Hawk's Prize (3 page)

A grunt from the bar turned Willie in its direction.
One look at Drew’s red face and squinting expression and Willie blurted at his friend, “What have you been doing while I was gone, man?”

Willie’s question reverberated shrilly in Drew’s ears, and he winced. It was hot, and Willie was talking too loud. The sound started Drew’s head pounding anew and upset his equilibrium. It further unsettled his queasy stomach, too; and the truth was, he couldn’t take much more without losing control.

“You look terrible.” Willie walked closer. “I thought you were going upstairs. Was you drinking all the while I was gone?”

Drew attempted to draw himself upright, but the effort to put weight on his throbbing leg was beyond him and he stumbled against the bar.

“Dammit, man, you’re drunk!”

“Is that so?” Drew’s response was slurred.

“You shouldn’t have come here if you wasn’t in the mood.”

“My mood has nothing to do with it.” Every word he spoke seemed to unsettle his stomach even more, and Drew silently cursed. No one had to tell him that the whiskey he’d drunk had nothing to do with the way he felt. The wound in his leg was acting up again. He had ignored the doctor who told him he was leaving the hospital too soon. The war was over, and the choice of whether to leave with a partially healed leg or remain in a filthy, infectious hospital until the Yankees found him had been a simple one.

Drew scrutinized his irate friend. Willie had settled his business and was now anxious to be on his way
home. He was angry because he thought Drew would delay their departure. The problem was, if Willie knew his true condition, he wouldn’t leave until Drew was able to travel with him—and there was no telling what the result would be.

Drew stared at his friend through his fevered haze. No, he couldn’t let that happen. Willie had waited a long time to see his family. He couldn’t put him at unnecessary risk while Willie waited in Galveston out of loyalty to him.

His decision made, Drew said gruffly, “You may be in a rush to leave now, but I’m not. This bar serves some of the best liquor I’ve had in a dog’s age.”

Willie’s frown was disapproving as he retorted, “My family ain’t going to be too happy if I bring home a drunk, even if he did fight beside me in the war.”

“That’s too bad, isn’t it?” Drew forced a lopsided smile. “We all have our ways of enjoying ourselves, and I’ve found mine.”

“That ain’t true, and you know it.” Willie shrugged as he approached him. “Come on, let’s go.”

Aware that he would not make it across the room without revealing his true problem, Drew ordered, “Stay where you are. I don’t need your help and I’m not moving until I’m good and ready.”

“Drew—”

“Go home. You know where to find me if you want me.”

“This ain’t like you, Drew.”

“Maybe it is.” Drew breathed deeply, disguising the escalating pain. “And just maybe it’s better this way.”

“Drew, you said—”

“I said I’d go home with you. Well, I changed my mind. Besides, I’ve got some unfinished business to take care of here.” When Willie searched his face uncertainly, Drew added sharply, “How many ways do I have to say it? I’m going to stay here awhile. Go home, Willie!”

Willie did not respond.

His expression darkening, Drew repeated, “Go home!” He then turned back to the bar and downed his drink in one gulp.

He did not look back at the sound of Willie’s departing footsteps.

“You never should have let the two of them in here.”

Angie’s nagging tone turned Chantalle toward her sharply. She had left Tricia upstairs minutes earlier so the dear girl could clean up after her long trip. Chantalle was still disturbed by Tricia’s reference to the bordello as
home,
and despite their tearful, bittersweet reunion, she had not yet decided how she would handle Tricia’s decision to remain. Uncertain, she had come back downstairs, aware that her guests expected her to welcome them at the door. What she had not expected was to be assailed by Angie the moment she stepped down onto the floor.

Annoyed, Chantalle replied, “What are you talking about? What two fellows shouldn’t I have let in here?”

“Those two new fellas who came to the door an hour ago . . . the ones Mavis and I took on.” Angie’s lips twitched with irritation. “You know, the ones who walked in here still wearing those Confederate trousers.”

Chantalle felt heat rise to her cheeks as she replied softly, “I didn’t hear you complain when Miles White-stone came in here wearing his
Yankee
uniform.”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?” Chantalle’s voice dripped ice as she continued, “Those two fellas looked fine to me.”

