Nighthawk & The Return of Luke McGuire

by Rachel Lee

  “I’m Craig Nighthawk, by the way. I own the spread next to yours.” He indicated the land behind him with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder.

  “I’m pleased to meet you. I’m Esther Jackson.”

  “Well, Miss Jackson, I’m real sorry about your flower beds. I’ll get Cromwell out of here and replace all the plants she ate.”

  “Oh, that won’t be necessary, Mr. Nighthawk. It’s getting late in the summer and I’m sure a frost would have killed them before much longer anyway.”

  Esther hesitated, feeling rude for sitting in her rocker and not budging even a little to shake his hand or offer him a drink. But there was her limp, her terrible limp, and as long as she stayed seated, her long denim skirt covered the brace on her leg completely. When she stood, long though her skirt was, the brace would become visible, and for some reason she didn’t want him to see it. Of course, she didn’t want most people to see it, but she’d long since become accustomed to the fact that there was really no way to avoid it.

  But she just kept sitting there, rocking, giving him what must certainly appear to be a vapid smile, not even offering him a glass of cold water.

  “I’ll replace the flowers, ma’am.”

  “That really won’t be necessary, Mr. Nighthawk.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, as if he were pondering her behavior, then he turned and swatted the sheep on the rump. “Come on, Cromwell. Enough is enough.”

  The sheep looked at him, then returned to nibble another geranium. Guinevere woofed softly from the door.

  “Nice dog,” Nighthawk remarked. “Saint Bernard?”

  “Yes.” Which reminded her. “Your dog…is it a dog?”

  A slow smile creased his face, softening an expression that had been as unyielding as stone. “He’s a dog, all right. A komondor.”

  “He looks like a string mop.”

  His smile widened another notch. “I call him Mop.”

  At that Esther chuckled. “How apropos. Now what about Cromwell?”

  “I call her Cromwell after Oliver Cromwell because she’s always bothering the neighbors.”

  Esther laughed outright, and her opinion of this man underwent a great shift. He might well be a cowboy who talked plain and herded sheep, but he was clearly well-read. And she rather liked his sense of humor. At that moment she decided to get up, brace or no brace, and offer him a drink.

  “Would you like a glass of water, Mr. Nighthawk? Or some iced tea?”

  He looked surprised again, and Esther found herself wondering if this man was unused to common civility from his neighbors—and if so, why.

  “That’s kind of you,” he said, giving her a crooked smile. “A glass of cold water would be great.”

  For an instant she feared her body was going to refuse to obey her, but after the briefest hesitation, her muscles resumed functioning. She rose, feeling the exact instant his eyes spied the brace visible beneath her skirt. There was a buzzing sound in her ears, and she felt her cheeks heat painfully as she turned and limped toward the door.

  There was absolutely no reason to feel humiliated, and so she had been telling herself for years. So therapists had told her on countless occasions. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She wasn’t wearing the mark of Cain, just a brace.

  But somewhere deep in her soul she felt defective and undeserving, and each time someone saw her limp and her brace, she felt exposed, embarrassed. The whole world could see she wasn’t normal. That she was imperfect.

  Nonetheless, feeling Craig Nighthawk’s eyes on her like a burning brand, she made it to the door. Guinevere, seeing that Esther was coming inside, backed away to make room for her.

  Once inside the comparative coolness of the shadowy house, Esther released a long breath and relaxed. It was silly to feel this way, she scolded herself. She’d been limping for the better part of twenty years, and she really ought to have gotten used to it by now.

  But she hadn’t. She loathed the looks of pity that came her way, and she hated the inevitable questions. Out here in the middle of nowhere she’d finally found a comfortable hideaway. The only people she dealt with regularly—the sheriff’s department, for whom she worked as a freelance artist, and the few stores she frequented—had all grown used to her disability. But instead of making her more comfortable with her condition, it only seemed to have heightened her sensitivity. Apparently what few calluses she’d been able to build had vanished.

