“No!” the Mexican snapped. “Right here. Now!”
“I’m going to give you a chance to run for it, you stupid bastard.” Hawk grinned.
The Mexican stared at him, one eye corner narrowing. His glassy jet orbs grew even brighter with cunning, and then he reached down and jerked his pants up above his knees while shuffling out into the runway, glancing anxiously over his shoulder at Hawk. The Rogue Lawman followed him, challenge in his eyes.
When the man had pulled his pants up to his waist, he stepped outside, turning full around to regard Hawk daringly, holding his hands up to his shoulders in supplication. He glanced over at the horses, all four of which were hanging their heads over the top corral pole, flicking their ears curiously at the two men before them.
The Mex was breathing hard with desperation. “You gonna let me saddle?”
“Nope.” Hawk shook his head. He snarled, “Run!”
He raised the rifle and narrowed an eye as he aimed down the barrel, lovingly caressing the cocked hammer with his gloved right thumb.
Fear flashed in the Mexican’s eyes. He started to say something, but then he whipped around and dashed straight out in the sage and rabbit brush.
When he was fifteen yards from Hawk, he glanced over his shoulder, then turned forward again, put his head down, and began sprinting in a serpentine pattern. He glanced back, grinning with more and more confidence the farther he ran from Hawk and the Rogue Lawman’s aimed Henry repeater.
Fifty yards, sixty . . .
The Mexican glanced over his shoulder, his mustache rising as he grinned.
Hawk squeezed the Henry’s trigger.
Boom!
The Mexican continued running, but he no longer weaved. He ran off to the right through the sage and cedars, his arms sort of flapping and his legs growing wobbly, his stride shortening. He tripped over a rock, twisted around, and piled up in a heap on his back.
Hawk stared out across the sage, watching for movement in the Mexican’s body. As he did, he ejected the spent cartridge and seated fresh. The Mexican was still, one ankle propped on a flat, white rock, arms stretched nearly straight out from his shoulders.
A sound rose behind Hawk, and he swung around quickly, automatically. A soft gasp escaped the woman’s lips, and her eyes widened at the rifle before she jerked them to Hawk’s face.
The Rogue Lawman slid the barrel sideways, then set it atop his shoulder. The woman continued to stare at him, a wary curiosity in her gaze. Hawk tried to speak but found himself mesmerized by the girl’s beauty—a ripeness of figure, an evenness of facial features, and an inexplicable aura, an earthy naturalness radiating from her eyes.
She wasn’t much over twenty, he guessed, her face oval-shaped and perfect, her cheeks light-complected though touched evenly and lightly by the western sun. Her almond-shaped eyes were a rich, lustrous brown, a shade darker than the chestnut hair that was piled loosely atop her head with rich tresses falling free about her shoulders. One lock curled out from behind her lower back to rest across her belly, the flatness of which was accented by the pleated wasp waist of her lilac day frock.
The bodice was torn, and she held the ragged flaps across her breasts, the inside curves of which shone beneath her arm. Her other hand was holding her torn riding skirt closed at her left hip.
Her full lips opened, and she frowned at Hawk as though she, too, were intending to speak. But then she looked past him into the field beyond, glanced at him once more, curiously, skeptically, maybe with revulsion, then swung around and, awkwardly holding her clothes together, walked toward the cabin. Her watched her go, her long thick hair jostling down her slender back that flared to rounded hips and long legs, the hem of her skirt sliding across her high-heeled, green canvas boots.
When she opened the cabin’s rickety wooden door, stepped inside, and pulled the door closed behind her, Hawk lowered the rifle to his side and looked around.
The barn had a vacant look about it, with few furnishings inside, and weeds grown up around its stone foundation. A rain barrel was tipped onto its side. In spite of the woman’s presence, the cabin had the same run-down, abandoned look, its roof missing more shingles than it boasted, and one window shutter dangled toward the ground by a single nail. The only horses in the side paddock were the three geldings that the three Two Troughs riders had been riding earlier, and a sorrel mayor.
