Agnes and the Renegade (Men of Defiance) (2 page)

Aggie shifted to pull her sketchpad from her bag. When her attention was diverted, men she hadn’t noticed before gathered around her Indian. He gave each of the three a dismissive look before his gaze returned to her. They shouldered into him, blocking his forward progress.
 

“Keep your eyes to yourself, chief,” one warned.

“You got no business looking at a white woman,” another said.

The Indian’s expression hardened, as if he knew what was coming. His gaze was on her, but his focus was with the men. Then one of them shoved a fist into his stomach, hard enough to lift him off his feet before he doubled over. Another man kicked his legs out from under him. Her Indian looked up, holding her gaze as he fell to his knees. He didn’t fight back, didn’t try to protect himself or deflect their blows.

“No!” Aggie shouted, jumping to his rescue. “Stop this! He did nothing wrong.” She tried to pull one of the men away from him but was shoved back against the railing. She hit her head on the support beam and cried out. Her Indian did fight back then. He punched the man who’d struck her, hitting him in the groin. When the man bent over, her Indian captured his face and slammed him against the wooden slats of the boardwalk. The others intensified their fight until the door to the store slammed open. Mr. Taggert entered the fray, pulling men off her Indian, giving him a chance to regain his feet. Others joined the fight, so his reprieve was short-lived. It seemed just the two of them against far too many men. Mr. Kessler came out of the store with a shotgun. He walked to the edge of the boardwalk and fired into the air. Twice. The fight had spilled down the steps and out into the street. Men were so covered with the wet muck of the muddy road that they were barely recognizable.
 

One of them was the sheriff. She hadn’t noticed him join the fight. He was cleaner than the others, so perhaps he’d come to break it up. As she watched, the sheriff gave Mr. Taggert a hand up from the muck, then he reached one down to her Indian. He accepted the help up, then swiped the sludge from an arm, but it did little to clear it off his buckskin tunic. She braced herself for when his gaze returned to hers, but he didn’t look at her again.

Chayton stood in the middle of the road with the town’s slime dripping off him. The sheriff was pulling men out of the mud, dispersing the crowd. Chayton hated these people. Hated the town. Hated
her
, the one whose blue eyes never flinched upon seeing him. Had the men not stopped him, he might have done the unthinkable: he might have touched her. Never, in the long, empty years since his wife Laughs-Like-Water was murdered, had he ever been drawn to another woman. And never to a white woman.

He shut that thought away. He wasn’t drawn to this one; she’d been rude to stare and he’d merely wished to teach her a lesson.
 

Logan’s wife, Sarah, came out of the store, hot on the heels of his daughter, White Bird. The girl rushed to the railing, gripping it in a white-knuckled hold. She smiled at him and looked ready to fly down the stairs and come to him. He let himself watch her a second longer, seeing in her the image of her mother, so beautiful and kind-hearted and brave. And, thanks to white men like those who’d just attacked him, so dead.

He turned his back on his daughter, halting her forward motion. Such a display of emotion was unseemly and dangerous among the people of this town. It would be best for her to forget he ever existed. Logan walked to the stairs where Chayton’s pack of deerskins lay. “You want the usual trade?” Logan asked in Chayton’s native
Lakȟóta
language.

Chayton nodded, irritated to need yet more help from his friend.
 

“I’ll bring it out to you at the bluffs tomorrow. You best head on back. We’ll be right behind you if you hit any trouble.”

Chayton drew his horse away from the others at the hitching post. With a quick hop, he leapt up to his pony’s back. He sent a last look toward his daughter, who was regarding him now in a calm, disinterested way. He nodded at her, then turned his horse toward the edge of town, letting him stretch out and speed away from the pit white men called a town.

CHAPTER TWO

It was late afternoon when Aggie began worrying they’d somehow gotten off track—the cabin was such a long way from Defiance, more than half a day’s ride. The spring rains that had churned Defiance into a mud pit had made the plains blossom in color. The road was barely distinguishable in the lush spring growth of grasses and wildflowers. They went over a small rise, and at last she saw her cabin about a half-mile from the road.
 

