Lone Star Loving (2 page)

Leaning toward her, Maria Sara repeated her question.

“If you have any money, would you loan me some?” Charity asked.

“Of course,” the brothel singer replied. “And, for once, I do have some cash. The patrons were generous with their tips last night.”

There was an odd lilt to that dulcet voice. Charity reasoned it stemmed from wounded pride. A couple of years ago, the proud
mexicana
was turned off the family estate after admitting she carried a bastard. Finances had forced her to accept a job in a house of ill repute. Finances and some crumb of a father, who'd abandoned his child and his obligations.

The singer emptied her purse and extended a wad of bills. “Take it.”

As Charity placed a kiss of gratitude on her friend's smooth cheek, she had a fleeting thought of how much she missed her sisters, even though as children the three had been at odds more than not. Sisters were like that, Charity supposed.
At least my sisters love me. They're the only ones in the family who feel that way.

It had been too long since she'd seen Olga and Margaret. Both were far away, each living respectable lives, neither aware of Charity's break with their parents and great-grandmother, unless one of the elder McLoughlins had informed the better two of the triplets. A likely situation. Charity had been too ashamed to tell them anything herself.

“I will miss you,
amiga,”
Maria Sara whispered, patting Charity's arm. “May God go with you.”

“Thank you.” She turned to leave. “I'll miss you, too.”

“Charity . . . before you go. What about Ian?”

“Let him eat cake.”

“Don't take him lightly. Ian will be furious when he finds you've left here.” Two ticks of the clock. “He's ruthless when crossed.”

Not replying, Charity rushed from the room and started down the stairs leading to a darkened back street of Laredo. Her foot had no more than touched the ground before a big hand grabbed her forearm. In the wink of an eye, she was forced to drop her valise, her arms were brought together in front of her, and a set of iron manacles–even more insistent than a predator's talons–was clamped on her wrists.

Hawk had captured her.

“Damn you!” Charity screamed as the Ranger slapped the handcuffs on her wrists. Realizing the gravity of her situation, she tried to plead with him. “I didn't mean to do wrong. Please leave me alone.”

She might as well have saved her breath, yet she hoped against hope Maria Sara would hear her, would rush to her aid. But no one appeared on the dark, deserted street.

The Ranger–wearing his now-battered Stetson–gave no verbal response to her continued shouts, not until after he'd grabbed her valise and clutch bag, tucked them under his arm, and began dragging her by the elbow toward the corner, where a buckboard and team were waiting. “Get in,” he ordered.

“No,” Charity replied adamantly.

He tossed Charity's valise in the wagon bed; without another word, he yanked her off her feet and deposited her onto the seat.

“I don't cotton to anyone resisting arrest,” he growled, dusting his hands. Swinging up beside her, he turned his face her way. “You're going to answer to the law, lady.”

Defeat. As a buzzard did carrion, defeat ate at Charity; she wilted on the spring seat. She wouldn't cry, though, refusing to show her vulnerability. Never had Charity allowed anyone that much purchase into her soul. Never. Not even her favorite sister, Margaret.

She straightened her back stoically. “All right. I'll go along peacefully,” she relented.

A funny, medicinal smell drifted to her nose; she disregarded it to eye her antagonist. The full moon afforded some light, but his face was hidden by the battered western hat, making it impossible to distinguish his features. It was easy to see he was big; it was just as easy to figure he could overpower her, especially with her hands tied.

Flying in the face of her usual luck, she said, “My name will be cleared, you wait and see.”

“What you need is a good lawyer.”

“No, Mister Hawk, I don't.” Bravado was this, but bravado was all Charity McLoughlin had left. “The truth will set me free.”

“Yeah. Right.”

He picked up the reins, set the buckboard in motion, and the two rode in silence through the streets of Laredo, silence that was shattered when the wagon veered off in the opposite direction from the city jail.

“Don't you know left from right? You've turned the wrong way.” Charity's voice lowered. “Where are we going?”

He snapped the reins over the team.

Watching as they passed by the muted lights of huts lining the outskirts of town, she repeated her question.

“Giddyup,” was his only reply.

By now they had cleared the edge of Laredo, and Charity realized there was something very, very wrong. What
was
going on? Who
was
this man?

If only she could get a good look at his face, perhaps she might get a clue. If only she had something to go on, something beyond the active imagination that had gotten her into hot water time after time.

“Take off your hat,” she demanded.

“You don't give the orders.”

