LeClerc 03 - Wild Savage Heart (15 page)

“What am I during the night?” he asked with amusement.

“My friend …”

Minutes become hours; hours become days; days become weeks. So marches the slow progress of time.

In the process of days, weeks and months, pain lessens. Memories become things to cherish instead of a tortuous agony. The sorrow still hovers in the background but it is more easily controlled.

Molly cherished her precious memories of Adam but the dark no longer brought a nightly bout of tears.

It did, however, still bring Hawk to her side, to sit with her until she slept. The midnight Hawk, so different from the one seen by the light of day. “Up, Mrs. Royse!”

“Oh, God,” Molly moaned, burrowing deeper beneath the quilt.

“Breakfast is ready!”

“Go ‘way, leave me ‘lone.”

She wasn’t surprised when she felt him grab the quilt and pull it from her grasp. Before she knew it, Molly was standing beside her bed, staring belligerently at her antagonist.

“Have you always been cruel or is this a new trait you’ve recently developed for my benefit?” she asked as she pushed her sleep-tossed hair from her face. “Just once, just one morning, couldn’t you let me sleep until I wake up on my own?”

She could have sworn she saw a smile lighting his dark eyes as he turned and walked away. “Get dressed before your breakfast gets cold,” he called back over his shoulder.

“Get up… get dressed … eat … ,” she mumbled as she hurried into her clothes. “All the man can do is give orders.”

She conveniently ignored the memory of solace freely given, and so achingly received, in the haunting hours of dark. The compassionate man who offered her a shoulder to cry on and held her until she drifted to sleep was someone totally different from the tyrant who bossed her from sunup to sundown. Sometimes it seemed to her that two separate men occupied the same body.

“Garden needs to be weeded.” Hawk handed Molly a plate and waited for her reaction to his statement. She didn’t keep him waiting long.

“Weed it yourself! ” Resentfully, she took the plate and sat down to eat. She would have loved to refuse the food, and she was disgusted that her stomach wouldn’t cooperate with her desire.

“I did it the last time.” Hawk reached for the hoe with a handle fashioned from a dogwood limb. “I assume you know how to use this?”

Molly chewed a piece of fried meat and tried to pretend to an ability she didn’t possess.

“I’ll show you when you’ve finished your breakfast,” Hawk said, accurately reading her face. “Clean up the dishes then come over to the cabin, I’m going to finish up the roof and start on the chimney.” He leaned the hoe against the wagon and walked away.

Molly cleaned her plate and drained her cup of coffee to the dregs on the bottom of the tin cup. Hawk had thoughtfully left a pot of hot water for the dishes and more quickly than she wished, her first chore of the day was completed.

When she walked up to the cabin she found that Hawk was on the roof. The back half of the building now boasted a roof of bark. The pieces had been laid on like shingles, each overlapping another, then each was fastened in place with one of the precious nails brought from Charleston.

She watched him work for several minutes until he finally noticed her on the ground. With the agility of a mountain lion he climbed down the rafters which were still waiting for shingles and he lowered himself to ground.

Hawk’s instructions on the use of the hoe were simple and thorough. When he returned to complete the roof, Molly worked out her frustrations by hacking at the weeds, which appeared to be the only things growing. Even with her inexperienced eye, she knew that the garden wasn’t doing very well. So far the summer had been very dry. Without rain, she feared, the garden would produce very little food.

Wiping sweat from her brow, she stretched her aching back and let her gaze drift to the hill and the marker Hawk had painstakingly carved for Adam’s grave. In the weeks since his death, Molly had discovered a strength she had never known she possessed. She still missed him, and knew a part of her always would, but the pain was no longer an acute tearing of her soul.

When she wasn’t utterly disgusted with him, she freely acknowledged that Hawk was responsible for helping to ease the pain. During the daylight hours he was a demanding tyrant, never giving her time to dwell on anything but the current chore or the next one waiting to be done. At times she hated him with an intensity that frightened her. Never before in her life had she felt such an overwhelming hatred for another person.

But at night, during the lonely hours when darkness invited sorrow, he was a friend who held her while she cried, and he never berated her for those tears.

Gradually the tears came less often, but Hawk was still there at night, holding her and talking to her until she drifted to sleep. Molly refused to dwell on the day when he would finally leave her to return to his family. He never mentioned Charleston anymore, but summer was nearly finished and she knew he would leave when autumn turned the leaves to red and gold.

“Morning, ma’am.”

Startled out of her thoughts, Molly turned to the voice behind her. The stranger’s approach had either been silent or she had been more distracted than she had realized.

“Good morning,” she greeted hesitantly, her eyes drifting to the cabin for a reassuring sight of Hawk.

“‘Pears to me that you be in need of a rainseed to reckly or you ain’t gonna have a slew of greens, come barnin’ time.”

Not quite sure exactly what the man meant, Molly was reluctant to reply. She continued to search for Hawk and she wondered desperately when he had disappeared. All morning long she had been aware of his surveillance from the roof and now, when she needed him, he was nowhere to be seen.

The stranger walked several steps closer and Molly backed away. He was hardly a reassuring sight. A scraggly, matted beard hung nearly to his chest and it was obvious that his buckskin pants and cotton shirt had never seen a scrubbing. Black, broken teeth peered out as he smiled at her. She fought an overpowering urge to gag as his ripe odor drifted toward her.

“Where be yore man, little lady?” he asked, as his red-rimmed eyes studied her. “You be all lone out here?”

