The Ruination of Essie Sparks (Wild Western Rogues Series, Book 2) (13 page)

Cade lowered his head.

With a shrug, she fed more sticks into the fire. "So we have both suffered rejection, you see? We are not so different in that way."

"It was his own life he turned from, not you," he suggested, rotating the fish over the fire.

"Oh, it was me. It was definitely me."

"Is that what you keep in that locket of yours? A picture of him?"

Instantly, she dropped the locket as if it had burned her fingertips. "
No
. I don't keep pictures of him."

"Who then?"

"No one," she lied, looking away. "It's just... just a locket I found in some old shop in Baltimore. Touching it is just a... comforting habit, I guess." The locket and its precious contents were not for anyone else to know about. Certainly not the man who'd kidnapped her.

The fragrant smell of the smoky fish cooking drifted up as silence stretched between them. "So," she said, "shall I call you Cade or Black Thorn?"

"Cade is what my father's people call me."

She tipped her head in agreement. "Cade, then. So, you had schooling, and you lived in the white world, but you chose this, living with the Cheyenne." It wasn't a question.

"As a heathen, you mean?"

"I didn't say that."

He shrugged. "You thought it."

Casting a look backward, toward the direction in which they'd come, she said, "Perhaps I did think that at first. Before I knew you. You did threaten to kill me with that knife. But now... I don't know what to think of you. I have known men who are far more savage than you and their skin was white. Those men following us, even. One of them... well, it was because of him I was dismissed from the school. As brutal a man as any I've ever met. Did I tell you they dismissed me? I was to leave there yesterday on a train bound for..." She shrugged. "
Ah
, who knows where?"

He frowned at that. "Why?"

"Why was I dismissed?"

"Why, because of
him
?"

"I believe the reverend was afraid of Mitchell Laddner. I stood up to him. I said things... He went to the Reverend Dooley and the church called me subversive. Thought I was undermining their mission. Giving the children hope, God forbid."

"Hope? For what?"

"A future. Something more. In particular, Little Wolf, who is quite brilliant. Did you know that? He's miles ahead of the others. And he loves to read. He wants an education. He wants, perhaps, what
you
had."

He shoved a stick into the fire and stirred. "No, he doesn't."

"Why ever not? Why shouldn't he want it?"

"Because there's no place for a boy like him there."

"Then you would deny him? Just as Reverend Dooley would?"

"Nothing good will come of it for him." When he got that look on his face, she remembered, he became impossible. So she bit her tongue.

Cade got slowly to his feet and used his knife to peel two pieces of bark from a nearby aspen to use as plates. He didn't want to talk about what would become of Little Wolf as an orphan in this world if they found him. What chance did he have now that he'd landed himself on the other side of
vé'ho'á'e
law by stealing their horses? Essie could talk all she wanted about glittery-eyed hopes and dreams for boys like Little Wolf, but Cade knew what the boy was up against. What he'd now put them all up against.

He slid the fish off the sticks and divided it onto the makeshift plates, handing her one. She looked comfortable in his too-big shirt, which she'd tied with a piece of rope at her waist over her shift and the corset he'd loosened after she'd nearly drowned. Beneath her long, once-white petticoat, her toes curled into the pine straw at her feet.

"That smells heavenly," she said, settling down to scoop the fish into her mouth with her fingers. Rolling her eyes she moaned in delight with the first bite. "Oh. That is so... mmm-mm. I'm,
oh...
so hungry."

He kicked dirt on the fire and put it out before he focused on his own meal. His appetite was dampened by the pain in his leg, but he ate because if he didn't, he would not have the strength to go on.

He wouldn't have guessed she'd eat the fish with her fingers without wrinkling her pretty little white nose. Complaining wasn't in her nature, it seemed, though she had plenty to complain about. But he shouldn't allow himself to be curious about her life anymore. Her reasons for trying to forget her husband were her own. What niggled at him, however, was the look that had stolen over her face at the mention of him and of that locket. It stood to reason her husband's loss grieved her. But she'd swallowed that grief and tried to forget it.

When Cheyenne women lost their husbands, they cut themselves, chopped off their hair, and often were stripped of all of their possessions. Even he, who had lived with and known the Cheyenne most of his life, found this harsh.

But in a way, Essie Sparks had done the same, keeping no reminders of her husband, no possessions that meant anything to her—even the locket which meant little to her. She had come here with nothing, to—

To what? Teach? Escape?

Steal the souls from the People's children?

Remember that
.
Remember how this all began. And where you must go. You have no time to ponder this woman's grief. Or imagine how to soothe it.

He finished his fish and tossed his bark plate into the river, watching it float downstream. A sound, like the retort of a pistol or the clatter of rocks colliding, came from the trail, somewhere behind them. His eyes met hers in alarm over the still smoldering campfire.

"What was that?" she asked.

With a curse, he shoved himself to his feet and peered down toward the granite cliffs they'd crossed yesterday less than two miles away. Two men, studying the granite face where Essie's foot had left a trail a blind man could follow. And, indeed, one of them was the man from the barn. The one whose face he would never forget.

"Hurry," he said. "We don't have much time." Limping toward his horse, he gathered up the reins and gestured for her to come.

She tossed the remains of her fish aside. "But you said you saw their fire. You said they had camped for the night."

"I was wrong," he said, throwing himself up onto Náhkohe and reaching a hand out for her. "Come on."

