The Renegades: Nick (7 page)

“What’s your name? Besides Peck?”

“Danny.”

“Well, Danny, you and your mount are both about played out,” she said. “Stay here and wait for me to come back with Mr. Smith. If you rest a bit, maybe you can plow a firebreak around my wagon.”

While she talked, Callie’s mind raced as fast as her heart, trying to think how to handle this situation now that she had taken control—this situation of saving all her belongings and those of no telling how many other people’s. Not to mention their very lives. She had no earthly idea how to fight a fire except with water, and that was something they’d have to do without.

“Help me,” she said, rudely ripping the bridle off the Peck horse. “Hold that mare over there until I can get on her.”

Staggering, the boy ran to Judy and put his arm around her neck. Callie came right behind him with the bridle, and he looped the reins around and held them where his arm had been.

Awkwardly, she stuffed the bit into the surprised mare’s mouth, her arms shaking the whole time. She could count on the fingers of one hand the times she’d ever ridden horseback—and never bareback.

But she wouldn’t let herself think about that.

“Give me a hand up,” she said, as soon as
she and the boy got the strap buckled and the reins straightened out.

He held out his hands, she stepped into them, and suddenly she sat astride the grumpy mare. She pulled her skirts out of the way as best she could and tried to hold on with her legs, the way Nick had done on the black horse.

“Take off the hobbles,” she said, tying a knot in the reins, “and pray I can stay on.”

His dust-covered face fell into lines of shocked astonishment—and that was the last thing she saw clearly. From then on, it was Katie-bar-the-door, because Judy did not intend to waste this chance at freedom. Callie pulled on the reins and got her headed in the right direction, and as they plunged into the long, tree-lined draw, she had to drop them onto Judy’s neck so she could hold on with both hands. She twisted her fingers deep into the shaggy mane and prayed.

Dear Lord above, help her stop bouncing and sliding around in every direction. She should’ve taken time to get the boy’s saddle, too, for this mare’s back was slick as ice on a mountainside.

Her skirts bunched and tangled again, and although she squeezed her legs harder, her position felt more precarious by the second. She glanced down at the rocky, dry creekbed, but only for an instant. Too far, it was way too far
to the ground. She was used to traveling on her own two feet, not even in a wagon, and certainly not on a horse. All her family had ever owned were mules for plowing.

Danny’s face and that of his little sister, Hope, flashed through her mind. She thought she could smell smoke; thought she could feel the heat from the flames on her back. It was the sun, the merciless Western sun—it had to be. She tried to look over her shoulder, anyway.

All of a sudden, the horse plunged ahead so fast that Callie’s body whipped backward from the force. She slipped way to one side and fear pulled all the breath out of her body while the strain threatened to tear her muscles.

But she wouldn’t let go. She couldn’t. Only Nick would know what to do about the fire, and she had to get to him. Nick could save them all.

She clawed her way back to the top of the mare and struggled into a precarious balance. She managed to bend closer to Judy’s neck and take a new grip on her mane before the mare flattened out into a gallop.

Nickajack paused with the bundle of hay held high in both hands over the fence of the rock pen. He held his breath to listen. It was hoofbeats, all right: a horse moving fast. Callie?

His heart thudded hard. Maybe Baxter had come back and scared or even shot her. Maybe she was bleeding and trying to get to him for help.

Hot regret sliced through him. It had been insane to leave her alone!

Instantly, he was furious with himself. She had come here alone, hadn’t she? If she had trouble, it was her trouble. He couldn’t watch out for her all the time. And even if he had nothing else to do, that wasn’t his job. He hadn’t invited her to the Strip in the first place.

But without your help, she wouldn’t still be here, now, would she?

He threw the hay into the pen with his mares, then turned and ran to the cabin for the rifle. Without even looking in, he grabbed it from the rack over the door and turned back, crossing the porch in two strides, leaping off the end of it, already running. He headed for the bend in the creek, where, in case the rider wasn’t Callie, he could stop an intruder out of sight of his cabin and the spring and pond.

It must not be Callie, for surely she couldn’t ride either one of her irascible animals. This was one horse coming up his creek, not two and a wagon.

Whoever it was, they were coming at an erratic rate: loping and long trotting, then galloping again. That made him think it was
somebody hurt and trying to hang on. Or maybe trying to stay conscious.

Who else but Callie would know or even guess that somebody lived up this draw? Or was it an outlaw looking for a hideout?

Suddenly the pace doubled to a faster lope, which soon fell into a flat gallop. Why in the hell risk crippling a horse by galloping in that rough, rocky stretch where one wrong step could snap a cannon bone in a heartbeat?

Nickajack ran harder, but before he got to the bend below the low pool of water, they burst into view.

