She barely kept back a moan.
“I know what my reputation is. You had no way of knowing I was . . . anything else than what they said I was.” He lifted one shoulder negligently. “If I am.”
“You are,” she whispered. “You are. I had no right to do that to you—”
“You were just trying to survive.”
She stared at him, unable to accept that he truly believed that. Her trembling intensified as she struggled with the fact that he was here, that he’d come back. Would he have, if he still blamed her, if he hated her for what she’d done?
“You don’t . . .”
“Don’t what? Blame you?” he asked, as if he’d read her thoughts again, as he seemed to so many times.
“Yes,” she whispered, eyes searching his face.
“You did what you thought you had to do.” His brows lowered slightly. “Just like . . . one day a long time ago . . . I did what I thought I had to do.”
He said it as if he’d just realized it himself. And when Kate looked up at him, for an instant she caught a glimpse of the boy he’d been then, haunted by his past, so alone after the death of the last member of his family, and hungry, more than a little scared . . . and he’d turned to using the only talent he thought he had.
“Josh,” Kate said, rather urgently. She raised her hand, reaching toward him hesitantly, unsure of her welcome despite his words. He reached out to take it.
“Kate, I—”
“Miss Kate!” Luke didn’t bother to knock, just threw the door open. “He’s throwing your things in the street. Yellin’ and saying nasty things.”
Josh stiffened. “Stay here,” he ordered Kate.
“He’s got that shotgun of Arly’s, too, Josh,” Luke added excitedly.
“Josh, don’t.” She touched his arm. “It doesn’t matter. I had so little . . .”
“That’s not the point.”
“Please, it’s only some clothes, and they’re hardly worth keeping anyway—”
“I’ve had my fill of men like the Dixon brothers. It’s time this one learned to keep his filthy mouth shut.”
Fear mixed with exasperation seized her. “Are you determined to make that book’s prediction come true?”
He looked as if he’d forgotten about that. Then he shook his head. “I’m not going to die now, Kate. Not at the hands of the likes of another Dixon.”
“Will Dixon is as bad a man as Arly ever was, except that he’s a better shot with that shotgun. And he’s even readier to use it.”
“I’ll be back, Kate.”
She watched him go, wondered if she should, as Luke had the instant Josh was out of sight, disobey his order to stay here and follow him. But she sensed that if Arly’s brother saw her, the situation would only go from bad to worse. She had to trust that Josh knew what he was doing. That The Hawk wouldn’t be bested by a brute like Will Dixon.
And she wondered if this was what happened to every woman fool enough to fall in love with a man who made his living with a gun.
ARE YOU DETERMINED to make that book’s prediction come true?
Getting killed would be one solution.
Josh frowned as he made his way down the wide, single dirt street of Gambler’s Notch toward the commotion in front of the mercantile. He didn’t know why all this talk of death was sticking in his mind; he had no intention of letting himself be taken by Will Dixon.
“—she’s never done anything to you!”
The sound of Art Rankin’s angry voice broke in on his thoughts, and the sound of Dixon’s fired his anger back to a high boil.
“She’s a lying slut who let the man who murdered my brother stay under his roof, let him screw her!”
“It wasn’t murder. Arly had a gun. They found it.”
Boardman, Josh thought in shock. He didn’t know the man had it in him. Maybe there was hope for the people of Gambler’s Notch yet. His gaze narrowed as he walked the last few yards toward the mercantile, and he saw the small pile of clothing tossed in the dirt at Dixon’s feet. True, Kate’s clothes weren’t much, but they were all she had.
Both Rankin and Boardman caught sight of him, and looked so relieved he had to stifle a pained smile. You boys have a lot of faith in me, he thought. More than Kate, anyway. She assumes I’m going to die out here.
“Been waiting for you, Hawk,” Dixon sneered, gesturing with Arly’s shotgun. “Thought you might want your whore’s clothes. Pick ’em up.”