Just out of reach, she stopped in her tracks to stare at him. He could see the indecision on her face. Wait for them or go with him? "What if I stay? What if that's enough for them? Maybe they'll stop chasing you."

"You'd be a fool to think so."

"What chance do we have to outrun them on one horse? They'll kill you if they catch you, no matter what I say."

"Do you see him back there? The one with his head down, watching the rocks?" he said, darkness creeping over his expression. She followed his gaze. "I know him. He is a killer of women. And he knows I know him."

Her face paled. "
What
?" She looked back toward their pursuers. He saw the recognition dawn on her face. "Mitchell Laddner? How could you possibly—"

"Years ago, on the Powder River, when he was a soldier. I'll never forget his face, nor will he ever forget mine, I suppose. Believe me or not. It is up to you now. Come with me or stay. But I would not put my life in his hands if I were you. Alone. Up here."

A shiver ran through her. He'd given her an impossible choice. He recognized that. But she was far better off with him now than with that man coming up behind them. He could only imagine what a man like that would do to a woman as beautiful as Essie, given half a chance.

She seemed to make up her mind then because something close to fear crossed her expression. Reaching for his hand, she let him pull her up onto the horse and settled herself in front of him. He gathered up the reins, but she delayed him with a hand on his wrist.

Half turning toward him, she said, "I have been at the mercy of men my whole life. First my father, then my husband, then the Reverend Dooley. I have been abandoned, dismissed, disregarded and kidnapped by men. But I am finished letting men decide my fate. And if I were to decide to trust a man, it would not be the man sniffing at our tracks. I choose to ride with you, Cade Newcastle. I choose it, because you're the first man to ever give me a choice." Her words settled in his chest like a fist. He slid his arms around her, brushing his hand against hers. She jerked a look at him. "Cade. You're burning up!"

"I'm all right." But he wasn't. Heat had settled in his leg and made him lightheaded. He needed to sleep, long and hard, and the medicine that White Owl knew of. Regretting all the times he had ignored the herbs and roots she picked in the forest for fevers, he nudged the horse into the rushing creek and followed it upstream for a few hundred feet before exiting. It was a small attempt at concealment, but it was all he had. It might slow his pursuers down for a short time, but they would catch up if he couldn't clear his brain enough to think of a way out.

On the other side of the creek, he kicked Náhkohe into a run.

Chapter 8

Little Wolf woke to the feel of a spider crawling across his nose. He batted the thing off him, sat up and whacked his head on the hollowed-out log he was sleeping in. With a grunt of pain, he rubbed the spot then peered outside. The sun had come up hours ago and Lalo was standing outside the log, stamping her hoof. Her whinny had woken him, he realized now.

Crawling outside, he took Lalo's velvety nose between his hands and stroked her. She was halter-tied to a branch, her saddle and bridle propped against the nearby log. The pony's ears were back. "You should have woken me sooner, Lalo."

"I reckon she should have, at that."

The man's voice behind him made Little Wolf jump and he turned to find not one but two men on horseback, staring down at him. They were strangers. Not from the school. The second looked even dirtier than the first.

"We was wonderin' what a pretty little paint like her was doin' out here on her lonesome," said the first man, who was chewing tobacco and paused to spit a stream of brown juice at Little Wolf's feet. "Good things come to them that wait. And look how we was rewarded, Payton. We got us a real, live Injun cub who speaks English."

Panic began drumming in his ears. The two men were dressed in oily, filthy clothes that were made of skins, with Winchester rifles tucked in their rifle boots. Even from a few feet away, they smelled like they had rolled in a swamp bottom. Their appearance marked them as hunters of some kind. But the hunting was so bad in these mountains, Little Wolf decided he must be wrong. Perhaps they were hunters of something besides skins.

He gathered Lalo's reins in his hand and moved to her side. "I-I don't mean any trouble," he told the men. "I'll be on my way."

"Hear that? He don't mean no trouble, Nestor."

"I heard him. Imagine that? A boy of the Cheyenne persuasion thinkin' he ain't no trouble. What's your name, boy?" When Little Wolf refused to answer, he said, "I asked you a question, redskin."

Little Wolf lifted his chin and, thinking fast, said, "Huckleberry."

The man named Payton threw his grease-stained leg over his horse's neck and dismounted. "
Huckleberry
?" He laughed, walking slowly in Little Wolf's direction. "Well, we seen lots o' huckleberries on the way up here. Even et a few, but not another 'un like you."

Little Wolf backed up, gauging how fast he could throw himself up onto Lalo before they overtook him.

"Hey, Payton," said the other one. "I think this huckleberry's a runaway. All trussed up like a white boy, puttin' on airs. What d'ya think?"

"Well, he ain't no agency Cheyenne. Are you, boy? You's from that Bible-thumper's school down in the valley."

Little Wolf felt for the skinning knife tucked into the back waistband of his trousers. He would not let them take him back there. He would never go back.

"You reckon they got a ree-ward if we brought this here boy back?" Payton asked the other man.

"Doubtful. But value is in the eye of the beholder, ain't that what they say?"

"Beauty," Nestor corrected. Lalo shied as he spit more tobacco juice at Little Wolf's feet. "I believe they do say beauty."

"I guess that's about right. And this boy ain't no beauty, though."

"Nope." Nestor began to circle around to Little Wolf's right. Above them a hawk watched from a high-up branch in the pine and let out a plaintive sound.