Kid Calhoun

by Joan Johnston

  “He Makes Trouble!”

  The child sat bolt upright. His smile was sheepish as he disentangled himself from Wolf.

  Wolf scowled ferociously, but He Makes Trouble seemed unconcerned. A cuff was little enough payment for a night spent unafraid. Only Wolf did not hit him, and the scowl soon disappeared to be replaced by a different look entirely as Wolf watched the woman in his arms stretch and waken. He Makes Trouble took advantage of Wolf’s distraction to escape outside.

  Claire was still half asleep, but she was aware of a hard male body fitted against her as she stretched. A male hand caressed the length of her from shoulder to hip, then slid down to cover her womb and pull her back into the niche created by his hips. She could feel his arousal, and a corresponding heat deep in her belly where his hand lay against her.

  “Sam?”

  Wolf froze.

  “Sam?”

  Claire reached back to lay a hand on Sam’s thigh. Only instead of long johns, the skin she touched was bare. Her eyes flickered open. It took a moment to orient herself.

  She was not in her bed at Window Rock; she lay upon a grass pallet on the ground. It was not coffee, but the smoke of a campfire she smelled. And it was not Sam who lay beside her. Sam was dead.

  Claire groaned, a ragged sound of despair.

  The Apache brave pulled her more tightly against him. “I am Wolf. I am Apache. You are my woman,” he whispered in her ear. “What came before must be forgotten.”

  “I can’t forget!” Claire cried.

  “You must.”

  “I had a husband. I have a son. And nothing you say can change that!”

  Claire struggled to be free of Wolf’s hold, but he easily turned her under him. He caught both of her hands in one of his. The sheer weight of him was enough to keep her captive beneath him.

  “Be still,” he said.

  Claire was fighting the frustration of the situation as much as she was the man who had created it. She bucked under him and had the awful—arousing—experience of feeling his hardness pressed against her softness.

  The husky sound she made in her throat caused Wolf’s body to tense. His voice was harsh as he said, “Your husband is dead. Your son has a new family. Nothing you say or do can change that.”

  Claire swallowed hard. She felt the tears welling in her eyes and closed them. One slid out and rolled down the side of her face. Suddenly her hands were released and she felt herself pulled into Wolf’s embrace. She resisted only briefly before she succumbed to the solace to be found in his arms.

  Wolf didn’t know what to make of the feelings roiling through him. He knew he was responsible for Little One’s distress in part. But even returning her to the place from which he had taken her would not bring back her husband. Or her son. He had never held a crying woman. He wanted to take the pain away so that she would smile again.

  His lips barely touched her brow, a gesture of comfort. His hands smoothed the tawny hair away from her face, and he brushed away her tears with the pad of his thumb. He murmured words in Apache, words he would not have imagined himself saying to any woman. Words of comfort. Words that told of his need to keep her safe. To protect her from harm. To take all the hurt away.

  At last her tears stopped. She hiccuped, and the sound surprised a smile from him.

  Claire sat up and eased herself from Wolf’s arms. She wiped at her eyes and dabbed at her nose with her sleeve. “I don’t know what came over me. I—”

  A ruckus outside had Wolf on his feet and running before Claire could finish her sentence. She jumped up and followed him outside. It quickly became clear that He Makes Trouble had been hard at work earning his name. He was surrounded by at least four older boys who were taunting him with their bows and arrows.

  “What is happening here?” Wolf demanded.

  The four boys turned wide eyes toward the Apache brave. Clearly they hadn’t expected any interference on He Makes Trouble’s behalf.

  “He wanted to come hunting with us,” one of the boys said.

  “But he has no bow—”

  “—nor any arrows.”

  Wolf looked from the boys to the small nuisance who had been planted in his wickiup by the white woman. “Is this true?” he demanded of He Makes Trouble. “Have you no bow or arrows?”

  The small boy’s moccasin traced a circle in the dirt. The chin that nearly rested on his chest bobbed slightly.

