Chapter 7 #3
“Ah.” He stared at Skylar, still offering no apology or explanation. “Sam, do you have the lady’s trunk? Tell me where, and I’ll fetch it while Hawk and his, er, wife have their meal.”
“I’ll help you with my father later,” Hawk said.
Skylar felt his hands on her shoulders, propelling her back toward the table.
The Indian girl appeared again with heavy wooden bowls of venison swimming in gravy.
She set them down without comment and disappeared to return with a platter of fresh-baked bread.
Her eyes were on Hawk, but he was apparently very hungry. He ate, heedless of her regard.
Skylar didn’t think that she could manage anything after having inhaled the scent of the corpse. But she’d eaten almost nothing in two days, and when she took a bite of the venison, she found it delicious and realized that she was starving herself.
“When you going to have a proper service for his Lordship?” Riley asked Hawk.
“Tomorrow night.”
“I heard as how some suggested he should be buried in some big family vault in Scotland,” Sam said.
“His wishes were always clear. He wanted to be buried at Mayfair, next to my mother,” Hawk said. “He’ll have what he wanted. I’ll get the Reverend Mathews out tomorrow around dusk to say the words. You all ride on out if you wish.”
“Be fittin’,” Riley said.
“He was one fine man.”
“He was.”
Riley was suddenly staring at Skylar. “Did you know him well, Miss—Lady Douglas?” he asked politely.
Hawk had suddenly ceased to eat. He was watching her, just as politely, his coffee cup in his hands. “Did you know him well, my dear?”
“I knew him well enough to know that he was aware he was ill, though he had told no one else,” she said, returning Hawk’s challenging stare.
His eyes darkened. He lifted his cup to her. “What a deep and binding friendship,” he murmured, and only she, Skylar was certain, could hear the biting sarcasm in the comment. “I can’t wait for you to tell me all about it,” he continued politely. “Which I’m sure you’ll be doing very soon.”
“It’s difficult these days to be too sure about anything, isn’t it?” she inquired pleasantly.
He smiled. Sipped his coffee. “There are some things of which I am very sure,” he said softly.
“But you’re determined to find out things on your own,” she reminded him.
“You’ve suggested I do so.”
“From experience I know that you do so.”
“Sometimes it’s easier when I’m given a little information.”
“Pity is that you don’t seem to like to accept information when you’re given it,” she said very sweetly, very aware that both Riley and Sam had grown very silent, their eyes darting nervously from her to Hawk and from Hawk back to her again.
Hawk stared at her hard, setting down his cup. “You’re right. What I have to find out, I will,” he said simply. Then he stood abruptly. “Riley, you are managing to have food here good enough to attract a crowd. We’re trying to keep the population down around here, remember?”
“There’s gold here, Hawk. Ain’t much chance of that.”
“Reckon you’re right. I’m going to give Willow a hand with the coffin, then we’ll be on our way. Thanks for taking Pa in, Riley.”
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t have done for him,” Riley said sadly.
Hawk nodded, acknowledging the compliment. His eyes suddenly riveted on Skylar. “We’ll be on our way in a matter of minutes. Be ready.”
She resented his tone and didn’t reply. It didn’t matter. He didn’t expect a reply. He went down the hallway. It didn’t seem that a full minute had passed before she could see him and Willow through the doorway, carrying the coffin out to the wagon.
“So his attacking ‘Indians’ all speak excellent English as well!” Skylar murmured aloud.
“Now, young lady, that’s not quite true,” Sam said.
“Lots of his kin learned some of the language from David, and some Indians as of late have been learning what they can of the white man’s tongue in self-defense, but don’t you go assuming anything around here.
Willow lives not far from Mayfair. He’s got the prettiest little mixed-race baby girl you’d ever want to see.
But the other two Oglala with Hawk the other day are just about ready to turn their backs on all that’s white, period, plain and simple.
Then, you gotta remember this—many Sioux don’t think a thing about trading with a white man one day and declaring war on him the next.
