His gaze met hers. “Then you think too much.”
What did he mean? It was pointless to ask. She knew he wouldn’t explain. “What are you doing?” she asked. He had a coil of rope he was stringing between two trees, clothesline style.
“Making a picket line for the horses.” He knotted the rope and gave a tug before releasing it.
“Oh.” She loosened her horse’s cinch and led it over to him. He nodded curtly as she slipped off Sadie’s bridle and tied the horse. “What can I do to help you?” she asked, determined to prove she wasn’t as clueless as he seemed to think.
He eyed her, gaze narrowed. “You can pump water.” He pointed out a rusty-looking hand pump near a collapsed building that must have once served as the well house. “The horses are going to need about ten gallons each. Hopefully that old well will produce enough for all of us.”
“All right. I can do that.” She approached the rusted pump with a dubious look. It took both hands, all her strength, and a grunt just to raise the handle. “You don’t happen to have some WD-40, do you?” she quipped, trying again to break the tension.
Keith scowled back. “The only lube we have is elbow grease. I suggest you use it.”
Miranda threw herself into the effort, bearing all her weight down on the handle, but failed to raise it again. She silently cursed that she’d have to ask him for help. “I’m sorry, Keith. I’m not sure I have the strength even to prime the pump.”
Keith came to the well, muttering a stream of incomprehensible words. “Fine. I’ll pump the water. You go gather firewood. Just watch out for snakes and scorpions.”
“Wonderful,” she grumbled back. “The only thing I hate worse than scorpions is snakes.”
“And I’d rather deal with either of them than a whiner.”
“I’m not whining,” she protested. “I just don’t like things that slither and creep, okay?”
His gaze met hers, his expression dark and cold as he raised the pump handle. “And I don’t like people who lie and deceive, so I guess we’ll both just have to deal with it.”
“I didn’t lie!” She stamped her foot in protest. “Damn it! How many times do I have to say it? Maybe you didn’t like the spin Bibi put on it, but everything in that film was factual. The words were from your own mouth, and the rest was taken straight from public records.”
“And just how would you know that?” he asked, driving the handle back down.
“Because I fact-checked everything.”
Determined to prove her worth to Bibi, she’d spent days digging before finally solving the mystery of Keith Russo, a.k.a “Two Wolves.” Bibi was so pleased, she’d rewarded her with a job.
“Fact is not always the same as truth,” he countered, his breath coming shorter as he vigorously forced the handle up and down. “Facts can be twisted and distorted into falsehoods. But truth can’t be spun or twisted.” The pump gave a violent hiccup. “Truth is immutable.” A sudden surge of rusty water sputtered and splashed into the bucket. “You didn’t present the truth,” he contended fiercely.
“Oh really?” She snorted. “If anything, deceit is your specialty. You presented yourself as a clinician, when you’re really just a poser. A talented one, I’ll give you that, but you don’t really teach anything. It was all just a big show, wasn’t it? You trained your horse to do tricks and then worked your seductive magic on your audience. That’s fine if you’re just an entertainer, but you touted yourself as more than that.”
She’d been as enthralled as the rest of them after watching him work with Picasso at his clinic and felt inexplicably let down once she’d realized what he was really after—sex and money.
“How about you?” he threw back. “That film you made depicted me as a phony, but it was nothing but a series of half-truths. My people have a proverb, Miz Sutton. ‘Do not wrong your neighbor, for it is not he that you wrong, but yourself.’”
“But I didn’t wrong anyone,” she insisted. “Maybe Bibi embellished the film for the sake of entertainment, but how can you fault her when you’d already sensationalized yourself?” She faced him, hands on hips. “Do you deny that you were born in New York? That you changed your name purely to promote your career?”
“Lots of people use a stage name,” he retorted. “There’s nothing dishonest in that. I never tricked or deceived anyone. Two Wolves is the Shoshone name my grandfather gave me. It’s mine by right of heritage.”
“Heritage?” She regarded him, perplexed. “I-I don’t understand. Isn’t your family from Long Island? I looked it all up, your birth date, even the hospital name. Your family—”
He glared back at her. “They aren’t my real family. I was born in New York, but my father was full-blooded Shoshone. I am Shoshone through his blood and by tribal adoption.”