by Shirl Henke
“How soon can we move him?” Despite the flood of relief the doctor's words brought him, Hawk's face was impassive.
“If he doesn't bleed during the night and his temperature is stable, I'd say he could be transported as far as a comfortable bed in the Excelsior in a couple of days.”
Both men's attention was drawn to Carrie then as she slowly stood up and said, “You're sure he'll be all right? Thank God....” Her voice was faint, and the dark smudges beneath her eyes made her pale face seem even more deathly.
Lark noticed the bloody raw abrasions on her wrists and the torn, disheveled state of her clothing, but he did not offer to treat her injuries until Hawk ordered him. “She's had a bad knock on the head. Take care of her.”
Remembering the disdainful way the doctor had announced his refusal ever to treat her again after Perry was born, Carrie shook her head stubbornly. “No, Hawk. All I need is a bath and some sleep. Just so Kyle's all right.”
“Shouldn't you be more worried about the marshal?” Dr. Lark looked at the tall half-breed out of the corner of his eye as soon as he blurted out the question.
“First some medical attention and rest, then we'll settle with the law. What's this about a marshal?” Hawk pinned Lark with an obsidian gaze.
“Sheriff Woods was found dead this morning, and she was missing. The mayor sent to Helena for a federal marshal to investigate,” Lark said defensively, suddenly beginning to sweat as the realization struck him that he was standing next to a murderess and her accomplice.
Hawk scoffed. “Don't worry, Doctor. We're hardly going to run off after coming all this way back.”
They left Dr. Lark's house after Hawk gave him an ultimatum to care for Kyle or face consequences the physician would not like. Lark’s head had bobbed so hard it was a wonder he did not snap his own neck. Promising to return shortly, Hawk was satisfied that his friend would be well tended while he was gone.
Carrie and Hawk rode along the deserted streets to the hotel. They were exhausted, and now that the crisis with Kyle seemed over, their spent emotions left them silent. The Excelsior clerk almost collapsed behind the desk in gape-jawed amazement when Hawk walked in with the town's infamous jailbreaker. However, he was even more easily quelled than Lark, quickly giving Hawk two room keys and agreeing to send up hot water and some first-aid supplies.
Before he availed himself of the luxury of a bath, Hawk quickly took the horses to the livery stable. By the time he returned to the hotel and cleaned up, Carrie had refreshed herself with a long soak and was quietly sitting at the table in her room, struggling with the salve and bandages for her wrists. She felt as if no part of her body was free of scratches, bruises, or lumps, but the wounds to her spirit were the worst.
Hawk entered her room after knocking. Carrie looked so wan and vulnerable that it grabbed at his heart. More gruffly than he intended, he said, “I don't know why you didn't let Lark do that for you. Here, let me.”
“I could scarcely take a bath with bandaged arms,” she replied in overly sweet reasonableness, some of her old fire evident in the tone of her voice now.
As he picked up the jar of salve, he grunted and began to apply it to the slim, fine-boned wrists. Seeing the way she had struggled against the cruel ropes and the damage they had done, he was struck with renewed fury at Lola and Rider, and, irrationally, at Carrie, too. “How the hell did you get yourself into this mess anyway?”
He felt her stiffen as he wrapped a wrist with the clean linen. “Do you think I had a tryst with Krueger and shot him in a jealous rage? That's what Woods said.”
Hawk snorted in obvious disbelief and kept on bandaging. “No, but if you hadn't tangled with that damn German in the first place, you wouldn't have fallen into Lola and Rider's hands so neatly, that's for damn sure!”
Just like him always to blame her for everything! “So generous of you to think I didn't shoot Krueger, at least,” she snapped, wrenching her wrist away as soon as he tied the bandage. His touch still made her tremble, and now her response was intensified by anger and exhaustion.
He sat back on the wooden chair and rubbed his eyes. “I ordered that slick-eared clerk to send a meal up here. Now, tell me everything that happened while I was gone.”
Carrie calmed down and went over the past two days of harrowing events. He interrupted with questions several times and rose abruptly to leave when he was satisfied with all the facts.
“I'm going to check on Kyle. Eat when the food comes and get some sleep. That's a nasty knot on your head.”
