“We’ve got to help them get away,” Suzette said.
“How?” Josie asked, not missing a step.
“The exit the owner showed us in case of fire.”
“There are at least a dozen men between them and us.”
“They’ll move for us.” Suzette abandoned the routine, stepped between two footlights, and dropped from the stage to the theater floor. Josie was right behind her.
Suzette started pushing her way between knots of fighters. She got jostled, elbowed in the ribs, even almost knocked to the floor, but the man who did it apologized even as he smashed his fist into the face of another man. Back up on stage, the pianist kept right on playing. Suzette pushed her way through until she came up behind Hawk. When she tried to grab his arm, he whirled, fist drawn back, ready to strike. The shock of recognition paralyzed him momentarily, long enough for a man to hit him upside the head. Hawk turned and hit the man so hard he slumped to the floor.
“Get back on the stage before you get hurt,” Hawk said, pushing away a man who stumbled in between them.
“You’ve got to get out of here,” Suzette said. “They’ll kill you if you don’t.”
Hawk ducked two men who were coming at him from opposite directions. They collided with looks of stunned surprise. “I can’t leave Zeke.”
“Josie’s getting him. Come on. I know a way out the back.”
By now the fight had become so general, no one seemed to care who had started it. Even the men in the balcony were fighting. Hawk was reluctant to follow Suzette, but she had a firm grip on his sleeve. He had to fight his way to the edge of the melee, but she escaped with only a few more bumps. She’d have sore ribs tomorrow.
“I’m not leaving without Zeke,” Hawk said when Suzette tried to pull him through the door leading to the back of the stage and the rear exit.
It took only a few seconds for Suzette to find Zeke and Josie in the brawl. Without a word, Hawk fought his way through the tangle of bodies and pulled Zeke and Josie free.
“Go!” Josie pushed both Zeke and Hawk toward the door.
“We can’t leave you,” Zeke said.
“Nobody’s going to hurt us.”
Josie and Suzette pushed both men through the door and along the passage toward the rear of the building. On stage, the pianist continued to play a sprightly dance tune, providing an incongruous backdrop to the fight. The men balked at the rear door.
“I’ve never run from a fight in my life,” Zeke said.
“With the odds at least a hundred to one, this is a good time to start,” Josie said, her tone stinging. “What possessed you to throw that man into the middle of the audience?” she asked Hawk.
“He grabbed Suzette.”
“Men do that all the time. We can take care of ourselves.”
Suzette could tell that Josie was worked up, but she didn’t know exactly why. She couldn’t be upset that a fight had broken out at their first performance. Now people would be willing to pay even more to see what all the fuss was about. Maybe she was upset that their performance had been stopped. Josie complained all the time about having to dance for a living, but she took great pride in her work. If their routine wasn’t better than everybody else’s, she wouldn’t rest until it was. She might be afraid there’d be so much damage to the theater, the owner would be afraid to hire them, but Suzette discounted that, too. She was certain Josie’s present mood stemmed from a quite different reason.
She was upset because Zeke had been in danger.
“Get your mares and head out for your ranch,” Josie said. “When those men sober up, they’ll remember who started the fight and come looking for you.”
Hawk looked reluctant, but Zeke turned him around and pushed him through the rear door. “Come on. I told you it was a mistake to come back.”
Hawk spun away from Zeke and turned. “Are you sure you’ll be okay?” He glanced at both women, but his gaze settled on Suzette.
“We will if you two disappear before anybody knows we helped you escape,” Josie snapped.
“We’re fine.” Suzette hoped Hawk believed her. After being so happy that he’d come back, she was now weighed down with guilt for having put him in danger. “Josie and I are going inside and closing this door. There’s no reason for you to stay here one more minute. Get your horses and leave tonight.”
Stepping back through the door and closing it on Hawk and Zeke was just about the hardest thing she’d ever done. It was like closing the door on the best part of her life—again. It was getting harder each time.
“Do you think they’ll leave for their ranch tonight?” Josie didn’t look any happier than Suzette felt.
“Did you ever know a man to take advice from a woman?”
“You got any cuts that need tending to?”
They hadn’t spoken during the ride back to the ranch where they’d left the mares, but Zeke wasn’t about to let Hawk go to sleep before they had a good talk. He had to know what had prompted Hawk’s action.
“I don’t guess so. Nothing’s bleeding.”
They had unsaddled the horses and turned them into the corral with the mares. The darkness under the trees as they walked along a creek prevented Zeke from seeing Hawk’s expression, but he didn’t need to see it. After twenty years, he knew exactly how he looked: as if nothing had happened.
Zeke had seen the cuts and bruises, but he wasn’t going to force Hawk to let him clean them or put salve on them. If he wanted weeping wounds that would attract flies, that was his problem. Zeke had washed his head in the creek. “What about heading for the ranch tonight?”
They had dumped all their gear under some cottonwoods that bordered the tiny creek that emptied into the San Pedro River a few hundred yards away. Most years it would have been dry until the monsoon rains of summer, but the wet winter had provided additional runoff. Zeke didn’t particularly like the idea of traveling at night, but he didn’t like the possibility of being confronted by an angry vigilante committee the next day either.
