Nightway (11 page)

Even before the four riders came close enough for Hawk to see their faces clearly, he recognized them. The two riders lagging behind were ranch hands, Bill Short and Luther Wilcox. The man sitting so stiffly in
his saddle was Chad Faulkner. He was riding beside Tom Rawlins.

“Oh, no! It’s Daddy!” Carol sobbed behind him and Hawk turned to find her fumbling with the snap on her jeans.

Making a lightning-quick assessment, Hawk realized there was no hope of fooling Rawlins. His view of the scene might have been limited by distance, but Rawlins would have seen enough to know what had preceded his arrival. Reaching down, he scooped his shirt off the ground and slipped his arms into the sleeves, but he made no attempt to button it or tuck it into his denims. Carol’s hands were still all thumbs, unable to fasten the hook of her bra when he turned away to step between her and the quartet of riders, led by her father.

Fifteen feet away, the horses were reined to a sliding halt as the riders piled out of their saddles. Hawk’s attention focused on Rawlins, paying scant heed to the riders who flanked the man who was now striding forward. Rawlins was small-built but wire-tough. The man’s quietness was deceptive, but Hawk had never underestimated the man’s strength or will. Running a ranch this size, as Rawlins did, meant keeping thirty and more rough and rowdy cowhands in line, something the man had been doing for more than half of Hawk’s life.

A fair man. If Rawlins had a blind spot, it was his daughter. She could do no wrong in his eyes. Hawk knew this situation was going to rearrange his timetable, moving forward his marriage plans to this summer instead of the next. Hawk respected this man who had taken him in, raised him, and taught him everything he knew about cattle and ranching. No matter how severely tested his temper was, Rawlins had always been a man who listened to reason.

But at the moment, the savagely hard and cold
expression on the man’s face didn’t appear to belong to someone willing to listen to explanations. Hawk stood his ground, meeting the raging look of the man facing him without flinching. Behind him, he could hear Carol breathing in gasping sobs.

“What the hell is this?” Rawlins thundered. “What have you done to my little girl?”

Prepared for such an outburst, Hawk didn’t let the anger touch him. “Tom, I—” He never had a chance to finish the sentence.

“Daddy, I didn’t want to,” Carol sobbed in shrill hysteria. “He made me, Daddy. He held me down.”

Stunned by this false accusation, Hawk jerked his head around to stare at her. Tears were washing down her face, stained red with shame. The white straps of her bra were falling loosely off her shoulders as she huddled behind the blouse she held in front of her. The watery green of her eyes was focused on her father, pleading with him. Hawk felt the sickening shock of betrayal.

“I treated you like a son, you goddamned son-of-a-bitchin’ bastard!” Rawlins snarled in hate. “And you repay me by raping my baby!”

Hawk turned back to forcefully deny the charge, but he never had a chance to speak. What felt like a steel rod was rammed into his stomach, driving the air from his lungs and doubling him in half. A fist exploded against his jaw, the force of it straightening him and sending him flying backward to the ground. Pain roared through his head.

A woman’s scream echoed through his brain as he shook his head, trying to clear its fuzziness. As he pushed his swaying body to his knees, his blurred vision saw Carol running to Chad. He never made it to his feet as another blow sent him sprawling into the dirt.

Again, Hawk wedged an arm between his body and
the ground to lever himself upright. Before he could carry out the attempt, the toe of a boot was driving into his ribs, lifting the middle of his body, and rolling him over. Sheer instinct took over, rolling his body another revolution away from his attacker and letting the momentum bring him woodenly to his knees.

As Rawlins advanced toward him, Hawk dove for him. A fist clipped his temple, but Hawk got his arms around the man’s waist and hung on to drive Rawlins backward. Hawk’s superior size and weight should have forced Rawlins to the ground and give Hawk the few seconds he needed to clear his reeling senses so he could defend himself.

But Rawlins didn’t go down. Something supported him. In the next second, a different pair of hands was dragging Hawk away from his attacker. His first thought was that someone was trying to stop the fight until he realized no one was holding Rawlins. With his arms pinned in a vise-like grip, he couldn’t ward off the swinging fist that slammed into his stomach.

Struggling wildly, Hawk nearly freed an arm, but his captor was joined by a second man. Some distant part of his brain realized the two men holding him for the beating were the cowhands, Bill Short and Luther Wilcox, men he’d ridden with and worked beside. But Rawlins’ fists were hammering him to pieces, blotting out the sun and his memory.

