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

rank stranger. What was it about Callie Sloane that had loosened his tongue?
    “No need to noise the word ‘Indian’ around any more than the word ‘water,’ “ he said. “Only eighty allotments were set aside forCherokees, and my claim wasn’t one.”
    She answered him with a solemn, thoughtful nod. Her eyes were darker than usual and her face more pale in the deepening dusk. Its shape was so pure, its look so full of light against the night, that he wanted to gaze at her forever.
    If he did, the fact that he’d just handed her enough information to cause him to lose his home would never again cross his mind. He wouldn’t be able to think of anything but her.
    Such a storm of feelings rose in him, he couldn’t have sorted them out if there’d been a gun at his head. He put down his fork and stood up.
    “I need to see to my horse,” he said, and left her.
    He walked out past his horse and then hers and her mule, all the way to the edge of the arroyo that the creek deepened with every flash flood. His heart kept on pounding hard and fast, rolling in his chest like ominous thunder.
    Looking out across his beloved prairie made it worse. Campfire lights glowed everywhere, sparkling with a taunting cheerfulness that tore him up. Why, he could even hear voices and faint faraway music on the night breeze!
    Last night he’d been the only human being for miles as the grass waved in the wind and the wild animals settled into their dens.
    This
night, people were everywhere, their plows in hand. Soon the face of Mother Earth would blow away.
    Fences would be next. Lots of fences—more, many more than the cattlemen who’d leased the land had ever built. There’d be enough fences to pile the wild horses up against them when the snow and sleet flew, enough to prevent them from drifting to shelter in the hollows of the land.
    He had known this and he had fought it and he had hated it for so long that the bitterness ran wild in his blood. Nickajack waited for the old rage to rise in him.
    Instead came a despair that spread deeper into his bones with every breath he took. How could the sun have set as always? Why hadn’t it blazed down and burned the earth to a crisp? How could the wind die down into a breeze tonight instead of growing into a curling, twisting tornado that would clean the ignorant farmers off this land and blow them back to wherever they had come from?
    But the most mysterious question of all was how could one of those ignorant farmers, on this sorry, devil-spawned day of the Run, reach out and touch him in the heart?
    They carried his saddle blanket and her quilt, both of his handguns and his long gun, and a canteen of water up to a rolling rise.Nick got them situated at the feet of the few scraggly trees so they wouldn’t be silhouetted against the horizon in the moonlight.
    “We can see your flag and your marker from here,” he said, keeping his voice quiet so it wouldn’t carry out into the night. “Imagine a circle around us, take that half of it, and watch for movement against the sky.”
    They settled in, carefully sitting far enough apart that they weren’t touching. Callie looked east and north, he west and south. He handed over the extra gun.
    “Here’s a handgun you can use,” he said, “but I’m hesitating to let you have it.”
    “Why? I told you I can shoot.”
    “That’s what I’m afraid of,” he drawled. “I know you’ll at least try, and
this
gun works.”
    They chuckled very quietly, like conspirators up to no good.
    “Proper or not, I’m glad you stayed here tonight,” she blurted, as if she, too, felt the camaraderie. “I’ve never spent a night alone in my life, and out here in this huge, open place with claim jumpers prowling around it wouldn’t be a good time to start.”
    It sounded so preposterous, he laughed.
    “You what?”
    “Never spent a night alone. On the train, there were other people in the car. At Arkansas City, Dora took me in and let me camp with