“We’ve got plenty of time to make it tomorrow.” Having reached the spot where they’d dropped their gear, Hawk knelt down to untie his bedroll and spread it out on the soft ground next to the creek. “I’m tired.”
Zeke stopped, undecided whether to lay out his bedroll or try to convince Hawk to leave tonight. “You lie down now and you’ll be stiff in the morning.”
Hawk sat down on his bedroll and started to pull off his boots. “I’m always stiff when I sleep on damp ground. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but we’re not in our twenties anymore.”
“Then you ought to know enough not to start fights.”
Hawk hunched his shoulders.
Deciding it was useless to try to convince Hawk to leave tonight, Zeke reached for his bedroll. “You can’t start a fight every time someone tries to grab her. If you do, you might as well reserve a jail cell. Better yet, buy a plot for yourself in Boot Hill and save us all a lot of trouble.”
Hawk reached for his saddlebags to use as a pillow. “Go to sleep.”
Zeke sat down to remove his own boots. “Not until you tell me why we were at that theater tonight.”
“I told you.”
“I want the real reason. And don’t think you can go silent on me. I’m going to keep after you until I get the truth. All of it.”
Zeke wiggled his toes. It felt good to have them out of his boots. It would be nice to reach the ranch and take a bath in the Babocomari River, which ran alongside their property. It had been a long time since he’d had a real bath in a real bathtub, but that would have to wait until they went into Tombstone or Bisbee for supplies. Hawk had fixed it so they couldn’t go back to Benson. “You ready to talk?”
Hawk lay down on his bedroll but didn’t cover himself. They had climbed in altitude as they traveled up the river, but the spring day had been so warm, the night hadn’t cooled the air yet. Hawk turned on his side to face Zeke. “No, but you’re going to plague me until I do.”
�
��You’re damned right.” Zeke went on when Hawk fell silent again. “Look, I know you’re hung up on Suzette. What I want to know is what that means.”
“I don’t know.”
“Great. That helps a lot.”
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”
“You could if you stopped lying to yourself.”
“What about you?”
“I was the one who wanted to push on to the ranch, remember. I was the one who didn’t throw a drunk fool into the middle of the audience.”
“He shouldn’t have tried to touch Suzette.”
It was worse than Zeke had thought. He wouldn’t be surprised if Hawk went back to Benson to make sure Suzette was all right. “Okay, I’ll make it easy for you. Just answer one question. Are you going to be able to leave Suzette, or do I have to look for another partner for the ranch?”
“Would you do that?”
How could Hawk ask a question like that? The two of them had been partners for more than twenty years. “What choice would I have?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“You didn’t answer mine.”
This was stupid. They were acting like kids. They’d been together too long for it to end like this. “I don’t think I could work with anyone else,” Zeke said. “If I couldn’t run the place by myself, I’d have to do something else, but I don’t know what that would be.”
“You could go back home.”
There were times when Zeke thought he’d give anything to do just that, but going home would be admitting defeat. Jake and Isabelle would swear he was finally coming to his senses, but you go home when you have a choice. Otherwise, you’re just retreating from life. “I can’t go home any more than you can, so don’t ask that again.”
Hawk sighed deeply, something he never did. “I’m going to the ranch. I still want us to be partners, but I might not leave here tomorrow morning. I’ve got to make sure Suzette is really okay.”
“You sure you’re not hoping for more than that?”
“She has a sister she has to educate and support until the girl marries. There’s no place in her plan for me.”
“What happens after she’s done that?”
“It doesn’t matter. Her sister’s going to have a place in society. She can’t have a half-breed for a brother-in-law.”
If Hawk had been thinking about marriage, things were a lot more serious than Zeke had suspected. Hawk had to be hurting bad. Zeke wished there was something he could do, something he could say, but Hawk hated sympathy. If he thought Zeke was feeling sorry for him, he’d get angry.
“Why don’t I take the horses and head for the ranch?” Zeke suggested. “You can follow when you’re ready.”
“We’re going together.”
The words sounded like they came from between clenched teeth. Not a good sign. “I think I ought to go on ahead,” Zeke insisted. “Dusky Lady has been showing signs of getting ready to foal.”
“She’ll hold off for a few more days.”
“Maybe, but I’ll feel a lot safer with her at the ranch.”
Hawk sighed again. “I’ll go into town in the morning and get back in time to leave by noon. That will put us at the ranch the next day.”
It wasn’t really the delay in reaching the ranch that bothered Zeke, or even Dusky Lady’s impending foaling. He was worried about Hawk. He’d never seen him act this way about a woman. It was obvious he’d fallen in love with Suzette, and having to leave her was tearing him up.
Why wasn’t leaving Josie tearing him apart? Zeke wondered. Because there had never been a question of love between them. Josie had been friendly the last couple of days, but only because he’d protected her from Gardner. She’d never given him room for even the slightest hope there could be anything more between them. Maybe his heart could have been engaged by Josie if she’d spent the last week making love to him, but she hadn’t. Leaving wasn’t tearing him up, because there was nothing to leave.
