Kid Calhoun (6 page)

“They didn’t.”

“Because you were lucky!”

“I know I should have cut my hair when I started riding with the gang. But—” How could she explain that cutting off her hair would have been like cutting away the last of what made her female. She hadn’t
been able to do it. Booth was right. It was sheer luck that she had managed to keep her secret for so long.

“What happens now?” she asked. “I mean, now that I can be identified.” Anabeth had visions of being confined to the valley for the rest of her natural life.

“We go to Colorado.”

Anabeth’s eyes went wide. She was afraid to believe that her dream was finally coming true. “Really? No fooling, Booth?”

Booth put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t you want to go?”

“Of course I do! Do you?”

Booth grinned his charming grin. “Sure, Kid.”

“When?”

“As soon as I meet with the gang one last time.”

Anabeth’s suspicions regarding Rankin were superseded by her excitement over the prospect of actually going to Colorado. She couldn’t stop talking about it. Booth seemed every bit as enthusiastic as she did. The only cloud on her horizon was the knowledge that she would never see Wolf again.

That afternoon, she built a mound of stones on top of the cliffs that could be seen for miles, and which would alert Wolf that she wanted to talk to him. Two days later, while she was grooming her dun, he called out to her from where he was hiding along the stone cliffs.

“Stalking Deer. I am here.”

Anabeth located Wolf from the sound of his voice and left the animal she was brushing to join him. “I’m so glad you’ve come! I was afraid you wouldn’t get here before I had to leave for Colorado.”

“You are leaving the valley?”

Anabeth nodded vigorously. She reached out and clutched Wolf’s hands. “Booth has finally agreed to go to Colorado. We’re going to have a ranch there. I won’t be an outlaw anymore. We’ll live like normal
people, have friends and go to parties. I’ll get to wear dresses and be a lady at last!”

“I do not want you to go,” Wolf said.

Anabeth’s joy was cut short by the harshness of Wolf’s voice. “I have to go,” she said. “There’s a man who can identify me as one of the outlaws who robbed the stage. Some men were killed, and the law will be after me now. I don’t have any choice.”

“You can come live with me in my village.”

She raised a disbelieving brow. “As your friend?”

“As my wife.”

“I can’t—I don’t—No, Wolf. It would never work.”

“Why not?”

Anabeth was blunt. “I don’t wish to be your wife.”

Wolf’s lids lowered to hood his eyes so Anabeth couldn’t see his reaction there to her rejection of his proposal. But his hands tightened painfully on hers.

“I won’t ever forget you, Wolf. Not ever. You’re the best friend I’ll ever have.”

Wolf stood there stoically while the one person who had ever truly valued him as a person explained why she could no longer be a part of his life. What flashed through his mind was their first meeting thirteen years ago. It was the day he had fought Growling Bear for the first time.

The two Apache youths had writhed on the ground, their sweaty flesh collecting a fine layer of dust, with first one, and then the other on top. Locked in mortal combat, they had gouged and kicked and bit each other in a battle that had no civilized rules. The five Apache boys surrounding the combatants had shouted guttural incantations, urging their favorite on to victory.

“Ho, Growling Bear!”

“He is yours, Growling Bear!”

“Use your teeth, Growling Bear!”

None were there to call Wolf’s name. To give him encouragement. To hope he would win.

But Wolf had not spent fourteen years as an outcast among his own people without acquiring a hard shell that protected him from such slights and snubs. He did not need the cheers of others to urge him on. He looked inward and found the strength to conquer his foe.

It soon became apparent that Growling Bear, though two years older and both taller and heavier than his rival, was having the worst of it. Wolf was stronger, more agile, more fleet of foot. The crowd surrounding the two adversaries was stunned into silence when Wolf pinned Growling Bear. His wiry forearm sliced across the older boy’s throat, in position to choke the life from him.

The two youths glared at each other, their teeth bared, their breathing ragged, their bodies bloodied with scrapes and scratches, bruised by their struggle on the rocky ground.

“Take it back,” Wolf demanded.

“I will not! You
are
a brother to Coyote.”

