Heart of the Hawk (13 page)

He heard a slight thump from the storeroom, but no call for help came. He’d discovered Kate was a little touchy about him assuming she needed help when she hadn’t asked for it, so he stayed where he was.

This time he finished the sweeping quickly, receiving another sign of how round the bend he’d been by how little he’d gotten swept today. If he kept this up, he’d be dead inside a week, shot while woolgathering, by some other do-gooder thinking to rescue the Widow Dixon. He wondered what would happen to the book when the inevitable came and the Hawk line finally did die out.

He jerked his mind out of the rut it had worn long and deep since he’d found his name written on that otherwise empty page last night, impossibly appearing where nothing had been before. Think about something else, he ordered himself. Anything else. Like maybe just how sweet that young lawyer was on Kate.

That, he thought suddenly, stopping his sweeping, just might solve his problem here. If the lawyer was genuinely sweet on the widow, and could be persuaded to proceed along that path . . .

Of course. Another husband. A decent one this time, like Alexander Hall, lawyer. That’s all that was needed here. Kate would be settled, taken care of, and he could be on his way. Of course, there’d have to be a seemly period of mourning, even for a miscreant like Arly Dixon, but once he was certain the lawyer was going to do the right thing, he could at last shed himself of this town.

Kate and the lawyer. It would work. He knew the townsfolk liked her, had felt sorry for her life with Arly—although not, he thought with more than a little rancor, sorry enough to help her, except for Luke—and would welcome her staying. Not, he amended, that she had anywhere else to go; she certainly couldn’t go home to her father.

The question was, would she agree? Did she feel anything in turn for Alex Hall? True, she’d blushed when Luke had said the lawyer was sweet on her, but she could have simply been embarrassed; it didn’t seem to take much to make that lovely color rise in her face. He liked that about her. It gave him a clue about what she was thinking.

He’d ask her, he thought. That was the simplest way. He’d simply ask her how she felt, and if he got the right answer, then he’d go have a talk with Lawyer Alexander Hall. Even if he didn’t get the right answer, he might have a talk with the man. Surely a man clever enough to become a lawyer could manage to convince Kate she wanted him, now that she was free of the merciless Arly.

He leaned the broom against the shelves behind him and walked toward the storeroom, only now realizing that she’d been in there without making a sound for some time. He hoped that thump he’d heard hadn’t been more ominous than he’d realized, and began to hurry. He stopped in the doorway, relaxing slightly when he saw her upright and seemingly intact.

She was standing beside the small side window, intent on something in her hands.

“Kate,” he began, stepping inside.

She gave a little start, half turning toward him. He thought he’d frightened her again, almost to tears, since her eyes looked moist, but her expression wasn’t one of fear. Oddly, it seemed almost guilty, as if she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t have, although what it could be here in her own storeroom he couldn’t guess.

And then he saw what was open in her hands, and he knew.

It was the book.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, “but it was on the floor, and I accidentally kicked it. It opened when I picked it up, and I saw . . .”

Her words trailed away. He got an idea of what his face must look like by the way she quickly turned away and closed the book. It was a moment before she looked at him. When she did, her eyes were still moist, and in them was an emotion he couldn’t put a name to.

“I apologize, Josh. I had no right.”

She held the book out to him. For a moment he studied her face, wondering what had put that odd softness in her expression. Then, at last, he reached out and took the book from her. He felt it again, that odd sense of warmth, of companionship he’d never known before. He glanced down at the cover, wondering how much she’d read. Had she seen the pages with Jenna and Kane’s story, that mythical tale of sorcerers and magic? Was she convinced he had descended from a line of nothing less than lunatics?

“I’m sorry about your family,” she said quietly.

His gaze shot back to her face. So it was sympathy he’d seen in her eyes. Or pity. She’d begun reading at the end, and seen all the dates of death so painfully close together. His jaw tightened as he looked away. He’d never been able to talk about it, and didn’t see himself starting now.

“How awful for you, to find them like that.”

His head snapped up. “What?”

