Heart of the Hawk (2 page)

Pike nodded. “You do that.”

Josh’s gaze narrowed at the man’s tone. “Just what do you mean by that?”

Pike met his eyes levelly. “Just that. For now.”

The warning was implicit, and the lack of fear in the older man’s eyes told Josh he wouldn’t hesitate to back it up if he had to. Even against The Hawk; Josh had little doubt the man knew exactly what his reputation was and how many bodies it had been built on. But whatever he knew, the man was clearly not intimidated.

Admiration sparked in Josh for a tough man in a tough job. Although they were a long way from Texas, Josh was tempted to ask if there had once been a ranger star where the town marshal’s badge now rested against the man’s chest; he had the look.

“I’m not looking for any trouble,” he assured the man.

“As I recollect,” Pike drawled, “you weren’t looking for any the other night, either.”

Josh stifled a sigh. “I can’t deny that. But I’m still not hunting for problems.”

“Son, some folks just attract problems, like a carcass attracts flies.”

And that, Josh thought with wry humor, about summed up his life. Pike seemed to discern his whimsy, and Josh could swear the man almost smiled.

“I’ll walk away if I can,” he said, meaning it.

Pike considered this rather rash promise for a moment, then nodded. “I believe you.”

Josh buckled on his cartridge belt and adjusted the holster that hung from the right side. The rig was plain, lacking the fancy leather carving some went in for, but the fit of the Colt .44 in the holster was perfect; it slid out smoothly, yet didn’t bounce loose at a gallop. A box fit, some called it. Whatever the term, it was vital to his survival, and he’d take it over any amount of fancified tooling.

“Folks are thinking about a town ordinance,” Pike said conversationally. “No firearms.”

Josh put on his hat, settling the black Stetson comfortably. Then he looked at Pike once more. “Good luck if they do.”

“Time’s a comin’.”

“But it’s not here yet.”

TIME’S
A COMIN’.
The words echoed in Josh’s head as he walked outside, into the sunlight he’d thought he’d never see again, except maybe on that last walk.
Time’s a comin’
.

He supposed Pike was right. Civilization was advancing westward. The railroad had been completed nearly ten years ago; the long trip he’d made as a child with Gramps was easy now, and it seemed every train disgorged more and more folks aghast at the sight of six-guns in public.

Josh walked to the front edge of the covered boardwalk in front of the marshal’s office. He shoved his hat up, tilted his head back, and let the morning sun pour over his face. Odd, he thought. He’d been resigned to this being his final morning, had even welcomed the thought . . . yet now he was finding pleasure in as simple a thing as the warmth of the sun on his skin. He wondered briefly if the one had caused the other.

His mouth curved down at one corner; that had been Gramps’s kind of question, one of those things he’d called “philosophical explorations.” The old man had been able to hold forth endlessly on topics that had seemed pointless to his grandson. Only after he was gone had Josh realized how much he’d come to enjoy those continuous discourses.

He grabbed the brim of his hat and pulled it back to its normal position above his brow. Dodging a board in the walkway that had been warped at some point in the town’s relatively short history by rain, snow, or heat, he started walking toward the big two-story building that stood out both for its size and its slight list to one side.

A quick glance to his right made him smile rather cynically; the proximity to the marshal’s office of the narrow, rather ramshackle building with the words ALEXANDER HALL, LAWYER in obviously newly repainted letters on the weather-beaten gray boards seemed a bit convenient. Marshal Pike had suggested Josh wait until the man returned to town and hire him for his defense at the trial, but at the time Josh had had little interest in defending himself.

That had been the conclusion he’d reached in those lonely weeks spent in the lower reaches of the mountains, surviving a month of unpredictable spring weather that had left him sweating and shivering by turns; he just wanted it to be over. He’d wanted this life he’d come to hate over, and letting the law do it for him had seemed like the easiest way.

Gramps would have seen his release as a sign, he thought as he continued to walk. He would have expounded at length on the portent of it all, that Josh had been given a second chance, that he’d reached a crossroads requiring some momentous decision. Josh smothered a rather wistful chuckle; Gramps would have embarked on another of his stories and somehow found a way to use it to impart some lesson he felt Josh needed to learn.

