Hawke's Pride Read online

  Hawke's Pride

  By

  Norah Hess

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter One

  "There goes Buck DeLawney's girl. Skimmin' over the ground like a wild Indian."

  "You mean Rue?"

  "Yeah. Wonder why he ever gave her such an odd name?"

  "Cause he rued the day he ever married her loose mama, most likely."

  "Wouldn't be surprised. I never could figure out how he come to get tangled up with Becky. By the time she was fourteen she'd laid with half the men around here. It just about broke his parents' hearts when he married that one."

  "He cut and run, though, when she had herself a woods colt."

  "Ain't nobody blamed him though, his wife whorin' round like she did. It's a shame though, he didn't take his own youngun' with him."

  "That would have been a mite hard on Buck, draggin' a three-year-old round with him. You got to remember he was awful young, just turned twenty. A man don't always think straight at that age, especially if he's blind mad."

  " 'Spect you're right. How long has he been gone now, do you reckon?"

  "About sixteen years, I figure. Rue is nineteen now, and she was three when Buck up and left. Ain't never been seen nor heard of since."

  "That poor child ain't had it easy all these years. Becky whorin' and all, bringin' two more bastards into the world for Rue to take care of. Her too drunk all the time to tend to them herself."

  "And don't forget the girl havin' to put up with her shiftless stepdaddy."

  "Yeah, Sly Burford, the lazy no-account. Somebody ought to have shot that man the first time he showed himself around here. That man ain't got no shame nor morals at all."

  The old couple watched Rue DeLawney's slender figure disappear into the tree-studded foothills, then set their rocking chairs to creaking. They leaned their heads back, their faces lifted to the noon sun beaming down on the small porch, their young neighbor and her problems slipping from their minds.

  Rue's long legs flashed smoothly up the steep incline, her bare feet making no sound on the thick carpet of fallen pine needles as she hurried along. She paid no attention to the stately spruce and pine that seemingly towered to the very sky. They were a familiar sight; she had passed beneath them too many times to be impressed by their green splendor. She had traveled this path, daily, ever since she could remember.

  She paused once, long enough to pat gently the chicken-pox scabs on her face with a rag she carried for that purpose. It was Indian summer and the sun was still scorching hot, causing perspiration to bead on her forehead, then inch downward onto her sores.

  Her thin face grimaced, they itched so and she was hard-pressed not to scratch them. But Grandma DeLawney's warning was ever with her. "If you scratch them, honey, you'll be dreadfully scarred," she had cautioned. "And for life. There's nothing that will take them away." She had then lovingly brushed the red-gold curls off Rue's wide forehead and said, "I don't want anything to happen to that pretty face of yours. You won't catch yourself a husband if your face is all pockmarked."

  Rue's shapely lips curled scornfully, remembering her grandmother's last caution.

  She hadn't told the sweet old lady that she would never marry, never put herself at the mercy of some man. That it had been her experience, with the exception of her grandfather, that men were brutes and self-serving. She could live very happily without a husband.

  Putting the distasteful thought of men from her mind, Rue daubed at her face again, thinking of her three half brothers. Sixteen-year-old Jimmy had taken to heart her advice not to scratch his sores, but the four- and two-year-olds dug at their faces continually. She hated to think what their skin was going to look like later on for surely they would be scarred for life.

  For life, she thought sadly. But how long a life for them? She couldn't imagine they would be long ones. From the day their drunken mother brought them into the world, having no idea who their fathers were, the children had been sickly, undernourished because her stepfather was too lazy to provide for them.

  Rue sighed raggedly. If Granddad DeLawney hadn't had any luck hunting yesterday, she didn't know what she would give the children for supper. This morning she had given them some cornmeal mush with a few scraps of salt pork in it. She and Jimmy had shared an apple he had filched from a neighbor's tree so that at least the edge of his hunger would be eased a bit.

  Rue sighed again. Would they all starve to death, come winter? For the time being there was the small vegetable garden patch she and Jimmy had planted. It hadn't done well though. Rain had been scarce that summer and most of the plants they had worked hard at sowing, the seeds coming from Grandma DeLawney, had shriveled up and died. Although what had survived had helped toward their meager diet, they had not produced enough to put some away for the cold months ahead. And Granddad was getting too old to hunt their meat all the time.

  "Damn Sly Burford's soul to hell," she gritted out. "It was a sorry day he came into our lives."

  Rue could only vaguely remember her father, a big laughing man who had gone away when she was just a tot and Jimmy only an infant. As she grew older, she pestered her mother for the reason her father had left them. Becky had always ignored the question until finally one day, hate flashing in her eyes, she had snarled, "Because he's a no-good bastard, that's why. Now don't ask me about him again."

  But shortly before her seventh birthday Grandma DeLawney told her the real reason Buck DeLawney had left his wife and child and hadn't been heard of since.