That was what was nearly tearing him up.
Much to Josie’s surprise, the brawl had stopped almost as quickly as it began. The audience had poured out into the lobby to get drinks, and the owner had managed to get the theater cleaned up enough for the second half of the evening’s entertainment to begin only an hour late. Instead of being upset, the owner seemed delighted. The men in the audience had drunk up every ounce of beer and whiskey even though he doubled the prices. Afterwards, the audience was in such a good mood, they loved everything. Even a midget act. Suzette and Josie had to do their number three times before the audience finally agreed to leave the theater.
“The place will be packed again tomorrow,” the owner said, almost dancing with excitement. “I’m doubling the prices.”
“I hope that means you’re doubling our share.” The men weren’t coming back to see the dogs or the midgets.
“Of course,” the owner agreed immediately.
“We want a share of tonight’s bar taking,” Josie said.
The owner didn’t look too happy about that.
“The men spent the hour waiting so they could see us,” Josie said before he could protest. “I know you doubled the prices. We want half.”
The owner got a stubborn look on his face. Josie hadn’t dealt with sleazy men for years without knowing what he was going to do next.
“Before you start making threats, let me tell you a few things,” Josie said. “If you don’t pay us, we won’t come back tomorrow. Before we leave, we’ll make sure everybody knows you refused to pay us. That ought to make you about as popular as a cholera epidemic.”
The owner turned to Suzette, but she said, “Josie speaks for me.”
“We’ll take our earnings now,” Josie said before he could decide they needed to help pay for the damage to his theater.
There was a good bit of haggling about how much money had been made selling spirits, but that was settled when Suzette went to the bar manager, dazzled him with her smile, and got him to tell her exactly how much money he’d taken in. The owner threatened to fire the bar manager, said Josie and Suzette were no better than robbers, and threatened to tell the sheriff they’d organized the fight just to squeeze extra money out of him, but in the end he paid up. They left his office with a very satisfying weight of gold in their purses.
“If things keep up like this, we can retire early,” Josie said to Suzette as they crossed the theater lobby and headed for the front doors. “You’ll be able to go back to Quebec in style.”
“I don’t want to go back to Quebec. I hate the city and the people in it.”
The passion and anger in Suzette’s voice surprised Josie.
“But you said—” Josie broke off when she stepped through the theater door to see Gardner waiting for them. “What are you doing here?” Even though she knew what kind of man he was, she had to admit his smile was disarming. No wonder the Redfield girl was willing to do anything for him.
“The sheriff couldn’t believe that a man of my reputation would attempt to kidnap a woman. He found it completely believable that I was protecting you from that black man. After all, that’s what a man of my wealth and reputation would naturally do.”
“Even when the woman you were trying to protect was black?” she demanded. “What about your men?”
His grin grew still broader. “They weren’t my men. But even if they were, they didn’t have any stolen horses, so they couldn’t possibly be horse thieves.”
“In other words,” Josie said, “the sheriff wasn’t about to believe accusations made against white men by a black man and a half-breed.”
“What about our word?” Suzette asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Josie snapped, barely able to keep her temper in check. “Any man’s word will be taken over a woman’s.”
“Women don’t understand the West and what it takes to survive out here.” Gardner’s smile was so self-satisfied, Josie longed to slap it off his face. “Things aren’t like they were back
East.”
Josie didn’t bother to tell him she’d never lived back East, that she’d spent her whole life in the West and knew as well as any man what it took to survive. “We’re tired and need to get some rest. Good night.” They’d turned before Gardner spoke again.
“You helped them get away.”
Suzette turned back. “Who are you talking about?”
“Hawk and Zeke. They started the fight.”
“The man who grabbed me started the trouble.”
Gardner’s chuckle was so jovial it was unnerving. “He was a harmless drunk. Your Injun friend started the fight.”
“It was the least we could do after all they did for us,” Suzette said.
“You mean like accusing me of trying to kidnap Josie? Or did you have something else in mind?”
Josie could guess what Gardner was thinking. Men like him always assumed the worst about women, hoping it was true.
“She means fixing our wagon wheel when it was broken and taking care of our sick friend until we could get her to her parents’ farm,” Josie said.
“And finding our mules when I didn’t tether them properly,” Suzette added.
“You make them sound like regular good Samaritans.”
“We’d have had a very difficult time making the journey without their help.”
“The sheriff doesn’t have the same high opinion of them.”
Josie thought Gardner had waited for them just to gloat, but she should have realized he didn’t really care about their opinion. His real animosity was directed toward Zeke and Hawk. Josie’s stomach tightened. She wondered what Gardner was up to.
“What do you mean?” Suzette asked.
“The sheriff doesn’t believe a black man and an Injun could have come by mares of that quality honestly. Where would men like that get that much money?”
Josie had no idea how Zeke and Hawk made their money, but she was confident they’d paid for the mares with money they had earned. “We just met them a few days ago, but I’m certain they’re honest men.”
The Mavericks Page 21