It was Callie! He stared, blinked, and looked again. She wore no hat, her hair flew loose and long behind her, whipping in the wind like a burnished silk banner, while the nasty-tempered mare did everything she could to unseat her rider. Callie was riding her, though.

Barely. Clinging desperately to the mane, she slid to one side and then the other, coming dangerously close to falling off twice in as many heartbeats. Her red-gold hair spilled over her shoulders in all directions, half the time nearly blinding her by flying across her face.

God help her, had she come all the way from her wagon like this? She must have. How had she even managed to mount the devil mare, in between her constant kicks and bites at the mule?

Then Callie’s hair blew back and he got a glimpse of her huge eyes, which looked too frightened to see him. He ran even harder. If she fell off at this speed, on that ground, there was no way she’d be unhurt.

As he ran, he tried to think what to do. No wonder “Runaway!” was such a dreaded warning, second only to “Fire!” A man on foot coming at a horse that was already panicked out of its mind, or even a mounted man racing alongside it, basically only made the terror worse and the horse go faster.

He couldn’t stand still and wait for this to play out, though—he couldn’t.

Judy swerved hard to the right and ran under the low-hanging branch of a cottonwood, trying her best to scrape Callie off. At first, when Callie looked up, she raised one hand to try to ward off the blow, then, at the last second, she dropped low onto the mare’s neck and passed underneath, unscathed.

Nick got to them just as they charged up onto the bank that encircled the pond, the mare’s hooves slipping on the slope. Grabbing at the bridle proved futile, for the mare was quick as a cat and veered past him. But as she reached the top and saw the water, she hesitated.

He grabbed the near rein and pulled. She came around and started to circle, and he
stepped to her side at the same moment she jerked her hindquarters around.

Callie came completely unseated.

Nick dropped the rifle and caught her in his arms.

T
he last thing he ever expected to do was to kiss her. All he wanted was for her not to get killed, not to get hurt, not to fall off that damned crazy mare and get trampled. And as soon as he felt the sweet weight of her in his arms, he knew he’d been granted those wishes.

But he instantly turned greedy for more. There she was in his arms, still wild-eyed with fear, yet gasping with relief, her luscious lips parted and her breasts rising and falling against his chest with her hard breathing. He glimpsed the ghost of her smile before she buried her face in his neck.

“Oh, thank God,” she said, her lips hot
against his skin. “I thought … I’d die … before I could get to you.”

The words wrapped themselves around his heart. He crushed her closer, and, still struggling for breath, she lifted her face and looked at him as if he were the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

“Callie,” he said, “you have got to learn to ride.”

Then he kissed her, long and hard.

She tasted of flowers and of honey, and she smelled of sweat and the horse and the dust, and he couldn’t get enough of her. Her lips felt like velvet, hot and soft, and deep in her throat she made a little helpless sound of surprise that made his head go light.

He found the fit of their mouths as soon as they touched and fell into the kiss with never a thought, only a needing that was more than wanting, a needing that blotted out all the others. He didn’t need air anymore, or the sunshine, because he was kissing Callie.

Callie. She wasn’t hurt and here she was, melting against him, slipping her arms up around his neck.

Callie. All he could think was her name.

Suddenly she tore her mouth away, just as his tongue begged for entry, just at the instant that hers teased him back and started to welcome him in. She made an incoherent panicked sound.

“No, I can’t,” she said, gasping, “I’m forgetting; I have to tell you …”

He looked into her eyes.

“We’ll talk later, Callie,” he said, and tried to take her mouth again.

She looked straight at him and her eyes went soft, but she stiffened her arms and held him away.

“There’s a prairie fire, Nick! We have to help fight it!”

The two terrible words cut through everything else in his head. Instantly, the kiss was past and the present was a whole world dry as dust, the grass and brush everywhere as combustible as guncotton.

“You have to tell the Pecks where to set the backfires—”

He went cold to the bone, furious in a heartbeat.

“God Almighty, why me? Who am I, the Governor?”

“You’re the only one who knows the country.”

“How does Peck know that?”

“By the way you talked about the Chikaskia Creek, I guess.”

“Damn it, Callie, I’m not taking responsibility for those people!”

The terrible roaring conflict in his head started up again as if just yesterday Green Lightfoot and Austin Deer-in-the-Water had
fallen off their horses with bullets in their backs, bullets meant for Nickajack himself. Bullets that never would have been flying if he hadn’t set himself up as a leader, trying to persuade other people to do what he wanted.

“Why not help if you can? You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

“No!”

“They’re locusts and intruders and ignorant pumpkin rollers, so you don’t care if they burn to a crisp? Won’t you burn up, too, if the fire gets past them and comes rolling up this canyon?”