His amusement faded; he was sure Gramps would find him long beyond learning now. He’d come a long way from the fifteen-year-old boy Gramps had hugged with the last ounce of his fading strength. And all of it downhill. His grandfather had always said Hawks bred true. Josh doubted he’d say it if he could see his grandson now.

A woman came out of the mercantile just as he got there. He reached out instinctively and held the door for her; at least some of Gramps’s stern instruction had taken root. She took a firmer grasp on her basket, filled with what appeared to be sugar, a crock of apple butter, a length of bright calico cloth, and, if he could trust his nose, cinnamon. Arly Dixon’s death hadn’t halted business for long, he thought. The woman looked up at him.

“Thank you,” she began, then her words faded away as her eyes widened in recognition.

Josh stifled a sigh. “I don’t bite, ma’am.”

She smiled suddenly, lighting up warm brown eyes with an amused twinkle that made her look like a girl rather than a woman who’d seen more years than he had. “I shouldn’t think you’d have to, Mr. Hawk.”

Josh blinked. He’d been complimented by women on his looks before; something about his dark hair and blue eyes seemed to appeal to them. And for some, it was what he was, rather than his looks. There were women who liked, or so they said, the edge of danger he brought with him. But he’d become so used to women like this, respectable women, sniffing as he passed, assuming they didn’t scurry to the other side of the street so that their skirts wouldn’t have to brush over the same dirt he walked on, that this took him by surprise. Especially when she obviously knew who he was and, since she was coming out of this particular store, no doubt knew who he’d killed.

“Lovely morning, isn’t it?”

Warily, he studied her for a moment, wondering if there really was a glint of teasing humor in her eyes, or if he was imagining it.

“Yes,” he finally said; it seemed safe enough.

“Much nicer than I’d anticipated,” she said, and this time there was no mistaking her meaning, or the jesting tone. Josh found himself smiling back in spite of himself.

“And longer than
I’d
anticipated,” he agreed. He was oddly gratified when the woman’s smile widened.

“I’m Deborah Taylor,” she said. “I live down at the end of the street. Since my father died three years ago, I also provide what there is in the way of doctoring in this town, should you need it.”

“Thank you, but I hope to avoid that,” Josh said fervently.

Deborah chuckled. “I’d say you avoided a big piece of it this morning. Kate will be glad to see you alive and well. I assume that’s why you’re here?”

“Er . . . yes.”

Kate. Short for the Kathleen they had called her during his rather abbreviated trial, he assumed. He’d almost forgotten that was her name; it had only been mentioned once; the rest of the time she’d been simply Arly’s widow. His gaze flicked to the window of the store where, lettered by a slightly steadier hand than had done the lawyer’s sign, were the words DIXON’S DRY GOODS—GROCERIES. He was still having trouble figuring this out, why the woman he’d made a widow would first save him from the hangman, and then be glad to see him as well. He looked back at Deborah.

“She’ll be glad to see me?”

The woman nodded. “She was quite upset at the thought of them hanging you this morning.”

At least someone was, he thought wryly. He hadn’t cared much. “A lot more’ll be sorry to miss it. A good hanging always brings people to town. And they spend money.”

“Barbaric.” Deborah sniffed. “You’d think this land had seen enough of death without setting it up as a celebration.”

Something dark and pained shadowed the woman’s eyes, and Josh quickly decided not to point out to her that she was conversing quite easily with a man whose business was death. He knew she already knew that, but for some reason had chosen to ignore it.

“I do appreciate Marshal Pike’s not inviting the whole territory,” he said lightly, and the shadow vanished from the woman’s eyes as if she’d long been used to burying the pain that had caused it.

“Caleb Pike is a good man,” she said, as if that answered him. And perhaps it did, he thought. He nodded.

She glanced at the storefront. “I’ll be on my way. Congratulations on your freedom, Mr. Hawk.”

