Wild Burn (9 page)

He wondered about her when he lay in his bed at night. He wondered if she’d rolled to her stomach, her thighs pressed tightly together. Maybe her hands would have snaked up the mattress to grip the brass rails of the headboard. The cool metal would have heated, slicked, beneath her palms as she twisted and writhed. Her hips would’ve thrust gently into the soft tick, and maybe, oh, Christ, maybe her legs would have parted as her need grew. Would she have released the headboard to run a hand beneath her body to seek the damp red curls he knew he would find at the apex of her thighs? Would she have stroked those slender fingers through her folds and played there in that perfect wet heat?

He’d spent into his hand—bottom lip trapped between his teeth, at the thought—three times since the night of the kiss.

He couldn’t keep sleeping in this room.

As he stalked toward John White Horse’s cabin, his foul mood grew. He would
not
veer to the right. He would
not
stare at her daintily curtained window in an effort to see any movement from within. He certainly wouldn’t knock on her door and, the moment she opened it, pull her into his arms and kiss the life out of her. That would be rewarding her bad behavior in running away from him that night, and Moira had been very, very bad.

She made him want to be very, very bad.

Damn it.

So when Del rapped his knuckles on John White Horse’s door, the bare-chested Indian gave him an assessing once-over and arched an eyebrow. “Good morning.”

Del grunted.

The younger man smiled. It was rare to see such easy amusement in a native, as they were for the most part rather staid in showing their emotions. But he’d noticed that John was more…well…
white
than any other Indian he’d met. He didn’t fit into the square space Del had set aside in his mind for the savages he hunted, which was likely for the best.

He wasn’t supposed to hunt John White Horse, anyway.

Del’s gaze landed on the man’s bandaged shoulder. “How’re you feeling?”

John shrugged with his good shoulder. “It is not the first time I have been shot.”

“Yeah?”

John didn’t answer, merely stepped back in a silent invitation for Del to enter.

Del shook his head. “I’m heading over the hill today.”

“To see the tribe.”

“Hoping you’ll maybe want to come along with.” He’d decided yesterday, after sitting on his haunches and studying them from afar for long hours, that he needed an introduction to Walking Bear. It would be unusual for him to take the time to talk to the Cheyenne, for all that he knew their language, but something didn’t sit right with him about Sheriff Nelson’s orders, and he suspected John White Horse could help him figure out why that was.

The man in question stared down at him from his vantage point of standing a step above Del within the doorway of his cabin. “No guns.”

“I don’t think so.” He braced his hands on his hips, pushing back his coat to reveal the pistol on his hip. “This goes where I go.”

“You shot me less than a week ago. I would say you owe me a boon.”

“And that boon is that I go into a Cheyenne camp without protection?”

John’s expression was sly. “I did not say you couldn’t bring a knife. Or two.” He disappeared into the dark depths of the cabin, coming back a few moments later wearing a homespun shirt beneath an open leather tunic. A wide-brimmed black hat bearing two hawk feathers in the band sat on his head, and he carried a large hunting knife in each hand. “Want one?” He flipped one in a neat trick until he pinched the sharp, gleaming blade between two fingers. Then he offered the weapon, handle first, to Del.

Del knew what that show of skill meant even as he took the proffered knife. John may be Red Creek’s friendly resident Indian, but he was exactly that—an Indian. He knew the land, hunting, his people. More than that, he knew white people, and they were a cracked bunch if they underestimated just how powerful John could be.

Which made Del doubly glad he hadn’t done more than given the man a through-and-through shoulder wound.

“You can leave your gun here.”

“I’d rather take it along, thanks.” When he saw John’s unyielding expression, he amended, “But I’ll leave it in the brush outside the camp. Will that do?”

Nodding, John closed the door to his cabin behind him and began striding up the craggy hill. Del followed, sliding the knife into his belt.

They walked in silence. The morning was chilly, a sign of impending autumn. At this time last year, Del had been sweating and dirty, knee-deep in marsh grasses as the Georgia sun beat down on his neck. He may have been a captain, but war was a great equalizer, in that it made each man about as important as the cow dung he tromped through on his way to the battlefield. But here the air was crisp, the tangy scent of the fir trees strong and strangely fresh on the back of his tongue. The sky was pale blue, cloudless and not quite as brilliant as her eyes. Moira’s eyes.

