Agnes and the Renegade (Men of Defiance) (6 page)

She hadn’t regretted leaving the orphanage for Theo’s studio. The work he did was fascinating. And he’d been very grateful for the food she cooked and the way she kept his living space neat. She’d watched the way he lost himself in his work, his concentration unshakeable. She’d learned early on stews and soups were the best foods to feed him because she could keep them warm until he was ready for breaks during his work.

When he came home that day and found her collapsed on the floor, a replica of his work on her easel and his paints opened and spread about, well, she’d been terrified how he would react. She was only sixteen. If he put her out on the street, she’d have nowhere to go. He’d stared at her much as the Indian had just done as he squatted by her door, as if she were a different kind of animal. Not a human. She’d felt ill that morning.

Theo had walked to the palette tray that was flipped upside down, its expensive paints spread against the floor, wasted. He picked it up and set it back on the table. She’d started crying silently. How very badly did she want to stay with him and learn from him, though she knew he’d never take on an apprentice—especially not a female student. He scraped the mess off the floor and tossed it in a waste bin. Then he took hold of her arms and lifted her to her feet.
 

“Follow me,” he’d ordered. He pointed out several different areas on the floor where oil paints had smeared into the rough wood planks of the studio floor. “See this? And this? I speak from experience when I say it is much better if you put the palette down before sleeping.”

“I’m sorry…”

He glared at her, fervent emotion slicing across his usually stoic demeanor. “Never apologize for your art. We’ll begin your lessons tomorrow. Clean up in here before you leave.”

For the next several years, she’d spent long hours practicing his techniques, learning about color selection and creation, composition—everything he’d taken a lifetime to learn. He’d brought in his artist friends to teach her their techniques. And then, in the last few years of his life, she’d increasingly had to help him with his commissioned pieces as his arthritis had grown severe, twisting his hands into painful knots. The disease was insidious, stealing his ability to create art, which for him was like a slow suffocation. They’d moved west, hoping the drier air would ease his symptoms, as so many people reported it had for their ailments. She and Theo were not so fortunate.

The night before he died, he showed her his will, listing her as his sole heir. He left her everything, including the new Denver warehouse where they lived. He’d told her now that she knew how to paint, it was time she went out to find the stories she wanted to create. He’d told her that he’d made his way in the world painting the stories others commissioned, but he wished she would find the stories
she
wanted to paint. He said they’d come from the soul and would be so very much more powerful than the work he did.

They’d argued that point. She’d always been a fan of his work. It was important to give a voice to those who couldn’t create. Yes, his work had been commissioned, but it was all very important. It was their last argument.
 

God, she missed him, she thought as she looked her palette; she’d remembered to set it down. She smiled, feeling weepy again. The tips of her fingers were sticky, the oils still tacky. She sighed in disgust.
 

Remembering the dream of her deadly visitor, she flashed a glance toward the empty doorway, feeling a strange mixture of relief and loss that she’d only imagined him. She reached for the tin cup sitting in front of her and emptied it. She pushed herself to her feet, then went to clean the paint off her hands with a little rag dipped in turpentine. She was slowly returning to the real world. How long had she been lost in her creative bubble? Theo had shown her how to stave off those artistic seizures by giving herself time with her art every day. In the busy weeks since his passing, she’d not been able to do that, so she wasn’t surprised she’d succumbed as she had.
 

Outside, she drew deep breaths of fresh air as she checked on her horse. She remembered feeding and watering him twice, but wasn’t sure how long it had been since she’d last seen to him. He was munching on a fresh pile of hay. His water trough was full. She frowned as she looked into the corral, trying to remember if she’d been out earlier in the day.

Aggie sighed. Looking down at herself, she realized she was in the same clothes she’d been in for several days. Her painting apron, a heavy canvas smock, was covered with fresh stains on top of the old. At least she’d had the sense to put it on before she went under. It was time to clean up, take stock of her work—see if any of it was usable. Sometimes, the early pieces on a project weren’t. They ended up being mere studies of a subject. She reminded herself not to judge them too harshly—even her studies sometimes brought a fair price. She needed a volume of work to select from if she hoped to get into a show at the end of the summer.

She fetched the water buckets from the house and filled them at the pump. She moved the small paintings from the dry sink and the larger one from the stove so she could heat water for a bath. The paint was still curing, so she couldn’t stack the canvases against each other. She’d painted four works. Not a bad start. While the water was heating, she dug out the toolbox she’d brought with her. Taking out a hammer and a box of nails, she picked places along two bare walls where she could hang the paintings to dry.

She dragged the big tin tub into the center of the room, then poured several buckets of well water into it while she waited for the water on the stove to boil. She drew the shutters closed on the windows and locked the door, then lit a couple of kerosene lamps. She stripped down to her underclothes and poured several pots of hot water into the tub. She put more water on to heat, then gathered a towel and bar of soap, dropped her chemise and drawers to the floor, and slipped into the tub. Most days she only sponge-bathed, so dipping her entire body into a full bath was luxurious and decadent.
 

She leaned back against the edge of the tub and looked up at her four paintings. There were several different ways to examine art. One was to gauge its emotional impact; how does it make one feel? What was the mood of the lighting in the work? What was the message or story the work wants to tell? Another was to look at it critically from a stylistic standpoint. Did the work adhere to the conventions of its genre? Was the subject accurately represented within that genre’s technique? Were the colors right? Was the texture, the depth, the content right?

Aggie closed her eyes and cleared her mind, mentally selecting the filter she would use to see the paintings. Light. How was her use of light? The room was dim, shuttered as it was to the morning light. She got out of the tub and moved the table under the paintings against the wall, then rearranged two lamps on it to illuminate the work. She added a third lamp, then stepped back into the tub and studied the paintings.
 

