Jessie's War (Civil War Steam) (19 page)

Despite the cold, her palms
began to sweat. “Your being a bastard has nothing to do with your parentage,
Bradshaw. Nobody here cares about that. If you’re a bastard, it’s because of
your personality.”

“You didn’t seem to mind it
so much when I saved your life. Or when I kissed you last night. Seemed like
you enjoyed that.”

“If you had any sense at all,
Bradshaw, you’d shut your mouth and keep it that way. If you don’t knock it
off, I’ll have to get someone else to help me. You’ll be dead before we get to
Fort Clark,” she said.

“Don’t bet on it, sweetheart.
As much as I hate to disappoint you, I’m not dying any time soon.” He folded
his arms across his chest, somehow accentuating his broad proportions and
making him seem larger than he actually was. “You’ve apparently got something
stuck in your craw. So spit it out.”

Her eyes narrowed, and she
considered keeping her silence, but then thought better of it. He wanted to
know what she thought? Fine.

“I think once you get what
you came for, you’ll leave again.” The words tasted bitter in her mouth. “I don’t
think you care about anyone.”

“Untrue.”

“You’re a spy and a saboteur.
A professional liar. Anyone who believes anything you say is a fool.”

“And you would know?”

“I’ve been that fool.”

The muscle in the side of
Luke’s face twitched, and he glared at her.

“What are your intentions?”
Grandfather asked, breaking the silence. Jessie flinched: she’d forgotten he
was there. Cheveyo translated the old man’s words for Luke, because it was
clear to everyone Jessie had no plans to.

Luke’s eyes locked on Jessie.
“My intentions are honorable. I’ll find Jessie’s father and get him out of
wherever he is. Return him to where he belongs.”

“But you don’t plan to stick
around this time either, do you?” she asked. “Once you get what you want, you’ll
walk away. We’re just something you need, right? Like a good horse or a nice
weapon? Because it’s not like you actually care about us. Or about me.”

Strangely, it felt good to
voice the hurt. That is, until she realized Cheveyo had translated that, as
well. Without another word, Jessie held up her hand and stalked away.

“Stop being so goddamn
melodramatic,” Luke snapped. “I’ve apologized for what I did. I can’t change
what was done in the past. Judge me for what I do
now
.”

Her grandfather’s touch was
little more than a whisper on her shoulder.

She turned toward him as
surely as if he’d grabbed her. No one walked away from him unless he allowed
it.

“You let him touch you?” His
voice was quiet, a warning for her not to lie to him.

“It was just a kiss.”

“I wouldn’t call what we did ‘just
a kiss,’ but suit yourself,” Luke interjected.

Her heart sank as she
realized she had answered her grandfather in English. Luke had always been able
to turn her inside out, making her forget all logic and common sense.

“Are you trying to get
yourself killed? Have you forgotten where you are, and with whom?” Checking to
see if Cheveyo had translated, she was relieved to find he had not.

Luke rubbed the scar running
through his eyebrow. “No.”

Grandfather’s eyes shifted
between Luke and Jessie and back again. “Did you share a wikiup with him?” he
asked quietly.

Careful to use her mother’s
tongue rather than her father’s, she said, “No.” It was not precisely a lie.

“Not a wikiup, but he stayed
the night with her in the Whites’ house. And they shared a tent on the journey
here,” Cheveyo offered. “She’s splitting hairs.”

“How do you know that?” She
saw the answer in his eyes. “Oh. You were watching.”

The expression Cheveyo’s face
served as a warning—if she pushed him too far, he’d tell her grandfather
everything. Jessie held her tongue and hoped her kinsman would hold his.

She swallowed the betrayal
rising in the back of her throat. “I followed the customs of hospitality by
offering refuge to a traveler who asked for it. I only did it out of
politeness. Even our ancestors would not hold me accountable for that.”

“And the other?” the old man
asked, his eyes sharp and dangerous.

“It was cold, and my cousin
here wasn’t sharing his,” she retorted. Cheveyo visibly suppressed a smirk, and
her temper sparked. “Was I supposed to sleep outside?”

“Outside, no. Clothed,
probably,” Cheveyo responded jovially in English.

Beside her, Luke folded his
arms across his chest, his legs braced apart, the challenge evident.

Thank the ancestors Cheveyo
had the sense not to translate their conversation. She’d have to kill him if he
did.

Grandfather made no remark. “I
have missed you, Granddaughter. You have been gone from the tribe for too long.

“And now our lost daughter
has returned, bringing a man who can be our bridge to peace. I have seen his
eyes in my visions. He can help us find peace, and he is one of us.” He pointed
to Luke. “
He
will be our bridge.”

Luke turned to her. “What is
he saying?” he asked, and danger lurked behind words softly spoken.

Unable to wrap her mind
around her grandfather’s words, Jessie simply shook her head, so Cheveyo
translated. “He says you are one of us. You will be our bridge.”

“What does
that
mean?” Luke never took his eyes off
Jessie.

She couldn’t answer his
question. The words died on her lips, and her brain was unable to make sense of
her grandfather’s unusual pronouncement.

He should hate Luke and the
government he represented, but with a few simple words, he’d turned Luke into a
Paviotso brave and welcomed him as a son.

Her grandfather took Luke’s
hand in his, reached for Jessie’s, and placed it on top of Luke’s.

He turned to her. “You have
taken refuge in his wikiup.”

Her heart stuttered and
stopped. Her vision became as wobbly as her knees as understanding dawned on
her. “Oh, no. No, no.
No
.”

“And you bicker like an old
married couple.”

“No.” She started to shake,
her hands trembling as she tried to extract them from her grandfather’s iron
grasp.