“That’s my lookout. I’ve got horses to see about. I won’t be responsible for anybody else.”

“You are, though,” she said, giving him a narrowed look, “even if you stay right here all by yourself.”

“How do you figure that?”

“If you’re the only one who can save them, but if you don’t, you’re responsible.”

He stared at her, his heartbeat a wild tumult. She stared back, fear a presence in her eyes.

“I have to get back,” she said, turning to look for her wild mare.

Damn it all straight to hell, there was no hope for it.

Judy was grazing peacefully a stone’s throw away. He strode toward her and she merely
raised her head and looked at him, too tired to run anymore. He took hold of the reins, reached for the buckle, and gently stripped her bridle off.

“What are you doing?” Callie cried, running toward him, a bit unsteadily. “I’ll never catch her now.”

“I’m turning her loose,” he snapped. “There’s no sense in riding her to death.”

Or killing your own meddling, foolhardy self
.

“That bridle’s from the Peck horse,” she called.

“I’ll return it, damn it! If they insist on trusting me with their lives, they can trust me with a piece of tack.”

He glanced back at her.

“Go to my barn,” he said. “Gather all the towsacks and saddle blankets you can find, except for the ones on top of the saddles, and tie them in rolls on the two saddles nearest the door.”

She nodded assent.

He turned and ran for the cabin, whistling for the Shapeshifter as he went.

The light inside the barn was dim, but even in her haste, Callie paused to notice how neat Nick kept it. It felt homey and cared-for, like a barely-remembered place from the long-distant past, since it had four walls and a roof.

She hurried down the center aisle, glancing
both ways into all the stalls, and saw no extra sacks or blankets. Then she noticed the shelves above the feed bins, filled with folded towsacks, and saw an old saddle blanket covering a stack of wooden buckets.

Still breathing hard, she gathered her finds and ran to the saddles with them. A glance out the wide door showed Nick running toward the barn with two horses following, his big black and a tall reddish-brown one.

Pray God this horse would be easier to ride than Judy.

He’d be here in only a moment, so she began rolling the sacks tightly and tying them to the first saddle in the row. No telling how far the fire had come by now—it might even be at the Peck place. Hers would be next.

Oh, how could she have wasted time with a
kiss
, of all insane things?

And her treacherous lips still wanted more. They’d tasted Nick’s spicy-sweet, dark honey man-taste, and they wanted to taste him again. If she gave in to her selfish body, she’d run out there to meet him right this minute and throw herself into his arms again.

She jerked the second set of saddle strings straight—so hard that she had a moment’s panic that she’d broken them—and wrapped them around the sacks, her cheeks flaring with heat. She had kissed him back, she truly had. And that was a shameless, unforgivable thing
to have done, because she would never, could never, love anyone but Vance. She shouldn’t be feeling even so much as the temptation of kissing another man.

Especially not a man who’d drag his heels about helping his neighbors fight fire, and who’d refused to give them water!

Nick and the horses burst through the doorway.

“Good,” he said, taking the saddle from her hands, swooping to pick up the blanket she’d found lying on it and had pushed aside. “Callie, this is Fast Girl, but don’t let her name scare you. All you have to do is keep your feet in the stirrups and hold onto the horn.”

Her temper, already rising in anger at herself, flared at him, too.

“If Judy couldn’t scare me, I don’t think Fast Girl’s name will,” she said sarcastically.

He threw her a look over his shoulder as she tied the first batch of strings on what would evidently be her saddle, since he was swiftly cinching the first one onto the black horse.

“You showed a lot of sand with that ride, all right,” he said. “Even to attempt it, much less finish it.”

She couldn’t answer. Suddenly her throat felt tight, and an overwhelming urge to weep came over her. Reluctant or not, Nick was helping her now, the way he’d been ever since she’d come to a stop in the godforsaken,
danger-ridden Strip. He was going to take her back to her wagon at least, with a bunch of sacks for fighting the fire, whether he went to help the Pecks or not. She couldn’t expect more than that from a man who only wanted to be left alone.

A man with a hot, sweet kiss that could enrapture her more than that of her true love.

Nick drew the Shifter’s cinch tight, shot the tongue of the buckle into the hole, and looped the end of the latigo through the loop all in one motion. Then he went to saddle Fast Girl. Callie had the sacks tied on and she moved out of his way so as not to slow him down. When he held his hands out to give her a leg up, she was ready.

Maybe she would survive out here, after all, he thought. Her blood was pounding like his with the words “prairie fire” driving the quick beat of her heart; he could see the pulse jumping beneath the porcelain skin of her temple. Her breath was still coming fast and her hands shook a little as he handed her the reins, but she was game. That hair-raising ride on Judy hadn’t scared her into staying on the ground.

