The Renegades: Nick (19 page)

“Matilda betrayed me for her own ambitions,”
he said with a furious look that said,
As you did, too
.

“
I
haven’t betrayed you, Nick.”

She waited patiently, but he appeared not to have heard her.

“Matilda told my enemies where I’d be so they could set up the ambush,” he said. “But you didn’t need to do that, since Baxter already knew I was locked up in jail.”

All her pity burned away in the fire of her anger.

“Stop comparing me to Matilda!”

“She taught me not to trust even the
word
‘love’.”

“Coming from
her
,” she cried, before she could stop herself.

What was she doing? Getting ready to say he could trust her, Callie, if she said she loved him? She could never tell him that—he hated her now. He didn’t trust her any farther than he could throw this cabin they stood in.

And if he didn’t leave her this instant, she was going to throw herself at him and beat his chest with her fists until her bones broke. If he didn’t trust her, he didn’t love her.

Woe to her, she loved him anyway, in spite of all—and she could not bear to be near him another instant.

“All right,” she snapped. “Fine. You’ve learned your lessons about life. Leave me now so I can get dressed.”

Callie decided to wait until daylight to leave. She marveled that she could have that much control, because all she wanted was to run to her wagon and drive Joe and Judy away as fast as they could gallop. Nickajack didn’t love her. The thought sliced a wound across her heart that would never heal.

Not only did he not love her, he didn’t know her. He didn’t even
want
to know her.

After all their adventures, after she’d showed her loyalty by buying him out of
jail
, for heaven’s sake, he didn’t even know she was herself, Callie Sloane—no, Callie
Smith
, to her own everlasting regret—and not that Matilda from his past. That woman must have been an awful person and he was lumping them together, saying they were peas in a pod.

The hurt of his words hung in the air around her like a fog clinging to a river. She needed to get out from under it more than she needed her belongings in his house and barn—but she needed her baby even more, and the danger of wrecking the wagon in a ravine in the dark was too real. Never, in a million years, should she have started that trip to rescue Nick from Cap Williams in the jolting, scary dark.

“As things turned out, it wasn’t worth the risk, was it?” she muttered to the baby.

Never, since she’d boarded the train that
carried her out of the mountains forever, had she felt so alone.

She dressed quickly, just to be able to get out of Nick’s bedroom, wrapped her things in her nightgown, and carried them out into the big room. He wouldn’t come back into the cabin until she was gone. He didn’t want to see her any more than she wanted to see him.

The cut across her heart widened a little. She had thought she had a friend for life. A husband in name only, maybe, but a friend. Now he was gone because he had no faith in her at all.

If she needed any proof of that, she had it. On his way out, he had thrown the marriage certificate and the claim registration to the floor.

As she crossed to the kitchen, they mocked her, those two stiff pieces of paper, their edges blowing gravely back and forth in the breeze from the open door like winged ghosts, shining white in the night gloom. They
were
ghosts—the ghosts of her dreams.

Trying not to think, she went to get her favorite iron skillet and the cloth sack of shucky beans. She would need every scrap of everything to eat until she could get a job in Arkansas City.

When she had looked around for everything that was hers, when she had tied it all into a bundle and set it beside the door, she went to
Nick’s desk and lit the lamp. He could think what he wanted from now on, but he’d never be able to say she stole his place.

She longed to grab all the paper in the house and start covering it with writing, to pour out all the anguish that filled her, to hammer the truth into Nick until he had to see the light, and pelt him with every pain that she felt.

She couldn’t, though. Her little voice of truth warned her that if she even looked at all her feelings, they would tear her apart.

And they would probably have no effect on him at all.

Nickajack didn’t trust her. That was all that mattered. He could never love her because he didn’t trust her.

Before she sat down in his chair, she went around the room and gathered the paper ghosts. She needed the land description since she didn’t know it by heart.

Spreading the two crumpled pages on the table, she left the marriage certificate on top while she pulled out the drawer and took out one clean sheet of paper. Nickajack’s name stood out where he’d signed it in a hand so bold and big that it brooked no contradiction.

He had spoken in that very way when he’d announced they would marry. She hadn’t had a chance, really, to refuse him.

