Heart of the Hawk (31 page)

Josh rose to his knees. He had that same sensation as in the street, that feeling of time slowing to a crawl. “What are you talking about?”

“After we met . . . that first day, I found out who you were. The notorious Hawk. Arly was already suspicious. He always was, of any new man in town. It was . . . easy.”

A chill was setting in, a chill unlike any he’d ever known. “What was easy?”

“I told him . . . you talked to me nicely. Smiled at me. That you . . . touched me. I knew what he would do.”

Her hand crept up to the cheek that had been so badly bruised. Josh forgot to breathe. He felt as if he’d caught one of Buck’s wilder kicks in the gut.

“You . . . used me to . . . kill him?”

“I couldn’t bear it anymore. And you were The Hawk. A cold-blooded killer. At least that’s what I thought. I didn’t think one more death would mean anything to you. I never dreamed you were . . .”

She broke off. She lowered her gaze, as if she could no longer meet his eyes. As if she’d only now remembered her nudity, she grabbed up one of the blankets and held it in front of her.

“It doesn’t matter why,” she said, her tone utterly weary. “I did use you. Because I didn’t know you then, I didn’t think it would matter to you.”

“The gun Luke found,” he began.

She didn’t pretend not to understand. “I put it there, then told Marshal Pike it was missing. I knew he’d find it, and let you go.”

Josh sat back on his heels. Dixon
hadn’t
been armed. “So you did lie for me.” He was amazed at the steadiness of his voice; his gut was in turmoil.

“No. I told you I didn’t. I lied for me, because I couldn’t bear to see even The Hawk hang for freeing me. I couldn’t live with that.”

He remembered all the times he’d thought she was about to say something, tell him something, but had stopped herself. He guessed he knew all too well now what that something was.

“Maybe you should have thought of that first,” he said, his voice tight.

Her head came up then; whatever he felt about what she’d done, he couldn’t fault her nerve.

“I should have thought of many things. But I thought past nothing but my own salvation. And I used you to buy it.”

She gathered up her clothes, then rose unsteadily to her feet. “And I used you tonight as well, to try and take away my guilt and shame, to burn it out of me.” Her voice began to shake. “But not even this,” she said, gesturing at the blankets, “can burn it away.”

She walked away through the storeroom door. Josh stared after her. He fought the nausea roiling in his stomach. Dreams shattered around him, dreams he hadn’t even known he’d had until now, when they lay in shards, taunting him with his own foolishness.

At last he reached for a blanket himself, wrapping it around him as if the wool could somehow ward off an iciness that came from within. Then he realized the naked feeling had nothing to do with clothes; it was his soul that had been stripped bare, and there was no defense for that.

Chapter 21

“I DON’T UNDERSTAND,” Kate said.

Deborah smiled indulgently at her friend as she handed her the money for her basketful of ribbons, jams, canned peaches, and the peppermint sticks she’d discovered Alex had a weakness for. She added a cooking pot she didn’t really need, one of the few Kate had left.

“Did you think everyone in town had run out of everything at the same time?”

“I . . . didn’t think of it at all. I guess I’ve been . . .”

“Distracted? I know, dear.” Kate had been more than distracted, Deborah mused. She’d been lost in a world of her own, and Deborah thought she knew quite well what was going on in it. “You have been putting all the money in Alex’s safe, haven’t you?”

Kate nodded, her expression still bewildered. “But why? Why would they all do it?”

“Perhaps because everyone in Gambler’s Notch knows we should have done something to help you long ago.”

“You put them up to it, didn’t you?”

“Me?” Deborah shook her head. “It was Josh’s idea.”

Kate paled. “Josh?”

“He’s the one who explained to everyone that anything the store made before Arly’s brother got here would be yours. And suggested if they had any buying to do, they do it now.”

Kate looked utterly stricken, and it didn’t take much for Deborah to guess why.

“He’ll come back, Kate.”

Kate shook her head. “He won’t. Not after what I did to him.”

