Capture the Sun (Cheyenne Series) (24 page)

      
While Noah was away, Carrie and Bright Leaf ate in the kitchen with Feliz. Knowing where to find them, Hawk came straight from the corral with Kyle and headed there to tell Carrie that Bright Leaf must leave early the next morning.

      
She did not receive the news with good spirits. “Must she go so soon? Noah won't be back until the end of the week. We could—”

      
He interrupted her impatiently. “Look, I know you've grown fond of the child, but it will only be harder the longer you wait, both for you and her. She's very attached, to you, too,” he said, affectionately stroking the shiny black hair of the child as she sat cuddled up against Carrie on a kitchen bench.

      
He said a few words in Cheyenne to her, and her expression darkened. Questioningly, she turned her eyes to Carrie and clutched her hand tightly, murmuring in her halting English, “Carrie go,” and motioning to herself.

      
“She wants ya ta make th' trip with her. I guess she's afeard o' goin' ta a big village where she wont know no one,” Kyle said to Carrie.

      
Hawk scowled. “That's out of the question. They'll make her welcome and she'll be fine.” He spoke again to the child, gently, and once more she clung to Carrie, but this time did not argue, only nodded in resignation.

      
Taking a deep breath, Carrie said, “If I go with her she'll feel much better, Hawk.”

      
“You can't go,” he replied in exasperation.

      
“Why not? I care for Bright Leaf. Would your grandfather's people not welcome me because I'm white? Or is it because I'm Noah's wife?”

      
He shook his head impatiently. “No, they'd treat you like royalty, I'm sure. But it's a hard four-hour ride there and another four back.”

      
“That's not far. I could easily make it there and back in a day,'' she said spiritedly, waiting for him to voice his real objection.

      
He looked levelly at her. “Do you seriously think you could keep Noah from finding out you went to a Cheyenne village?”
And rode back alone with me?
“He'd be furious with you.”

      
She gave a sad little nervous laugh. “In case you hadn't noticed, I've never been able to please him anyway, so what difference can it make?”

      
Realizing this was shaping up into a duel of wills, Feliz left her tasks by the stove and picked up the child. Kyle, who had been busily stuffing sweet rolls in his mouth, followed her outside. “We will show the
muchacha
some of those big chrysanthemums that grow in the garden. She loves to smell them,” the cook said airily.

      
With that they were gone, leaving Carrie sitting alone on the bench and Hawk draping his long-legged frame over a chair across the table from her.

      
“Now's not the time to push Noah further just to satisfy a girlish whim for adventure,” he argued.

      
“Whim! Why, you insufferable—” She began to jump up, her eyes blazing at him. Then, dejectedly, she sat back down and took a deep breath. “Look, in spite of what you think, I haven't acted on childish whims for a long time. In fact, I had a remarkably deprived adolescence. I just want Bright Leaf to be all right, to know I care enough about her not to desert her. When she's met your grandfather and the young woman who'll care for her until her family returns, then she'll accept my leaving her.”

      
He looked at her earnest face, determined and full of genuine love for the little girl. “We'll leave at daybreak. Have Feliz pack some food.”

* * * *

      
As bright fiery orange slashed across the morning sky, casting its warm light on the rustling dry prairie grass, they set out. Bright Leaf rode with Carrie on Taffy Girl, her slight frame adding little to the horse's burden. After an hour or so, the steady plodding of hoofbeats lulled the still-weakened child asleep. Motioning for Carrie to hand her over, Hawk took the girl whose unconscious weight pressed against Carrie uncomfortably. Bright Leaf stirred, but did not awaken.

      
He held her effortlessly. Carrie thought they made a splendid picture, the delicate little girl and her fierce, tall protector. Hawk had been so gentle with the child. Although she had considered his complex personality many times, here was indeed a side to him she had never seen. Her reverie led her to ask, “Why did you become a gunman?” The minute she spoke the words, she wanted to call them back, fully expecting he'd turn on her once more, furious at her presumption.

