Heart of the Hawk (18 page)

He looked across the table at Kate. The only woman he’d met on the day he’d arrived in Gambler’s Notch.

Chapter 12

“WHAT THE HELL are you doing?”

Kate jumped at the sharp inquiry, and spun around. It took her a split second to realize it wasn’t directed at her. Josh was in the storeroom doorway, glaring into the small room.

Kate hurried toward him and saw Luke inside the storeroom with what appeared to be Josh’s Colt cradled in his hands. He must have come in as he often did, through the back kitchen door. She felt a twinge of guilt; Josh had only taken his gunbelt off for breakfast because she’d told him it made her uncomfortable at the table, and he hadn’t yet put it on again since they’d been back in the store.

“I was just lookin’, honest! I didn’t hurt it!” Luke exclaimed, panic in his voice as Josh strode across the room toward him.

“You
never
handle another man’s gun without asking him.”

Josh’s anger was clear in his voice. He lifted his right hand, and Kate saw Luke cringe away.

“Stop!” she cried out, reacting instinctively. “Don’t you dare hit him!”

Josh froze as Kate’s voice came at him from behind. He looked over his shoulder at her. She ran past him to stand beside Luke, putting her hands protectively on the boy’s shoulders.

“Hit him?” Josh asked a little belatedly.

“He didn’t mean any harm,” Kate said, her voice shaking.

“Maybe he didn’t.” He lifted his hand again, taking the Colt from the anxious boy. “But he could have hurt himself, or anybody else around.”

“I was only holding it,” Luke protested.

“The notch of that hammer is filed so close you practically don’t have to pull the trigger,” Josh said harshly.

Kate was appalled, but held her ground. “That’s still no reason to hit the boy. He didn’t know.”

“Hit him?” Josh gave her a bewildered look. “I just wanted . . .”

His voice trailed away, and his gaze shifted from her to Luke, as if he were remembering the way the boy had cringed away when he’d moved his hand. His gaze flicked back to Kate, and she knew he was remembering the moment when he had grabbed her and she had panicked, screaming and fighting him.

He looked back at Luke, then slowly knelt in front of the boy, so he was looking up at him.

“I wasn’t going to hit you, Luke,” he said softly. “I just wanted to get the Colt away from you.”

“I wouldn’a hurt it,” the boy mumbled.

“I was worried about you, not this,” he said, gesturing with the six-shooter. “And Kate. What if you’d dropped it and it had fired?”

Luke looked properly chagrined. “I didn’t think of that.”

“When it comes to weapons, thinking’s the most important thing you have to do.” He paused, looking at the boy’s troubled face. He didn’t look at Kate again, but she felt the intensity of his next words as if he had. “But I’d never hit you, Luke. I don’t hold with hitting those who are smaller or weaker than I. That’s a coward’s way.”

Luke swallowed. “Arly used to say he was just doin’ what I had no father to do, and I oughta be grateful.”

Josh’s jaw tightened. He muttered something Kate couldn’t hear, but she suspicioned it was a comment guaranteed to speed Arly on his way to whatever hell he was bound for.

Convinced now that Josh meant what he said, Luke looked at him curiously.

“Didn’t your father ever beat you?”

“Whipped me, yes, when I had a hiding coming. But he never beat me, not like you mean. Nobody has the right to do that, Luke. Nobody.”

After a moment, the boy nodded. Kate tightened her hold on the boy’s shoulder, and he glanced up at her.

“Do you have something else to say?” she hinted.

Luke looked puzzled, then his expression cleared. “Oh.” He shifted his gaze back to Josh. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have touched your things.”

Josh stared at the boy as if nonplussed, then a bemused smile curved his mouth. “Apology accepted.”

“I hope you’ll accept mine as well,” Kate said.

Josh’s gaze shot to her face. “What?”

“I apologize for thinking you would strike him. That was Arly’s way. And as you . . . reminded me on Saturday, you are not Arly.”

“No,” he said quietly, “I’m not.”

