by Shirl Henke
All the while they talked, Chelsey—that was the name she gave—watched the silent Hawk in fascination. Niver seen it beat, th' way women fancy him, the little man thought, half peeved, half amused. After a few minutes more, he left on the pretext of going outside to relieve himself. If she was so all-fired raring to snare Longlegs, let her have a shot at it. Maybe it might lighten his mood.
Straightening her yellow satin dress, which had seen better days, Chelsey looked the tall dark gunman up and down boldly. “Yew part Injun 'er somethin'?”
“Or something,” he replied laconically. For the first time he pushed his hat to the back of his head and returned her perusal. For a whore, she wasn't bad. Young and reasonably clean, even a little pretty in a coarse, country sort of way. The eyes were the thing. Soon they would be dull and hard, but now they were still shiny, giving off a liquid glow.
“My grandma was Cherokee, 'er so my ma tole me one'st, afore I run off from th' hills o' Tennessee.”
He smiled for the first time at her pronunciation of “Tennessee,” with the, accent on the first syllable. Her heart stopped. He was positively the most dazzlingly handsome man she had ever seen. “I got me a feelin' ‘bout me 'n' yew, sugar. Yessiree, I have.”
Hawk awoke the next morning in a strange room, filled with strewn articles of female clothing, stale cigarette smoke, and greasy glasses with the odorous remains of whiskey clinging to their sides. He raised his head and immediately lay it back on the lumpy gray pillowcase. It throbbed in an old familiar way that he had not experienced in months. Damn! What was in that bottle last night? Or was it more than one bottle?
As he reached up to rub his aching temples, Chelsey stirred and rolled over next to. him, but did not awaken. The harsh light of morning was not kind to her, especially with her eyes closed. Into his memory flashed a fleeting vision of Carrie's face softly touched by the first streaks of dawn as he carried her back to her room. Swearing, he forced the image aside and crawled from the bed. By the time he had dressed and left Chelsey some money, he had barely enough remaining with which to buy a meager greasy breakfast. Kyle was right. They needed to go to work.
A morning spent asking around the post netted them several names of big cattle outfits looking for men to deal with rustlers. Deciding to head to the Turkey Cross camp the next day, they encountered an unexpected surprise. A tall, well-dressed man of middle years came into the saloon, where they sat discussing plans over warm beer. His black broadcloth suit marked him as an eastern preacher, but his facial contours and smooth braids indicated that he was an Indian.
Watching the sharp black eyes scan the room in shrewd assessment, Hawk wondered what a man like him was doing in a dive like this. Then he moved toward their table. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am John Tall Oak. You are Hawk Sinclair and Kyle Hunnicut?”
Hawk stood up and looked eye-to-eye with the tall stranger as they shook hands. “Your name is well chosen.” Few men were as tall as he.
Tall Oak laughed as he shook Hawk's hand. “I'm afraid my height didn’t earn it for me. It's been our family surname for four generations, although I'm told my great grandfather who lived in Georgia was even taller than I. I'm Cherokee, born and raised in this, the land of our exile.”
“Yes, one of the civilized Tribes,” Hawk said smoothly.
“And you, I have heard, are Cheyenne,” John Tall Oak replied.
“One of the uncivilized tribes,” Hawk shot back without rancor.
The Cherokee laughed as Kyle offered him a chair. “Whut 're ya doin' in this dive? ‘Pears ta me yer used ta better.”
“You know us.” Hawk asked no question, only waited.
“Let's say I've heard of you. More to the point, Mr. Sinclair, I want to hire you and your friend to do a job for us.”
“Us?” Kyle looked puzzled.
“I represent the tribal council of the Cherokee Nation. For quite a few years, since the trail drivers have been bringing Texas beef north, they've grazed them on the grasslands the great white father so generously allotted us, to the north of here. We've charged them for that privilege by the head, per season, until they fatten the cattle and move them to market. However, a few of the larger spreads have gotten together and decided they no longer like our prices.”
“They're welchin' on th' deal,” Kyle supplied.
Tall Oak nodded. “They say they have five thousand head in a graze. My men see three, four times as many. Maybe they can't count. Maybe they think we can't.” He shrugged expressively, then when on. “The money adds up, as much as a hundred thousand per year in a good year. Of course,” he said, watching Kyle's eye light up, “it must be divided among a whole nation of people scattered across this wilderness.”