Blinded, stunned, and helpless, he felt the strength going out of his legs. He sagged, kept upright only by the two men who held him. A bone popped, enveloping him in a red mist of pure agony. More blows fell, but Hawk had begun to sink into a black oblivion that offered numbness. His weight grew heavier and heavier, pulling at the hands that held him. His head was on a swivel that allowed it to roll with the slamming fists.

The blackness swallowed him and he slumped over like a dead weight.

“He’s finished, boss.” Luther Wilcox was on Hawk’s right. He let go of his arm.

“Pick him up.” Rawlins’ voice was guttural and winded, vibrating with savagery.

For a pulsebeat, there wasn’t a sound. Then Luther hissed an appeal for some rational thinking. “You can’t kill him, boss. My God, he’s—” His gaze darted to Chad. He checked the words he’d been about to say, not wanting to be the one who called attention to Hawk’s blood relationship to Chad.

Moreover, Luther wasn’t convinced that Tom Rawlins was within his rights to do more than just work Hawk over. He’d seen Rawlins’ daughter out riding with Hawk a couple of times this summer. If Hawk took advantage of the girl, it might have been because he’d been given some encouragement. And he wasn’t so sure Hawk was the only one. Besides, there was J. B.’s reaction to consider if Hawk was killed.

The silence lengthened without Luther’s appeal for reason being dismissed. Vengeance still burned in the set of Rawlins’ features, but the murderous light was fading from his eyes. Luther sent a brief, sidelong glance at the cowboy gripping the waist of the half-crumpled body.

“Let him go, Bill,” Luther ordered with a nodding gesture of his head, his voice low and quiet, careful not to let his tone usurp Rawlins’ authority.

There was a dull thud as the arm was dropped and the rest of the body hit the ground. It seemed to snap Rawlins out of his poised stance, his hands stiffly flexing out of their fists. He turned to shoot a glance at his daughter. At some point, with Chad’s help, she had succeeded in putting on her blouse. His arms were
around her, offering both protection and comfort. She had buried her face in the front of his shirt. The handsome face of Chad Faulkner smiled grimly back at Rawlins. Then his hands were moving to her arms to hold her away from him.

Her fingers clutched at the front of his shirt. “Hold me, Chad,” she whimpered.

“Wait here,” Chad ordered gently. “I’m just going to get your horse.”

As Chad moved away from her, Rawlins walked over. Her head was bowed, her face hidden from his sight by a tangled curtain of gold hair. When he laid a hand on her shoulder, she trembled and turned her head away from him. Rawlins murmured something which produced an affirmative nod. It was Rawlins’ shoulders that were hunched as he removed his hand, a sensation of helplessness seeming to defeat him.

Halfway to Carol’s ground-hitched horse, Chad stopped beside the limp body. He looked down; then he stepped over the still form to gather the reins of Carol’s horse and lead it over to the girl.

The bay horse Hawk had been riding lifted its head and whickered a protest at the sight of the five riders trotting away from the wellhead. No one looked back. Its reins were dragging the ground and the horse was too well trained to ignore their significance. The horse turned its head to the man on the ground, its ears pricking, but the man didn’t move. Lowering its head, the horse began to graze again, the bit jangling between its teeth as it tore off chunks of nourishing yellow grass.

When Hawk finally regained consciousness, the high desert air was cool and the sky was a black backdrop to a parade of stars. Everything was fuzzy. At first he couldn’t figure out where he was or why he was lying on the ground. Then he tried to get up. A pain, so sharp
and so intense, stabbed through him and he collapsed with an unearthly cry. When he could think clearly again, Hawk realized that the ribs on his right side were either cracked or broken.

Favoring them, he tried again to rise. This time he succeeded in staggering to his feet, where he swayed drunkenly. The top of his skull hammered, making it difficult to string two thoughts together. His face felt all pulpy and broken. There was something wrong with his nose. His eyelids were all puffed up, the openings merely narrow slits. Every part of him ached, some worse than others, his muscles stiff, cramped, and sore. His mouth felt dry and cracked, throbbing with the pain of a thousand needles. Hawk attempted to moisten his lips and tasted grains of dirt mixed with salty blood and sweat.

