Capture the Sun (Cheyenne Series) (30 page)

      
The housekeeper stewed and brooded as she went about the house inspecting the maids' work. As was her habit, she simply barged into Carrie's room without knocking. “Sorry, Mrs. Sinclair, I assumed you were out,” she muttered.
 

      
Carrie was holding the white silk peignoir she had worn the night she and Hawk had made love. She ran her hands over its softness, lost in her bittersweet memories.

      
“What's wrong?” Mrs. Thorndyke asked sharply. She snatched the gown from Carrie and said, “The orange ribbon that ties the neck is ripped off.”

      
Carrie's cheeks flooded with mortification as she recalled how roughly Noah had torn the gown from her body. “I, er, must have forgotten to ask Feliz to restitch it. It was coming loose. It's probably somewhere around here. I'll look later on.”

      
The housekeeper harrumphed. “I'd take better care of such beautiful things if I was you. Think what this must have cost Mr. Noah.”

      
Carrie sighed exasperatedly. ‘If he paid for it, then I guess he can tear it off me if he wants to!” With that, she whirled and departed, leaving a beet-faced Mrs. Thorndyke standing agape in the middle of the room.

* * * *

      
Hawk and Kyle drifted as far as the north fork of the Canadian River, through a nameless host of squalid settlements, bizarre mixtures of tents and prairie mud houses, smattered with grimy saloons where dusty cattlemen stopped on their way to the railheads in Kansas. Life was fast, cheap, and violent. It suited Hawk's mood. Outlaws from Wyoming to Texas, New York to California, fled to the isolated island of no-man's-land known in 1880 as the Indian Nations. No one tribe owned it, and no government, federal or local, kept order. It was not an organized territory as were Montana or Arizona, but a vague jurisdiction that was contested by Indian tribes, Texas cattlemen, Kansas farmers, and eastern railroad barons.
 

      
A scant handful of U.S. marshals from Fort Smith in Arkansas were assigned the impossible task of keeping order in a wide open land without form or law. In one year alone, over sixty of them died for their trouble. In any given year of the past decade, hundreds of thousands of Texas cattle traversed the Nations' length to the railheads of Abilene, Hayes, Ellsworth, and finally Dodge City in Kansas. Men lived violently and died suddenly.

      
The farther south they rode, the quieter Hawk became, seemingly fixed in his misery. Kyle, who had observed his friend over several rough weeks, was finally moved to speak.

      
“I got me a habit when I wuz a tad, Longlegs. Eatin'. We be near outta cash money. Looks ta me we better git us a job o' work. Right soon.”

      
“You particular what?” Hawk looked at Hunnicut levelly.

      
“I 'spect yew ain't, thet's fer sure. Havin' a downright dislike fer drovin' cows er any other hard work, I figger we cud see if' n them whiskey runners down on Cashe Creek need shotgun guards.” He waited for a rise out of Hawk.

      
And got one. “They sell to Cheyenne, Arapaho, even Cherokee! I won't help that scum kill any of them with rotgut. Let's head to Sill. Always something shaking around there.”

      
Kyle smiled, assured Hawk still felt a few things were worth living for. He grunted. “Sill it is,’ then.”

      
Fort Sill in 1880 was assigned the impossible task of keeping order amidst the chaos of relocated Indians and cattle-trail drivers, as well as controlling the depredations of trespassing sodbusters and wandering outlaws. Often, it was difficult to tell who was who in the cast of characters. An army outpost, Sill attracted more than its share of camp followers and hangers-on, red and white. If various, post commanders over the years looked the other way while whiskey runners and whores peddled their wares, those were the least of sins in the Nations, a place the manifest, destiny of civilization neatly bypassed on its headlong rush to the Pacific.

      
Hawk and Kyle settled in at the garish frame building that passed for a hotel and headed to the nearest saloon, the only one actually made of wood, the others being tents and mud houses. Despite its construction, it had little to recommend it but rotgut whiskey and even less savory women.