The cabin itself was tiny, made of mud brick covered with stucco. On one side of the front door, firewood was neatly stacked. On the other side sat a bench. A well stood halfway between the house and corral. She could just make out a small outhouse behind the house as they drove up. Her agreement with Mr. Taggert included his providing a horse and its feed. Though the corral was empty, a six-foot-high pile of hay was stored inside a small fenced pen near the corral.
 

Mr. Taggert helped them out of the wagon. Aggie looked around at the sea of prairie colors surrounding the cabin, finding herself eager to start working.

“Well?” Mr. Taggert prodded, a hint of tension on his face.
 

She smiled at him. “It’s wonderful. Exactly what I was looking for.”
 

Mrs. Taggert drew her foster daughter back against her, and her hands folded over the little girl’s pinafore. “White Bird and I came down a few days ago to straighten the cabin and bring fresh linens, but let’s go inside to be sure you have everything you need.”

Mr. Taggert opened the door for them, then started to unload Aggie’s crates and trunks. It took a minute for her eyes to adjust from the bright sun to the dim interior of the cabin, but when they did, she was thrilled with what she saw. The one-room cabin was larger than it seemed outside. In the far corner was a large bed with a pine headboard and footboard. The bed was made, and a stack of additional linens and blankets sat on the foot of it. There was a dresser with a pitted mirror and a large bowl and pitcher on it. Catty-corner to the door was a fireplace with a swinging iron pot arm. A square table with two mismatched chairs was pushed against the wall near the door. Another stack of linens was piled on it—tablecloths, dishtowels, and potholders. The walls inside were whitewashed stucco that had crumbled in some places, revealing the earthen bricks. A dry sink stood between the fireplace and the stove with a big tin washbasin on it. The cabinet held a full complement of the necessary pots and utensils. Cutlery was neatly arranged in the drawers. Stacked next to the fireplace was a pile of splintered wood for the oven. An ax hung to the right of the front door. Three kerosene lanterns were placed strategically about the room.
 

“This is wonderful, Mrs. Taggert. I think everything I’ll need is here.”

White Bird lifted the bed skirt. “We brought you a tub, too, because the creek out back isn’t very big.”

“And we had a small keeping box put in under the table,” Mrs. Taggert said as she pointed in that direction. “It’s insulated with sawdust. It won’t keep dairy goods cool for long, especially not with the summer heat coming in, but it will let you get a few days out of the dairy items we send down each week.”

Aggie smiled; her cabin was perfect. The best thing was that there was enough space in the middle of the room for her to set up several easels and spread her work out, space to let her paintings dry and set.
 

“We’ll let you get settled now,” Mr. Taggert said from the doorway. “I’ll bring your horse down tomorrow. If there’s anything else you need, let me know or ask my men when they bring your supplies down each week.”

Aggie made a simple supper of eggs and biscuits, then went outside to eat later that evening. She sank onto the bench in front of her house, exhausted but happy. The opportunity to spend a summer in this place didn’t exist even five years ago. It wouldn’t have been safe for a white person, alone, here in what had been the heart of Sioux country.
 

When she finished eating, she set her plate aside and listened to the sounds of nature around the cabin. It was quiet but not silent. Crickets, robins, larks, and sparrows chattered, busy in the fading light. A large hawk soared, his plaintive cry hovering overhead. The breeze, which was a tad too stiff to be called a breeze, made a sound as it cut around the cabin—not whine or a sigh, but maybe a bit of both. Down by the creek, the old cottonwoods’ big leaves flapped in the wind, slapping against each other.
 

The evening was cool, the sun low in the sky. The heat she’d expected when they left Defiance had never quite arrived. She wondered if the weather would step back into winter or jump forward into summer. Either was possible this time of year. She pulled her shawl tighter about herself. She’d eaten late—it had taken her a while to organize her gear. And she’d spent hours sketching the Indian she’d seen in town. She closed her eyes and let herself dwell in the heat of his gaze. No one had ever looked at her the way he did. What would have happened had the fight not broken out?

When she opened her eyes, the evening’s gloaming light had softened the world around her, coloring the clouds and land in pastels far more beautiful than anything she could paint.