Oooh!
“All right.”
I'll teach him.
“Why don't you take off your hat so that I might be allowed to see if you're as ugly as I think you are.”

All he did was chuckle.

Quite unamused, the shackles heavy, she said, “You know me, and you said I must face the law. You let me believe you're a lawman. Yet you didn't take me to jail. Who are you?”

“I'm called Hawk.”

“I know that. But it's just a name. A hawk is nothing to me but a mean-eyed bird with sharp, nasty talons.” Well, hawks were regal. Under the moonlight she watched as he moved a leg slightly, the faint light outlining the strength of long, long limbs not at all birdlike.

“Mister Hawk, where are you taking me?”

“To your deliverance.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me.”

“Why did you let me think you were taking me to jail?”

“I am Hawk. That's all you need to know.”

She begged to differ. But arguing became secondary to the fear that crawled up her spine. Fear as cold as the manacles stiffening her wrists. If this Hawk were a Ranger or a sheriff or whatever, he would admit it, wouldn't he? His vague answer spoke for itself.

He was not the law.

Undoubtedly, he was outside of it.

Wasn't this a fine kettle of fish?

She said, “If you're one of Adriano Gonzáles's men, I–”

“I am not.”

Small comfort. “You're not a lawman. You weren't a partner of Adriano's. What does that leave, Mister Hawk?”

As she somehow expected, he didn't reply.

The wooden seat hard against her backside, she tried to make some sense of his identity; the conclusion drawn did nothing to settle her nerves. Several times she'd read newspaper accounts of persons from prominent families being seized, then ransomed to their loved ones. Especially if the booty didn't materialize, they were sometimes never seen again. Alive, anyway.

It wasn't a publicized fact that the McLoughlins wouldn't give a red cent for their wayward daughter's return. But Charity knew they wouldn't.

Her only chance was to escape.

She glanced at the man beside her. He seemed intent upon driving the team, nothing more.
Think, Charity. Think.
Since he'd been unconscious once tonight, surely he was in a weakened condition. What about trying to hit him again? Should she try to push him off the seat and beneath the rolling wagon wheels?

Neither option sounded as if success was written into it.

Continued inquiry seemed the best course. “Mister Hawk–”

“Just call me Hawk.”

“Hawk. Ah, um, I've deduced something. You've kidnapped me. Am I right or wrong?”

“I've taken you away.”

Just minutes ago, she'd wanted to be away from Laredo. And riding beat walking, but . . . “Deliverance was how you put it–a peculiar choice of word. Doesn't it imply that you're taking me to my freedom?”

“Could happen, provided events fall in the right order.”

His vague answer settled in the abacus of her brain–rarely a reliable tool, but all she had to work with. “Kidnapping is a hanging offense. You'll pay for your folly, Mister Hawk.”

“You talk too much.”

Too many times she'd been told what a blabbermouth she was. Too many times it had been pointed out that she was less than worthy to open her mouth. Nonetheless, she'd never learned to keep that mouth shut.

“Don't you think I have a right to say whatever I please, especially if it might shake some sense into your noggin?”

“You're much too argumentative. You'd never sway a jury with your words.” Hawk tapped the reins. “And a jury, lady, is just what you would've faced, if I hadn't come to your rescue. Matter of fact, your pretty head would soon be resting on a jail cot, if not for–”

“Rescue?” she repeated, ignoring the last part of his statement. She didn't give a hoot how he knew about her law troubles. Ian knew; probably a lot of people hereabouts knew her for a smuggler. “Since when have rescue and kidnap been synonymous?”

“Be quiet.”

“In no way, form, or fashion!” When he shrugged, she made a huge demand of herself: patience. “There's something you need to know. If you think to extort money from my father, think again–I'm worthless to him.”

“Perhaps you underestimate your worth.”

For a moment she didn't say a word. If only what he said were true.
If only
. Wait a minute. Could it be possible . . . ? Had her father sent this man to collect her? She warned herself not to live in a dream world. Gil McLoughlin would never budge from his parting words: “If you leave this house, Daughter, and go running after that Blyer man, I'll consider you dead.” Papa wasn't one for idle threats.

“Even a black sheep has its value,” Hawk said.

“Not in the McLoughlin flock.”