      
One girl looked younger and less used than the rest. She had long, dark hair that was reasonably clean and huge chocolate-brown eyes. Perhaps it was the sad eyes that caused Hawk to forget her thickly rouged cheeks and carmine-coated mouth. She smiled in greeting, then, uninvited, sat down at the rickety table.

      
“Howdy. Yer strangers. I kin tell. Know all th' reg'lars. Shore is hot out fer fall. Buy me a drink?”

      
She looked at Hawk, who was reclining against the rough plank wall, his long legs stretched beneath the table, hat shading his face. He did not move, but Kyle responded.

      
“Shore thing, pretty lady.” It had been a long time since Miles City and the cathouse there. He needed a woman and so did Hawk, but Hunnicut knew better than to get mixed up in his friend's business. He would simply take care of his own.

      
All the while they talked, Chelsey—that was the name she gave—watched the silent Hawk in fascination.
Niver seen it beat, th' way women fancy him
, the little man thought, half peeved, half amused. After a few minutes more, he left on the pretext of going outside to relieve himself. If she was so all-fired raring to snare Longlegs, let her have a shot at it. Maybe it might lighten his mood.

      
Straightening her yellow satin dress, which had seen better days, Chelsey looked the tall dark gunman up and down boldly. “Yew part Injun 'er somethin'?”

      
“Or something,” he replied laconically. For the first time he pushed his hat to the back of his head and returned her perusal. For a whore, she wasn't bad. Young and reasonably clean, even a little pretty in a coarse, country sort of way. The eyes were the thing. Soon they would be dull and hard, but now they were still shiny, giving off a liquid glow.

      
“My grandma was Cherokee, 'er so my ma tole me one'st, afore I run off from th' hills o' Tennessee.”

      
He smiled for the first time at her pronunciation of “Tennessee,” with the, accent on the first syllable. Her heart stopped.
 
He was positively the most dazzlingly handsome man she had ever seen. “I got me a feelin' ‘bout me 'n' yew, sugar. Yessiree, I have.”

      
Hawk awoke the next morning in a strange room, filled with strewn articles of female clothing, stale cigarette smoke, and greasy glasses with the odorous remains of whiskey clinging to their sides. He raised his head and immediately lay it back on the lumpy gray pillowcase. It throbbed in an old familiar way that he had not experienced in months. Damn! What was in that bottle last night? Or was it more than one bottle?

      
As he reached up to rub his aching temples, Chelsey stirred and rolled over next to. him, but did not awaken. The harsh light of morning was not kind to her, especially with her eyes closed. Into his memory flashed a fleeting vision of Carrie's face softly touched by the first streaks of dawn as he carried her back to her room. Swearing, he forced the image aside and crawled from the bed. By the time he had dressed and left Chelsey some money, he had barely enough remaining with which to buy a meager greasy breakfast. Kyle was right. They needed to go to work.

      
A morning spent asking around the post netted them several names of big cattle outfits looking for men to deal with rustlers. Deciding to head to the Turkey Cross camp the next day, they encountered an unexpected surprise. A tall, well-dressed man of middle years came into the saloon, where they sat discussing plans over warm beer. His black broadcloth suit marked him as an eastern preacher, but his facial contours and smooth braids indicated that he was an Indian.

      
Watching the sharp black eyes scan the room in shrewd assessment, Hawk wondered what a man like him was doing in a dive like this. Then he moved toward their table. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am John Tall Oak. You are Hawk Sinclair and Kyle Hunnicut?”

      
Hawk stood up and looked eye-to-eye with the tall stranger as they shook hands. “Your name is well chosen.” Few men were as tall as he.

      
Tall Oak laughed as he shook Hawk's hand. “I'm afraid my height didn’t earn it for me. It's been our family surname for four generations, although I'm told my great grandfather who lived in Georgia was even taller than I. I'm Cherokee, born and raised in this, the land of our exile.”

      
“Yes, one of the civilized Tribes,” Hawk said smoothly.

      
“And you, I have heard, are Cheyenne,” John Tall Oak replied.

      
“One of the uncivilized tribes,” Hawk shot back without rancor.

      
The Cherokee laughed as Kyle offered him a chair. “Whut 're ya doin' in this dive? ‘Pears ta me yer used ta better.”

