Native Wolf (17 page)

"What about his missing stallion?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Thunder gets out all the time."

"Really?" He didn't believe that either. "Then what about your aunt? Won't she notice when you don't show up?"

She opened her mouth, then closed it. Just as he suspected, she was up to something.

"Your father
is
looking for you," he decided.

"Maybe," she admitted. Then she brightened. "But he'll never think to look for me here. He'll go to Chico."

Chase furrowed his brow. If he didn't know any better, he'd suspect Miss Parker was trying to convince him not to take her home.

"So you see?" she said with far too much enthusiasm. "We're perfectly safe."

Chase scowled. She
was
trying to convince him not to take her home.

That was a hell of a thing.

"Don’t worry, sir," Frank Sullivan announced, his eyes gleaming at his discovery of the buried ashes from a fire. "I’m onto him now."

Samuel was only half listening. He was more interested in the faint tracks leading to and from the campfire. They didn't quite match.

Samuel’s insides had twisted every time he discovered an imprint of his daughter’s bare toes in the mud. But the tracks leading away from the campfire revealed that the smaller of the two travelers now wore shoes, or at least something resembling shoes. How was that possible?

He glanced again at the charred bones atop the smothered fire. They belonged to something small. Probably a rabbit. The man must have killed a rabbit for supper.

"We should be heading out now, sir,” Frank said. “We don’t want the quarry to slip the net."

Samuel stared at Frank, who stood beside his mount, tapping his quirt impatiently against his thigh. But Samuel’s mind was elsewhere.

If the man had killed a rabbit... The rabbit skin. Claire’s shoes might be made out of rabbit skin. He strode forward, eager to prove his theory.

"I want to see the clearest tracks," he told Frank.

"But, sir..." There was that false forbearance again. It was beginning to annoy Samuel. "I’ve already determined that—"

"Never mind that. Just show me the tracks."

He could almost see waves of indignation rise off of Frank, but the young man held his tongue. He walked off a few paces and squatted in front of a bare patch of mud. "Here."

Samuel crouched beside him and peered closely at the tracks, running his fingers around the edge of the smaller print. "She’s wearing shoes now."

Frank spit into the bushes. "Probably just rags from her gown or something, wrapped around her feet."

Samuel didn’t think so. Whoever had his daughter was seeing to her welfare. He was convinced of it. Which could mean only one thing.

"Let’s go," he told Frank.

There was hope. The kidnapper wasn’t going to hurt Claire. He wanted to ransom her.

“Kid-witch,”
Claire repeated solemnly.

“Kidiwische, -wische,”
he corrected.

Claire knitted her brows. His language was difficult, beautiful but difficult. She gazed out again across the sun-kissed lea, where newly-hatched white butterflies filled the air like snowflakes.

"And it means?" she prompted. She had been pestering Chase Wolf all morning about the Hupa language, much as she’d done with Yoema when she was learning the Konkow tongue.

He frowned, but she could tell he wasn’t as irritated as he let on. "You’re more curious than a raccoon."

"Raccoon. You mean,
minawe?”
she asked coyly.

A reluctant smile bloomed on his face.
“Minaxwe.”
It sounded so much better on his lips, husky and exotic. It made her ears shiver.

"Mm." She watched the butterflies disperse slowly into the woods.

"Thing that blows on the wind."

She looked askance.

“Kidiwische,”
he explained. "Butterfly. Thing that blows on the wind."

Claire nodded. His language was so poetic. "And how do you say—"

"No more, little
loqchwo,”
he groused. "That's enough for today."

“Loq- loq-,”
she attempted.

“Loqchwo,
mockingbird."

He plunged onward out of the trees. He didn't seem quite as worried about her father tracking them, but that didn't mean he wasn't still intent on taking her back to Paradise.

She wished she could change his mind. It was so beautiful here above the canyon. She was enjoying his company. And she didn't want the adventure to end.

They passed through the meadow, careful not to disturb the few remaining butterflies that flitted and dipped through the air. The sun felt good on her face. The woods were thick at this elevation, and clearings like this were few and far between. The air was cool and clear, scented with pungent evergreen and, in meadows like the one they now crossed, the barely discernible fragrance of spring’s first wild flowers.

For a long time, neither of them spoke. Yet the world was far from silent. In the distance, blue jays argued in screeches. Hummingbirds buzzed past in their search for nectar. At least once a minute, Claire heard a chipmunk rearranging pine needles with scrabbling paws.

High overhead, a hawk announced its presence with reedy cries. Claire squinted up at the circling bird.

“Kitsay,”
she whispered.

Hawk. Chase had told her the hawk was his brother’s spirit animal, just as the wolf,
kilnadil
, was his. She watched it wheel lazily across the cloudless, lupin-blue sky, at last disappearing behind the tufted spears of towering pines that swayed almost imperceptibly in the slight breeze.

Claire took a deep breath of fresh mountain air. The day was glorious. In Paradise, it was the kind of day that a gentleman might take his sweetheart on a picnic. He’d stop to pick her a bouquet of lupins and poppies. She’d unpack a basket of fried chicken, fluffy rolls, and apple pie. He’d pour the cider, and they’d lunch on a quilt beside the creek.

She stared at the man hiking in front of her and smiled ruefully. He wasn’t exactly a gentleman, and he didn’t have flowers. They
had
eaten by the creek—an awful meal of those tasteless bulbs that seemed to grow everywhere and a handful of pine nuts he’d stolen from a squirrel’s cache.