“I think we might talk a deal, Tall Oak,” Hawk interjected.
So they went to work, visiting the camps where big herds were to be wintered, taking Cherokee police with them merely for an official look. Tough Texas range drovers knew of Kyle Hunnicut from a long time back.
The tall, dangerous-looking half-breed with him had already acquired a reputation in a land, filled with gunmen. Mostly, they collected the due bills without mishap. On a few occasions they had to resort to force. Kyle had a nicked wrist and Hawk a shallow flesh wound in his left thigh. Their opponents didn't fare as well.
Months slipped by and winter came, cold and desolate. With enough cash to see them through, they settled down to enforced idleness, playing cards, drinking, and amusing themselves with women.
Chelsey had not forgotten her half-breed lover and welcomed him back, even giving him a pair of gold loops for his ears. She said the earrings had belonged to her grandfather. Hawk wore them, reopening the partially sealed holes in his ears for the first time in several years. His hair grew shaggy, down to his shoulders, and he wore buckskin leggings, moccasins, and the gold and silver rings he'd brought from Montana, all his jewelry except Iron Heart's medallion.
Kyle watched the gradual transformation in him as the thin veneer of civilization slipped away. Hawk lost or won money at cards, he did not care which, and slept with Chelsey most nights. As the monotony of winter's inactivity wore on, he drank more than anything, beginning in the afternoons on many days.
On just such a day, Hawk sat in his usual place in the corner of the saloon, back to the wall, legs stretched indolently in front of him, sipping a whiskey. A thickset man in his late teens or early twenties with short-cropped yellow hair and piercing blue eyes came in and walked up to the bar. His square face betrayed nothing as he ordered beer and sipped it, casting his eyes across the room. It was not crowded. A few off-duty troopers played cards at one table, and two trail drovers sat at another with Gracie, an aging but obliging whore., An old drummer ate a plate of congealed stew while standing at the bar.
The stranger finished the beer, then ordered another from Ben the barkeep. Chelsey arrived shortly after, beginning her evening turn before the dinner hour that night. He watched her with appreciation as she sauntered across the rough plank floor in her high-heeled satin slippers and rustling green taffeta dress. After she greeted several regular customers, she looked over toward Hawk, who pushed the hat back on his head and raised his empty glass. Noting the gesture, she came over and took the glass, heading to the bar to get him a refill.
“Hello, little bird. All bright green and pretty as a songbird Can you sing?” The blond youth's voice was precise and pleasant, but held a smug, almost menacing quality that set her on edge. Chelsey had seen his kind in a dozen saloons between Tennessee and Texas. Young, crazy mean, and looking for a cheap thrill.
Smiling brightly, she moved past him to the bar. “Nope. 'Fraid not.” With that she started to turn, but he caught her arm, causing the refilled drink to spill, sprinkling her dress with staining spots.
As she let out a sharp oath at the ruination of her best dress, one Hawk had bought her, the stranger laughed and grabbed her. “I'll buy you another drink, or dress, baby. Just come sit with me.”
“I already have a customer, over there,” she responded peevishly.
“That Injun? Where I come from, white women don't fuck with Injuns, and white saloons sure don't serve 'em whiskey.”
The room became very still. Even the old drummer froze, his spoon suspended halfway between bowl and mouth. Then Chelsey let loose a volley of oaths and kicked him in the shin, jerking her arm free of his brutal grasp.
He struck her a stinging slap and began to grab her shoulder when Hawk's voice cut in. “I hate to interrupt, but it seems to me you owe me a whiskey and the lady a new dress. Now.”
The young man turned incredulously to look at the hard, unshaven face of the half-breed. Although slimmer, Hawk was easily a head taller. Blue and black eyes clashed. The eerily insane glow in the pale-blue eyes flashed up and down the buckskin-clad form with contempt.
“I don't buy breeds whiskey and I sure don't plan to pay the price of a dress to have the likes of her.” He gestured to Chelsey offhandedly. As he waited to see what Hawk would do, the stranger's fair-skinned face looked guileless.
