Nightway (31 page)

Hawk’s look was sharply questioning when he reached Lanna. “Was that Bobby Crow Dog?”

“Yes. Do you know him?” She was faintly surprised that he would recognize him when Chad had only vaguely remembered him.

“I met him a few times.” A frown narrowed Hawk’s gaze as he looked again in the direction of the trio. “Where are they taking him?”

“To get something to eat,” Lanna explained. “Chad told him he could stay as long as he liked.”

“He did?” An eyebrow was lifted in open skepticism.

“Bobby Crow Dog was a friend of your father’s. He came here looking for him. When he found out John was dead, he looked a little lost. It was sad,” she murmured.

“He doesn’t have anyplace to go. The hogans of his relatives aren’t open to him anymore, because he shames them with his stealing to buy liquor,” Hawk admitted. His mouth twisted in a slanting line. “I find it a little hard to believe that Chad actually invited him to stay here.”

“Chad is very kind and generous,” Lanna retorted, defending Chad in his absence. “He’s been very helpful to me.”

“Only because he could gain from it,” Hawk stated, then flashed a quick smile. “I think we’d better find a subject we can agree on. How do you feel this morning?”

“Fine.” The sparkle returned to her eyes. “You?” Hawk studied her look with lazy satisfaction. “Fine.”

“Not sore?” she asked with a faintly provocative smile.

“Nope. Where are you going?”

“Originally, I was going riding, but”—Lanna hesitated, glancing toward the house beyond the trees—“I thought I’d go to the house to check on Katheryn. She appeared upset by something Bobby Crow Dog said.”

Turning, Hawk stared at the house, his features expressing a quizzical concern. “Maybe you should check,” he agreed. “I’ll see how Bobby Crow Dog is making out with your kind and generous Chad.”

His smiling taunt sent a flash of irritation through Lanna. She glared at his retreating shoulders, her loyalties divided between the two brothers, and conscious that this wouldn’t be the last time. Pivoting sharply on her heel, she retraced her steps back to the house.

When she opened the front door, she heard the shrill anger of Katheryn’s voice coming from the living room. Its sound didn’t match the image Katheryn had always presented publicly to Lanna—that of a refined and composed lady. Her curiosity was aroused. She closed the door quietly, careful not to make a sound.

“I could kill him! I swear I could kill him!” she raged. “It was bad enough at the hospital! Carol, when J. B. reached out with his hand, I thought it was for
me!
God, I thought
finally—finally
—he was turning to me! Then he whispered her name—
her name!
Now, that filthy Indian shows up here!”

“Katheryn, it’s over,” Carol soothed.

“No, it isn’t over!”

“You are letting yourself get all worked up over something that isn’t even important anymore.” There was an angry edge to Carol’s voice now.

“Isn’t important?”

“Ssh!”

Realizing that they suspected their conversation was being overheard, Lanna took a tiptoeing step back to the door, opened it noisily, then closed it. She had heard enough to know that Katheryn was still jealous of John’s association with Hawk’s mother, a jealousy that had gone beyond the grave.

As Lanna walked toward the living room archway, she hooked her thumb through the throat string and slipped her hat off her head. She was wearing a bright look of interest when she entered the room.

“I thought you were going riding, Lanna.” Carol eyed her with equal brightness.

“I decided to wait until after lunch. Chad said he would go with me then.” She sank into a chair, stretching out and letting the hat dangle from the armrest. “Is anything wrong?” She glanced from Carol to Katheryn.

The older woman pivoted away. “I have a bit of a headache. Too much sun, I expect.” Her voice was as still as her posture. “Foolishly, I didn’t wear a hat outside this morning.”

Lanna wished she hadn’t asked the question and forced the woman into a lie. Rising from the chair she had just taken, she excused herself. “I think I’ll see if there’s any coffee left.”

The conversation she had interrupted wasn’t resumed
after she left. But her thoughts kept turning back to what she had heard as she sat alone in the morning room. She felt sorry for Katheryn. Her life had been consumed by bitter jealousy that fed on itself. It must have tainted her every waking minute—and still did, evidently. Lanna sighed.

Hawk let his gaze stray from the poker game to the corner of the room where a couple of the older hands were sitting with Bobby Crow Dog. The old Indian was regaling them with tales of his Hollywood days—the movies he’d made and the stars he’d known. He’d tried to sell just about everything he owned for a drink of whiskey, but so far he was still sober.