Still, her heart and her step were light, and her mood was happy. Maybe it was the thin air, or maybe it was only that up here on the mountain, she was so much closer to heaven. Whatever the reason, she felt deliriously joyful. As wrong and ridiculous and fanciful as it was, a part of her wished they could wander like this forever.

She liked Yoema’s grandson. Now that she was confident he wasn’t going to kill her or hurt her or steal her for a slave, she could appreciate his finer qualities.

Despite his mass and his menace, his dark scowl and his fierce growl, he wasn’t the brute he pretended to be. Like the natives she knew, he had an affinity for nature, and he was sensitive to his surroundings. He detected the presence of animals long before she did, and he always knew just where to dig for food.

There was an inherent kindness in him, too, that belied all his grumbling. He’d carried her when she couldn’t walk. He’d made shoes for her, sung her to sleep, trimmed her hair.

And he'd given her her first kiss.

That was never far from her mind. Though he'd chosen to claim "it never happened," she could still vividly recall the lovely sensation of his arms holding her close, his chest crushing her breasts, his lips coaxing hers with sweet abandon. She wanted him to kiss her again.

Then her thoughts would slip back to Paradise, and she'd be struck by a pang of disappointment. If he returned her, all of this would be over—the adventure of sleeping by the sun’s clock and traveling where the path led, living among the trees and the animals like a creature of nature. It wasn’t always comfortable, and it wasn’t always easy, but it made her feel alive. Or perhaps, she reconsidered, it was her companion who did that.

What would become of her when he said goodbye?

She didn’t want to think about it. The future was too uncertain. She wanted to live in the present, wild and beautiful and free.

She shuffled along, kicking ideas about in her head the way she kicked at tiny fir cones on the path.

What if he didn't have to say goodbye? Claire's father was a reasonable man. Surely he’d see at once what a fine person Chase Wolf was, how kind and decent and honest and...

What if she invited him to stay? Paradise was the place of his birth, after all. Chase was a blacksmith. Maybe her father had a use for him. She wondered if she could convince him to let Chase work at the ranch. Certainly he could shoe horses and forge tack, repair scythes and mend broken wagon wheels. Her heart thumped excitedly at the prospect.

She could talk her father into it. She knew she could. After all, hadn’t she convinced him to let her keep Yoema?

Then a doubtful scowl burrowed into her forehead. She’d been much younger when Yoema came to stay with her, and she’d just lost her mother. Samuel Parker would have given his little girl the moon if she’d asked for it.

But having a half-breed pay court to her? Her father would never stand for that. What would people say? Such a thing might sully the Parker name.

Besides, it sounded too much like she wanted to keep Chase Wolf for a pet. She imagined Chase fetching supplies for her father, standing by obediently while Samuel inspected his work, bedding down in the barn with the cattle.

She sullenly kicked a stray pebble from the trail. Chase was like a woodland beast—unbroken and unbound. He could be neither leashed nor tamed. He no more belonged within the barbed wire of her father’s ranch than she belonged in the open forest of his people.

It saddened her, and she let out a long, weary sigh.

“Sisil-ninyay?”

"Hmm?"

"Are you tired?"

"No."

"Hungry?"

"No. Well, maybe."

He pointed ahead to a patch of slender-bladed leaves poking up through the exposed roots of a dead pine.
“Qus.”

"No," she groaned in protest. "No more bulbs. Isn’t there something else we could..."

She regretted her complaint the instant he turned around. His troubled frown revealed his thoughts. He’d done the best he could to provide sustenance for them, and here she was, acting the ungrateful wretch.

"I didn’t mean..." But she could see it was too late for apologies. Her words had already hit their mark.

"I’ll see what else I can find," he muttered.

She felt awful, trailing after him in silence as he plodded forward, scanning their surroundings, looking for something more palatable for his spoiled companion. Curse her quick tongue, she’d hurt his pride, and she wasn’t sure how to repair the damage.

She hung her head, staring at the path. "You know, honestly, Mr. Wolf, I’d be perfectly happy with—"

He stopped so suddenly that she plowed into the back of him. Of course, his great bulk didn’t budge a bit, so she bore the brunt of the impact, earning herself a face full of cotton shirt. His hand immediately reached behind to steady her.

“Tsisnah,”
he said under his breath.

She pressed her cheek against his back, listening carefully, but heard nothing.
“Tsisnah?”
she whispered.

"A bee."

She screwed up her forehead, still mashed against his damp shirt, content enough there for the moment, particularly if there was a bee on the loose. She wondered why he was so interested in a bee. Perhaps it was sacred to his tribe.

"And where there are bees..." he murmured.

Her brows shot up. Of course. "There is honey." She licked her lips, already imagining the sweet-tasting syrup. "Can you find the hive?"

He didn’t answer her. Instead, he grabbed her hand and pulled her forward, his gaze pinned to the insect flitting from bloom to bloom in the clearing ahead. It seemed an impossible task, tracking such a madcap creature on its impetuous flight, but Chase was determined.

The bee hovered at first, gliding leisurely from the vivid orange poppies to the deep violet lupins, and they crept along after, watching its legs grow furry with pollen. Then it streaked abruptly away, flying low over the grass. With an oath, Chase tugged her forward till they were jogging after the bee, hand in hand, like children.