She had only agreed to marry him because of her reputation, because she needed and
wanted so badly to get a school. That was the only reason.

Except for the fact that she loved him, whether she knew it or not.

She faced that fact again, let it tear through her again.

Then she banished it into the very nether regions of her mind. Next month, next year, after the baby came to fill up her arms and her life, would be soon enough to think about Nick. Until then, she had to think about what had to be done to survive.

I, Calladonia Sloane Smith …

She stopped and looked at that name. She would probably never write it again. As soon as she had money for a lawyer, she would find out how to get a paper of divorce.

A divorced woman would never be hired to teach school.

All right, so she would go by Sloane and stick to her story of widowhood in Kentucky. Nick certainly didn’t want to be married to her and would tell no one.

She dipped the pen in the ink and continued to write.

… Do
hereby renounce any and all claim to the tract of land in the Cherokee Strip with the legal description …

Finally, it was done: the closest approximation to a legally binding quit-claim deed that she could imagine how to make. It should
serve. In all likelihood, Baxter wouldn’t protest any more, since he had what he wanted, and Nickajack could pass for white to get the land title changed.

She blotted the page, let it dry for a moment, then placed it on top of the land registry document in the middle of the table. After a moment’s fruitless search of the drawer, she got up and brought a heavy pewter mug from the kitchen to hold both pages down.

There. Nick would see that immediately when he came into the room.

The marriage certificate still lay where she’d left it, folded, to one side. Callie looked at it for a moment, then picked it up, folded it again, and put it in the pocket of her skirt.

Nickajack sat on the tallest rock at the high end of the canyon to watch the moon travel across the sky all night. The old people said that the moon was a ball thrown up against the sky in a stickball game a long time ago.

The legend went that, back in the Old Nation, which was the Center of the Earth, two towns had played each other, long and hard, and one town was about to win when the leader of the other side picked up the ball with his hand—which was not allowed in the game—and threw it toward the goal. Instead of going in, it stuck against the solid sky. It
stayed fastened there to remind players never to cheat.

Callie needed to hear that legend.

His heart hurt. How could she have betrayed him so?

I
knew I could deed it over to you when all the excitement had passed
.

She had sounded and looked completely sincere when she said that.

But so had Matilda when she had asked which road he would take to the Board of Governors’ meeting.

How could he have been so fooled, just because Callie was little and green-eyed and quick in her movements and usually blunt in speaking her mind? Matilda may have been tall and languid and dark-eyed and mysterious, but they were sisters under the skin.

I haven’t betrayed you, Nick
.

That had sounded even more credible because she had said it in such a sure, flat way, with that innocent light blazing at him from her eyes.

A man could be fooled, though. A man could always be fooled by a woman.

A man could never believe it when a woman said she loved him.

Hadn’t he believed Matilda? And hadn’t she gone out of her way to set him up to be killed?

The old, soul-racking pain tore at his heart again. Those boys never would have died if he
hadn’t listened to that woman. Too bad Matilda’s friends had been such bad shots. He would have died with a smile on his face to have saved his young followers.

No wonder he couldn’t trust even the word
love
, ever.

What was it Callie had said when he’d told her that?

Coming from her. Her
.

Said with such derision. That, too, had come off her lips with all the honesty in the world.

Had she almost said that
she
, Callie, loved him and meant it?

Surely not.

Grandfather Moon began to set. The sky in the east went black, and then, so gradually that the eye could not mark it, the darkness began slowly to fade into gray over the land that he loved.

He looked at it and waited for wisdom.

When the very first wash of pink appeared, he got to his feet.

This would always be his land—no matter what the white-eyes’ law said, no matter whose name was written on a piece of paper and in a book. He would not leave it.

Callie lured her team up from the pasture with grain as soon as she could glimpse gray on the horizon. She had them hitched and the wagon loaded by the time there was enough
light to see as far as the spring and the pond.

Nickajack was nowhere on the place. She’d steeled herself to see him when she entered the barn, but she’d sensed instantly that he wasn’t there. All the horses were, though. Where had he gone on foot?

She climbed up over the wheel and picked up the lines.

