“Callie,” he said, “you have got to learn to ride.”
Then he kissed her, long and hard.
She tasted of flowers and of honey, and she smelled of sweat and the horse and the dust, and he couldn’t get enough of her. Her lips felt like velvet, hot and soft, and deep in her throat she made a little helpless sound of surprise that made his head go light.
He found the fit of their mouths as soon as they touched and fell into the kiss with never a thought, only a needing that was more than wanting, a needing that blotted out all the others. He didn’t need air anymore, or the sunshine, because he was kissing Callie.
Callie. She wasn’t hurt and here she was, melting against him, slipping her arms up around his neck.
Callie. All he could think was her name.
Suddenly she tore her mouth away, just as his tongue begged for entry, just at the instant that hers teased him back and started to welcome him in. She made an incoherent panicked sound.
“No, I can’t,” she said, gasping, “I’m forgetting; I have to tell you …”
He looked into her eyes.
“We’ll talk later, Callie,” he said, and tried to take her mouth again.
She looked straight at him and her eyes went soft, but she stiffened her arms and held him away.
“There’s a prairie fire, Nick! We have to help fight it!”
The two terrible words cut through everything else in his head. Instantly, the kiss was past and the present was a whole world dry as dust, the grass and brush everywhere as combustible as guncotton.
“You have to tell the Pecks where to set the backfires—”
He went cold to the bone, furious in a heartbeat.
“God Almighty, why me? Who am I, the Governor?”
“You’re the only one who knows the country.”
“How does Peck know that?”
“By the way you talked about the Chikaskia Creek, I guess.”
“Damn it, Callie, I’m not taking responsibility for those people!”
The terrible roaring conflict in his head started up again as if just yesterday Green Lightfoot and Austin Deer-in-the-Water had fallen off their horses with bullets in their backs, bullets meant for Nickajack himself. Bullets that never would have been flying if he hadn’t set himself up as a leader, trying to persuade other people to do what he wanted.
“Why not help if you can? You’re one of them, aren’t you?”
“No!”
“They’re locusts and intruders and ignorant pumpkin rollers, so you don’t care if they burn to a crisp? Won’t you burn up, too, if the fire gets past them and comes rolling up this canyon?”
“That’s my lookout. I’ve got horses to see about. I won’t be responsible for anybody else.”
“You are, though,” she said, giving him a narrowed look, “even if you stay right here all by yourself.”
“How do you figure that?”
“If you’re the only one who can save them, but if you don’t, you’re responsible.”
He stared at her, his heartbeat a wild tumult. She stared back, fear a presence in her eyes.
“I have to get back,” she said, turning to look for her wild mare.
Damn it all straight to hell, there was no hope for it.
Judy was grazing peacefully a stone’s throw away. He strode toward her and she merely raised her head and looked at him, too tired to run anymore. He took hold of the reins, reached for the buckle, and gently stripped her bridle off.
“What are you doing?” Callie cried, running toward him, a bit unsteadily. “I’ll never catch her now.”
“I’m turning her loose,” he snapped. “There’s no sense in riding her to death.”
Or killing your own meddling, foolhardy self.
“That bridle’s from the Peck horse,” she called.
“I’ll return it, damn it! If they insist on trusting me with their lives, they can trust me with a piece of tack.”
He glanced back at her.
“Go to my barn,” he said. “Gather all the towsacks and saddle blankets you can find, except for the ones on top of the saddles, and tie them in rolls on the two saddles nearest the door.”
She nodded assent.
He turned and ran for the cabin, whistling for the Shapeshifter as he went.
The light inside the barn was dim, but even in her haste, Callie paused to notice how neat Nick kept it. It felt homey and cared-for, like a barely-remembered place from the long-distant past, since it had four walls and a roof.
She hurried down the center aisle, glancing both ways into all the stalls, and saw no extra sacks or blankets. Then she noticed the shelves above the feed bins, filled with folded towsacks, and saw an old saddle blanket covering a stack of wooden buckets.
