Read Online The Renegades: Nick by Genell Dellin - Free Book Online

him.
    Sadness flooded into her eyes.
    “Papa said never to come back as long as I Uve.”
    He waited and waited.
    Finally she continued.
    “Vance … was from the other side of the feud. My kin and his have been fighting for a hundred years.”
    “Why?”
    She shrugged.
    “Who knows? Nobody even asks. It’s the way it is, like the sumac turning red in the fall.”
    Callie turned her face away to hide her tears, and he badly wanted to comfort her. But what comfort could there be for banishment from the land you belonged to? He would feel cut loose from the earth if he had to leave this prairie forever.
    “We have sumac out here, too,” he said awkwardly. “That’ll be one thing that’s the same.”
    She looked at him, her huge green eyes glistening,thanking him for trying to help. A man would always know where he stood with her, because, unlike Matilda, she was one who couldn’t lie worth shucks. Her eyes told the truth.
    “Look, Nick,” she said finally, “let’s forget about everything and eat this good food. I haven’t eaten all day, have you?”
    “No.”
    Food had seemed a travesty this morning, the day of the Run. Now that day was over, and he was eating with the enemy.
    “Pull up two barrels,” she said, “and I’ll fill our plates.”
    So he did, and she did, and they began the meal of fried cured ham and sourdough biscuits and dried apples he had smelled simmering. Suddenly he felt starved.
    “I made fresh, strong tea,” she said, “to keep us awake.”
    He nodded. Poor girl. Didn’t she even have any coffee?
    “Where’s the conversation?” she said, teasing him with a small grin. “Tell me a story.”
    He shook his head.
    “Too many years as a cowboy on this range,” he said. “You eat when you get a chance and do it fast. Talk’s for afterward, if you don’t have to get in the saddle again.”
    “All right,” she said. “Sorry there’s no butterfor the biscuits, but I’ve got honey in the wagon.”
    She started to get up, but he stopped her with an upraised hand.
    “Save it,” he said. “It’ll be mighty fine this winter.”
    “Will you come over and share it with me?”
    He looked at her for a long time. God knew, she was one brave girl.
    “I will,” he said, “and I’ll bring the butter if you’ll tell all your other visitors not to ride up into my canyon.”
    She gasped with delight.
    “You have a milch cow, besides two horses?”
    He nodded. “One thing I always hated about the cow camps was no cream, no milk, no butter.”
    “Wonderful!” she said. “Next time I go to town I intend to trade for some chickens, and then we’ll have eggs, too!”
    A strange feeling twisted his gut. Not only was he eating with the enemy, he was making plans to keep it up all winter. With a woman he was trying to rim out of the Strip. He was losing his mind.
    “Did you hear what I said about the neighbors?”
    “Yes. I’ll explain that you’re an ill-tempered, churlish, shameless, bold-faced Sooner who shoots first and asks questions later.”
    She picked up her tin cup and looked at him over the rim.
    “You don’t want them to see your place? You already built a cabin?”
    “Anybody can see that cabin’s been there since long before I could be called a Sooner.”
    Then, from some impulse he couldn’t explain, he added, “My daddy built it when I was a little boy.”
    She stared at him, transfixed.
    “Then you’re right to be a Sooner,” she cried. “If it was my homeplace, I’d take no chances with it, either!”
    He could see her thinking about it, perhaps trying to imagine this land when the cabin was new.
    “Was he one of the cattlemen who used to lease grazing land in the Strip?”
    “No. He came out here to catch wild horses and never went back to the Nation.”
    “The Nation? Was he a Cherokee?”
    He nodded.
    “An eighth or so. My mother was nearly fullblood.”
    He clamped his mouth shut. Nothing like confessing to being a Sooner and an Indian to a