“The Confederacy lost the war!”

“Unfortunately.”

“They’re losers!”

“You didn’t look at that big fella like he was a loser when you went sauntering up to meet him. What happened? Didn’t he like you?”

“Any man who
is
a man likes me.”

Chantalle raised her brows. “Except . . . ?”

“Except for drunks that hang on the bar without taking the time for any woman in this place!”

“Is that why you’re angry?”

“He’s still hanging on the bar. And if you ask me, he’s not going to leave it until he falls down.”

Dragging Chantalle by the arm, Angie pulled her to a spot where she could see the tall man leaning against the bar more clearly. She said haughtily, “He doesn’t belong in here.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“Look at him! He’s drunk!”

Chantalle stared at the tall fellow’s back, thinking that it was a waste of a lot of man if he was drunk. Yet the way he was standing off-kilter, the flush on his face, his squinting expression—she hated to admit that Angie was right this time, but obviously she was. The policy of the house was to tolerate a less than sober condition among regulars, but this fellow was a stranger. Since it
was apparent that he wasn’t interested in any of the women, and since it was impossible to gauge what to expect from him in his condition, she had no recourse but to ease him toward the door before any possible problems could start.

That thought in mind, Chantalle moved to his side. With an expertise developed over the years, she said gently, “It looks to me like it’s time for you to go home, fella. You can rest up a bit before coming back here to finish your business, if that suits you.”

Pinning her with his unsteady gaze, the big fellow responded, “Are you throwing me out of here?”

Startled by his intense reply, Chantalle was momentarily at a loss for a response. She said more softly, “You strike me as a sensible fella, and we both know you’re not in any condition right now to go upstairs with one of my ladies. You’re welcome to come back here anytime, but for now—”

“—for now I’m going to stay right where I am.”

Chantalle said more forcefully, “There are other places in Galveston where you can indulge yourself at the bar, but not here. This bar is maintained for the convenience of my customers only.”

The big man turned more fully toward her. He swayed as he said, “I’m not leaving yet.”

“You’re making a mistake.” Chantalle felt the rise of anger as she continued, “My memory isn’t so short that I enjoy asking a former Confederate soldier to leave; but I will not allow any man to become drunk and disorderly in this establishment.”

The man did not reply.

“Please go.”

The big fellow remained silent.

“If you don’t go, I’ll be forced to—”

Chantalle was unprepared when the man fell suddenly toward her.

Breaking his fall with a clutching grip, Chantalle gasped at the heat radiating from the man’s body. The startled bartender rounded the bar and shifted the fellow’s unconscious weight onto himself as Chantalle said breathlessly, “This fella’s not drunk, Jake. He’s sick . . . fevered, if I don’t miss my guess. Get him upstairs so I can call Dr. Wesley.”

Speaking up from behind her, Angie said, “You’d do better to throw him out onto the street. He doesn’t deserve anything else.”

“Maybe he doesn’t.” Nodding thankfully at the helpful patron who stepped up to help shoulder the man’s weight, Chantalle continued harshly, “But no man wearing Confederate gray in any form is going to be thrown unconscious onto the street from this house!”

When the two men carried the stranger toward the stairs, she instructed, “Put him in the spare bedroom at the end of the hallway so Dr. Wesley can see to him undisturbed.”

Still breathless, Chantalle turned back to the occupants of the barroom. With a forced smile calculated to erase the tension of the moment, she ordered Angie behind the bar and announced, “Drinks are on the house, gentlemen.”

Scraping footsteps in the hallway . . . mumbled curses . . .

Tricia raised her head from the washstand as the
sounds filtered into her bedroom in the private quarter of Chantalle’s house. She had been attempting to refresh herself, but the all-too-familiar sounds echoing down the corridor raised harsh memories. She reached for her dressing gown to cover her seminakedness, flicked her unbound hair free of the garment, and walked to the doorway to peer out cautiously. She went still at the sight of two men carrying a third, unconscious fellow into a bedroom at the far end of the house. The hallway was not a hospital corridor filled with the mutterings of the wounded and dying, and the men transporting the fellow weren’t wearing Yankee uniforms, but the scraping sound of a helpless man’s dragging feet was the same.

