Native Wolf (12 page)

But as he stacked the kindling, his eyes wandered again and again to the ragged soles of Claire’s bare feet. The sorry sight made him feel like a monster. He wished he’d noticed before. He would have offered to carry her sooner. He might have even given her his boots, except that they were several sizes too big.

He settled for dragging a broken chunk of log in front of her, patting the top of it and mumbling, “For your feet.”

Claire didn’t dare meet his eyes. She’d had the most troubling thoughts for the past several hours, and she feared they might be written all over her face.

She quietly propped her heels on the log and pulled her petticoat down over her knees and shins. Not that it mattered. She’d been riding with her legs wrapped around the half-breed’s bare waist for the past several hours. Her modesty was beyond repair.

So were her nerves.

She’d had a long time to think as he packed her through the canyon, and she was shocked by the direction of her thoughts. She should have been frightened by his threats of vengeance, concerned about his dishonorable intentions, and worried about what was to become of her. Instead, all she could do was think about was how much he reminded her of Monowano, the handsome Indian hero of her favorite dime novel.

This Two-Son wasn’t quite as uncivilized as the Red-skins in her books, of course. He wore denim trousers instead of buckskins. He had no feather headband or bear claw necklace. And rather than a flintstone, he carried sulfur matches, which made starting a campfire much easier.

Once it was going, she stole a glance at him across the flames. He really was magnificent. Firelight haloed his head and flickered in his black eyes, transforming him into a dark angel, dangerous and intriguing. It illuminated the angular planes of his face and the muscular contours of his chest. And to her morbid fascination, his unbuttoned shirt kept gaping open, exposing his delicious golden skin and reminding her of how warm his body had felt against her thighs.

A delicious shiver went through her bones.

Heavens, what was wrong with her?

He turned the spit, and a whiff of roasting rabbit made her mouth water.

Maybe she was only delirious from hunger.

No, he was definitely doing something to her insides that had nothing to do with her appetite...and it felt curiously pleasant.

It was absurd, of course. He’d kidnapped her. How could she possibly find him attractive? It went against everything she’d ever read. In her novels, heroes were heroes, and villains were villains. Things were always black and white.

The half-breed was distorting her perceptions of good and evil. He spoke of revenge, yet his compassion betrayed him. He seemed obliged to punish her for her imagined crimes, but he grappled with guilt over doing her harm. He was big and brooding and brutal in appearance, yet there was a gentleness about him that belied his stormy countenance. And more than any fictional character she’d ever encountered in a book, he was utterly fascinating.

Was he friend or foe? She wasn’t sure anymore. Perhaps he wasn’t sure himself. All she knew was when he looked at her...like that...she felt it all the way down to her toes.

Chase grimaced. For a woman who had good reason to wish she’d never laid eyes on him, she sure was staring at him a lot. Maybe she was just half-starved. She did have kind of a hungry look in her eyes. And now and then, when she caught the appetizing aroma of the roasting meat, her tongue slipped out to lick her parched lips.

It was hard watching her suffer, knowing he was to blame. She reminded him of the story of his grandfather on the march, wasting away in the name of grief.

Chase wasn’t used to being watched like that, and under her scrutiny, he almost dropped the skewered rabbit onto the coals. Thankfully, he snatched it from the fire, and his callused fingertips scarcely felt the heat. He pulled off a hunk of seared meat, blew gently on the morsel to cool it, then extended it to Claire, relieved to discover that she seemed to like rabbit.

He tore off his own portion with his teeth. The meat was succulent and smoky. He thought he’d never tasted anything so delicious. But then he’d never been so hungry.

They ate in silence. The only sounds were the smacking of their lips, the gently crackling fire, and the tentative chirps of crickets. He offered her another piece when she was done, and then another. Truthfully, he could have eaten the entire rabbit himself. He regularly polished off three whole rabbits at one sitting. But every time he looked up at her and saw the shadows under her eyes and her sunburned cheeks, guilt spoiled his appetite.

So he gave her the rest of the rabbit, pleased when she stripped every last morsel of meat from the tiny bones.

Meanwhile, he gazed into the fire, absently breaking the empty skewer into smaller and smaller pieces.

His mind was bothered.

All his life, he’d trusted the Great Spirit to lead him down the true path. The vision Chase had been given was strong. He’d clearly been led to Paradise. He’d been led to the Parker Ranch. He’d even been led to Parker’s daughter. Why else would she have come downstairs at that exact moment?

Yet he couldn’t help but feel that the Great Spirit was wrong in leading him to seek vengeance. It wasn’t right to hold Claire accountable for her father’s sins, especially when she’d been too young to understand them.

As much as Chase was obligated to grant his grandmother the peace she deserved, he didn’t have the heart to hurt an innocent woman. How the white soldiers on the march could have closed their eyes to the Konkows’ torment—watched women and children starve, grow sick, and die—and do nothing, he didn’t understand. Even he, Chase Wolf, son of the wronged Konkow, couldn’t perpetrate such cruelty in the name of revenge.

But how else could he bring closure to his grandmother’s soul? How could he break free of this hopelessly tangled web without getting himself hanged by Parker, angering the Great Spirit, and bringing the wrath of his grandmother’s
chindin
, her spirit, down upon him?

He tossed the last of the broken stick into the fire and rubbed the crease from his forehead. Right or wrong, his mind was made up. Until he got Claire taken care of and safely home, he would trust his own instincts and save the Great Spirit’s demand for
lenulya,
vengeance, for another day.

He rose, and then hunkered down beside Claire, nodding as he eyed the bottoms of her feet, illuminated now by the fire.

"Let me see," he said, holding out one palm.

She gulped, giving him an unsure glance.

"Come," he repeated, beckoning with his hand.

“I’m fine,” she breathed. Her tone said she was not fine.