As if he’d been trained to servitude, Josh knelt to gather a dress, then the worn undergarments that sparked memories he couldn’t afford right now.
“Well, now, so this is the great Hawk. Heard folk hereabouts saying he’d been tamed by that ugly little sparrow, but I didn’t believe it. Reckon I should have.”
Josh was aware of Boardman gaping at him, and Rankin staring thoughtfully, but looked at neither man. Nor did he look at Dixon, even when the big man began to snigger as Josh walked around him to pick up the worn calico dress that lay in the soft dirt behind him.
“Now, I was hopin’ you’d make a fuss. I was lookin’ forward to being the man who finally killed The Hawk.”
Josh moved swiftly then, from behind Dixon. He grabbed the barrel of the shotgun and forced it downward. Dixon yelped and tried to pull it away from him, but he was a split second too late. His hand on the butt of the stock, Josh had the end of the barrel jammed against the ground. Dixon struggled, but without leverage couldn’t match Josh’s hold. Josh saw his hand move toward the triggers.
“I reckon,” he said in that deadly quiet voice, “that you should think about just what would happen if you fired this thing right now. If you’re lucky, it’ll only take your leg off when the barrel peels open sideways. And maybe your hand, too.”
Dixon had gone very still, and Josh pressed his advantage.
“But you just go ahead and pull that trigger, Dixon. As big as you are, you’ll make a fine piece of cover. I’ll never know the thing went off, except by the blast. And you screaming, of course.”
“You bastard,” Dixon snarled. But his hand quit moving.
“I’m many things, but that’s not one of them,” Josh said. Then, as if merely curious, he added, “I wonder just how badly you would get chewed up. Maybe I should find out.”
He slid his own hand down toward the triggers. It was a bluff; he couldn’t pull the triggers himself without risking his own hand, but he was gambling Dixon didn’t think that fast.
He was right.
“Son of a bitch!”
Dixon abandoned the shotgun and dove sideways—right into the mud at the base of the water trough.
“I’d say you misjudged your direction a little,” Josh observed mildly, as both Boardman and Rankin burst into laughter. Dixon’s face flushed. Josh broke open the shotgun and pulled out the shells. He pocketed them, and tossed the gun back to the ground.
“Luke?” he called.
The boy scrambled out from behind the trough where he’d been hiding and came racing over. Josh bent and whispered something to the boy. His eyes lit up; he nodded and ran into the store. He came out moments later with a bundle in his hands. Josh pulled some coins out of his pocket and tossed them into the mud beside the fuming Dixon.
“I believe that’s more than the price of the new dress,” he said. “But you can keep the change. Buy yourself a new shirt.”
“I’ll kill you, Hawk, I swear it!” Dixon bellowed. “Next time I see you, you’re a dead man!”
He left Dixon swearing in the mud, and Art and Boardman laughing as they returned to their work.
“That was great, Josh,” Luke exclaimed as he scampered along beside him. “Would the shotgun really have blown up?”
“With the barrel jammed into the dirt? It wouldn’t have been pr
etty.”
Luke chattered on excitedly as they walked back toward Deborah’s. They were passing in front of the saloon when Marshal Pike stepped out. Josh looked at the man warily; he hadn’t seen him after the incident with Carter and his men, but he was willing to bet the man hadn’t been happy to have three more dead men to deal with.
“Expected you back a little sooner.”
Josh blinked. Where was the order to get back out of town?
“I see you’ve already met Arly’s brother,” Pike added.
“You . . . saw?”
“Been watching through the window here,” the marshal drawled. “That was a right smooth bit of work.”
“Thanks.”
“It won’t stop him, you know.”
“I know.”
“You’ve made a powerful enemy.” Pike tugged at his mustache. “Watch your back.”
“Always.”
Josh watched the marshal walk away, wondering why he hadn’t delivered the expected warning.
“Maybe you should have killed him,” Luke said.
