Heart of the Hawk (17 page)

He sighed. “I think it’s more what it’s supposed to do with me.”

“That sounds almost . . . threatening.”

“It’s not supposed to be. At least, not according to the legend. The book is supposed to help that last Hawk find his way.”

She looked down at the book, thumbing through the pages, pausing at the drawings that occasionally appeared, every century or so.

“His way where?” she asked at last.

For the first time in longer than he could remember, as he watched her long, graceful fingers turn the pages, Josh felt his face heat. It was a moment before he could answer.

“Er . . . his way to no longer being the last Hawk.”

She kept going a few more pages, then her hands stopped. Her head came up and she gave him a wide-eyed look. “Wouldn’t that mean he would have to . . . have a child?”

He’d had a feeling it wouldn’t take her long to make that jump. Wishing now he’d never begun this, Josh nodded. She kept looking at him in that astonished way, and he shifted in his chair uncomfortably. And suddenly he was the one who felt the need to fill the silence.

“That’s when it disappears again. When the next Hawk is born, assuring the line will go on. It’s all part of the promise the man gave Jenna when she saved his life.”

“Aren’t you leaving something out?” Kate asked, her voice abruptly very cool. “A child means a mother. Does the book take care of that, too? How?”

“I . . .” Josh felt his face heat again, and groaned inwardly at the thought of anyone knowing The Hawk had suddenly become prone to blushing. “I don’t know. They weren’t very clear about
what
it does, or how, just the results.”

“Oh.” Her tone left little doubt of what she thought about that. She tapped the page she’d now turned back to, the page where his name was inscribed. “If you didn’t write this, then . . . is it right?”

“Right?”

“Is this the truth? Did your sister Ruth really . . . drown herself?”

His jaw tightened, but he nodded. “The day we got word my father had been killed at Franklin.” His mouth twisted. “We didn’t even think she’d understood the message. But she did. She walked out that night, straight into the river.”

“I’m sorry, Josh.”

He tried to acknowledge her, but for some reason the memories were riding him hard tonight and he could only go on.

“Less than five months later, Lee surrendered. On my twelfth birthday,” he added, although he wasn’t sure why. “Gramps sold everything that was left, which wasn’t much, bought a couple of horses, and we headed west.”

She glanced down at the first page of his entry again. “Did you really go to all these places?”

He shrugged. “We moved around a lot. Gramps wanted to see as much as he could. Said he just wanted to be on ground war hadn’t touched.”

“It must have been hard for you when he died.”

“He was all I had left,” he said, then wished he could call back the words. What was it about this place that made him let his mouth run on like this? First Luke, now Kate. Twice he’d talked about things he never spoke of, to anyone.

“Did you really win your first shooting contest when you were fifteen?”

He smiled at that. “Yep. Down in Abilene. October, end of the trail drive season, they were having a big shindig. Beat a man called Hatch, who’d been the champion in those parts for years.”

“Was he angry?”

“Hatch? No. He said it just meant he’d stayed too long in one place, and it was time to move on.” He hadn’t thought of the lean, rangy man with the thick brush of a mustache in a long time. “Funny,” he added, remembering, “he used to talk about taking his winnings and coming up here to Wyoming Territory. But instead I won, and I ended up here.” He gave her a sideways look. “Almost permanently.”

Kate looked away, as if uncomfortable with the reminder. After a moment, Josh went on.

“Anyway, I won enough money at that shoot to keep us going for a month.”

Kate fingered the open page of the book. “And killed a man for the first time two years later.”

His smile faded then. “Yes.”

“Is it true that that man just came up and hired you after he saw you shoot?”

He didn’t want to talk about this, but he found himself answering her anyway. “I was broke. Hadn’t eaten in a while. He offered me double his cowhand’s pay to stand guard on his stock. He’d been having trouble, and expected more.”

“And it came?”

“It did. They thought because I was young I was the weak link. Their mistake.”

“And the next time?”

“He tried to backshoot my employer,” Josh said curtly. “I stopped him.”

“Then how—”

“No.” He cut her off. “We’re not going to sit here and chew over my no-account life.”

“I thought we were trying to . . . understand this,” she said, toying with a page of the book.

He stood up and shoved a hand through his hair again. “Understand? It appears out of nowhere, it adds bits and pieces to itself, writing things no one still alive could know. . . . How do you understand that?”

“I don’t know.” She gave him a sideways, nervous look that made him realize he’d sounded a little agitated. “It’s your legend.”

He sat down again. He looked at her across the table. “I didn’t mean to be so . . .”

He shook his head, not knowing what to say. Uncomfortable again, he reached out and picked up the top book of the four she’d been carrying when he’d scared them out of her hands. It was an often-read volume, judging by the wear on the cover and the corners. When he looked at the title printed on the spine, he smiled.

“Moby Dick?”

For an instant she cringed, then she drew herself up. “Is there some reason I should not read it?” she said, a defiant undertone in her voice.

“No,” Josh said gently, “not anymore.”

The air of defiance faded, to be replaced by chagrin. “There is a reason,” she said with a sigh. “I can’t. At least, not well enough.”

“You read well enough to teach Luke.”

She lowered her eyes. “We read . . . simpler things.”

He leaned across the table and handed her the timeworn book. “This isn’t that hard. Just take your time. Try. Perhaps I can help.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t. Not in front of . . . you.”

“Me? I’m just a hired gun-toter, remember?” He nodded at the book. “Besides, this seems rather . . . appropriate. Captain Ahab was mad, as I recall.”

“You don’t really think you’re—”

“I know I will be, if I don’t think about something else for a while. Read. Please.”

