Agnes and the Renegade (Men of Defiance) (10 page)

“I tell visual stories because they are important. We should never forget some things, but forgetting is the easiest of all things we do.”

He looked back at her. “No, it is not.” He started toward the tent exit, saying as he left, “I have brought back your pie dish.”

Aggie watched him step out into the sunshine, watched how the light hit his hair and feathers. She followed him outside. “I made a coffee cake this morning. Would you like to have a piece with me?”

He paused, facing her as he studied her. “I will eat.”

Aggie smiled at him. She led the way from her tent to her house. Inside, she poured water into the basin and washed her hands. She still had paint on them, but they were otherwise clean. She wasn’t finished working for the day, so it didn’t make any sense to scrub them more thoroughly. She gathered dishes and turned to the table to find Chayton standing outside the threshold of the front door. He looked annoyed.
 

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“You have invited me to eat with you, but you have not invited me inside. It would be rude of me to presume an invitation.”

“Oh.” Aggie straightened. “You’ve already been in my home. Several times. I didn’t think that was a boundary you recognized.” He said nothing further, nothing in his defense. She smiled. Perhaps Indians didn’t tease. “Chayton, please come in. And forgive my rudeness. I rarely have visitors and often forget my manners.”

He stepped inside, then promptly ignored her while she put coffee on the stove and stoked the fire. She fetched the butter from her keeping box, along with blueberry jam, watching him from the corner of her eye as she worked. He was moving around her small cabin, looking at each painting.
 

“What are you going to do with these?”
 

Aggie leaned against the doorjamb. “I hope to arrange a show in Denver. I’d like to be able to sell some of them.”

“My wife was an artist. She traded with Logan every year.”

“What was her medium?” Aggie asked, but her question confused Chayton; he frowned at her. “What type of artist was she?”

He stroked the beaded strip of rawhide that bound the two sides of his breastplate together. “She did beadwork. She decorated all of our garments. All summer she would prepare the finest skins and all winter she would work them into items for trade and for us to wear.”

Chayton looked at her, his eyes swimming. She wondered how long he’d been mourning his wife—the pain seemed as fresh to him as her own loss was to her. “When did she die?”

He faced the painting in front of him. She could see his struggle for control. “Four summers ago.”

Aggie sighed. “I lost my parents when I was little, and my adoptive father earlier this year. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about them. I was hoping it got easier.”

He met her gaze. “It does not.”

The rich aroma of fresh, hot coffee filled the air around them. Aggie went to pour their cups. “Do you like sugar in yours?”

“Yes.” His answer was immediate—and far nearer to her than she’d expected. She hadn’t heard him move from the back of the cabin. She poured the coffee, then brought the cake over. He stood beside the table, giving no indication that he knew what was expected of him.
 

Aggie smiled and gestured toward the chair opposite her own. “Please, have a seat.” She knew how thoroughly indecent it was for her to entertain in her state of undress, but he seemed to take no notice of it, and if she made anything of it now, she might make him aware of just how little she’d been wearing. And, a bigger concern, he might leave before she had a chance to convince him to sit for her.

“Shall I serve you?” she asked, remembering his dining customs and hers were different. He was politely deferring to her lead. When he nodded, she cut a large square of the coffee cake with its heavy streusel topping and set it on a plate for him, then pushed the butter and jam his way. She cut a smaller piece for herself. When he hadn’t made any attempt to add condiments to his serving, she added them to hers, then cut into it with her fork.
 

“Do you like it?” she asked. He’d nearly consumed the whole piece in three bites. She pushed the cake dish toward him when he nodded. “Have some more.” While he ate, she studied his attire. He was bare-chested today, wearing his choker, breastplate, and necklaces. His hair was parted on the side and worn in two ponytails, both of which had been wrapped in a red fabric and lay in front of his shoulders. He had the lean and powerful build of a man of action. Her gaze traveled down his arm to his hands, which had ceased moving. She glanced at him, curious about his stillness.

“You eye me as if you will eat me.”
 