“Probably.”
At his weary tone Luke’s eyes widened. “Will he . . . will he try to kill you?”
“Probably.”
Getting killed would be one solution.
Are you determined to make that book’s prediction come true?
The words echoed in his head again, and he didn’t know why they kept coming back. They were like that damned book, haunting him.
The book.
May 1878—Gunfighter Joshua Hawk buried in Gambler’s Notch, Wyoming Territory.
I was lookin’ forward to being the man who finally killed The Hawk.
The book’s prediction and Dixon’s declaration—born of ignorance, Josh thought; no man in his right mind would want the kind of notoriety that made others want to kill you just for the sake of building their own reputation—joined Alex and Kate’s words, circling in his mind like buzzards over a carcass.
You take that girl and get out of here, to somewhere they never heard of you, and men like Robards and Carter aren’t coming after you like the scavengers that they are.
Was there such a place? Anywhere? Was there any place far enough away to keep those men off his trail, short of hell itself? Would it do any good? Or was the book’s prediction destined to be the truth?
His steps slowed. He felt the shotgun shells in his pocket. He pulled them out, looking at them speculatively.
If he believed in the book, he had to believe in all of it, he thought. And if he believed the book was right about his death, here in Gambler’s Notch before the end of this last week of May, then he had to believe it was right about the Hawks as well, that they would continue. Which meant . . .
Which meant Kate was already pregnant. With his child. The mere thought nearly staggered him.
But she’d said she couldn’t be, thanks to Arly’s beatings. Which meant he couldn’t be going to die. Didn’t it? His mind was whirling so fast he couldn’t begin to sort it all out.
“Josh? Are you all right?”
He mumbled something at the boy that was supposed to be reassuring. Luke looked at him doubtfully, but Josh was too distracted by his thoughts.
If the book wasn’t right about his death, then what? If he wasn’t going to be buried here in Gambler’s Notch, his grave to probably become a place of minor fame for as long as it took people to forget he’d ever existed, then didn’t that prove the book was a . . . joke? A bad magic trick perpetrated by some long-dead wizard who perhaps had had one too many cups of mead before muttering his incantation?
But it had been right about so much. . . .
May 1878—Gunfighter Joshua Hawk buried in Gambler’s Notch, Wyoming Territory.
His eyes widened. He stopped in his tracks.
“Josh?” Luke had stopped beside him, looking up at him with some concern.
“You go on, Luke. Take the dress to Kate. Tell her I’ll . . . see her later.”
“But—”
“Go, Luke. I need to go see Hatch.”
“Oh.” Then, brightening, “Can I come up later?”
“You do that.”
Luke grinned, and hastened off to deliver the new dress. Just as well, Josh thought; Kate would most likely throw it back at him.
He trotted across the street, warily watching his back, knowing he’d made a deadly enemy by humiliating Will Dixon in public. Henry Meeker gave him a wary nod as he stepped into the lobby of the Grand Hotel. Josh returned it as he took the stairs two at a time.
He opened the door when Hatch answered his call.
“Saw that move you pulled from the window here,” Hatch said with a grin as he wheeled his chair around to face Josh. “You haven’t lost your touch.”
“Have you lost yours?”
Hatch lifted a brow. “Mine?”
“Time was, you knew more about every kind of gun made than any man alive.
“Time was,” Hatch agreed.
Josh tossed him the two shotgun shells. “I hope you still do,” he said.
Then he sat down and began to talk. And when Luke arrived sometime later, the boy quickly found himself pressed into service as a messenger. And eventually, one by one, several members of the population of Gambler’s Notch made their way to the Grand Hotel.
KATE’S HEART WAS pounding as she stood in Deborah’s parlor, smoothing her hands over the folds of the first new dress she’d had in years, the first dress that had actually fit her in just as long. It was the dress Josh had suggested she take when it had arrived at the store. She hadn’t wanted it then, but she accepted it now with an odd sense that it was a symbol of some kind, of a new life she was about to begin.