These are dangerous times. You remember to take care out here, young lady. Great care!”
Skylar nodded. “Thanks for the warning. I’ll do that.”
“We’d best be getting you out there,” Riley said anxiously. “Looks like Hawk’s about ready.”
“And Hawk can’t wait a minute like anybody else, hmm?” Skylar asked him.
Riley stared at her, shaking his grizzled head. “Why, ma’am, I guess he’s just ready to get his father back home again.”
She nodded, sorry to upset these two. Despite the roles they had played in the charade, she liked them. They were comforting old fellows, two peas in a pod. And she might find friends few and far between out here.
“Then I’d best be going,” she said, striding by them out to the wagon. The coffin and her trunk lay in back. Wolf was in the back bed of the wagon as well, his muzzle set mournfully on the coffin.
Willow held the wagon reins in his hand while Hawk waited impatiently by the single step to the open front seat.
Before Skylar had quite reached him, he lifted her up, setting her down next to Willow.
“I’ll be riding ahead,” he told her flatly.
“It’s only a couple of hours to Mayfair.
The weather should hold.” He looked at Willow. “All set?”
“Yep, all set.”
“See you at home then.”
He stepped back, slapping the backside of one of the two heavy draft horses pulling the wagon.
Willow lifted the reins, and the wagon wheels began to turn.
They headed out from the flat expanse of rocky lawn in front of the inn to the road.
Skylar looked ahead as they jounced out onto it. Then she turned back.
Hawk had mounted, but he hadn’t yet left the inn. The Indian girl stood by his side, her hands on his foot where it rested in his stirrup. He looked down at her, speaking with her.
Skylar turned her eyes back to the road ahead. The man, Willow, at her side drove in silence, his eyes ahead as well.
“I don’t suppose you’re going to apologize for your part in that pathetic act the other day?” she inquired pleasantly.
A slight smile curved his mouth, but he didn’t glance her way.
“Act? He says that you are Lady Douglas, so you are. But that was no act, ma’am.
We are all Sioux warriors; we have all raided, seized wagons, stolen horses…
women.” He shrugged. At last he turned to her, looking her up and down.
“He needed to know who you were. It was the way he chose to find out. Apparently, he did. And you’re still here.
You haven’t run. So we didn’t frighten you so badly after all. ”
“You scared me half to death,” she told him. “But I don’t run easily.”
He smiled again, looking ahead at the horses. “Then maybe you’ll survive the Badlands,” he told her, adding softly, “and the times to come.”
“And your friends,” Skylar added beneath her breath. She wondered if he heard her. Perhaps he did because he laughed quietly.
The sun was just beginning to set. Burned into dark pastels, it sank into a mauve splendor that edged the hills in the distance.
From somewhere, a wolf howled.
And against the shadow-draped sky, the moon rose even as the sun sank. The air became chill and sharp. Flatlands stretched ahead until the abrupt rise of the hills. The night was suddenly silent.
But then she started as she heard the sound of horse’s hooves bearing down upon her.
She turned. Hawk rode at her side, looking down at her, his face as shadowed and dark and forbidding as the landscape.
“You’ve crossed onto Douglas property again,” he told her. “Mayfair lies ahead. As do the rivers, the hills—and true Sioux country.”
“So which is home?” she asked him.
“All of it,” he told her flatly. “But Mayfair is all you need to concern yourself with. I’ll be waiting there.
Just what was your exact comment last night?
What you want to know, you can just find out on your own?
Ah, yes, that was it. There’s a damned lot I still want to know. I’ll be waiting to find out on my own.”
She spoke softly, very aware of Willow at her side. “If you’re expecting something from me, you’ll be waiting until hell freezes over.”
“We’ll see,” he warned her. “We’ll see.” He nudged Tor. The stallion suddenly took flight in the night. A dark, soaring shadow, horse and rider disappeared across the plains.
But she knew well that Hawk hadn’t gone that far.
And that as he had promised, he’d be waiting.