Hawk looked at the cabin again. Thick smoke curled from the chimney, as though the fire had been stoked. If the woman lived here, she likely lived alone. But Hawk couldn’t imagine one so young and beautiful living way out here, much less alone. Her lilac day suit was store-bought, and not the customary attire of a ranch woman unless she were heading for church or town.
Hawk let the questions evaporate. Whoever she was and what she was doing here alone was no business of his.
Leaning his rifle against the open barn door, he went in and grabbed hold of the fat man’s ankles and dragged him a good ways into the brush behind the barn. He rolled the man into a shallow ravine, then tramped back to the barn for the long-haired gent and gave him the same treatment. When he’d rolled the Mexican, whom he’d shot through the base of the neck, into the ravine with his partners, he stepped back to rest his hands on his knees, catching his breath.
Having no intention of wasting time and energy on burying such men, he walked back to the barn where the grulla was waiting patiently, reins dangling. He slid his repeater down snug in his saddle boot and turned to regard the cabin once more. Smoke still lifted from the chimney, same as before, but now the plank door was open and propped back against the cabin wall with a rock. He thought he could smell the inviting aroma of boiling coffee on the cooling air.
No sign of the woman, though. Since he didn’t know if he should take the propped-open door as an invitation, he decided he wouldn’t and, grabbing the grulla’s reins, swung up into the saddle. He rode out to where a lone cottonwood jutted up from a small hollow in the middle of the box canyon. There were rocks and cedars, plenty of protection, so he deemed the place a good place to camp.
The rosy sun was down behind the purple western ridges, and night was coming on fast, a sharp, knifelike chill threading the breeze.
Hawk built a fire while there was still some light left, however weak. Before he had time to put coffee on, and when he’d just begun unsaddling his horse, he heard footsteps moving toward him. He reached for the rifle but aborted the movement when he smelled the subtle but distinctive smell of female growing on the air around him.
5.
SCHOOLTEACHER
HAWK had the brow strap of the grulla’s bridle in his left hand as he watched the woman walk up to the edge of the hollow. She’d put her hair up and secured it with a tortoiseshell comb trimmed in silver, though a loose mane hanging down her back blew about her shoulders in the breeze. She wore buckskin gloves and a man’s wool coat that did not go with her dress.
She regarded Hawk with a puzzled frown then glanced at his fire, the flames torn by the wind. “You’re welcome to the cabin,” she said, clutching her arms with her gloved hands and giving a shudder. “Going to be cold tonight.”
Hawk tossed the bridle over a deadfall log. “I’ll be fine out here.”
She shook her bangs out of her eyes. “The cabin . . . it’s not mine. Just a line shack I use when I’m traveling this way. I’ve never . . .” She let her words trail off and acquired a consternated look, as though unsure how to proceed. “I’ve never run into trouble here before.”
“Two Troughs,” Hawk said, reaching under the grulla’s belly to unbuckle the latigo straps.
“What’s that?”
“You’re on Two Troughs range.” He tossed his head in the direction of the ravine into which he’d rolled the dead men. “Those were Two Troughs riders.”
The woman hiked a shoulder and slid a lock of hair from her left eye with her hand. “I haven’t much cared whose range this was. The cabin’s always been available when I’ve passed throug
h, so I’ve stayed here. The Two Troughs bunch is an outlaw outfit, anyway. Can’t see that they’d have much need for a line cabin.”
She paused, canted her head toward the yard. “It has a good stove, and I have some supper cooking.” She glanced at the coffeepot he’d set on the ground, its top tilted up. “And I have a big kettle of coffee, too.”
“No, thanks,” Hawk said, lifting the saddle from the grulla and giving the woman his back. “Like I said, I’m fine out here.”
She regarded him, puzzled, for a time. As Hawk reached into his saddlebags for his pair of braided rawhide hobbles, she hiked a shoulder, turned away, and started back toward the cabin. Hawk watched her go, holding the hobbles in one hand. He looked down at them, pensive.
It was going to get cold tonight. And he hadn’t tasted a woman’s cooking, aside from café fare, in a long time. . ..