Barely ten minutes after leaving yesterday, Luke had returned bearing the unexpected gift of the dress and the thankful news that Josh was all right. The boy had been full of admiring excitement at The Hawk’s handling of the big bully, and she herself hadn’t been able to stop a small tug of selfishly pleased amusement at Will Dixon’s very public embarrassment.
But Josh hadn’t come back. She had been nearly frantic by the time Luke had returned again, this time with a message from Josh. The message that had brought them to this pass today.
“Everything will be all right, Kate,” Deborah said soothingly.
Kate wished she could believe that. But that ominous entry in the Hawk book haunted her, and she wondered with dread if this might be the day it came true. But she smiled at the couple standing beside her, unable to dim her friend’s obvious joy with her own fears.
Alex and Deborah had quite given up worrying what anyone else thought of the inappropriateness of the young lawyer courting a woman older than he. It did Kate’s heart good to look at them even as she wondered what her own future held.
She sighed heavily. Was she being a fool yet again? Was she placing too much faith in a few moments of exquisite pleasure in the night? She shook her head, as if that could rid her of the painfully sweet images.
No, she told herself firmly. It wasn’t just that. It was the evenings spent reading, the days spent working companionably side by side. It was the way Josh treated her, with a respect and consideration so ingrained in him she knew it was automatic, that it was as natural to him as the constant cruelty had been to Arly. As it was to Arly’s brother.
She shivered. Half the town had heard Will Dixon swear he would kill Josh on sight. And the entire town knew that he was savage enough to do it. In only four days in Gambler’s Notch, he’d made his late brother look gentle by comparison; at least Arly had been drunk and only semiconscious half the time.
“It’s noon, Kate. Let’s go for that walk.”
She shivered again, but nodded. Alex held the door for Deborah and Kate, then closed it behin
d them. It was a bright, sunny day, a harbinger of the summer to come. As they walked, Kate tried to see it as a good omen, but so little had gone right in her life, she couldn’t seem to find the faith to believe it. Or to hope that somehow things had changed, simply because a man called The Hawk had come into her life.
They were in front of the hotel when she heard Will Dixon roar. Her heart seemed to leap into her throat, cutting off her breath. She looked at the mercantile that had once been the center of her life, in time to see Josh coming out the door. He stepped out into the street and walked toward the saloon. He never even looked at Kate, or at Art Rankin, who was standing outside the stable, or at Marshal Pike, who was in his office doorway, arms folded across his chest, covering his badge.
Seconds later, shotgun in his hands, Dixon charged out onto the boardwalk. Josh didn’t turn.
“I told you you’d be a dead man if you came back here!”
Dixon’s bellow made Kate shiver yet again. Josh kept walking, his back to the infuriated man. Dear God, was it really going to happen? She saw Marshal Pike move, stepping down into the street.
“Turn around, Hawk! Or are you afraid to face me?”
Josh took another three steps. He stopped and glanced around as if to be sure of how far he’d come. Then, slowly, he turned around. Dixon moved then, stepping off the boardwalk. Josh tensed as if to move, but when Dixon stopped in the street in front of the mercantile, Josh stayed where he was.
“Why didn’t you just backshoot me, Dixon? You’re the type. Just like your brother was.”
With a howl of rage Dixon lifted the shotgun. In the same instant, Josh’s hand flashed down toward his Colt. The sound of the six-shooter was lost in the blast of both barrels of the shotgun going off at once.
As the echo died away, Dixon stood there, gaping stupidly. The others stared. Kate cried out despite herself.
Joshua Hawk was facedown in the dusty street.
Before anyone else could move, Marshal Pike was there. A second later, Art was beside him, both of them huddled around Josh’s body, almost hiding it. Dixon moved, but the marshal gestured him back warningly. Pike looked at Art, and shook his head. Art looked back at Kate.
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