It looked to be a cloudy day. Or maybe it was still too early for streaks of pink and yellow to flare across the sky.

She brought the lines down, the team pulled against the harness, and the wagon started to move.

This morning washed across the land exactly as it had done that other time. The light seemed to float the same way it had done then. It was a gray like smoke, like the color of Nickajack’s eyes. Like the warm gray they had been when she lay in his arms in the moonlight.

She would have to live on that memory for the rest of her life, but right now she couldn’t bear to recall it.

She set her face toward the mouth of the draw and didn’t so much as glance at the cabin as she drove past. This was not her home, and she never wanted to see it again.

N
ickajack moved slowly down off the rock, across the flat butte, then over the edge to descend the rough side of the canyon, feeling his way by the shape of the earth under his feet. He knew it as well as he knew the floor in the cabin. He would never leave it, not even in death.

But the thought gave him no comfort; it only hardened the rock that used to be his heart.

At the bottom, he stood still for a minute, head up, face turned to the north into the wind. Yes, it had shifted. It was coming out of the northwest.

Even that thought gave him no hope. How could this north wind bring rain, now that his
petrified skin wouldn’t be able to soak it in?

The faintest light of day lit the sky but it hadn’t yet reached the ground, and he started down canyon by instinct. If Callie had slept at all, she was still sleeping.

And why
wouldn’t
she be able to sleep? She had accomplished what she set out to do when she left Kentucky, hadn’t she? She had a claim in her name, and it was one with a cabin and barn and supplies and water. She owned a place where she could have and raise her baby.

He felt a grim smile curl his lips. Whether Callie knew it or not, she also had him on her new place, since he wasn’t leaving.

A juniper brushed his face, and he reached out and broke off a piece to carry with him, held it to his nose to catch the spicy scent. It still held its fragrance, but it wasn’t as pungent because of the drought.

The aroma didn’t give him consolation, though. It couldn’t penetrate his wooden body.

Had Callie felt the slightest twinge of guilt or remorse while she was stealing his land? Had she been touched at all by regret when he had found her out last night?

An image flashed across his vision before he could stop it: Callie’s shocked eyes as he roared his fury into her astonished, open face. She had looked genuinely stunned.

He would have sworn on his mother’s grave that Callie had always been honest with him. Yet look what she’d done. And look what she’d kept from him when he’d thought they were friends.

Of course, he
had
kept telling her all the time that it was impossible for a woman alone to homestead. And she was right to think he’d have been even more adamant if he’d known she was carrying a child.

It was also true that a condition like that wasn’t easy for a woman to talk about to a man. But he had been foolish enough to think they were close friends, that she could tell him anything. Hadn’t he blabbed to her all about Matilda and every other painful thing?

A new wave of hurt swept through him, so unexpected it nearly brought him to his knees. He’d thought he was numb, that he was getting past it, yet here he was, longing to hold Callie in his arms with an ache that threatened to kill him with misery.

He came out of the upper canyon into the wider valley that held his buildings and pens just as the light broadened to show the beginning of a cloudy day. Without even a glance toward the barn or his horses and chores, he picked up his pace and strode toward the house.

No smoke came from the chimney or the stovepipe. Callie was either still asleep or
she’d decided not to cook anymore, and he would bet the yellow filly that it was the former. She was bound to be exhausted—when he’d first charged into her bedroom she’d been trembling like a willow in the wind.

She had looked so truly surprised when he accused her. How could she be so deceitful, after the way she had always been?

The baby would be making her sleep, too, he’d imagine. Just the thought of it almost made him ashamed of putting that dreadful, fearful look in her eyes last night—but dammit, she had brought it on herself! What a weak story: the clerk in the Land Office had done it; she’d had no hand in registering Nick’s claim for herself!

He jerked his mind from the past and fixed it on the present. What would he say to her first?

This is my place, and I’m not leaving
.

She was so determined, so stubborn, that she would never leave, either.

The infuriating, downright unjust truth of it all was that he’d have to keep living in the barn, with his own house right here. He couldn’t put her out now in her condition and he couldn’t later because the babe would be so new.

