Native Gold (18 page)

"Don’t move, Little Acorn," he said, and the pet name rolled off his lips as easily as if he’d known her all his life.

She felt her skin flush. Indeed, the Indian was becoming too familiar. He took too many liberties, assumed too much. And yet his easy manner was enormously comforting, almost as if they
were
old friends.

"
Akina
," he said, finally easing the pressure from her knee. "It is done."

He moved away from her then, careful of the cliff’s edge, and his sudden distance left her feeling awkward.

"Well, then," she said, gingerly working her way up to a sitting position, "thank you. I’ll just be on my way. Did you happen to see where I dropped my—“

"Sketchbook?" he asked, sweeping it up from the ground nearby.

"Yes, thank..."

Drawing back his arm like a pitcher for the Knickerbockers, he hurled the sketchbook upwards over the lip of the cliff. Her boots followed. Then he shoved the two recovered pencils between his teeth and bent down toward her. For a moment, she wondered if he intended to toss her up there as well.

Before she could sputter out an objection, the Indian plucked her skirts out of the way, turned his back to her, and hunkered down between her knees.

"Hold on," he said.

Nonplused, she stared at his broad, smooth, perfect back. She had no intention of getting one inch closer to that blatantly masculine body, let alone clinging to him like a baby monkey.

"This way," he mumbled around the pencils.

He planted her arms about his neck and hauled her up from the ground before she could think of a reply. Then he bent forward even further, and hiked her knees up around his waist.

"Hold on," he told her again, blessedly unaware that she was too mortified to speak.

It was completely indecent the way he carried her. She scarcely knew him, and yet her arms encircled him like a lover. She could feel the beat of his heart where her forearm contacted his throat. The bare skin of his sun-warmed back burned against the flesh of her thighs as she clung to him. It felt wrong and forbidden…and sinfully wonderful.

She had to hold on tightly, she discovered. The cliff was steep, and instead of scrabbling along the pebbled passages as she’d done, he chose instead the granite boulders, leaping from rock to rock up the cliff face.

Once, when she felt his foot slip, she panicked, glancing over her shoulder at the long drop below, and tightened her hold. He grunted and she grimaced as her heel found the worst possible place to lodge. But he didn’t complain, and in another minute, they lit safe and sound at the top of the cliff.

Sakote knew he was crazy now. He was packing a white woman on his back, in the clear light of day, atop a cliff visible from the entire valley, a woman whose stray foot had just reminded him he was a man. He might as well braid the hanging rope himself.

He had known it was dangerous to go near the woman, that she’d bring him only trouble. And now he’d interfered with The Great Spirit’s plans by changing the woman’s destiny.

But as he carried her toward the thick trees—her pale arms wound around his neck, her legs entwined about his hips, her soft breasts pressed against his back—he knew it was too late to change his path.

His heart had stopped when he feared Mati lay broken at the bottom of the canyon. A terrible dizziness had overcome him as he peered over the edge. And when he found her at last, tucked back onto a ledge of rock not far down the slope, within his reach, such hope had entered his spirit that he thought he’d burst with it.

It tore at his insides to see her injured. He’d rather have the wounds himself. Her skin was delicate, finer than a child’s, and it looked even paler against the patches of blood marring her body. Her limbs were scraped, and her brow was gashed, but the shard of stone in her knee concerned him the most. He thanked the Creator that she, like Hintsuli, was ticklish, for it was the quickest way to wrench the sliver from her.

But his worries ran deeper than her wounds. They were connected now, the two of them. Her blood stained his fingers, and her trust claimed his soul. He’d altered her fate, and she his. The path ahead was perilous, but now there was no turning from it.

"If you’ll put me down, I’ll be on my way." The woman’s voice was taut, almost frightened, and she shivered like a newly hatched
cheeztahtah
—robin.

Of course, he had no intention of abandoning her in the middle of the wood. She’d only lose her way again. Besides, she probably didn’t know which plants to use on her wounds. He must take her to a safe place where he could tend to her cuts. With his mouth full of the writing sticks, he grunted in reply.

While the woman was still slung across his back, he retrieved her sketchbook and boots and his hunting pouch. As for the kill he’d brought for her, he could see through the brush that Trickster Coyote was already slinking off with it, his teeth grinning around the rabbits. Sakote sighed in disgust.

"Sir."

He paused. Strands of the woman’s fine hair tickled his ear.

"Sir, I really must insist..."

Sakote had no time for her insisting. It was hazardous to stay so long in the open. He scrutinized several possible paths traversing the canyon and finally chose one of the deer trails. It wasn’t the best way to go. There were few places of concealment along the way, and he would leave footprints. But the trail was fairly level, and it led swiftly to his destination. He started forward.

"Mr. Indian!" The woman yanked the drawing sticks from his mouth, scraping them between his teeth. "Where are you taking me?"

"Not far, but we have to go quickly," he said, nodding. "Along the canyon."

"But where...what’s along the canyon?"

"A place, a good place." He could tell she didn’t like his answer. But, in the same way he’d taken the splinter from her, sometimes it was best not to know everything.

"But I don’t...I don’t want to go." She began to loosen her grip on him. "I want to go home."

He dropped her things and let her slide gently down, bracing her when she tottered on her injured leg.

"You weren’t going home when I found you."

To his amazement, she didn’t reply, but only blinked her eyes many times, soundlessly moving her mouth. It was an expression he’d seen on Hintsuli’s face many times when the boy was about to make up a story.

And like his little brother, the woman seemed to need answers for everything. She would probably hammer at him like the woodpecker all the way along the trail if he didn’t explain where they were going.

