So he gave her the rest of the rabbit, pleased when she stripped every last morsel of meat from the tiny bones.
Meanwhile, he gazed into the fire, absently breaking the empty skewer into smaller and smaller pieces.
His mind was bothered.
All his life, he’d trusted the Great Spirit to lead him down the true path. The vision Chase had been given was strong. He’d clearly been led to Paradise. He’d been led to the Parker Ranch. He’d even been led to Parker’s daughter. Why else would she have come downstairs at that exact moment?
Yet he couldn’t help but feel that the Great Spirit was wrong in leading him to seek vengeance. It wasn’t right to hold Claire accountable for her father’s sins, especially when she’d been too young to understand them.
As much as Chase was obligated to grant his grandmother the peace she deserved, he didn’t have the heart to hurt an innocent woman. How the white soldiers on the march could have closed their eyes to the Konkows’ torment—watched women and children starve, grow sick, and die—and do nothing, he didn’t understand. Even he, Chase Wolf, son of the wronged Konkow, couldn’t perpetrate such cruelty in the name of revenge.
But how else could he bring closure to his grandmother’s soul? How could he break free of this hopelessly tangled web without getting himself hanged by Parker, angering the Great Spirit, and bringing the wrath of his grandmother’s chindin, her spirit, down upon him?
He tossed the last of the broken stick into the fire and rubbed the crease from his forehead. Right or wrong, his mind was made up. Until he got Claire taken care of and safely home, he would trust his own instincts and save the Great Spirit’s demand for lenulya, vengeance, for another day.
He rose, and then hunkered down beside Claire, nodding as he eyed the bottoms of her feet, illuminated now by the fire.
"Let me see," he said, holding out one palm.
She gulped, giving him an unsure glance.
"Come," he repeated, beckoning with his hand.
“I’m fine,” she breathed. Her tone said she was not fine.
He frowned. "I want to look at your cuts."
She stiffened. "I...don’t think that’s a good idea."
“You’re afraid.”
“No.”
“You think I’ll hurt you.”
“No.”
Chase’s mouth worked impatiently. Even the mules he shod were not so headstrong. His calm demeanor was starting to slip. What was it about the stubborn woman that rankled at him so? "Woman. Let me see."
"My name is not Woman," she declared, her spirits remarkably renewed by virtue of a full belly. "My name is Claire.”
He reined in a growl of frustration. "Claire. Let me see," he said with as much calm as he could muster, adding for good measure, "please."
“I really don’t think that’s nec-“
Impatient, he seized her ankle to inspect the damage, ignoring her halfhearted protests and feeble slaps. The top of her foot was scratched from thistles, and scrapes and thin cuts crisscrossed her sole. The taste of shame grew heavy in his mouth. He was the cause of those cuts. He was the source of her pain.
Carefully, he lowered her foot. Then he retrieved the scraped rabbit skin he’d left hanging in the brush, sat cross-legged by the fire, and drew his knife.
Claire could feel her ankle tingling where the half-breed’s fingers had wrapped around it. The sensation wound its way up her leg and settled brazenly between her thighs. It was a heady feeling—forbidden and dangerous—and yet it filled her with shocking warmth and pleasure.
She watched him through half-lidded eyes as he cut two long, narrow strips from the rabbit skin and split the rest of the hide evenly down the middle, wondering how he could maintain such a calm demeanor while her emotions were whirling like a cyclone through her brain.
She caught her breath as his hand trapped her ankle again, sending that strange tremor up her thigh. He stretched his free arm toward a vine of wild grape that had grown up a nearby scrub oak, clutching a bunch of its leaves in his fist. Murmuring something in his own tongue, he tore the leaves free.
Grasping her injured foot, he carefully pressed the cool, soft leaves over her broken flesh. The gesture brought a flood of memories washing over her. Yoema had done the same thing for her when she’d skinned her knee jumping rope. She’d said the grape leaves helped to heal sores.
