by Martha Hix
“Accept it, Hawk. Accept it. You’re more than halfway there already. You’ve got an advantage. Your white blood near-about overrode your Indian strain. Most folks figure you’re white. Or no more than a white man with a native ancestor somewhere in the family tree.”
“You know it needles me when I’m mistaken for something I am not.”
“But you are what you are. Be as white as you can. Be the white man’s attorney. And make use of the legacy from your paleface grandmother in Maryland. You’ll be well-served, since there’s no future for your people.” On a dry note, Sam added, “And your money is the great equalizer.”
All of that might have been good advice, but Hawk would rather have been born a century earlier. “Your suggestions are unacceptable.”
“Then you’re a fool, my friend.” Sam glanced at the sky; moonlight highlighted his prominent nose when he lowered his intense scrutiny. “The Indian culture has been dying since ole Christopher Columbus first set foot on American soil.”
It had taken hundreds of years for Europeans to subdue the natives. Now, that task was on the road to completion. It left a bitter taste in Hawk’s mouth, especially as Sam was echoing advice given him by the land-baron senator from Texas, Gil McLoughlin of Fredericksburg.
Hawk took his own look at the moon. It was the same moon shining over the Osage reservation, up in the Territory. What were his mother and father doing now? Had the corn crop been brought in? What about Amy? Had his sister delivered her baby yet? He shook off sentimental thoughts, replacing them with angry ones. He thought about how, without a shot being fired, the Territory Indians had stood by passively and allowed the land rush of the previous April.
By May first the council elders had sent a communiqué to Washington ordering Hawk to cease his demands for fair play. He severed his ties with his Osage brethren that same afternoon. At least one thing was accomplished before his leaving. Congress granted the Osage nation sovereign rights to their latest reservation. But how long would that last?
“Will you marry the woman, now that you’ve captured her?” Sam inquired.
Shaken out of his gloom, Hawk grinned. His thoughts went back to that day in 1869 when he had told the lovely German woman Lisette McLoughlin, then carrying her triplets, that he meant to take her daughter as his own. “It was a boy’s decision, my intentions to marry a McLoughlin daughter.”
“Yep, but I’ve heard you talk about it since you were knee-high to a grasshopper. And here lately, you still . . .”
Hawk laughed. “I’d be lying if I said I haven’t given it a thought or two.” Or a thousand. “But you know what’s going on in my life. I’ve no business with a wife. Especially one as wild and felonious as Charity McLoughlin.” Another chuckle. “You should have seen her earlier this evening–she’s the image of her father. Obstinate as a Missouri mule.”
“That so? Seems to me, I recall you never had anything against women more mulish than your own self.”
Hawk cleared his throat. Best to shut up. He didn’t hanker to discuss the lustful thoughts he’d been entertaining from the first moment he’d laid eyes on Charity McLoughlin.
Settling an elbow on the corral rail, Sam cocked his head. “Why’d you want one of them in the first place?”
“I figured the daughters would be as good as the mother.” Lisette, a pretty blonde who had accompanied her husband on a cattle drive through the territory, had said the right words to bolster Hawk’s youthful vanity. And she had set him on the road to education. Back then–and now–she was a damned good woman.
“In my mind,” he said to Sam, “I always figured any daughter of that good lady would be smart and brave and compassionate. A woman who’d fight at her man’s side, rather than against him. Like her mother. Like a good Indian woman. Perhaps she is. But I’m thinking Charity isn’t.”
“Good or no-good, she’s a fine-looking gal. I myself always liked ’em like that, tall and brunette and top-heavy.” Sam hitched up his pants. “If I were a young buck like you–”
“I don’t have anything against her looks.”
“Then what about one of the sisters? You said you heard the three ladies look just the same. Maybe one of the other two would be more to your liking.”
“Even if I were interested, which I am not, one is married and the other attends a university back East.”
“Okay. Don’t marry any of them.”
“I won’t.”
“I doubt their father would allow it, anyway.”
“Right.”
Were he salivating for the love of Charity, Hawk supposed he’d have the fight of his life with Gil McLoughlin. But as it was, he wasn’t panting for wedlock. Bedding Charity was a different matter.
