Capture the Sun (Cheyenne Series) (31 page)

      
“I already have a customer, over there,” she responded peevishly.

      
“That Injun? Where I come from, white women don't fuck with Injuns, and white saloons sure don't serve 'em whiskey.”

      
The room became very still. Even the old drummer froze, his spoon suspended halfway between bowl and mouth. Then Chelsey let loose a volley of oaths and kicked him in the shin, jerking her arm free of his brutal grasp.

      
He struck her a stinging slap and began to grab her shoulder when Hawk's voice cut in. “I hate to interrupt, but it seems to me you owe me a whiskey and the lady a new dress. Now.”

      
The young man turned incredulously to look at the hard, unshaven face of the half-breed. Although slimmer, Hawk was easily a head taller. Blue and black eyes clashed. The eerily insane glow in the pale-blue eyes flashed up and down the buckskin-clad form with contempt.

      
“I don't buy breeds whiskey and I sure don't plan to pay the price of a dress to have the likes of her.” He gestured to Chelsey offhandedly. As he waited to see what Hawk would do, the stranger's fair-skinned face looked guileless.

      
“I don't drink with spiders, either. Just put the price of my drink on the bar and leave. I'll buy the lady a new dress.” He reached over and put a hand possessively on Chelsey's shoulder, smiling evilly at the younger man.

      
“You're asking for a bullet, breed. You know that?” The feral gleam in the ice-blue eyes was anticipatory.

      
“How old are you, twenty maybe? Stupid age to die, kid.” Hawk stood at ease, his anger beginning to abate as his sobriety returned.

      
With a snarled obscenity, the big blond went for his gun. Before he could get off a shot, Hawk put two .44 slugs in his chest. “Maybe you're right. It is a good day to die.” With a few curses muttered in Cheyenne, he holstered his gun and turned toward the shivering girl crouched against the bar. “Now, refill that whiskey, Brown Eyes.”

      
Just then, Kyle uncocked his gun and slipped it back into its resting place. He stood in the door. “Thought I heered a bit o' trouble. Nothin’ ya couldn't handle, I see.” He squatted down next to the body and pulled the face up for inspection. “Yep; he's daid. They git younger an’ dumber ever’ year. Yew know him?”

      
“Not that I recollect,” Hawk said, rubbing his eyes and laying his head against the back of the wall as he sat down in his chair once more. “Just one more young asshole on the prod, trying to impress a woman and get a reputation.” He took the drink Chelsey offered him and swallowed half of it in a fierce, burning slug.

      
“Soon be spring. We cud head ta Texas. Get us a good-payin' job o' work. A man needs fresh air 'n' a clean place ta clear th' cobwebs out, Longlegs. This here place's trouble fer us!”

      
Hawk snorted and finished the drink morosely. “Everywhere I go is trouble—or hadn't you noticed, Kyle?”

      
“Some men need a place ta belong,” Kyle began uncertainly, his shrewd gray-blue eyes assessing his friend. He had watched Hawk in several fights lately. The younger man seemed not to care if he lived or died. This life was killing him. He said so to Hawk.

      
“My grandfather told me the same thing last summer.”

      
Knowing better than to bring up the festering wound of Carrie, Kyle stayed on a safer course. “Wal, ‘pears ta me he's right. All's yew do is drink, kill time, 'n' shoot a occasional varmint. Sooner 'er later one'll do fer yew, Longlegs.”

      
“What are you suggesting? I don't want to go to Texas, Kyle. I've already seen it. Just more men with guns, more card games and whiskey. Hell, what does it matter?” He took a pull on the whiskey glass and realized it was empty, then slammed it down in disgust.

      
Watching him, Kyle said softly, “Whut about yer grandpa's people? Would there be trouble there or would ya be welcome?”

      
Hawk shrugged. “Some of both, I expect. Maybe she was right. Maybe I do have to choose,” he mused.

      
Kyle's eyes crinkled in curiosity. Who was “she”? Carrie? Or someone else—someone with Iron Heart's band?

