“Sounds like a determined woman.”
“She’s got more sand than most of the men around here,” Luke said.
“Most women do,” Josh said softly, fighting off another host of memories he tried to keep locked away. They’d been harassing him a lot of late, and he didn’t know why. He supposed it had something to do with nearly meeting his maker—and having to account for his no-account life.
“She had a tough time with ol’ Arly. He was a mean one. Really mean.”
Josh stopped moving again, the brush poised for a moment over the black points on the buckskin’s legs. Then he straightened up. “How mean? Did he hit her?”
Luke dodged the question. “Mr. Rankin says he don’t hold with men hitting women.”
“He’s right. It’s a cowardly thing to do.”
Luke nodded. “That’s what he says.”
“He may not talk much,” Josh said, willing to let the boy avoid a direct answer for the moment, “but he’s a man to listen to when he does.”
“He looks out for me, since my folks died.”
“How long has that been?”
“I’ve been here since I was eight, an’ I’m twelve now.” He shrugged his thin shoulders. “My folks died of the cholera.”
The boy had been alone since he was eight? Josh didn’t know what made him say it, but before he could stop them, the words were out. “My grandfather died of it, too.”
Luke looked up quickly. “Really?”
Josh nodded. “He was the only family I had left.”
Luke’s eyes widened. “You’re an orphan, too?”
Josh drew back a little. “I never thought about it like that, but I guess you’re right.”
“Guess we’re kind of alike, then, huh?”
The boy was looking at him so hopefully Josh nearly smiled. “Guess we are.”
Luke smiled, and Josh instinctively reached out and ruffled the boy’s hair. Then he nearly laughed at himself. He’d hated that when Gramps did it, and here he was doing it in turn.
Josh went back to brushing Buck’s legs. He still wanted his answer, but he didn’t want to push the boy. He cleaned out the buckskin’s hooves, then straightened up again. Luke was staring across the street at the mercantile. The boy seemed to sense his gaze, and looked back at him. He seemed about to speak, then hesitated. Josh said nothing, figuring silence would encourage the boy as much as anything.
Gramps had known that, had known how hard it had been for him at this same age, to talk about the ugly things. He’d made it clear he was listening, then left Josh alone to talk or not as he wished. In the end, he’d always talked; it had been too much to hold in.
“She tried to run away once, a couple of years ago,” Luke finally said. “He caught her. Nobody saw her for a couple of weeks after that. Talk was they thought he’d killed her.”
Something in the boy’s tone caught Josh’s full attention. He saw it in Luke’s face, too. He might not have recognized it had he not been wrestling with it himself recently. Guilt.
“But he didn’t,” Josh prompted gently.
“No. He just beat her real bad. She could hardly move. Miss Deborah, she went in there and faced ol’ Arly down, made him bring Miss Kate to her place so’s she could nurse her.”
He didn’t doubt that, having met the redoubtable Miss Taylor. But that didn’t explain Luke’s unmistakable look of self-reproach. “What else, Luke?”
The boy’s towhead ducked, and when he finally spoke, Josh had to strain to hear.
“I . . . tried to help her. Got her a horse and hid it out back. She was always nice to me, let me come in the store when it was rainin’, snuck me hard candy now and then. She even gave me a pair of shoes one winter, said they were damaged and couldn’t be sold, but I couldn’t see nothin’ wrong with ’em.”
“And Dixon found out you helped her?” Another nod. “What happened?” Silence met his query. “Luke?”
The boy stole a glance at him. “He whupped me but good. Knocked out two of my teeth, but Miss Deborah said it was okay, they weren’t my real teeth yet. Ol’ Arly told me if I ever tried anything like that again, he’d kill me.”
The lingering guilt Josh was feeling about having killed the man was rapidly fading. A man who would not only beat a woman nigh unto death, but also a child who couldn’t have been more than ten at the time, deserved killing. But there was something he still didn’t understand.
