Hearth Song

by Lois Greiman

  She stifled a shiver.

  He scowled and gritted his teeth. Silence echoed between them.

  “You must be more careful,” he said finally and, straightening carefully, backed away a half a foot. “Horses can be dangerous.”

  “Don’t I know it?” Sherri said from behind. “I swear, every time I see Tonky ride, I think I’m going to pass right out.”

  No time like the present, Vura thought, and erred, again, on the side of silent diplomacy.

  “Relay’s gotta be like”—Sherri shook her bleached head—“the most dangerous sport in the whole world.”

  “Is it?” Bravura scowled.

  “You needn’t fret,” Tonk said.

  “What?” She glanced at him.

  “I sense your worry.”

  She caught his gaze. “Well, of course I’m worried.”

  Something sparked in his river-agate eyes. She stifled a smile and only half-wondered why she was so mean.

  “It would kill me if Hunter got hurt,” she said.

  His jaw bunched. His brows lowered. “Come, Sherri,” he said and, taking the woman’s elbow, steered her into the crowd.

  Chapter 2

  “This is insane.” Beside Vura, Sydney Wellesley looked as pale as a January blizzard. Inside the rodeo arena, the bucking stock was taking a sabbatical as all eyes turned toward the sandy, oval track beyond the rodeo grounds.

  Horses, pitchforks, and the myriad accoutrements of the traveling equestrian ringed the trailers hooked to every conceivable vehicle.

  Nothing but a single, twisted wire pinned to metal T-posts stood as a barrier between the audience and the competitors. Five divisions had been chalked onto the sand. Inside each tenby-twenty-foot square two horses were being held. Hunter Redhawk restrained an unruly gray. She shook her head and kicked out behind, but he soothed her, his expression impassive, voice quiet. Hunter Redhawk was an equine magician. Still, Sydney was right to worry. Madness reigned on that oval track, and Hunter’s impressive size was no match for the thousand-pound animals that milled around him like sharks in unfriendly waters. He could easily get injured. Yet, Vura’s gaze strayed to the left, where, behind the starting line, five men were mounted on war-painted ponies. They drew the eye like an emblazoned target.

  Vura couldn’t help it if one of those men was Tonkiaishawien Redhawk. He sat tall and relaxed on a long-legged bay. Feathers fluttered against the gelding’s dark forelock and quivered in his black, windswept tail. He reared, but Tonk seemed entirely unconcerned by the animal’s restive energy. Instead, he simply leaned toward the animal’s crest, one hand clutching on the reins, the other quiet on the bay’s burnished neck.

  Red paint had been streaked across his high-boned cheeks. Yellow dotted his bowed nose. But it was his torso that drew Vura’s gaze. Of course he would be the one who chose to ride bare-chested, Vura scoffed silently, and ignored the muscle that flexed, hard as a fist above his leather breeches.

  Sydney gripped Bravura’s upper arm with fingers like talons.

  “Take it easy, Syd,” Vura soothed, but just then a shot was fired. Five horses charged toward the starting line. Sand sprayed into the air, hooves churned, but Tonk’s mount was still rearing. Then, seeing his comrades spurting away, he twisted like a hooked trout and leapt forward. The crowd roared.

  Beside Vura, Sydney screamed like a banshee. “Come on, Tonk! Come on!”

  And he did. In three strides he and the bay were devouring the distance. In eight he was passing the fourth horse, then the third, then, straining, struggled past the second.

  “Give him his head, Tonk! Give him his head!” Sydney shrieked. Lily added her breathy encouragement, but a leggy chestnut held the lead. Nostrils flaring, Tonk’s bay challenged the forerunner, but as they rounded the last bend, a scrappy buckskin bumped his shoulder. The bay staggered and hit his knees. Onlookers gasped. Someone screamed. Tonk slipped but clung, one knee clasped over the animal’s spine. The other horses raced past, but the bay was game. Leaping to his feet, he charged on. Tonk was still fighting to regain his balance as the others skidded to a halt in the chalked squares. Riders leapt from their mounts and dashed toward the horses held for the next lap. Throwing themselves onto the animals’ bare backs, they galloped away just as Tonk was skidding up to his pinto. The bay reared again but Tonk was already flinging himself to the ground. One bounce and he was magically astride the paint. There was a flurry of hooves and leather and hair. The course was short and fast. There was a breathy gasp as the riders changed horses for the final lap and then Tonk was again challenging the leader. The horses fought like warriors. Eyes rimmed with white, manes flying like banners, they screamed toward the finish line. Bent low over his mount’s straining neck, Tonk yelled encouragement and endearments. His hair melded with his mare’s wild mane, black against white. No longer two separate entities, they strained together, and the gray, game to the bone, dug for her final reserves and dashed past the frontrunner.