Still breathing hard, she gathered her finds and ran to the saddles with them. A glance out the wide door showed Nick running toward the barn with two horses following, his big black and a tall reddish-brown one.
Pray God this horse would be easier to ride than Judy.
He’d be here in only a moment, so she began rolling the sacks tightly and tying them to the first saddle in the row. No telling how far the fire had come by now—it might even be at the Peck place. Hers would be next.
Oh, how could she have wasted time with a kiss, of all insane things?
And her treacherous lips still wanted more. They’d tasted Nick’s spicy-sweet, dark honey man-taste, and they wanted to taste him again. If she gave in to her selfish body, she’d run out there to meet him right this minute and throw herself into his arms again.
She jerked the second set of saddle strings straight—so hard that she had a moment’s panic that she’d broken them—and wrapped them around the sacks, her cheeks flaring with heat. She had kissed him back, she truly had. And that was a shameless, unforgivable thing to have done, because she would never, could never, love anyone but Vance. She shouldn’t be feeling even so much as the temptation of kissing another man.
Especially not a man who’d drag his heels about helping his neighbors fight fire, and who’d refused to give them water!
Nick and the horses burst through the doorway.
“Good,” he said, taking the saddle from her hands, swooping to pick up the blanket she’d found lying on it and had pushed aside. “Callie, this is Fast Girl, but don’t let her name scare you. All you have to do is keep your feet in the stirrups and hold onto the horn.”
Her temper, already rising in anger at herself, flared at him, too.
“If Judy couldn’t scare me, I don’t think Fast Girl’s name will,” she said sarcastically.
He threw her a look over his shoulder as she tied the first batch of strings on what would evidently be her saddle, since he was swiftly cinching the first one onto the black horse.
“You showed a lot of sand with that ride, all right,” he said. “Even to attempt it, much less finish it.”
She couldn’t answer. Suddenly her throat felt tight, and an overwhelming urge to weep came over her. Reluctant or not, Nick was helping her now, the way he’d been ever since she’d come to a stop in the godforsaken, danger-ridden Strip. He was going to take her back to her wagon at least, with a bunch of sacks for fighting the fire, whether he went to help the Pecks or not. She couldn’t expect more than that from a man who only wanted to be left alone.
A man with a hot, sweet kiss that could enrapture her more than that of her true love.
Nick drew the Shifter’s cinch tight, shot the tongue of the buckle into the hole, and looped the end of the latigo through the loop all in one motion. Then he went to saddle Fast Girl. Callie had the sacks tied on and she moved out of his way so as not to slow him down. When he held his hands out to give her a leg up, she was ready.
Maybe she would survive out here, after all, he thought. Her blood was pounding like his with the words “prairie fire” driving the quick beat of her heart; he could see the pulse jumping beneath the porcelain skin of her temple. Her breath was still co
ming fast and her hands shook a little as he handed her the reins, but she was game. That hair-raising ride on Judy hadn’t scared her into staying on the ground.
He threw himself onto his horse.
“She’ll stay with the Shifter,” he said, nodding at Fast Girl. “Take a deep seat and hang on.”
He kept a sharp eye on her as they started down the creek, watching her slide a little in the seat and learn to grip with her thighs.
“I do much better with a saddle,” she called.
“You’d do even better than that if we had time to adjust your stirrups.”
When he knew she had her balance, he laid his heels to the Shifter and they pounded faster down the draw. Callie was tired—he could see it, and she was beat up from that nightmare ride to find him—but she didn’t look back. She just clung to the saddle horn and faced whatever lay ahead.
But by the time they reached her wagon and the Peck boy, who had miraculously managed to take that sorry excuse for a plow and cut a shallow, crooked furrow halfway around the vehicle, her shoulders were sagging. She looked smaller and more fragile than she ever had, and she still had a fire to fight.
