Chapter Thirty-Four Osage Nation—February 11, 1894
Chapter Thirty-Four
two days later
Midmorning light warmed my eyelids, my dreams hazy with mirages.
Of vast, barren spaces and a gilded, burning land, of breezes carving patterns through a wolf fur cloak, an oblong moon casting a silvered glow.
The Native woman’s profile tilted skyward, her feet planted against upturned soil, as if she bloomed.
Of the homesteader clutching damp cloth against her mouth, the terrain behind her scorched, of a cattle drive foaming across my land, last sunglow glinting like fire in the oat grasses.
Flame and smoke, ember and rainstorm and drought.
I rolled from my bed these past days, a fur spread before the fire.
Pulling a blanket coat over my shoulders, I shuffled about Niabi’s lodge.
My body ached and all-overish screamed, as if my bones and ligaments sucked in deep sighs and moans.
I shimmied into my skirt and grabbed my overblouse from where it hung off a drawer.
A cough racked my body as I threaded my hands through the sleeves.
I’d arrived after sunfall, bleary and disoriented, unable to communicate much to Niabi but the necessity of sending Wa-ah-zho to Stot, to warn of the impending vendetta against him.
Niabi had set my arm back in its socket, rubbed salve on my scrapes, sat beside me as flame writhed across the ivory canvas.
Now light shattered in an array through the smoke hole and shadows patterned across the russet floor in lazy streaks.
It’d been more than a day, and Wa-ah-zho had not returned.
I held the pieces of my shirt together over my chemise, too worn to button.
I folded onto the ground and laid my head in my hands.
Though I knew disappointment was the way of the world, I still broke all over again.
Course men are wicked, darling, my pa said, but that’s precisely the point.
I just hadn’t realized how many times I could feel abandoned and betrayed in one year.
I’d come so far, allowing myself to trust others again, and yet it seemed that failure, not resilience, was the constant in humanity.
I scooped out salve from a pot, a glob of mossy-river green.
It smelt of dampness, of the deep of creeks and the wide of distances.
I hissed as I smeared the salve on my brow, the cut burning.
I prayed that Wa-ah-zho had gotten to Stot in time.
I supposed Stot knew how to watch his back, but I couldn’t stop worrying about him.
What was this between us? It couldn’t be love, could it?
We were fire and lushness and delicious sparring.
Sure, we helped each other round our homesteads, and we’d developed a vicious loyalty, and he listened to me about my longings and my fears, but that wasn’t love. Love was—
Lord, but wasn’t that the size of it—I didn’t know what love was at all.
But we couldn’t have a romance, him intended for another.
I rubbed the salve on my forearm scrape and wound a piece of cloth round my arm.
My fingers slipped. I couldn’t tie the blasted cloth with one hand.
Niabi strode in with a kettle. She set the pot down and took the cloth from me, tying the bandage.
After pouring hot water over sassafras roots, she dribbled in some honey, just as I liked.
I sat on the rug, and she handed me the warm mug.
“Your stomach?” She lowered beside me.
I shrugged. Stared at the pieces of tree wandering the deep, wine-red tea.
The flavor was spicy, almost like root beer.
Niabi had been gentle and patient as I healed.
I envied her hope. She held on to her positivity without expecting me to join her.
She waited and watched, like the sun knowing a flower will someday rise again from the darkness of the earth.
She grabbed a handful of bur oak acorns. “So the gossip of the morning—Stot’s here.”
“Oh—” I jostled my mug. “He’s safe?”
Niabi told that Stot had not been at his homestead when Wa-ah-zho had arrived. Instead, Stot had been helping a neighbor deliver a breech cow—and it’d taken Wa-ah-zho a while to track him down. I inhaled, released a sigh. “But he’s unhurt?”
“Safe and whole.” Something like amusement tugged at her mouth. “But he’s in a fury.”
“Isn’t he always?”
“Oh, this is worse,” she said. “He’s all churned up. Like there’s warring tornadoes inside him.”
“Where is he?” I needed to see him.
“Pacing outside. I wanted to check with you before he stormed on in, surprising you in your unmentionables.”
I smiled weakly and told her I wanted to see him. She nodded and stood, then paused. “My Wa-ah-zho carries roiling weather within him too.” She ran her thumb around the lip of her cup, glanced through the smoke hole. “The world heavy on him.”
I nodded and rubbed my face, the scent of dried blood bitter. Stot was complicated, composed of stormcloud and lightning but also the steady drift of sunrays across aged oak floorboards, the sort of glow that returned day after day. “I need to see Stot,” I said. “And then I need to go home.”
