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Arrogance didn't bother him. "You can say it a hundred times, but it ain't gonna change things."
"He wasn't that kind of man."
"You don't say. You take after him with your high and mighty gall. Didn't you wonder why I kept comin' around? Did you all wonder? Shore he robbed it. He planned the whole thing hisself. He wanted to make that Ma of yours proud. He wanted to start a station in Texas and own land. And he did. Only the land weren't his. Now he's gone, and the money is mine. And you are gonna help me find it, girl."
"You're out of your mind. I didn't know anything about all this," she cried aloud. "I still don't believe it."
"Don't matter if you believe it or not. You're gonna help me find it"
"And if I refuse?" she rebelled.
"I've killed a woman before, ain't hard." Hawks glanced her way with a knowing smile.
"Did you kill your wife?" Katherine asked bravely. "And blame it on my father?"
"Nope, done told you girl. Yore Pa did that. Not that he wanted to kill her. He didn't mind usin' her. Seems yore Ma shut him off there at the last and he got mighty raunchy, let me tell you. He was glad of the squaw. And she never minded him. She'd lay down for any man if I told her to." Hawks stopped what he was doing and looked at her sharply. "No, I didn't kill Soshe, I loved her. Even though I knew she'd been with your Pa a time or two. She liked me better. I knowed that 'cause she kept comin' back to me. I didn't cry none when she died, though. Why should I? She found out yore Pa was the one that had the money and she shimmied up to him. That was at the end. Jest afore he got sick. From her tellin' I found out he liked her too. Yes sir, most men liked little Soshe. Aw now…don't look so surprised, he didn't want to like her, but she gave him what he couldn't get from yore Ma. That's all. He used her, and she used him. She might have left me if she'd got the money out of yore Pa. But she miscalculated the man. He wanted to bed her, not wed her. He loved yore Ma, it's true. But there was somethin' stuck in his craw about yore Ma."
"What do you mean, what are you saying now?"
"It ain't my place to tell it, girl."
"Tell what?"
"You jest like yore Pa in some ways girl. Won't let nothin' rest. I ain't got no right to tell you this but you do have a right to know it. Yore Ma was a right proud woman too. Yes ma'am, she was. One of them high bred ladies from the north, she was. But well, when yore Pa got to drinkin' he let it all slip out. It seems, once, on the way to Missouri, yore Ma was captured by the Indians. Shawnee I think he said. Oh, yore Pa went after her, tore out like a mad man, according to him, but she'd been gone weeks before he found her. He told me about it one night when he was laid up drunk and we was talkin' about the money. Said he weren't sure what happened at that Indian camp. She was sittin ' in the chief's tent when he found her and drug her out of there. But it bothered him night and day. He said he never told nobody because he didn't want anyone thinkin' bad about her. It were a long time ago, and he put it behind him. But he never forgot it. To protect her reputation, he told everybody she'd left him and gone back home. Nobody doubted that. But her capture is not somethin' a man could forget, I reckon. Only he kinda thought she had eyes for that Chief, because she didn't want to go back with yore Pa."
"Hawks, you are lying…"
"No skin off my back if you don't believe it."
"I don't. I know my folks better than that."
Hawks firmed his lips and shook his head. "Okay, have it your way. But ain't you ever wondered why you are darker than the rest of 'em?"
"Are you saying…" her eyes widened and she screamed, "No…it isn't true." Her eyes mirrored her shock, she knew. Just looking at Hawks and realizing what he was suggesting had her shaking.
How could one man turn her world upside down? He had to be lying. After all this time, surely her folks would have said something. And yet, deep down somewhere, she had wondered for a long time why there was such a difference and only with her.
"Suit yourself, girl. Maybe it ain't. How would I know? I just wondered why you was dark and they was light. It happens in families sometimes, but a lot of the time there is a reason for it too."
Katherine threw sand in his face and screamed.
She moved away, but not far, and she fell down into the dirt and cried. It couldn't be true. It just couldn't be!
Could this be why being with Chase felt so right. She was a breed too?
But later, she looked at herself in the water, then at her skin, and at the many times she had compared herself to Josh and the others. Could it be true? Believing it was hard, thinking on her folks who died with the secret.
Hawks saw her fretting and shook his head. "It's time you knowed…"
"You lie. It wasn't enough to dirty my pa's name, now you do so with my mother? You are no good, Hawks. Besides, my pa wouldn't rob and kill and take an Indian woman to bed. He hated Indians. And my mother, you dare to dirty her name. It's unthinkable." Katherine choked on her own tears. "They both hated the Indians, so stop lying."
"Ah, shut up. You don't know nothin'. Yore Pa was a liar and a cheat. He lied to me about the money and to yore Ma about the squaw. He just took the squaw to get even with yore Ma. That's all. That's the reason he never invited us in. 'Fraid that squaw would tell on him, and she probably would have. She only wanted the money herself."
"You're the liar…"
"Got me pegged, don't you? Think I'm the only one could be that low. Well,
it were yore Pa that robbed the bank and I held the horses outside. He didn't trust me to do the job. He thought I was dimwitted. Thought me too ignorant. He took the money, shot a deputy, and we high-tailed it out of that town pronto. If he hadn't shot that deputy, they wouldn't have chased us so long."