He looked at her silently, and so steadily, that Kate began to feel uncomfortable. Hanging between them was the knowledge of the Hawk book, and what it had said. After he’d read it, he had been by turns disbelieving, scornful, and furious. When he pointed out that by the date’s implication, the woman the book mentioned was her, she’d been stunned. And then, when she realized that was no doubt the reason for his scorn and fury, she’d been humiliated by the realization that the idea was so repulsive to him.

She had made her escape upstairs, castigating herself every step of the way for even caring what such a man thought of her. For even thinking about such things, no matter what kind of man Arly had been, when she was barely a widow. She had slept little that night, but that wasn’t new; she hadn’t slept soundly since Joshua Hawk had come to Gambler’s Notch. Breakfast had been a strained meal, eaten in silence except for her request that he remove his gunbelt, which he had done grudgingly, but without comment. By the time they’d finished, the atmosphere that was already tense between them was almost unbearable, and it hadn’t changed all morning.

Hastily, she turned back to the boy.

“What did you need, Luke?”

“Nothing,” the boy answered. “I just had a message for Josh.”

“A message?” Josh asked as he buckled his gunbelt on. “From who?”

“Mr. Meeker.”

Josh settled the holster against his right thigh, and the cartridge belt around his lean hips with absent, practiced motions that told Kate the task was as familiar to him as putting on his coat.

“I paid up my bill,” Josh said, “so what did he want you to tell me?”

“Not him, I mean old man Meeker,” Luke said.

“I think Mr. Meeker, Senior, might be a nicer thing to call him,” Kate corrected mildly.

“All right,” Luke said agreeably. “Anyway, he said to tell you”—Luke’s brow furrowed with his effort to get the message right—“that he saw Robards ride in early this morning.”

Josh, who had been testing the slide of the Colt out of his holster, went very still.

“Robards?”

Luke nodded. “That’s the name he said. He made me repeat it, so’s I got it right. Said you’d understand.”

For a long moment, Josh said nothing. He slid the Colt back into the holster. Then he asked, “This Mr. Meeker, he have a first name?”

“I don’t know.” Luke glanced at Kate, who shook her head.

“I’m afraid I don’t know his first name, either,” she said. “I’ve only met him once or twice, when I’ve delivered a basket to him. And I’ve only heard him called Mr. Meeker, or Henry’s father.” She studied Josh for a moment. “This Robards . . . is he a friend of yours?”

Josh’s mouth twisted wryly. “Not exactly.”

“How would Mr. Meeker know him?” she asked. “I don’t think he ever gets out of his room.”

“Robards,” Josh said, his tone dry, “has a face you don’t forget. A man once took offense at something Robards said about a member of his family, and rearranged it for him. From what I hear, it didn’t teach Robards any manners.”

He pulled the Colt out again, this time checking the load. He pulled a single cartridge from the belt and slid it into the empty chamber in the cylinder.

“What did you do that for?” Luke asked, his eyes bright with interest.

“Always keep your hammer on an empty chamber. Nothing looks more foolish than a man who shoots himself by accident.”

“Oh. But why did you load it now?”

Josh reholstered the weapon, answering somewhat absently, “You don’t walk around with only five beans in the wheel with a man like Robards around.”

Luke’s eyes widened. “Is he a bad man?”

“If you like living, you don’t ever turn your back on him.”

Luke looked up at Josh, then down at his Colt, then back at his face. “He’s here after you, isn’t he?”

Kate gasped. Josh looked at her, giving her a look that made her shiver.

“Is he? After you?” she asked, shaken.

“Probably.”

“But . . . why?”

“To try and take The Hawk, why else?” Luke said excitedly.

“Luke!” she said sharply. “That’s hardly something to be excited about.”

“Sure it is, Miss Kate! We’ll get to see The Hawk in action! Get to see—”

“Get to see him kill someone, or be killed himself?”

Luke gaped at her. “Be killed? The Hawk? You might as well go barkin’ at a knot as wait for that to happen! No one’s gonna beat you, right, Josh?”

Josh looked down at the boy, but Kate had the strangest feeling that he wasn’t really seeing Luke at all. “Sooner or later, there’s always somebody who beats even the best.”