After a long, silent, rather strained moment, she did. She read, floundering at first, then more easily. Her hesitation over the longer words tested his admittedly rusty memory of a story read long ago, but her enthusiasm for the tale made him smile inwardly.

When after a few pages she came to a halt, he looked over at her.

“I wish I was better at this,” she said.

“You’re doing fine.”

“You . . . went to school, didn’t you?”

He blinked. “Yes. Back in Missouri. At least, until the schoolhouse became a hospital, and our teacher left to go north. Then my grandfather taught us at home. He used to be a teacher himself.”

“Us?”

“Ruthie and me.” He was glad his voice was steady, because Kate looked at him as if she was searching for signs of distress. “Rebecca and Amanda were older; they’d already finished school.”

“Your . . . sisters went to school?”

She said it so longingly it made him look at those days he’d so often hated, trapped inside a classroom when he yearned to be outside, as perhaps a privilege rather than the punishment he’d thought it at the time.

“Yes,” he said, “they did.”

“My father didn’t hold much with schooling, especially for girls. He said a man needed to know how to read and figure numbers, so he wouldn’t be cheated by those that can, but girls . . .”

She let her voice trail away as she lifted one shoulder in a shrug.

“Then how did you learn to read?”

“In one of the towns we lived in for a while, there was a reverend. Not like Reverend Babcock, but a real, living and believing reverend. A good man. He taught me. Told my father that all of God’s children should be able to at least read the Lord’s words. My father was a God-fearing man and didn’t dare to go against him.”

“And you’ve kept on yourself?”

“I try. Deborah helps when she can, but she’s always so busy, I hate to ask her. It’s hard, because I don’t know if I’m working some of the words out right.”

“You do fine.”

“Still, I wish I could have gone to school. There’s so much I want to learn, to know about.”

Ruth had had that same kind of eagerness, that same kind of quick intelligence that had made her look forward to the lessons Josh had so dreaded. For the first time he began to look at what he’d considered the curse of his childhood as something to be appreciated.

“Maybe . . . I could help. While I’m here, anyway,” he amended, wondering what had possessed him to say it, to offer to do something that would force him to spend even more time in her distracting company.

Kate blushed furiously. “Oh, no, I couldn’t ask that.”

“You didn’t ask,” he said, a bit irritated at her instant rejection. “I offered.”

“But you—”

“I what?” An edge had crept into his voice. “I can read. Fairly well. That’s all you need, isn’t it? Or are you still afraid of me?”

That, as he’d expected, did it. Her head came up. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“Then it’s settled.” She looked at him warily, and with an effort he softened his tone. “I helped Ruthie, when Gramps was busy.”

“You did?”

He nodded. “She loved to read. Anything. Everything.” He had kept it long buried, this memory of the lively, quick mind lost behind the vacant stare of the girl who had once been his sister Ruthie. “My grandfather used to tell me you can find the whole world and more in books.”

“And more . . .”
she said slowly. Then she reached out to touch the dark blue cover of the Hawk book. “Like this.”

Josh exhaled slowly. He’d needed this break she’d given him, this respite from the chaos of dealing with an impossibility that had apparently turned into reality. But nothing had changed. The Hawk book hadn’t vanished as it had appeared, leaving him free to blame the entire occurrence on some mental lapse perhaps brought on by too many legends heard, and too much time spent alone in the mountains of late.

He watched her as she toyed with the book, watched her long, slender fingers touch the gilt edges of the pages, stroking them as if she like the feel. He studied the twin semicircles of her lowered lashes, noticing the thick softness of them. Her eyes, he thought, were really more than just striking; they were beautiful. It was as if all the beauty that in other, more classically lovely women had been divided among their features, in this woman had been poured into those eyes, making them so clear and gold and haunting that they were impossible to forget once you’d seen them.

He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there, watching her as she slowly turned the pages of the book, but when he realized that he was wondering what it would be like to have those long, lovely fingers sliding over his skin in the same slow, torturous way, he yanked his gaze back to his now-empty cup.

A few moments later, he sensed rather than saw her sudden stillness. He raised his head. Her hands were no longer moving. She was staring down at the book that was open before her, to the last page where the elegant lettering ended about halfway down. And she had gone very pale.

His heart seemed to slam up into his throat, and for an instant he couldn’t breathe. He tried to say her name, but it came out as an odd sort of croak.

He saw her eyes move, but she didn’t raise her head. She looked at the top of the page and began to read again, with that intensity he’d seen before as she worked her way through the printed text of the other book. He knew when she had finished by the shiver that visibly rippled through her.

“Kate?” He finally got it out past the tightness.

At last she looked up at him, those golden eyes full of both fear and awe. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again. With a little shake of her head that told him she was having the same trouble speaking he was, she slid the Hawk book across the table to him.

He didn’t want to look, because he was afraid he knew what he’d see. It was impossible; the book had been here on the table between them, unmoved and untouched, long enough for dusk to fade to black. It was impossible, but still he had to force himself to look. And the moment he did, he knew his fear had been well-founded.

The book had changed.

It had caught up to the present. It now spelled out the dates and the story of each of his killings, including every grim detail, yet somehow making them sound not as bad as he knew they were.

It even told of his weeks spent up in the mountains, examining his life, making himself remember each of the men whose death he’d caused, comparing himself to his father, and his grandfather, and seeing himself come up sadly short.

All of it was true. Right down to the smallest detail, the book was accurate. He didn’t know how it had been done, and right at this moment, he wasn’t sure he cared. Because it was the last entry that held his attention now. The last entry that seemed to mock him, both in what it said and the taunting promise that it wasn’t the final entry, that there would be more to follow, whether he liked it or not.

The last entry, telling him he’d met the woman who was going to make sure the Hawks continued as promised. And it was dated the day he’d ridden into town.