Luke was the most likely culprit, he thought now. The boy had been fascinated with the damned book. The night he’d first seen it, the boy had spent what seemed like hours trying to follow every branch of the family tree that began with Jenna and Kane, reading every name out loud until Josh was ready to gag the boy with his bandanna.
But then he had decided that listening to that endless list of names was better than hearing that crazy story the boy had read aloud, the one his grandfather had told him so often, about how Jenna had saved the life of a mysterious man of the forest who had made her a promise that in return, her own blood would live on forever. The fact that the bloodline had done exactly that, continued unbroken since that day, didn’t make the story any easier to believe, just harder to dismiss.
He wondered now why he hadn’t just thrown the boy out. He usually didn’t pay much mind to kids except when they got in his way. They were a nuisance then, following him around, spreading stories that had him doing so many things in so many places he should by rights be a hundred years old instead of twenty-five.
Usually a stern look sent them scurrying away. But Luke was different. Josh couldn’t quite bring himself to shoo the boy away. Perhaps because when he looked at him, he saw a bit of himself as he’d been not so long ago: proud, stubborn, and trying to make it alone in a world that seemed to have no place for him.
“Getting soft, Hawk.” He drummed his fingers on the book.
He looked down at the leather cover, remembering Luke’s stumbling reading of the incredible story. Josh had been unwillingly fascinated, drawn to Jenna’s story in a way he didn’t understand. So drawn that he’d read the story himself tonight. And had found the pull becoming stronger, even as he scoffed at the foolishness of the parts about magic and wizardry.
At least she’d been able to save her people.
The bitter words rose in his mind yet again. From the time he’d been nine years old, he’d been given a rifle and taught to shoot. Although his mother had been told it was to hunt, to help supplement their war-shortened food supply, his grandfather had explained to him that the war was very close, and while the fact that they, like many Missourians, had family in both blue and gray, might be of some help should they be visited by troops, they must be ready to defend their home and their women.
Josh, frustrated at being too young to follow his father into battle, had taken to the lessons eagerly, practicing until Gramps had laughingly told him they had to save some ammunition for the real thing.
But when the real thing had come, in the summer of ’63, he’d been worse than useless. Despite his grandfather’s instructions to stay close while he went into Springfield in search of the latest casualty lists, Josh had been off hunting rabbits when it happened. He’d smelled the smoke first, and started home at a run. He’d heard the faint screams when he’d burst out of the woods, all caution forgotten.
He’d found his mother in the front yard, lying in the middle of her trampled garden. His two oldest sisters were on the front porch, their clothes torn open. His aunt was in the parlor of the big house, her husband’s old Sharps rifle beneath her. All were sprawled lifelessly, in grotesque and obscene postures he hadn’t completely understood until years later, when he realized what had been done to them. Numb with shock, he’d straightened their bodies, covered them up, and sat down to wait for his grandfather.
It was then that he’d found his youngest sister, twelve-year-old Ruthie, under the high front porch, on her knees, rocking back and forth, staring glassy eyed, muttering “Foxes, Foxes” over and over.
Josh knew what it meant; he’d heard about the local guerrilla band of raiders. “They call them Foxes because of the fox tails they tie on their hats,” Gramps had told him once. “And they’re no better than Quantrill and his gang, for all that they were supposedly formed up to fight them.”
By the time Gramps had returned, Ruthie was in the same state Josh had found her in; he hadn’t been able to get another word out of her, or even get her to acknowledge he was there. He was crying by then, beyond caring about pride or manhood. But when his grandfather arrived, taking in the grim scene with horrified eyes, Josh had wiped his eyes and stood up to meet him, knowing what he had to do.
“It’s my fault, Gramps,” he’d said. “I wanted to surprise Mama with a rabbit for supper. The Foxes came. I wasn’t here to save them. It’s all my fault.”
He shivered now, amazed that the old memories still had the power to shake him so. He’d eventually realized that, even had he been there, there was little a ten-year-old boy could have done to stop what had happened.
“You would have died with them, Joshua,” Gramps had said that bloody afternoon, “and then where would I be?”
And only much later had he broken the news that Uncle Charles was dead, killed in the fighting at Vicksburg. Josh had known better than to ask about his father; there had been no word for months.
His grandfather had been an incredible man, Josh thought. Comforting his guilt-ridden grandson despite his own pain, and trying futilely to soothe a granddaughter who had retreated so far inside herself she couldn’t be found anymore.
He tossed the book down beside him on the floor, resenting that it was stirring up painful memories he’d managed to dodge for years. Remembering the man his grandfather had been only made him more aware of what he himself was not.
Of course, if he quit thinking about that, that left only another uncomfortable subject to dwell on. He hadn’t spent so much time in one town since Gramps had taken sick. And he’d come too damned close to dying here to like the place much. So why was he here, on the floor of a place that belonged to the woman he’d made a widow? Why had he pushed himself to near exhaustion chasing down that wagonload of supplies? Why was he still in Gambler’s Notch at all?