It chilled her.

She turned abruptly toward the sound of Chantalle’s voice as the older woman ordered, “Go back inside, Tricia.”

“What happened? What’s wrong with that man?”

“I said, go back inside.” Chantalle shook her head. “I don’t have time to talk right now.”

“What happened to him?”

Chantalle gave her a despairing glance. “I don’t know who that fellow is, I don’t know where he came from, and I don’t know what’s wrong with him. I only know he passed out at the bar downstairs. He’s sick . . . burning up with fever. For all I know, he may be contagious, and I don’t want you exposed to any disease he may be carrying.”

“You’ve been exposed, and so has everyone downstairs.”

“That’s different.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Just do as I say.”

Tricia felt a familiar shuddering begin inside her as dark memories of hours spent at the bedsides of suffering soldiers returned. She did not bother to reply but fell into step behind Chantalle as the older woman continued on down the hallway. She came to an abrupt halt at the bedroom doorway when she saw a muscular fellow with a white mustache struggling with the man on the bed, who had regained consciousness and was trying to stand.

“Lie still.” Chantalle approached the sick man’s bedside, partially blocking Tricia’s view with her broad figure. “You passed out downstairs,” she said tersely. “You’re sick. I’ve called for a doctor.”

Tricia heard the large man’s grunt of pain when the mustached fellow attempted to restrain him by pushing down on his leg. “I’m all right now,” the big man said with a shaky voice. “You wanted me to leave, so tell this fella to let me go.”

“I’d let you leave if I thought you could make it out the door, but I don’t think you can.”

“I can make it.”

“As far as the stairs, maybe.” Chantalle continued more softly, “Just wait a few minutes. The doctor will give you something to take care of your fever, and then you can leave.”

“I want to leave
now.”

Tricia heard the determination in the man’s tone. She had heard it many times before from men so badly wounded that they were not fated to survive. She remembered
the many times she had heard that determination gradually weaken until it went still forever.

The sound haunted her.

It kept her strangely immobile as the sick man’s agitation increased.

Drew fought the helplessness slowly overwhelming him. He was so hot . . . burning up . . . and his mind was becoming confused. The madam was right. He was sick, but he had been sick before and he had handled it. He didn’t need anyone’s help.

But . . . what was that?

The sudden boom of cannon fire startled him. He heard glass breaking. He ducked his head at the thuds of splintering beams falling around him.

The Yankees were firing their big guns again!

The barrage was relentless. Wounded men lay all around him in a house where only three walls remained. Some had minor wounds, and some had wounds so severe that he knew the men could not last much longer. He glanced at Willie, who lay on his stomach firing his gun as the enemy continued its unyielding approach.

The enemy would soon overwhelm them.

No, he couldn’t let that happen! He knew the fate that awaited these injured men in Federal prisons, where maggots feasted on the wounds of the dying and where Confederate soldiers gradually became unrecognizable as the brave men they had once been.

He looked up at the mustached fellow standing over him. The man was not wearing a Yankee uniform, but he knew an enemy when he saw one.

“Lie still.”

He turned toward the other side of the bed, where a woman in red stood. Her voice echoed hollowly in his ears as she continued talking. He could not understand the words, but the mustached fellow reacted by holding him down more firmly.

He winced at the pain. She was the enemy, too. He needed to escape.

He tried to get up. He punched and struck out at the man restraining him. His wounded leg failed him, but he would not give up.

He could not give up!

Tricia snapped free of her immobility when Chantalle was flung back a step by the sick man’s thrashing. Stopping only a moment to steady her, Tricia ignored the older woman’s protests and moved closer to the stranger’s bedside.

She dodged a flailing fist, frowning when she saw the fellow’s face for the first time. He was dark-haired, light-eyed, even-featured, and his expression was set. He was a big man who appeared in the prime of life, with muscle enough to perform whatever determination he had manufactured in his fevered mind, despite his injured leg’s obvious weakness.