Hawk 08, p.1
Hawk 08, page 1
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Jared Hawk wasn’t looking for a fight. Not until the marshal at Eagle Pass decided his woman was looking too long at the gunfighter, and threw Hawk in jail.
It was pure chance that the Kincaid gang chose then to raid the town. And the marshal made up his mind Hawk was one of them … and decided to hang him.
Hawk got offered a simple choice: wait around for the rope or go after the outlaws.
Kincaid’s men were mean. Natural killers. But so was Hawk.
He rode out to clear his name the only way he knew how… with a gun…
HAWK 8: DESPERADOES
By William S. Brady
First published by Fontana Books in 1981
Copyright © 1981, 2024 by William Stuart Brady
This electronic edition published April 2024
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by means (electronic, digital, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book / Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Series Editor: Chris Haynes
Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate.
Visit Piccadilly Publishing to read more about our books.
For Barry and Hilary
New Spring: New Beginnings: New Magic
Chapter One
THE COUPLE RACED along the low rim of land, man and horse together, muscles moving as one. The drum of hooves stirred the still air. A flash of harness silvered the sun, again and then another, harness and spur. The man was letting the animal choose her own pace, both of them enjoying the speed, the freedom. The man bent low over the horse’s neck, his hat blowing behind, attached by a cord to his neck. The wind caught inside his vest and swelled it out; it made the far corners of his eyes catch with water.
Gradually they began to slow down, the animal’s stride shortened, the man’s back straightened. He rocked forwards and back in the saddle, the reins wrapped about his wrist, slotted between his fingers. Sweat ran freely from them both; the breath from the horse’s nostrils sat on the air in small clouds.
They had slowed to a walk.
Down to the right, towards the south-west, a stream ran over its sandy bed, splashing up from time to time against whitened rocks in its midst. A small bird, agile and dark, a flash of bright blue about its wings, skimmed the surface of the water, taking insects. At the other side, the short grass over which they had been galloping lengthened where the land dipped slowly into the plain. It rose to a height of perhaps a foot, hardly more. Nothing to the tall grasses … Western Wheatgrass, Indian Grass, Big Bluestem, Switch Grass … that rose up from the Kansas prairie high enough to cover a man’s head when he walked out. Here the grass was not only shorter, but duller, lacking the fresh green, the bright color; here the green was subdued and shot through with patches of brown or flat red where the sun had dried it out.
Almost a mile ahead, after the stream had forked south, hills rose up from the land like a jagged barrier, purple and blue-gray shifting into a bluey-white that jostled with the sky.
The man pulled on the rein, steered with his knees, brought the mare down and round to the water.
They both drank.
The horse was an appaloosa, three years old, her head fine and narrow, legs strong and leanly muscled. Now, as she drank, the mare swished her tail at the flies which buzzed around her spotted rump. He had bought her down along the border, Laredo way. Or, rather, he had taken her in exchange for an I.O.U., scrawled on a scrap of paper by a drunken rancher who loved five-card stud a hell of a lot better than he played it. Next morning, early, Hawk had gone out to the ranch to claim his rights. The rancher had been sore-headed, arrogant; at first he’d tried to deny that the note was his and then when he hadn’t been able to talk his way out of that, he’d tried to put the man off and told him to wait a few days and then meet at the bank. That hadn’t been good enough. The appaloosa had been standing in the corral, a little way off from the other horses, apart as if special…
‘It’ll lose me fifty dollars at least if I take that animal off you, but I’ll do it just the same.’
‘The hell you will! That’s prize stock. I’m goin’ to race her and then breed her and—’
The rancher didn’t realize he was talking in the past. There wasn’t anything he was going to do with his appaloosa mare any more other than bid it goodbye.
The man squatted alongside the slow-moving stream now, cupping water in his hands and drinking, glancing every now and then towards the horse. Damn! She was a beauty! He smiled, his face relaxing, that was the best night’s cards he’d played for many a long while. The world all aces and eights. Yes, indeed.
He stood up and stretched, cleared his throat and spat down into the stream. He was a tall man, young but with the air of someone who has grown old in the world before his time; no surplus weight clogged the muscles of his body, he carried not one ounce of unnecessary fat. His face was lean also, the eyes clear yet cold, the lines at the corners of his mouth and alongside his narrowed eyes hardening.
His hair was dark and ragged at the point where it tumbled over the frayed collar of his bleached red shirt; his black, low-crowned hat still hung down behind his head. He wore brown pants, leather shotgun chaps fastened over them; brown boots with scuffed leather round the foot. A black leather vest was unbuttoned over his shirt.
He wore a gun belt strapped tight, the holster cut away for the Frontier model Colt .45 which nestled there, its smooth and shiny butt catching the sun as he turned towards his horse. The Colt wasn’t the only weapon the man carried.
A special holster had been made and fitted to the left side of his belt and it held a 10-gauge Meteor shotgun, the single barrel of which had been cut down to twelve inches. The grip had been shortened and rounded and it slanted across the front of his body for a cross-draw.
