Nightway Page 6

  “Yes, sir.” The crisp nod seemed to match the severely squared shoulders and the artificially erect posture.

  “What did you bring Chad?” Katheryn repeated the question that wasn’t answered earlier.

  The hesitation was almost imperceptible. “Nothing. Chad already has two of everything.”

  “Do you mean that you bought that Indian boy something and you don’t have a gift for your own son?” Her voice was cold with anger.

  His father stiffened, then relaxed with a heavy sigh. “That is precisely what I mean. Shall we continue this discussion some other time? I’ve had a long drive and I’m tired.”

  The rigidity left the woman’s expression. “Of course you are. Chad, go in the house and pour your father a glass of whiskey.” She moved to link her arm with his father’s and guide him toward the house. “Don’t bother about the luggage, J. B. I’ll send someone out to fetch it.”

  Hawk watched the trio disappear into the house before his gaze fell to the brightly colored shirt in his hands. A wind rustled the paper it had been wrapped in. It was an empty sound.

  Shortly after his father’s return, there was an unexpected addition to Hawk’s nightly routine of chores, homework, and bed. Since Carol was only seven years old, her bedtime was much earlier than his. It was always a drawn-out affair because she would try to wheedle a few extra moments. When that failed, she kissed her mother good night, then her father, and persuaded him to take her to the kitchen for a drink of water. Only after that would she go to bed.

  This night, after her drink of water, she stopped beside the kitchen chair where Hawk was studying and kissed him on the cheek. “Good night, Hawk,” she declared gaily and skipped away.

  At the touch of her lips, he had recoiled instantly, shocked by what she had done. In the Navaho belief, any contact with members of the opposite sex within the same clan was strictly forbidden, no matter how distant a relative was. He glanced sharply at Rawlins, expecting him to be angry with his daughter. Instead, the man was smiling.

  “Is it permitted for her to do that?” Hawk questioned warily.

  “Of course.” Rawlins laughed at the question and wandered into the front room.

  As far as Hawk was concerned, there was only one conclusion to be drawn from the answer. Although he lived in Rawlins’ house, he had not been taken in as a member of their clan. He was separate from them.

  Through the long winter and into spring, Hawk rarely saw his father. The trip to Phoenix turned out to be the first of many. Before he left and each time he came back, his father would seek out Hawk and, depending on the length of his return visits, would see him several times in between. The discussions were either instructive or related to how Hawk was doing with various school subjects. Never was Hawk asked how he was adjusting to his new life, how he was getting along with the Rawlinses, or if he missed the Reservation life.

  Always the time spent with his father was alone. No one else was ever included. Each time his father came back from a trip, he brought Hawk a present. One time it was a shiny new pocketknife, another time a leather belt, and so on. Hawk had no way of knowing whether Chad received a gift, too.

  By the time school closed for the summer, he had learned the meaning of words like “bastard,” “mistress,” and “illegitimate.” Listening to the conversations of the cowboys, Hawk heard the contempt they held for most of the Indians.

  Gradually, it became apparent to him that his father felt shame … shame because Hawk had been born on the wrong side of the blanket and because his mother was an “Indian squaw.” That was why his father only saw him alone.

  There were times when he remembered wistfully what it had been like when his mother was alive. Seated at the table, he would stare at slices of the soft, white bread. His mouth would wish for the taste of the tortilla-like bread his mother used to make. He would lie in bed at night, listening to the creaking of the wood house, and long to hear the comforting repetitious chants of the “sings.” Sometimes he would sing them to himself, but he had to do it softly, or else the woman Rawlins would come to his room and whip him with her stinging tongue.

  The advent of summer meant spending most of every daylight hour outside. It was taken for granted that he would work. The cowboys had grown used to having him around all the time and had ceased to regard him as an oddity. Sometimes they even included him in their jokes and laughter. Hawk had such a natural aptitude and an eagerness to learn that they were always giving him tips and pointers.