Given her lack of alternatives, she knew she had to act quickly. That's all there was to it. She leaned slowly to the side, bracing one foot on the floorboard. She raised her arms discreetly, and then quickly reared up, meaning to bring the manacles down on his temple. But she was no match for Hawk. In less than a heartbeat, he had dropped the reins, feinted her blow, and grabbed her arms. The wagon wobbled. The horses picked up speed. Charity fought him.

“Dammit, woman, be still or you'll get us both killed!”

She kicked frantically at his muscled body, tried to elbow him off the seat. Not succeeding with either course of action, she leaned to bite his shoulder.

She tasted buckskin, and the warm scent of man filled her nostrils. “Ouch!” she heard him shout as he flinched. “Hellcat, be still or I'll–”

His grip on her loosened, and such an advantage was put to good use–she slapped her iron-clad wrists against his throat. The next thing she realized, he had tossed her across his lap, and her head was swinging from the moving buckboard. Her hair nearly touched the ground, and her fright rose to a pitch–she'd be the one to get tangled in a wagon wheel!

It figured.

When good luck was passed out, it must have missed the dunce's corner–where Charity had to have been banished.

Right then Hawk pulled her hair up, and reached over to grab something from the floorboard, something that turned out to be a white cloth. Before pressing the wet cloth over her nose, he said with a growl, “I'd hoped it wouldn't come to this.”

A sharp smell poleaxed her; she attempted to avert her head. What . . . ? What was . . . ? She felt the fight leave her, felt herself drifting off to sleep. Her last thought was,
The louse has drugged me.

Rendering Charity insensible had been Sam Washburn's idea.

David Fierce Hawk hadn't liked the suggestion the day before, when the doctor had concocted the evil brew, and Hawk didn't like the idea one whit better tonight. Not when he shut the hellcat up, not as he drove to the prearranged hideout located a few miles east of Laredo. And the idea of drugging her didn't sit any better now, now that he and Sam had leashed her in the two-room shack and left her to sleep off the chloroform's effects.

Nevertheless, Hawk had taken the jar and rag with him that morning upon leaving the doctor's hermitage. He had heard too many tales about the wildest, most undisciplined of the McLoughlin triplets not to play it safe. And it was a good thing he had, since as it turned out Charity McLoughlin hadn't gone along peaceably.

At least she'd fallen for the lawman trick, which she, herself, had planted in Hawk's mind; it was consistent with the handcuffs he'd thought of himself. Getting her aboard the wagon had proved easy enough.

Brute strength, Sam's medicine, and the trappings bartered from a Uvalde lawman did have their advantages.

Right now, in the dark of midnight, as Hawk settled a boot heel on Sam Washburn's rickety corral rail while watching the hideaway's only door to the outside world, he rubbed the lump on his head and the bruise on his throat, then gave thought to the bite mark on his shoulder.

It was doubtful he'd have even gotten the opportunity to use the chloroform, had she known his true purposes in kidnapping her. As he'd been alerted, she would have fought to the death–clawing and spitting until the end–rather than go with him.

Better she should think he was out to ransom her, that he was a kidnapper interested only in dirty recompense.

She'd learn the truth soon enough.

“Reckon she knows who you are?” asked Sam.

“I doubt it. I've been told she'd recognize my full name, but . . .”

“You gonna tell her?”

“No. I was warned she'd be set against returning to the fold, and from what I've gathered, that is the case. I can't let her make that connection.” He cast an eye at his old friend from Fort Smith, who was swilling from a flask of rye whiskey. “Shouldn't have been this way, Sam. Figured when I met Charity McLoughlin, it would be on her turf. At some fancy ball . . . with violins playing. Or somesuch.”

A white man with a red man's way of thinking, Sam chuckled. “Your lawyering in Washington was a bad influence, my Osage friend. You went soft in the heart.”

Hawk pushed away from the corral railing and straightened. “Better check on the woman,” he said, inhaling the clean, dry smell of south Texas. Lacking the beauty of the high plains, this was a flat, harsh land, swept by drought and dotted with chaparral and cactus; it would be a difficult place to hide in. But he would find a way to keep out of the paths of well-meaning strangers who might come to a kidnapped woman's aid. “She may be sick, once she wakes up.”

“Another sign of your soft heart. Never thought I'd see the day you'd turn sap.” Sam tapped the flask into his back pocket, then ran long fingers through his crop of gray hair. “Look at you, Fierce Hawk of the Osage. Worrying over a white woman, dressed as a paleface–”

“I draw less attention, wearing the raiment of their kind.”