“You have always been
stubborn. Just like your mother. You have brought me my bridge, and now I task
you with building it.”

Cheveyo suddenly produced a
beaded belt, and with a quickness that belied belief, her cousin bound their
hands together. As if this had, in some way, been planned long before Luke and
Jessie had been discovered in the mine.

“No, no, no,” she whispered
over and over like a broken litany. She tried to pull away, but her cousin’s
grip was stronger than she could have imagined. Heat rose to her face, and her
stomach churned.

Beside her, Luke stiffened,
preparing for a fight he knew nothing about.

She felt Grandfather’s hands
on theirs, though he didn’t actually touch either of them. “Now you shall share
his wikiup.”

“Oh, God, please don’t do
this.”

“Your father’s pale god won’t
save you now, Princess,” Cheveyo jeered.

“What have I done to you,
Cheveyo, that you hate me so much?” Her voice was soft and bereft.

Grandfather held up a hand as
a warning to her cousin—she’d been on the receiving end of it often
enough as a child to recognize it. He squeezed her hand gently, and a chill
traveled up her arms and settled in her spine.

“It is the will of the
ancestors.” He nodded to the belt binding Luke and Jessie’s hands. “Their will
is done.” He turned away.

“Don’t you walk away from me!”
she shrieked. Even she was surprised she spoke to her grandfather in such a
fashion. No one did that and lived to tell about it. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Share his wikiup,” he
called, never breaking stride. “He will join me as we ride to the winter camp.”

She shook off the belt
binding their hands together and sat down heavily in the melting snow. She
doubled over. Rested her head in her hands.

“This is your fault,” she
gasped.

“What just happened?”

“Nothing. I’m having a
nightmare. It didn’t happen.” Her vision swam and she saw stars.

Luke knelt beside her and
took her hands in his big ones. They warmed her where she hadn’t even known she
was chilled. “You’re doing fine, Jess,” he said softly. “Just breathe. You’re
doing fine.” He inhaled deeply and then released it. Did it several times more
times.

She sank into his bright
eyes, captivated, held in thrall as if hypnotized, and suddenly, her heart
somehow stumbled into a more regular rhythm.

“What happened?” he asked,
his voice low and soft. Calm. She had to struggle to hear him over the pounding
of her heart in her ears. “Talk to me.” When she didn’t answer, he prompted, “Jessie.”

She pulled herself together
and looked up at the sky where her ancestors were surely having a hearty laugh
at her expense. “I can’t believe he just did that.”

He stood up, extended his
hand out to her, and helped her to her feet. “What happened?” he repeated.

He had gone still and quiet,
and she recognized this as Luke at his most dangerous.

Her voice little more than a
whisper, she told him.

“He just married us.”

As they made their way to the
winter camp, Jessie watched Luke as he rode with her grandfather and Cheveyo.
As the leaders, they were at the head of the tribe, the first to fight and the
first to die, should enemies attack.

Warriors surrounded her,
flanking the sides and the rear. Protecting her.

Around her, she heard a
smattering of languages she recognized as Bannock, Paiute, Cheyenne, Shoshone
and Apache, some of which she understood and some she didn’t. Many of them
belonged to tribes who had once been enemies—with each other and with her
tribe, too, yet all of them wore the braided belts marking them as Ewepu
Tunekwuhudu. Marking them as belonging to her grandfather, and, by extension,
to
her.

Add Luke to their ranks, and
this was, perhaps, the strangest tribe to ever have existed.

Luke turned in his saddle and
caught her eye, and he leaned over to speak to Cheveyo before he turned his
horse and galloped back toward her. This man dressed in black astride a big,
black horse was as fierce and deadly as any of them, and the Ewepu Tunekwuhudu
had long been one the other tribes in
the region and white men gave a wide berth.

Her grandfather was one of
the most feared men in the West, yet no one would openly call him enemy. She’d
banked on his reputation—and the rumors and exaggerations of what had
happened—for so long she rarely thought about how he had faced an entire
regiment alone, armed with nothing more than his voice and his dance, and
single-handedly won the Paiute Wars.

A great storm had arisen from
the ground, a whirling cyclone spanning the gap between earth and heaven. When
the wind died and the dust settled, all that had lain before him were the
bodies of the slain. He’d told the lone surviving general the soldiers’ deaths
had been the will of the ancestors. The Union government had immediately signed
the Paiute treaty of 1861, granting autonomy to the Paiute and Shoshone nations.
In theory, the end of the conflict meant they were to be left alone,
unmolested.

The truth was somewhat
darker.

And now here she was,
accompanied to her tribe by her grandfather and an agent for the Union Army, a
man who should be an enemy and yet had been welcomed as a friend and brother.

Luke sidled up next to her,
but he didn’t look at her. Instead, he studied the surrounding landscape, the
barren peaks and the ocean of snow-covered brush stretching out for endless
miles. Beyond that, the great lake spanned out in front of them, the tufa
pyramid of Anaho Island rising out of the dark cerulean water.

“You all right?” he asked
softly.

For a moment, she wasn’t even
sure he was talking to her.

“Jess?”

“Oh,” she mumbled. Even after
all they had been through over the last few nights, she still found it hard to
accept the idea that Luke Bradshaw lived, her ghost brought back to life. She
brushed hair out of her eyes, and pretended his presence didn’t pain her in a
way she couldn’t find the words to describe. “Yeah.”

“Good.”

Silence settled into the
space between them, and she found herself wondering about the kind of life he’d
been living since he’d left. What had he been doing? What had he done? Who had
he befriended and whom had he been with?

Eventually, he said, “I
talked to your grandfather.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”

Damn him, he was going to
make her ask. And she wouldn’t. She would resist, if only because asking was
what he
wanted
her to do.