  “So …” Wolf turned his fierce, dark eyes on the other boys. “We will have to make you a bow and arrows.”

  The four boys stood stunned at Wolf’s pronouncement.

  “But—”

  “Enough!” Wolf said. “Be gone now.”

  The four boys departed in different directions, like shifting winds. Wolf stood there feeling awkward, not sure why he had offered to do something that would require him to spend even more time in He Makes Trouble’s company. Making a boy’s first bow and arrows was a task that would ordinarily fall on a member of his family—his father or his uncle.

  The boy’s toe deepened the circle it was making in the dirt. “Did you mean it?” he asked.

  “I do not say what I do not mean.”

  He Makes Trouble looked up, his eyes full of admiration for his new hero. Wolf felt his spirits lift. “After breakfast we will go look together for the wood from a mulberry to make your bow and some ocean spray or mock orange to make your arrows. Then you can hunt for feathers from the red-tailed hawk. For now, go and get some water for Little One.”

  He Makes Trouble shrieked a childish war cry and headed into the wickiup to get something in which to carry water.

  Wolf turned to share a look with the white woman and saw her eyes still followed one of the boys as he ran away.

  White Eagle.

  Wolf might not have been paying attention to which boys were teasing He Makes Trouble. But Claire had been very much aware that Jeffrey was among them. She had caught her son’s eye once, but he had quickly turned away. Even that small glance was enough to tell her that Jeff wasn’t as unaware of her as he wanted her to think.

  This incident pointed out to her another of the changes in her son. The child she had been raising would not have been so cruel as to tease a younger boy. Or if he had, she would have soon shown him the error of his ways. But Apache boys learned in a more ruthless school.

  Claire had not been so focused on Jeff that she hadn’t been aware of what Wolf had offered to do for He Makes Trouble. She met the Apache’s dark-eyed gaze and smiled at him. “That was a wonderful thing you did.”

  “It is not the boy’s fault that he does not have the weapons of a warrior.”

  “Now he will,” Claire said.

  Wolf grunted. It had begun to dawn on him that by agreeing to help He Makes Trouble he had put himself in the role of father to the boy. The last thing he had intended was to commit himself to the troublesome child in such a way. Only he had to admit he had felt good when the boy looked up to him. And he had basked in Little One’s approval. He was startled from his reverie when Little One spoke.

  “How do you say ‘I love you’ in Apache?”

  Wolf told her the words and repeated them with her until she had them right. Finally he asked, “Why do you need to know these words?”

  She kept her golden eyes lowered as she answered, “You never know when you may need them.”

  Then she turned and walked away, leaving him standing there. Wolf felt the band tighten in his chest. The woman and the boy were slipping past barriers he had erected years ago to keep himself safe. He did not know what to do to keep them at a distance. Most worrisome of all was the fact that he was not sure he wanted to.

  Because he had realized as he taught his white captive how to say “I love you” that he wanted her to say the words to him.

  16

  It rapidly dawned on Jake that he was stranded in this godforsaken valley with a woman who irritated and infuriated him—and whom he desired with a violence he kept tethered on a short leash
.

  “Let’s get a few things straight,” he said to Anabeth their first evening in the valley. “I need you to tell me where to start hunting for the gold, but we won’t be needing to spend much time together.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more!”

  Jake threw his arm wide. “It’s a big valley,” he said. “There’s no reason our paths have to cross any more than necessary.”

  “That suits me just fine!”

  “You stay out of my way, and things will be fine around here.”

  “I’ll be invisible,” she assured him. “You go hunt for Sam’s gold your way and I’ll go hunt for it in mine.”

  Her eyes had darkened with every lash of his tongue, so that by the time he was through with his tirade they were almost violet.

  “So we’re agreed?” He wanted an argument from her. It wasn’t like her to go along with him. He didn’t care at all for the wounded look in her eyes.

  But he hadn’t underestimated her after all, because she seemed to visibly straighten as he stared at her—shoulders back, chin up, stance widened for battle.