Why did everything he said sound so damn accusatory to her ears? Wasn't he relieved at all that she was alive, or did he really harbor a faint suspicion that she had been involved with Krueger? Carrie's head and heart ached.
Just then the waiter bringing the food knocked. Hawk let him in and departed, too preoccupied to even say good night.
Hawk was deep in thought as he walked the streets to Dr. Lark's residence. Part of his mind turned over the problems of how to extricate Carrie from what appeared to be a carefully designed frame-up. Yet nagging right along side practical considerations was the same old feeling that he had always experienced around her. He could still smell the faint whisper of wildflowers and feel the silky warmth of her pale, golden skin.
He cursed his weakness and forced himself to plan for tomorrow. First he must send word of what had happened to Feliz at Circle S, then convince the local authorities, such as they were, that Carrie could be trusted to stay in Miles City while he went after the real killer of Karl von Krueger. He was sure Lola was at the bottom of it, and he would drag her in to confess if he had to peel the skin off her rottenly voluptuous body an inch at a time.
As it turned out, Sioux persuasion was neither possible nor necessary. Lola Jameson Krueger was dead by her own hand. She had spent the previous day drinking, locked in Krueger's study, screaming and smashing things. Finally, in an alcoholic stupor she had placed one of Karl's fine German dueling pistols to her head and pulled the trigger.
Worthington Ashmore, playing his role of proper and professional English butler to the hilt, came to town, asking to speak to the authorities. He informed the astounded mayor and other dignitaries that he and the baron's German maid had information regarding their employer's murder.
Ashmore had been the one to unlock the study door and find Mrs. Krueger's body the preceding evening. With both his employers now dead, the butler decided it was no longer a breach of professional ethics to explain what he knew and to compel Frau Kaufmann, who had acted as Lola's maid, to do the same.
Both butler and maid, excellently trained European house servants, were simply regarded as part of the furnishings by the imperious baron and his sister-in-law. Krueger had been somewhat cautious, but Lola was not. Ashmore told of several loud arguments between them about marriage, her dire financial straits, even the baron's involvement with Caleb Rider in the rustling. However, the crucial testimony came from the sobbing maid, who explained in her broken English what she had overheard the baroness and the foreman plot. She knew only fragmented details about the timing for luring Carrie to the dressmaker's, drugging her, and leaving her to awaken in the room at the Excelsior, but it was enough.
When Hawk told the mayor how he and Hunnicut had rescued Carrie from Rider and she showed them her raw, blistered arms and the lump on her head, no one could dispute her innocence. After the whole bizarre tale had been pieced together, all charges against her were dropped.
The notoriety was another matter. Carrie-had been the subject of scandal for bearing a half-breed's child while married to her lover's father. Now she further fueled the fires by staying in the same hotel room with the infamous gunman, Kyle Hunnicut, nursing him tirelessly while her Cheyenne lover went back to run their son's ranch.
Imagine, involved in a love triangle with Baron von Krueger and Lola Jameson, framed for murder, abducted and heaven knew what else by Caleb Rider! And now she continued to flout decency by sleeping in the same room wi
th that Texas riffraff. Mathilda Thorndyke had so much to be indignant about that she could scarcely contain herself. She would see Carrie Sinclair run out of town with tar and feathers if it was the last thing she ever did!
Hawk busied himself at the ranch, doing the work of two men, covering for Kyle and carrying out all their plans for the big fall roundup and shipment of cattle to the railhead. With Krueger and Rider dead, the remnants of their gunmen and rustlers disbanded. Thievery dropped abruptly to an all-time low. Still, there was a great deal of work to occupy the ramrod of Circle S. If he did not own the vast ranch, Hawk ran it nonetheless. Occasionally, when he had time to consider, he wondered how Noah would have reacted to seeing him in charge, or, for that matter, how the old man would have felt about a boy with Cheyenne blood inheriting Circle S. The irony of that amused him.
When his thoughts turned to Perry, Hawk felt alternately warm and anguished. He loved his son deeply, yet realized the boy would grow up in a white man's world, a world where the son could learn to adapt, but where the father did not belong. No more than I belong with his mother.