Sam chuckled dryly. “You may not know it, but you've turned into a paleface. Your speech, your mannerisms. And in a dozen other ways that I doubt you're aware of.”

Hawk crossed his arms and tucked his fingers under his armpits. Was Sam's assessment correct?

“I suppose you aren't alone in doing such,” said the grizzled physician of fifty winters. “Many of your people have taken the white man's habits.”

“The times forced us into it.” A sour note curdled Hawk's tone. “In Washington I behaved as a white man. As you know, that was the expected conduct for an advocate of Indian rights. If one wanted to be taken seriously.”

Hawk knew the older man needed no reminders of acceptable behavior, that which was dictated by the white race; in siding with a renegade Kiowa in a dispute with the army, Sam Washburn–a mountain man whose brilliance with a scalpel had earned him a degree from a prestigious school–had lost his medical practice in Arkansas.

Under the full moon Sam scrutinized Hawk. “It's been difficult for us both, life. I've suffered for siding with the red man. And you're out of place in both worlds.”

“Sam–”

“Had you been born in the previous century, or even earlier in this one, you could've gone with your instincts. You could have ridden the plains, free as the wind, your bow and arrow at the ready. You would have been a warrior with a war. And you would've been a good warrior.”

But now, in 1889, Hawk had nothing to fight for.

“Since you're more white than Osage–”

“I don't accept my mixed heritage.”

“Accept it, Hawk. Accept it. You're more than halfway there already. You've got an advantage. Your white blood near-about overrode your Indian strain. Most folks figure you're white. Or no more than a white man with a native ancestor somewhere in the family tree.”

“You know it needles me when I'm mistaken for something I am not.”

“But you are what you are. Be as white as you can. Be the white man's attorney. And make use of the legacy from your paleface grandmother in Maryland. You'll be well-served, since there's no future for your people.” On a dry note, Sam added, “And your money is the great equalizer.”

All of that might have been good advice, but Hawk would rather have been born a century earlier. “Your suggestions are unacceptable.”

“Then you're a fool, my friend.” Sam glanced at the sky; moonlight highlighted his prominent nose when he lowered his intense scrutiny. “The Indian culture has been dying since ole Christopher Columbus first set foot on American soil.”

It had taken hundreds of years for Europeans to subdue the natives. Now, that task was on the road to completion. It left a bitter taste in Hawk's mouth, especially as Sam was echoing advice given him by the land-baron senator from Texas, Gil McLoughlin of Fredericksburg.

Hawk took his own look at the moon. It was the same moon shining over the Osage reservation, up in the Territory. What were his mother and father doing now? Had the corn crop been brought in? What about Amy? Had his sister delivered her baby yet? He shook off sentimental thoughts, replacing them with angry ones. He thought about how, without a shot being fired, the Territory Indians had stood by passively and allowed the land rush of the previous April.

By May first the council elders had sent a communiqué to Washington ordering Hawk to cease his demands for fair play. He severed his ties with his Osage brethren that same afternoon. At least one thing was accomplished before his leaving. Congress granted the Osage nation sovereign rights to their latest reservation. But how long would that last?

“Will you marry the woman, now that you've captured her?” Sam inquired.

Shaken out of his gloom, Hawk grinned. His thoughts went back to that day in 1869 when he had told the lovely German woman Lisette McLoughlin, then carrying her triplets, that he meant to take her daughter as his own. “It was a boy's decision, my intentions to marry a McLoughlin daughter.”

“Yep, but I've heard you talk about it since you were knee-high to a grasshopper. And here lately, you still . . .”

Hawk laughed. “I'd be lying if I said I haven't given it a thought or two.”
Or a thousand.
“But you know what's going on in my life. I've no business with a wife. Especially one as wild and felonious as Charity McLoughlin.” Another chuckle. “You should have seen her earlier this evening–she's the image of her father. Obstinate as a Missouri mule.”

“That so? Seems to me, I recall you never had anything against women more mulish than your own self.”

Hawk cleared his throat. Best to shut up. He didn't hanker to discuss the lustful thoughts he'd been entertaining from the first moment he'd laid eyes on Charity McLoughlin.

Settling an elbow on the corral rail, Sam cocked his head. “Why'd you want one of them in the first place?”

“I figured the daughters would be as good as the mother.” Lisette, a pretty blonde who had accompanied her husband on a cattle drive through the territory, had said the right words to bolster Hawk's youthful vanity. And she had set him on the road to education. Back then–and now–she was a damned good woman.