Damn it.

He wanted her. He wanted her so badly. He wanted to toss her down on that bed they’d unwittingly shared and peel one of those lovely, feminine dresses she wore to the schoolhouse from her lithe body. She would feel so good beneath his hands. He would feel so alive beneath hers.

That was what he’d noticed the night of their kiss—that after enduring a seeming eternity of numb nothingness, every inch of his body had buzzed with insistent life, the blood in his veins an acid that burned him and soothed him at the same time. Moira was a timely reminder that he’d been drifting through his existence for as long as he could remember, including the time before the war. What she did to him, even when he was alone and thinking of her though he obviously shouldn’t be, was exhilarating and slightly terrifying.

She was something utterly new, and he had no idea why that was.

As he and John approached the Cheyenne encampment, Del shucked his gun belt, settling it discreetly between the creeping roots of a birch tree. “Will Walking Bear talk to me?” he asked John as they continued to wend their way through the forest surrounding the tribe’s settlement.

“My uncle only wants peace. I am certain he will answer any questions you may have.”

“Even if my questions are about the dog soldiers Sheriff Nelson suspects your uncle of protecting?” With no sign of Cloud Rider’s braves over the past couple days, Del had his doubts about whether there truly was an actual threat to Red Creek. “Tell me, John—what do you think the sheriff wants from me?”

The other man’s jaw clenched. “You’re here for Cloud Rider.”

“That’s not an answer.” Several tentlike abodes came into view, smoke wafting from a handful of stone-encircled fires. Soft voices rose on the breeze, murmuring vaguely French-sounding words in casual tones. The Cheyenne language was pleasing to the ear in a lilting, guttural way, though he probably only understood a fraction of the words.

John stopped abruptly, turning to face him. “I think Hank Nelson is a bigot parading himself as a fair man. I think it angers him that we were not purged from the territory entirely. I think he would rather you kill us all and then ride out of here.”

“And I would take the blame with me.” He’d figured it was something like that. “But I told him I didn’t kill innocents.”

“The sheriff will find a way.” John’s brow furrowed. “I have been thinking, Captain Crawford—”

“Just Crawford.”

John nodded. “I have been thinking that you might be the only chance my uncle’s tribe has of staying here. We have been in these mountains for generations. We shouldn’t have to leave.”

“I agree.”

“You do?” He sounded shocked.

Del shifted uncomfortably. He knew his reputation. Hell, he knew what he’d done. His body would forever bear the mark of those he’d killed. He might be cold, but he wasn’t heartless, had never been heartless—only cowardly. Numbness was no longer an option, not since coming to Red Creek. “Land is land. Doesn’t matter to me whose it is.” And wouldn’t his daddy just die all over again to hear his son, sole heir to a massive plantation, say such a thing.

“I work with the sheriff in order to prove we’re no worse than any of the white people living in his town, and in return, I do what I can to protect my uncle’s tribe from any aggression.” A wistful expression flitted across his aquiline features as John took in the green and gray forest surrounding them. “Our future is tied with the white man. I recognized that long ago. But I often feel as though I am the only one.”

Blindness was equal parts stubbornness and ignorance, and Del had grown up with all three, the deadweights of his heritage tethered to his neck. Del understood John’s dilemma.

They walked into the encampment. Indians—men and women, young and old—stopped in the middle of their tasks to stare at them. Something was a little off, though. “Where are the children?”

“The youngest are in town at the schoolhouse.” Pride laced John’s tone. “Miss Tully came here yesterday to speak with the mothers, and they agreed to let her teach their children in Red Creek.”

The emotion that gripped Del at John’s statement was immediate and ugly. “You let Miss Tully come here?”

Furious. He was furious.

John frowned. “I was with her.”

Del’s hands fisted at his sides, his teeth clenched. “Oh, and that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“I would never let anything happen to Miss Tully. Never.”

“Do you…?” No. Not possible. “Do you…
care
for Miss Tully?”