“I don't drink with spiders, either. Just put the price of my drink on the bar and leave. I'll buy the lady a new dress.” He reached over and put a hand possessively on Chelsey's shoulder, smiling evilly at the younger man.
“You're asking for a bullet, breed. You know that?” The feral gleam in the ice-blue eyes was anticipatory.
“How old are you, twenty maybe? Stupid age to die, kid.” Hawk stood at ease, his anger beginning to abate as his sobriety returned.
With a snarled obscenity, the big blond went for his gun. Before he could get off a shot, Hawk put two .44 slugs in his chest. “Maybe you're right. It is a good day to die.” With a few curses muttered in Cheyenne, he holstered his gun and turned toward the shivering girl crouched against the bar. “Now, refill that whiskey, Brown Eyes.”
Just then, Kyle uncocked his gun and slipped it back into its resting place. He stood in the door. “Thought I heered a bit o' trouble. Nothin’ ya couldn't handle, I see.” He squatted down next to the body and pulled the face up for inspection. “Yep; he's daid. They git younger an’ dumber ever’ year. Yew know him?”
“Not that I recollect,” Hawk said, rubbing his eyes and laying his head against the back of the wall as he sat down in his chair once more. “Just one more young asshole on the prod, trying to impress a woman and get a reputation.” He took the drink Chelsey offered him and swallowed half of it in a fierce, burning slug.
“Soon be spring. We cud head ta Texas. Get us a good-payin' job o' work. A man needs fresh air 'n' a clean place ta clear th' cobwebs out, Longlegs. This here place's trouble fer us!”
Hawk snorted and finished the drink morosely. “Everywhere I go is trouble—or hadn't you noticed, Kyle?”
“Some men need a place ta belong,” Kyle began uncertainly, his shrewd gray-blue eyes assessing his friend. He had watched Hawk in several fights lately. The younger man seemed not to care if he lived or died. This life was killing him. He said so to Hawk.
“My grandfather told me the same thing last summer.”
Knowing better than to bring up the festering wound of Carrie, Kyle stayed on a safer course. “Wal, ‘pears ta me he's right. All's yew do is drink, kill time, 'n' shoot a occasional varmint. Sooner 'er later one'll do fer yew, Longlegs.”
“What are you suggesting? I don't want to go to Texas, Kyle. I've already seen it. Just more men with guns, more card games and whiskey. Hell, what does it matter?” He took a pull on the whiskey glass and realized it was empty, then slammed it down in disgust.
Watching him, Kyle said softly, “Whut about yer grandpa's people? Would there be trouble there or would ya be welcome?”
Hawk shrugged. “Some of both, I expect. Maybe she was right. Maybe I do have to choose,” he mused.
Kyle's eyes crinkled in curiosity. Who was “she”? Carrie? Or someone else—someone with Iron Heart's band?
For a couple of days Hawk brooded, realizing that he could not drift and drown himself in a vat of whiskey at trail's end each night. Dreams of Carrie continued to torture him. Only whiskey brought oblivion. Chelsey certainly did not. He could barely stand leaving her bed most mornings in a hung-over stupor of misery, unwilling to look at her painted face and none too clean body. In a few years she'd look like Gracie. In a few years he'd be dead.
“It is a good day to die,” the old Cheyenne death chant said. Perhaps so, if one had a cause worth dying for—home, family, honor. What did he have?
* * * *
“I'm going back to the People. I made a bust of living white, I should at least try to live their way before I give up.” Hawk's face looked grave, but for the first morning - in months, his eyes were not bloodshot. He was freshly bathed and shaven, looking more like himself than he had since they left Circle S.
Kyle nodded. “Guess I'll be slopin' off ta Texas without yew, then.”
Hawk smiled sadly. “If you'd ever learned Cheyenne, you'd make a hit with the women. You always like them tall.”
Kyle chuckled. “Thet I do, Longlegs, but they're right pertic'lar ‘bout bein' married 'n' all afore ya kin have any fun. I might jist git myself scalped fer my trouble. Sides, yew know I lived all my life in Texas 'n' kin scarce spit out a couple dozen words o' Spanish, much less learn Cheyenne. Shucks, I had a schoolmarm tell me one'st thet I couldn't talk English, neither. Friend, I'm plumb hopeless.”