  But it was always worse when she came under the scrutiny of one of life’s rare perfect physical specimens. The man standing in her garden appeared to be as close to physically perfect as most mortals ever get.

  In her yellow-and-white kitchen, she filled a large tumbler with water from the bottle she kept in the refrigerator, then limped her way back to the front door. Guinevere whined again, but when Esther told her to stay she sighed and obediently sat down.

  Craig Nighthawk was on the porch now, standing back respectfully so she didn’t feel crowded, but saving her unnecessary steps. She felt her cheeks burn with shame, and was grateful to be able to sink back into her rocker. He tipped his head back, downing the water in one long draft, then looked straight at her.

  “Does it hurt?”

  The bluntness of his question startled her. Her hand flew to her throat and she blinked rapidly.

  “Your leg,” he repeated quietly. “Does it hurt?”

  “No. No.”

  “That’s good. Pain isn’t a whole lot of fun. Thanks for the water.” Giving her a nod, he set the glass down on the porch railing, then walked down the steps. “Come on, Cromwell. Let’s get you back where you belong before you ruin any more of Miss Jackson’s garden.” He paused to look back at Esther, touching a finger to the brim of his hat. Then he grabbed the sheep by the wool at the back of her neck, and tugged her toward the fence. Cromwell obviously decided she wasn’t going to win this one, and trotted along beside him docilely enough.

  Esther was amazed that he managed to get the sheep through the fence. He made it look almost easy. Well, perhaps Cromwell had figured out how to do it, too, which would explain what the animal was doing in her garden.

  As for its owner, Mr. Nighthawk… Well, the man was in a class by himself. People had stared at her over the years, sometimes rudely, but no one had ever been quite so blunt about her leg. She didn’t know whether to be amused or offended. Amused, she decided finally. Just amused. It was a far more comfortable emotion, and generally stood her in good stead.

  Rocking gently, she closed her eyes and tilted her head back a little, letting the breeze caress her face. It was so nice out here, she thought. So isolated. No one from her past could find her here unless she wanted them to. He couldn’t find her.

  The fear that never left her seemed far away right now.

  Strange woman, Craig Nighthawk thought as he shepherded his flock toward the next pasture. Very strange. Pretty enough in a quiet way, with the finest pair of hazel eyes he could recall ever seeing. And that auburn hair of hers, tumbling down past her hips—he had wanted to gather it up by the handfuls and see if it was as soft as it looked.

  Well, she’d probably acted a little funny because she’d heard about him. Sooner or later everyone who passed through Conard County heard that Craig Nighthawk had been charged with kidnapping and raping a five-year-old girl. Didn’t matter that he’d been released when they found the real culprit. Didn’t matter that Dud Willis had actually done it, that he’d confessed and been sentenced to life in prison. Nope, didn’t matter a snowball in hell. For all folks claimed to believe in “innocent until proven guilty,” once the finger was pointed, a person stayed guilty for the rest of his days. The old “where there’s smoke there’s fire” view of life.

  Not that it mattered to him. He’d always been a loner, and always would be. It was easy enough to ignore the looks, stares and whispers when you spent most of your time herding sheep.

  Craig glanced back over his shoulder and saw that Esther Jackson’s hous
e was disappearing behind the lip of another rise. She was still sitting on the front porch in her rocker, watching the afternoon wane. What a strange and lonely woman.

  But he had things he needed to be more concerned about, like getting his sheep ranch on a solid financial footing. He wasn’t a rancher by nature, and all that he knew about raising sheep had come from books, magazines and USDA pamphlets. Thank God for his sister, Paula, and her husband, Enoch Small Elk. They, at least, had some hands-on experience—although, after the last two years, he was getting a damn sight better at it himself.

  No, he was a trucker by nature and experience, a wanderer who had always lived his life on the road. Now he preferred to spend most of his time on the range, communing with the sheep, the sun, the wind and the earth. He supposed ranching was basically the same thing, just more limited in scope. Instead of seeing a bunch of different mountains in the course of a day, he saw the same mountains from a different perspective. He could live with it.

