The Outlaw

by JoAnn Ross

  Noel realized that to Wolfe's aunt, this small piece of black-veined turquoise was more than a mere blue stone. It represented a time when Wolfe had been born. It was also, she suspected, symbolic of his having achieved freedom yet again due to Noel's intervention.

  "Thank you," she said gravely as she closed her fingers around the stone that seemed to be warming her hand. "I will treasure this. Always."

  As the two women exchanged a long look, Noel imagined she could view pity in Wolfe's aunt's gaze, making her wonder if her unruly feelings for this man were so obvious.

  They were.

  Others had crowded around him and the questions began coming fast and furious. Finally, he turned to Noel.

  "This could go on for a very long time. Why don't I get you settled into Second Mother's hogan? You can wait there while I talk with my clan."

  "Thank you." Unaccustomed to such blazing sunshine, she was beginning to feel a little light-headed.

  They walked side by side, the dog following close behind, as if unwilling to let Noel out of its sight. "Were those real coins your aunt was wearing on her blouse?"

  "Yes. Most Dineh wear their wealth. It's simpler that way since we don't have a great many banks on the reservation."

  Not wanting to get into an argument, Noel decided to overlook the sarcasm in his voice.

  From the outside, the dome-shaped six-sided hogan resembled a colorful earthen beehive. Pausing at the door, Noel ran her fingers over a piece of turquoise, much like the one she'd been given, that had been imbedded in the mud covering.

  "The Holy People built the first hogans out of turquoise, white shell, jet and abalone shell," Wolfe said. "The colors also represent the four sacred mountains."

  "You wrote in the 'Sweat Bath Song' that hogans are more than a place to eat and sleep. They're a gift from the gods."

  "To the Dineh, the way we live is not merely tradition, it is the only way to live—we call it the Beautiful Rainbow Way. The hogan is always at the center of our world. The entire community gets together to construct a hogan and when it's completed, the ha tathli— what you Anglos call a medicine man—performs a Blessing Way rite, asking the Holy People to make this place happy."

  If he'd been expecting her to scoff, he would have been disappointed. "I think that's lovely. My home has great sentimental value to my family, but of course, it's not quite the same."

  "No. It's not."

  He opened the door, which always faced east, he explained, so that the rising sun was the first thing the family saw in the morning.

  Noel was surprised to find the inside of the hogan quite cozy, with juniper-log walls and ceiling. Sheepskin rugs had been spread over the earthen floor; pots, baskets and other personal belongings were hung on the wall. She decided that when you moved your home and all your worldly possessions on a routine basis, you undoubtedly learned to economize.

  "Usually, women are on the south side, men on the north. But since you're a distinguished guest, Second Mother has instructed me to give you this place." He gestured to a rug against the west wall facing the doorway.

  "Please thank her for me." After two days in the saddle, Noel was relieved to be able to sink onto the soft rug. She was even more gratified when Wolfe handed her the leather water canteen.

  "Will we be staying here long?" she asked.

  "What's the matter, Princess? Are the accommodations a bit rustic for you?" As soon as he heard the words escape his mouth, Wolfe realized that he'd spoken more harshly than the circumstances warranted.

  "Not at all," she said, flashing him a sweet, totally feigned smile. "Princess Di and I took a trip together last year to the Australian outback. We spent one night in the bush in flimsy tents that blew over during a dust storm."

  Once again, Wolfe found himself liking the way she stood up to him. Once again, he warned himself this was not a good sign.

  "I suppose Princess Di is another member of your illustrious royal family?"

  "Actually, she's a friend. Who's married to the Prince of Wales. Well, technically they're married. But they live apart."

  "The Prince of Wales happens to be married to Princess Alexandra of Denmark." Wolfe knew this well because when his publisher had sent him to England, Edward had insisted on taking him to all the city's nightspots.

  "Prince Edward was married to Alexandra," Noel agreed. "But Prince Charles is married to Diana."

  "Charles."

  "Eldest son of Queen Elizabeth. Who ascended to the throne when her father, King George VI, died in 1952."