      
For a couple of days Hawk brooded, realizing that he could not drift and drown himself in a vat of whiskey at trail's end each night. Dreams of Carrie continued to torture him. Only whiskey brought oblivion. Chelsey certainly did not. He could barely stand leaving her bed most mornings in a hung-over stupor of misery, unwilling to look at her painted face and none too clean body. In a few years she'd look like Gracie. In a few years he'd be dead.

      
“It is a good day to die,” the old Cheyenne death chant said. Perhaps so, if one had a cause worth dying for—home, family, honor. What did he have?

* * * *

      
“I'm going back to the People. I made a bust of living white, I should at least try to live their way before I give up.” Hawk's face looked grave, but for the first morning - in months, his eyes were not bloodshot. He was freshly bathed and shaven, looking more like himself than he had since they left Circle S.

      
Kyle nodded. “Guess I'll be slopin' off ta Texas without yew, then.”

      
Hawk smiled sadly. “If you'd ever learned Cheyenne, you'd make a hit with the women. You always like them tall.”

      
Kyle chuckled. “Thet I do, Longlegs, but they're right pertic'lar ‘bout bein' married 'n' all afore ya kin have any fun. I might jist git myself scalped fer my trouble. Sides, yew know I lived all my life in Texas 'n' kin scarce spit out a couple dozen words o' Spanish, much less learn Cheyenne. Shucks, I had a schoolmarm tell me one'st thet I couldn't talk English, neither. Friend, I'm plumb hopeless.”

      
His eyes turned from merriment to graveness. They both knew they would most likely never meet again. Neither could express what he felt in words, but their eyes and handclasps communicated it.

      
“Take care of that tough Texas hide, you hear? I don't want you shot the first time you hire out alone.”

      
“Don't yew go countin' coup on no bluebellies, neither!” Kyle snorted back.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      
It took Hawk almost a week after arriving back in the Yellowstone country to locate the winter campground of Iron Heart's band. The land was invigorating. He let his eyes sweep the majestic high prairie, now awash with pristine snow gleaming diamond bright in the blinding sunshine. The snow had drifted high as a horse's head in many places, tossed about by the cruel plains wind that left other spots swept clean. It was as if a capricious housekeeper had plied her broom at random over the landscape.

      
The mountains stood in faint lavender relief on the far horizon and the tangy scent of pine needles assailed his nostrils. A dense stand of hardy evergreen trees grew in the crevices of a nearby outcropping of rock. Now the pines' jagged sweeping branches beckoned him with snow-laden arms. Hawk took a deep breath and .watched a vapor cloud form in front of him as he expelled it. It was good to be home.

      
He had packed away his boots, cotton shirts, and other articles of
veho
clothing and rode into the village dressed in his best buckskins. He still wore the earrings Chelsey had given him, as well as several rings and a bracelet, all worked by Cheyenne craftsmen. His chest felt naked without the medallion. He knew his grandfather would wonder about its absence, but would not ask. The wise old man would wait for his grandson to tell him what he wished to impart.

      
Hawk was deep in thought as he wended his way past the lodges, alternately sorry for his impulsive gesture in parting with the medallion, yet achingly glad to have given it to Carrie. On more than one occasion he considered that Noah might find it and realize its significance in her possession. No, Carrie knew better than to be so careless. The real problem was that it remained a link between them, however tenuous.

      
As if I need a tangible reminder. She is burned into my soul.
Such morose considerations were quickly put aside as he stopped before Iron Heart's lodge and dismounted. Word of his approach had preceded him. The old man stood outside in the bitterly cold, bright March air and watched him.

      
After Hawk had greeted several old friends and relations who had congregated around the lodge, they embraced and entered the warm shelter. Considering it a great honor, one youth eagerly took Redskin to rub down and feed. Hawk adjusted his eyes to the dim interior after the bright glare of the sun on snow, and then turned as Iron Heart spoke.

      
“You have come home to stay.” It was not a question. The old man took in his grandson's clothing, jewelry, and long hair. He grunted then, indicating Hawk should sit. “It will take more than beads and braids for you to be a part of the Cheyenne way.”

      
“I know that. I have come to try. I do not know if I will succeed,” Hawk said simply.

      
The old man smiled. “If you wish it, you will succeed.”