And most of all, why did every creak of the boards over his head make him wonder what she was doing? And why, when the creaking finally stopped, did the images in his head take such an intimate turn? She wasn’t the kind of woman who made men stop in their tracks. She’d said that herself. He thought she was a bit hard on herself to call herself plain—those eyes made that a lie—but she was hardly what you’d call a beauty.
So why was he lying here, wide-awake, wondering if she took her hair down at night, how long it was, and if her nightclothes were as ill fitting as her dresses seemed to be, or if they perhaps revealed more of that lovely curve of hip he’d noticed that first day?
And why the hell had he turned down the chance to ease this damned ache with that girl in Granite Bluff? She’d been a good-enough-looking woman. And she’d been willing—more than willing—and he could have walked away after without a backward glance. Instead, he’d just walked away.
And it made him more than a little angry that the ache that had vanished in Granite Bluff had come back with a vengeance the instant he’d returned to Gambler’s Notch. And it was about to drive him crazy with its fierceness. If he was so damned eager, then why the hell hadn’t he been the least bit interested in that saloon girl?
It must have been something about her, he told himself firmly. Perhaps it had been her eagerness to bed The Hawk, without knowing a thing about the man behind the name. That had never bothered him before, but maybe this time . . .
With a smothered groan, he reached over and picked up the book. Anything would be better than these kinds of thoughts; he’d been far too long without a woman if he was intrigued by one who had nothing in particular to recommend her except a pair of interesting eyes and a certain way of moving.
You had your chance, last night, he growled at himself inwardly. There was no reason—except his unexpected lack of interest—why he couldn’t have scratched this itch. A man had to take care of those needs, eventually. And the last time had been . . . Cheyenne? Lord, he couldn’t remember, except that she’d had red hair he’d discovered was d
yed, and had been a bit too bony for his taste. But she’d been enthusiastic enough, although he suspected his reputation might have had something to do with that. Like Lily, she’d been one of those women who seemed to get a strange sort of enjoyment from that kind of thing.
He wondered if Gambler’s Notch ran to sporting women. He’d ask Markum tomorrow; although he hadn’t seen any girls in the place, most saloon owners found it worth their while to keep a soiled dove or two on or near the premises. That was all that was wrong with him; it had simply been too long. No other reason for him to be wondering what the Widow Dixon wore to bed.
That this conclusion did not give him an answer to his lack of response to the willing Lily was a fact he chose to overlook for the moment. And when that small voice in his head pointed out that he’d been doing a great deal of overlooking lately, he chose to ignore that as well.
Determinedly, he opened the book again. He began to look at the family tree, finding the names Luke had read out loud. It was an odd feeling, to see how the Hawks had grown, how the line had gone on and on, narrowing in times of hardship or disease, but never breaking. Decade after decade he read, Hawks and their offspring, and theirs, and theirs. On and on it went, each page he turned seeming to pound home to him that he was going to be the one to bring this to an end, that he was the one who would topple the Hawk dynasty.
“Foolishness,” he said aloud. How did he even know any of these names were right, that any of these people were really his ancestors? This whole thing was unbelievable, the way the book had appeared, the crazy story of Jenna and her warrior, and the wizard. . . .
He nearly laughed out loud. There was no more truth in this than there was in the rest of Gramps’s fanciful legends, no matter how this book had come to be in his bag in the first place, or where it had come from. In fact, the whole thing was probably a trick rigged up by that writer he’d run into in Denver last year, who’d taken a notion to make The Hawk the next dime-novel hero.
A slow smile curved his mouth; he was very pleased with this idea. It was much easier to accept than the other crack-brained ideas he’d had. Yes, that writer was behind all this. He’d told the persistent fellow that if he ever saw a book with his name on it, he’d hunt him down and kill him, whether he’d written it or not. Josh had thought the man was convinced, but perhaps not. Perhaps this was the writer’s way of trying to convince him he should go along with the idea.
Yes, that was it, Josh thought with a smile. If he poked around hard enough tomorrow, he’d just bet that Mr. Bunting, or whatever his name had been, would come scurrying out from whatever rock he was hiding under. And he’d make him painfully sorry he’d ever pried into things that weren’t his business.
His smile faded. While someone might be able to track down his family tree, he supposed, and have it put into this fancy book, there was one thing his explanation didn’t account for, and that was how he’d known Jenna’s story. Hawks might tell the old legends repeatedly to each other, but they rarely told outsiders. Gramps had pounded that into him from childhood.
“When you find the right woman, you tell her,” he’d said, making, “because she’ll need to know. Otherwise, you keep this among Hawks.”
Well, he doubted such a woman existed, and he’d certainly never found her, so he’d never told the stories to anyone. And the rest of the Hawks had been dead for well over a decade. So how in hell had the writer come up with the story, down to the details of how Jenna had found her warrior and lured him out of the mountains to save her people, in a time and place not to be found in any history, or on any map?
With a weary sigh, he again tossed the book on the floor. He was tired of searching for answers to ridiculous questions. He leaned over to the kerosene lamp, lifting the glass chimney to blow out the flame. He hesitated when he saw the book had fallen open to the last page of the tree, the page with the grim record of deaths, and reached down to close it. His fingers missed the cover, although he wasn’t sure how, and turned a single page instead.