Deborah shook her head in turn. The day Alex had told her, after learning it from a disconsolate Luke, that Josh had vanished in the night, she had gone to the mercantile to check on Kate. She’d found her friend huddled in the rocker in her shabby room, and had gently pushed until Kate told her the story. All of it.

“He’ll get over that. He knows about doing what you have to do to survive. He’ll realize you were desperate.”

“He’s gone, Deborah. He won’t be back. I know it. I used him horribly, because I thought he was cold, a killer . . .”

“We all thought he was.”

“I was so wrong. He’s nothing like . . . his reputation.”

Deborah sighed. She didn’t know what to say. She wanted to believe Josh would be back, but she was a little bit afraid that her own happiness was coloring her thoughts.

“Don’t give up on him yet, Kate.”

“Why would he come back?”

“Because he loves you,” Deborah said simply. “And you love him.”

Kate stared at her. “No! No, he doesn’t . . . I don’t . . .”

“Whatever you say, dear.”

“You just want to believe that because of you and Alex.”

Deborah blushed at this sudden turning of the tables. She hadn’t said anything to Kate, but in a small town like Gambler’s Notch, it was hard to hide the fact that Alex had been at her house every evening since the night Josh had taunted him into recognizing his own feelings.

“I’m sorry,” Kate said remorsefully, “I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m very happy that you and Alex are . . . together. It’s just that—”

“I understand. Besides, I’m not all that sure Alex and I are together.”

“But you’re—”

“Still older than he is.”

Kate reached over the counter and grasped Deborah’s hands. “Don’t, Deborah. You deserve to be happy.”

“So do you.”

“No. Not after what I’ve done. But you’ve done nothing but good for people—”

“Kate, stop, you’re being too hard on yourself. We all know what your life was like—”

“Miss Kate!” Luke’s call was quickly followed by the clatter of footsteps as the boy ran in. “Miss Kate, he’s here! Ol’ Arly’s brother, he just got off the stagecoach.”

WELL, HE’D WANTED out of Gambler’s Notch.

Josh rolled over, shifting the saddlebags beneath his head, trying to find a comfortable spot. That damned book had more sharp edges than seemed possible. He’d pondered trying once more to destroy it, but burning it and drowning it hadn’t been very effective. He’d considered leaving it behind, then decided that wouldn’t do any good either, and packed it, figuring that was less disconcerting than having the damned thing show up again out of nowhere. Although it had remained relatively placid of late; nothing had changed since the entry documenting his burial in Gambler’s Notch.

Perhaps, now that that had been averted, the book had nothing to say, Josh thought sardonically. Maybe he should have left it behind. It might have stayed this time. Kate had seemed so fascinated by it; he should have left it for her.

He just hoped he hadn’t left her anything else. The thought of her pregnant with his child made him feel . . . he wasn’t sure what. So he tried not to think about it.

Two nights. Two nights; that’s all he’d spent in Kate Dixon’s arms, so why was he finding it impossible to sleep without her? Why had he spent the past week in this rocky little campsite at the base of the notch that had given the town its name, as if crossing over to the other side and losing sight of the clustered buildings was some irrevocable choice he wasn’t ready to make?

He shifted the bags again. And then again, with a sigh of exasperation as he rolled over on his back and stared up at the predawn sky through the canopy of ragged-edged cottonwood leaves.

So she’d used him. What did it matter? Didn’t everyone? Wasn’t that how he made his living? And God knew she’d paid him. She’d paid him in a different coin, but she’d paid him. With her soft lips and sweet body, she’d paid him a thousandfold more than he ever would have charged her for getting rid of the likes of Arly Dixon.

So why was he in such a frenzy over this? Why was he still here at all; why hadn’t he lit out for somewhere, any place that didn’t have a tall, golden-eyed woman who persisted in haunting him despite his fury at her?

And the fact that a small voice in the back of his head kept telling him he didn’t have any right to be angry didn’t help any. Whatever else she’d done, she’d saved his life twice. Maybe she’d felt she had to plant the gun, but she hadn’t had to risk herself to take out Carter’s man. But she’d done it. And he didn’t know why.

