“Give him time,” Tay said, looking up from tightening the cinch on the white horse’s saddle. “Will you be opening the mercantile soon?”
“Probably in about two weeks. The building is completed except for the brickwork and while that’s being finished I’m arranging the stock inside.”
The two men and Emily talked a moment more, their breaths rising in frosty puffs in the cold air while Cotannah continued to pace. After a moment Phillips, preparing to leave, pulled on his gloves, and put on the felt hat that he carried.
“I need your warm red cap this morning, Miss Cotannah,” he said, with a dramatic little shiver that made his stomach jiggle again. “It’s a whole lot nippier out today than I had expected.”
He tipped his hat to her.
“Be sure you bundle up for your ride,” he said. “I only hope you aren’t going on a secret shopping trip to Fort Smith or McAlester before I can even get my mercantile open.”
Cotannah smiled back, suddenly glad for the distraction.
“I wouldn’t,” she said. “I have my heart set on being your very first customer.” He beamed at her.
“That’s wonderful! Well, you ride safe. I’ll see you at supper.”
He waited for a split second as if expecting an answer, then he tipped his hat to Emily and strode away toward the stables, whistling a ragged tune.
“He’s a naturally jolly person,” Emily said, “but he really is sorry about Jacob.”
“I didn’t mean to criticize him—I wasn’t even thinking about Jacob when I asked him why he was happy,” Cotannah said. “He just took it that way.”
“Here’s Walks-With-Spirits,” Tay said.
Cotannah swung around to look across the pasture. Walks-With-Spirits was surprisingly close, running toward them with that sure, unhurried, silently graceful flow of muscular power that marked his every movement. With his light step he looked as if he were caressing the face of the Earth Mother. Where the mist rose in the low spots, he appeared to be floating a little bit above the ground. He truly was like a shadow.
Her breath caught in her chest and made a hard knot there, tears stinging her eyes. He would soon be a shadow gone from this world no matter how bright the sun might shine.
Unless she saved him.
Walks-With-Spirits reached them then, looking more handsome than ever in clothes she’d never seen before: faded denim breeches and a gray wool coat with the stand-up collar of a white shirt showing at the neck. He smiled as the three of them looked him over in amazement.
“I dressed to blend into the town,” he said, “so no one will take notice of me …” He grinned and flashed her a devilish glance. “… and if I have to rush in and rescue Cotannah, maybe it won’t bring the white men’s attention back here to the Nation.”
“Well, you won’t have to rescue me, I can take care of myself, thank you very much,” Cotannah said, giving him a saucy look in return.
She couldn’t help staring at him. How did he think no one could notice him? He had an air about him that drew attention more than fringed buckskins—or even war paint on his face and feathers in his hah—ever would. Women, especially, would watch him every minute.
“Where are Taloa and Basak?” she asked.
“They’ll stay at the cave,” he said, “so no one will be tempted to shoot them.”
Her heart drummed hard against her ribs when his soft, rich voice caressed her ears. He was wearing his hair pulled back and tied with a rawhide thong at the nape of his neck instead of in braids, too, in another attempt not to draw attention to himself or his Indian origins. Cotannah felt another rush of excitement go through her. He was, by far, the handsomest man she’d ever seen.
“I’ve got a hat, too,” he said, patting the soft leather bag he carried swinging from his shoulder, “to complete my disguise. I intend to stay near you in that town, Cotannah. I won’t let you out of my sight.”
Those words warmed her so that she almost forgot what they were doing there.
Finally, at the same moment, they turned and began walking to their horses. Tay and Emily followed.
“You can go to Mary Sudbury’s tonight, remember,” Emily said, as she stood between their horses with a hand on each animal’s neck as if to hold them there.
Emily could hardly bear for them to go without her, Cotannah thought, because she took it upon herself to protect everyone she loved.
“Mary’s only three miles from McAlester, and if you all stay there, no one can gossip about the two of you spending the night away from home.”
“Well, I sure don’t want that, with my reputation completely unsullied as it is,” Walks-With-Spirits said wryly, as he swung up onto the white horse.
“Nor I,” Cotannah said, “since so far the worst they say about me is that I’m a shameless jade whose teasing ways cause fights and killings.”
They all laughed a little and the sound of Walks-With-Spirits’s deep chuckle calmed Cotannah even more. Maybe he knew his life would be spared, the same way he’d known for two years that she’d seek him out, she thought, suddenly. If he did, he’d better tell her!
She twisted in the saddle to try to read that in his face. Their eyes met, and a quick feeling of warmth sparked between them.
“Don’t worry, you’ll both be vindicated,” Emily said.
“Watch your backs,” Tay said.
Walks-With-Spirits answered with a quick gesture of his hand, Cotannah bent and hugged Emily’s neck, and they rode off with Emily calling after them, “Godspeed!”
They went out of the yard and down the driveway at a long trot, side by side, through the chill of the autumn morning with the sweet smell of woodsmoke from Tall Pine’s kitchen floating on the air with the homey sounds of cows lowing to be milked and roosters crowing, riding into the unknown. She smiled at him.
“Thank you for coming with me.”
He threw her a slanting glance.