  The crowd went crazy, screaming, chanting, cheering. Somewhere near the crow’s nest, Indian drums beat a pounding rhythm.

  Sydney yanked Vura in for a rib-cracking hug. “We won! We won, Vura. Four thousand dollars for the mustangs. Four thousand for the wild—”

  The gasps that rippled through the crowd made her stop and turn back toward the track. Vura did the same. Even now Tonk was rising to his feet on the gray’s bare back. Steadying his stance, he pushed himself to his full height as the mare danced a high-stepping gallop. With his free hand, Tonk motioned for applause and the crowd reciprocated. Seasoned cowboys, accomplished equestrians, and admiring laymen roared in approval, honoring his athleticism, loving his antics, cheering his boldness, but suddenly a plastic bag blew onto the track, and the gray, flush with the thrill of victory, reared onto her hind legs like a geyser.

  Tonk dropped to the mare’s back and grappled for her mane, but she was already falling, toppling over backward. She struck the ground and twisted wildly. Then, scrambling to her feet, she galloped away. But Tonk remained as he was, lean body sprawled in the sand, legs flung wide, eyes closed to a world gone quiet with dread.

  Hunter was already sprinting toward his fallen brother. Sydney slipped beneath the twisted wire and rushed onto the track.

  Others were hurrying forward … cowboys, handlers, spectators, but Vura remained absolutely motionless, eyes straining, breath locked in her chest.

  “He’s not breathing!” The words hissed through the mob. “Anyone know CPR?”

  “I do!” A curvy woman of thirty-something years pushed through the crowd and slipped beneath the wire. Racing across the sand, she dropped down beside Tonk’s prone body. Red hair flying, she pumped his chest, closed his nose and breathed into his mouth. Pumped, breathed, pumped until suddenly Tonk’s arms came around her and pulled her down. It took a moment for the crowd to realize he was kissing her. There was a second of hushed uncertainty. Then laughter and cheers roared through the masses as he rolled atop her to continue the caress.

  As for Hunter Redhawk, he stood glaring at his brother’s muddied back for a total of three seconds before hauling him up by the waistband of his leather breeches.

  Tonk grinned, threw his face toward the sky, and raised hard-muscled arms in wild victory.

  The crowd laughed and whistled as he assisted his rescuer in rising. She giggled, looking proud, if a little stunned, as she staggered toward the fence.

  Riley, Tonk’s cousin and best horse mugger, shook his head and trotted off to catch the gray.

  On the sidelines, Vura closed her eyes and felt herself wilt.

  “Are you okay, Mama?” Lily brought her back to the moment in a snap.

  “Yes.” She squeezed her daughter’s tiny hand and forced a smile. “Of course I am, honey.”

  “He’s okay, you know,” Lily assured her. “He’s not bad hurt.”

  “I know, baby,” Vura said, and watched as the man in question strode toward them.

  “Then how come you loo
ked so scared?”

  Vura pulled her gaze from the victor. “I’m not scared, sweetheart.”

  The quizzical brows dipped a little, questioning. “You don’t gotta be mad, neither. I’m sure he only kissed that lady cuz he was so grateful.”

  Vura ground her teeth into a smile. “I’m sure you’re right,” she said, and shot a killing stare at the approaching Tonkiaishawien.

  He stopped in his tracks not five feet away, expression cautious. “How did you like the race, Bravura Lambert?”

  Vura did her best to formulate a response that included neither spitting nor curses, both of which, supposedly, would be a bad influence on her impressionable daughter.