“In my mind,” he said to Sam, “I always figured any daughter of that good lady would be smart and brave and compassionate. A woman who'd fight at her man's side, rather than against him. Like her mother. Like a good Indian woman. Perhaps she is. But I'm thinking Charity isn't.”

“Good or no-good, she's a fine-looking gal. I myself always liked 'em like that, tall and brunette and top-heavy.” Sam hitched up his pants. “If I were a young buck like you–”

“I don't have anything against her looks.”

“Then what about one of the sisters? You said you heard the three ladies look just the same. Maybe one of the other two would be more to your liking.”

“Even if I were interested, which I am
not,
one is married and the other attends a university back East.”

“Okay. Don't marry any of them.”

“I won't.”

“I doubt their father would allow it, anyway.”

“Right.”

Were he salivating for the love of Charity, Hawk supposed he'd have the fight of his life with Gil McLoughlin. But as it was, he wasn't panting for wedlock. Bedding Charity was a different matter.

The sound of horses neighing in the corral diverted Sam's attention. “Think I'll take a walk,” he said. Maybe give the girls a goodbye pat, seeing's how you'll be taking them tomorrow.”

Half listening, Hawk nodded. Yes, come morning, he'd hitch up the elderly mares for the trip to Miss Charity McLoughlin's destiny.

An image formed. He saw the woman he'd been following for days, who was now sleeping just yards away. She was all the things Sam had mentioned admiring in looks. And more. Her eyes–the contrast of those blue, blue irises to her sable-dark mass of waves–could neither be ignored nor forgotten.

But she was trouble.

It hadn't taken much investigating to discover she'd fallen in with the notorious Adriano Gonzáles and his bandits. Several of them had died at the hands of John Hughes and his Rangers upon being ambushed near Shafter, but somehow Charity had escaped with her life. Hawk grimaced. A woman ought to behave, ought to be above reproach.

And though the law wasn't yet aware of Charity's complicity in the smuggling, Hawk was sure that was only a matter of time.

Charity McLoughlin needed a damned good lawyer.

David Fierce Hawk was a damned good lawyer.

But he had to get his life in order, perhaps by setting up a law practice in Texas's capital at Austin. Back in Washington, in the wake of recalling their meeting in '69, Gil McLoughlin had suggested the Austin move. “Success in Texas will mean playing up your white blood,” Hawk had been advised. Such a proposal had and did sit like a tomahawk in his gut. Yet, at loose ends after the fiasco of the previous spring's land rush, Hawk had been curious enough to travel to Texas and seek the rancher-solon out.

A week of indecision ensued.

On a horseback ride across the vast Four Aces Ranch, McLoughlin had asked, “Will you make your home in Austin?”

“I've got to give it more thought.”

“If not Austin, what then?”

“Time will tell.”

But what were his options? There just weren't that many wars left to wage for an Osage in these times.

He eyed McLoughlin, seeing silver-winged black hair and an air of confidence etching a sun-dried face. Hawk grinned. “Maybe I do have an idea or two,” he joked. “Maybe I'll just find me some nice white woman and wage war with her. Where did you say those unmarried daughters of yours are right now? Margaret, for instance.”

A look crossed McLoughlin's face much akin to that of an Apache with a thorn in his toe–black fury. “I respect you, David Fierce Hawk,” he replied with a note of restraint in his voice. “I think you're one helluva lawyer, and you're a damned fine man, but don't overstep your bounds.”

Bounds? More like racial lines,
Hawk thought.

Hawk set his mount into a prance to circle in front of McLoughlin. “All right, forget Margaret. What about the other one? Charity. You said yourself she's been a hellion since the day she was born.” Spunky had always had its allure to Hawk. “I could take her off your hands.”

“Do as you please.” McLoughlin tugged on the reins and kicked his mount. “As far as I'm concerned, that one is dead and buried.”

Hawk knew Lisette stood by her husband's decision over their black-sheep daughter, though he had seen sadness in her expression. A damned sorrowful situation. Catching up with the senator, Hawk said, “She couldn't be all that bad, your girl.”

“Dammit, don't concern yourself with my family. And don't interfere, either.”

On that August morning, Hawk had laughed heartily. The senator might claim to have buried a daughter, but blood ran thicker than family feuds. And if red were to mix with McLoughlin white . . .

“No need to worry yourself,” he called after the departing McLoughlin. “I'll keep my britches buttoned where your girls are concerned.”
Maybe.