“I thank you for what you’re trying to do for me.”
Then he held her gaze.
“How can you be so sure that I didn’t kill him, sure enough to risk your life?”
She shrugged. “I just know you didn’t.”
Because you’re the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen. Because you have wise and magical eyes.
“And don’t tell me again that your curse may have killed him. Whose side are you on, anyway?”
He grinned.
“I’m just amazed that you think you know me so well.”
“I know I do,” she said confidently. “I can sense your true nature.”
“Yet …” he said, frowning now, “you don’t sense the true nature of other men, men like Jacob, men whom you tease without knowing the danger.”
Heat rose in the skin of her throat and suffused her face, she turned away. “You’re different.”
He laughed. “But not different enough for you to recognize me when you saw me again.”
She whirled in the saddle to meet his eyes.
“I never saw your face that night we met, remember? And I did know there was something familiar about you that day on the Texas Road.”
He laughed even more, and she finally grinned back at him.
“You’re different, too,” he said, cocking his head to one side and looking her up and down as if to note every detail that would make him say such a thing.
The pleased tone of his voice, the bright heat deep in his eyes, the intensity of his stare all melted her thoughts.
“How do you know?” she asked, at last. “How many women do you know, anyway, Walks-With-Spirits?”
He smiled.
“Not too many.”
“Well, then.”
“But I see lots of things. Most women aren’t bold and brave like you, most aren’t straightforward in their talk because they try to hide bad feelings and not upset anyone, most are … nowhere near as beautiful as you.”
She sat transfixed, staring at him.
He was praising her for exactly th
e qualities that Cade and Aunt Ancie and everyone else usually criticized. And, she thought, as her heart gave a quick, hard stroke of delight, he considered her beautiful.
She couldn’t think of another thing to say.
“Cotannah,” he said, “you’re different in another way that pleases me greatly. You don’t fear me as a witch, you don’t stand in awe of me as an alikchi.”
Tears stung her eyes. Oh! How lonely he must be! And now most people wanted to kill him!
“You please me, too,” she said, “because usually I’m taken to task for being bold.” She swallowed hard and forced a smile to try to drive away the urge to cry. “But not for being straightforward. I’m not honest with any man but you.”
He watched her face as the horses jogged along, side by side.
“I don’t say personal things to any woman but you,” he said. “Usually I do my healing with animals and the land.”
They held a long, steady look and Cotannah felt, suddenly, that they had exchanged some kind of vow. A frisson of fear ran through her. She cared too much for him. With him, she was home.
“You’d be good for people if you did say personal things to them,” she said. “You made me really angry at you at first, but if you hadn’t said I was degrading myself, I might never have tried to take responsibility for my own actions.”
“But you’re overdoing that responsibility now,” he said softly, his light brown eyes still fixed on hers. “You can’t prove me innocent when half the Nation heard me saying that death curse.”
“Yes, I can,” she cried, welcoming the frustration that sprang up in her, trying to make it grow hot enough to blot out all her other feelings. She urged Pretty Feather to more speed and rode out ahead of him down the middle of the road, but almost immediately he caught up.
“You saved me twice, Walks-With-Spirits, and I am jolly well going to save you this time!”
“What if you’re killed, too?”
She whipped her head around to look at him.
“I thought you said you weren’t going to let me out of your sight.”
“I’m not. This trip. But later the Boomers could send someone into the Nation to find you. If Jacob really was involved with them, you might make them think you know too much.”
“I’m not afraid of Millard Sheets,” she said scornfully. “He’ll never know who I am or what kind of information I’m really looking for.”
“And how will you get it, then?”
“Hirt it out of him.”
“Why did I ask?”
But he wasn’t censuring her, she could tell by his tone, he was teasing her.
She smiled at him, but his face had fallen into its accustomed solemn, chiseled lines.
“Sheets is an Indian hater. What if he feels superior to the Spanish, too, assuming he does believe that’s what race you are? What if he considers himself too good to flirt with you?”
She threw him a quick glance.
“You mean the way you always do?”
He grinned, actually grinned, at her. It changed his face to that of a mischievous little boy, a roguish young man, a … dangerously handsome, dimpled devil who could play havoc with her heart. Then the light in his eyes turned to heat, heat that set fire to the core of her, body and soul. Something leapt in the air between them, some magnetism strong enough to touch crackled in the air.
And a startling truth fell into her head.
Why, his spirit was kindred to hers! He had that calm, that wisdom, yes, that incredible, mysterious peace, but within it, or beneath it, he was filled with passion, too.
If he held out his hand just now he could take hers. He could hold her hand in that sure, warm grasp that had saved her and Sophia from the falling bricks. If he stood in one stirrup and leaned toward her while their horses were keeping pace like this, he could take her lips in a kiss. Another of his wonderful, hot, sweet kisses. The thought of it streaked through her blood like a falling star.
But he didn’t move, he only looked at her.
She had to break that look, she had to, or she’d be the one reaching for him.
“You …” Her voice sounded low and husky and strange. She cleared her throat and tried again. “You need to pull your hat down and stay as inconspicuous as you can in McAlester,” she said. “In case someone sees us together on the road and notices us again in town.”