He stopped, staring at the pages after his branch on the family tree, pages that he could swear had been blank. And the first one was indeed blank, as if it had been skipped for some reason. But the next held one short entry at the top of the page. An entry in capital letters that he knew hadn’t been there before. He would have remembered if it had been.
He would have remembered because of what it said, in that same elaborate, elegant script:
Joshua Hawk.
WHAT DID YOU do with a jittery gunfighter?
Kate watched warily as Josh worked the broom with an energy that threatened to wear it out, over a spot near the storeroom door that he’d already swept twice. He’d been on edge all day, and it was making her very nervous in turn.
She’d been surprised by his silence at breakfast after his affable charm with both her and Luke at supper the night before. She’d told herself that he was still tired. She hadn’t expected him up at all this morning, and had even been careful not to make any noise, knowing he’d had to sleep in the main room last night. But as noon rolled by, she’d had to admit it was more than that.
Or perhaps this morning she was seeing the real Joshua Hawk, and last night’s charm had been an act. She supposed even gunfighters had occasion to be charming, perhaps to lull their targets into thinking they were safe. It was a chilling thought, but then every thought she had about what this man did for a living gave her a chill.
But this was the same man who had pushed himself to exhaustion to retrieve what she’d needed. Who had been kinder, more polite, more helpful, and had worked harder than her husband ever had. How did she reconcile the two? Which one was the real Joshua Hawk?
She looked up as the door opened, grateful for any kind of distraction from Josh’s too intense presence. Luke, who had left at least an hour ago to deliver the monthly supply of preserves and canned peaches to Mr. Meeker, came in as he always seemed to, at a run. He glanced at Josh, who didn’t even look up from his sweeping. Luke looked doubtful, then trotted over to the counter where Kate stood.
“Here’s the money, Miss Kate, and Mr. Meeker says thank you for . . . remembering him in your time of grief.”
The last words came out in a breathless rush, as if the boy wanted to get the message out before he forgot it. That had been very kind of Mr. Meeker. She’d have to make a point of visiting him again soon.
“Thank you for taking it to him, Luke. Here’s something for your time—”
“No, ma’am.” Luke shook his head, declining the coin she held out to him. “Mr. Meeker, he already gave me somethin’.”
“But I always pay you, Luke.”
“Mr. Meeker, he said he was payin’ this time.” The boy grinned. “An’ he gave me a dime.”
Kate smiled as she put the five-cent piece back in the drawer she’d opened when the boy had come in. She would make a point of going to see Mr. Meeker soon, she thought.
Luke glanced again at Josh, who was still sweeping the same spot. Even the boy seemed to sense something wasn’t right, because he didn’t go over and begin to ply Josh with questions and chatter as he usually did. Instead, he turned back to Kate.
“That man, he surely can talk.”
“I’m sure he’s just lonely, Luke. It must be awful, to have to be in that room all the time. I hope you were nice to him.”
“Sure, I was. I like him. I even visit him sometimes.”
“You do?”
Luke nodded. “He doesn’t mind. He said so,” the boy added earnestly, and Kate’s heart ached for the boy who found it such a novelty to have someone who didn’t mind his presence.
“I’m sure he’s glad of your company,” she said.
“He’s been a lot of places, and he’s got lots of interesting stories,” Luke said, “and he lets me look at that old rifle of his, the one he used to shoot buffalo
with. And it’s not such a bad room. He can see the whole street from that window. Reckon he knows most everything that goes on.”
Kate thought it sounded rather sad, watching the world without being a part of it. But she hastily amended that; she’d been part of the world, and there had been many times when she would have given a great deal not to have been. But at least the man didn’t treat Luke like he was some kind of wild animal, instead of just a boy who ran a little wild because he had no one to look out for him.
Luke’s fascination with The Hawk soon overcame his wariness, and he abandoned Kate for a tentative approach to Josh, stopping a few careful feet away. The boy had been astonished that The Hawk would lower himself to such a menial task as sweeping, but Josh had unperturbedly pointed out that since he was sleeping on the floor, keeping it clean seemed like a good idea. Luke had seen the wisdom in that, and quickly abandoned his opinion that sweeping was beneath him. And now he watched the regular movements of the broom as if fascinated.
“You been sweepin’ that spot a long time,” Luke said after a moment longer.
Josh kept sweeping, as if he hadn’t even heard the boy speak. Luke hesitated, then tried again.
“You were sweeping there when I left.”
The broom kept moving, and Josh still never looked up. Kate saw hurt flash across Luke’s face, and suddenly she’d had enough; whatever had Josh acting like a caged wolf, it had gone far enough. The boy looked up to him like some sort of hero, and while she was fairly certain a man like The Hawk wasn’t the best of idols for a boy, that didn’t mean she’d stand by and let the man hurt the boy’s feelings.
She stepped out from behind the counter and walked toward them. She put her hand comfortingly on Luke’s shoulder as she passed. The boy glanced up at her, his face now a mask of studied indifference. His expression gave her the nerve to keep going until she was close enough to reach out and grasp the broom’s handle, stopping the endless motion.
Heart of the Hawk Page 10