The sound of horses neighing in the corral diverted Sam’s attention. “Think I’ll take a walk,” he said. Maybe give the girls a goodbye pat, seeing’s how you’ll be taking them tomorrow.”
Half listening, Hawk nodded. Yes, come morning, he’d hitch up the elderly mares for the trip to Miss Charity McLoughlin’s destiny.
An image formed. He saw the woman he’d been following for days, who was now sleeping just yards away. She was all the things Sam had mentioned admiring in looks. And more. Her eyes–the contrast of those blue, blue irises to her sable-dark mass of waves–could neither be ignored nor forgotten.
But she was trouble.
It hadn’t taken much investigating to discover she’d fallen in with the notorious Adriano Gonzáles and his bandits. Several of them had died at the hands of John Hughes and his Rangers upon being ambushed near Shafter, but somehow Charity had escaped with her life. Hawk grimaced. A woman ought to behave, ought to be above reproach.
And though the law wasn’t yet aware of Charity’s complicity in the smuggling, Hawk was sure that was only a matter of time.
Charity McLoughlin needed a damned good lawyer.
David Fierce Hawk was a damned good lawyer.
But he had to get his life in order, perhaps by setting up a law practice in Texas’s capital at Austin. Back in Washington, in the wake of recalling their meeting in ’69, Gil McLoughlin had suggested the Austin move. “Success in Texas will mean playing up your white blood,” Hawk had been advised. Such a proposal had and did sit like a tomahawk in his gut. Yet, at loose ends after the fiasco of the previous spring’s land rush, Hawk had been curious enough to travel to Texas and seek the rancher-solon out.
A week of indecision ensued.
On a horseback ride across the vast Four Aces Ranch, McLoughlin had asked, “Will you make your home in Austin?”
“I’ve got to give it more thought.”
“If not Austin, what then?”
“Time will tell.”
But what were his options? There just weren’t that many wars left to wage for an Osage in these times.
He eyed McLoughlin, seeing silver-winged black hair and an air of confidence etching a sun-dried face. Hawk grinned. “Maybe I do have an idea or two,” he joked. “Maybe I’ll just find me some nice white woman and wage war with her. Where did you say those unmarried daughters of yours are right now? Margaret, for instance.”
A look crossed McLoughlin’s face much akin to that of an Apache with a thorn in his toe–black fury. “I respect you, David Fierce Hawk,” he replied with a note of restraint in his voice. “I think you’re one helluva lawyer, and you’re a damned fine man, but don’t overstep your bounds.”
Bounds? More like racial lines, Hawk thought.
Hawk set his mount into a prance to circle in front of McLoughlin. “All right, forget Margaret. What about the other one? Charity. You said yourself she’s been a hellion since the day she was born.” Spunky had always had its allure to Hawk. “I could take her off your hands.”
“Do as you please.” McLoughlin tugged on the reins and kicked his mount. “As far as I’m concerned, that one is dead and buried.”
Hawk knew Lisette stood by her husband’s decision over their black-sheep daughter, though he had seen sadness in h
er expression. A damned sorrowful situation. Catching up with the senator, Hawk said, “She couldn’t be all that bad, your girl.”
“Dammit, don’t concern yourself with my family. And don’t interfere, either.”
On that August morning, Hawk had laughed heartily. The senator might claim to have buried a daughter, but blood ran thicker than family feuds. And if red were to mix with McLoughlin white . . .
“No need to worry yourself,” he called after the departing McLoughlin. “I’ll keep my britches buttoned where your girls are concerned.” Maybe.
What he hankered for was a good look at one of those girls promised to him back in ’69. Then, on the eve of his leaving the Four Aces to visit Sam Washburn, Maisie McLoughlin had set Hawk on his current course.
“Bring the lass home,” she had said, appealing to what she knew to be Hawk’s affection for her, a ninety-year-old Scotswoman who pined for a wayward great-granddaughter. She’d also piqued his curiosity.