He tossed the hobbles in his hand, then slid them back into a saddlebag pouch. He returned his coffeepot to the pouch, as well. He tossed the saddle atop the grulla and slipped the bridle over its ears.
When he’d kicked dirt and rocks on his fire, he grabbed his rifle, mounted up, and put the horse up and out of the wash. Looking toward the cabin, he saw the woman stop on the small front stoop, the handle of the open door in her hand. She looked toward him, and continued looking toward him until he was halfway to the barn. Then she went on into the cabin and closed the door.
Hawk led the horse into the barn where he unsaddled him, gave him some grain and a good rubdown with a scrap of burlap, then turned him out into the paddock off the barn’s opposite side with the others. There was fresh water there and some hay in the crib.
The hay told Hawk that, despite their being an outlaw band, the Two Troughs crew was likely using the place. Possibly infrequently, but he’d have to keep an eye out tonight for more riders from the main headquarters, though he doubted any would be out at night, unless they were moving stolen stock, and he’d seen no sign that the main headquarters was anywhere near.
The three he’d killed were likely making their way back from Laramie after a few days off to chase whores and play cards, or somesuch.
His rifle resting on one shoulder, his saddlebags and war sack draped over the other, he closed the barn’s front doors, then made his way over to the cabin, the windows facing him now showing a weak lantern glow. There was only a little green light left in the sky, and he guessed the temperature was around forty and dropping fast.
He tapped on the door with his rifle barrel and waited. Presently, footsteps sounded, there was the metallic knocking of the latch being tripped, and the door slid toward him. The woman stood there, arching her brows. “Change your mind?”
Hawk shrugged.
She looked him up and down, and there was that wary, disapproving look in her eyes again. Then she turned away from him, and he took that as his permission to enter, so he did. Drawing the door closed, he looked around, taking it all in quickly—the one-room, twenty-by-twenty-foot cabin with a fireplace in the south wall over which a small iron pot was suspended and dribbling rich, dark juices down its sides and sputtering in the glowing coals below.
There were three cots, a few shelves of airtight tins, a few more holding utensils over a dry sink against the back wall, a square kitchen table that had been scarred and burned so many times, the initials carved into it crusted with old food, that it looked like one massive, elaborate tattoo.
There was also a black coffeepot in the fire. The woman grabbed a leather pad off the hearth and used it to carry the pot over to the table. She grabbed a tin cup off a shelf, looked inside as though to make sure it was clean, jerked her eyebrows up as if deeming it as clean as anything else around here, and filled it from the pot. She slid the cup to the door side of the table, coffee spilling over its sides when it caught in a gap between the warped planks.
As she returned the pot to the fire, Hawk eased his war sack and saddlebags down on the floor beside the door, leaned his rifle against the wall, and removed his hat. The woman came back to the table where a half-filled cup of coffee sat beside a book that lay facedown and open, over a mess of crumpled papers like those torn from a child’s school tablet.
“I have a rabbit stew cooking,” she said, looking down at the table as she smoothed her torn but crudely mended dress beneath her and sat down. She wore a loosely woven sweater over the top of her dress, concealing the torn bodice, and she leaned forward on her elbows now, pressing her hands to her temples.
She kept her eyes down, and her voice was thin as she said, “Please, sit down. You’re making me nervous, standing there.”
Hawk hadn’t realized he’d been staring at her. But of course he had been. Any man would stare at such an attractive creature, especially one so unexpected in such a remote, rough-hewn place. He tried to brush the remembered image of her long, creamy legs and round rump from his vision, and cleared his throat.
“Obliged.”
He looked around, saw the woman’s coat hanging from a hook under a broad-brimmed leather hat. There were three more vacant hooks, and he hung his hat on the one farthest from the coat then shrugged out of his capote. He hung that on another hook, then, running his hands back through his thick, wavy dark brown hair, kicked a chair out across from the woman and sagged into it.