  But what a greenhorn he’d been at the outset. Hell, he hadn’t even realized that all those acres of grazing land he’d been counting on were in such bad shape. He was still working at reconditioning it with the help of his flock. They chewed down the overgrowth so that he could fertilize and seed with better vegetation. Right now he was moving this group over to an unreclaimed area from the section they’d just prepared for seeding.

  Little by little he was getting his land into the kind of shape that should eventually allow him to enlarge his flock and yield an excellent return in terms of wool. For now, though, his little flock were mostly lawnmowers who were helping him break even.

  He and Enoch had been out here last week, laying the electrified wire around the section where the sheep would be grazing for the next month. He didn’t use the fence to keep the sheep in—he already had barbed wire that was supposed to do that—but to keep predators out. An electrified wire running outside the fence about eight inches above the ground would keep out coyotes and wolves. There were wolves up on Thunder Mountain, he’d heard, and while he hadn’t heard of any livestock kills, it was always a possibility. What really worried him, though, were the coyotes. They played hell with a sheep rancher’s bottom line. The electrified fence had so far done a good job of keeping them out.

  And then there was Mop. His komondor was the world’s best sheepdog, he figured. Not only did the dog keep the flock in line, but the breed was famed for its ferocity on guard duty, reputedly capable of winning a fight with a bear.

  Not to mention Mop was just a good friend.

  Cromwell, on the other hand…well, that damn sheep just didn’t act like a sheep. Now he was going to have to figure out how he could afford to replace Esther Jackson’s decimated garden. That had been strange, the way she just sat there and watched Cromwell devour her plants. He couldn’t imagine anyone being too afraid of a sheep to try to shoo it away. Of course, she did have that bad leg. Maybe she wasn’t too steady on her feet.

  Well, it didn’t matter. Point was, he had to repair her garden. And that was probably going to cost a few dollars that he could ill afford to spare. Damn that Cromwell, why couldn’t she ever be content to stay with the rest of the flock? Why was she always wandering off to be by herself and do her own thing?

  Sort of like himself, Craig thought. The flock went one way, and Cromwell and Nighthawk went another. Loners by nature.

  Damn it, a sheep wasn’t supposed to be a loner. But then neither was a man.

  And both of them seemed to be doing just fine in spite of it.

  Several days later, Esther Jackson awoke feeling that a magical day lay ahead of her. It was a feeling she associated with special times, special events, and particularly her youngest years. Her earliest memory of feeling this way had been on the first day of summer vacation when she was seven years old. She had climbed stealthily out of bed, taking care not to wake her mother, or most especially her father, and had slipped her feet into brand-new sneakers.

  Sitting on the edge of her bed this morning, she vividly remembered how exciting and beautiful the day had seemed. It had been early, no one else was up and about yet, and the day was little more than a pink glow in the east. Everything was fresh and new, just waiting for her to discover it.

  That feeling had been scarce enough in childhood, and it was even rarer now. Looking out through the uncurtained window of her bedroom—no need for curtains on the second story when no one was around for miles—she watched the pink light wash the eastern sky, staining the high wisps of clouds the exact, unreproducible orangish pink of a flamingo’s feathers.

  Just the sight of that incredible color, the gift of nature’s prism, filled her with a sense of awe and magic, and a need to hurry to her studio to see if she could possibly capture even a small part of that beauty.

  She dressed swiftly, almost haphazardly. After all, one of the great things about living in the middle of nowhere was that there was almost no one but an occasional hawk to see what she was wearing. At times she had even gone out to her studio in her flannel nightgown—although she’d been reluctant to do that ever since she had started helping the sheriff out as a sketch artist because deputies had begun dropping by to make sure she was okay and didn’t need anything.

  Not that there was much call for her work as a police artist. More than two years ago she had volunteered to sketch a kidnapper from the description of his five-year-old victim. The man who had eventually confessed had proved her ability to translate a verbal description into a charcoal sketch. Since then, the sheriff had called on her expertise another half-dozen times.