“But keep yer hands to yerself,” the feisty woman–old as the plains and skinny as a rail–had demanded. “Bring my great-granddaughter back in the condition ye find her. A virgin.”
“What if she’s not?”
Fires jumped and blazed in the aged blue eyes; she shook an arthritic finger. “The lass may be a lotta things, but ye’ll not be finding her loose. So don’t ye be poking at her maidenhead.”
As for the “lass,” Hawk had been wondering what it would be like to mate with a McLoughlin daughter since he’d obtained the medicine of manhood. He made no promises to her great-grandmother.
The Old One started jabbering about how she had lost weight and sleep over the “tarnished angel running off t’ wed that Blyer peacock.”
Recalling her parents’ banishment of their daughter, Hawk asked, “If you want my help, I need some answers. Do Lisette and McLoughlin hate her simply because she’s a runaway?”
“They doona hate her! They love the lass. But she is”–the Old One dabbed at her eyes–“hard to love. She has done her best to drive us all mad. Running off to marry that peacock was the last straw.”
“I was under the impression they aren’t married.” Hawk crossed his arms. “And I’m no magician. I can’t make a virgin out of a married woman.”
“She ain’t wed! Her father alerted every county clerk in the state t’ watch for an application for a marriage license. There hasna been any. Now, get riding, lad! I’m wanting me lass at home.”
Hawk packed his bag. The Old One gave him one last instruction as he was riding away. “ ’Twon’t be easy, lad, bringing her home. She’s a stubborn wench. Scare sense int’ her if need be. And she’ll be needing it.”
“Scare sense into her?”
“Ye’re an Indian, ye know what t’ do.”
“Ma’am, my people are the peaceful sort. With a bow and arrow I’m considered a fine hunter, but I’m not a marksman with a gun. And I am not trained in scare tactics.”
“Ye’ll think of something.”
That had been Fredericksburg; this was the aftermath of Laredo. His curiosity had been appeased. As for keeping her virginity intact, there was a good chance Charity was no flower of purity, given that she’d run off after that Blyer character, then had taken up with Gonzáles and his lot, which spoke chapters about her nature.
Spunky might have its allure, but an outlaw woman went against the grain of a man who fought for right, not wrong.
Anyway, the Old One would get her descendant to an attorney. Hawk squinted at the stars before he strode into the physician’s shack. All he had to do was get Charity to the powwow point in Uvalde, then escort the two women to the Four Aces Ranch.
Then Hawk would be done with her.
Chapter Four
A minute or so after vowing to be done with Charity McLoughlin posthaste, Hawk entered the sleeping room that was lined with the paraphernalia of medical science. But his eyes didn’t linger on the stoppered bottles, nor the shelves of medical books, nor the instruments of Sam’s trade.
Hawk eyed his captive. A lantern cast a soft glow over her shapely form. Her hands shackled to the rungs of an iron bedstead, she lay dressed atop a worn quilt. Her skirts had worked their way up to her knees, displaying worn velvet slippers and curvaceous legs.
“Not bad,” he murmured to himself. “For a hellcat.”
His gaze moved upward. Wavy hair, long and luxurious, cascaded across her shoulders and down to her nipped waist, and his fingers strummed the air in a rhythm suddenly and irrationally impatient to twine through those locks. His glance settled on cheeks tinged with roses, then on a lush mouth opened slightly as if in invitation. His head moved downward.
Back off. She’s trouble you don’t need.
Were the situation different, though–if Charity were a different sort, or if he were nothing more than a kidnapper out for his own gain–Hawk would crawl in bed with her and find out just how much was spunk and how much was bluster.
He grew hard just thinking about it.
Hard and hot.
Gulping a couple of drafts of air to ease his engorged lower region, Hawk shucked the fringed jacket, leaving his torso clad in a cotton shirt. He felt somewhat relieved. He turned from the sleeping woman; when he did, he heard the bedclothes rustle.
“You dirty, low-down polecat,” he heard her mutter.
Keeping his eyes on the door and his back to Charity, he stopped his retreat. “You’ve awakened.”
“Brilliant deduction.”
“Are you feeling all right?”