His eyes turned from merriment to graveness. They both knew they would most likely never meet again. Neither could express what he felt in words, but their eyes and handclasps communicated it.
“Take care of that tough Texas hide, you hear? I don't want you shot the first time you hire out alone.”
“Don't yew go countin' coup on no bluebellies, neither!” Kyle snorted back.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It took Hawk almost a week after arriving back in the Yellowstone country to locate the winter campground of Iron Heart's band. The land was invigorating. He let his eyes sweep the majestic high prairie, now awash with pristine snow gleaming diamond bright in the blinding sunshine. The snow had drifted high as a horse's head in many places, tossed about by the cruel plains wind that left other spots swept clean. It was as if a capricious housekeeper had plied her broom at random over the landscape.
The mountains stood in faint lavender relief on the far horizon and the tangy scent of pine needles assailed his nostrils. A dense stand of hardy evergreen trees grew in the crevices of a nearby outcropping of rock. Now the pines' jagged sweeping branches beckoned him with snow-laden arms. Hawk took a deep breath and .watched a vapor cloud form in front of him as he expelled it. It was good to be home.
He had packed away his boots, cotton shirts, and other articles of veho clothing and rode into the village dressed in his best buckskins. He still wore the earrings Chelsey had given him, as well as several rings and a bracelet, all worked by Cheyenne craftsmen. His chest felt naked without the medallion. He knew his grandfather would wonder about its absence, but would not ask. The wise old man would wait for his grandson to tell him what he wished to impart.
Hawk was deep in thought as he wended his way past the lodges, alternately sorry for his impulsive gesture in parting with the medallion, yet achingly glad to have given it to Carrie. On more than one occasion he considered that Noah might find it and realize its significance in her possession. No, Carrie knew better than to be so careless. The real problem was that it remained a link between them, however tenuous.
As if I need a tangible reminder. She is burned into my soul. Such morose considerations were quickly put aside as he stopped before Iron Heart's lodge and dismounted. Word of his approach had preceded him. The old man stood outside in the bitterly cold, bright March air and watched him.
After Hawk had greeted several old friends and relations who had congregated around the lodge, they embraced and entered the warm shelter. Considering it a great honor, one youth eagerly took Redskin to rub down and feed. Hawk adjusted h
is eyes to the dim interior after the bright glare of the sun on snow, and then turned as Iron Heart spoke.
“You have come home to stay.” It was not a question. The old man took in his grandson's clothing, jewelry, and long hair. He grunted then, indicating Hawk should sit. “It will take more than beads and braids for you to be a part of the Cheyenne way.”
“I know that. I have come to try. I do not know if I will succeed,” Hawk said simply.
The old man smiled. “If you wish it, you will succeed.”
As the weeks passed, it seemed that he would succeed. There was certainly no time to brood and no whiskey to drink. An abundance of both had brought him to grief in the south. Here he rose with the sun each morning and went hunting, often spending the better part of the daylight hours tracking antelope, elk, deer, and small game. They saw scant few buffalo. In the brief span of his twenty-six years, Hawk had witnessed the virtual extinction of a species. Soon, with the coming of the railroad into the north country, there would be none of the great shaggy beasts left at all.
Game was growing scarce, and workable firearms for hunting were also scarce. Hawk's guns, here as in the white world, were his fortune, but here they were used to provide sustenance for human beings, not destruction. He had spent much of his cash reserve before coming home to purchase several good Winchester rifles and a large quantity of ammunition, as well as a number of good, sharp hunting knives. He kept the remaining cash he had earned from John Tall Oak to use for whatever other utilitarian items he might need to buy from white traders in the uncertain future.
The life was harsh but clean and simple. Calf Woman tended the household chores for the old man and his young grandson. Hawk repaid her for cooking and sewing by providing her and her widowed sister with fresh game. On the long winter evenings, he sat and mended the more primitive weapons inherited from Iron Heart—tomahawks, bows, and arrows—as well as the religious gear worn in the summer ceremonies. His own buffalo-hide shield, with its blazing sun and hawk in flight painted on it, was worn and brittle with age. He made a new one and painted it under the critical guidance of his grandfather. They shared pipes of fragrant tobacco and often talked far into the night until their lodge fire burned to winking coals.