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

her family until I bought my own outfit.Besides, there were thousands of people camped all up and down the line.”
    “But before that. In Kentucky.”
    “Some of my kin was always with me. I shared a room with my Aunt Janey and my littlest brothers.”
    “Where’d your husband sleep? With your big brothers?”
    She hesitated. He thought he’d offended her with such a direct reference to the marriage bed.
    “Oh, well, of course, after I married …”
    Her soft voice trailed off for a moment.
    “… Vance never did leave me, never was gone at night. Until he … passed on.”
    Then, hastily, as if to change the subject, she said, “I don’t think we have to worry about getting through the winter, Nick. If this land can be this hot after the sun’s gone down, it’s too hot to ever be cold.”
    He chuckled.
    “Tell me that again come January. It’ll be just as cold then as it is hot now.”
    “Surely not!”
    “Surely so. And that same week in January it can turn warm enough to spawn a cyclone.”
    “What a place! Does it feel so huge to you that it seems you’re no bigger than an ant?”
    “No. I feel part of it.”
    “What feels natural to me are the mountains, wrapping their arms around me. Theymake me feel safe and this makes me feel … exposed, I guess. Like a chicken about to be caught by a hawk.”
    “You’ll get used to it.”
    If you can survive it
    “Back home, nobody leaves the mountains without some of their kin going with them. I guess everybody feels the same way I do.”
    “Sounds like mountain people don’t trust outsiders.”
    “Flatlanders,” she said. “We don’t. And especially not the government.”
    “Then you’ve come to the right place,” he said. “I have a lot of trouble with that myself. Any kind of government, tribal or …”
    The Shifter’s soft whinny called to him through the dark.
    Nickajack sensed Callie freezing in place.
    “Baxter?” she whispered.
    “Maybe.”
    But they waited and listened for a long time and heard nothing else. Finally Callie let out her breath in a long sigh.
    “Don’t be scared,” Nick teased her, in a whisper. “Fear’s your worst enemy.”
    “I’m not scared!” she whispered back.
    “In a pig’s eye!”
    “Pigs! Why do I always make you think of pigs? If you keep this up, I’m going to start a pig farm right here on the line between your claim and mine.”
    “Go ahead. The wind’s usually out of the south or southwest, so all the smell will blow to your place instead of mine.”
    That made her laugh. Her laugh made him go warm in the pit of his belly.
    They waited a long time more without a single word and without moving, but they heard nothing else except some faraway singing.
    “The horses are settled,” he said, at last. “Nobody’s sneaking around.”
    “I’m going to get the school,” she said fiercely, right out of the blue. “I won’t let anyone else have it. And nobody, sneaking or not, is going to get this claim, either.”
    His jaw clenched.
Damn
the minute he’d jammed her stake into this ground. And damn the fact she had such a one-track mind.
    “I thought you planned to raise pigs,” he said, keeping his voice light.
    She made an unladylike noise of derision.
    “Only if you drive me to it.”
    There was something so trusting, so companionable, in her voice that he felt like the most treacherous snake in the world. He shouldn’t even be here, shouldn’t have been pretending that the connection between them was real and that they’d be riding back and forth sharing supper all winter.
    “No,” she said, “I’ve been thinking that Mr. Peck might want to teach the school in this district. It’s plain he’s an educated man, andhe has all those sons to do his farm work.”
    She sounded so disconsolate that he searched for a way to cheer her. Usually he never bothered to think what another person was feeling, much less try to help. What was it about her?
    “He didn’t strike me as the kind to