  Tonk raised one dark brow in foolish curiosity. It took all her dubious self-control to keep from wiping it off his face with the shovel that rested against a nearby trailer. But when he took a step closer, she found that her fingers had, quite magically, curled around the handle of a pitchfork.

  A grin tilted his lips. She tightened her grip.

  “Goldenrod …” Hunter’s voice snapped her from her dark fantasy.

  Lily turned toward her hero, eyes alight. “Hunk!”

  He lifted her into his arms before shifting his gaze to Tonk. “The horses are asking for you, little brother.”

  Lily gave him a scolding glance from the corner of kaleidoscope eyes. “Horses can’t talk, Hunk.”

  “What?” He settled her more firmly against his chest. “Why do you think this?”

  She lowered her brows in an expression too old for her face. And he sighed. “I suppose I shouldn’t say what I heard about you, then.”

  Her gumdrop lips pursed, her eyes squinted suspiciously, but she couldn’t resist asking. “What’d they say?”

  He shrugged, a simple lift of heavy shoulders. “Just that they like it best when you ride since you weigh no more than a dewdrop.”

  “What did they say about Tonk?”

  He shot his brother a sidelong glance rife with frustration. “That, little snapdragon, cannot be repeated in polite company.”

  “Mama says I’m not very polite sometimes,” Lily said.

  “Well, that would depend who you’re compared to, I suppose,” Hunt said, and shifted his dark gaze back to Tonk.

  Lily giggled. “Can I talk to them now?”

  “The horses?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That’s up to your mother.”

  “Now’s fine,” Vura said and, releasing the pitchfork with an effort, turned to follow her daughter.

  But Tonk stopped her with a hand to her arm. “I would ask one more minute of your time.”

  She turned toward him, already missing the fork.

  “Please?” he added.

  She pursed her lips and waited.

  “I have been wishing to speak with you.”

  She waited a heartbeat, lifted a hand. “Then speak.”

  “Your daughter”—he shifted his feet, making her wonder for the first time in their acquaintance if he was uncertain—“Lily …”

  “I know who my daughter is, Tonk.”

  Amber chips glowed in the burnt-umber depths of his eyes as he shifted his gaze away and back. “She has the gift of the old ones.”

  Vura stared at him. He was ridiculous, she reminded herself. Melodramatic, flashy, and foolish. Yet she felt the hair rise at the back of her neck. “What are you talking about?”

  He scowled as if vexed by her naïveté. “She has a way with the wild beasts.”

  “Wild beasts …” She scoffed and refused to think about how their stupid geese, so boisterously opinionated when she herself was near, seemed to consider Lily one of their own. Even Milly, currently brooding a clutch of mottled eggs, tolerated her. “Like you?”

  Mischief sparked in his eyes, making Vura curse herself for giving him the opportunity to think of himself in such an outrageously masculine fashion.

  “I could be tamed,” he said, and something about the way he watched her made her face flush. She set her teeth and reminded herself that he was only baiting her. Even if she was free, which she most decidedly was not, she wasn’t his type. The big-boobed blonde was his type. And it was entirely possible that Vura and Sherri didn’t share so much as the same number of chromosomes.

  “Well …” she said, and glanced toward the track where Riley Old Horn was riding the gray and leading the pinto. “I’ll inform the Ringling Brothers at the first opportunity, but right now I’d better—”

  “I am concerned for her education.”

  “Concerned for her …” She scoffed again. It was becoming a habit. “What are you talking about? Lily’s been able to read for months. Her math skills—”

  He held up a hand.

  She considered biting it, but he was already placing it reverently against his chest. His bare chest. Why wasn’t he wearing a shirt? He owned a shirt. She was sure of it. Not that his state of undress bothered her. Why would it? “I do not speak of book learning, but matters of the soul, of the heart.”

  She rolled her eyes and turned away, but he stopped her again.

  “She is Native, is she not?” he asked.

  “Part.” She didn’t know why it was a difficult fact to admit. Though she had never known her mother, she had always been aware of the Sioux blood on her maternal side. Had always been proud of that heritage. “What about it?”