“And you were only ten, Josh. Younger than Luke, even. How could you blame yourself?”

“What are you talking about?”

“And your sister . . . how horrible. Seeing it all happen, and being helpless to stop it. No wonder she couldn’t live with it any longer. The river must have promised peace to her.”

No one, absolutely no one other than he and his grandfather, had known Ruthie had drowned herself. No one.

“And just how,” he said, very slowly and carefully, “do you know that?”

She looked puzzled. “I read it. I know I shouldn’t have, because it’s private. But the book just fell open to that page when I picked it up, and I saw your name, and the story, and . . .”

Again her voice faded away. He didn’t have to see her expression this time to guess what his face looked like. And he was sure his voice matched it.

“What story?”

She looked apprehensive, but she answered him. “The one about you.” She paused. Then she nervously rushed on. “Are you writing it? Are all the dates listed there, after the story, things you’re going to put in it?”

“There is no story about me in this book.”

Her brows furrowed. “Of course there is. You know there is.” Her chin came up as if he’d insulted her. “I don’t read as well as I should, but I could read this.” As if to prove her point, she gestured toward the book. “It’s right at the end there. I mean, it’s in the middle of the book, because of all the empty pages, but at the end of the writing.”

He shifted the book in his hand to open it. He didn’t know what she’d seen, but she was obviously confused. He remembered what Luke had said about her not reading that well, and she’d said it now herself. He wondered if that was what had happened, if she’d been confused somehow. But if she read well enough to teach Luke, who had managed to get through Jenna’s story without stumbling too badly, then she—

His thoughts came to an abrupt halt as the book fell open in his hand, as if to a page often turned to. But he’d only looked at that page once, last night, and it had sent him into a dizzying whirl of confused thoughts that lasted until Kate had shaken him out of it this afternoon. And his questioning of Luke hadn’t helped; the boy’s positive statements had only proven what he’d already known—his name had not been there the night before.

But that somehow seemed minor compared to what he was seeing now. Insignificant next to the fact that where last night there had been merely a blank page beneath that graceful script entry of his name, there was now a page full of the elegant writing, spelling out in grim detail the destruction of the Hawks. Grim details that no one else alive could know. Grim details he’d even managed to forget himself. And following it were dates, dates that were engraved in his mind, dates that marked things in his life he would never, ever forget.

He didn’t know which was more impossible, that the story was here, or how it had appeared. Or that it seemed bent on continuing, with that list of dates sitting there like some omen of things to come. It was crazy. He would have thought himself hallucinating had not she seen it as well.

“Josh, what’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a—” She broke off as he looked up at her. “I’m sorry,” she said breathlessly, “that was an awful thing to say.”

A ghost? Josh nearly laughed; he could deal with that more easily than he could deal with the impossibility of what he was holding in his hands. At least some people believed in ghosts; the only thing anyone would believe about this was that he’d been up in the mountains too long.

“Of course it’s awful, reliving all that horror. But perhaps it helped, to write it down?”

“I didn’t—”

He stopped before the damning words were out. Let her think he’d written it. It would be easier to explain. Now if someone would just explain it to him. . . .

He slapped the book shut. With sharp, determined movements, he strode across the small room to his saddlebag and stuffed the book inside, thinking perhaps he should go out and stuff it in the stove at the back of the store instead. Isn’t that what they did with things connected to witchcraft and sorcery and wizards? Burn them?

He might do it yet, he thought.

When he straightened up, he found Kate watching him with an odd expression. He waited, unable to think of a single thing to say to her.

After a moment, she said only, “I’m sorry I pried,” and walked out of the storeroom. Josh looked after her for a while, wondering what she would have said if he’d told her the truth.

He nearly laughed aloud. The truth? He wished somebody had told him the truth long ago. But nobody had. Not his father, not his mother, not his uncle. They’d told him the legends; they’d told him of century after century of Hawk history; and they’d told him all the things to be proud of.

But never once had they told him the damned Hawks were haunted.