  Wolfe shook his head. "I'll say this for you, Princess, once you concoct a story, you stick to it."

  Before she could argue yet again, he turned on his heel and went striding out the door.

  Deciding that he was angry because he thought she was still lying, Noel sighed. What she had no way of knowing was that Wolfe was angry—but at himself. Because, as she'd looked up at him, with that absolute surety of conviction gleaming in her calm blue eyes, he'd been all too tempted to kiss her. Which, while she was an honored guest in his family's hogan, would be taboo.

  He rejoined the others in a nearby communal hogan, and told the story of his arrest and incarceration. There was a long drawn-out silence after Wolfe related his tale as everyone considered the implications of what they'd just heard.

  "There is only one solution," a gray-haired, much-respected elder said finally.

  "What is that?"

  "We must have an Enemy Way performed for you."

  Wolfe decided that the fact that he'd been expecting a suggestion that he leave now, before he drew the white posse and bounty hunters into Canyon de Chelly, suggested he'd been too long among the white people. Loyalties among the Dineh ran as deep and constant as the underground springs in this canyon.

  "I cannot risk staying here for nine days," he argued. "It is too dangerous for you."

  There had not been an organized campaign of white violence against his people since the treaty of 1868, the treaty that allowed them to return to Dinetah. But Wolfe knew that were he to remain hiding out here in the canyon, he would give those men who believed that the only good red man was a dead red man an excuse to slaughter his people.

  This he could not allow.

  "It is dangerous for you to walk among the whites," another older man, the brother of his mother's sister's husband observed what Wolfe had already discovered the hard way.

  "You belong here," a third voice chimed in.

  "We will fight to protect you," a fourth insisted. The young man jumped to his feet and held a hunting rifle over his head.

  "There will be no fighting," Wolfe insisted. "Not here. Which is why I must leave."

  "You cannot leave without an Enemy Way," the first man said, bringing the conversation back to the starting point. "Unless you rid your body of the sickness from being tainted by the enemy, you will die without bullets."

  There was a murmur of agreement.

  "Perhaps we can come up with a compromise," a quiet voice said from the back of the hogan.

  Wolfe recognized the voice immediately. Many Horses's merry smile had proven a soothing source of comfort during those long lonely nights at the Eastern boarding school they'd been forced to attend.

  "A compromise would be appreciated, my friend."

  The man Wolfe had loved like a brother smiled, his solemn dark eyes exchanging similar boyhood memories. "I have been studying the Blackening Way with Red Hawk," he said, naming another healer.

  "This is only a shortened version of the Enemy Way. It is not as effective." The older man bristled, dearly not happy about losing a potential patient. Especially to a mere upstart.

  Despite Wolfe's white education, a deep primal part of him clung to old beliefs. "How long would it take?"

  His childhood friend's expression had turned as solemn as Wolfe's own. "A day and a night. You could go alone into the Canyon del Muerto and fast tonight in preparation. We could begin tomorrow morning at dawn."

  "Tha
t is not long enough," the detractor complained. "There has been much contamination. Only an Enemy Way will drive away the evil."

  A day and a night. Long enough for the men following them to reach the canyon, Wolfe feared.

  "We will take care of any bilaganna who wish to hurt you," someone suggested. The unflattering term was the Dineh word for white.

  Wolfe's head spun and he impaled the young man who'd waved his rifle with a sharp warning glare. "There is to be no killing."

  "Of course not. But we can sure slow them down," the man said.

  There was a united burst of laughter that seemed to have the effect of releasing the tension from the room.

  Deciding to risk the delay, Wolfe sat back and listened as his lifelong friend described the Blackening Way.

  8

  "You're going to do what?" Noel stared at Wolfe in disbelief.

  "A Blackening Way. It's a shortened version of the Enemy Way."

  "So you said."

  After changing into more practical clothes contributed by Wolfe's aunt, she'd accompanied him away from the gathering of hogans to a private place where his clan's corn was planted beside a stream. They were sitting on a wide flat boulder overlooking the water. The yellow dog lay at their feet happily basking in the sun.