      
As the weeks passed, it seemed that he would succeed. There was certainly no time to brood and no whiskey to drink. An abundance of both had brought him to grief in the south. Here he rose with the sun each morning and went hunting, often spending the better part of the daylight hours tracking antelope, elk, deer, and small game. They saw scant few buffalo. In the brief span of his twenty-six years, Hawk had witnessed the virtual extinction of a species. Soon, with the coming of the railroad into the north country, there would be none of the great shaggy beasts left at all.

      
Game was growing scarce, and workable firearms for hunting were also scarce. Hawk's guns, here as in the white world, were his fortune, but here they were used to provide sustenance for human beings, not destruction. He had spent much of his cash reserve before coming home to purchase several good Winchester rifles and a large quantity of ammunition, as well as a number of good, sharp hunting knives. He kept the remaining cash he had earned from John Tall Oak to use for whatever other utilitarian items he might need to buy from white traders in the uncertain future.

      
The life was harsh but clean and simple. Calf Woman tended the household chores for the old man and his young grandson. Hawk repaid her for cooking and sewing by providing her and her widowed sister with fresh game. On the long winter evenings, he sat and mended the more primitive weapons inherited from Iron Heart—tomahawks, bows, and arrows—as well as the religious gear worn in the summer ceremonies. His own buffalo-hide shield, with its blazing sun and hawk in flight painted on it, was worn and brittle with age. He made a new one and painted it under the critical guidance of his grandfather. They shared pipes of fragrant tobacco and often talked far into the night until their lodge fire burned to winking coals.

      
While Hawk settled into a routine he had not lived since adolescence, Wind Song waited and dreamed. She stood in the back of the crowd that had gathered to welcome him home, shyly holding herself aloof. There would be a time when it was right to speak with him, but this was not it.

      
As the weeks flew by, the bitter northers of late winter kept her confined to the camp, making an accidental encounter with Hawk nearly impossible. The harsh weather did not keep Angry Wolf from plaguing her, however. He came offering gifts—fresh game, soft pelts, even a new iron cookpot.

      
At one point, Sweet Rain teased her older sister mercilessly. “Why don't you want Angry Wolf for a husband? He would be a good one. He is brave and handsome.” She paused to consider teasingly, “Of course, not so brave and handsome as the half-blood, Hunting Hawk.”

      
“Be still!” Wind Song admonished the irritating child while Bright Leaf sat quietly, stirring the stew pot over the fire. She had heard this conversation often before.

      
“Wind Song is right, Sweet Rain,” her childishly high voice piped. “Hunting Hawk is the best choice. Someday I will marry him. Of course, I will be a second or third wife by the time I'm old enough,” she finished sadly.

      
Wind Song whirled angrily between her two young tormentors. “The white men take only one wife! Have you learned nothing? If—when he marries, he will choose only one.”

      
Sweet Rain giggled, but Bright Leafs eyes became suddenly wistful in remembrance. “If that is so, if white men only love once, then he will wait for Carrie.”

      
Wind Song paled. “She is his father's wife! Don't ever speak such an obscenity! He is Cheyenne now. He will marry here.”

      
Sweet Rain laughed out loud. “If he is Cheyenne now, he may take two wives. Maybe me.”

      
Wind Song grabbed a thick buffalo robe, wrapped it securely, around herself, and stormed out of the tepee into the cold wind for some fresh air.

      
Standing Bear took Angry Wolf’s suit seriously, feeling he was a good match for his eldest daughter, still unmarried at the scandalous age of seventeen. The old man's health worsened steadily, and despite the security Iron Heart's protection offered his family, Standing Bear desperately wanted Wind Song to accept Angry Wolf, who was a tribal leader and .a skillful hunter. He would make a good provider. Standing Bear knew the reason his daughter refused all her suitors. Several times he had tried to speak of it to the girl, had tried to convince her that Hunting Hawk had gone to the
veho
for good. She had cajoled and pleaded to wait, half convincing the softhearted old man that she had a dream in which she was given to the half-blood. Since white blood flowed in her own veins, he had held his peace. Perhaps it was meant to be.