“What a question. Of course I’m not all right.”
From the venom spewing from her tongue, Hawk figured the chloroform hadn’t upset her stomach.
The iron posts protested as she tried to get free. “Unlock these blasted shackles,” she ordered.
“Are you hungry?”
“I said unlock these manacles!”
“Not a good idea. But I am willing to feed you some dinner, Miss Charity McLoughlin. There’s a pot of venison stew simmering. Sure you wouldn’t like a bit of supper?”
Silence descended; it didn’t take glancing over his shoulder to know she was skewering him with a look of loathing.
He decided to get the rules of the warpath straight. “Charity, you are my captive. And I give the orders. You can make it easy on yourself. Or you can make things difficult. Take your pick. Now, I’m not going to unlock the handcuffs. Understand? But I am willing to feed you, and I suspect you may be hungry, so do you want the stew, or not?”
He wondered what would win out, her hunger or her defiance.
“I . . . I do.”
“Good girl.”
He quit the room.
Those turquoise eyes were half closed, yet the anger in them was full-blown when Hawk carried a bowl of stew into the sleeping room. “Charity, I’ll have to prop you up with a few pillows,” he said, “or you’ll strangle on your meal.”
“You’re ever so kind,” she said sarcastically.
“Raise up.”
He placed a couple of pillows behind her, catching a whiff of rose water blended with the musky scent of woman as he did so. He felt the rush of her breath against his shoulder at the same moment that strands of her hair brushed against his mouth. And the collective effect–
“You’re smothering me, you big ox.”
He reared back to sit on the bed’s edge.
She was watching him, denouncement written in her oval face. Rebuke that turned to pure curiosity. Her brow quirked as she looked him up and down. “Do much wood chopping?”
“Beg pardon?”
“I asked if you’re a woodchopper. With brawn like yours, you must spend a hefty amount of time swinging an ax. Then again . . .” She paused to continue her assessment. “Your skin isn’t quite white and I see traces of savage in your features. Perhaps axes don’t interest you at all. Perhaps you swing war clubs. You’re an Indian, aren’t you?”
“I am,” he answered, giving her credit for her astutene
ss.
Sam had been right. Not many pegged him as Indian, especially not when he was garbed in white trappings. Hawk took it as a compliment that Charity had made such a swift and accurate appraisal of his ancestry.
Complacent, he smiled. “Earlier, you wondered if I was as ugly as you expected. Do you think Indians are ugly?”
“If you’re fishing for a compliment, think again. If you were as handsome as John Wilkes Booth–Lucifer, burn his soul–I wouldn’t tell you.” She eyed the knife thonged to his thigh, swallowed, then nervously moistened her upper lip. “Going to scalp me before this is all over?”
He’d heard more than his share of comments like that in his twenty-seven winters. Such affronts were especially bad when he’d attended law school in Maryland. But his mother’s relatives had pulled strings to get their “heathen” relative enrolled, and Hawk had wanted a law degree bad enough to suffer the indignities. By becoming an attorney, he had concluded that he could help his people in these days of reservations and government agents.
Thus, he had become inured to prejudice. But it was a good ways to Uvalde, and he could do without her insults.
Hawk said, “Not all Indians are out to scalp women.”
Despite her superior airs, her mouth bowed sensuously, and Hawk read something in her expression. The hellcat eyed him as a man. Color be damned. Maybe she wasn’t as much her father’s daughter as he had first supposed.
“I’m not interested in scalping you,” he said. “Not unless I have to.”
“Don’t gawk, redskin. It’s rude. If you’re going to feed me, do it.”
He reached for the bowl. Raising the filled spoon to her lips, he watched as she devoured the portion, then another and another. “Charity, how long has it been since you’ve eaten?”
Her throat worked as she swallowed. Her eyes closed, a dense fringe of black lashes rested against her fair skin. “It seems as if forever. I’ve got a powerful hunger.”
The huskiness in her voice and his own powerful hungers broke his resolve to leave her be. To hell with misgivings. To hell with any disapproving McLoughlin. In the matter of man and woman, it was nobody’s business but their own.