Hawke's pride

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Front Cover

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

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"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 her 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."
He reached a hand down to her, and grasping it, Rue pulled herself to her feet. "What are we going to do, Rue?" Jimmy asked as they walked toward the house.
"I don't know, Jimmy," Rue said quietly with a tired shrug of her shoulders. "I'll have to think on it."
They entered the house and Jimmy sought his straw pallet laid out in the corner of the room. It was quiet in the bedroom as Rue ate her cold supper, then washed the dishes, and put them away.
Should she tell Granddad and Grandma DeLawney about the incident with Sly? she wondered as she prepared for bed. No, she decided a moment later as she slid beneath the rough blanket. The pair were too old to be worried with that. Granddad would be outraged and would tear into Sly, threatening him with bodily harm and the much younger man wouldn't hesitate to use his fists on the dear old man.
Rue stared into the darkness, her tired body slowly relaxing. A gentle smile curved her lips as she listened to Jimmy's even breathing. Only sixteen years old and already so wise, so dedicated to watching over his big sister. She stretched and yawned and her lids began to droop.
Rue was half-asleep when a stealthy noise brought her wide awake. She opened her eyes a slit, sure of whom she'd see. In the moonlight streaming through the window, Sly's naked body loomed over her. A coil of fear tightened around her heart. The sneaking bastard had been lying in there, waiting for her and Jimmy to go to bed.
Jimmy's instructions came to mind, and she wondered if she could follow them. First you must keep calm, she warned herself, and pretend that you are sleeping if you want to catch him off guard.
Never had Rue's heart beat so loudly, nor had her nerves ever screamed in such protest as she willed herself to Ee perfectly quiet while waiting for Sly to reveal that vulnerable spot between his hairy thighs. A moment later it was all she could do not to flinch and cry out when he slowly lifted one fat leg over her hips, then carefully positioned himself over her.
"Now!" a voice whispered to her as Sly hung over her and fumbled at the hem of her nightgown. Gritting her teeth determinedly, Rue quickly brought up a knee, held it a split second then lashed out with her foot as hard as she could. She heard a crunching sound as her aim found the fat crotch, quickly followed by a screeching yowl. Sly fell to the floor, where he curled up in agony, screaming and swearing. Jimmy sat up with a startled jerk, and while he grimly smiled his satisfaction, Rue watched the man crawl into the bedroom.
Burford was unable to leave the bed for three days. In the meantime Rue and Jimmy were barred from the house as Becky entertained her customers in Rue's bed. Ever since that night, however, Sly never touched her again. But he still watched her, revenge and hate replacing the lust that had stared out of his gimlet eyes.
And strangely, that made Rue more uneasy than his pawing hands. The man was a danger to her, he meant her harm. Finally, in desperation, she had gone to her mother, telling her all that had happened, explaining her fear of Sly's retaliation, that she believed that given the chance the man might even kill her.
She had received a slap in the face for her trouble, not to mention the tongue-lashing that had followed. "Do you think you're too good to spread your lily-white legs for a man?" Becky had railed at her. "You're fifteen years old and should have been doin' it a couple years ago, help bring some money into this house. I had my first man when I was thirteen."
Rue had stared at Becky, complete bewilderment on her face, not wanting to believe what she had heard. Surely, no mother, no matter how uncaring she might be, would want her daughter to sell her body.
But as Becky raved on Rue had to admit that her mother meant exactly what she said. Rue also learned that day why she hadn't already been forced into a life of prostitution as her mother drunkeningly complained, "The village men have no qualms about usin' Buck DeLawney's wife, but, damn them all, his daughter is somethin' else. Every last one of them have refused to lay a hand on you."
Sick to her soul, Rue had left the house and tramped the woods for hours, bitter hot tears washing down her cheeks as she cursed the father who had gone off and left her to be brought up in such an environment.
It had been late in the fall when Rue noticed her mother was gaining weight. When Rue mentioned this fact to Becky, she had laughed mirthlessly and grouched, "My new weight will disappear in the spring."
Rue had paid no attention to the slurred conjecture. As usual by midday Becky was well into her daily bottle of whiskey, and very little sense came out of her mouth after sucking at the raw spirits. However, near the end of winter the drunken sentence came back to Rue and she realized that her mother's words hadn't been senseless ramblings after all. Becky was going to have a baby.
On a blustery March morning Becky was delivered of an undersized baby boy who was too weak to cry. The doctor wrapped the mewling infant in the white square Rue had cut from an old blanket, and handing the wizened body to Rue, said disgustedly, "I'll send a nanny goat up here to provide milk for the poor little mite. All he'd get from his mother's breast would be straight whiskey."
Three more years followed in which another baby came along. This one, also a boy, had fallen to Rue's care as well.
Then one morning, two weeks ago, Sly came from the bedroom and callously announced, "Old Becky died sometime last night."
Jimmy had gone for the doctor, and after the white-haired man had examined the wasted body, he had snapped his black bag shut and said to no one in particular, "Probably all the whiskey she consumed through the years ate up her liver."