Just like he didn’t know why she’d given herself to him. Had she done it out of some feeling of guilt, or indebtedness? Had she traded herself to him the same way her father had once traded her for a pair of boots? If so, did she now consider them even?

The thought did nothing to ease his mind. In fact, it made him ache in a way he’d not felt since his grandfather had died in his arms.

He rolled over yet again, giving the saddlebags another shove. He’d been wrestling with this for a week, and was no closer to resolving his jumbled emotions. He was angry, but wasn’t sure he had the right to be. He was glad to be out of Kate’s disturbing presence, but he missed her. He was glad to be shed of Gambler’s Notch, but he was still lingering within sight of it. He was glad to be on his own again, but he was regretting not having said good-bye to Luke, to Art, to Hatch—

And he was going slowly crazy, waking up in the night and reaching for Kate as if he’d been with her for years.

Dawn streaked the sky, shooting across the land to hit the wall of the Rockies. When the pink-streaked indigo brightened to cobalt, then clear morning blue, he finally sat up, rubbing at gritty, weary eyes. Thinking next time he’d use his saddle as a pillow and maybe get some sleep, he shoved the saddlebags off the edge of his bedroll with an angry swipe of his hand. The top bag flipped open, and the book slid out.

“Got something to say?” he asked it, half mockingly, half seriously.

He doubted it. It had been unchanged for two weeks now, but he picked it up anyway. Maybe he’d completely ruined that old wizard’s spell. His mouth twisted.

Leave it to me,
he thought
, to be the Hawk that broke the chain, the Hawk that took generations of history and brought it to an end.

He spent a long time looking once more at the drawing of Jenna and Kane, feeling as if he should apologize to them for making such a mess of things. For a moment he almost wished Kate was pregnant, that the Hawks would somehow continue, for the sake of these two courageous people. But the thought of what she would face if it were true made him feel ashamed of the selfish urge.

Unless, of course, he stayed. Unless he went back and . . . and what? Married her?

If you were to marry her, nobody’d ever dare be mean to her again.

Luke’s words echoed in his head, followed swiftly by Hatch’s fervent recommendation.

You take that girl and get out of here, to somewhere they never heard of you, and men like Robards and Carter aren’t coming after you like the scavengers that they are.

He nearly laughed aloud. As if any woman would marry him, even if he were to want to marry the woman who’d used him to . . . to what? Save her own life?

Disgusted with the furrow his thoughts seemed to be endlessly plowing, he flipped to the middle of the book with a sharp motion. All he had to do was stay alive for another couple of weeks, until June, and he’d know this whole thing was a farce. That last entry would be proven wrong, he thought almost defiantly as he turned to the page that held the grim prediction.

It was no longer the last entry.

The book had changed again.

He didn’t want to read it. He didn’t want to know what ridiculous new prediction was going to be written there. He started to close the book, thinking he’d bury the damned thing under the biggest rock he could move. And then something caught his eye.

It wasn’t his story anymore.

It was Kate’s.

He read of her indifferent father, glad to get rid of the daughter he thought so plain as to be unmarriageable. He read of the four years of utter horror her marriage to Arly Dixon had been, both day and night, a harsh tale that confirmed much of what he’d already guessed and added grim details he would rather not have known.

And then came the fateful day when he had walked into her life. He was beyond questioning how the book knew. He merely read.

It was an innocent encounter, barely a word spoken, but Dixon refused to believe it. He resorted to his usual method of persuading his wife to say what he wanted to hear; his fists and his boots. Screeching his accusations, he battered her. When she refused to give in, he grew more furious. His accusations became threats, then evil, vicious promises of what he was going to do to her, of how he was going to mark her body, how he would take her until she was bloody from it, so that she would never again forget who owned her.

Kate tried to hold out, but she was hurting so. What if she gave him what he wanted? Wouldn’t it serve him right if he was fool enough to challenge The Hawk? Another blow, so hard it made her dizzy, coupled with the horrible images his words invoked, broke her heroic resolve.