  The first week of June, Chad came home to the ranch for the summer. The first few days after his return, Hawk saw little of him. Late one afternoon he had just finished his assigned task of cleaning out two of the barn stalls when Chad walked in.

  “Have you see my father?” Chad followed Hawk to the water hydrant that stood by the horse troughs in the corral. “We’re supposed to go riding this afternoon.”

  “No.” Hawk turned on the faucet and bent to drink from the running water, the excess spilling in to fill the horse tank.

  “He’ll probably be here shortly,” Chad replied with unconcern and rested the toe of his boot on the bottom rail of the corral fence. With his thirst slaked, Hawk shut off the hydrant and glanced at his half-brother. There was nothing in his expression to indicate his presence was unwanted. A natural curiosity to know more about this stranger who was his relative kept Hawk by the corral fence. Chad sent a sidelong glance his way, then let his gaze sweep over the area. “All this is going to be mine someday,” he announced, then looked back at him and said nothing. “I know who you are.” He began to study Hawk with a quiet kind of curiosity. “I’ve heard my mother talk about you.”

  “What does she say?” The fascination he felt for his father’s first wife had increased over the months until Hawk became totally entranced by her.

  But Chad wasn’t interested in answering Hawk’s question. “Was your mother really a Navaho?”

  “Yes.” Hawk could read no contempt in his half-brother’s face.

  “Have you ever been to any of their ceremonies?” he wondered.

  “Yes.”

  “Jess Hanks, this friend of mine at school, says that they carry rattlesnakes in their mouth.”

  “The Hopi does this in his snake dance,” Hawk explained.

  “Don’t they get bit?”

  “Sometimes.” Hawk shrugged to show it was unimportant.

  Chad digested that and looked around disinterestedly. “Is it true your mother was a whore and that she would sleep with anyone my father told her to?”

  The insult sparked the flames that leaped in Hawk’s eyes. “She was his second wife. She slept with no one but him.”

  Chad laughed at that. “His second wife! A man can only have one wife at a time, and he was married to my mother. If your mother slept with him, then she was a whore.”

  Anger deprived Hawk of all sense of caution. It ceased to matter that Chad was older, taller, and stronger, or even that he was his half-brother. He hurled himself at him. The ferocity of the attack knocked Chad to the ground. The two scuffled in the dirt, with Hawk kicking and hitting and inflicting some damage, but Chad soon gained the upper hand. Twisting an arm behind Hawk’s back, Chad straddled him and pushed his face in the dirt.

  “Do you give up?” Chad demanded in a voice that was hoarse from breathlessness. When there was no sound of surrender, he applied more pressure to the twisted arm. “Do you give?” Hawk gritted his teeth and shut out the cry of pain that tried to escape from him.

  “What’s going on here?” J. B.’s gruff voice loosened Chad’s hold. In the next minute, Chad was standing up and Hawk was free. A large pair of hands insisted on helping Hawk to his feet, then brushed the dirt from his cheek. “Are you hurt, boy?” Hawk kept his eyes downcast as he shook his head in denial. “Go to the house, Chad,” his father ordered.

  “But we’re supposed to go riding together,” Chad protested.

  “I said go to the house!”

  “I nev
er started it. He did!” Chad cast an accusing finger at Hawk.

  “I don’t care who started it! I want you to go to the house!” J. B. turned his head to enforce the order with a piercing look. With a mutinous set to his mouth, Chad reluctantly obeyed.

  “What started the fight, Hawk?” his father demanded when Chad was gone.

  Hawk lifted his head to study him with emotionless blue eyes. “Were you married to my mother?”

  A certain grimness settled onto his father’s features. “Yes, we were married in the way of The People.”

  “But it isn’t the way of the white man.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Because I loved your mother; therefore, I respected her ways.”

  “But in the white man’s way, she wasn’t your wife.”

  “In my heart, White Sage was my wife,” his father insisted.

  “Then why did you not marry her in the white man’s way?” Hawk did not relent in his search for an understanding.

  “Look around you, Hawk. Your mother would not have been happy here. If I had married her, this would have been her home.”