She’d done two of the western vista she’d selected, with the distant mountains as seen from her hill. One captured the area at sunrise, the other at sunset. She’d done another large work of the southern vista, looking at the sagebrush and creek bed. The fourth, a smaller canvas, was of the eastern view, the grasses and endless sky as lit by the setting sun behind her on the hill. These four works were done in a realistic style, almost photographic in their accuracy. But unlike photographs, whose content spoke only through shades of gray and sepia tones, these works showed a slice of the infinite range of colors painted across the sky and the earth. They did a good job of using the light at their particular times of day.

Aggie took up the soap and washcloth, switching her focus from the paintings to giving herself a thorough cleaning. She rinsed off, then shut her eyes as she selected another filter to examine her paintings through. Had she selected the right composition—the correct content and angle for the story she wanted the paintings to portray?
 

The water was rapidly cooling. She got out of the tub and fetched a pot of newly heated water and poured it into the tub, then stepped back in and faced the paintings with her eyes closed. Sitting up, she opened her eyes, looking at each work in turn. Of the four, the only one she liked the content of was the smaller, eastern-facing work. The others needed something in the foreground that would anchor the great distance represented by the space between the viewer’s perspective and the horizon. She tilted her head, considering whether something could be added to the works to fix the deficiency. She’d take a ride out there later today to see what options she might have. Maybe a close-up of sagebrush.

She leaned back, sinking under the water to wash her hair. She let the water close in over her face. Holding her breath, she listened to the sound the water made in the tub as she moved around, clearing her mind for another look at her work, relaxing for a few seconds until a thought slammed into her mind.
 

The Indian!

She hadn’t been alone this morning, hadn’t dreamed or imagined his presence. He’d been there, watching her. And he’d given her water. She sat up, splashing water out of the bath. The door was still barred, the window shutters still closed. She was alone now, but she hadn’t been this morning. She looked over at the tin cup sitting on the table. It had been on the floor when she woke, next to her. She remembered lying down on the floor by her easel. She hadn’t fetched any water before giving in to the exhaustion weighing her down. Her door had been closed then. When she woke, he was there, hunched down, staring at her.

A chill swept down her damp skin. She’d narrowly escaped a disastrous outcome by awakening when she had.

CHAPTER FIVE

When she went out to the hill the next morning, the air was already hot. Aggie settled her horse in the shade from the cottonwoods along the creek bed below her hill. The Plainsman she wore kept the blazing sun off her face and neck. She took her art bag and blanket up the hill. She was looking for some natural elements to add to her landscapes and wanted to do a study of some of the vegetation.
 

There were two clumps of mature bushes. Sage and rabbitbrush. The rabbitbrush had the silver-gray leaves of the sage, but in a different pattern. Both were on a draw that went up her hill. She went to it, kneeling in front of the rabbitbrush to get a perspective of the plant in the foreground and the rolling prairie in the background.
 

Looking down at the bush from above, she realized she was still too high up for the right perspective. She went down on all fours. Her eyes shifted focus from a close inspection of the rabbitbrush to a wider view of the distant ground. She turned her head this way and that, changing her height, looking at the details around the bush.
 

Something beneath her hand moved, drawing her attention back to the plant. She held still, fearing she’d knelt on a snake. Seeing no reptile beneath her, she wondered what she’d felt move. She pushed a bit of dirt aside and realized her hand was on a pair of big, brown hands.
 

Aggie shrieked and fell back on her bottom as a man separated himself from the landscape. The renegade Indian. He rose to his knees, covered in dust from the top of his head to his lean, bare chest. A stripe of burnt umber crossed from temple to temple, covering his eyes and brows. Another reddish stripe covered his mouth and went from cheek to cheek.
 

She stared at the man before her. He looked like someone who might eat children. For dessert. When he was already full. Just for the meanness of it.
 

Steeling herself to face the frightening warrior, Aggie pushed to her knees. Only a few feet separated them. Had he not moved earlier, she would never have seen him, even with her hands right on top of his. How often had he been there when she went to her hill? Had he seen her studying the rabbitbrush? She blushed at the thought, realizing how ridiculous she must have appeared.
 

“Hello,” she whispered, praying he was more the man Sarah and Logan thought him to be than the devil he’d shown to her. He stared at her, giving no indication he’d heard her, then barked a shrill call, baring bright, white teeth in his savagely painted face.
 

Aggie jumped, then scrabbled back as fast as she could, which was neither fast nor far because of her cursed skirts and the rabbitbrush around them. A low thundering began. She thought it was her pounding heart at first, but a horse came out from behind a copse of trees down by the creek, running at full speed toward them. She feared she might get trampled until Chayton, naked except for his breechcloth, ran down the hill toward the east and away from her. The horse turned to follow him, slowing slightly as it came even with the renegade. The man increased his speed and reached up to grab a fistful of mane, then vaulted onto the horse’s back, lying low atop its bare back as the horse sped away.
 

Aggie watched him ride off into the far distance, then closed her eyes, locking everything she’d just seen away in her mind, keeping it fresh, like an unopened picture book. After a few minutes, when she’d sorted and cataloged every color, texture, and nuance, she made her way down to her horse and returned home. As soon as she got the horse settled, she sat outside on the bench by her front door and sketched out several scenes. All of them had the Indian hidden in them, hidden in plain sight, only there if the viewer had the eyes to see him.
 

She set the sketchpad aside but couldn’t tear her gaze from what she’d drawn. Perhaps he wasn’t real. Perhaps he was a spirit man, a ghost of the people for whom this land had been home. She’d asked for that, hadn’t she? She’d opened herself to hear the story the land wished to tell. Perhaps the land had given her more than its wind and its colors and its heart. Perhaps it had given her a teacher who could show her the people who’d lived where she now lived.