Wolf’s breath hissed in sharply at this repeated insult. He cut off the other boy’s air and watched with merciless black eyes as Growling Bear began to turn blue. Nor did Wolf release his hold when the older boy’s body began to thrash in death throes beneath him.

Abruptly, Wolf was grabbed by the shoulders and yanked off the other boy. “Hold! What are you doing there?”

Wolf backed away, his face feral in its wildness, his body poised for defense.

But Growling Bear’s father, Yellow Shirt, ignored Wolf. He pulled his son to his feet and said, “Come. It is time to go hunting.”

Yellow Shirt turned to the five boys who had been
watching the fight and said, “Go to your wickiups. Your fathers await you also to join the hunt.”

Red-faced with shame at having been beaten by Wolf, and still heaving air into starved lungs, Growling Bear brushed past the outcast, his eyes filled with hatred. The other boys followed after him, with Yellow Shirt bringing up the rear.

Wolf was left standing alone. As he always had been. As he feared he always would be. His mother, Night Crawling, had slept with many men, so he had no father to claim him as son. No father to teach him what a boy must learn. How to make his weapons. How to hunt. How to steal horses. How to kill his enemy.

So Wolf had watched and listened and taught himself. He had become better, stronger, swifter, more ruthless. Still it had not won him the acceptance he craved. They had not invited him to come along on the hunt. But he would go hunting anyway. Alone. And he would come back with a bigger deer than any of them.

Wolf collected his bow and arrow and his knife from the wickiup where he lived by himself. He passed by his mother’s wickiup and said, “I am going hunting. I will bring you meat for your cookpot tonight.”

Night Crawling merely nodded. She was aware of the battle her son fought for the respect of the tribe. She did her part to help. She did not boast of her son’s prowess as a hunter. But she generously shared the meat Wolf brought her as well as the skin and horn and the other delicacies that were to be had from the kill, with the other women whose husbands or sons had not been as successful hunting.

Wolf mounted one of his ponies—he had already stolen several from the white men—and rode off in the opposite direction from the hunting party of fathers
and sons. As soon as he was beyond sight of the last wickiup, he kicked his pony into a lope and then let him run full out.

No matter how fast Wolf rode, he could not escape from who and what he was. Soon he pulled the flagging pony to a trot, and then to a walk. Almost immediately, he saw the tracks of a deer. It was a large one, and he reminded himself of his vow to return with the greatest prize from the hunt.

He focused all his attention on tracking the deer, which followed a narrow, rocky trail upward along a high cliff. The track narrowed so that Wolf’s foot hung out over a sheer drop. His heart was pounding by the time the trail crested. He stopped short at what he had found.

The deer was forgotten. Below him and stretching out in a wide oval was a lush, grassy valley. From what he could see, it was completely surrounded by impossibly high walls of stone. He could detect no other way in or out of the valley other than the one he had found. Nor could he see any signs of habitation.

Here, then, would be his sanctuary. A place of his own where he would come and be alone and where the stigma of his birth could not intrude. He kicked his pony and began the descent down the narrow deer trail that led into the valley below.

To Wolf’s delight, a stream ran the length of the valley. He followed the trail of sparkling water to where it ended in a large pond in the shadows of the cliff. It was there at the pond that he discovered his valley was not as uninhabited as he had thought. Someone was swimming there.

He kept himself out of sight and was chagrined to realize that it was a white child, a girl. His eyes quickly scanned the valley again. She would not be here alone. There would be other white men. He felt angry. He had already claimed the valley for his own,
only to discover someone else had claimed it before him.

But that could be remedied.

The girl in the pond was a child of no more than six or seven. Nevertheless, he approached her stealthily. He did not want her to cry an alarm and warn the others who must be here in this valley with her.

He could not help but admire her grace in the water and her abandon. He could hear her laughter even from where he lay hidden in the rocks. He realized he did not want to kill such a free spirit. But that left him in a quandary.

Should he capture her and take her back to the village? Usually, the Apache did not take female prisoners, as they were useless. This child would be especially so. With no clear plan in mind, he decided to approach her.