  The police work was a sharp contrast to her usual milieu of watercolor landscapes and still lifes. An interesting contrast, she thought, because it gave her the opportunity to do something so completely different. It was even refreshing. And it was rather surprising that she could excel in an area so diametrically different.

  Since she wasn’t expecting to see a soul, except possibly a sheriff’s deputy later in the day, she pulled on a pair of jeans and strapped her brace on over the denim. The brace was an ugly contraption of metal and leather, but the only alternatives to it were crutches or a wheelchair and neither one would suit her. Crutches would occupy her hands so that she couldn’t paint, and a wheelchair was simply too immobile for her needs. Besides, she didn’t care to paint sitting down. She was a pacer, walking back and forth as she viewed both her work and her subject from different angles, stepping back to see more clearly how translucent smears of color were coming together.

  This morning she was as eager as she had ever been to get down to her studio. There had been a time when finding opportunities to paint had been like discovering nuggets of gold. Since she had become successful enough to support herself at it, however, the opportunity to paint was available every morning, and no longer excited her as it once had. There were even days, much as it embarrassed her to admit, when she didn’t want to paint at all.

  So much for her lifelong dream of never having to do anything except paint. What was that old saying? Be careful what you wish for, because you might actually get it?

  She laughed at herself and made her way cautiously down the stairs. Today was going to be an absolutely perfect day. She could feel the magic on the air.

  Pink light poured into the kitchen through the open café curtains. How different from Portland, where she’d always drawn her curtains at night. Here she never feared that anything except a coyote would peer into her window. The highway was a good mile down a rutted driveway, and nobody came this way by accident.

  She had time, she decided, for a cup of coffee on the porch before the day brightened enough to give her the best light. All her life she’d been a morning person, cherishing the quieter colors of dawn over the more florid hues of sunset, loving the crystalline clarity of the dew-scrubbed air and the stillness of a world not yet fully awake.

  In the time between the first lightening of the eastern sky and full day, the world underwent a gradual transformation of
colors that thrilled her. Nature was the world’s premier watercolorist, shifting hues in gentle gradations that she was ever struggling to imitate. Always an acolyte, she sat at the feet of Nature in the morning, and watched the hand of a true master at work.

  Her work reflected her appreciation of dawn, and one critic had remarked that when viewing an Esther Jackson painting, it was possible to tell to the minute how old the day was.

  That wasn’t true, of course, and no one recognized that better than Esther herself. She was always striving, and never quite achieving her goal.

  But that was what kept life interesting, she mused. With nothing to strive for, life would be pointless.

  The porch on her house was both exquisite and extravagant, and it was one of the two things that had convinced her to buy this place. She loved the way it wrapped around the entire house, providing a vista in every direction. It was always possible to find a spot that was sheltered from the ceaseless wind, or dry in the heaviest rain.

  This morning she stepped out the back door, facing east, and watched the subtle shifts of pink in the wispy clouds as the day steadily brightened. The coffee was hot and the morning was chilly, and the contrast caused a sensual humming in her nerves. It was hard to imagine that life could be any better.

  At some point she noticed an unusual sound. It was faint, but so regular it couldn’t be natural. Sort of metallic, sort of scrapey… She cocked her head a few times, trying to place it as a new, uncomfortable tension began to sing along her nerves. No one, she reminded herself, could find her here. No one outside of Conard County knew she was here except her agent, and Jo would never betray her.

  But the foreign sound continued, unnerving her. The beauty of the morning was irretrievably shattered, leaving only ugly fear in its wake. Clutching her mug in both hands, she debated whether to check it out or just go inside and call the police. At last she decided to walk around the house to see what she could find.

  She tried to move silently—a nearly impossible task in her brace which creaked and made her movements awkward. She consoled herself that whoever was out front wasn’t trying to be quiet and probably couldn’t hear the small sounds she made.