He sighed. "I know a good place to wash your wounds, where the miners don’t go to look for gold." He stopped, distracted for a moment by the color of the white woman’s eyes, so much like the eyes of the white eagle in his dream. They were all the various greens of the precious serpentine stone that lined the cave in the mountain beyond the village.

"I can wash my own wounds."

"You’ll lose more blood if you walk home. The mining camp is distant. The place I’m taking you isn’t far." His next words were not his own. He didn’t know where they came from. "It’s a beautiful place. Your body will find comfort there. Your heart will find peace."

The words slipped like sacred smoke blown by The Great Spirit between his lips. They twisted Sakote’s fate. They sealed the white woman’s destiny.

Mattie soon discovered the Indian was right. The pain indeed came. And though he carried her with the easy grace of a wildcat, never jarring her, never even allowing a stray branch to scratch her, by the time they entered the shaded copse, Mattie’s arm felt on fire, and her knee throbbed like the devil.

The moment she spied the waterfall, however, she forgot all about her discomfort.

It was the most beautiful, idyllic spot she’d ever seen, something she might have sketched in her imagination. A grand tower of churning white water cascaded over black rock, plunging down two stories or more into a deep, dark, round pool. The sound was like thunder, softened only by the babble of the creek and the hiss of the spray obscuring the fall’s end. The pool was carved like a great jade bowl, with the middle so black it appeared bottomless, and the surface of the water rocked with gentle, widening rings that glimmered in the sunlight. Bright green mosses studded the vertical rock wall where the mist hovered. A huge boulder of granite intruded into the water, reflecting sunlight onto the undersides of the lush trees encircling the pond.

The moist air soothed Mattie’s parched throat at once. Her nose filled with the pleasant scent of wet rock and mud. And, true to the Indian’s promise, a sense of calm descended upon her as they climbed down the bank.

He set her down on a small, sun-splashed boulder at the water’s edge. It was warm, almost hot in contrast to the damp earth she could feel through her socks. She wanted to take them off, to feel the cool mud on the soles of her feet, to dabble her toes in the bracing water.

As if he read her thoughts, the Indian bent on one knee and began peeling off her white cotton stockings.

"It’s lovely," she sighed. "What is this place called?"

He shrugged. "The waterfall."

His hand still cupped her foot, and she realized with a jolt how natural it seemed to let him touch her.

"And what about you, Mr. Indian?" she breathed. "What are you called?"

He quirked up one corner of his mouth and wriggled his fingers beneath her foot, tickling her. "Why do white people need a name for everything?"

She had no answer for him—not that she could have formed syllables anyway. The twinkle in his eye and the curve of his lips—so sensual, so inviting—charmed the words right out of her head.

He tossed her socks aside. "We need to wash your wounds."

She didn’t think much about what he’d said until he reached around and began unfastening the buttons at the back of her dress.

"What are you doing?" She seized his wrist. Lord, it was thick and strong.

"These...buttons you call them? They’re difficult."

She flushed. "Well, maybe they’re supposed to be difficult," she said in a heated rush, "to keep men like you from..." The minute she looked in his eyes, she knew she had misjudged him. He meant no offense, and he certainly intended no seduction.

She glanced down at her dress. Of course, he wouldn’t dream of seducing her. She was a mess. Her gown was filthy, torn by the brush, and where he’d used a wad of it to stanch her blood, a giant macabre rose bloomed crimson against the brown. The garment would never be the same. And yet it was the only thing she had to wear back to the cabin.

He withdrew his hands, suddenly uneasy. "Don’t you wear the longhandles?"

She blinked. "The long..." When she beheld his solemn face and realized what he meant, she couldn’t help but smile. He’d obviously learned his English from the local miners. And he obviously knew nothing about women’s clothing. "Yes, Mr. Indian, I have, well, something like the longhandles."

She couldn’t very well swim in her dress. The wet linsey-woolsey would weigh her down on the trip home. She’d have to strip down to her cotton chemise, which would dry quickly. It was clear the Indian was one step ahead of her.

"Very well," she said as stoically as possible. "You may assist me with the buttons."

It took him a painfully long time. She supposed he’d had little practice with buttons, and there were at least two dozen down the back of this particular dress. She’d skipped a few of them herself, since she had no maid now and because her diminished size allowed her to slip the thing up over her hips. It wouldn’t have been so awful, except that the way he casually crouched beside her, she got a perfect view of his long, tan thigh, and it took every ounce of her will not to reach out and sample its smooth-muscled texture.

Despite his boyish look of triumph when he finished the task, Mattie blushed keenly at the thought of standing before him in her unmentionables. It was silly, really. After all, he seemed to think nothing of traipsing all over God’s earth in scarcely more than a fig leaf.

With as little fuss as possible, and careful of her injuries, she stepped out of the ruined garment.

The sun felt delicious, the breeze decidedly wicked as it riffled the sheer cotton of her embroidered chemise. She shivered as a light gust blew waterfall mist over her.

"Is the water cold?" she asked as he began untying his moccasins.

He shrugged and gave her a dismissive shake of his head. "No."

Resisting the urge to cover herself, and falling short of limbs to fully accomplish the task anyway, Mattie studied her surroundings more thoroughly. A tiny gray lizard sunned itself on the biggest rock while vivid blue damselflies buzzed and nipped at the air. Water striders left tiny circles on the top of the pool, and here and there, she could see the sleek movement of fish beneath the surface.

He nodded toward her knee. "You’re bleeding again."

She followed his gaze. Bright red seeped through the white cotton of her chemise. She snatched the fabric up out of the way. Blood trickled lazily down her shin.