“Not you,” Luke insisted.

Josh shrugged. “We’ll see.”

Kate shook her head in horror. “You can’t mean to just go out there looking for this man?”

He gave her that look again, that look she imagined had been the last thing seen by the men he had killed.
She’s deluding herself, and you,
if she thinks I’m anything other than what I am.
His harsh, almost angry words came back to her with jarring intensity.

“What would you suggest, Kate?” he asked with deadly softness. “That I wait until he finds me, then maybe shoot up your mercantile here, and leave you with the mess to clean up?”

“You can’t be sure that’s why he’s here,” Kate said desperately.

“Oh, he’s here for me, all right. That last job you read about in the book? Down near Denver?”

She remembered the story the Hawk book had recounted, of the three men who had tried to rob an ore wagon from one of the local silver mines. They had had the bad judgment to pick the one guarded by The Hawk, and two of them had paid for the mistake with their lives.

It hit her then. Her eyes widened. “Robards . . . is the third man?”

Josh nodded. “And one of the others was his brother. If he didn’t come to Gambler’s Notch looking for me, he’ll be looking as soon as he finds out I’m here.” He glanced at Luke. “Which probably won’t be long.”

Kate knew it was true; Luke had been bragging up Josh’s presence in Gambler’s Notch to anybody who would listen.

“But that doesn’t mean you have to go out looking for him, make it easy for him to find you! Surely if you told Marshal Pike—”

“I don’t send another man to do my fighting for me. If I did, I’d never work again.”

Something snapped in Kate. “You mean you’d never kill for a living again! There are some who would count that a blessing, you know!”

“There are some who would count my being killed a blessing,” he said grimly. Kate stared at him, something in his expression giving her the oddest feeling that he put himself among that number.

He turned on his heel and started toward the front door. After three steps he halted, as if considering something. Then he turned and strode rapidly past her back into the storeroom. When he came out, he was holding the Hawk book.

He crossed to the small stove. She had just stoked the fire, so the small door was still open. Before either she or Luke could react, he shoved the book into the flames.

Luke cried out something Kate couldn’t hear over her own exclamation of shock. But Josh ignored them both. He watched until the book was engulfed, the pages curling into ash. Then he turned again on his heel and strode out into the noon sun.

ROBARDS WAS UGLIER than he remembered, and Josh was reasonably certain he was just as mean-spirited and arrogant. He knew it had put a serious bend in Robards’s pride that even at odds of three to one, they hadn’t been able to take Josh. In fact, he guessed that probably bothered the man more than the death of his brother.

He also guessed that Robards hadn’t changed his ways; he’d meant what he’d said to Luke about not turning your back on him. So when he left the mercantile, he headed down the narrow alleyway to come up to the back of Markum’s saloon. He still spent the occasional evening there, slowly building the stake that would take him out of Gambler’s Notch. He’d spent most of what he’d won before on his room and Buck’s care, but now that he had a roof over his head he didn’t have to pay cash for, things would move faster. He was grateful for that; he’d about come to the end of his rope in more ways than one in this town.

Robards had been where he’d expected him to be, at the bar, already downing what looked to be the latest in a few shots of Markum’s cheapest trade whiskey. As usual, he was wagging his chin, and as usual, not saying much.

Josh checked the slip of the Colt in the holster. He’d try to dodge this, but he had little hope of being successful; Robards was too downright mean. But he’d promised Pike, so he would try. Besides, while he wanted out of Gambler’s Notch, he wanted to leave on his own terms—and in his own time—not because Pike had ordered him out.

He walked to the end of the long bar and touched his hat brim in greeting to Markum. Markum’s hasty, almost furtive glance toward Robards and then back to Josh told him the man had been asking about him. Josh nodded in understanding.

“I paid a lot of money for this saloon outfit,” Markum said, rather mournfully as he wiped a rag over his catalog-ordered bar.

Josh nodded again, understanding the man’s fear that the rather ornately carved mahogany piece would soon be scored with bullet holes.