“What? Did you say gold?” one of the other customers asked.
“That’s what I said all right. Gold, and a lot of it too. Why, they’s enough gold up there to make ever’ man in Green River rich as a king!”
“Up where?” Jake asked. “Where is this gold?”
“Yeah, where is it?” another asked.
“Up in the Sweetwater,” Luke said. He waved the rock around. “I done had this assayed. Eighty dollars a ton, boys! Eighty dollars a ton!”
By now everyone in the saloon, including Jake, was crowding around Luke, trying to get more information from him. Where, exactly, in the Sweetwater Range was the gold? How did he find it? Did anyone else know about it yet?
As the discussion of gold was taking place, Hawke continued to stare at Dancer, who had quit returning the gaze and was now staring pointedly into his glass of whiskey.
One of the patrons slipped out of the saloon, and a second later those inside could hear the clatter of hoofbeats as he rode away.
“Hey, boys, some have already started. If we don’t get up there now, we’re goin’ to be left suckin’ hind tit!” someone shouted, which started a rush for the door. Within moments nobody was left in the saloon but Jake, the piano player, Hawke, and Dancer.
Hawke picked up his beer and turned his back to the bar. He lifted his mug to his lips as he studied Dancer.
“You ain’t goin’ after the gold?” Jake asked Hawke.
“No.”
“I’d be out there with them right now if I didn’t have this here job,” Jake said.
“The man who discovered gold…I think you called him Luke?”
“Yes sir. Luke Rawlings is his name.”
“Why do you think Luke came in here like that?”
“Well, wouldn’t you be excited if you’d discovered gold?”
“Yes,” Hawke said. “But I don’t think I’d be telling everyone exactly where I found it.”
“I’ll be damned. I never thought about that. Why do you reckon he did tell?”
“I don’t know,” Hawke replied. “It is puzzling.”
Chapter 8
ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON HAWKE PICKED UP HIS clothes from the Chinese laundry. For his dinner engagement with the Dorchesters, he changed from the jeans and plaid shirt into something he considered more appropriate.
For many men such a drastic change in apparel would make them uncomfortable. Hawke felt at ease in his formal attire, having donned such clothes many times for his piano performances. He told himself it was his last connection with the genteel life that he had so long ago abandoned.
Shortly before he left his hotel room there was a knock. Hawke pulled his gun and stepped up to the door.
“Who is it?”
“Mr. Hawke, my name is Joey,” a young-sounding voice said from the other side. “I work down at the livery stable.”
Curious as to why someone from the livery would be calling on him, Hawke opened the door. The boy in the hall looked to be about fourteen.
“Are you Mr. Hawke?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Your horse is tied up in front of the hotel.”
“My horse? I don’t have a horse.”
“Yes, sir, you do. Mr. Dorchester come down to see me, and asked me to come out to his place to pick out the finest horse I could find and bring him in to you. You want to see him?”
“Yes,” Hawke said.
Hawke followed the boy downstairs, then out the front door. There, tied to the hitching rail in front of the hotel, was one of the best-looking horses Hawke had ever seen. It was a buckskin stallion standing about seventeen hands high with a long neck, a sloping shoulder, a short strong back, a deep heart girth, and a long sloping hip. His musculature was smooth and well-defined. Hawke noticed that his saddle was on the horse.
“How’d my saddle get there?” he asked.
“I knowed you’d left it down to the depot, so I went down and got it. Do you like the horse?” Joey asked.
“Yes, he’s a magnificent animal.”
“I picked ’im out my ownself,” Joey said proudly. “I figured I pick ’im out as iffen I was pickin’ ’im out for me.”
Hawke pulled out a silver dollar and gave it to the boy. “Well, you did a good job, Joey,” he said. “Yes, sir, a find job.”
“Gee, thanks, Mr. Hawke!” the boy said, excited over the dollar.
Dorchester’s ranch, Northumbria, was about five miles north of Green River. Once out of town, Hawke urged the horse, and it responded instantly, going from a walk to a full gallop in a heartbeat. Hawke leaned forward, encouraging the horse to give him all it had. The ground flashed by in a blur, and he had the irrational sensation that if he went any faster, he would fly.
Hawke held the gallop for about two minutes, then eased back and let the horse cool down with a trot, then a brisk walk. Almost before he knew it, he was at the southern boundary of Dorchester’s ranch, indicated by an arched gate with the word NORTHUMBRIA worked in metal across the top.
It was another mile up the road from the entry gate before the house came into view. When Hawke saw the house for the first time, he stopped just to take it in. It was huge, with cupolas and dormers and so many windows that the setting sun flashed back in such brilliance that it looked almost as if the house were on fire.
The edifice reminded him of a wedding cake, white and tiered. But the tiers did not end with the house. Even the surrounding lawn was built up in a series of beautifully landscaped terraces that worked up from the road to the base of the house itself.
A large white-graveled driveway made a U in front of the house where a coach and four sat at the ready, its highly polished paint job glistening in the setting sun. A crest of some sort was on the door of the coach.
Hawke had started toward the broad steps leading up to the front porch when Pamela and her father came out to meet him. Seeing Pamela, Hawke couldn’t hold back a gasp of surprise. He would have been hard pressed to identify her as the same bedraggled-looking young woman he last saw wearing his rolled-up jeans and flannel shirt.
The woman who greeted him now looked as if she had just stepped down from a fine oil painting. She was wearing an off-the-shoulder dress with a neckline that plunged low enough to show the top of her breasts, though a red silk rose strategically placed at the cleavage helped preserve some modesty. The dress itself was clinging yellow silk, overlaid with lace. Her coiffure featured a pile of curls on top and a French roll that hung down her neck.
The intensity of Hawke’s gaze made Pamela uneasy. With a nervous laugh she touched her hair.
“Have I gone green?” she asked.
“What?”
“You are staring with such concentration,” she said.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Hawke apologized. “It’s just that…well, you must admit, this is quite a change from the way I last saw you.
“Well, I would hope so,” Pamela said. “And speaking of changes, I must say that you do look more like a knight now than when you rode to my rescue. Oh, wait, you didn’t exactly ride to my rescue, did you? As I recall, you had clumsily killed all the horses.”
Hawke laughed as well. “I had indeed,” he agreed. “And speaking of horses, I want to thank you, Mr. Dorchester, for the loan of the horse tonight. He is certainly a fine animal.”
“It isn’t a loan,” Dorchester said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“It isn’t a loan,” Dorchester repeated. “It is a gift. I have the bill of sale inside.”
Hawke held out his hand in protest. “Oh, no, Mr. Dorchester, I could never accept such a gift.”
“Why not? Do you think Pamela isn’t worth a horse?”
“What? No, no, I didn’t mean to imply anything like that.”
“Then prove it by accepting this gift.”