  She had known of course that her home life was different from that of the children she occasionally attended school with. Day or night, often both, some man or other would climb the trail to the DeLawney shack and knock on the door. Her mother would smile at him and take him into the only bedroom. After a spell of springs creaking and the headboard banging against the wall, the man would leave, avoiding eye contact with Rue and Jimmy. Consequently, when her schoolmates would chant at her, "Your mother is a dirty old whore," she knew what they meant. At first, she had shed many tears at the cruel taunts, but over the years, she had grown a skin so tough, insults could no longer penetrate her heart. Not even the sly remarks and salacious invitations she'd had to endure as her ripening body and pretty face drew the attention of the gawkish teenagers she'd run into.

  Her trips to the village had been curtailed, however. One day on her way home from the grocer's she had almost been raped by two youths who lay in wait for her in an old abandoned cabin. As she kicked, screamed, and scratched, ironically, a man on his way to visit her mother had heard her. He had dragged the boys off her, cuffed them a bit, then sent them running off He had helped her up then, saying kindly, "Best you don't walk alone anymore, Rue."

  To this day, Rue shivered every time she remembered that day, the boys' rough hands on her body, their fingers digging into her flesh as they tried to drag off her bloomers. She had had nightmares about the assault for a long time. She remembered longing to tell Becky about it, but she had never been close to her mother and had kept it all locked up inside her.

  Becky had never been close to any of her children for that matter, Rue recalled. And for a very simple reason. She was a hard and uncaring woman who didn't look for, nor want, a tender relationship with her offspring. She hadn't wanted them in the first place.

  In the eleven years that Becky had whored for a living, she had managed not to get in the family way. Then four years ago that all changed. The old herb woman who had kept Becky supplied with a concoction guaranteed to kill any man's seed took sick and died, taking the secret of her mixed herbs with her. Almost at the same time, Sly Burford appeared at their shack.

  .ue, fifteen then, had taken a dislike for the man on sight. She was repelled by his gross stomach hanging over his belt and the way his fat, squinted eyes roamed over her budding curves. Wise beyond her years, her hard blue eyes had warned him away. He had turned his attention on Becky then and had flattered her so that she had taken him into the bedroom without charging him. Rue and Jimmy had looked at each other with raised brows. Never had that happened before.

  And surprising them even more, the fat man had stayed with Becky all night. None of the other customers had stayed more than an hour, most of the time only minutes. She and Jimmy had waited for Burford to leave the next morning, but he was still there at suppertime.

  Sly Burford was still with them a week later, with Becky turning away the men who made their weekly trip to the old canting shack. Meanwhile, the fat man chopped the wood, carried the water from the spring a half mile away, mended the leaky roof, and made himself useful in a dozen different ways. He spent a lot of time with Jimmy, taking him hunting and fishing. And Jimmy, never having had the attention of a man before, thought that Burford was wonderful, the best thing that had ever happened in their mother's life. But despite his overtures to Rue of being careful to look only at her face, and speaking to her kindly as a father would do, Rue was still wary of him. She had not forgotten how his eyes had undressed her the first time she saw him. He looked to h
er like a lazy man, putting forth an effort that would benefit him some way.

  When at the beginning of the following week, Sly married her mother, Rue, along with their neighbors, asked themselves why he would marry an aging, worn-out whore.

  Not that Burford was all that good a catch himself, being fat and smelly. The answer was made clear to the two DeLawney women in a short time. Becky learned first, and Rue a few hours later.

  Becky, her new husband, and her children had returned from the preacher's house only a short time when Jimmy, standing in the open doorway, called over his shoulder, "Ma, there's a couple men comin' up the hill."

  "Let them come, for all the good it will do them," Becky said with relish, her chin proudly in the air. "I'm a married woman now." She slid her arm through Sly's. "Ain't gonna be but one man in my life from now on."

  "Well now, Becky." Sly removed her hand and stepped away from her. "Don't be too hasty. The money your business brings in will come in handy, cold weather comin' on and all."

  When Becky told him absolutely not, that she was tired of lying with any man who had the price, Sly looking sad and distressed, took her arm and sat her down at the table. Then, his hand on her shoulder, he began to speak as Rue and Jimmy watched. Disillusionment clouded the boy's eyes, but Rue's shot sparks of hate and disgust.

  "I should have told you, Becky"—the fat lips whined the words—"but I got a bad back. I can't hold down a job more than a week or so before it goes out." He paused to give a long sigh. "Then I'm laid up for months."

  Becky's own disillusionment quickly changed to one of rage as she realized she had been duped. She jumped to her feet, shaking with fory. She tore into her new husband, calling him every vile name she could think of, ending with, "You're a rotten, deceitful swine!"

  The subservience that had for over a week lay like a cloak around the fat man was wiped away as though it had never existed. His eyes narrowing menacingly, Sly clamped biting fingers onto Becky's shoulders.

  "You fat old whore," he sneered, "surely you don't think that I married you out of undyin' love." His eyes skimmed Becky's body, ranging from the sagging breasts to the body that was going to fat. "I figure you'll be a good meal ticket for a few more years."

  He turned her around to face the bedroom, then giving her a hard shove, growled, "If you don't want to feel the weight of my hand, you'd better carry on as usual."