      
“You know us.” Hawk asked no question, only waited.

      
“Let's say I've heard of you. More to the point, Mr. Sinclair, I want to hire you and your friend to do a job for us.”

      
“Us?” Kyle looked puzzled.

      
“I represent the tribal council of the Cherokee Nation. For quite a few years, since the trail drivers have been bringing Texas beef north, they've grazed them on the grasslands the great white father so generously allotted us, to the north of here. We've charged them for that privilege by the head, per season, until they fatten the cattle and move them to market. However, a few of the larger spreads have gotten together and decided they no longer like our prices.”

      
“They're welchin' on th' deal,” Kyle supplied.

      
Tall Oak nodded. “They say they have five thousand head in a graze. My men see three, four times as many. Maybe they can't count. Maybe they think we can't.” He shrugged expressively, then when on. “The money adds up, as much as a hundred thousand per year in a good year. Of course,” he said, watching Kyle's eye light up, “it must be divided among a whole nation of people scattered across this wilderness.”

      
“I think we might talk a deal, Tall Oak,” Hawk interjected.

      
So they went to work, visiting the camps where big herds were to be wintered, taking Cherokee police with them merely for an official look. Tough Texas range drovers knew of Kyle Hunnicut from a long time back.

      
The tall, dangerous-looking half-breed with him had already acquired a reputation in a land, filled with gunmen. Mostly, they collected the due bills without mishap. On a few occasions they had to resort to force. Kyle had a nicked wrist and Hawk a shallow flesh wound in his left thigh. Their opponents didn't fare as well.

      
Months slipped by and winter came, cold and desolate. With enough cash to see them through, they settled down to enforced idleness, playing cards, drinking, and amusing themselves with women.

      
Chelsey had not forgotten her half-breed lover and welcomed him back, even giving him a pair of gold loops for his ears. She said the earrings had belonged to her grandfather. Hawk wore them, reopening the partially sealed holes in his ears for the first time in several years. His hair grew shaggy, down to his shoulders, and he wore buckskin leggings, moccasins, and the gold and silver rings he'd brought from Montana, all his jewelry except Iron Heart's medallion.

      
Kyle watched the gradual transformation in him as the thin veneer of civilization slipped away. Hawk lost or won money at cards, he did not care which, and slept with Chelsey most nights. As the monotony of winter's inactivity wore on, he drank more than anything, beginning in the afternoons on many days.

      
On just such a day, Hawk sat in his usual place in the corner of the saloon, back to the wall, legs stretched indolently in front of him, sipping a whiskey. A thickset man in his late teens or early twenties with short-cropped yellow hair and piercing blue eyes came in and walked up to the bar. His square face betrayed nothing as he ordered beer and sipped it, casting his eyes across the room. It was not crowded. A few off-duty troopers played cards at one table, and two trail drovers sat at another with Gracie, an aging but obliging whore., An old drummer ate a plate of congealed stew while standing at the bar.

      
The stranger finished the beer, then ordered another from Ben the barkeep. Chelsey arrived shortly after, beginning her evening turn before the dinner hour that night. He watched her with appreciation as she sauntered across the rough plank floor in her high-heeled satin slippers and rustling green taffeta dress. After she greeted several regular customers, she looked over toward Hawk, who pushed the hat back on his head and raised his empty glass. Noting the gesture, she came over and took the glass, heading to the bar to get him a refill.

      
“Hello, little bird. All bright green and pretty as a songbird Can you sing?” The blond youth's voice was precise and pleasant, but held a smug, almost menacing quality that set her on edge. Chelsey had seen his kind in a dozen saloons between Tennessee and Texas. Young, crazy mean, and looking for a cheap thrill.

      
Smiling brightly, she moved past him to the bar. “Nope. 'Fraid not.” With that she started to turn, but he caught her arm, causing the refilled drink to spill, sprinkling her dress with staining spots.

      
As she let out a sharp oath at the ruination of her best dress, one Hawk had bought her, the stranger laughed and grabbed her. “I'll buy you another drink, or dress, baby. Just come sit with me.”