Aggie laughed. “You are so pretty—”

“And you insult me?”

She smiled at his reaction. “You are pretty
and
fearsome. I’m curious how both can exist in one person.”

“I am
Lakȟóta
. I am a warrior.”

“I’ve seen many warriors among my people. They don’t look as you do.” She studied him another moment. “Will you sit for me?” He frowned at her. She clarified: “Let me paint your portrait.”

“No.” He took the last bite of his second piece.

“I’ll cook for you.”

“You cannot create art and cook.”

“I cook for me.” Sometimes. When she thought of it—when eating was an absolute necessity. The look he gave her refuted that. Just how closely had he been watching her? “Please?”

“Why do you want to paint me?”

“To tell your story.”

“You don’t know my story.”

“Your story is in your eyes, in your face, in your clothing, in your posture. You are your story, and I would very much like to help others to see it.”

Chayton sipped the last of his coffee. He looked at the coffee cake. Aggie wrapped it up in a tea towel and gave it to him. “I will think on your request,” he told her.

“Thank you.” She followed him outside and around the house to where he’d left his horse. The yellow afternoon sun caught him standing next to his horse as he lifted his horse’s reins. “Chayton. Wait. Don’t move.” Though he paused out of curiosity and not compliance, he’d stilled long enough for the image of him standing with his horse to set in her mind. She shut her eyes, locking that sight away for a moment, giving her brain a chance to remember what she’d just seen.
 

When she opened her eyes, he was gone. She hurried to her tent, searching for her sketchpad so that she could rough out the subject of her next painting.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Several days later, she had a new four-foot-wide by three-foot-tall painting of Chayton standing in front of his horse. The colors weren’t ones she usually favored; they were the washed-out afternoon tones of ochre, tan, and beige with the brilliant spots of cobalt, green, and white in Chayton’s beadwork cuffs, and the white coat with black splashes of his horse. She’d changed out the background, setting the tree-lined creek behind him. She’d captured the mood of the afternoon sun, the way it hit Chayton and his horse. The earth tones made the brilliant blue sky, with its white clouds, stand in sharp contrast.
 

Tired from long days on her feet, she indulged in a soaking bath that evening, then ate a small bowl of the stew she’d started earlier. She was preparing for bed when she heard a horse in front of the house.

“Agkhee Hamilton. I would speak with you.”

Chayton! She grabbed a shawl and hurried to open the front door.
 

He lifted something from the bench and handed it to her. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t wake me.” She took the soft bundle from him. It was a folded and rolled deerskin. “What’s this?”

“You wanted my story.” He nodded to the bundle.

Aggie opened the door wider. “Won’t you come in?”
 

He stepped inside, lingering by the door.
 

“Are you hungry? The stew is still hot.”

“I am hungry.”

“Sit down. I’ll get you a bowl. I was making tea for myself. Would you like a cup?”

“Yes.”

He sat at the table. She dished out a big bowl of the stew she’d made for supper. She was keeping it warm so that she could have it for breakfast. Besides, even though the days were brutally hot, the nights still became quite cool. The warmth from the stove would be welcome through the night. She set a cup of tea and a jar of honey on the table for him. Then she moved a lamp to the table so that she could see what he’d given her.

She unrolled the bundle carefully and saw the pictograph it held—an oval path that wound clockwise in widening rotations, filling the entire skin one figure at a time. Some of the pictures were people, some were tipis, some were horses or other animals, some were warriors, some were soldiers.

She looked in awe at Chayton. “You did this?”

He nodded. “I am not an artist, like you or my wife. Or the historian in my band who counts the winters. And it is not an annual record. It shows the significant things in my life, three or four of them a year.”

Doing a quick calculation, she guessed Chayton was somewhere in his mid-thirties. Aggie sat down and leaned close to the light. Starting with the first image, which was of a hawk, she studied each image. “Why a hawk?”

“I was named after the hawk. My full name is Hawk That Watches.”

She traveled along the path of his life. Some pictures she understood, some she didn’t. “You remember all of these events?”