  All she said was, “I’m not about to hang around where I’m not wanted.” Then she turned and marched away from him.

  Jake had known he had to keep her away from him, but he felt a sense of loss as he watched her leave. He was torn by the contrast between the dangerous, destructive emotion he had perceived love to be as a child, and the protective, possessive instincts he felt for Anabeth as a man. He wanted to believe that it was possible to care for a woman and not end up being destroyed by the relationship. But with Anabeth, things were complicated.

  Anabeth Calhoun wasn’t just any woman. She was an outlaw who had sworn to take vengeance on other outlaws. She was a female brought up without the chance to behave as a woman. But whether she approached him as Anabeth or Kid Calhoun, he found himself attracted to her.

  So he had taken the safer course. He had told Anabeth to keep her distance. And meant it. All the while wishing for something he felt sure he could never have.

  Anabeth stayed away from Jake as he asked. But she found another challenge. At first she tried to get close to Dog simply because Jake had told her it couldn’t be done. As the weeks passed and Dog remained aloof, she began to think that if she could just reach Dog on some level she would also be able to somehow, someday reach Jake as well.

  They were two of a kind, the dog and the man, loners, not needing anyone or anything to survive. She was determined to prove Dog could be reached because that would mean Jake’s stone wall could also be breached. Anabeth wasn’t sure why that was so important to her. She only knew it was.

  Anabeth never missed a chance to speak to the black beast. She would sit a half a field away from him and croon words that meant nothing. Dog never gave her so much as a glance. She would have despaired except his ears stayed cocked in her direction, and he lingered to listen.

  She began to leave gifts of food for him. At first they remained uneaten until they rotted—or the crows got them. But she caught him once, sniffing the rock where the food had been. When he suddenly looked up to find her standing nearby he stared at her with his dark eyes for a full minute before he turned and trotted away.

  Jake wasn’t unaware of Anabeth’s efforts.

  “I don’t want you to bother Dog anymore,” he told her.

  She murmured something noncommittal and ignored him.

  What he had really wanted to say was that he didn’t want her bothering him. But there was nothing she did overtly that he could complain about. She was simply there. Smelling like the green grass on a summer day. With eyes that seemed to have the whole damn sky in their depths. And flesh that looked like honey, so warm that he was dying to taste its sweetness.

  But he had laid down the rules, and now he was forced to follow them. He was determined to keep his distance from her, and in order to do that he had to keep temptation from his path. Not that he had to worry. She never came near him unless she had to.

  Unfortunately, she was never far from his thoughts.

  Jake had watched her with Dog and felt the roots of a deeper feeling growing within him. Tendrils of need twined around his heart, threatening the stone walls that protected it from harm.

  Jake knew he was in trouble when he saw Dog take a slab of bacon right from the Kid’s hand. Of course Dog had immediately trotted away to eat it all by himself, but Jake knew Dog would be back. As he had come back again and again for the sight of her. For the scent of her. For the accidental touch of her hand on his skin.

  Anabeth had begun to feel a shred of hope that she would succeed in taming Dog. It had taken her every bit of three weeks, hour after hour, day after persistent day, before the huge beast would stand still long enough for her to touch him. Dog had swallowed the bacon she offered him whole, but he hadn’t run from her. He had stood there … waiting.

  She had suddenly been afraid to reach out to him, afraid that despite her patience, he would bite. Her hand trembled as it settled on sleek black fur.

  Dog shuddered, but he stayed where he was, black eyes watching her steadily, muscles tensed for escape.

  She slid her hand down the length of his back, smoothing raised hackles. But when she lifted her hand and tried to touch his head, he jerked and bounded away.

  “I never thought I’d live to see that,” Jake said.

  Anabeth stumbled getting to her feet, and Jake reached out to break her fall.

  “Let go of me!” she cried.

  Jake let her go and watched with sucked up breath while she somehow managed to regain her balance.