He thanked her, touched the brim of his hat, and watched her walk away, carefully skirting the leaky water trough in front of the store. Interesting woman, he thought as he turned and opened the door of the mercantile, to confront the widow who had bought him that freedom.

At first he thought the store was empty. It was quiet and cool. Morning sun spilled in from the front windows, but the light faded away into shadow as it reached the center of the long, narrow store. Two glass-and-wood display cases full of fancier items—tins of tobacco arrayed beside papers of pins and spools of thread and lengths of ribbon—sat parallel to the long walls. Equally full floor-to-roof shelves ran along all three walls.

A small doorway was set in the back wall beside shelves crammed with ready-made shoes and bolts of cloth, a wall he guessed was a good fifteen feet in from the actual back of the building. Over the door was a sign, rather grandly lettered OFFICE. Beneath that, in a more amateurish fashion, was ARLISS DIXON, PROPRIETER. Josh’s mouth twisted wryly; he doubted anyone had ever pointed out the misspelling to the cantankerous Mr. Dixon. Especially if that shotgun he could just see the stock of protruding from under the counter had always been as handy as the marshal had said.

A sound from above made him tense, the creak of wood making him spin to his right. A ladder leaned against the shelves of groceries: mason jars of fruits and vegetables, sacks of sugar, flour and salt, and a few cans of various sorts. At nearly the top of the ladder, reaching out to hang a large cooking pot on a peg fastened to one of the shelves, was a woman dressed in a faded black dress. Either it wasn’t hers, or she’d thinned out some, Josh thought. It was too large for her slender frame, although from this angle, and bent over as she was, it outlined nicely the womanly curve of her hips.

“I’ll be right with you,” came a soft, feminine voice, one he’d heard before.

The widow. He felt a slight flush as he realized he’d been eyeing the woman whose husband he’d shot down just a couple of weeks ago. True, he’d been a long, long time without a woman, but that was no excuse for ogling her. Nor was the fact that that soft, sweet-sounding voice was balm to ears long used to the drunken growl of rough-edged men.

But somehow, as she finished hanging the pot, he couldn’t make himself look away from the graceful sway of her movements as she began to come down the ladder. She reached the floor and turned to face him. And paled slightly. He was certain of that, because it was so noticeable beside the ugly bruise that marked her left cheek and jaw. It was beginning to yellow, and looked even nastier because of the fairness of her skin and her fragile-seeming features. She was tall, he’d noticed that before, but almost painfully thin; the Dixons, it seemed, didn’t hold with eating their own inventory.

She wiped her hands nervously on the skirt of the faded black dress. A widow’s dress, Joshua realized. Perhaps she’d had to borrow it, and that was why it fit her so ill. But the dress he’d seen her in the first time had fit no better, nor had it been any less faded. Arly Dixon apparently didn’t believe in outfitting his wife from his stock, either.

“May I . . .” Her voice broke, and she swallowed, a visible movement of her slender throat, and tried again. “May I help you find something, Mr. . . . Hawk?”

“No.”

She went a little paler at his abrupt answer, and Josh swore inwardly. He hadn’t meant to alarm her; he truly hadn’t. But now that he was face-to-face with her, he didn’t quite know what to do. She was a woman, and a frightened one because of him. In a quick movement that was a belated and purely habitual reaction to being in a lady’s presence, he reached up and yanked off his hat. He ran his other hand over his hair, which was almost to his shoulders after a month in the mountains and even longer away from any town that had boasted of a real barber.

“You can tell me something, though,” he said.

The fear that had seemed to abate at his hasty removal of his hat turned to wariness in her eyes. Rather striking gold-brown eyes, almost the color of rich, thick honey straight from the comb. Amid the plainness of her other features, they stood out like some kind of gemstones.

“Tell you what?” she asked, wiping her hands on her skirt once more.

Josh glanced around, to be certain they were alone. When he looked back at her, the fear had returned, as if she, too, had just realized she was alone with a man whose reputation preceded him most places.

“Tell me,” he said, figuring there was little to be gained by subtlety here, “why you lied for me.”