He then wrapped the rabbit pelt up around the leaves and over the top of her foot, fur side in, securing the makeshift boot around her ankle with the hide strip. While she sat in numb wonder, he repeated the process for her other foot. Then he sniffed in approval and sheathed his knife, settling back on his haunches to stare off toward the rising moon.
The fur felt marvelously soothing upon her feet. But why, after speaking so vehemently of vengeance last night, would he do her such a kindness?
What an enigma he was. She studied his beautiful face as he frowned into the distance. He was fiercer and bolder than Monowano. He didn’t possess the reserved, gentle, sweet nature of her dime novel hero. But there was something primitive and powerful about his presence, something that made her heart beat fast and drew her to him like lightning to a lightning rod.
“Chase.” He said the word softly, out of the blue.
She blinked. Maybe she’d only imagined he’d spoken, for he was staring blankly at the ground.
"Pardon?"
He picked up a trio of pine needles and drew them lazily through the silt at his feet. “Chase Wolf.”
She drew her brows together, baffled.
He trained his eyes directly upon her then. Reflections of the fire flickered like golden butterflies in their ebony depths, entrancing her. “My name," he explained. "I’m called Chase Wolf."
Chapter 9
Claire held her breath, too astonished to speak.
"How do you do?" she finally managed, speaking purely out of habit. She extended her hand nervously, withdrawing it again when she realized the inanity of the gesture. "I’m..."
His eyes narrowed at her discomfiture. Was there a glimmer of amusement in his gaze, or was it a trick of the moonlight?
"Claire Parker," he supplied.
She blushed. Of all times for her to become tongue-tied...
"The daughter of Samuel Parker," he confirmed.
She nodded. His voice was breathy, deep, and warm.
His gaze dropped casually down the front of her camisole, sending an uncomfortable shiver through her.
"And woman of Frank," he added.
She gathered the neckline of her camisole together in one hand. "Fiancée.”
His stare thankfully returned to her face. "Mm. So Frank is not yet shackled to the yiman-dilwawh?" When she furrowed her brow in confusion, he translated. "The chattering white woman?"
She opened her mouth to protest, and then decided it was a waste of breath. She didn’t want to have to explain Frank. She also suspected she’d have to choose her words wisely, since she wasn’t sure how long Chase Wolf would put up with actual conversation. There was a long silence. Finally she mustered up enough courage to ask what she most longed to know. "Pardon my bluntness, Mr. Wolf, but exactly what are your intentions?"
He looked off toward the west, where the last of the sun’s lingering glow faintly burnished the indigo drapery of the night sky.
"I wish to speak of the past," he said at last.
"The past?"
"The march to Nome Cult."
She furrowed her brows.
“You’ve never heard of it?” he asked.
She shook her head.
He nodded. “Your father hid it from you.”
“Hid what?”
“What did my grandmother tell you about her people—her husband, her brothers, her children?”
Claire frowned. “She said they were gone.”
His face grew suddenly sad. “Gone.” The word sounded melancholy on his lips. “But she didn’t say where?”
“I assumed she meant they were..
.dead.”
“Not dead. Not all of them. But they might as well have been. She never saw them again.” He stared into the flames, his mouth grim, his thoughts far away. “I’ll tell you the secret your father has been keeping from you, the story of my grandmother’s people.”
Claire clasped her hands and waited patiently as he tossed the trio of pine needles into the fire and watched them curl and burn.
Then he began his story. “For generations, the Konkow people lived here in peace. Even when the white men came…with their diseases…with their beasts that ate the food of the people…the Konkow were silent.” Atop his thigh, his fist clenched once, then released. “But the whites became greedy. First they wanted all the gold…then all the food…then all the land. And when Konkow lived on the land they wanted, they took it from them.”
Claire sat transfixed. Up till now, Chase Wolf had been a man of few words. What he was telling her must be important to make him open up to her and speak at such length.