  He could see the truth in his father’s words. That part was settled in his mind. “I am your son. Why don’t I live in your house?”

  “It isn’t possible,” his father declared with a helpless shake of his head.

  “At school they call me a half-breed—half-Indian and half-white.”

  “It would be harder for you if you lived in my house,” J. B. explained wearily.

  “Because they would call me a bastard,” Hawk guessed, speaking the word in a voice that held no feeling.

  “Yes. Now do you understand why I don’t want you to carry that burden, too?”

  “Are you worried how people will think of me, or how they will think of you?” he asked, exhibiting a wisdom beyond his years.

  Guilt blanched his father’s face. “Try to understand, Hawk. There are more people involved than just you and me. I have to consider Katheryn and Chad, too. I’ve provided you with a good home. You’ll have the best education. There will come a time when you can get involved in my business.”

  Hawk looked at him with impassive blue eyes. He saw the weak side of his father’s character. He was disillusioned but not bitter. Slowly he turned and walked away—alone. There were so many considerations to be weighed.

  To celebrate the Fourth of July, the Flying F Ranch held its own rodeo and barbeque. There was a lot of good-natured rivalry and competition among the cowboys as they pitted their skills against each other in calf-roping, bull-dogging, steer-roping, and saddle-bronc riding. Even the children of the cowboys had an event of their own—a goat-milking contest. The last event was a horse race.

  When Hawk rode his chestnut horse to the starting line and crowded in with the other riders, there was a slight lull in the talking. Most of the cowboys at one time or another had seen the desert-bred pony stretch into a flat-out run and knew about its speed. Yet they glanced from one to the other, their eyes inevitably straying to a second boy entered in the competition on a sleek, long-legged bay. Chad Faulkner always won. The contest was who would take the second and third places.

  At the starting line, Katheryn Faulkner held the pistol, every inch the owner’s wife in her split riding skirt of leather and a matching leather vest over a white cotton blouse. Luther Wilcox was the cowboy closest to Hawk. He inched his horse nearer.

  “Your horse is good, but you can’t beat that bay of Chad’s,” he said.

  “His horse is faster,” Hawk agreed. “But I ride better.”

  The pistol was fired and the horses leaped forward. The race course was a mile-long run, its circuit extending across the grass pasture to a lone cotton-wood, then circling back to finish where they started.

  Hawk took the lead on his chestnut, then let the bay catch him and pass. Choosing his route with care, he avoided the rough ground that slowed the other horse. Instead of crossing the dry wash where it sloped, he guided his horse to the point where the gully was narrow and the banks were steep, and jumped his horse across it, taking the lead easily.

  The bay had nearly caught up with him when they reached the cottonwood, but its circle was wide. Hawk’s chestnut curved around it so close that the bark of the trunk scraped his knee. He was bent low over the horse’s neck, the wind-whipped mane stinging his face. The fleet-footed bay again made up the lost ground, only to lose it again at the gully.

  When they crossed the finish line, the chestnut was ahead by a neck. The pounding of racing hooves and the grunting of straining, equine breathing deafened Hawk to the hesitant and scattered cheers from the crowd.

  Flushed and exhilarated by his victory, he reined his horse into a canter and made a sweeping turn back to the finish line for his prize. The resentful look that clouded his half-brother’s expression when he rode by didn’t bother Hawk. His father was standing in the front of the crowd, wearing a faint smile of pride.

  It wasn’t his father’s approval and recognition of the victory that Hawk wanted as much as it was that of the slim, graceful woman who bestowed the ribbon and prize money to the winner. His blue eyes were shining with excitement as he rode toward her. He wanted her praise more than the prize.

  Little Carol was standing beside Katheryn when Hawk stopped his scrawny-looking mount. Long seconds passed before Katheryn Faulkner lifted her head to look at him. Something died inside of him when he saw the icy anger and hatred in her eyes. The smile of victory faded from his face as the chestnut danced and shifted beneath him. Hawk held her gaze with stubborn pride, refusing to be denied the recognition that was rightfully his.

