The Ruination of Essie Sparks (Wild Western Rogues Series, Book 2) (12 page)

"Náhkohe needs to rest," he told her.

She felt embarrassed for falling asleep. Horrified, really. And then she remembered she'd been dreaming about him. Some combustible, half-witted dream that made no sense, though she couldn't recall the thing now. But those female parts of her remembered. Throwing her leg over the horse's neck, she dismounted, holding Black Thorn's hand.

He followed her down, stiffly. His face was wan-looking and she wondered how he had managed to stay awake all night long. She knew he must be hurting and weak.

The simple feat of holding her up while she slept was remarkable, considering. But as she watched him, she knew there was no accounting for strength like his. He was a different sort of man from the ones she knew. Or had ever known.

The horse lumbered over to the stream and sucked noisily from it. Parched, Black Thorn—
should she call him that or Cade?
—bent and cupped his hand in the briskly moving water upstream from the animal and drank deeply, too, then splashed water on his face and the back of his neck. It took a moment for him to gather the wherewithal to stand again, but when he did, he caught her watching him as he swiped a damp hand down his face, looking dark and foreign and dangerous.

She meant to pull her gaze away immediately, but it caught on the water that clung to his dark lashes and trickled down his neck. It was, perhaps, fatigue that made such a small, intimate thing so fascinating. In fact, she was too tired to apologize for staring. She simply looked away to quell the unfamiliar curl of heat that had settled in her belly.

He gave her a "be my guest" gesture and she edged past him to take a drink herself. The water tasted good. Sweet and cold. She'd been thirsty. But even more, she told him, "I have to... I—I need some privacy."

He'd let her off the horse once last night to see to her needs, but it had been dark and he had no fear of her running off into a forest filled with bears and wild cats. Now, his gaze scanned the woods around them with a suspicious eye.

"Where would I
go
?" she asked pointedly. "We're in the middle of nowhere."

"I told you. You are free to go anytime you want. It is not you I worry about, but what lives in these mountains."

A chill ran up her as she allowed her gaze to follow his.

He pointed to a hedge of bushes not far away. "There," he told her. "Keep talking so I can hear you."

So I can hear you
... She rolled her eyes and headed to the shrubbery. Horrifying. But what choice did she have? "What would you like to discuss while I suffer the humiliation of proximity?"

"Of... what?"

"What shall we talk about? The weather? Mr. Harrison's chances of beating Mr. Cleveland in the presidential elections this year?"

He didn't answer for a moment, then said, "Who?"

"Never mind."

From behind the shrubs, she watched him unbuckle his saddlebag and pull a piece of jerky from it. He took a bite but it seemed an effort for him to chew it.

"All right. How is your leg feeling this morning?"

"Fine."

His back was to her, so she couldn't read his expression, but he limped toward the tree as if it still pained him. "I suspect," she called through the hedges, "that you are exaggerating."

He glanced back with a reluctant smile in her direction, then quickly away.

"Can I assume," she asked, changing the subject, "that you are the one Little Wolf referred to as 'Black Thorn'?"

"The same," he answered, leaning his back against the tree to stare up at the morning sky. "It is what I am called by the
Tsitsistas
."

She peeked through the bushes to be sure he wasn't watching as she lifted her petticoats behind them. "
Tsitsistas
?"

"The People. The Cheyenne, to you."

She didn't know why it had never occurred to her that they called themselves something entirely different than their enemies did. "So if you are Black Thorn to Little Wolf, that makes you... his—?"

"Cousin," he finished. "He is my mother's sister's son."

"So your mother's Cheyenne and your father's...?"

"From Texas," he answered distractedly, staring down the path behind them for signs of their pursuers. "White," he added, as an afterthought.

It was the most information she'd managed to wrangle from him since she'd met him and she decided to press her luck. "Are they both still living? Your parents?"

"My mother died when I was fourteen."

So young to lose a mother.
She finished and stood, shaking her petticoats into place.

"My father..." His voice trailed off.

"Your father?" she prompted when he stopped talking.

"I have not seen him in years."

"He doesn't live in Montana now?"

He shrugged, his expression stark when he turned to her as she emerged from the shrubbery. "He does."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—that's none of my business. You should rest. Eat something more than... whatever that is you're eating." She shuddered again. Her stomach had been growling since yesterday, but she couldn't force herself to eat the malodorous—what had he called it?
Pemmican
.

But he didn't rest. Instead he limped to the pool near the waterfall, stretched out beside it and caught a fat trout—barehanded. He bowed his head and said a prayer over the fish before cleanly lopping off its head. Then he dug up some roots growing by the stream and washed them in the cold current.

"We'll risk a fire to cook it, before the fog clears," he said with a look at the spires of pines surrounding them. "You need to eat."

He needed food as much, if not more, than she did. How, in the space of twenty-four hours, had she gone from sheer terror to caring whether he lived or died from that bullet in his leg? But maddeningly, she did care. She supposed it was because he'd treated her mostly with kindness, the rope being the glaring exception, of course. But in that short space of time they'd saved each other. She imagined it was just
that
which made her feel some obligation to him. No, not obligation. Bond?

Perish the thought!

And while she was at it, banish the pang of desire that twisted in her belly when she rode beside him, felt his powerful arms around her, his chest and thighs against her. Or even now, when she allowed her gaze to roam over his long limbs, his strong, narrow hands and imagined them touching her in other places.

Her gaze flicked to the scar on his cheek. A nearly straight slash, faintly darker than the skin around it. Made by... what? A blade? An arrow? The furrow of a bullet? Curiosity only made her want to know him better, which was a foolish, foolish thing. Because getting to know him frightened her almost as much as it intrigued her.