“Why do you feel guilty about trying to help her?”
“Not that,” the boy said quickly. “It’s just that . . . he hit her more, because of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“He told me that because of me, he was going to make her sorrier than she’d ever been in her life.”
Josh’s stomach knotted. The world was indeed a twisted, out-of-kilter place when men like Arliss Dixon flourished and boys like Luke carried burdens far too heavy for their young shoulders.
“Luke, it wasn’t your fault. He would have done it anyway, if he was that kind of man.”
Luke looked at him with wide brown eyes far too old for his young face. “That’s what she said. Miss Kate. Later, when she got well. I was afraid she’d hate me, but she just kept telling me it wasn’t my fault. And thanked me for trying.”
Josh took in a deep breath. Sand, he thought, was not enough word for Kate Dixon. She might be plain, but she was a survivor. A survivor with grit, who could sum up what had apparently been a brutally painful life with mild words.
My husband was not the kindest of men.
It is not the kindest of times.
His mother’s voice, just as soft, just as gentle, and so long forgotten echoed in his mind. No, not forgotten. Suppressed, forced into that darkest corner of his mind, where he kept the memories that were too painful to look at. Or in this case, too painful to hear.
“Mr. Hawk? Are you all right?”
Josh exhaled, long and slow. “Yes,” he lied. “I’m fine.”
Except that my family would be ashamed of me and I should have died this morning, and I don’t know what the hell it all means.
Chapter 3
“THERE A BARBER in this town?”
Art Rankin rubbed a hand over his own unshaven chin. “Was. You killed him.”
Josh blinked. “Dixon was the barber?”
“Close as we had. Cut hair okay, but not many trusted him with a razor. Arly was kind of surly.”
“So I’ve heard.” He gave the blacksmith a considering look. “Nobody seems to miss him much.”
Rankin shrugged. “Most towns I’ve been in, general store’s a friendly sort of place. Not Arly’s. ‘Buy something or get out,’ that was his slogan.”
Josh ran a hand through the tangled length of his hair. It had been longer, but not often. “Guess I’ll do without a haircut before I pull out, then.”
“You’re pulling out?”
“In the morning.”
“You’re in a hurryin’ mood.”
Josh looked at the man. “What’s that mean?”
“Nothing.”
“You don’t have any slack in your jaw, Art. When you say something, you mean to. What is it?”
“After you sayin’ at your trial you was sorry about the widow, figured you’d want to stick around and see she was going to be all right.”
Josh glanced over to the far side of the barn, where Luke was industriously cleaning his saddle, despite his protests that it wasn’t necessary. The boy was far enough away, and so intent on his job, that Josh didn’t think he could hear. He looked back at Rankin.
“Some reason you think she might not be?”
“Just thinking there might be some of Arly’s suppliers not eager to do business with her, once they hear Arly’s dead.�
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Rankin didn’t say it—he wouldn’t spend that many words—but he didn’t have to; the implication was clear. If those suppliers refused to deal with her because her husband was dead and she was a woman alone, it was his fault. She could wind up losing everything and it would be his fault.
Don’t be a fool, Hawk. You’ve made widows before, and never felt responsible. And Dixon had asked for it as much as those other men.
“I’m a gunfighter, not a nursemaid.”
“Woulda been a dead one, ’cept for her.”
“Right,” he muttered, still not certain that was something to be thankful for. But Rankin had put his finger on the problem; Josh had made widows before, but none of them had ever saved his life in return. And that was a debt that needed repaying, one he wasn’t at all sure he could ride away from.
But he was damn well going to try. He slung his coat over his shoulder. Rankin said no more, but then Josh guessed he figured he’d said all that needed saying.
“I’ll be over for my horse first thing,” he said determinedly. Rankin only nodded, as if he’d never expected anything else. For some reason that irritated Josh, and he turned on his boot heel and strode out of the barn.