“No … no, I’m not alone.”

“You ain’t be asoundin’ too sure of thet.” After thoroughly studying Molly, his gaze turned toward the cabin. “Don’t be alookin’ to me like thar’s anybody but you and me here.”

“Look again, friend.”

Molly turned, filled with relief by the familiar sound of Hawk’s deep voice. He had walked up the slight incline from the creek, a stringer of trout in one hand and his rifle in the other.

“Here’s our supper, sweetheart.” He held out the fish and grinned as Molly’s eyes opened wide at the endearment. “Take them on back to the cabin. I’ll be along as soon as I hear what our visitor has to say.”

Molly took the fish and walked several steps away before she stopped and turned back. The familiar impassive expression was in place. She had seen that look before and knew he would answer her questions only when he was ready to do so.

Hawk waited until Molly was nearly back at camp before he turned his menacing gaze back to the stranger. He had seen his type before, a man who made his living from the pain and suffering of others. A man who followed no rules except those governed by his own greed, The stranger’s gaze was nearly on level with Hawk’s and yet he felt a premonition of impending doom as he met those fierce black eyes. This was not someone who would be moved or even concerned by threats.

“I’m Junior Wilson, up from Columbia way. Been hired to find a woman and return her to her father.” Hawk remained impassive and Junior Wilson found himself fidgeting under the unwavering gaze. “She done run away and he’s awantin’ her back. I done followed her this far and I be aknowin’ that she’s here somewhere.”

“What has that to do with my woman?” Hawk asked in a voice made more threatening because of its softness.

“You ain’t her man.”

“How did you arrive at that conclusion?”

“You ain’t white! You be an Indian.” Swallowing hard at the fierceness contorting the savage visage, Junior Wilson continued. “She fits the description of the woman I’m alookin’ for. I’m atakin’ her home and collectin’ the reward that’s rightly mine.”

“Listen well and remember, you’ll not be told a second time,” Hawk said in a quiet voice that thundered with pitiless brutality. “She is mine and no one takes what is mine.”

Occasionally letting her gaze drift toward the garden and the two men deep in discussion, Molly cleaned the fish with the dexterity of long practice. It appeared to her that the stranger did all of the talking while Hawk stood with his rifle resting across his folded arms. She knew the kind of look that would be on Hawk’s face, stern and forbidding, and thought that the old man was either very brave or a fool to confront him.

After putting the fish on to fry, she mixed up a cornmeal batter and poured it into a dutch oven and set it in the coals. Beans had been slowly cooking since the noon meal and Molly tasted them to make sure they were ready.

Hawk finally returned to camp, alone, just as the meal was ready to eat. Molly filled plates and coffee cups for both of them. Her impatience grew as Hawk began to eat without mentioning his discussion with the stranger.

“Well, what did he want?” she was forced to ask when Hawk remained quiet.

Hawk lifted his dark, penetrating gaze to her but he continued to eat without comment. Deciding it would be easier to get blood out of a turnip than information out of him when he chose to be obstinate, Molly quietly finished her meal.

“All right, don’t tell me,” she mumbled as she stood up. “I’m sure it had nothing to do with me.” Hawk’s eyes narrowed slightly. “We’ll sleep in the cabin tonight.”

“Really? Do you mean it?” Molly temporarily forgot their strange visitor, in her excitement. She longed for a roof over her head again and for several days she had been asking when they could occupy the cabin.

In other circumstances, Hawk would have enjoyed the pleasure radiating from her face. “The fireplace won’t be finished for several days yet, but I don’t see any reason why we can’t start sleeping in there.”

“I don’t know what to carry in first!”

Hawk stood and handed his plate to her. “Just bedding. There’s still work to be finished inside and we don’t need to be tripping over things.”

“Just bedding,” she agreed reluctantly, “but at least we’ll be inside!”

Hawk picked up his rifle and cradled it in his arms. “Stay in camp. If you need help fire the gun.” Turning from her contemplation of a night under a roof, Molly looked at him. “Where are you going?”

“To see that our visitor has left.”

A chill ran up her spine and she was no longer sure she wanted to know what the man had wanted. “You’ll stay close?” she asked quietly.

“I’ll hear you if you fire the gun.”

Deciding it was better to be sure than to sit and wonder, Molly raised her chin with determination. “What did he want?”

“Not what,” Hawk replied quietly, “but who. He’s a bounty hunter and he has been offered a pound of gold if he finds a certain woman and returns her to her father.”

Molly knew, without asking, that she was the woman. “What did you tell him?”

Like a stormy cloud covering the bright sun, Hawk’s expression changed to the familiar stoic countenance. Only this time, as never before, Molly realized that his dark eyes were readable. The emotion that filled his black gaze made her breath catch and her heart begin to pound with an erratic rhythm.

“What did you tell him?” she asked again, her voice barely a whisper of sound.

“I told him you were my woman.”

CHAPTER NINE

The afternoon dragged by with the speed of a snail crossing a meadow. In the sky, dark clouds piled like feather pillows upon each other, promising much needed rain and a break from the steamy heat, but disappearing without fulfilling that promise.

Dust rose in its own stifling cloud as Molly worked with a vengeance and finished weeding the garden. Her gaze constantly searched the surrounding woods for a sight of Hawk.

At dinnertime, when he still had not returned, she ate a solitary meal of leftover fish, fighting to keep the growing fear from taking control, she quickly dispensed with the dishes, then carried the bedding into the cabin and carefully made up two beds on the dirt floor.