Carrie spent those weeks in Miles City caring for Kyle, whose return from near death was accounted almost a miracle by Dr. Lark. In three days' time he had been moved from Lark's residence to the Excelsior. The physician and Carrie were glad to be quit of one another. Every few days, Feliz came into town. Then Carrie would return to Circle S and spoil her son for a brief interlude. She almost never saw Hawk. Once in a while when he could spare a few hours he would ride to town to visit with his recuperating friend.
After about a month, the doctor finally agreed that the gutsy little Texan was strong enough to be safely transported back to Circle S for the remainder of his convalescence. When the whole Circle S entourage departed, the town lost its liveliest entertainment. Mathilda Thorndyke attempted to keep the juicy gossip alive, speculating about a new, even more heinous triangle between Carrie, Kyle, and Hawk, but townfolk were tired of Circle S gossip—much more interesting was the murder of an honest-to-God baron by his own brother's wife.
As Kyle Hunnicut grew stronger he noticed the continued estrangement between Hawk and Carrie. The day Hawk brought the big flatbed supply wagon to town to take him home, Kyle watched his tall friend's cool manner. For her part, Carrie was guarded and nervous whenever Hawk approached. The sexual tension fairly radiated from both of them, yet neither would do anything to resolve the dilemma.
At first when Hawk returned from the Cheyenne, Kyle had been content to let things sort themselves out, especially after having found that his friend's wife was dead and that he planned to stay on at Circle S. But that had been last July and this was nearly October. All they seemed to do was antagonize one another. One morning he asked Feliz about it as she brought up his breakfast.
“Whut yew figger's eatin' them two?” He bit off a hunk of a sweet roll and downed it with a slug of aromatic black coffee.
He did not need to say more to the intuitive Mexicana. She knew what he meant. “Pride. Jealousy. Pain. Both have been hurt. Neither one wants to have the other turn away.”
“Wal, it shore cain't go on this away,” Kyle said disgustedly. “They got them a young'un ta think ‘bout—not ta mention all thet aggervation, jist rubbin' next ta one another. Ain't natur'l.”
“That is part of the trouble, I think,” Feliz said, remembering last August when Carrie had come in wet from a swim, flushed in agitation. She was sure that Hawk, too, had gone to the lake that morning.
“Yew mean they been—” He spluttered to a halt, oddly indignant after what he had known went on two years earlier. Now they could get married! They should get married!
Feíiz nodded shrewdly. “Not often, maybe only once, but, quien sabe? They cannot live so near and share the love of a child without sparks flying. Then the force that draws them to desire one another makes them angry and afraid, all at the same time.”
“We gotta do somethin'. I'm gonna have me a li’l talk with thet long-legged Injun.”
“It is not only him, Kyle. She has caused him much pain, cut deep into his pride.”
Kyle only looked at her, waiting for her to continue.
“It was last summer,” she said. “He had not been back long, a week maybe. He went to town and returned very late and very drunk. So drunk he let Redskin carry him to the big house instead of his madre's place. I was awake and heard him in the kitchen, trying to make coffee.” Her eyes lit with fleeting mirth at the memory of the tall man caught like a small boy in some forbidden act. “I sobered him up with coffee and food, but not before he told me more than he would have otherwise about what happened at the village where they held Carrie.”
“I know ‘bout th' banishment ‘cause o’ th' fight. Leavin' his grandpa thet way wuz tough.”
“That was only part of it, not the worst. After the fight—Dios, it must have been terrible—Carrie was frightened and said a terrible thing to him. A thing she did not mean, I know. She called him a filthy savage and tried to stop him from carrying Perry on their ride back.”
Kyle whistled low. “An’ him with all thet hard-shelled Injun pride, all th' years o’ growin’ up ‘round his pa ‘n’ th’ good white folks hereabouts ‘n’ back east...”
“Yes, all their cruelty he shut out, but not hers. He loves her, Kyle.”
He scratched his head. “Yep, 'n' she loves him, too. I knowed thet afore he ever come back last summer. Pair o' damblasted fools, thet's whut we got us, Feliz!”
With that they made a silent pact to prod the recalcitrant lovers. Carrie brought Kyle's dinner that evening after being out riding with Perry through the warm autumn afternoon.