She walked a small circle around her house, looking at the expansive land surrounding the cabin. Off to the north, she could see a line of sandstone bluffs. Perhaps that would be the first area she would go exploring once Mr. Taggert brought her horse.

After her walk, she prepared to retire for the night, drawing water from the pump to fill the pitchers in the house and the water kettle for the morning. She made sure the front door was barred, then did a quick sponge bath and changed into a nightgown. The windows had shutters that could be closed from inside the house, an oddity she thought might have been left over from the Indian wars, which put her in mind of the man she’d seen in town so many hours ago.

She brought a lamp to her dresser, then retrieved her charcoal and sketchpad, setting to work, filling more pages with the things she’d seen in town. Her Indian. The way he’d looked on his black-and-white pony. The men who’d attacked him. The fight. And afterward, his cryptic, angry conversation with Mr. Taggert.
 

At some point, she fell asleep, the sketchpad still on her lap, her pencil still in her hand. When she woke, she didn’t know whether she had dozed a few minutes or if it had been longer. She doused the lamp, then lay still and listened, wondering if something had awakened her.
 

In the dark isolation of her new home, sounds were amplified. The wind in the eaves outside. Distant coyotes. Strange screeches and calls she hadn’t heard during the daylight hours—any of which might have been what roused her. She shut her eyes, trying to force herself to relax and go back to sleep. As eerie as things sounded, she reminded herself there was no such thing as ghouls; everything out there was natural, not unnatural. She had nothing to fear.
 

Her cabin had three windows: one over her bed on the south wall, the other two on the front and back walls. There was no window on the north wall because of the fireplace. The windows were closed but not shuttered. She lay on her side, her gaze bouncing between the east and west windows. She didn’t know what she was on the alert for; perhaps it was the complete lack of human noise that irritated her senses. In the warehouse where she’d lived with Theo in Denver during the last year, the streets were alive well into the wee hours of morning, and then again throughout the day. It was an industrial section of town, but a night never passed when there wasn’t a fight or drunken brawl of some type, or even just the noise of people passing by.
 

She missed Theo. She’d been so frightened when he brought her from the orphanage. He’d shown her around his expansive Georgetown art studio where he lived in Washington, D.C., then told her he expected her to see to the cooking and cleaning for the two of them. She was only twelve, but she’d helped in the kitchen at the orphanage since she’d arrived four years earlier. He’d chosen her because of her domestic skills, he’d informed her.
 

Aggie sighed, closing her mind to the memories that would not aid her now. She’d become expert at adapting to major life shifts. She’d done it when her parents had died and she’d gone to the orphanage. She’d done again it when Theo brought her to his home. This was yet another new beginning. Each had led to something better. This would, too.
 

The moonlight dimmed briefly, darkening her room. She sat up in bed, wondering if she’d imagined a shadow moving outside. She blinked and shifted her gaze from the windows in the main area of the cabin to the one above her bed. As she watched, something walked in front of it, briefly blocking the light.

Something tall and solid.

She gathered herself close to the wall, hoping whoever was looking in wouldn’t see her. But they could from the other windows. Summoning her courage, she slowly raised herself to look out of the window over her bed. The moonlight was bright, casting sharp shadows over the outhouse and chopping block. Everything was calm and still outside. Perhaps the shadow she’d seen had been a cloud slipping over the moon.

She closed the shutters and bolted them. It took her senses a moment to acclimate to the new darkness now that most of the moonlight was blocked by the shutters. She held herself still and tried to calm her breathing as she watched the other two windows, her ears straining for any unusual sounds. She needed to close and bolt the shutters on the other windows as well, but she dreaded crossing the room. For several minutes, while she waited and listened, there was no movement and no strange sounds outside. In fact, everything had gone very, very quiet.

Gathering her courage, she climbed off her bed and crossed her cabin, hurrying to the first window. She paused against the wall, then spun around and slammed the shutters closed. After running to the other side of the cabin, she grabbed the shutters and was about to repeat the action when a face appeared in the window. A painted face. An Indian warrior’s face. She screamed and banged the shutters closed, dropping the bolt over them. She backed away from the window, scrambling into the center of her cabin. Her gaze bounced around the small space as she sought safe refuge, but there was none to be had.