Chapter 9

“COME IN, MRS. Dixon.”

Kate winced as she stepped into the marshal’s office. “Thank you. But, please, call me Kate.”

Caleb Pike looked at her as if he knew exactly why she’d offered him the familiarity of her first name, as if he knew that being called by Arly’s name made her cringe inside.

“Of course . . . Miss Kate,” he said, much as Luke did, which made her smile.

Pike smiled back. He really was a nice-seeming man. With his long, curling mustache, and his slight paunch hanging over his belt, he hardly looked like a man who could quell a fight among drunken cowboys without drawing a weapon, but she’d heard he’d done it more than once.

“Sit down,” Pike suggested.

Kate hesitated. She had hesitated outside as well, not at all certain she wanted to do this. She’d barely spoken to Caleb Pike in all the time he’d been here as town marshal, and most of that under Arly’s watchful eye when the man had come into the mercantile.

Once, after Arly had left her face particularly bruised, Pike had threatened to talk to Arly. She’d been terrified this would only earn her a worse beating, and Pike had backed off. And once Deborah had sent for him, that time after Arly had caught her trying to run away. Pike had talked to Arly then, and whatever he’d said had made an impression; Arly had never hurt her that badly again.

It was that that decided her; she sat down in the chair he’d indicated. It felt odd to be here. She still wasn’t quite used to the fact that she could come and go as she pleased now. She had to remind herself that if she wished to take a walk, she could; if she wished to talk to someone, she could.

“What can I do for you?”

Kate laced her fingers together in her lap. She had been formulating the question in her mind all the way here, trying to decide how to say it. But now that she was here, all she could manage was to blurt it out.

“You can tell me about Joshua Hawk.”

Pike looked thoughtful. He tugged at his luxuriant mustache. At last, he sat on the edge of his desk, a few feet away from her.

“Well, now,” he said slowly, “seems everybody already knows all there is to know about The Hawk.”

“You mean his reputation. The legend.”

Pike smiled. “Sounds like something outta one of them dime magazines, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. It does. That’s why I’m asking. Most legends are made of half-truths and imagination.”

“And you want the truth, is that it?”

“Yes.”

“And you think I know it?”

“I think you know more of the truth than anyone else in town.”

Pike smiled again. “I may know a thing or two,” he conceded. “Exactly what is it you want to hear?”

I want to know just how awful a thing I’ve done,
she thought. But she said only, “Is he a killer?”

Pike leaned back. “Well, now, that depends. Lots of men have killed. That doesn’t necessarily make them killers.”

“It doesn’t?”

“Way I look at it, there are those who kill because they’re forced to. Given a choice, they walk away. And there are those who, given that choice, kill anyway. Who kill not because it’s unavoidable, but because they like it. They take pleasure in it. They’re born that way.” Pike shrugged. “You ask me, that’s a real killer.”

“And . . . The Hawk? Which is he?”

“I’m not sure, yet. From what I’ve heard, he’s never been the first to start a fight.”

Kate wasn’t sure that was a recommendation; she’d seen Arly drive people to making the first move more than once, just so he’d be able to claim later he hadn’t started it.

“But he has killed people. Lots of people.”

“So they say. I know he’s carrying a lot of fame around with him, but . . .” Pike lifted his hands in a gesture expressing indecision.

He’s carrying a lot of pain around with him as well,
Kate thought, remembering the horrible story she’d read.

“But what?” she asked.

“I’ve got a feelin’, but I could be wrong.”

“What is . . . your feeling?”

Pike shrugged again. “That boy’s no born killer. He’s good, and he’s cooler than most, but he’s not cold. Not clear through. Not yet anyway.”

Kate didn’t know if that made her feel better or worse.

“Funny thing, though,” Pike said, as if he were merely thinking out loud, “I got the idea, when he was locked up here waiting on the hangman, that he didn’t really mind the idea of dyin’.”

Kate stared at the marshal. “What?”

Pike nodded. “He seemed almost relieved. Like a man who was tired of living.”