He dug into his saddlebags and pulled out a tin of matches then dropped the fish and the wild onions in her hands. "You clean this. I will start the fire."

She bobbled the slippery thing in her hands with a horrified look. "Me, clean it? I have a better idea. Why don't I make the fire and you clean the fish?"

With a look that said it was women's work, he pulled his knife from his belt and handed it to her before limping off to look for wood.

That he trusted her with the knife shocked her. But, she supposed, he knew that if she'd wanted him dead, she would have accomplished that last night at the river. Staring down at the slippery thing in her hand, she reasoned,
It's just a fish. A fat, just-a-moment-ago-alive fish.
But she was hungry. Starving, actually. She had never cleaned a fish before, but now was as good a time as any to learn.

While she gingerly did as he asked, and tried not to gag, he gathered deadfall from nearby for a fire.

"How far behind us do you think they are?" she asked, trying to keep the optimism from her voice.

"I saw their fire late last night. I think they camped for the night."

Disappointment threaded through her. If he was right, they'd put miles between themselves and rescue. She glanced over at him, noting that he seemed almost relaxed as he built a small tepee of sticks with dry grass stuffed inside. Though somehow this morning, the prospect of finding herself at Mitchell Laddner's mercy instead of Cade Newcastle's felt... unsettling, to say the least. Not to mention that in order for her to be saved, it meant this man's certain demise. A possibility that held less and less appeal.

She turned to watch him gathering firewood. There was something primal about her feelings for him. Something she couldn't explain, considering her circumstance. Was it only that he'd done nothing to actually hurt her that had her thinking such things? But he had not only failed to meet that awful expectation, he'd actually risked his own life to save her as well.

"I owe you an apology," she said, watching him.

"For what?"

"I'm afraid I wasn't very grateful last night at the river. I surely would have drowned if you hadn't saved me. So, thank you."

A flicker of surprise crossed his expression before he lowered his head once more to his work. "And thank you for coming back. For cutting the bullet out."

"Then we're even, I suppose?"

Those gray eyes rose through a sweep of dark lashes. "We are."

A look passed between them that was not a simple evening of the sides. It was nothing like the looks he'd given her before. This was a look that said something had shifted between them. His gaze fell to her mouth then back to her eyes with some unasked question.

It seemed unthinkable that his look was enough to make her imagine kissing him. But she found herself wondering how it would feel to do just that. Would he be gentle? Would he ask her permission? Or would he be rough and brutal?

No, she couldn't imagine that. Forceful, perhaps. That thought stirred something warm, deep inside her. Did she actually
want
him to kiss her? But just then, two squirrels scampered up the tree beside them, chasing each other. The moment was broken.

"I've been thinking," she said, watching him bend down to blow on the small flame, "about Shakespeare."

From the corner of her eye, she saw him roll a look at the sky. Of course, a dimple appeared in his cheek when he smiled. Damn him for being so attractive and so hostile at once.

The fire caught and flared. He added smaller sticks. "What about him?"

"Then you admit it. You
do
know the Bard."

"The Bard?" he snorted then. "Yes. I was schooled when I was younger. Back East. A white boarding school." He picked up the fish she'd cleaned and rinsed it off with water from his canteen.

"But how did you manage to—"

"My father. He had the money and he preferred the white part of me. Wanted me to fit into his world." The bitterness in his voice twisted at her.

He could have fit in to the white world, she thought, if he cut his hair, donned white clothes. Though knowing him now, she guessed it would never be a comfortable fit for him. There was something exotic about him—the tanned color of his skin, those eyes, the strong shape of his nose. Those things all made him different in some indefinable way. Different and, God help her, attractive. But those things were merely external. In every other way, as well, he was distinct from any man she'd ever met in the world from which she came.

"What about your mother?" she asked.

Threading the fish onto two long sticks, he thought about his answer for a moment. "Gone by then from smallpox. My father didn't want me spending time with the People after that. As long as she was alive, he'd let her take me summers. But her death was the end of that."

At a great cost to him, she could see. "And now?"

"Now?" he asked, not understanding the question.

"Does he accept you as you are?"

He jerked a look at her. "You mean with this?" he asked, lifting the hair away from the scar on his cheek.

It was odd that in such a short time, she'd gone from being shocked by his scar to not even remembering it was there. "No. I meant as Cheyenne."

"Like I said, I haven't seen my father in years." Stirring the coals with a stick, he propped the fish over the fire and said, "As for the Cheyenne, they accept me. I live with them. I speak their tongue. But..." He stopped and looked through the smoke at the edge of the waterfall. "I am not one of them, either. Not really. I do not really belong in either world."

His admission, so deeply personal, surprised and touched her. "But perhaps it is only you who feels that."

Lifting a cynical gaze her way, he said, "I would expect that from a white girl, who grew up knowing exactly where she belonged."

Essie straightened. "If you're saying I can't imagine being an outsider, like you, you'd be wrong. I, too, am alone in the world. My parents, gone. My husband..." She fingered the locket and stopped short of admitting her biggest loss.

"You are married?" Suddenly he was interested in this conversation.

"No. Not anymore. He's dead." Had she said those words before? She could not remember. Nathan's death had been a private hell she'd simply survived.

"How did he die?"

"How? Well, one day he went to the shore and took off all of his clothes. He folded them neatly, then pinned a note to them. Then he simply walked into the Atlantic Ocean and started swimming. He never came back."