By the time he reached his room at the hotel, he was thoroughly disgruntled. He didn’t like this feeling. In fact, he resented it. Arly Dixon had brought this on himself, and he’d evidently done the town a favor by ridding them of a surly, razor-wielding woman and child beater. And then he’d escaped a date with the hangman. He should ride out of here first thing in the morning feeling satisfied. And damn lucky besides.
He yawned, then blinked, startled, wondering where this abrupt feeling of weariness had come from. He’d been so irritated he would have thought it would carry him through the night until he rode out.
And he would ride out of here feeling satisfied and lucky, he told himself. He shut the door behind him and locked it out of habit, as he tried to fight off the odd lethargy. In fact, he thought, he’d pack his things tonight, so he could save time tomorrow.
He yawned again. The way he was suddenly feeling, maybe he’d wait until morning to pack. Then he shook his head, trying to clear it of this strange fogginess. No, he thought determinedly, he’d pack tonight.
He walked over to the table that held the chipped chamber set, where he had laid his saddlebags. He’d pack now, then roll out at first light, slide on his clothes and boots, and be out of Gambler’s Notch for good by full sunup. He picked up the bags. He took a step toward the dresser where he’d put the two shirts he’d just had washed at the town bathhouse and laundry. Then he stopped dead.
He looked down at the leather bags in his hand. Unlike his gunbelt, the bags were intricately carved, with a design featuring a hawk on the wing, a design custom ordered by his grandfather to represent the family name. Gramps had given them to Josh on his fifteenth birthday, presenting them with great ceremony and a retelling of the original Hawk legend, the mythical one about Jenna, the Hawk who long ago had saved the life of an unusual man and won unending life for the Hawk name.
Josh had carried the bags for ten years now. They were worn, stained, gouged, but still sturdy, and Josh knew every mark on them. And even as groggy as he was, he also knew exactly how much they weighed empty, which these were. Or were supposed to be. And they didn’t weigh this much.
Adrenaline kicked through him, pushing away the fuzziness. He hefted the bags, testing the weight, acknowledging both that he’d been right, they were no longer empty, and that the unexpected weight was in the bag with the bullet scar on it, picked up in that fight up in the Montana Territory last year. Only Buck’s speed had gotten him out of that canyon ambush alive, and only the fact that the big horse was the best rimrocker he’d ever seen had kept him from plunging back to the bottom in the process.
He looked at the scarred bag for a long moment. A memory flitted through his mind, of a man with a young lady’s three brothers on his tail, a canvas sack, and a very angry rattlesnake. He lifted the leather bags, gave them a shake, listened, then grinned at himself.
“You’re suspicioning all kinds of things here, aren’t you?” he said aloud.
Still, he set the bags carefully down on the bed and drew his Colt out of the holster before he pulled back the flap with the scar.
Nothing happened. He holstered the Colt. He reached out to tilt the bag up so he could see what was inside.
A book.
He nearly laughed at the image of himself almost shooting the thing, but his amusement didn’t last; this book wasn’t his, so someone had been in here. Locking hotel room doors and windows when he left was a habit he’d gotten into early, to save himself any surprises upon his return; careless gunfighters didn’t last long.
But this door had been intact, with no sign of being pried or forced open. And there was no window in this room. He’d asked for it that way, although the deskman had expected he would want one of the better—and more expensive—rooms. But no windows meant one less way for anyone to get in.
That left only the door.
He walked over to check the door again, and found nothing amiss. He unlocked the door and opened it, checking the outer surface and the knob; it looked perfectly normal. He stood there for a moment, thinking.
The man at the desk had told him there was only one other guest at the moment, a whiskey drummer who’d be leaving in the morning now that he’d finished his business with Hugh Markum, the owner of the saloon. He’d seen the drummer in the saloon when he’d been building his stake—he was a dandified, mild-seeming man who wore spectacles and a bowler hat, and didn’t seem at all the type to risk breaking into The Hawk’s room, nor to have the knowledge to do it without leaving a sign.