“Soon the people began to starve. They had no choice but to take the white men’s animals for food.” His eyes took on an even darker cast. “And when they would steal a rancher’s steer, they would be shot.”
Her brow creased. Surely he wasn’t talking about her father. Her father would never shoot a native. Samuel Parker got along fine with the local tribes. He said they were trustworthy, hard-working, and loyal.
“One day, the whites got tired of shooting the Konkows and decided to send them away forever. The army rounded them all up—scores of men, women, and children—and drove them like cattle, west to a place called Nome Cult.”
Claire didn’t see how that could possibly be true. There were a few Konkows who worked at the Parker Ranch. But she remained silent to hear him out.
A taut thread of tension underlined his words. “It was a march of a hundred miles. Those who refused to go were killed. Those who went and could not keep up were killed. Those who became ill were killed.”
Claire paled. It was a horrifying story. But surely that was all it was—a story. Yoema had never told her about any march. Neither had her father.
Though his voice was quiet, he bit out the next words between his teeth. “Samuel Parker took my grandmother from her family to keep her for a slave and sent the rest on the march. My grandfather, believing his wife had been killed, refused to eat. He starved to death on the journey.”
She gasped. “Where did you hear such a horrible thing? My father never kept a slave in his life. Yoema chose to live with us. And except for the Two-Sons, she never spoke of family or—“
“She would not have. She didn't know if they were alive or dead.”
Claire shook her head. “No, it’s just not possible. My father is a good man. And Yoe-…your grandmother...” She hesitated. Now that she thought about it, it was curious that Yoema had never talked much about her husband or her children, only her grandsons. What had happened to the rest of her tribe?
She bit the inside of her cheek and looked up at him again. He believed what he was saying with all his heart. She could see sincerity in his eyes. She could also see pain.
Without thinking, she reached out and covered his hand with hers. “I think there’s been some terrible misunderstanding. I’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise you. When my father…”
At the same instant, they both glanced down sharply at their joined hands.
But when Claire would have pulled away, he caught her wrist, startling the breath from her.
“What I’m trying to say is…” he began. “It's not right to hold you accountable for what your father did. I know that now.” She doubted that he was even aware of it, but he began idly running his thumb back and forth across the back of her wrist as he spoke. “But I need to make things right for my grandmother. I need to send her on her journey. I need to give her spirit peace.”
She gulped. His rhythmic stroking was doing strange things to her, soothing and exciting her at the same time.
He shook his head. “But taking revenge on the daughter of my enemy isn’t the way to do it.”
He let go of her then, and she could breathe again. Her skin still burned where he’d touched her, however, and she was having trouble thinking straight.
She creased her brow. “Do you mean to...take me home then? Back to my father? Back to my fiancé?"
He nodded.
"I see," she said.
It was the way the stories always ended—with the villain vanquished and the heroine living happily ever after. And yet a strange emotion followed that thought, an emotion she could neither explain nor excuse.
Disappointment.
She frowned. She didn’t want to go home.
“When?” she asked.
“Soon.”
“But not right away?”
“I can’t just yet.” He grimaced and tossed a pine cone onto the fire. “It’s...complicated.”
She actually breathed a sigh of relief.
“Meanwhile,” he said, “we have to keep moving. Your father probably has a whole posse tracking us. And now that we have no horse...”
Claire bit her lip. Her father might be out looking for his prize stallion, but she doubted he was looking for her. Still, she didn't think it wise to let Chase know all the sordid details. “I don’t think you have to worry about my father.”
He gave her a doubtful smirk. "If you were my daughter, I’d carve your kidnapper to bits." He bent his head forward, furrowing his hands through his thick hair. His long sigh fluttered the flames.
"But if I tell him you’re the grandson of Yoema—"
As soon as she spoke the name, an eerie, dolorous moan floated past, shattering the peace of the evening and chilling Claire to the bone.
