Lone Star Loving Read online

  “Yes, I need one. But how would I pay?”

  “You could ask your mother. Or your great-grandmother.”

  Pain, icy and sharp, lodged in Charity’s veins. “My mother stands by whatever my father says, and Maiz...” She swallowed. Neither one has done so much as drop me a postcard.

  “What about your brother?”

  “Angus? He’s but a child. Thirteen.”

  “You have two sisters.”

  Charity glanced at the clock that sat on the battered bureau. Fifteen long minutes had passed since she had left the Ranger on the street. She set the valise on the floor. “Maria Sara, I’ve got to go.”

  “How can I help?”

  Charity hesitated. The young mexicana’s financial situation wasn’t much better than hers, given that she had a young son to support on a meager salary. As friends, though, each had always helped the other.

  Charity’s problems–at least those associated with south Texas—had started the previous May, when she’d arrived in Laredo to marry the son of a local Anglo politician. After Ian Blyer proved to be a scoundrel interested only in getting his mitts on McLoughlin money, Maria Sara Montana had flown to her aid with an offer of friendship.

  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.

  But if Margaret or Olga knew–

  “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.

  Chapter Two

  “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.

  Chapter Three

  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.

  What a hellcat.

  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 b
e 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.”