Images flashed through his mind: Callie big with the child, her small hand resting on her huge belly. Callie with a baby in her arms,
both of them looking at him with wide, sparkling green eyes.

A paralyzing thought struck him. Damn! He would be here when the baby came. No matter what Callie had done to him, he couldn’t ignore her at a time like that.

As soon as winter passed, he’d have to build her another cabin somewhere else on the place—that was all there was to it. He’d pick a spot and snake some logs onto it this fall, and in the spring he’d put it up fast, working like a madman.

Which he would be by then, after having her right here beside him all winter.

I’ll let you winter here with no trouble, and then I’ll give you half my place if you don’t tell the officials I’m Cherokee
.

No, that made him sound too weak. He had to take control of this situation somehow.

He crashed through the dry leaves in the yard, bounded up the steps, and strode across the porch in a fever to get the confrontation over with. The instant he stepped in through the door, he saw it: the tall mug sitting on his desk where it had never been before.

It stopped him in his tracks. Beneath it, a sheet of white paper gleamed like a light in the dim room.

Callie was gone. That paper was a note to him.

A desolation like he’d never felt before overwhelmed
him. It drew his whole body down, toward the ground, and nailed his feet to the spot where he stood.

Callie was gone.

Finally, he was able to move, to go to the door of his vacant bedroom, and then to the windows at the front of the house, where he saw that her team and wagon were no longer there.

After that, he forced his feet to carry him to the table. He moved the mug away and picked up the note.

I, Calladonia Sloane Smith, do hereby …

It was not a note to him. He blinked and read it again, his eyes going back twice to that name.

Dear God. At last, he read it all the way through and went back to look at her name again. She was giving him his claim.

Callie hadn’t left him a note; she had left him a deed to his place.

He read it one more time before the lightning bolt hit him. At the end there was no signature. Callie had left him a deed, but she hadn’t signed it.

Nick picked up the registration certificate from the Land Office that bore his land description and her name. Beneath it, the surface of the desk gleamed up at him. She must have taken the marriage certificate.

He folded the deed she’d written and
stuffed it into his pocket, left the Land Office document under the mug, and crossed to the door in a heartbeat, whistling for the Shifter as he ran to the barn.

She needn’t think she could take that certificate and keep him tied to her forever! Or leave him an unsigned quit-claim deed that probably wouldn’t be worth a hill of beans to the officials! What kind of game was she playing, anyhow?

He saddled the Shifter and mounted, then followed the wagon tracks he should have noticed when he came into the yard. This
loco
situation was destroying his eyesight as well as his mind.

Nick and the Shapeshifter moved out through the early morning, catching deep breaths of air sweet enough to break their hearts. The scent of rain rode on the wind and the Shifter lifted his head and whinnied toward it, welcoming the promise.

Nickajack, too, tried to wish it would rain, but at that moment even the drought and the land he loved weren’t all that important. He needed to find Callie before she got too far away.

He rode with his eyes on the distance, searching the woods and the creekbed for the arching, bare ribs of the wagon. Who could say what that wild team might have done? She might even still be here, in his canyon.

When, dear God, had she hitched up and started out? Surely she hadn’t been traveling in the dark—surely she hadn’t gone too far.

As soon as he passed the last trees and rode out of the mouth of his draw, he saw the wagon not far out onto the open prairie. He lost all the air from his lungs. It was empty. It was standing still.

He smooched to the Shifter and raced toward it, searching the surrounding area in every direction as he went. Coming up from behind, he was nearly on the wagon before he saw Callie.

She was in between those two wild beasts of hers, straddling the shaft with her skirts hiked up, pulling in vain with both hands at the mare’s firmly planted hind leg. Judy had tangled herself up again trying to kick Joe, who looked ready to retaliate any second now.

“Callie, get out of there!”

He sat back, stopped the Shifter, and leapt off.

Callie turned only far enough to flash him an angry glare.

“
You
get out,” she said, and went back to her hopeless task.

He murmured to both animals, let them smell his hands, and stepped in between them, stroking their sides as he worked his way to their hindquarters. Callie kept at it.

“You heard me,” he said.

“I’ve heard you say a lot of things you shouldn’t have said.”