Before she could ask what the devil that was, Chase sprang from his haunches, dragging her up against him to protect her with one brawny arm, and faced the shadowy wood with his knife drawn.
Chase felt a cold shiver. like a rattlesnake's warning. slither along his back. His pulse pounding, he scanned the bushes. Had the white woman summoned his grandmother’s chindin to the world of the living?
Several tense moments passed, measured by the rapid beating of his heart. Nothing but firelight skittered over the manzanita leaves, and the only sounds Chase heard were the soft pop of flame and the shallow, quick breathing of his captive.
Finally the low cry came again. With a shaky sigh of relief, he lowered his blade and shoved it back into its sheath.
"Owl?" Claire whispered.
"Mm," he grunted. But he didn’t let her go. Nor would he until he extracted a promise from her. "Swear to me you’ll speak my grandmother’s name no more."
She wilted against him.
"Give me your word,” he said.
She shook her head. "How can I?" Her next words came out like the sad, soft sigh of the wind. "You don't understand. She was my friend. She was my mother. For heaven’s sake, she was your own grandmother. How can you bear to let her die...forgotten?"
Chase swallowed hard. Like the sliver of bone on a fishing line, her despair had caught him by the throat. He fought the strong urge to turn her in his arms so he could hold her.
Of course, he wouldn’t do that. Even his sisters knew that Chase was not the brother to run to when they needed comfort. His big arms always crushed them, and the littler girls were smothered by his ferocious hugs.
"She won’t be forgotten," he whispered fiercely, his breath ruffling her hair. "She’s the reason I’ve..." He almost said the words "come home," but Paradise had never truly been his home, had it? "The reason I’ve returned."
"You said you came for revenge."
Her words melted his heart. He lowered his tense shoulders. "I don’t know what I came for. I only know I have to make things right for my grandmother."
Holding her like this—her body soft and quivering like a dove’s—he found it hard to imagine he’d ever considered torturing her.
"Revenge never makes things right,”
she murmured.
She was probably right. Hell, he wasn't sure anymore. His purpose had seemed much clearer before he’d crossed paths with Claire Parker.
"Just promise me you won’t say my grandmother’s name."
"And if I won’t promise?"
With a whispered curse of disbelief, he wheeled her about by the shoulders, holding her at arm’s length.
"Why do you persist? You’re like the bee who keeps buzzing at the grizzly when the bear could smash it with one swipe of his paw."
"I persist, because, unlike you," she said pointedly, "I knew her. I loved her.” Her eyes filled suddenly with tears. “And, God help me," she choked out, “I miss her." She buried her face in her hands.
And then he did it—exactly what he should not have. He pulled her toward him and tucked her against his chest, folding his arms around her frail body as carefully as he could.
It was crazy. Her people had subjugated his. Her father had enslaved his grandmother and caused his grandfather’s death. He should despise Claire Parker.
But when he held her like this, snuggled against him—her hair tickling his chin, her sniffles wetting his bare chest—she seemed neither murderer nor oppressor. She seemed only a very sad and lonely young woman.
Without thinking, he lifted his hand to cradle her head, marveling at the fine texture of her hair. He suddenly realized why it was cut short. She must have hacked it off herself, just as he had his own, in the Konkow display of grief. Those were not what his white mother called crocodile tears. The woman’s sorrow came from her heart. She had loved his grandmother.
“Do chweh,” he murmured, stroking her hair. "Don’t cry."
He continued to speak words in his tongue, words of comfort she might not understand, but words that would soothe her by virtue of the soft whisper of his language. And she began to respond, calming to his voice like a skittish mare.
It had been a while since Chase had held a woman. Yet holding Claire felt right. She fit perfectly in the cradle of his arms despite her small size. Where her soft cheek pressed against his chest, it seemed she warmed his heart. And the way she relaxed against him with such trust made him feel protective and significant.
Native Wolf Page 9