Capture the Sun (Cheyenne Series) (48 page)

      
Hawk rode out in search of Kyle that afternoon and found him on the east range where stock losses had been heaviest lately. Both men knew the thief was Rider, working for Krueger. It was only a matter of time until they captured one of his men alive and got the truth from him. After last night and Krueger's open declaration of war, Hawk wanted Hunnicut to be prepared. He told him of the German's threat without mentioning what had led up to it.

      
When he arrived at his cabin that evening, he was bone-weary. All he wanted was to fall in bed and sleep. Feliz had reluctantly sent some cold food with him when he declined supper at the big house. He carried the sack she had given him into the cabin and lit a lamp over the kitchen table.

      
Then he saw it, lying in a carefully cleared space on the oiled wooden planks of the table. The medallion. Its intricate, wrought-silver design winked in the flickering light and a note lay beside it. Unwillingly he unfolded the note from the envelope and read:

Hawk:

After all that has happened between us, I thought you would prefer to have this returned.

Carrie

      
He crumpled the message into a tiny ball, pressing it between his palms in pained, furious anger, then threw it with all his might into a corner of the room, where it was lost amid the clutter. Slowly he picked up the medallion and placed it around his neck. It was all he had of the old life now.

* * * *

      
“Caleb, you are too transparent.” Lola tapped Rider sharply on the shoulder when she caught him staring intently out of the window of Cummins' Emporium at Carrie Sinclair. The tall, lovely redhead was dismounting from her horse in front of the bank. Rider turned with a snarl and grabbed Lola's gloved hand.

      
“Don't play with me,
Mrs
. Krueger,” he said nastily, ignoring her title.

      
Swallowing her revulsion at the crude gunman's manners, she bestowed a dazzling smile on him instead. “Don't get testy with me, Caleb. I've been considering some things that might be of, er...mutual benefit to us.” Seeing his cold gray eyes measure her, she resumed. “You want Carrie Sinclair. So does Karl. If you get rid of Karl, you get her. Of course, to do that, you'll have to eliminate her guardian angel, too.” She looked outside at Kyle Hunnicut, who followed in Carrie's shadow. “Could you manage that, hmmm, Caleb?”

      
He assessed the scheming woman in front of him. “What would all this gain you, Lola? You never do anything for nothing. And don't lie to me,” he grabbed her hand roughly, “I know you want Hawk Sinclair. But he's got no money, while Krueger has K Bar. Why choose a penniless half-breed?” He smiled a cold, oily grimace that set her teeth on edge.

      
“Who says I can't have both, Caleb?” His head swiveled in interest now. She laughed a low, throaty chuckle and said, “If you dispose of darling Karl and that odious little Texan, I inherit K Bar and you can have your redhead. When we control all the cattle lands in eastern Montana, Hawk Sinclair will crawl to me!” Her voice became hard, breaking in anger as she recalled his scathing rejection of her the night of Krueger’s gala.

      
Turn from Lola Jameson, would he? Walk away as if she were some common trollop! If Karl wouldn't marry her, well, he need not. She had brooded all week after the debacle of the ball and finally it came to her in a blindingly simple revelation— Karl had no living relations and had written no will. If he died, she was his sole heir! It was so obvious she berated herself for not thinking of it sooner.

      
Rider's eyes grew hard and measuring as he watched the triumphant display of emotions across her face. “You mean if the new baron dies, you inherit? Well, I'll be damned....”

* * * *

      
Hawk spent the week doing some hard riding and even harder thinking. He was up at daybreak each morning, checking stock, preparing for the upcoming roundup. All the while he rode to isolated line shacks, along deserted cow trails, he mulled over his tortured and confusing relationship with Carrie.

      
He still could not accept the fact that she had shared his medicine dream. Did she first experience it twelve years ago when it came to him in that sweat lodge? She would have been only a small child. He longed to ask her, to share with her the mystic memories of that long-ago time. But he could not bring himself to approach her after the grievous wrong he had done her, falling on her and forcing her to couple with him, then scorning her when her warm woman's body responded to his need. Why did love always seem to end in hurt and anger for them?