You’d ride a long way through the south-west before you saw another man who wore a weapon like that at his hip.
You’d ride a long way through the south-west before you met another man who measured up to Jared Hawk.
Hawk reached Eagle Pass about an hour after his stomach announced loud and clear that it was hungry. He’d ridden through the small town once before, on his way to the Rio Grande, which ran just to the south of the town, separating it from Piedras Negras, the Mexican settlement on the southern bank. He didn’t remember it as anything special, a bunch of adobe buildings hunched along either side of a wide main street, some kind of square with a well. A cemetery.
He passed the cemetery first, the figure of a woman standing in front of a freshly dug grave, flowers in her hands and the hands clenched at the waist of her dark blue dress. Behind her there was a low stone wall and behind that open country.
As Hawk rode by, the woman turned her head and he saw a rounded face framed by reddish-brown hair, brown eyes, a mouth that seemed to have a perfect shape. No smile. She swung her head away and Hawk watched a little longer, twisting in his Denver saddle.
The woman bent over the grave and set the flowers at its foot, placing them in an earthenware vase, then standing straight again, her hands joined as if she might be praying.
Hawk felt he was intruding and looked away.
A wagon drawn by four mules and driven by an old-timer with gray hair and a grizzled beard went slowly by in the opposite direction.
Hawk and the old man exchanged nods and grunts.
Hawk’s stomach did a little grunting of its own.
He grinned and patted the horse’s neck. ‘Guess you must be pretty hungry, too, eh? Well, we’ll see about you first, then get us a steak that looks big enough to fight back.’
The mare lifted her head and nickered.
The few folk that were on the street stopped and looked at Hawk as he rode by. There weren’t that number of strangers heading through Eagle Pass that you could afford to ignore any of them, but when they had two guns worn the way this man did and one of them some kind of shotgun worn like a pistol … well, you stood and stared like you was at a fair.
Hawk didn’t give a damn: Hawk was used to it.
Every new town, every saloon and every cantina it was the same. He couldn’t afford to mind. If men didn’t see him and note him down then how was he going to get work? Work with those guns. A pistoleer. A shootist. A bounty hunter if need be. Hawk’s guns were for hire to the highest bidder.
Hawk shifted the appaloosa across towards the side of the street and a young man with wire-rim spectacles and a white shirt suddenly stopped staring and turned away as if he’d that second recalled something important he had to do. In his haste he was clumsy and nearly fell, the heel of his right boot giving way under him.
Hawk was feeling good … he laughed at the man’s discomfort.
‘I’m lookin’ for the livery,’ Hawk said, a grin still on his lean face.
‘Up … it’s up past the end of the street… it’s—’ The man blinked at the sawn-off Meteor behind his spectacles and lost his words.
Hawk thanked him and wheeled the mare round and walked her past a couple of cantinas and a general store, a barber shop whi ch specialized in undertaking, dentistry and medicine, the Eagle Pass and South Texas Bank, a saddler’s and gun store, the Eagle Pass Grand Saloon and Miss Hester’s Dining Rooms (Bath: 5 cents). The street broadened into a wide square, at the center of which there was a stone-walled well, a couple of women standing there now, one of them winding a bucket of water to the surface. Almost immediately behind the well was a high barn with a painted sign at the front which announced it as the livery stable.
Hawk dismounted outside and began to loosen the mare’s girth while a man with the bottom half of his left leg made from wood came limping towards them.
‘Water an’ feed her, brush her down. Give her a good stall on her own.’
The man looked up at Hawk and nodded. He was around five seven and his body was sagging and loose. There was a cast in his right eye. Hawk wondered how he had lost his leg.
‘Stayin’ long?’
‘Maybe a couple of days. That matter?’
‘Uh-uh. Just interested is all.’
‘Yeah.’
Hawk unfastened his saddle bags and threw them over his left shoulder. He caught the livery man staring at the black glove that was held tight around his left hand by a length of black cord. The man’s mouth opened and Hawk thought he was about to ask him something about the glove. But it closed again without a word having been spoken. He was no more going to ask about Hawk’s hand than Hawk was going to ask about his leg. Besides, the stranger could have been wearing a single glove on account of he liked wearing a glove.
Hawk took a couple of dollar pieces from his vest pocket and dropped them into one of the livery man’s hands. ‘Here. That’s to tide you over. Any more an’ I’ll settle before I ride her out. Okay?’
The man nodded and began to lead the appaloosa into the high building. ‘That’s okay by me.’
‘See to her good now.’
‘Always do. Known for it. No one else round here cares for horses the way I do, say it myself.’
Hawk shrugged the saddle bags higher on his shoulder and walked across the square. He went past the well with the strong impression that he was being watched but when he stopped and looked around there was nobody obviously in sight … other than the one woman who was left at the well.
She smiled at Hawk, a short woman with a mass of brown curls and a wide mouth, breasts which pushed easily against the front of her white blouse. He grinned quickly back. She made a face, as if to say, winding this bucket filled with water, it is hard work.