He bent over and reached around her from behind to help just as Judy gave in and stepped daintily over the shaft. Callie, overbalanced, tumbled backward into his arms.

“There, you see?” she said breathlessly.

Nick’s arms closed desperately around her, although he meant to let her go.

Yes, I see. I see that my own body will not obey me when it comes to you
.

She stiffened after the fleetest moment of leaning against him. He kept one arm around her waist and backed up, reaching for Judy’s head with the other.

“Come on,” he said, “before this mare has another fit and stomps us both into the ground.”

She came, but she was dragging her feet.

“Turn me loose! What are you doing here, interfering in my business, anyway?”

“Saving your life, looks like.”

“Ha!” she said derisively.

Once safely away from the team, he let her go. She whirled to glare at him, though she didn’t step back very far.

He felt as if she’d put a mile between them, however. This was ridiculous. He hadn’t ridden all this way to try and hold her. Had he?

“I’m out here tending to
my
business,” he said.

“Then it has nothing to do with me.”

“I think it does. My marriage certificate is missing.”

She widened her eyes in mock innocence.

“So? What makes you think I have it?”

“You’ve been meddling in my personal papers, as usual.”

“As usual! Meddling! I simply sat down at your desk to write! Weren’t you glad to find the deed?”

He pulled it out of his shirt pocket, fighting the sudden urge of his hands to shake as he unfolded it.

“It would be a lot more help to me if you had signed it.”

The mixture of sudden feelings that crossed her face made his heart turn over. Surprise and sorrow, he was sure of them both, but then her old determination wiped them out.

He’d seen regret there, though. Hope surged to life in him—maybe he
had
ridden out here to hold her, after all.

She glanced at the bottom of the page she had written.

“My name’s at the beginning.”

“Yes, but it needs your signature at the end.”

“Very
well
,” she said irritably. “Did you bring pen and ink?”

He realized then what he had done. He had come to bring her back. To bring her home.
All along, he’d been afraid to know it.

“No.”

She lifted those green eyes and looked at him. Somewhere, off far away to the southwest, thunder rumbled low behind the cloudy sky.

“I have ink and pens packed in my supplies,” she said abruptly, and turned away.

Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe she hadn’t leaned into him for just one heartbeat when he had his arms around her. Maybe she would refuse to come with him.

He followed her to the wagon wheel and helped her climb up to the seat. She moved quickly, let him touch her very little. When she was in and turning toward the back, to her meager load of supplies, he couldn’t take his eyes from her. He held his breath.

Thunder sounded again.

“Oh, don’t go to all that trouble,” he said, as she went to a stack of boxes carefully wrapped in her oilskin sheet. “Come on back to the house. It won’t take long and it’s a shame to tear into your boxes now.”

She hesitated. A drumbeat of panic rolled through his blood. Her boxes belonged in his house.
She
belonged in his house. Oh, God, could he make her see that?

“Well,” she said, turning toward the now-stronger sound of the thunder, “it might rain.”

He forced his words to come out light and careless.

“It’s October,” he said with a shrug. “About time for the fall rains.”

She glanced around at her things.

“I was going to stop in Santa Fe and buy a wagon cover.”

Was
. He didn’t dare say a word. He waited.

“All right,” she said, at last. “No sense getting everything wet before I can get to town. I’ll go back and wait out the storm.”

He longed to climb up to the seat and take the lines from her when she sat down and picked them up, but he couldn’t, for fear of scaring her away. For fear of reaching for her too soon, before he thought of what to say.

“Good plan,” he said, and vaulted up onto the Shapeshifter. The horse turned back toward home as if he’d understood every word.

“You caught up with me just in time,” Callie said, as she brought the wagon around, “like you did the first time.”

“First time?”

“Here’s where I was driving my stake on your claim,” she said matter-of-factly.

He glanced around. She was right, within a stone’s throw. His pulse quickened—maybe it was a sign.

The trail up the canyon was too narrow in most places for them to travel abreast. Callie seemed lost in her own thoughts, anyway, and
he wanted time to pull his together. He didn’t know what to do or say, but he did know he had to convince her to stay.