  Becky stumbled, caught her balance, then turned back as though to defy the man she had foolishly married. But while Rue silently urged her to fly at the man, to scratch his eyes out, adding that she and Jimmy would help her, Becky shrugged and entered the bedroom. When a moment later there came a knock on the doorframe, Sly invited the men in, his hand held out for their money.

  Rue, her shoulders slumped, watched the pair file into the small room, seeing a bottle of whiskey shoved into the back pocket of the man bringing up the rear. It was but a short time later that Becky was laughing and urging the men on.

  "See." Burford leered at the brother and sister who stared at the floor. "She enjoys it. She was just bein' stubborn."

  Neither brother nor sister made a response to the crude remark. Rue ran outside. She had to get away from that loathsome man, the grunts and groans, the sound of the shuddering bedsprings that carried through the small shack. Although the noise wasn't new to her—she had heard it ever since she could remember—Sly Burford had made it seem obscene somehow.

  Tears pricking her eyes, Rue ran to the shed at the back of the house. They would be flowing down her cheeks soon, and she would die before she let that awful man see any weakness in her. She entered the dim interior of the small building and started to close the door behind her. The flimsy barrier moved a few inches then stuck. Rue looked up and dread leapt in her pulse. Sly's big bulk blocked the entrance, his pig-like eyes revealing his lustful intent.

  Her heart beating painfully in her chest, Rue strove to hold the door fast, her mind racing as she tried not to give in to panic. When she suddenly snatched open the door and launched herself at Buford, he staggered back in astonishment. He let loose a bellow of rage when the nails of both her hands raked across his face, scoring deeply into his flesh.

  "Bitch!" he snarled, and grabbing her fragile wrists he stuck a foot behind her knees, tumbling her to the ground.

  Rue lay flat on her back, the breath knocked out of her body, and Sly still holding her hands. She opened her mouth to cry out, to alert the two men with her mother. One of them had come to her rescue before and would come again she had no doubt.

  But Burford had read the thought in her blue eyes. His cold words drove the idea from her mind. "You get them men out here, and I'll see to it that something happens to Jimmy the next time he goes huntin'. A careless youngun' could easily trip over somethin' and shoot himself."

  He tightened his grip on her wrists until she was sure the bones would snap. "Do you have that clear in your mind, Miss high-and-mighty?" His fat, squinted eyes bored into hers. "Are you gonna behave yourself and be nice to ole Sly? Give him what your mama is givin' them two men in the house?"

  Rue stared up helplessly at her tormentor. Tears slid down the comers of both eyes as she nodded.

  "That's more like it," Sly grunted, and released her hands. "You just lay there nicelike while I get ready."

  She watched in horror as her stepfather stood up and unbuttoned his trousers. When they fell down around his ankles, he closed his thick fingers around his swollen manhood, and moved them up and down its long length.

  "I can't decide which way to take you first." He leered down at her. "I guess it don't really matter," he said after a moment, still stroking himself "I'll have you a lot of different ways over the years."

  Please, God, don't let him do this to me, Rue was silently praying when a movement behind Sly caught her eyes. A fast, careful glance quickened her heartbeat. Jimmy was slipping up behind them, a good-sized club raised over his head. When Sly dropped to his knees and roughly jerked her legs apart, there came a crack of wood as the cudgel broke over his balding head.

  A burst of bird song overhead interrupted Rue's reliving the past. I should be getting on to Granddad and Grandma's house, she thought, but her mind was stuck on the way her life had been for nineteen years. Then hardly aware of it, she sat down on a rock and picked up where her dark musings had broken off.

  Her stepfather had not been knocked unconscious, but he was stunned enough to allow her and Jimmy to run to the house. Her heart was a loud drumbeat as she sat down at the table, rubbing her bruised wrists, her hatred of men strengthening. She looked up at Jimmy when he placed a glass of water in front of her. Would he, too, grow up to be like Sly and like those two men in the bedroom, cheating on their wives?

  Her trembling hand lifted the glass of water to her lips, and Jimmy sat down beside her. "Look, Rue," he said earnestly, gazing into her tear-streaked face, "he's going to be pestering you all the time. You've got to learn how to protect yourself I might not be around the next time, so here is what you do to the bastard if he corners you again."

  Jimmy had spent several minutes explaining the method she could use that was guaranteed to work every time.

  Rue smiled grimly, remembering that she'd had occasion to put Jimmy's instructions into action later that same evening.

  The two men had left and Becky, stumbling drunk, came from her room, loudly, in a quarrelsome voice, demanding her supper. When Sly and Jimmy joined her at the table, Rue placed a platter of pan-fried steak and mashed potatoes before them, then walked outside. To eat with Sly Burford was beyond thinking about.

  She moved out into the gathering dusk and sat down on a patch of grass beneath a tall cottonwood. What if Jimmy's advice didn't work? she worried, leaning her head back and gazing up at the evening star. And what about Jimmy himself? He had received his share of threatening looks when Sly followed them into the house a short time later. "Would it be safe for him to leave the area of the house now? she wondered, remembering the fat man's threat to the young lad.

  The soft crunching of footsteps turned Rue's head toward the sound. "They've gone to bed, Rue." Jimmy's teeth flashed in the darkness that had fallen. "Come in and eat your supper now."