  "And this is supposed to drive out whatever evils resulted in your contamination with white people. With those you call bilaganna."

  "Just my enemies," he corrected. "Not all white people." Because he wanted to reach out and smooth away the frown lines from her forehead, he closed his hands into a fist. "Not you."

  "Isn't that a relief." Her tone was thick with sarcasm, but she could not hide the relief that flooded into her eyes.

  Wolfe felt an uncharacteristic need to try to explain his feelings regarding the ceremony. "When I was sent back East to the white boarding school, I would look at all the cities the train was passing through on the journey and see how all those Anglos lived so closely together. I would wonder how one old and bearded man could possibly hear the prayers of so many white people."

  "Faith is accepting without understanding," Noel murmured.

  "Yes." He nodded gravely. If they agreed on nothing else concerning what he was about to do, they could agree on this. "The Blackening Way is to restore hozho, the balance between harmony and peace."

  "And restore you to the Beautiful Rainbow Way."

  He searched her expression for disbelief or scorn and found neither. "Exactly."

  There was a long silence, the only sound that of the tasseled green corn rustling softly in the breeze.

  "Well, then." She let out a deep breath. "I think you should do it."

  Although he hadn't brought her here to ask her advice, her willingness to accept a belief so alien to her own pleased him.

  He was lowering his head, intent on kissing her, when an image suddenly swirled in her mind, causing her to gasp.

  He pulled back. "What's wrong?"

  "It's nothing." Her throat had gone as dry as the red dust beneath her feet. She swallowed.

  "You have gone as pale as Sisnajini." Concerned, he ran the back of his hand down her white cheeks.

  His gentle touch did nothing to restore calm. "Sisnajini?" she repeated on a ragged whisper easily heard in this vastly quiet place.

  "The eastern mountain, the source of the male rains. First Man and First Woman decorated it with white shells and fastened it to the ground with white lightning. Your complexion reminds me of those shells."

  As impossible as it seemed, the story no longer seemed mere myth. Because of what she had seen.

  "I saw you." She began to tremble. "You were standing on a bent rainbow, dressed all in black, and this horrible giant was throwing spears at you, which were really lightning bolts." She closed her eyes. "And then there was blood. So much blood."

  He might still question her story about time travel but Wolfe no longer disbelieved her claim of special vision. "That's the giant Yei Tsoh," he said quietly. "He devoured our people at the beginning of the world. It looked as if we would die out. Until the hero twins killed him and cut off his head."

  She opened her eyes, her gaze shadowed with fear and dread. "You're going to fight this giant, Yei Tsoh."

  "It's only a ritual battle," he assured her.

  "No." The single word came out on a soft, unsteady breath. "It's much more than that." She placed her hand on his arm as her eyes pleaded with him. "It's dangerous. This Blackening Way could turn out to be more fatal to you than those men who are following us."

  "It will be all right." Wolfe wished that he felt as confident as he sounded. "I will be all right."

  A few tears escaped her worried blue eyes; Wolfe brushed them away with his fingertip. "You've obviously inherited your grandmother's gift of second sight. Do you look like her, as well?"

  Noel watched the subtle change in his eyes and tried to remind herself that she hadn't come all this way to get emotionally or romantically involved with an outlaw. She was, after all, an engaged woman.

  "Not at all." When she felt herself beginning to drown in those warm indigo depths, Noel dragged her gaze away and tried desperately to picture Bertran's pleas-ant, unthreatening face. When she couldn't envision her fiancé, her nerves tangled even more painfully. "Katia was everyone's fantasy of queen of the Gypsies."

  Although her mind could not conjure up Bertran's image, she had no trouble at all remembering the life-size portrait of her grandmother as a young woman, hanging in the palace back home.

  Clad in a traditional scarlet flamenco dress trimmed with an ebony lace flounce, Katia's dark hair had been a wild, unruly tangle around her shoulders, and her eyes—more black than brown— had flashed with tempestuous fire.

