Agnes and the Renegade (Men of Defiance) by Elaine Levine

the nights still became quite cool. The warmth from the stove would be welcome through the night. She set a cup of tea and a jar of honey on the table for him. Then she moved a lamp to the table so that she could see what he’d given her.
    She unrolled the bundle carefully and saw the pictograph it held—an oval path that wound clockwise in widening rotations, filling the entire skin one figure at a time. Some of the pictures were people, some were tipis, some were horses or other animals, some were warriors, some were soldiers.
    She looked in awe at Chayton. “You did this?”
    He nodded. “I am not an artist, like you or my wife. Or the historian in my band who counts the winters. And it is not an annual record. It shows the significant things in my life, three or four of them a year.”
    Doing a quick calculation, she guessed Chayton was somewhere in his mid-thirties. Aggie sat down and leaned close to the light. Starting with the first image, which was of a hawk, she studied each image. “Why a hawk?”
    “I was named after the hawk. My full name is Hawk That Watches.”
    She traveled along the path of his life. Some pictures she understood, some she didn’t. “You remember all of these events?”
    “Not all of them. The early ones were told to me.”
    Aggie studied the pictograph, touching some of the images, trying to understand them. “Will you read it to me?”
    “Not tonight. Tonight, you will consider it so that when we speak about it, you will know what questions you have.”
    Aggie looked up, a smile slowly working its way across her face. “I’d like that.” It was nice having Chayton visit with her, she realized. He didn’t know enough about white people’s customs to know she was an utter disgrace in her world. No respectable woman would receive a male visitor in her perpetual state of undress, much less at night and alone. Especially not a renegade Lakota warrior. And no respectable woman would try to make a life out of her art. As much as people admired her work and paid good prices for it, she hadn’t been able to sign her paintings with her full name while she’d been apprenticed to Theo—even when the works were ones she’d completed for herself and not for his clients. It was a simple truth that works by a woman artist carried less value.
    She studied the man sitting at her table. The light from the kerosene lanterns, even with two of them on the table, was dim, casting a soft, warm glow over everything in the room. Chayton’s features were harsh. Dark eyes, straight, low brows, high cheekbones. His lips were wide and rounded, indented at the corners. Creases lined the sides of his mouth, others feathered out from his eyes and others made furrows in his forehead. He was always neatly groomed when she’d seen him. No late-night shadow hid his pronounced chin or the rigid line of his jaw. His nose was straight, thin but triangular and masculine. His dark hair was thick and long. He took care that it was combed and styled in different ways that fascinated her.  
    Her gaze returned to his eyes. They were the most eloquent eyes she’d ever seen. She looked for such things in her subjects. It was what Theo had loved most about her work—the personality and humanity she revealed in the people she painted.
    “Will you let me paint you?” she asked, still watching him.
    “Yes.”
    She smiled. “Thank you.”
    “How do I do it?”
    “Come here tomorrow morning. Early. I will make breakfast for you, then we’ll get started.”
    She followed him when he walked to the door. She touched his arm, then pulled her hand away quickly. She was painfully aware of his masculinity—all the differences between their bodies. His height. The coiled strength in his lean body. The warm glow of his tanned skin. The wild scent of him, a mix of dust and leather, sunshine and sage. He was too much for her senses. And tomorrow, she would get to paint him.
    “Thank you for the pictograph. I look forward to