One glance at the boy’s horse told Nick that it, too, was played out.
“Nick, this is Danny Peck,” Callie said, as they stopped beside the wagon. “Danny, this is Mr. Smith, the man your Papa sent you to find.”
The boy ran to him.
“We seen the smoke,” he said breathlessly. “My pa says will you please help, ‘cause it’s a monstrous big fire on the claim south of us.”
He turned toward his horse, then turned back to look at Nick with big eyes full of fear.
“Likely it’s on our land by now.”
Nick’s gut contracted. Peck was dumping this kid’s life into his hands, and no telling how many more, and the man didn’t know Nick from Adam’s off ox.
It was too late to get out of it, though. He had come back with Callie, the fire was eating up the grass on its way toward them, and he was in for it now.
“Here, you have to have a fresh mount,” he said, trying not to look into the boy’s trusting blue eyes or get to know his face. “Callie can ride with me.”
Nick sidepassed the Shifter to Fast Girl’s side and plucked Callie from the saddle.
He realized that second that he’d made a terrible mistake. All he wanted, fire or no fire, was to pull her into his arms and kiss her again.
For comfort. Only for that. It must be that he needed the comfort of her closeness, because he was trapped in this situation he’d sworn would never catch him again.
Now how weak and stupid was that?
“Ride behind me,” he said, and helped her get settled astride on the blanket while the Peck boy clambered up into the saddle she’d just left.
She didn’t put her arms around his waist or hold onto him at all. He glanced around as he smooched to the Shifter and saw she had hold of the cantle board with both hands.
“Straight south of here,” the Peck boy shouted, and Nick rode out to lead the way.
He would’ve sworn he was in hell long before they rode anywhere near the smoke and the flames of the fire. The whole way, Callie kept sitting like that behind his saddle, trying to hold herself away from him. And that was good—since if she had her arms wrapped around his waist and her breasts pressed against his back, he would’ve felt wilder inside than he already did.
Something about it made him fighting mad, though. It seemed like a gesture of distrust or prissiness or some such damn thing. After she’d kissed him right back with a passion not half an hour ago!
It was his own fault. He should’ve taken the Peck boy up on his horse with him and left her on the mare. Now she’d probably fall off the Shifter after staying on Judy and Fast Girl, too. Well, it’d serve her right for being so schoolteacher-prim about not touching him.
“Hold on,” he called irritably over his shoulder, without looking at her. “And keep your feet out of his flanks.”
The Peck boy, riding Fast Girl beside them, looked over at Nick as he smooched to the Shifter again.
“Lope on,” Danny yelled. “This mare can stay with you.”
Nickajack ignored him. One thing he didn’t have to do was buddy up to the neighbor kids.
“Yes, she can,” Callie called back, “she creates such a wind, I almost blew off her back.”
The boy laughed and Nick’s tension eased just a little. But it was a mistake to ask the Shifter for more speed, Nick realized, for it jerked Callie back and then forward, into him. She bumped him again and then finally, at long last, laid her arms around his waist.
Instantly, he wanted to turn and hold her. But at the very same time he wished he could push her away, set her onto the mare, and leave her behind. What the hell was happening to him?
He’d better get his mind off women and onto fires, if he was racing to this one as the savior of the Chikaskia settlers. His mind and his instincts had to be free to guide him right, or he was liable to have sodbusters with nothing but the clothes on their backs camped all over his place.
Now, that was a thought that should be sobering enough to do the trick.
About three miles later, they smelled smoke. The Peck boy stood in his stirrups a few yards ahead, waving to three riders galloping toward them from the east.
“There’s my brother,” the boy shouted, as Nick and Callie caught up with him. “He’s brought some neighbors.”
They all appeared to be greenhorns, by the way they were dressed. Nick nodded and waved for them to come on.
“Let’s get to it,” he shouted, as the newcomers rode within hearing distance. “Follow me.” He lifted the Shifter into a long lope again.