“Good heavens, you should rest. At least a few more suns.”
The pull homeward was dynamic. “I must go.”
Niabi tucked her hair behind her ear and frowned. But she ducked through the doorway. Beyond the lodge, I heard raised voices. That low rumble was Stot. I set my cup down and stood, raking my fingers through my tattered hair.
Stot stormed in, his bulk taking up too much space in the lodge. I turned toward the fire.
“What in blasted burning thunder?”
I peeked over my shoulder. “Beg pardon?”
He strode forward, spun me around.
I yelped.
“Blazes.” His fingers fussed about the bandage on my forearm.
I batted at his hands. “Stop it.”
“I’m trying to help.”
I grabbed his hands, stilled them.
His hat hung on his shoulder blades by a braided black cord round his neck.
His hair was windblown and disheveled, his jaw singed with stubble—but he was whole and unharmed.
He brushed his gaze down. I’d yet to close my blouse, my ivory silk chemise visible.
I fumbled with the buttons, my fingers ungainly.
Stot’s hand paused mine, his voice muffled and hoarse. “Allow me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
He flicked my fingers away and buttoned my blouse.
A round of howls began, the dogs echoing throughout the camp.
I lost the ability to breathe, the sweep of his thumb against my chemise.
His jaw clenched, his body right before mine, his fingers on the button at my throat.
He smelt of oil and of frozen water, salty and fresh.
He skimmed his fingertips above the gash at my temple. “I’ll kill him.”
“You will not.” I stepped back. “This is my battle.”
“No longer.”
I shoved my shirt into my skirt. Exasperated that he kept grasping after pieces of my life. “And what are you about, confessing to my crimes.”
“I didn’t confess.”
I inhaled, then tried to fling my cape round my shoulders.
“I couldn’t allow folks to target the Browns,” he said. “How about I go to town, after we get you settled, and I’ll confess. Tell the marshal I dropped them in self-defense.”
“You will do no such thing.” I tugged on the hem of my cloak.
“I cannot fathom another solution. In my past, when everything went off the rails, I spiraled. For years. I didn’t know how to hold on to control.
Didn’t know how to balance honor against vengeance.
” He stepped forward, pulled the fabric of my cloak around my body, held my shoulders a second longer than a heartbeat. “I don’t know how to keep you safe.”
“Then let go,” I said, my voice threadbare.
He shook his head, mouth a firm line. “That’s not the solution neither.”
I leaned my forehead against his collarbone, closed my eyes, allowed him to slip his arms round my waist, myself completely unmoored.
“You won’t allow me to take the blame?” he asked.
I stepped back. “No.”
He stared at the floor. His hip cocked, one gun visible, bandolier strung across his chest. Somehow this outlaw had become my dearest friend. His jaw ticced, muscles flexing on his neck. I wanted to press my fingers there, feel his warmth.
“When he hurt you, Ezra became my concern.” He transferred his weight. “Why did you come here? Why didn’t you come to me?”
“Cricket came here. Niabi’s closer to Ezra’s—and she’s a healer.”
“So am I.”
I swallowed, the air between us charged with questions and smoke. “What happened—with Bitter Creek and the outlaws?”
“Nothing yet,” he said. “If there are intents on my life, Wa-ah-zho found me first. Thank you.”
I nodded. I picked up Niabi’s salve and screwed on the cap. The thread misaligned. “Is that why they shot you that day down in the holler, because they suspected you?” I sighed, tried again to screw on the lid. “What is it you aren’t telling me?”
He reached for the salve. I held it back. He said, “You still don’t trust me.”
“Course I trust you,” I whispered, quick and harsh. I finally capped Niabi’s salve, tucked the pot into my satchel. Then I fussed with my gloves.
“No, actually.” I loosed a weak, wet laugh. “I don’t know you.”
I jabbed at my gloves, trying to shove my fingers into the bunched wool.
He walked up behind me. His heat pressed on my shoulders, the gust of his breath on my neck.
I yanked off the gloves and threw them down, then lifted my hair, shoved some pins into a twist. My hand shook, my shoulder shattering with the movement.
He laid a palm on my lower back. “Just stop.”
He took the hairpins from me and wound my strands into a bun, then pressed the pins through, his fingers slipping through the strands, brushing my neck, the texture of his calluses along my skin.
A draught rattled the hide, his fingers in my hair.
Then he took my bonnet and placed it on my head.
His voice low, blowing the loose tendrils of hair at my nape. “What do you mean, you don’t know me?”