  “You cheated,” she accused in a low, husky voice that trembled with barely controlled anger. The insulting words stung Hawk. A blinding feeling of hurt briefly darkened his eyes. “You only won because you deviated from the course of the race.”

  Someone stepped into Hawk’s side vision to stand beside the golden-haired girl clutching the woman’s hand. “He won fairly, Katheryn.” It was his father, speaking low, too, so those looking on couldn’t hear. “You can’t show favoritism for Chad in front of the others.”

  The blue ribbon and envelope of prize money were in her hand. Her smile was forced as she turned to the little girl beside her. “Here, Carol. You can give out the ribbon this time.”

  His father reached down and picked the girl up by the waist so she could reach Hawk to present him with his winnings. As he reached out a hand to take the ribbon and envelope from her, Carol drew them back and sent a frowning look over her shoulder at his father.

  “But I wanted to give them to Chad,” she protested. “He should have won.”

  “Yes, he should have,” J. B. Faulkner agreed. “But Hawk gets the blue ribbon. You can give the red one to Chad.”

  With obvious reluctance, Carol gave Hawk the first prize. Carol’s defection came as no surprise to Hawk. The rare times that Chad came home from the private school he attended, and deigned to notice the daughter of the ranch foreman, she treated him like a god.

  Taking his prize, Hawk relaxed the pressure on the horse’s bit and kicked it into a trot toward the barns where the other cowboys and horses were milling. When he joined them to dismount and unsaddle his horse, conversation lagged. A few of them acknowledged his win, tossing out subdued comments.

  “Good job.”

  “Helluva ride, Hawk.”

  Hawk didn’t make a single response, hiding his disappointment behind a mask of stoic indifference.

  With the race over, everyone began drifting toward the lawn of the low, rambling main house where the barbeque was to be held. Hawk went, too, although his appetite was left behind. Keeping to the background, he joined the fringes of a group of ranch hands and their families and did nothing that would draw attention to himself. His gaze strayed often to his father’s first wife as she laughed and talked with those around her.

  Plates became emptied of food, were refil
led, and emptied again before bellies became stuffed to the point they could hold no more. Then the adults sat around in groups, talking, drinking, and laughing while the children played rowdily—all except Hawk, who merely sat beneath the shade of a tree and watched them all.

  “Hawk?”

  He glanced sideways in the direction of the little girl’s voice that had called his name. She came running toward him to stop somewhat breathlessly in front of him. Her tightly coiled ringlets of gold were starting to droop, the ends brushing the white ruffles of her pinafore. She was pretty, like a little pink and gold doll, and Hawk smiled.

  “Are you really an Indian, Hawk?” Her hands went to her hips as she asked the question, tilting her head to one side.

  “Yes, part Indian,” he admitted.

  His answer widened her eyes, which shimmered with curiosity and a hint of fear. “Do you scalp people?” she murmured in faint alarm.

  His eyes laughed with mischief. “Only little girls with yellow hair,” Hawk teased and made a playful lunge toward her.

  She ran from him, shrieking, “Chad! Chad!” She catapulted herself into the older boy’s arms when he appeared. “He was going to scalp me!” she cried. “Don’t let him get me, Chad!”

  “It’s all right, honey,” the boy soothed and sent Hawk a glaring look. “I won’t let him hurt you.”

  Hawk watched silently as the tall boy turned and carried the girl away.

  Late that night, Hawk slipped out of the house while everyone was sleeping, saddled his horse, and rode north. A full moon lit the way, silvering the land with its bright light. Many times he spurred his horse, feeling the presence of ghosts that traveled in the darkness of night.

  Before dawn, he arrived safely at the hogan of his mother’s uncle. He spent three days there before his father came to take him back. Hawk wasn’t unhappy to leave his mother’s relatives. Almost a year away from them had produced significant changes within himself. The absence of modern conveniences like electricity, running water, and indoor toilets didn’t bother him as much as the meager amount of food on the table; he also missed the nightly showers and having clean clothes to wear each day.