He closed the door again, and locked it. As he always did. As he knew he’d done this morning, before he’d headed over to Markum’s saloon in hopes of adding to his stake.
If not the drummer, he thought as he walked back across the small room, who? The young man at the desk? Meeker, the name was, Josh recalled, and it seemed appropriate. Josh remembered how he’d been rambling on about his father owning this place as Josh had checked in. He hadn’t paid much attention; he was used to people chattering at him, nervous in the presence of The Hawk’s reputation if not the man himself. Meeker would have a key, but he didn’t seem the type either.
Josh paused beside the bed, thinking as he looked down at the bags, at the hand-carved work that, despite the intricacy of the hawk design, was as familiar as the weight of the Colt in his hand.
He supposed the father could be suspect, but he thought he remembered hearing that the man was an invalid confined to a wheeled chair in his room in the front corner of the hotel. That greatly lessened the chance that he was involved in this. Whatever this was. He couldn’t explain that, and he didn’t like things he couldn’t explain.
And that was the real crux of the whole thing. He could think of no reason why any of them, or for that matter, why anyone at all, would go to all that trouble to slip a book into his saddlebags.
A book.
A chill swept through him, unlike anything he’d ever felt before.
A book.
How many times had Gramps told him the story? How many times had he listened, first, as a little boy, rapt with childish wonder; then, as he got older, with the patronizing patience youth showed to age? How many times had he wished Gramps would find something else to talk about besides wild stories of previous Hawks Josh cared little about? The last of the Hawks he’d ever cared about, except for his grandfather, had been dead since he was eleven.
He stared at the book, telling himself it was impossible. It was a story, a legend with no more truth than the incredible yarns cowboys told around a campfire. There was no such thing as magic, so there was no such thing as a magical book that appeared to every Hawk who was the last
of the line.
Like him.
The book. The magical book of Hawk legend. The book that Gramps had mentioned practically with his dying breath, saying that Josh would find it when the time was right. He’d muttered something about Josh being the last Hawk now, had told him to do the Hawks proud, and with a final, feeble squeeze of his fingers around his grandson’s hand, had died.
Josh swallowed tightly. He hadn’t thought of Gramps’s death in a long time, hadn’t let himself. He’d let the man down so badly, it hurt too much to ponder what his grandfather would think of what he’d become.
And he couldn’t think of it now.
Shoving the painful thoughts away, he reached once more for the bags. He lifted them and shook the book out onto the bed. He stared at it for a moment.
He hadn’t seen anything like it in a very long time. He had a faint memory of books like this, elegant books, in the library of the big house back in Missouri, the big house that had once been his home. His father’s library, where Josh had often retreated when he wanted to get away from the constant teasing of his older sisters.
He jerked his thoughts out of that painful scene as well, and tried to concentrate on the book before him now. The book that couldn’t be here, but was.
It appeared to be an ordinary book, although it looked very old. It was beautiful, like those books he remembered and like them, bound in heavy leather. He wondered what the leather had been dyed with; the color was deep, rich, and dark blue. He cocked his head to one side, to see the edge of the book. The pages looked thick and heavy, and were gilt edged, shining in the lamplight. Oddly, there was no sign of a title, or an author on the cover or the spine.
After a moment longer spent staring at it, he at last reached out to pick it up. And immediately nearly dropped it again.
It was . . . warm. No, warm wasn’t right. It wasn’t really any warmer to the touch than anything else in the room, including the saddlebags, but somehow, holding it, he felt warmer. And he couldn’t explain the strange sense of peace that seemed to have overtaken him. Peace was a state he’d had little experience with since he’d been eight and war had become the focus of his young life. But he couldn’t deny this sensation was pleasant, this gentle warmth, this feeling that perhaps he wasn’t as alone as he sometimes felt, that perhaps Gramps would even forgive what he’d done with his life. . . .
Heart of the Hawk Page 4