“Not all of them. The early ones were told to me.”

Aggie studied the pictograph, touching some of the images, trying to understand them. “Will you read it to me?”

“Not tonight. Tonight, you will consider it so that when we speak about it, you will know what questions you have.”

Aggie looked up, a smile slowly working its way across her face. “I’d like that.” It was nice having Chayton visit with her, she realized. He didn’t know enough about white people’s customs to know she was an utter disgrace in her world. No respectable woman would receive a male visitor in her perpetual state of undress, much less at night and alone. Especially not a renegade Lakota warrior. And no respectable woman would try to make a life out of her art. As much as people admired her work and paid good prices for it, she hadn’t been able to sign her paintings with her full name while she’d been apprenticed to Theo—even when the works were ones she’d completed for herself and not for his clients. It was a simple truth that works by a woman artist carried less value.

She studied the man sitting at her table. The light from the kerosene lanterns, even with two of them on the table, was dim, casting a soft, warm glow over everything in the room. Chayton’s features were harsh. Dark eyes, straight, low brows, high cheekbones. His lips were wide and rounded, indented at the corners. Creases lined the sides of his mouth, others feathered out from his eyes and others made furrows in his forehead. He was always neatly groomed when she’d seen him. No late-night shadow hid his pronounced chin or the rigid line of his jaw. His nose was straight, thin but triangular and masculine. His dark hair was thick and long. He took care that it was combed and styled in different ways that fascinated her.
 

Her gaze returned to his eyes. They were the most eloquent eyes she’d ever seen. She looked for such things in her subjects. It was what Theo had loved most about her work—the personality and humanity she revealed in the people she painted.

“Will you let me paint you?” she asked, still watching him.

“Yes.”

She smiled. “Thank you.”

“How do I do it?”

“Come here tomorrow morning. Early. I will make breakfast for you, then we’ll get started.”

She followed him when he walked to the door. She touched his arm, then pulled her hand away quickly. She was painfully aware of his masculinity—all the differences between their bodies. His height. The coiled strength in his lean body. The warm glow of his tanned skin. The wild scent of him, a mix of dust and leather, sunshine and sage. He was too much for her senses. And tomorrow, she would get to paint him.

“Thank you for the pictograph. I look forward to the time we can discuss it.”

He nodded, studying her as he stood at the threshold. He murmured something in Lakota, which she didn’t understand and he didn’t translate, then he stepped outside to his waiting pony.

* * *

While Chayton ate the breakfast she made for him the next morning, Aggie went out to arrange things in the tent for the sitting. She put a stool against a section of the north tent wall. She wanted him to face east so that the light would be the most favorable during the morning. She’d set up the easel, prepared a canvas, and laid out her brushes, paints, and other supplies.

The white canvas of the tent diffused the day’s bright light, casting a soft glow over Chayton’s features when he came out to sit for her. She stood next to her easel, considering him. “Could you turn toward me a bit more?” He inched around. Still, he wasn’t set up quite right. She went to adjust him. He wore his hair parted in the middle, loose except for two thin braids at the front. Two eagle feathers decorated the back of his hair. Both had thin strips of hair tied to their tips. She moved his hair so that it split over his shoulder, with the long braid nearest her visible. She closed her mind to its silky texture. She tapped his right thigh. “Raise this leg and lower the other.” His leggings had an intricate panel of beadwork along the seam that she wanted focus on.
 

She lifted his arm, adjusting where his wrist rested against his leg. The warmth of his bare skin and the weight of his arm made her aware of him in an uncomfortably intimate way. She glanced up at him, wondering what it was about him that was causing such a reaction within her. She’d painted men before, but hadn’t been aware of them except in the context of a composition—the colors that would be needed to express their image, how light played on their skin, hair, and clothes.

With Chayton, it was something different entirely. He didn’t avoid her eyes. He had an unusual intensity about him, like a tree that was still when all the others around it fluttered in the breeze. She pulled her hands away from his arm and backed away, seeking the safety and distance her easel provided.