“Perhaps I should go in with you,” he said. “The color of my eyes shows my white blood from some ancestors in the past.”
She chuckled.
“But the color of your skin and the bones of your face scream of many Choctaw ancestors born into the woods and hills of the old homeland.”
“All right. I’ll pretend not to know you, and I’ll wait on the street near the newspaper office like any Choctaw come to town for trading waits for his wife.”
Like any Choctaw waits for his wife.
She tried to shut out the insane echo in her head, but she couldn’t help turning to look at him again.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be watching you and Millard Sheets through the window,” he said. “If he so much as touches you, I’m coming in.”
His jaw jutted out and he flashed her a fiercely protective glance that shot straight to her heart.
For the rest of the ride Cotannah tried either to keep them moving too fast for much talking or, when they slowed to rest the horses and stopped to eat a quick noon meal, to keep the conversation completely impersonal. Most of the time she didn’t have to worry—they were riding fast because covering thirty miles on horseback through the mountains would take all day long and the trails through the woods were narrow enough in most places that they had to take them single file.
They arrived on the outskirts of town as the day was sliding into late afternoon and immediately separated to ride in from different directions on the busy main street. Cotannah tried not even to glance around her for Walks-With-Spirits, but he was in front of the office of the Oklahoma Star when she found it. He had found a vantage point leaning against a post not far from some loiterers on the street corner, and he blended into his surroundings very well.
She dared to look at him again as she rode Pretty Feather up to the hitching post. He was an alikchi, that was for sure, else how could he look like such a part of a town when always before he’d looked so like a natural part of the wild?
He was wearing the hat now, a brown, wide-brimmed sueded leather pulled low over his eyes, and his hair was tucked in beneath his coat collar at the back of his neck. It would seem to any passerby that he was completely absorbed in whittling at the stick he held propped against his thigh—he stood on one foot and placed the other behind him flat against the post, every line of his big body completely loose and at ease. The knife in his hand moved slowly, with a certain sureness that struck a longing deep at her core.
Looking at him standing there made her go weak all over.
Knowing, although he gave no sign, that he knew she was there made her ache to touch him.
Finally, she tore her gaze away and got down, tied Pretty Feather to the hitching rail, and crossed the board sidewalk to the door, glass across the top half, etched with the words in script, Oklahoma Star. When she opened the door, a tiny bell rang. Two men occupied the room, one seated across the room at a printing press with his back to her and the other at a desk facing her.
The one at the desk was a tall, thin man who immediately stood up and walked around to the counter that ran across the front of the office.
“Yes, miss,” he said. “How can I help you?”
“It’s Mrs.,” she said, tilting her head to smile up at him. “I’m Mrs. Maggie Harrington, owner of the Double H Ranch in South Texas.”
He offered the slightest suggestion of a bow but did not return her smile.
“They call me Millard Sheets,” he said abruptly.
“I’ve come to you for some advice,” she said, pasting the smile onto her face.
“About what?”
She walked up to the counter and put both hands on it, leaned toward him until he bent his head to listen.
“About who among the Choctaw might be willing to overlook that silly law they have against leasing grazing land to outsiders.”
He drew back and looked down at her sharply.
She gave him her best smile one more time.
“We’ve had a dry year at home,” she confided, softly enough that once again he had to tilt his head again to hear her, “and I’ve come all this way to find grass for my cattle that would be on the way to market—only to find out that they have this stupid law!”
She stepped back and glanced at the man working at the printing press, then used her prettiest, most indignant pout on Millard Sheets.
“You don’t have to worry about Ernest there overhearing us,” he said, in a flat, bored tone. “Everybody in this establishment is here to tell the world that the redskin savages have no business trying to run a country on their own. Any fool can see that they could make a lot of income leasing out all that good grazing land.”
“Good!” she cried enthusiastically. “So can you tell me the names of some of the more progressive Choctaw landowners who are also good businessmen?”
The man was a stick. A lump of unfeeling clay. He still hadn’t smiled at her and now it seemed that he might not answer her question. He wasn’t going to. She could feel it.
She smiled at him again anyway.
“As you can imagine, I don’t want to get into trouble by approaching the wrong person,” she said, “and I’ve been assured by several citizens of McAlester that you have your finger on the pulse of every kind of business transaction that transpires for miles and miles around here.”
He favored her with the barest of nods.
So, flattery must be the best tactic to use on him, but at this rate she would be too old to ride horseback before he gave her the name of someone to see. It would be a true miracle if that name was Jacob Charley.
She took a deep breath to steady her breathing.
“Surely you know someone among the Choctaw who resents all those stupid laws they have?”
He almost smiled. But he didn’t speak.
“Now, I do have one name already,” she said, wasting another smile on him before she opened the bag hanging from her wrist and took out a small piece of paper, “the person who gave it to me said that this man is a very shrewd Choctaw businessman and that he has lots of grass.” She looked up with wide, innocent eyes. “Can you advise me whether I should mention leasing grazing lands to him …” she paused and touched her chest delicately, “leasing them to me, a white woman … or not? If I tell you the name, could you tell me if that proposal would offend him?”
After the Thunder Page 17