  “Xboxes and iPods will not complete a child of nature.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said, and dropped her head back as if able to endure no more. “Will you give up the proud Indian act and spit it out so I can get back to—”

  “I wish to tutor her.”

  She blinked once. “What?”

  He looked peeved now, though for the life of her she couldn’t have guessed why. “I wish to teach her of the old ways,” he added.

  She wouldn’t have been more surprised if he had spontaneously morphed into a bumblebee. Less maybe. Surely the womanizing Tonkiaishawien had no time for small turbo-charged children.

  But his expression was absolutely somber. “She is a child of the wild and needs someone to teach her the ways of The People. How they revered their old, valued their young. How they retrieved their wounded in battle, honored the earth, spoke across the hills with no more than a puff of smoke.” He scowled, voice softening. “Someone should teach her. Perhaps someone like me.”

  “She has someone like you. Kind of.” She curled her lip. “She has Hunt.” Though, in some ways, the two brothers could hardly be more different and still share a species.

  “Hunt,” he said, and shook his head as if such ridiculousness was laughable.

  “What about him?”

  “My brother is a good man,” he admitted. “But he has embraced the ways of the white world.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Look how he makes his living.”

  “By saving mustangs?” Sydney had established a wild horse sanctuary more than six months ago. Hunter had been instrumental in its success.

  But Tonk shook his head as if saddened by her naïveté. “Surely you are not so deluded as to believe a profit can be made by saving the wild things.”

  “They seem to be doing all right.”

  He breathed a laugh. “That is because my brother made his fortune in the Wasichu’s world long before …”

  “Long before what?”

  He shook his head, stoic persona firmly back in place. “It matters not. The point is this …” He glanced away, gritted his teeth, and turned back, head held high. “Young ones should have a man in their lives.”

  “Oh, for …” She resisted rolling her eyes this time, but only because it was giving her a headache. “She has a man in her—”

  “A man who isn’t my brother,” he snapped.

  She raised a brow at him. “I was thinking of my husband.”

  “This husband of yours … how is it that I have never met him?”

  Her face warmed immediately … which w
as ridiculous. She didn’t have to explain Dane’s absence to anyone. She was proud of the fact that he was ambitious enough to join the ranks in the oil fields. “Why would you?”

  “I have met your father, your aunt, your sister. I have even met Blue.”

  She scowled. Honest to God, she hated that goose.

  “And your point?” she asked.

  “Why have I not met your husband?”

  “He works out of state. You know that.”

  “As an indentured servant?”

  She gritted her teeth. Native humor … so funny.

  “He does not get a single day off to visit his family?”

  She straightened her back. If she had a high horse, now would be the time to climb aboard. “I’m sorry if his work ethic offends you.”

  Anger or something like it flashed in his eyes.

  “Listen …” she said, and spread her hands before her like a shield. The nail on her left index finger was chipped, perhaps proving there was nothing new under heaven. “I’d love to chat about Dane’s occupation, since you are clearly fascinated, but I have work to do, too.”

  “It is wrong to leave her handicapped.”

  She tried to ignore the insult, but Lily was her world, and who was he to find fault? Just a transient interloper who brought her daughter gifts now and then … a pink chunk of rose quartz, a hand-carved stick horse. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Horses,” he said, catching her gaze and holding it hostage. “They are yet the soul of our people.”

  She longed to scoff, but the equine species did seem to have an indefinable something that brought Lily fully alive. Even Styx, the stupid stick horse, fascinated her no end.

  “I get her out to Gray Horse as often as I can,” she said, but guilt was already creeping in. Gray Horse Sanctuary was Sydney’s brainchild … part working ranch, part mustang rescue, all intensive labor funded by love and unreasonable amounts of optimism. Bravura herself had put in a thousand man-hours and each one had been worth the effort just to watch the herd gallop against the backdrop of sun-dappled bluffs. But three months ago, she had purchased her own little acreage. A little acreage that needed as much TLC as an abandoned puppy. A little acreage that was a good half-hour drive from the sanctuary. Then there was Saw Horse, Inc. Newly formed construction companies, it turned out, put even puppies to shame in the needy department.