as he watched the young horses start a game, running in a bunch from one side of the round corral to the other. The smile wasn’t for them, though; it was for Callie.

  Who would’ve thought a slip of a girl like her could have stuck in there and wrestled that crazy team of hers to town, found Baxter, made a deal, and got him out of jail in time to get home in time for evening chores? He shouldn’t have bawled her out for trading off her claim—plainly she’d had no choice, since that was what Baxter’d been after all along.

  The deal had just scared him because he’d known in his gut that if they lived in the same house, they’d be in the same bed before long. Last night had proved him right. Thank God, she had wanted it as much as he had, and if actions really did speak louder than words, he had a feeling that one of these days, she’d be telling him that she loved him, too.

  The thought made his heart clench in his chest. If that dream came true, he’d have no right to ever expect anything more, in this life or the hereafter.

  An incoherent choking sound made him turn around.

  Callie raced past him, one hand over her mouth, heading for the back door with her other hand holding the sheet wrapped around her. He stared, then dashed after her.

  She ran out through the back door and into the yard, but she couldn’t make it past the cottonwood tree. All she could do was latch onto it for support as she bent double to throw up what little was in her stomach.

  Nickajack turned back into the house, grabbed the first cloth he saw and the pitcher of water, then ran toward her while he wetted it. She tried frantically to wave him away and hold up the sheet at the same time but he went to her, anyway.

  Pitifully, she shook her head at him, then doubled over again.

  “You haven’t eaten for hours,” he said. “You’re throwing up nothing but bile. Here, let me hold this cold rag …”

  She blushed beet red, as if this were the most embarrassing situation he could ever find her in.

  “No!” she gasped, flapping her hand at him weakly. “Go away …”

  Then she was retching again.

  He held her head, he put the cloth on it, he wet it again, and finally led her to the back porch, where he sat her down on the steps.

  “Callie, what has made you sick? It can’t be what little you ate on the way home …”

  She took the cloth from her forehead and held it out while he poured more cold water over it. Then she slumped back against the porch post and stared at him with her huge, green eyes.

  “The smell of coffee makes me sick,” she said.

  “It does? Why didn’t you tell …”

  She shook her head and the look on her face shut him up instantly.

  “What I didn’t tell you is a whole lot more than that, Nickajack,” she said baldly. “Come spring, I’ll be having a baby.”

  He couldn’t quite take in the meaning of her words. He searched her face, as if they’d been written there for him to read and refresh his memory.

  But his memory wasn’t the problem; he remembered what she’d said, all right. He thought he knew her. How could he not know such a big thing as this?

  He shook his head to try to clear it.

  “You never said …”

  “I never said it because you’d have tried even harder to send me back home or into town,” she said wearily. “Don’t you see? You’d have jumped on that fact like a dog on a bone. You’d have lectured me from now to kingdom come about how a woman with child could never prove up a claim.”

  He didn’t even try to respond to that. All he could do was let every time he’d been with her since that day of the Run flash back through his head.

  Had he been wrong about her openness, her bluntness, her honesty?

  Yet, why should she tell him all her secrets?

  This was a big piece of information, though—one that would soon be visible. Obviously, she didn’t feel as close to him as he did to her.

  “What were you going to do? Let me find out along with the rest of the world? You could’ve told me, Callie. You should have told me—why, you wouldn’t even let me help with your soddy!”

  Hurt and anger held his jaw so tight he could barely get the words out.

  “My soddy isn’t … wasn’t … your responsibility.”

  An even more horrifying thought hi
t him.

  “And last night! We might’ve damaged the baby … good God, Callie, I had a right to know!”

  She paled even more, so the freckles across her nose stood out like tiny brown specks on snow. Her eyes filled with pain and regret but he didn’t feel sorry for her.

  “You have a right to know something else, too,” she said, clearly fighting to keep her voice from shaking.

  He could see that it was all she could do to hold his gaze and not look away, but she did it.

  “What?”

  “You’re my first husband. Vance and I were never married.”