Ignoring the steaming plate of stew, crisp hot bread, and luscious apple pie, he fixed her with his most stern east-Texas poker face and bade her sit down. Guessing what he was going to bring up, she did so with great trepidation, hovering on the edge of a large wingback chair next to the bed. Her green eyes were haunted and sad.
“I'm gonna speak my piece 'n' I reckon yew ain't gonna like it, but damnit, Carrie, it needs ta be brung out in th' open.” When she let out a long, whistling sigh of acquiescence, he went on. “Yew 'n' Hawk should git hitched. Noah's daid now, 'n' yew got thet boy ta think o'. ‘Sides, neither one o' yew kin fool me. Yew always loved one another.”
“He's got peculiar ways of showing his love, Kyle. Running out, leaving me to Noah's mercy, then marrying a Cheyenne woman.”
Impatiently he ignored her anger. “Thet don't make sense if n ya think on it, honey. First off, his wife's done died, same as Noah. Whether er not he cared fer her more 'n' yew did th' ole man, it don't change nothin' now. Yew got a fine son who needs his ma 'n' pa both. Anyways, it's plumb foolish ta talk ‘bout him runnin' out on yew. I went with him thet mornin', 'n' I seen how bad he hurt.”
“Then why did he leave me here?” Her voice was choked with anguish. “Noah threatened to kill me and Perry, too. He would have if he'd lived to see him born!”
“No way Hawk cud o' knowed thet. I bet yew didn't even dare hope Perry'd be his'n, not th' ole man's.” Her guilty flush told him the truth of that. “Think, gal. Hawk wuz a gunman, out'n a cent ta his name. He only had him two choices back then. Goin' back ta his ma's folks er headin' ta th' Nations. Onliest thing between a woman like yew bein' tore apart by a dozen killers down there woulda been his gun. Life fer a man like thet's cheap. I oughta know, Carrie. I'm one, too. He couldn't take yew with him. Even Noah wuz a better risk'n thet.”
“Oh, Kyle, it's so much more complicated than you know. We've both done things, said things... Maybe he wants me, but he doesn't love me, not like he loved his wife. He wants to keep his son, not me.”
“All th' more reason fer ya ta fight fer him. Shit, th' Cheyenne's dead 'n' yer alive. Not much better odds'n thet! Yew said yerself he wants ya. With all yew got ta gain, I think yew kin make him love yew all over agin—if'n he ever quit—which I purely disbelieve.”
“Oh, my friend, I know you mean well,
honestly, I do, but—”
He cut her off. “No buts. He give up more'n yew know ta git yew 'n' th' boy outta thet camp. When a Cheyenne kills another Cheyenne, no matter why 'er how, it's th' most terriblest thing he kin do. By their law, he's banished fer at least four years. Then, if’n th' council agrees, mebbe they'll let him back in.” He paused to see how she was taking this.
Her eyes were widened in shock. So that was why he was so angry with her—not because he cared about that brute he killed. His own grandfather had banished him from the only home he had, and it was her fault! “I didn't know that. He never told me,” she whispered brokenly.
“Mebbe yew wasn't 'xactly in a listenin' mood then,” Kyle said gently.
The tears, held back so long, flowed freely now. “You're right. I do love him so terribly. Nothing else matters but that. I'll just have to think of some way to convince him I'm worth all the grief I've caused him.”
She raised crystalline green eyes to look proudly into Kyle's crinkled, blue-gray ones.
“That's my gal talkin'. Sensible, finally.”
* * * *
For the next several days Carrie mulled over what Kyle had told her. She had plenty of time to think without distraction since Hawk was with the roundup crews, spending nights out on the prairie where the cattle were gathered and tallied. Soon he would go to Chicago for several weeks. Last summer he and Kyle had decided the best price could be obtained by contacting the big slaughterhouses in that rail center. Circle S herds were large enough now to interest the meat packers in such a direct arrangement.
Carrie had a lot to do before he left to close the deal. Her first move entailed a visit to Jebediah Cooper. Despite her aversion to the self-righteous old man, she was forced to do business with him since he was the only lawyer in town.