      
He surprised her, however, smiling ironically and seeming to ponder the question for a suspenseful moment. Then he said, “Lots of reasons, I guess. Part accident. When I wandered down to the Nations as a kid, it was either learn to shoot or be shot. That's where I found out I was naturally fast. A drunk cowboy called me a half-breed in a bar and threw his drink in my face. I hauled off and socked him. When he reached for his gun, I reached for mine.” He shrugged fatalistically. ”I was seventeen.”

      
She shuddered at the violence of frontier life and how it hardened everyone, especially the young. “You could’ve stayed east. You obviously had a great deal of formal education.”

      
He snorted in disgust. “Yeah, I learned a lot, a lesson a day. Do you know where I first learned to fight? Not at my grandfather's village. At boarding school when I was ten. Cheyenne children are taught to cooperate, not brawl among themselves. But rich white schoolboys are just the opposite.”

      
“They picked on you because of your Indian blood?” She knew the answer, and it saddened her.

      
“I don't have much use for most white men. Maybe that's really why I became a drifter and used my guns. No roots, no ties.” He stared at her defiantly. “Maybe I like to kill whites.”

      
“But you have white friends,” she said, undaunted by his provocative remark. “Kyle, Feliz, and Frank. There must be others.”

      
“Damn few,” he said laconically.

      
“So, the whites were cruel. Did the Cheyenne accept your white blood?” Once more she sensed the answer.

      
He sighed. “Not always. Actually I had to fight a few of my own cousins when I was growing up, too. Being Iron Heart's grandson, I'll always be welcome, but there are some who'd rather I didn't stay with the People. Maybe that's part of the reason I drift with Kyle so much. Men outside the law are men with no families, no prejudices. We understand each other.”

      
“Maybe it's also a way to get back at your father. I think he's afraid of you.”

      
Her perception no longer surprised him, but he found himself amazed that he was talking so openly with her. “Yeah, I guess if he ever feared anything or anyone, it's me. He spent my childhood trying to make me white, keeping me away from my mother's people as much as he could, shipping me east to school after she died. But it didn't work.”

      
“Or it only half worked,” Carrie said gently, realizing the sundered world in which he had grown up. “Part of you is white, Hawk, whether you like it or not.” She could still picture him elegantly attired in formal evening clothes, dancing so superbly that night of the ball in Miles City.

      
They rode in silence for a few minutes, but he did not attempt to argue her point. He had always known what she said was true. He belonged nowhere. Had he never wanted to choose, as Wind Song said? Or was the choice truly not his to make?

      
He changed the subject, wanting to understand her earlier life. “What about you? You grew up in one secure world, then came here where it's brutally different. Why?”

      
The way he asked the question indicated to her that he no longer prejudged her to be the cheap fortune hunter he had once imagined. It was incredible that they could talk this way for the first time.

      
“I grew up in a split world, too—oh, of a different kind than yours. My parents loved me and pampered me, but they were killed when I was thirteen. My father's investments went bad, and he left me nothing. His brother took me in, grudgingly.”

      
She went on to tell him of her nightmare years with Aunt Patience and Uncle Hiram and their spiteful daughters, describing incidents where her clothing, even her most treasured possessions, such as her porcelain doll and her mother's pearl necklace, were taken away in punishment.

      
“Aunt Patience couldn't have me sweep the sidewalk or drive the rig. The neighbors and servants would talk, but she found plenty of ways to keep me in my place. I scrubbed floors, waxed furniture, and washed dishes aplenty. I was also sent away from school. I hated that worst of all, for I did love to learn. Luckily, Uncle Hiram inherited my parents' library, one of the few things left when they died. I read and studied on my own after Miss Jefferson's expelled me.”

      
“What did you do to get expelled?” He looked genuinely interested.