  That rocked him back on his heels. All he could do was stare at her.

  Her eyes filled with tears. He didn’t care.

  “I never figured you for a liar.”

  Or a betrayer, like Matilda.

  “I’m not!”

  “It would be fair to say that you are, Mrs. Sloane.”

  “What did you expect me to tell people?” she cried, throwing up her hands in despair.

  Every line of her body pleaded with him.

  “I want to teach school. I’m going to have a baby. No one way out here would ever know the difference—and you wouldn’t have, either, if I hadn’t been honest and told you!”

  He turned on his heel and walked away.

  Callie couldn’t move. She couldn’t have moved if an angry rattlesnake had uncoiled from around the post she leaned against and struck at her, fangs bared.

  Nick would never love her now.

  And she was married to him.

  Worse, she loved him.

  She ought to get up, pack up, and leave.

  She ought to drive her wagon straight to Arkansas City and find a place to live and a job. It was a settled town; she’d be safe enough there.

  That thought held firm for a moment, but then it was gone. If she did that, she’d never see Nickajack again.

  Her whole life, for endless days just past, had been nothing but losing people she loved whom she’d never see again. She’d endured more loneliness than she had ever imagined could exist. Only when she was with Nickajack had it eased.

  One night with him had healed the terrible wound in her heart.

  Callie stood up, wrapped her arms around the post, and leaned on it to steady her. The heat-blasted trees and rocks, already reflecting the early-morning sun, led her eye farther up the hollow from the house to a trailing patch of sumac turning red.

  The cyclone that had stolen her wagon top had brought the only rain in months, but it must have been enough to keep the sumac alive. That one night in Nick’s arms had done the same for her spirit.

  She leaned her cheek against the weathered wood and looked out across the homey old place. That feeling still lingered, deep inside her somewhere—the feeling she’d had the day of the Run that this valley was where she was supposed to be.

  Nickajack would get over his surprise at her news—he was a fair person, in spite of his prejudice against farmers and homesteaders. Wouldn’t she be prejudiced against them, too, if a bunch of strangers had come rushing in to the Sloane Valley to carve out farms for themselves?

  Yes, he would get used to the thought of the baby. Didn’t men always get overexcited if they had a big shock of some sort? Wasn’t that why Granny and Mama always said not to tell a man bad news or ask him for something he didn’t want to give until after he’d rested a while and had his supper?

  Once he’d become accustomed to the idea, he would see reason.

  That thought gave her strength, and so did looking at the hard land. Those trees, that sumac, had endured for no telling how many years, and so could she. Hadn’t she come this far?

  Callie let go of the post and walked steadily back into the house, went straight to the stove and set the coffee off the fire. From the feel of the pot, it had half boiled away.

  She was beyond getting sick from the smell. Right now, she was beyond everything but hope.

  Hope sustained her during the long days and helped her go to sleep each night. Nick spoke very little.

  “What are you doing, trying to prove I need a wife?” he had said on that first day at supper, when she’d covered the table with a fresh apple pie from the drought-stunted fruit in his orchard, a venison roast from his smokehouse, potatoes from his cellar, and shucky beans and jelly from her own meager stores.

  “You’ve got one whether you need me or not,” she’d retorted.

  He had raised a wry eyebrow at that and she imagined she saw his ghost of a smile.

  The next day he did come in to eat at noon, which he had not done the day before. Callie had spent the morning baking yeast bread and cleaning the main room of the cabin to a gleaming shine.

  “Now, look here,” he said, glancing around the room as he sat down to hot bread, butter, and sliced leftover venison, “cooking is enough. It’s not your place to clean up after me.”

  “It’s not your place to sleep in the barn, either,” she said.

  “This marriage is in name only,” he snapped. “I told you that from the start.”

  The hurt that stabbed through her surprised her with its strength.

  “I intend to earn my keep,” she snapped back. “But you needn’t worry about my baby’s. I’ll be gone before he comes.”

  She looked down at her plate and steeled herself.