“Did you really make all those movies with John Wayne, like you said you did?” Bill Short was eyeing Bobby Crow Dog skeptically.

“He always asked for me.” Bobby nodded. The dirty pink blanket was gone; so was the feather. In place of the ragged shirt and pants, he had on a bright plaid shirt and Levi’s. The new clothes emphasized the gauntness of his frame. “I called him Duke and he called me Crowbait.”

“Were you really in
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon?
I saw that movie four times and I don’t remember you in it.” The other cowboy exchanged a glance with Bill Short, half-grinning. “The only Indians I saw in that were dead.”

“That was me!” Bobby explained with a toothy
smile. “That’s why I was such a good Indian—I was always dead. That’s why Duke called me Crowbait, because I was always sprawled in the dust.” He laughed and his audience joined him.

“What are you going to do, Hawk?” The Mexican, Sanchez, directed his attention to the poker game. “Dan just raised. It’s three bits to you if you’re staying in.”

Hawk glanced at his cards showing on the table. A pair of fours was all he had, nothing in the hole, and the seventh card had been dealt. Dan already had him beat with a pair of ladies on the table. There was maybe three dollars in the pot. Chances were he could bluff Dan out. He’d done it often enough in the past. But there was a stronger impulse running through him—powerful and impatient. It was wearing down his restraint, making him feel reckless and uncaring about the possible consequences—the same way he’d felt last night.

Throwing in his hand, Hawk rose abruptly from his chair. “I’m out.”

There was a desire for haste in him, but he made himself wander slowly across the room to the door. Outside, Hawk paused beneath the overhang to let his eyes adjust to the night’s darkness. His gaze was drawn immediately to the lights glittering through the trees from the windows of the main house. A quick heat rushed through his veins. He took a step toward the lights and stopped in cold shock when a voice came out of the darkness near him.

“All that smoke get to you?” Luther Wilcox inquired with too much nonchalance. “I had to come out for some fresh air, too. It was cloggin’ my lungs.” There was a dull thump as the front legs of his chair came down.

Irritation ran wild through Hawk’s nerves. Why hadn’t he known Luther was there? The answer didn’t put him at ease because Hawk knew he had allowed himself to be distracted by the image of Lanna’s face, the steadiness of her hazel eyes, and the quiet beauty of her features.

Hawk turned, with apparent casualness, to face the man in the chair. Age had widened Luther and grizzled his hair. For all the easy talk they exchanged over the years, there was always a brittleness between them. Luther and Bill Short had been the ones who had held Hawk for the beating Rawlins had given him. Hawk had never forgotten it. Both men knew it and were wary around him, despite what might appear on the surface.

“Yeah, I needed some air.” He accepted the excuse Luther had provided and walked past the man to lean a shoulder against a windowframe.

The position gave Hawk a view of what was going on inside the bunkhouse as well as with the door, the old cowboy, and the distant house. Luther shifted in his chair with an effort, angling himself toward Hawk. It was age that stiffened the man after a hard day’s work.

“You should retire, Luther. You’re getting too old for this work.” It was a statement of fact, rather than interest in the old man’s well-being.

“Retire? Hell! I’m going to cowboy until I’m dead or crippled!” Luther snorted. “And if I get crippled, well, you can just tie me in a saddle. I ain’t gonna retire. I’d just as soon be dead.”

Impatience gnawed at Hawk, although it didn’t show in his expression. A burst of laughter came from inside. “You should be in there, Luther, listening to Bobby Crow Dog. He made all those films in your heyday, didn’t he?”

The Indian’s presence was another thing that didn’t rest easy in Hawk’s mind. Chad had a reason for it. Lanna might believe it was merely a gesture of goodwill, but he didn’t—not for a minute.

“Never went to movies much. Couldn’t afford it.” Luther coughed up some phelgm and turned to spit. “After supper tonight, that Indian was trying to sell me this telescope he’s got. It ain’t a telescope. It’s one of them girlie-peep things. You look in it and there’s a picture of a naked woman. It was something. Stirred this old man’s pulse.” He chuckled, then turned his bright gaze on Hawk. “Chad’s new friend has a face and figure that can give a man ideas, don’t she?”