      
She cleared her throat nervously. “Well, you see there was Therese, my friend and schoolmate. She hated Charity, my eldest cousin, as much as I did, and Charity was inordinately terrified of insects. You know, things like big woolly caterpillars?” At his grin of dawning understanding, she went on. “We collected a whole nest of them from a big elm tree on the school grounds and smuggled them into her writing desk over lunch break one day. But I was the one who took a stick and broke open the webbing so they began to crawl out—all over her books and writing utensils. When she opened the lid and reached inside—well, she lost her lunch.”

      
“And you lost your place in school,” he supplied with a chuckle.

      
Carrie joined him in the laugh. “Unfortunately, several other girls had seen me at Charity’s desk. They tattled. The headmaster would have been inclined to let me off with a reprimand and some extra Latin conjugations for penance, but Aunt Patience took matters in her own hands. So much for girlish hijinks. It was almost worth it.” She laughed again rather wistfully.

      
Hawk knew there was a great deal left unsaid about her unhappy youth. “And your cousin Charity—was she by any chance a bland-looking, plain creature?” Things were becoming clearer to him.

      
Carrie nodded. “Stringy tan hair and a great fondness for Switzer's licorice and other confections. Charity's probably fat by now,” she said on a note of long-repressed spite.

      
He laughed. “I can imagine what your competition did for her chances at every social gathering. Why didn't you marry some young swain and escape the Pattersons?” He couldn't imagine her not having droves of offers, beautiful and bright as she was.

      
Her face drained of color when he said that, and she swallowed hard. “I did marry someone and leave St. Louis.”

      
Hawk felt his chest tighten. He was not sure he wanted to hear what she was about to say, but sensed that she needed to tell him.

      
“I was engaged to Gerald Rawlins, my young swain as you called him. A medical student of good family but poor means. Charity had always fancied him. So, like everything else his darling wanted, Uncle Hiram bought Gerald for her. Rather an expensive acquisition, too,” she added darkly, “since Gerald planned to keep mistresses on the side after he married poor plain Charity for her money.”

      
Hawk could see the glaze of tears in her eyes now, but she fought them back and went on gamely. “I was honored by being the first one he asked to fill that position—the same afternoon he explained to me that our engagement was off and he was going to marry Charity instead!”

      
Hawk winced.
The stupid bastard.
“So, you met Noah and decided to leave it all behind,” he said gently.

      
Her lips broke into a false but dazzling smile. “Convenient, wasn't it, Noah arriving the same time Uncle Hiram made his offer to Gerald? When Noah asked my aunt and uncle about a suitable wife, you can't imagine how quickly they leaped at the chance to rid themselves of me.”

      
“Oh, yes, I can,” he said quietly.

      
“I refused, of course.”

      
He looked startled when she said that. “Why? He must have been the answer to your prayers after what had just happened. Noah can be very charming when it suits him.”

      
“Like his son,” she shot back, wounded that he'd ever believe she willingly married Noah. “I was given a choice by Uncle Hiram—marry Noah or be turned out on the streets. Do you have any idea what it's like for a woman, alone, with no family and no money, not even any prospect of employment?” She laughed. “But the obvious one, of course.” She blushed hotly. “I seriously considered trying to get a job as a tutor or even a factory girl, but I knew when my aunt Patience got finished with my reputation, no one would hire me. So...they won, the three of them. In two days I was married and packed off on a steamer for St. Paul as Mrs. Noah Sinclair.”

      
“I'm sorry, Carrie.” He said it with genuine contrition, ashamed of his earlier misjudgment of her. “Did you still love Rawlins?” For some reason he felt a self-punishing need to know.

      
Suddenly, she felt horribly vulnerable. She had revealed so much to this man, a man about whom she had very ambivalent and distressing feelings. “Let's make a deal, Hawk. You don't pity me and I won't pity you. We neither of us had a very good time growing up or easy choices along the way. All right?”

      
He nodded, understanding her pride and admiring her for it. “Now who's building walls? You accused me of doing it, and you were right.”