He placed a hand on his cup, feeling awkward and half wishing he’d stayed in the cottonwood hollow. The woman continued to stare down at the table, kneading her temples with her long, pale fingers. She had only one ring, a diamond-shaped turquoise stone set in gold on the middle finger of her right hand. No wedding band.
“Name’s Hawk,” he said tentatively, glancing at her across the table and lifting the cup to his lips. He blew on the surface and sipped the hot, invigorating liquid.
“I guess my nerves are frayed.”
“You all right?” Physically, she looked fine. Sometimes, though, the mental scars were slow in surfacing but even more severe.
She nodded.
“I heard a couple of pistol shots,” Hawk said.
She didn’t say anything. The only sound was the sputtering of the pot on the flames and the crackling of the flames themselves.
Finally, she sat back in her chair, and her large, brown eyes found him and held his gaze. The glowing lantern on the table shone in them brightly. “I saw them ride up, invited them into the cabin, told them I had plenty of food. None of them said anything.”
She shivered with remembered fear and looked at the door behind Hawk. “They just came in, looking hungry as wolves though it wasn’t food they were after. They came around the table, two on one side, the big man on the other. Somehow, I got away from them, ran through the door. One of them fired. To frighten me, I think.”
She crossed her arms on her chest, lowered her chin, and wrapped her hands around her shoulders. “Then they caught me.”
She closed her eyes. Quietly but evenly, without emotion, she added, “I’ve never been so frightened. I’ve lived on the frontier a long time, and that’s never happened before.”
He saw that the side of her right hand, starting beneath her little finger, was scraped and bloody. Hawk sipped his coffee, then slid his chair out, rose, and slowly reached over and wrapped his hand around her wrist.
She looked up at him, frowning, but did not resist when he drew her hand down on the table. Sitting back down in his chair, he slid her sweater and the sleeve of her dress up her forearm, slowly revealed the scraped and bloody skin to which a few small, white thorns and bits of sand clung.
“I didn’t even notice,” she said, looking down at her hand. “It’s only now beginning to hurt.”
“Hang on.” Hawk rose and went over to his war sack. He returned to the table with a whiskey bottle and a clean red bandanna. He sat down in his chair and placed the bottle on the table. Removing the cork from the bottle, he poured some whiskey on the bandanna, then took her hand in his left hand and looked up to see her eyes studying him.
“This’ll bu
rn,” he warned.
She drew the corners of her long mouth down, and nodded as though he’d told her something she was well aware of.
He began swabbing her hand. She jerked her arm suddenly, when the cloth first touched the scraped and badly chafed skin, but she kept her hand on the table, putting a little pressure on his fingers.
“What’s your name?” he asked her.
“Regan Mitchell.”
Hawk nodded as he worked his way up the underside of her forearm, gently dabbing at the cuts and removing the grit and broken cactus thorns.
He turned the bandanna over and splashed more whiskey on the other side. “What’re you doing out here by your lonesome, Regan Mitchell?”
“Teaching school.” She winced as Hawk dribbled a few drops of whiskey into the longest of the gashes, running about six inches toward her wrist from her elbow.
Hawk raised an eyebrow at her. “Out here?”
“Over in Fairfield. A little mining camp. I teach reading there one day every two weeks. I ride out across the mountains from Trinity, ride back the next day. I usually stay the night here.” She turned her mouth corners down once more. “I doubt I’ll do it again, though. Don’t think I’d sleep.”
She looked across the table at him while he refolded the cloth and dampened it again from the bottle. “I do appreciate your help, Mr. Hawk. But . . . what you did . . .” She let her voice trail off in bewilderment, regarding him again like a rabid dog that had just wandered into her camp. “I can’t condone cold-blooded murder.”
“It was cold-blooded?”
“Yes, I would say it was cold-blooded!”
“I like to think in terms of practicality.”
She winced again as he laid the cloth down on her arm but kept her exasperated gaze on the Rogue Lawman’s passive, chiseled features. “You might have asked them to stop. I would have felt fine about their mounting up and riding away. That seems practical to me.”
Gallows Express Page 4