  Anabeth’s skin felt seared where Jake had touched it. “Don’t touch me! That was our agreement. You keep your distance. And I leave you alone!”

  She left him standing there by himself. Alone.

  Jake had been slowly going crazy over the past three weeks, watching her with Dog, watching her search for gold, watching her … when she didn’t even notice he was alive.

  Well, he was damned sick and tired of it! Let her act like a sulky child. He didn’t have to.

  That night he joined her for supper. He didn’t say anything, but neither did she—just shared the bacon and beans she had cooked and took his dish away to clean afterward. She didn’t acknowledge him in any way. She was as damned invisible as she had promised she would be.

  Anabeth was more aware of Jake than he suspected, but she wasn’t about to let him know it. When he wasn’t looking she smiled to herself and thought how the mighty had fallen. A lonesome dog. And a lonesome man.

  That evening Jake looked in through the glass windows from where he was spreading his blankets outside and discovered Anabeth was playing solitaire at the kitchen table. She had a glass of whiskey in front of her and a cigarette stuck in the corner of her mouth. There was nothing feminine about the pose, but he felt himself harden at the sight of her.

  He walked inside and asked, “Where do you keep the whiskey?”

  “Top shelf of the cupboard. There’s a cup below.”

  Jake helped himself, then pulled out the ladderback chair across from Anabeth, turned it around and straddled it. “Mind if I sit here for a while?”

  Anabeth just grunted and ignored him.

  He watched for a while, noting how the single lantern on the table outlined her face in shadows of light and dark. He waited for Anabeth to invite him to join her. But she didn’t.

  At last he said, “How about a hand of poker?”

  She looked up, surprised. “You want to play cards with me?”

  Jake stood, turned his chair back around, and sat down facing her across the table. “A game of poker.”

  “What stakes?”

  “Matchsticks?”

  Anabeth laughed. “Oh, I think we should play for something more serious than that.”

  “Your cooperation finding the gold, then,” Jake said. “If I have more matchsticks than you by, say, dawn, then you’ll work with me to locate Sam’s gold.”

 
“And if I win?” Anabeth asked.

  Jake grinned crookedly. “You name it.”

  “If I win, you’ll tell me about yourself. I mean, answer any questions I want to ask about your life.”

  Jake sat stunned for a moment. Those were high stakes indeed. He eyed Anabeth and tried to gauge whether she could be any good at poker. Surely a face that open and innocent would reveal what cards were held by its owner. Jake took a gamble and said, “Three questions.”

  “What?”

  “If you win, I’ll answer three questions about myself.”

  Anabeth grinned. “Done.”

  Several hours later, Jake was having second thoughts. He stared into a female face so blank, so absent of emotion that he would have sworn there was no brain behind the eyes. In fact, the girl was shrewd beyond telling. Most of the matchsticks were already sitting in front of her. And she had done it by trickery.

  In the first few hands her face had been animated with delight or despair—neither having anything to do with the cards in her hand, he had discovered to his chagrin. She might be smiling and have only a pair of deuces, and chewing on her thumbnail with a full house.

  Once Jake realized her tactics, he tried to anticipate whether Anabeth was lying with her face or her bet. But he wasn’t much good at guessing. He lost more often than not. It seemed like it was going to be a short evening when he noticed a flaw in the Kid’s otherwise flawless bluffing.

  When she had a good hand, Anabeth held her cigarette between two fingers while she bet. When she had nothing, she kept the cigarette in the corner of her mouth and squinted through the smoke. In an embarrassingly short time, all the matchsticks were sitting in front of him.

  “I don’t understand it,” Anabeth muttered. “It was as though you could see what I held in my hand.” Her eyes narrowed and she turned to look behind her for a shiny surface that might have reflected her cards back to Jake. But there was nothing. “How the hell did you do it?”

  “Superior play,” he said with a rakish grin.

  Anabeth gave a very unladylike snort. “All right. I give up. How did I give myself away?”