He frowned. "I want to look at your cuts."

She stiffened. "I...don’t think that’s a good idea."

“You’re afraid.”

“No.”

“You think I’ll hurt you.”

“No.”

Chase’s mouth worked impatiently. Even the mules he shod were not so headstrong. His calm demeanor was starting to slip. What was it about the stubborn woman that rankled at him so? "Woman. Let me see."

"My name is not Woman," she declared, her spirits remarkably renewed by virtue of a full belly. "My name is Claire.”

He reined in a growl of frustration. "Claire. Let me see," he said with as much calm as he could muster, adding for good measure, "please."

“I really don’t think that’s nec-“

Impatient, he seized her ankle to inspect the damage, ignoring her halfhearted protests and feeble slaps. The top of her foot was scratched from thistles, and scrapes and thin cuts crisscrossed her sole. The taste of shame grew heavy in his mouth.
He
was the cause of those cuts.
He
was the source of her pain.

Carefully, he lowered her foot. Then he retrieved the scraped rabbit skin he’d left hanging in the brush, sat cross-legged by the fire, and drew his knife.

Claire could feel her ankle tingling where the half-breed’s fingers had wrapped around it. The sensation wound its way up her leg and settled brazenly between her thighs. It was a heady feeling—forbidden and dangerous—and yet it filled her with shocking warmth and pleasure.

She watched him through half-lidded eyes as he cut two long, narrow strips from the rabbit skin and split the rest of the hide evenly down the middle, wondering how he could maintain such a calm demeanor while her emotions were whirling like a cyclone through her brain.

She caught her breath as his hand trapped her ankle again, sending that strange tremor up her thigh. He stretched his free arm toward a vine of wild grape that had grown up a nearby scrub oak, clutching a bunch of its leaves in his fist. Murmuring something in his own tongue, he tore the leaves free.

Grasping her injured foot, he carefully pressed the cool, soft leaves over her broken flesh. The gesture brought a flood of memories washing over her. Yoema had done the same thing for her when she’d skinned her knee jumping rope. She’d said the grape leaves helped to heal sores.

He then wrapped the rabbit pelt up around the leaves and over the top of her foot, fur side in, securing the makeshift boot around her ankle with the hide strip. While she sat in numb wonder, he repeated the process for her other foot. Then he sniffed in approval and sheathed his knife, settling back on his haunches to stare off toward the rising moon.

The fur felt marvelously soothing upon her feet. But why, after speaking so vehemently of vengeance last night, would he do her such a kindness?

What an enigma he was. She studied his beautiful face as he frowned into the distance. He was fiercer and bolder than Monowano. He didn’t possess the reserved, gentle, sweet nature of her dime novel hero. But there was something primitive and powerful about his presence, something that made her heart beat fast and drew her to him like lightning to a lightning rod.

“Chase.” He said the word softly, out of the blue.

She blinked. Maybe she’d only imagined he’d spoken, for he was staring blankly at the ground.

"Pardon?"

He picked up a trio of pine needles and drew them lazily through the silt at his feet. “Chase Wolf.”

She drew her brows together, baffled.

He trained his eyes directly upon her then. Reflections of the fire flickered like golden butterflies in their ebony depths, entrancing her. “My name," he explained. "I’m called Chase Wolf."

Claire held her breath, too astonished to speak.

"How do you do?" she finally managed, speaking purely out of habit. She extended her hand nervously, withdrawing it again when she realized the inanity of the gesture. "I’m..."

His eyes narrowed at her discomfiture. Was there a glimmer of amusement in his gaze, or was it a trick of the moonlight?

"Claire Parker," he supplied.

She blushed. Of all times for her to become tongue-tied...

"The daughter of Samuel Parker," he confirmed.

She nodded. His voice was breathy, deep, and warm.

His gaze dropped casually down the front of her camisole, sending an uncomfortable shiver through her.

"And woman of Frank," he added.

She gathered the neckline of her camisole together in one hand. "Fiancée.”

His stare thankfully returned to her face. "Mm. So Frank is not yet shackled to the
yiman-dilwawh
?" When she furrowed her brow in confusion, he translated. "The chattering white woman?"

She opened her mouth to protest, and then decided it was a waste of breath. She didn’t want to have to explain Frank. She also suspected she’d have to choose her words wisely, since she wasn’t sure how long Chase Wolf would put up with actual conversation. There was a long silence. Finally she mustered up enough courage to ask what she most longed to know. "Pardon my bluntness, Mr. Wolf, but exactly what are your intentions?"

He looked off toward the west, where the last of the sun’s lingering glow faintly burnished the indigo drapery of the night sky.

"I wish to speak of the past," he said at last.

"The past?"

"The march to Nome Cult."

She furrowed her brows.

“You’ve never heard of it?” he asked.

She shook her head.

He nodded. “Your father hid it from you.”

“Hid what?”

“What did my grandmother tell you about her people—her husband, her brothers, her children?”

Claire frowned. “She said they were gone.”

His face grew suddenly sad. “Gone.” The word sounded melancholy on his lips. “But she didn’t say where?”

“I assumed she meant they were...dead.”

“Not dead. Not all of them. But they might as well have been. She never saw them again.” He stared into the flames, his mouth grim, his thoughts far away. “I’ll tell you the secret your father has been keeping from you, the story of my grandmother’s people.”

Claire clasped her hands and waited patiently as he tossed the trio of pine needles into the fire and watched them curl and burn.

Then he began his story. “For generations, the Konkow people lived here in peace. Even when the white men came…with their diseases…with their beasts that ate the food of the people…the Konkow were silent.” Atop his thigh, his fist clenched once, then released. “But the whites became greedy. First they wanted all the gold…then all the food…then all the land. And when Konkow lived on the land they wanted, they took it from them.”