“I haven’t seen much of her.” Not as much as he wanted to. “Chad doesn’t seem inclined to introduce her around.” The mere mention of Lanna turned Hawk’s hungry gaze toward the main house.

“She ain’t playin’ the piano tonight,” Luther remarked. “Katheryn does have a way of playin’ it that fills a man’s soul.”

“She is a very accomplished pianist,” Hawk agreed.

“She really must have worked her spell on you last night. Why, it was practically mornin’ before you came back.”

“Were you checking on me, Luther?” Hawk coolly drawled the challenge, but his eyes were coldly sharp and piercing.

The cowboy hesitated, pursing his lips. “No.” He shook his head. “No, I wasn’t checkin’ on you.” His sun-weathered face looked sad. “I know you aren’t goin’ to listen to any advice from me. But, boy, you are headin’ for a pack of trouble. You’ve already known more than your share. Back off, boy, while you can.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Hawk didn’t change his relaxed pose.

“Have it your way.” The cowboy shrugged.

“You’re tired, Luther. It must be past your bedtime. Why don’t you turn in for the night?” Hawk suggested.

“No, I’m goin’ to sit out here for a spell. I don’t sleep too good anymore. When you get old, the body doesn’t seem to need as much sleep as it used to.”

Hawk swore silently. Throwing a last glance at the beckoning lights of the main house, he straightened.

“I’m going to turn in,” he announced. “Good night, Luther.”

“Night.”

It was nearly sundown when Hawk rode into the ranch yard the next day. Hot, tired, and dirty, he hadn’t slept worth a damn, lying awake in his bunk most of the night and remembering the pleasures he had enjoyed in another bed. It angered him that he couldn’t forget. He’d pushed himself hard today in self-punishment. Damn, but he wanted a shower and something clean against his skin—like Lanna. Hawk clenched his jaw savagely.

With a check of the rein, he halted his horse’s shuffling walk in front of the barn. He swung out of the stirrups and started to lead the horse inside to unsaddle it. From the near side of the building, he heard a wavering voice monotonously chanting and paused. Curiosity moved him to investigate.

Looping the reins around a corral rail and securing them in a half-hitch, Hawk left the horse and ducked between the boards. When he rounded the corner of the building, he saw Bobby Crow Dog facing the setting sun and swaying as he sang. Hawk stopped to listen, his brows drawing together in a puzzled frown as he tried to catch a word or a phrase that would help him identify the chant. But the guttural sounds were garbled and indistinct.

“What is this song?” Hawk interrupted the singer. “I don’t recognize it. Where is it from?”

Bobby Crow Dog regarded this display of ignorance with contempt. “It is from
Flaming Arrows,
1949.”

The information prompted a wry shake of his head. But Hawk’s amusement vanished when he saw the fifth of whiskey in the Indian’s hand.

“Where did you get the whiskey?” Hawk thought it had been strictly understood that no one was to give him liquor. “Who gave it to you?”

“I trade,” he insisted, offended by Hawk’s implication that he had accepted charity. “Give big magic for bottle.”

The corners of Hawk’s mouth were pulled grimly down. The “big magic” was probably that picture of the nude woman the Indian had tried to peddle to all the cowboys last night. Somebody had finally given in.

“Who traded the whiskey for the magic?” Hawk demanded.

The Indian frowned as he tried to remember. “The Two-Faced One.”

“That description fits a lot of people on this ranch,” Hawk muttered to himself. Louder, he said, “Do you know his American name?”

“She give me good whiskey.” He took a swig and made a sound of satisfaction. “Want some?”

She? On second thought, Hawk doubted if that meant anything. Bobby Crow Dog had reverted his speech pattern to the old way. The Navaho language didn’t have pronouns that distinguished between the male and female gender. The Navahos tended to use the American ones interchangeably.

Hawk asked, “Was it a man or a woman?”

The liquor Bobby Crow Dog consumed deafened him to the question. He was staring again at the golden ball of the sun and chanting his unintelligible lyrics.

Shaking his head, Hawk turned away. With a certain fatalism, he decided that it didn’t matter who had given Bobby Crow Dog the whiskey. One way or another, he probably would have gotten hold of a bottle, anyway. It was the only way the old man could recapture his lost days of glory.

“Did I tell you Johnny received a perfect score on his math test, Katheryn?” Carol glanced up from the petit point design she was stitching, holding the needle in mid-air. “It was in the letter that came today. He was so proud.”