He threw himself onto his horse.

“She’ll stay with the Shifter,” he said, nodding at Fast Girl. “Take a deep seat and hang on.”

He kept a sharp eye on her as they started down the creek, watching her slide a little in
the seat and learn to grip with her thighs.

“I do much better with a saddle,” she called.

“You’d do even better than that if we had time to adjust your stirrups.”

When he knew she had her balance, he laid his heels to the Shifter and they pounded faster down the draw. Callie was tired—he could see it, and she was beat up from that nightmare ride to find him—but she didn’t look back. She just clung to the saddle horn and faced whatever lay ahead.

But by the time they reached her wagon and the Peck boy, who had miraculously managed to take that sorry excuse for a plow and cut a shallow, crooked furrow halfway around the vehicle, her shoulders were sagging. She looked smaller and more fragile than she ever had, and she still had a fire to fight.

One glance at the boy’s horse told Nick that it, too, was played out.

“Nick, this is Danny Peck,” Callie said, as they stopped beside the wagon. “Danny, this is Mr. Smith, the man your Papa sent you to find.”

The boy ran to him.

“We seen the smoke,” he said breathlessly. “My pa says will you please help, ‘cause it’s a monstrous big fire on the claim south of us.”

He turned toward his horse, then turned back to look at Nick with big eyes full of fear.

“Likely it’s on our land by now.”

Nick’s gut contracted. Peck was dumping this kid’s life into his hands, and no telling how many more, and the man didn’t know Nick from Adam’s off ox.

It was too late to get out of it, though. He had come back with Callie, the fire was eating up the grass on its way toward them, and he was in for it now.

“Here, you have to have a fresh mount,” he said, trying not to look into the boy’s trusting blue eyes or get to know his face. “Callie can ride with me.”

Nick sidepassed the Shifter to Fast Girl’s side and plucked Callie from the saddle.

He realized that second that he’d made a terrible mistake. All he wanted, fire or no fire, was to pull her into his arms and kiss her again.

For comfort. Only for that. It must be that he needed the comfort of her closeness, because he was trapped in this situation he’d sworn would never catch him again.

Now how weak and stupid was that?

“Ride behind me,” he said, and helped her get settled astride on the blanket while the Peck boy clambered up into the saddle she’d just left.

She didn’t put her arms around his waist or hold onto him at all. He glanced around as he smooched to the Shifter and saw she had hold of the cantle board with both hands.

“Straight south of here,” the Peck boy shouted, and Nick rode out to lead the way.

He would’ve sworn he was in hell long before they rode anywhere near the smoke and the flames of the fire. The whole way, Callie kept sitting like that behind his saddle, trying to hold herself away from him. And that was good—since if she had her arms wrapped around his waist and her breasts pressed against his back, he would’ve felt wilder inside than he already did.

Something about it made him fighting mad, though. It seemed like a gesture of distrust or prissiness or some such damn thing. After she’d kissed him right back with a passion not half an hour ago!

It was his own fault. He should’ve taken the Peck boy up on his horse with him and left her on the mare. Now she’d probably fall off the Shifter after staying on Judy and Fast Girl, too. Well, it’d serve her right for being so schoolteacher-prim about not touching him.

“Hold on,” he called irritably over his shoulder, without looking at her. “And keep your feet out of his flanks.”

The Peck boy, riding Fast Girl beside them, looked over at Nick as he smooched to the Shifter again.

“Lope on,” Danny yelled. “This mare can stay with you.”

Nickajack ignored him. One thing he
didn’t
have to do was buddy up to the neighbor kids.

“Yes, she can,” Callie called back, “she creates such a wind, I almost blew off her back.”

The boy laughed and Nick’s tension eased just a little. But it was a mistake to ask the Shifter for more speed, Nick realized, for it jerked Callie back and then forward, into him. She bumped him again and then finally, at long last, laid her arms around his waist.

Instantly, he wanted to turn and hold her. But at the very same time he wished he could push her away, set her onto the mare, and leave her behind. What the hell was happening to him?

He’d better get his mind off women and onto fires, if he was racing to this one as the savior of the Chikaskia settlers. His mind and his instincts had to be free to guide him right, or he was liable to have sodbusters with nothing but the clothes on their backs camped all over his place.

Now,
that
was a thought that should be sobering enough to do the trick.

About three miles later, they smelled smoke. The Peck boy stood in his stirrups a few yards ahead, waving to three riders galloping toward them from the east.

“There’s my brother,” the boy shouted, as Nick and Callie caught up with him. “He’s brought some neighbors.”