To his amazement, the solitary girl left the water the moment she saw him. She stood there dripping wet, wearing only a pair of thin white trousers that came to her knees, totally unafraid. She even spoke to him in the white man’s tongue.

“Hello. Who are you?” she asked.

Of course, he had no idea what she was saying. To his further astonishment, she extended a hand in welcome. Uncertain, he hesitated.

She dropped her hand and spoke again. “My name is Anabeth Calhoun. Are you an Apache? My uncle Booth told me Apaches are mean. But you don’t look mean. Can you understand me?”

The girl apparently realized he didn’t understand a word she was saying, because she began to use gestures with her speech. She spread her arm to encompass the valley and pointed to the far end, where he could see, now that she pointed it out, a stone house such as white men lived in.

“I live here in Treasure Valley with my father and
my uncle Booth. Pa is gone from the valley right now, working in the Two Brothers Mine. He’s already found a little gold, but he’s hoping to strike it rich someday. My uncle Booth is down at the house. He looks after me while Pa’s working at the mine. Would you like to join us for dinner?”

When she reached for his hand, Wolf jerked it away. It was the first time anyone had ever reached out to him in friendship. He continued staring at her. And she continued talking.

“Do you live near here? Do you want to be friends? I would like to have a friend. Booth is fun sometimes, but he doesn’t always want to play. Would you like to play a game now?”

She reached out again and, intrigued, Wolf let her grasp his hand. A second later she had tripped him and sent him flying into the pond.

He lunged up out of the water ready to kill—only to find her pointing at him and laughing.

“Booth taught me how to do that. Oh, it was funny to see you go flying!”

Wolf’s dignity was sorely wounded in the fall, and he quickly looked around to make sure no one had seen this slight child lay him flat. He who had vanquished Growling Bear had been thrown by a mere child! He glared at the girl who had been the source of his humiliation.

She stood there grinning down at him, asking him with laughing blue eyes to join her in appreciation of the mischief she had wrought. Then she stretched out her hand to help him from the water.

Wolf found himself utterly charmed. Reluctantly, then wholeheartedly, he grinned back. In that moment, an irrevocable, unbreakable bond of friendship was born.

Wolf levered himself out of the pool and sat down cross-legged on the stone that edged the water, patting
the ground beside him to indicate the girl should join him.

She quickly sat down beside him and began jabbering again. For the first time, he spoke to her in the Apache tongue.

“I will call you Stalking Deer, because that is what I was doing when I found you,” he said. “I will be your friend. But you must not speak of me to those who live with you. And I will keep this secret also.”

He wished he could tell someone about the valley. It was such a magnificent discovery! But it would be impossible to explain to his mother—or anyone—that he had made a white girl his friend. He suffered enough ridicule as it was. And he did not want anyone else to come here. This special place belonged to him and to the child he had befriended.

They talked until the sun began its descent, when the girl rose and tried once again to get him to come with her to the stone house at the other end of the valley.

“I cannot come, Stalking Deer. I must return to my village. But I will come again,” Wolf promised.

By signs, by gestures, by the few words they had already taught each other, they did their best to show that they would meet here again another day. From farther down the valley someone called for the girl.

“Hellllooooo. Annabeettth. Where are youuuuuu?”

“I have to go,” the girl said. “I’ll be here tomorrow. Will you come again?”

“I will come.”

When she was gone, Wolf mounted his pony and began the long ascent back up out of the valley.

That evening, when he returned to the village without any meat for his mother’s cookpot, Wolf did not mind the jeers of Growling Bear. He did not even acknowledge the taunts of Growling Bear’s friends.
He turned cold, dark eyes on them and dared them to do their worst.

Stalking Deer’s unqualified acceptance had provided a much-needed solace for an oft-bruised heart. The village could treat him with disdain and keep him at a distance. Their scorn no longer held the same power over him. Because Wolf had known he was not alone anymore.

Only now Stalking Deer had told him she was planning to go away forever.

“You cannot leave this place, Stalking Deer.” You cannot leave
me
.