“Tired of living?” Kate’s forehead creased. “But he’s so young . . .”

“Twenty-five, the paperwork says. But years don’t always tell the tale.”

She thought again of the story she’d read in that book, that beautiful, unusual book that he was so secretive about. What had happened to him, what he’d gone through, could indeed make a person older than his years. But still, the idea shook her.

“You think he really . . . wanted to die?”

Pike tugged at his mustache again before saying thoughtfully, “More like he didn’t want to live anymore. Leastwise, not like he’d been living.”

Kate sat silently, considering this. She knew too well how that felt, to have reached the point of finding death a more pleasant alternative than the life she’d been handed. But she wasn’t Josh, didn’t have his power, his strength. How much worse had his life been to drive a strong, fearless man like Josh to welcome death?

“Pardon me, Mrs.—er, Miss Kate, why are you asking? Is he giving you some kind of trouble?”

“Oh, no,” she said quickly. “Not at all.” Not the kind of trouble you mean, anyway, she added silently.

“Well, then, if you don’t mind my saying so, there are those in town who think he just might have done you a good turn.”

Kate paled. Hastily, she stood up. She searched the marshal’s face, looking for any sign of suspicion. She found nothing.

“I didn’t mean to upset you, ma’am. It’s just that . . . everyone knows Arly was a mean one. And that you had some mighty hard times. Some of us feel we should have done something to help.”

“You tried, Marshal. There was no way to help, not with Arly. Thank you for speaking with me.”

She was halfway back to the mercantile before her heart slowed to its normal rate.

That boy’s no born killer.

Perhaps not, she thought. But he’d certainly seen his share of killing, at an age when he should have been concerned only with being a child. If the story she’d read was true, his family had been nearly wiped out by the war. The war her father had run away from.

She turned away from the thought. She didn’t think about her father very much, and hadn’t for a long time. At first, she’d told herself he hadn’t known what he was doing, the kind of situation he was leaving her in. But she knew he had known what kind of man Arly was. She’d heard her mother arguing with him about it, one of the only times in her life her mother had ever dared to dispute her father’s decisions.

It was the memory of her mother that hurt. Kate had hoped that just this once, her mother would not give in. But she did, and the Daytons had gone on their way, abandoning their oldest daughter to her fate.

And abandoned was how Kate had felt at sixteen; she’d felt as much an orphan as Luke, which was probably why she’d felt such empathy for the boy, and had sneaked him food, and a pair of sturdy shoes when winter was coming. But she’d soon come to realize that even Luke, for all that he was a child with no one to look out for him, had a better lot than she. He at least didn’t have heavy, meaty fists of a drunken beast to dodge—until the day the boy had tried to pay her back by helping her escape, and Arly had caught them both.

She stifled a shiver at the memories, and wondered how long it would take before they went away. She wished they would go now. She had no desire to recall the ugliness.

But Josh apparently did. Why else would he have that book? She supposed it was different if your ugly memories were tied to something big, something momentous like a war. But still, she couldn’t see why he would want to remember all the grim details that were in the story she’d read. But he must, or he wouldn’t be writing the story down.

It was very odd, she thought, that a gunfighter would write a history of his family. Yet all the writing in the book was the same, so it had to be Josh’s. And the family tree, with all those names and branches . . . how had he ever found all that out? She barely knew anything about her family beyond her great-grandparents on her mother’s side; her father had never spoken of his own family. But Josh apparently knew the name of every Hawk who had ever lived. How was it possible? Had Josh’s grandfather helped him with that, before he died? But how could even he know that?

When she reached the mercantile, she tried to turn away from her scattered thoughts and pull her mind back to business; she had some accounts to go over. Once Arly had discovered she had a knack for numbers, he’d chortled over his good deal, getting a cook, a laundress, a clerk who could keep accounts, and a woman to use in his bed every night, all for a pair of boots. A canny trade, he used to tell everyone, even if the woman wasn’t much to look at.

She paused just inside the door when she saw Mr. Rankin standing at the counter, talking to Josh.