“All right,” she cried out. “He talked to me. He was nice to me. He touched me. Is that what you want to hear?”

She’d done it, she realized, when the enraged Arly left at last. She had said the words that would send her husband after a man who would very likely kill him. She thought she should go after him, try to stop him, but instead she merely sat on the floor where Arly had thrown her, nursing her aching ribs and face, waiting, admitting in her pain and humiliation and exhaustion that she prayed The Hawk would indeed put an end to this torture. It was her only hope. She didn’t think she could survive another night like the one Arly had promised her.

She sat huddled against the wall, waiting. And the hollow, despairing ache inside her grew, until it seemed to go beyond the boundaries of her body and encompass her soul. And she decided then that if Arly came back, she would end it herself. One way or another.

The words halted there. Josh shut the book sharply, a shiver rippling through him. He shivered again, feeling a strange emptiness inside, as if he were experiencing himself what Kate had felt that night. He felt weighted down, as if her despair had become his. It was an appalling feeling; while he’d been weary enough not to fight death when he’d thought it had come for him, had even welcomed the idea, he’d never been so broken as to actively seek it.

He was still sitting there, the closed book cradled in his hands, when Buck’s sudden alertness, head up and ears swiveled toward the trail below the camp, warned him. Instantly he rolled out of sight behind a large boulder to his right, and held his breath until he heard the sound of a horse on the narrow path.

He was gauging whether he had time to go for the Winchester, his preferred weapon in this kind of terrain, when Buck, surprisingly, whinnied softly.

Someone the big buckskin knew. And trusted.

“Josh?”

Luke. Josh let out a compressed breath, half relieved and half irritated; if he’d been someone else, the boy could have gotten himself killed.

“Over here,” he said, coming out from behind the boulder.

The boy, astride one of Art Rankin’s horses, looked at first relieved, then subdued. He slid off the horse and stood there for a moment, just looking at him. Josh supposed Luke hadn’t forgiven him for riding out without a word. He couldn’t say he blamed him for that.

“How’d you find me?”

Luke shrugged, masking his hurt with a boy’s studied offhandedness. “Mr. Rankin said he saw you ride out to the west. And Marshal Pike’s been talking about seein’ smoke up here now and then.”

“So you figured it was me?”

“I figured I’d look.”

“Look, Luke, I didn’t mean to just ride out like that, but . . .”

“You and Miss Kate had a fight. I know.”

Josh blinked. “She told you that?”

“Not ’zackly. She said it was her fault, that she did something awful to you, so you left.”

The simple explanation hit him hard on the heels of the ghastly story he’d just read. “It . . . wasn’t her fault. Not really.”

“I know.”

Josh blinked. “You know?”

The boy shrugged. “Miss Kate just couldn’t do nothin’ awful. ’Specially not to you.”

“Luke, my friend, you are wise beyond your years,” Josh said softly.

Luke gave him a look that was adult enough to prove his words. “Are you still my friend?”

“I hope so.”

“Are you still Miss Kate’s?”

There was a tone of desperate hope in the boy’s voice that made Josh stiffen. “Why?”

“Are you?”

He thought again of the book and its gruesome tale, of all the times he’d felt Kate had started to tell him something and been unable to bring herself to do it, of the story Luke himself had told him of her attempt to escape . . . and of the vicious bruise that had been Arly’s final legacy. He thought of the scars that marked her body, scars that had made him cringe inwardly at the thought of what she’d gone through. And then he thought of the scars that didn’t show.

She didn’t think she could survive another night like the one Arly had promised her.

She’d had no choice. She’d been utterly, completely desperate, and she’d used the only tool she’d had left to her, a man who, for all she knew, was the heartless killer his reputation bespoke, to whom one more killing would mean less than nothing.

She’d had no choice, but she blamed herself anyway, blamed herself not for the death of her brutal husband, but for what it had done to the man who had killed him.