Not one person from the village had attended Becky Burford's funeral, nor had her husband, Sly. And no tears were shed as her two eldest children watched their mother's body lowered into the ground. The woman had loved no one, and no one had loved her, except maybe Buck DeLawney when he first married her.
Becky's passing, however, had made an impact on her children's daily lives. There was no more money coming into the house, and with Sly making no effort to find work, it soon became a desperate situation. Everyone's bellies rumbled from hunger. The sickly little ones hung on to Rue's skirts, and she felt guilty that she couldn't love them. All she could feel was pity.
She had expected, hoped, that her mother's husband would leave now. There was no reason he should stay. Was there? The man still watched her, the hate in his eyes seeming to grow daily. A suspicion had been growing in Rue that he was waiting, waiting to take revenge on her before leaving.
A couple of months ago, by accident, she had overheard her stepfather ranting to Becky that he would get that wildcat. The wildcat was not an animal, she learned as Sly raged on, but herself.
"When she kicked me that night four years ago, she ruined me, took away my manhood. I can't get it up anymore." Rue heard his fist hit the wall. "And so help me I'll find her alone someday and that'll be the last anyone sees of Rue DeLawney."
Rue picked up a handful of pine needles and idly let them slip through her fingers.
"Somehow I've got to get away from here," she whispered. "Far away where that devil can't find me." It had gotten to the point where she was afraid to go to bed, fearful that her stepfather would kill her while she slept. And sweet little Jimmy, he never went far from her side.
A soft inquiry broke into Rue's dark musing. "Why are you sittin' there, granddaughter? Have you changed your mind about visitin' us?"
Rue jumped up, her even white teeth revealed in a glad smile. "I was just resting a minute, Granddad, thinking about all the injustice in this world."
"There be a lot of that, child." The old man nodded. "I ponder it myself sometimes. It don't seem fair that some folk get more than their share of bad times."
Shaking off her troubled thoughts, Rue changed the gloomy subject. It was bad enough that Granddad knew they were practically starving, he didn't have to know that she feared for her life. It was probably all in her imagination anyway. Sly was surely smart enough to know he couldn't get away with murder.
Looking at the glass jar in the gnarled hand, then lifting her eyes to John DeLawney's wrinkled visage, she asked, "Are you sap gathering, Granddad?" Blue eyes like her own, only faded a bit with age, twinkled back at her. "That I am, child. Your grandma has been fussin' that she's about out of salve. Give me a hand a bit, then we'll go on to the house. Maddy promised to bake me a berry pie for lunch."
"How long have you been out?" Rue fell in step beside the old man.
"Sun wasn't up yet when I rolled out of the blankets." He looked down at the rifle in his hand. "Brought along my Henry. Thought maybe I might see a squirrel before it warmed up. Most animals hide when it gets hot."
"Oh, Granddad!" Rue half cried. "Are you telling me that you didn't have any luck hunting yesterday?"
"Now don't go gettin' upset, Rue, honey." John put an arm around her narrow shoulders and squeezed them affectionately. "I bagged me a fine young doe, fat as butter. I got it butchered and stowed away in the cellar, next to that cold spring water that flows through it. The meat should keep a couple of weeks."
"Thank God." Rue sighed her relief "I've been wracking my brains about what to give Jimmy and the little ones for supper in case you hadn't shot anything."
"Dad blame it, Rue, it gets my hackles up that you have to worry whether or not them younguns' get to eat. What you airnin' to do, let them drag on you the rest of your life?"
"Oh, Granddad." Rue sighed. "I don't know what to do. I don't worry about Jimmy. He's a good lad and doesn't have a lazy bone in his body. I'm sure somebody would take him in. But the little ones, sickly and all, who'd want them."
"Well, the way I see it"—John passed over Rue's concern for the two little boys—"although Burford has good cause to doubt that either child is his, he owes it to them to see that they eat. He kept their mother in the business that brought them about. Lined his pockets too, I'll bet.
"And I'll tell you something else, I'm gettin' dad-blamed tired of trampin' this mountain lookin' for game while that one sits on his fat rump doin' nothin'."
"I know, Granddad," Rue said, her eyes full of apology. "But he doesn't care whether they eat or not. It doesn't bother him at all to listen to their hungry cries."
"What does that hog do for his own grub? I can't see that he's lost any weight." John ran his eyes over his granddaughter's thin body. "The way you have."
"He rides down to the village every day. He probably eats there, using the money Mom made to pay for it."
"Damn his rotten soul!" John kicked angrily at a rock. "I think it's time I called a meetin' of all the men around here and discuss this situation. We don't need men of his sort among us."
And wouldn't it be a blessing to see the last of Sly Burjord, I could sleep nights then, Rue thought as the subject was dropped, and she walked along with her grandfather, their attention on finding trees where the bark had cracked and its substance oozed out.
From this gurn Maddy DeLawney made a potent salve that helped various cuts and bruises to heal. It was the same ointment that covered the eruptions on Rue's face.
After about a half hour, John held the jar up and squinted at it. "I think we got enough," he said to Rue, who leaned against a tree, patting her sweaty face with the scrap of rag. "Let's get on up to the house and sample some of Maddy's pie."