  "My sister is the one in the family who resembles her most. Physically and emotionally." Her lips curved in a faint smile at the memory of some of Chantal's more outrageous antics over the years. "Caine always says that the first time he saw Chantal, he thought he heard the clatter of castanets and smelled the smoke from Gypsy campfires."

  From her tone, Wolfe suspected Noel was actually unaware of her own stunning beauty. "She sounds quite glamorous."

  "She's spectacular." Noel's smile displayed not the slightest jealousy of her sister. To resent Chantal's natural flamboyance would be like blaming the blazing golden sun for eclipsing the softer, paler light of the moon. "Before she settled down to marriage and children, newspaper columnists all over America called her the quintessential fairy-tale princess."

  "And what do those newspaper writers call you?"

  "I don't make the society columns all that much," she hedged, pretending a sudden interest in smoothing out the wrinkles in the full skirt she was wearing. "After all, I'm a great deal more low-key than Chantal or Burke, and I prefer to keep in the background, doing my work and—"

  She'd begun to talk too much and too fast again. Wolfe wondered if she realized how delightful she was when flustered. "What do they call you?" he repeated.

  His quiet, unyielding tone drew her reluctant attention back to him. "The ice princess."

  When she'd been younger, in her teens, the tag had hurt. These days, although she'd grown used to it, understood that the paparazzi had chosen it merely to accentuate the vast differences between the two royal sisters, there were occasions, such as now, when it stung.

  Although he knew that he was venturing into quicksand, Wolfe was unable to ignore such an obvious challenge. "I always knew that newspaper writers were idiots."

  As she dragged her nervous fingers through the silk slide of her hair, he reached out and captured her hand, linking their fingers together. "You're much too warmblooded for anyone to think of you as glacial, Princess."

  To prove his point, he brushed his lips across her knuckles, satisfied by the sharp intake of breath. "Too responsive."

  Her mouth had gone as dry as the arid red land they'd spent the past day riding across. She swallowed, resisting the urge to snatch her hand away, knowing it wou
ld only let him know how strongly his touch affected her.

  "Too passionate."

  When his teeth nipped at the fleshy part of her hand, Noel decided that it was time—past time—to make him understand she had not come all this way to tumble into his bedroll.

  "You shouldn't say such things," she insisted on a voice she wished was stronger. More authoritative.

  Wolfe's answering smile was slow. Wicked. Deliberate. "Too late."

  There was a moment, just before his mouth touched hers, when the intensity in his dark eyes warned Noel that Wolfe Longwalker was a very dangerous man. And if she didn't back away now while she still could, she'd be making a very big mistake.

  But then he was kissing her and she forgot to think at all.

  Unlike that first time, upstairs in the Road to Ruin, his mouth didn't crush hers. Nor did it plunder.

  Instead, with a touch as soft as dandelion fluff, as benevolent as summer sunshine, his lips brushed over hers without lingering, leaving warmth from one corner to the other, inviting her into the mists. Murmuring his name as she framed his ruggedly handsome face with her hands, she went willingly.

  It was as if he intended to kiss her endlessly. There were no demands. There was no rush. There were only shimmering sighs, soft murmurs and a glorious golden pleasure that seeped into her bloodstream. A soft breeze whispered across her face, but his breath was so much warmer. Her head began to swim as his strong sure hands moved through her hair. Her body turned fluid, her muscles went lax.

  Without surrendering the gentleness, without passion or fire, he took the kiss deeper. Then deeper still, drawing a trembling breath from her that shuddered into his mouth.

  Her lips were as sweet as honey, as potent as whiskey. Even as they turned more urgent beneath his, even as her murmurs became moans, even as the way she began to arch her warm, feminine body against his caused his need to claw at him, Wolfe refused to hurry, forcing himself to keep the pace achingly slow, teasing them both.

  As the sun rose higher overhead, Wolfe continued to battle hunger, fight back greed. With a patience he'd never known he possessed, he took Noel places she'd never been, gave her a glimpse of a world unlike any she'd ever imagined.