Agnes and the Renegade (Men of Defiance) (11 page)

With the way she worked, she didn’t need him to pose for long. It was nice, however, to have the luxury of a formal sitting so that she didn’t have to go through the exercise of rigorously committing her observations to memory. And with his consent to let her paint him, she hoped to have several sittings with him, each in different apparel so that she could paint him in a wide range of gear.
 

She focused on her work, separating herself from the strange sense of connection she felt with him. She sketched out on the canvas a rough, quick study of him. Then, on the hard board of her palette, she mixed the pigments that would give her his flesh tone, along with the colors she would need to create shadow and highlights, giving his body depth on the flat surface of her canvas.

She had the odd sense that Chayton was being created anew as she painted him. Seeing his body take shape on the canvas, it was as if he was pushing through the fabric to stand before her. Each stroke began to feel as if she were touching him. She looked over at him, wondering if he felt the feathery touch of her brush.
 

His eyes held no emotion, and yet, somehow, every emotion. He was beautiful, powerful, knowledgeable. He was a force of nature that no one would ever know existed without her capturing him on canvas.

Aggie refocused on her work, but it only intensified the strange feelings that were swirling around inside of her. Each brush stroke on the canvas felt as if she were learning him, tracing the curves of the lean strength in his arms with her fingers. After a time, the tent began to feel terribly warm. She’d worn a light muslin dress out of a sense of propriety, knowing she’d be spending the day in his company and the tent would likely be too warm. And even though the day’s heat hadn’t set in yet, she was already uncomfortable.
 

She switched her brush to her left hand, freeing her right hand to loosen the buttons at the base of her throat. She moved behind the canvas, hoping he wouldn’t see the adjustment she made to her clothes.
 

This was ridiculous. She’d painted men before, even nude men. Theo had had her paint nude men and women over and over until she lost her shyness around them and began to see them with artist’s eyes first and always. When she could objectify them, she could see them as representations of color, emotion, life.
 

Why was her training failing her now?

Theo had taught her that every painting had its own story. Perhaps the sensuality that she was experiencing had nothing to do with her and everything to do with Chayton. Perhaps that was the story of this painting. That realization let her distance herself from Chayton and focus on her representation of him. Which she did, with such intensity that when she next looked over at him, she found his stool was empty. The sun was high overhead, the bluish light of morning giving way to the yellowish glare of afternoon, even muted as it was by the heavy fabric of the tent.

She stretched, then went outside, wondering when he’d left his perch. She was still in something of a daze when she stepped into the sunlight. He was nowhere to be seen. She looked toward her corral. His horse was there, outside the corral, calmly munching on grass. Her horse was missing, however.

Just as she made that discovery, the ground began to rumble with the sound of a rider fast approaching her little spread. She looked around, uncertain which direction the rider was coming from. As she looked toward the hill that was east of her house, Chayton rode over it on her gelding, his brightly colored saddle pad a stark contrast to her horse’s sorrel coat. Chayton’s dark hair flew behind him. His feathers danced and jumped. He wasn’t using the bit she used for riding, but his halter made from braided leather.
 

Chayton stopped in front of her. He grinned and called out something in Lakota, directing the horse to dance in a tight circle. He rode off again at a fast pace, calling for his horse. When it caught up to them, Chayton leapt from her horse to his, then back again—while moving at a full gallop. He had complete control of both horses. They came back around her tent and over the hill, easing to a stop outside her corral.
 

Aggie couldn’t help but smile at him, amazed at his skill—and the fact that he’d obviously been training her horse. When he stilled, he smiled down at her and once more said something she didn’t understand. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Chayton. I don’t understand. Could you say that in English?”

The joy in his eyes slowly died. He did not repeat what he’d said. Instead, he turned her horse out in the corral, retrieved his tack, put it on his horse and rode away. Aggie rubbed her horse down. He’d been exercised hard. She sent a look toward the tent, wondering how long she’d been focused on her work. She brought fresh feed and water for him, then took a break herself before resuming her work.
 

She wondered if Chayton would return in the morning. How wonderful it had been to see him smile, see his joy this afternoon. She wished she understood what he’d been happy about.

CHAPTER NINE

Chayton did not show up the next morning. Or for the next several days. Aggie finished his painting, then did a study of him smiling down at her from atop her horse. When a week went by without any sight of him, she began to fear, once more, he would never return. In the quiet of her cabin that night, she retrieved the pictograph he’d given her. She sat on her bed and spread the fine deerskin out over her knees so she could study the images that represented his life. One hundred and eighteen images were drawn in an oval wheel moving clockwise around the first four images. If he’d used four images to represent each year, then he was in his early thirties.
 

She touched the pictures, wondering at the image choices he’d made and their significance for him. Some were cryptic pictures of animals, others were miniature battles and scenes of terrible bloodshed. She considered what her wheel of life would look like and what images she would use to depict it. Her parents were long gone; she had no one left who could tell her about her earliest years she no longer remembered.

A breeze came into her cabin from the open door, swirling about the small space before leaving the same way it entered. She took a deep breath of the cool night air and wished Chayton was with her so that she could ask him to tell her the meaning of the symbols on his pictograph.
 

No sooner had she made that wish, she looked up to see him standing in the open front door. Aggie smiled. “Hi.”

He didn’t answer her, didn’t attempt to enter, didn’t appear happy to see her, but his eyes belied his stoicism—they were heated and intense and entirely focused on her. She indicated the pictograph on her lap. “I was hoping you’d come by. I don’t understand many of the events you show here.”

She rearranged the pillows, then scooted over on the bed so that he could sit next to her. It wasn’t inappropriate; the bed was the only place to sit. She’d moved some of her paintings over from the tent so that she could consider their compositions and decide if they were finished enough to be signed. Those pieces were stacked on the table and chairs, hung on the walls. The only other place to sit was the floor. Besides, she was fully dressed—not in her usual state of dishabille.
 