He started to lift a hand to his mouth when he heard the rattle of a bridle bit. Turning, Hawk tried to locate the source of the sound. Outlined against a night sky, he recognized the shape of a horse a few feet from where he was standing. He tried to walk to it, but the signals his brain sent to his legs became muddled in the transmission. His steps were uncoordinated, almost drunken.

When he reached for the reins, the horse shied away from the smell of blood he carried. Hawk spoke to the animal, slipping into the Navaho tongue. It snorted nervously, but let him catch the reins and loop them over its neck. Wedging a foot into the stirrup, he used all his strength to haul his body into the saddle. Hawk locked both hands around the saddlehorn in a death grip, leaving the reins slack and giving the horse its head.

The animal needed no urging to turn for its home corral, striking out in a jarring trot. Hawk passed out before they had traveled a hundred yards. Instinct
alone kept him in the saddle, his legs clamped to the horse’s sides and his hands strangling the saddlehorn.

Hawk surfaced from the pain-induced stupor long enough to realize the horse had stopped. He nudged it with the heel of his boot. The horse shifted, but refused to go forward. Hawk roused himself sufficiently to look around. It was several seconds before his brain could identify the corral. He swayed in the saddle, nearly falling off. Somewhere, not far away, he heard the sound of someone leading a horse, but his haze of pain was too dense to let it mean anything. He concentrated his efforts on dismounting with the minimum amount of pain.

“Hawk!” Someone called his name. It was a voice he should know. Only when the person spoke again did he recognize the concerned and rasping voice as his father’s. “I heard there was trouble. I was just going to ride out to look for you.”

One foot touched the ground, but he lost his balance when his boot slipped out of the stirrup. Clutching the saddlehorn with one hand, Hawk swung around in a weaving half-circle. The horse’s flank was a wall for his back to lean against and stopped him from making a complete circle. With difficulty, he focused his eyes on the stricken face of his father as the man paused in mid-stride.

“Oh, my God, Hawk!” The hoarse words were ripped from his father’s throat. Then he raised his voice to shout: “Frank! Pedro! Come over here and give me a hand!”

“No!” Hawk’s refusal rang out clear and strong when J. B. took a step toward him.

But a great weariness was threatening to overwhelm him. Pain was a hot fire that burned and pulsed over his face and throughout his body. From the murky depths of his memory, Hawk dredged up the knowledge that
this corral shared a long horse trough with the adjoining one. Releasing the saddlehorn, he ordered his weaving, staggering legs to carry him to it.

When he reached it, his hands gripped the metal sides to steady himself. Then he immersed his head into the water all the way to his shoulders. As he surfaced, the shock of the cool water washed his senses clear. His awareness returned. He could think coherently again. Something warm trickled from his nose, and it wasn’t the water that was streaming from the rest of his head. Hawk realized that not only were his ribs broken, but also his nose. Out of the slitted corner of an eye, he saw his father approaching and remembered the first words his father had said.

“You were coming to look for me?” It was difficult to make his split and swollen lips shape the words. Hawk knew his speech was slurred. “Did somebody finally do something that wasn’t part of your plans? Did you forget to tell Rawlins that you were going to buy me some respectability in a few years?”

Still leaning on the metal sides of the water trough for support, Hawk turned his head to look at his father. Other cowboys had gathered behind J. B. besides the two he had summoned by name. Hawk was beyond caring who heard what he said, gripped by a reckless indifference.

“I never guessed you were so … badly beaten up.” It was a lame comment, a weak attempt to avoid the rawly worded questions.

“What did you expect?” Hawk spat in disgust. The violence behind his words caused rib bone to scrape against rib bone, resulting in a searing pain stabbing into his side and drawing an involuntary gasp from Hawk.

“We’d better get you to a doctor.” His father started toward him again.

“No!” Hawk leaned heavily on the trough until the sickening weakness passed. Hanging his head, he closed his eyes. There was nothing a doctor could do for a broken nose or ribs. No internal damage had been done—no lung had been pierced.

“I’ll talk to Tom and get this straightened out,” J. B. said.

Gathering himself together, Hawk straightened into an unsteady but upright position and faced his father. “A long time ago, J. B., you counseled me that I would have to make my own way. I don’t need you to make plans for me. I’ll handle Rawlins alone—the same way I have handled everything else.” He rejected the offer of help with careless disdain.