“—only enough for one more set of shoes. I needed that iron,” he was saying.

Josh lifted a shoulder in a negligent manner. “Now you have it.”

“Thanks to The Hawk.”

She saw Josh’s jaw tighten. “I suppose.”

He didn’t sound at all happy about it. He looked up then, seeing her in the doorway, and his expression became unreadable. Mr. Rankin turned, and saw her as well.

“Mrs. Dixon,” he said in greeting.

She nodded and smiled at the man who had always, even under Arly’s fiercest glares, at least been polite to her. “Was your shipment satisfactory, Mr. Rankin?”

He nodded in turn. “I was just thanking Mr. Hawk, here, for getting that load here so quick.”

Her mouth quirked wryly. “Having a famous gunfighter take delivery does seem to speed things up.”

Rankin smiled. Josh did not. With a final touch of his hand to his forehead, the blacksmith left and went back to his forge.

Kate turned to look at Josh. He remained unsmiling. She wondered if he was still angry at her for looking at his book. She walked toward him tentatively, pondering apologizing yet again, wondering if it would do any good.

Before she could decide, he spoke rather harshly. “I didn’t set out to be famous, you know.”

She didn’t know what to say to that, so she said nothing, just looked at him curiously as she walked behind the counter, wondering what had set him off on this.

“I just . . . happen to be good with a gun, that’s all. It’s something I can do that men are willing to pay for. When I started, it was just a job. A way to make a living. I never wanted . . . the rest.”

“The legend?” she asked softly as she came to halt beside him.

He grimaced. “Some men may like having people be afraid of them all the time. And I admit it has its uses. But I don’t
like
it.”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

She didn’t know what had possessed her to say it, although, she realized with some amazement, it was true. And when he looked at her intently, she wished she hadn’t said it. And she wished she hadn’t come so close to him. But she couldn’t seem to back away, either.

“It didn’t seem like that yesterday,” he said.

She knew he meant when he’d grabbed her and she’d panicked. “That wasn’t you I was afraid of. I wasn’t thinking. I was just . . .”

“Reacting?”

She nodded. Josh looked at her for a long, silent moment. “How did you survive, Kate?” he finally said, so softly she wondered if he’d meant to say it out loud.

“I got very good at staying out of Arly’s way.”

Josh shook his head, as if in wonder. “Did he ever know, Kate? Did he ever see that he hadn’t ever conquered you, he’d only . . . made you hide?”

She stared at him; that was exactly how she’d thought of her life with Arly, as a time spent hiding, hiding herself in both body and soul, until she would someday be safe to come out again.

“Some men never learn,” he said in that same soft voice. “They never see that any creature with spirit is best handled with care. They want to break that spirit, and never see how much more they could have if they fed it instead.”

Taken aback by both his perception and the softness of his words, Kate tried to deny the sudden welling of emotion he’d roused in her.

“It sounds as if you’re comparing me to a horse,” she said, trying to sound offended. “Or perhaps some other, lesser animal.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed easily, as if he saw right through her efforts to dissemble. “But as it applies to animals, it applies to people as well. No one with gumption takes easily to having it crushed.”

Her head came up. She had to stop this, it was making her feel too . . . She wasn’t sure what it was, this heart-pounding, stomach-knotting, hot-and-cold feeling he caused in her, but it had to stop.

“Especially a Hawk?” she asked, hoping to divert him.

He shrugged. “It seems they particularly don’t take well to bullies.”

“You say that like you’re not a Hawk yourself.”

He looked away then. “Maybe I’m thinking I shouldn’t be.”

Something in his tone made her regret she’d said what she had. “But you are,” she said.

“And I’ll be the last,” he said, a bitterness in his voice she’d never heard from him before. “The last Hawk. It dies with me.” His mouth curved into a twisted smile that echoed his tone. “A grand ending to a centuries-old bloodline, don’t you think? A killer who’ll buck out in smoke someday? The last of the Hawks, dead in some street, because he couldn’t even get himself hanged?”