      
The guilty shade of Noah's memory hovered over them too. She was his father's wife. Why had the Powers brought her from afar to share his dream with him? Why did he love her despite so many reasons he should have loved Wind Song? He had betrayed his wife, and that memory was bitterest of all.

      
But Wind Song and his Cheyenne child were dead, and Carrie and his white son were alive. Whenever he thought of Peregrine Sinclair, Hawk's mood lightened. The boy was bright and good-natured, growing every day to look more like him. From the first time he saw his son and carried him back to Circle S, Hawk had felt the bond between them grow stronger. Sensing their kinship, Perry always went eagerly into his father's arms, giggling and holding tightly when they galloped across the plains.

      
While Carrie was occupied with household matters. Hawk frequently picked him up early in the morning at Feliz's kitchen. He and the boy would watch the hands catch their broncs and saddle them. When everyone else was at work, Hawk would take Perry with him on part of his morning rounds, sometimes stopping at a branding fire to watch the men burn a Circle S on the hips of unmarked calves. Occasionally he took his son swimming at the lake, pushing aside the bittersweet memories of Carrie while he and Perry splashed and cavorted in the warm water.

      
Hawk was hopelessly trapped. He loved his son and could not leave him. Yet he could no longer bear living in such close proximity to Carrie, knowing that what had happened last week would happen again. To claim his son he must marry her, but she had made it clear she despised him. No matter that her body responded to his, her mind, her civilized white instincts, rejected him. And in truth, a hurt defensive part of his mind still rejected her as well. There seemed to be no answer.

      
Carrie existed in the same hell as Hawk, living out each day around him, unable to exchange more than minimal courtesies and discuss the essentials of running Circle S. Frequently she had Kyle act as intermediary. Hawk cooked his own meals at the cabin as often as Feliz would permit, sparing them both the poignant torture of sitting at the big kitchen table with their son between them.

      
Carrie watched Hawk and Perry grow closer over the course of summer's end. As the affection between them grew, it tore at her. Was there no chance they could ever be a real family? She feared losing her son to his father. Hawk loved the boy so much. Might he take Perry and vanish south to the Nations or return to the Cheyenne? Her imagination ran wild at times, but she knew she could never forbid him to see his son. That, at least, was his right and Perry's right, too.

      
“A boy should have a father,” Feliz said one afternoon as she observed Carrie, who was gazing out the window at the approaching Redskin, who was carrying two riders, one tall and the other tiny.

      
Carrie sighed and said, “He has a father who spends lots of time with him. More time than I get with my own child here lately.”

      
“And whose fault is that?” The old cook continued paring vegetables at the table, keenly aware of how hungrily Carrie's gaze fixed itself on the scene unfolding in the side yard by the pump.

      
It was a dry September. The roundup crews gathering cattle to ship to market stirred up thick yellow dust everywhere they worked. Everyone who rode into the camps came away coated with it. Hawk and Perry were no exceptions. Not wanting to take the child into Feliz's immaculate kitchen in such a filthy state, he went to the big pump by the well and stripped the chubby little boy.

      
Perry liked this new game, giggling and wriggling as his father pulled off the last hot, sticky garments, all the while tickling his toes and belly. Then Hawk stripped off his own shirt and scooped the boy up, holding him under the pump while a gush of cool water sluiced over them. It felt wonderful! Perry splashed and squealed in delight, soaking Hawk, who was trying desperately to wash the slippery bundle. Agile for a child scarcely over a year old, Perry quickly succeeded in making a mud wallow around the pump and getting an astounding amount of the sticky stuff on them both.

      
Hesitantly, with considerable prodding from Feliz, Carrie finally approached them with a small washtub, soap, and towels. They did not see her or hear her approach until she was directly beside them and liberally splashed with muddy water herself. Kneeling alongside the pump, heedless of the bright blue skirt she wore, Carrie pushed the empty tub under the spigot. Just then Hawk looked up as he caught the patch of blue from the comer of his eye.

      
“Fill this with clean water and let's see if between us we can't get the little one clean at least.” A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth now and she forgot her earlier shyness as Perry tangled his gooey fingers in her hair. She laughed out loud and hefted the child into the tub as Hawk worked the pump.