A dull flush crept over John’s bronzed cheekbones. “I think very highly of her. She is a lovely woman.”

“She
is
a lovely woman.” She was
his
lovely woman, not John’s. Moira, from the first moment in the clearing, with those delicious freckles that he hadn’t yet had a chance to count, was for him and him alone. He was the one she tended. He was the one she kissed. He was the one who would
count those freckles
, damn it. “You shouldn’t have brought her here.”

Just like Del shouldn’t have brought her to his room. Except that his body screamed that yes, he absolutely should have, and then kept her there too.

“She was perfectly safe. None of Walking Bear’s people would hurt an innocent woman.” Barely leashed aggression sharpened every line of John’s lean body. He sneered. “Can the same be said of
your
people?”

Del ignored him. “You put her in danger, taking her out here. And with what for protection, one of your little knives?”

“
Little knives?
” They were nearly nose to nose now. “I could slit your throat faster than you could pull your gun, Crawford, and if I weren’t a peace-loving man, I’d prove it to you.”

“Try, White Horse, and I’ll put a bullet three inches lower than I did the last time.”

“Oh? With what?”

“With—” But Del didn’t have his Remington, and when his hand brushed across his right hip, he experienced a moment of panic at being caught naked. Which he might as well have been without his gun.

John rocked back on his heels and laughed, reeking of superiority. “This is why Miss Tully will always be safe with me.”

Del forgot his surroundings, forgot that he was there as a guest and emissary, forgot everything but the possessive, jealous, impotent fury making his head pound like an exacerbated hangover. He grabbed John’s collar. “You—”

The sharp tip of a blade poked at his ribs. “Boys.” The new voice, creaky with age, carried the marked studiedness savages tended to have when speaking English. “Always a contest when women are involved.” The blade shifted, and Del froze. “Now who are you, and why did you shoot my nephew?”

Chapter Eleven

There were Indian children in her classroom.

Moira couldn’t quite believe it. She stood at the front of the schoolhouse, before the large blackboard she’d scrubbed clean of chalk yesterday afternoon upon the completion of lessons. She pressed her palms flat to the cleared desktop and stared bemusedly at the three small Cheyenne, two girls and a boy somewhere between the ages of seven and ten, who sat on a single bench seat near the back of the room. Their hands were neatly folded in their laps, and no educational accoutrements—no boards, no primers—rested on the long desk in front of them.

Most interestingly, all three of them stared back at her. There was implicit trust in their dark gazes.

Moira wasn’t quite sure what to do with that trust. When she’d visited the encampment over the hill yesterday, the children had immediately surrounded her, fingering the ribboned trim on the pockets of her skirt and chattering at her in their language. She hadn’t understood a word, but John had translated that they were excited to be going to the white school.

She may never have wanted to be a teacher, but as she stood in her classroom watching the three Indian children wait for her to begin, she was swamped with a nigh-overwhelming sense of responsibility. No one else had seen fit to teach these children. Shame on the townspeople—
shame on them
—for their prejudices. Prejudice had just torn this country apart, so viciously that Moira, who had grown up a God-fearing girl, began to doubt He even existed. It wasn’t only the Union soldier she’d encountered in the alley that warm April night in Boston that made her leave behind her life as a nun. The war had equally as much to do with it. What kind of God allowed brothers to kill brothers?

Not one Moira was interested in serving, thank you very much.

She smiled at her new students and remembered their names, in the native Cheyenne tongue, from when she’d met them at their camp. “He’kase?”

The shorter girl lifted her hand to her chest. “
He’kase
.”

The next name was harder to pronounce. “Heo… Um. Heovâheso?”

The second girl beamed at Moira, revealing a missing tooth right in the front. Moira smiled and tapped her own teeth, then said, “Tooth.”

Heovâheso mimicked Moira’s action and stuck her finger in her mouth. Then, around her finger, slowly mumbled, “Tooth.”

Oh, the teaching would be slow, but their learning would be fast, perhaps because they wanted to be here. Unlike a handful of her other students, who constantly fidgeted, rarely listened to the lesson’s lecture and toed the line of respectful discourse every day.