  Then go now. I want you off my place. I never want to see you again. I wish I’d never thought of marrying you. A marriage in name only can easily be undone.

  But he said none of that. He ate his food, looked her in the eye when he thanked her for the meal, pushed back his chair, then got up and strode out to the round pen. Callie couldn’t stop herself. She rose from the table, crossed the room, and stood just inside the door, watching him.

  Desire moved through her in a surging wave, desire for more than the pleasure he’d given to her body. His arms had held comfort, a comfort so splendid.

  Ever since the moment he’d ridden up to her during the Run, his eyes had searched hers and seen into her heart. Surely he would get over being angry that she’d kept the baby a secret.

  But when should she try to talk to him? He had to give her a chance or she had to make one.

  If he wasn’t going to forgive her, she didn’t know if she could stay.

  Even as the thought came to her, though, she realized she had no choice. He had merely looked straight into her eyes and had let his gaze linger for the first time in two days, and she was wanting desperately for him to take her into his arms. One look every thirty days would most likely do the trick just as well. She was as trapped by her own desires as if he’d built a gate at the mouth of the canyon to keep her here.

  Callie went back to the table and started clearing away the food. She had just finished wrapping tea towels around the leftovers and putting the jelly into the pie safe when she heard the thunder of hooves.

  “Callie!”

  He hadn’t called her by her name since she’d made her confession.

  “Callie!”

  She was already running toward the front door and out.

  “Go and stand down there by those trees,” he called, pointing toward the pond and the creek which eventually led to the mouth of the draw. “If they come that way, don’t let them past. Get in front of them and wave your arms until they turn.”

  Blindly, she ran toward the spot where he’d sent her.

  Once there, she turned to see that Nick had ridden the colt he was training around the house, toward the oncoming hoofbeats, and was waiting to the right of the horses’ path as they ran down the draw.

  “I can slow them and probably haze them into a circle,” he called to her. “Don’t worry if they come toward you, though—a horse won’t run over a person.”

  Her heart was beating fast. What if these horses didn’t know that rule? She wasn’t a very big person—what if they didn’t even see her?

  Instinctively, she laid her hand on her belly as if to protect the baby.

 
“We’ll jump out of the way if they get too close,” she told him. “Nick can do without three more horses.”

  Yet she wasn’t scared, she realized. She was excited—because she trusted Nick. He wouldn’t put her in a spot that was dangerous.

  He began to move his horse in beside the three running ones as they came on. Pushing his mount close to the nearest, a tall bay, he began to guide them off the path onto the grass at the front of the house. They started to slow, then gradually turned in a circle. A steadily slowing circle.

  “Come on up this way, Callie,” he called. “Keep to that side of the bunch and we’ll drive them into the corral.”

  She saw then that he had left the wide gate open on the pen where he’d been riding.

  “They’re tired,” he said, as she walked toward him, “they must’ve been running all over the hill up there.”

  Callie laughed.

  “That’s not a hill. I haven’t seen a hill since I got here.”

  Nick flashed her a quick smile. Her heart lifted.

  “These are the three young ones I brought from the Nation as weanlings,” he called, in a soothing, sing-song tone meant to calm the slowing horses. “They’re pretty gentle, but they’re young, too. Somehow they let themselves out of the brush pen I built up the canyon.”

  She took in a deep, long breath. Nick was talking to her again. Maybe it was for the horses’ benefit, but he was talking to her again.

  Working together, with Nick directing her with words and hand signals, they guided the horses in through the gate. Nick closed it from horseback, then he dismounted and stood beside her as she watched the three nose around inside the pen.

  “They know they’ve been naughty,” she said.

  He laughed.

  “Maybe so, but they wouldn’t hesitate to do the same thing again,” he said. “We’ll keep them here for a few days while I fix that fence on the south pen. They can benefit from some human attention.”

  Callie hardly listened to what he said, only to the sound of his low, rich voice. They stood there, leaning on the fence, looking at the horses for a moment more, and then he swung back up into the saddle.

  “I’ll take this one down the creek a ways,” he said. “Thanks for your help.”