Hawk took over from her and brought the bucket to the top easily and quickly, pouring the water for her into the two tall jugs she wanted to fill.
‘There are not many men who would help a woman,’ she said, ‘not for nothing.’
Her eyes smiled at him and ran down the leanness of his body. They said it need not, perhaps, be for nothing, this favor that you do me.
Hawk gestured with his right hand, it’s okay, and moved away. The woman shrugged so that her breasts bounced against the material of her blouse. She lifted the jugs, one on to her shoulder, one her head and, balancing them perfectly, walked slowly across the square.
Hawk hesitated outside Miss Hester’s Dining Rooms while a thin man in a blue shirt struck a match on the wall opposite and lit a thin cigar, peering at Hawk as he did so. There was a pistol holstered low on the man’s left side, worn as though he might be able to use it.
For several seconds they stared at one another.
The man with the cigar let a ring of smoke drift from between his lips and fade up into the air. He stood there long enough to show Hawk that he wasn’t scared of him or his fancy guns, then turned slowly and headed down the street.
Hawk watched him go for a few seconds more and then pushed open the door to the dining rooms and went inside. There were tables set along both sides of a narrow room, a dozen in all. Red and white or blue and white checkered cloths were spread over them, here and there spotted with gravy stains that had resisted washing. The menu was chalked on a board at the far end of the room, beside a door which Hawk presumed led to the kitchen.
There were three tables occupied. A man and woman, both middle-aged, sat close up to the window, empty plates pushed to one side, looking into one another’s eyes as if they were kids and they’d just met. Neither of them as much as glanced up when Hawk entered.
The occupants of the other two tables did. Two men sat down the right side, drinking coffee and smoking. They were both young, nineteen or twenty, their clothes dusty from riding. A man sat on his own a couple of tables further down on the other side of the gangway. He was forking a chunk of meat towards his mouth when Hawk came in and the meat was still poised, his mouth slightly open. His one good eye was fixed on Hawk; the other was covered by a triangular patch of leather.
There’s one hell of a lot of men in this town got bits and pieces of ’em missing, thought Hawk.
He said nothing.
He let the man with the patch see what he wanted, let him see the Colt Frontier and the sawn-off and then took a seat on the right, facing down towards the kitchen. He wasn’t about to turn his back on no one-eyed man.
A woman came bustling out of the back, rubbing her hands on the front of her gingham apron. She was medium height, dark-haired, well-built; she wasn’t pretty but there was a strength about her face that commanded respect. Down there on the border that sort of strength was worth a whole lot more than prettiness.
‘What’ll you be havin’?’
Her eyes were wide and brown with a tinge of green; her skin was clear and unmarked, purplish below her eyes.
Hawk glanced at the board. ‘I’ll take a steak and potatoes. Couple of eggs on the steak. Greens.’ He caught her eyes. ‘Pot of coffee.’
She nodded and leaned forward, resting a pad of paper on the table to write on it with a stub of pencil. Hawk looked at the silver chain tight at her neck, a six-cornered star hanging from its center, a Star of David.
‘Sounds a long time since you ate.’
‘That could be right.’
The one-eyed man shifted in his chair and Hawk tensed, his right hand drifting towards his holster.
The woman sensed the change in him, saw the movement of the hand; her head turned and she looked down the room at the man with the patch.
‘You want your coffee now?’ Her voice was brisk and business like.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Name’s Hester.’
Hawk nodded. ‘Yeah.’
She walked down and through the door into the kitchen. The man with the patch carried on with his food. The men down from Hawk finished up their coffee, rolled a fresh pair of cigarettes, lit them, left coins on the table and walked out, talking.
The couple in the window were still staring into one another’s eyes.
Hawk’s coffee arrived fresh and hot and strong.
‘Sugar?’
Hawk shook his head. She went off to fetch his steak. The one-eyed man chewed on gristle, finally spat it out into the palm of his hand, dropped it down on to his plate. Hawk’s oval plate was full to overflowing; the portion of greens was served in a separate bowl.
‘Enjoy it,’ said the woman, turning from his table.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
She glanced at him reproachfully.
Hawk was three mouthfuls into his meal when the door opened and he turned in his seat to see a youthful-looking man walk in with a Winchester held in the crook of his left arm. He was around six foot tall, fair-haired with a soft mustache blurring his upper lip; he wore a white shirt under a skimpy brown vest, black pants tucked down into new boots that still squeaked a little as he walked. The gun belt at his hip was black leather and the pistol holstered in it was a Smith and Wesson with a black wood butt.
He was a mighty smart dresser for a two-bit place like Eagle Pass and he had a marshal’s badge pinned to the right side of his skimpy vest.
The one-eyed man dropped his knife and fork on to his plate and coughed.
Hawk watched and waited.
The marshal kept coming until he was at the end of Hawk’s table; then he stopped and said howdy. He sounded real friendly. If it hadn’t been for the Winchester under his arm Hawk might have believed it.