At the wagons on Peck’s claim, a small crowd was gathered. How many were Pecks, how many were other neighbors, Nickajack neither knew nor cared. All he wanted was for this fire to be conquered and the lot of them to be scattered to the winds.
Callie let go of him, slid to the ground before he could hand her down, and started helping Mrs. Peck untie the sacks on both his horses. He turned away from the glimpse of her from over his shoulder, her bright hair gleaming, her face so resolute that she looked curiously wise. Well, she had better be, damn it, or these people would die because she had brought the Goingsnake to lead them.
He slammed his mind against her again and sat his horse, feeling the wind. The flames were visible now on the horizon, leaning a little toward the west. They didn’t look to be sweeping straight to the north, where they could get his place and Callie’s.
But they could change direction in a heartbeat. They could blow straight east in the next minute and consume their bodies, and their claims wouldn’t matter, then.
“We’ve got three barrels of water here,” Mr. Peck shouted through the hubbub.
“Wet the sacks and blankets,” Nick shouted back.
He sent Callie a glance meaning that she should oversee that. She replied with a straight look and a short, solemn nod that told him she would, then set to the task.
Nick swept his gaze around at the waiting settlers.
“As the women wet the blankets, you men go pick one up.”
And then come with me. We’ve got to set a backfire, and now.
The words wouldn’t come out of his mouth. He cleared his throat, but no voice would sound. What if the backfire turned on them?
Yet they had no other weapon. And three barrels of water was no more than a drop in the ocean.
His hands and feet wouldn’t move. The Shapeshifter danced restlessly beneath him, throwing up his head to whinny his protest at the smell of smoke, fighting his instinct to run from fire while he waited for direction from his rider.
Yet Nick sat there with the reins frozen in his fingers and the sweat running down his spine. The boy who had come to fetch him couldn’t be more than ten years old, yet he was lining up with the men for a wet towsack to fight the fire. What if he didn’t live through it?
Everyone was doing exac
tly as he had said, obeying his instructions to the letter, each man looking to him as he picked up a wet blanket, waiting for the next words out of Nick’s mouth as if he were Moses on the Mount. He had to do something, or sit here and let them all burn to ashes for sure.
Or do something wrong and cause them all to burn to ashes.
His mind’s eye flashed to two sixteen-year-old boys’ bodies on the ground, their handsome young faces already buried in the soft green grass of the Nation, their backs dotted with trickles of blood flowing from the bulletholes. He could hear the sudden, deadly cracks of the shots.
He’d looked to the screen of trees where the assassins were hiding in ambush, knowing even as he did so that he’d never see their faces, never be sure of their names. They would not face justice; they would get away with taking two young lives for no other reason than that the boys rode with him.
Or that he’d been the target and they’d missed him.
Either way, he was helpless to save them, helpless to do anything that would make a dime’s worth of difference.
Something touched his leg. He jumped and looked down to see Callie standing at his stirrup, her green eyes wide and deep.
“The wind’s shifting to come out of the east, don’t you think?” she said.
Still frozen, he sat and looked down at her.
Her skin had gone so pale that the freckles stood out across her nose, but not from fear. Her eyes blazed with hope and trust. In him.
“Nick, you can do this,” she said. “I’m sorry that you must, but you can.”
She believed it with all her heart.
He might as well believe it, too. He couldn’t very well turn and ride away, could he?
Wetting his finger, he lifted it into the wind.
“Pray it’ll hold,” he managed to say.
Then he tore his gaze from hers and swung around in the saddle. He looked out across the ragged bunch of neighbors he had never wanted, held his hand high, and shouted, “We’re setting a backfire! Men, follow my lead. Boys, form a line behind them. Women, keep every cloth wet.”
These were only Callie and Mrs. Peck and her little girl, but they could do the job. As if to prove it, Callie thrust a wet saddle blanket into his hands and ran back to the wagon that held the water.
The Renegades: Nick Page 8