Wolf Runner by Constance O'Banyon

there, but she reached out to him. “Don’t go,” she pleaded. “Please help me.”
    “Who do you think you are?” Nigel demanded as he turned to face the stranger. “You’re on private property and I could have you arrested.”
    Wolf Runner saw the young woman reach out her hand to him with terror in her eyes. “And you arepressing your attentions on a lady who doesn’t want them. I could have you arrested. Or…I could take care of you myself.”
    “She isn’t a lady—she’s an Indian.” Nigel looked Wolf Runner over carefully. “But then so are you, aren’t you?”
    Wolf Runner ignored the man’s comment. “Miss, do you want me to make him leave?”
    “Yes, please.”
    Wolf Runner towered threateningly over the man. Nigel felt the first inkling of fear when he looked into dark, menacing eyes—for a moment he thought he saw his own death reflected in their depths.
    “The lady wants you to go. So go.”
    Sullivan inched around Wolf Runner and made his way to the door. “This isn’t over,” he said to Cheyenne. “I’ll be back.”
    She cringed as he left and slammed the door. Trembling, she gazed up at her rescuer, wondering why he was there. “I don’t know how to thank you,” she said, standing, and bracing herself against the wall for a moment. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come along when you did.”
    “Am I right in assuming you are Ivy Gatlin’s granddaughter?”
    She nodded slowly as grief etched her face. “Gram is…dead.”
    “I know. I spoke to her a few weeks ago. We have to talk.”

Chapter Twelve
    Still shaking from her encounter with Mr. Sullivan, and more than a little confused because the owner of Mesa del Fuego had come to her rescue, Cheyenne asked the first question that popped into her head, “You spoke to Gram?”
    “Briefly.”
    It was now clear to Cheyenne where Señor Men-doza had taken Gram that day she wanted his wagon. “What did she want with you?”
    Wolf Runner stared into the face of the young woman who was causing him no end of trouble. Her Indian heritage was apparent in her high cheekbones and her darker skin. Her amber eyes were remarkable. Having only seen her from a distance, he had not known she was so beautiful, although Cullen had said she was. Ivy Gatlin had been right; her unprotected granddaughter would become a target for every unsavory man who crossed her path.
    “I have seen you before,” she said. “The day you came into town. But I don’t know your name.”
    As if coming out of a daze, he said, “To the Black-foot people I am known as Wolf Runner.”
    Cheyenne saw green flecks in his otherwise brown eyes, and knew either his mother or father was white. “You are Blackfoot and a half-breed as I am.”
    He turned to observe the crates stacked near thedoor. “I never consider that I am a half-breed until I walk in the white world. Never think that my heart is not fully Blackfoot.”
    “I am half white and half Cheyenne—nothing I do and no amount of wishing can change that. The day I was born marked who I am and how people react to me. You saw how Mr. Sullivan treated me.”
    “Your grandmother said you had never met your own people, the Cheyenne.”
    Tears glittered on long, silky lashes, and she wiped them away on the tips of her fingers. “What did Gram say about me?”
    “Did Mrs. Gatlin not tell you she came to see me at the ranch?”
    Cheyenne’s brow furrowed. “No. Why did she go to see you?”
    “She told me about your circumstances and that there was a man who was pursuing you.”
    Shame washed over Cheyenne. “Tell me she didn’t do that.”
    “She was worried about you, and from what I saw here today she had good reason.”
    His voice was deep, his words cultured, and he spoke with only a slight accent. His face was as beautiful as any of the statues she had seen in one of Gram’s books on ancient Greece. Making a hopeless gesture, she shook her head. “I’m sorry Gram dragged you into