      
Hawk thought he'd never heard a lovelier sound than her laughter. Had he ever heard her really laugh before? He watched as she squatted gracefully in the mire. She ignored the clots of slime with which Perry had decorated her hair, vigorously working a sudsy lather all over his small copper body.

      
“Stand by for a rinse,” he called out. She leaned back, holding Perry securely by one arm as the clean water cascaded over his head and shoulders. When his mother reached over with a fluffy towel and bundled him up in it, lifting him away from the pump, the child realized the game was over. He was clean and being dried! Well, this was no longer fun. He wailed in protest and thrashed two sturdy arms free of the towel to reach toward the waterfall, which had now mysteriously stopped running.

      
“Time for dinner, young man,” Carrie said, giving one teary cheek a nuzzle and carrying him around toward the kitchen door.

      
“You better let Feliz take him inside and dress him, or he'll just get filthy again.” Hawk's eyes were merry as his gaze traveled from her head to her feet. The outside of the towel was already liberally smeared with mud from her skirt, and one sticky lock of long, red hair was oozing droplets of yellow slime onto her arm as she held the wiggling boy.

      
Feliz hurried from the kitchen clucking at the sight the three of them made. She observed the merriment in both black and green eyes as she whisked her young charge away, leaving his parents standing in disarray in the yard.

      
Suddenly self-conscious, Carrie was aware she was staring at Hawk's bare, mud-spattered chest.
 
Her own blouse clung like a semitransparent skin to her breasts and arms, revealing a great deal to his eyes. They looked one another in the face, and all the laughter of a moment ago fled.

      
Then he reached over, taking her by surprise, and grasped her hand gently, tugging her back toward the pump. “Lean over,” he commanded gruffly, and she obeyed. He guided her head beneath the pump and doused her with cool water, rinsing the worst of the mud from her hair, arms, and upper body. “Now your feet,” he directed when she stood up, squeezing the excess water from her hair. She obeyed, presenting first one foot, then the other to him as he pulled off the sodden slippers, tossing them into the nearby grass. She stood obediently with stocking feet beneath the pump, filthy skirt hiked up to her knees while he once more worked the pump handle vigorously.

      
When she was dripping and free of the worst of the dirt, he reached over and scooped her up, quickly swinging her across the muddy ground to dry grass near the kitchen door. With a disarming smile, he set her down and said, “Now ask Feliz for another towel so you don't drip all over her clean floors.” With that he turned back to the pump and kicked off his moccasins. She tried not to notice the way the water seemed to hug and caress the lean, corded muscles of his arms and torso as it ran down his back. Her thoughts were interrupted by Feliz, who offered her a towel with a worldly-wise smile and then vanished inside once more. Wanting to flee after the cook, Carrie called out with a suddenly dry throat, “Do you want a towel?”

      
He shook his head, letting an explosion of diamond-bright droplets fly from his thick black hair. Combing his fingers through it, he pushed the raven locks off his forehead. “Redskin's ridden through lots of rainstorms worse than this.” He grinned, turning to pick up the muddy moccasins. Quickly he rinsed them off under the pump and replaced them on his feet.

      
Carrie stood there, lamely running the towel over her dripping hair and clothes while he walked toward the big bay and swung into the saddle. “Will you be back for dinner tonight?”

      
He smiled once more, melting her into the warm September earth. “If I can get the rest of this mud off me by then, yes.”

      
An uncertain truce was called after that day. Hawk ate all his evening meals in the big kitchen with Carrie and their son, Kyle, and Feliz. They discussed the mundane affairs of ranch life, stock breeding, and plans for shipping various herds to market before the snows. Kyle reminisced about their wild days in the Nations, occasionally drawing out Hawk, who described an amusing or exciting tale for the small group. Feliz recalled memories of Hawk's childhood. At ease in the company of the Texan and the Mexicana, Hawk and Carrie laughed and joked, but when they were alone together, both seemed to withdraw into their protective shells, he aloof and shuttered, she stiff and formal. It was as if each was afraid to make the first move. Feliz fussed and Kyle swore while summer faded to autumn.