He crossed the room and watched her as he settled on her bed. His shoulder touched hers. He didn’t avoid touching her as he stretched out. His long legs were crossed at the ankles. The buckskin leggings had molded to the shape of his legs, leaving little to the imagination about the musculature beneath them.
 

The breeze in the cabin had been cool a few minutes earlier, but now she was feeling quite a bit warmer. Aggie looked up at him, then felt a furious flush of color warm her neck and cheeks. He returned her gaze, his eyes steady.

She smiled and turned her attention to the deerskin spread over her knees. “Tell me what these symbols mean.”

“When my mother was giving birth to me, a hawk was flying over our village. He hunted in the prairie the entire time she was in labor, crying as he circled. She had a vision that I was that hawk. She saw, in that vision, that I would have the ability to see with the great perspective of a hawk. It is why she gave me my name, Hawk That Watches. Logan shortened it to ‘Hawk’ or Chayton.”

Aggie looked over at Chayton. “Can you? See with a hawk’s eye?”

He considered his words. “It isn’t just being able to see clearly, it is also being able to see with the perspective of a bird high in the air. No, I cannot see what she hoped I would. Not yet.”

“When I paint a landscape, I find it is much more difficult to face the sun and try to see the land than it is if my back is to the sun. Perhaps you won’t see things the way she hoped you would until you are older.”

Chayton frowned. “Yes. Perhaps.” He pointed to some marks next to the hawk, two vertical bars and one short horizontal bar. “I was the fourth child born to my parents. I had two older brothers and a sister.”

Aggie imagined the young family he was born into. “I wish I had not been an only child. What happened to your family?”

Chayton gave her a frustrated look. “I have written it in the pictures. You will soon learn.” The next image was of a wooden stand with strips of something hanging down it. “That year was a good one for buffalo. No one in the village went hungry.”

Over the next hour, in his calm, melodic voice, Chayton told the story of his boyhood: when he learned to swim as an infant; the year of the terrible snows when his father had buried each of them inside a snowdrift to wait out a blizzard; the night a bear had come into their camp to give them his body for food and his fur for warmth; when he began his history lessons with various wise men who knew the important legends of his people.
 

The summer that he was fostered to a master horse trainer was also the year that his wife was born in a different band. She was represented by an image of water rapidly moving. “Her name was Laughs-Like-Water. Like you, she was a great artist.”

“Were your families friendly with each other?”

“Yes. Our mothers were quite close. Often our bands camped together. I played with her brothers. It is said that I was the first person her infant eyes focused upon, but I cared nothing for that honor. To me, she was just another infant in a cradleboard.” He pointed to the next image, one of a snake. “In this year, my oldest brother was bitten by a rattlesnake and died soon after.”
 

“Oh, how terrible. What became of your sister and other brother?”

“Agkhee, I cannot tell a story backwards. You must take the journey with me so that you understand the man that I am. Otherwise, you will not know what I know and will judge me in error.”

Aggie kept the smile from her face. “Of course. Please continue.” They had only covered the first third of his life, and she very much wanted to hear about the rest of it. There were battles with the Shoshone and Crow, treaties that were hotly debated among his people, raids against stage stations.

He marked the summer he met Logan—they fought, and he almost killed the man who was to become his friend. Instead, they spent the summer together, capturing wild horses and training them so that Chayton could pay the bride price for Laughs-Like-Water.
 

“I wish I could have known her. I imagine she was extraordinary.”

“She was. Full of kindness and joy. Her skill in working bead art was such that several important warriors and chiefs commissioned work from her. She had begun training apprentices to help with the work. And she was expecting our third child when she was killed.” He frowned at her. “But again, you wish to rush to the end. There is much traveling to do before the story is over.”

The symbols he was covering were on the far side of the deerskin, so Aggie moved closer to Chayton, slipping into his arms so that he could more easily point out where they were in his timeline. A quick scan of the remaining images showed far too many that were battles or deaths. She leaned against him with her back to his chest, her temple against his chin.
 

Strange how comfortable she felt in his arms when she considered how terrifying he’d been when they first met.
 

“This year, my parents were killed. I had formed my own small group separate from my father’s band. We were traveling to meet with traders to sell my wife’s goods. While we were away, my parents had moved with their village to an area by a fort where the soldiers told them they would be safe. After being there three days, the camp was raided by soldiers and my parents killed. My sister and two of her children were also killed in that massacre. Her husband survived and now lives at the Agency.”

Aggie desperately wanted to ask questions about why soldiers would do something so insidious, but she could feel the tension building in Chayton’s body and did not want him to stop telling her the story of him. Instead, she reached up to touch his hair, holding it in her fingers as she drew them down its long length.
 

More battles now. The warriors among his people needed the horses he was training as fast as he could train them. His other brother died in one of the battles. His daughter was born. The carcasses of buffalo, so wastefully slaughtered for their skins and heads, were scattered across an entire prairie, feeding no one. Even the scavengers could not eat them all.
 

The very last image was of a white man holding a string of long hair. “One day, a group of white men who were scalp hunters came to my village while I was out hunting with the men. Logan had warned me they were in the area. I thought because we were in the lands protected by treaty that we would be safe. They killed dozens of my people—women, children, and elders. They took the scalps of the women and children. Laughs-Like-Water had been raped and beaten and shot. My son had been shot lying over her body.”

Aggie couldn’t hold back her tears. She turned in Chayton’s arms and wept. At first, he didn’t hold her but he didn’t push her away. After a minute, she felt his arms wrap around her shoulders, holding her tighter and tighter. How could one person—how could an entire people—survive what he and his people had survived?