“For godsakes, man, hold up!” her uncle shouted, though the man with the lash had already realized his mistake.
“Sorry, Miss McConnell.” Cleve Sanders, her uncle’s rawboned foreman, stepped back as he recoiled the whip. “I hope I didn’t hurt you.”
The thin strip of leather had cut through her dress and left a welt on her skin. It stung like fire, but other than that she was fine. “It’s the boy you should be worrying about, not me.”
Two Hawks just stared straight ahead, his jaw set against the pain in his back, his black eyes mutinous. His arms were stretched above his head, tied to the low-hanging branch of a tree. His back was bare, his oversized breeches hanging low on the bones of his thin brown hips. “Cut him loose,” Carly demanded.
When the men made no move to free him, just shuffled from side to side looking angry and beginning to mutter among themselves, her attention swung toward her uncle, who approached from a few feet away.
“I’m sorry, Caralee, but you shouldn’t be out here. This is man’s business. You had better get back to the house.”
“What’s going on here, Uncle Fletcher? What could a boy his age possibly have done to deserve a beating like this?”
“The boy’s a thief, Caralee. Like it or not, I won’t have a thieving savage stealing del Robles property.”
“Two Hawks isn’t a thief. What is it he’s supposed to have taken?”
“Stole a chicken, Miss,” Sanders put in. “Damn heathens is all alike.”
“A chicken? Where is it? Why on earth would he come here to steal a hen?”
“Not a live chicken, Miss. A dead one. Cook’s roastin’ a whole mess of ’em, gettin’ ’em ready for supper tonight. Boy reached in through the window. Stole it right off the spit.”
Carly swung to the boy, her chest squeezing painfully. “Did you pay for the chicken, Two Hawks?”
He nodded stiffly. “A dozen trading beads… more than the tough old bird was worth.”
Carly’s heart turned over. She glared at Sanders, her mouth thinning into a determined line. “There, you see? He didn’t steal the chicken, he bought it. Now cut him down!”
Her uncle started to argue, saw the implacable set of her jaw, and nodded his head. “Cut the boy down.” The tall lean foreman who had wielded the whip took a knife to the rope around the tree limb, then cut the binding on Two Hawks’s wrists. He stumbled as he fought to stay on his feet and Carly caught him beneath the arms.
“Can you make it as far as the kitchen?” she whispered so that only he could hear.
His spine went straighter and he steadied himself on his feet. “One day I will be a great vaquero. I can do whatever I must.”
Knowing how proud he was, she didn’t try to help him, just walked beside him while he made his way to the kitchen on his own. Once inside, she set him carefully down in a stout oak chair and turned to the buxom woman working over a thick roll of tortillas.
“Your name is Rita, isn’t it?”
“Si,senora.”
“I need something for his back, Rita. Can you tell me what I might use?”
“Si,I have just the thing. We keep it here for the vaqueros, for burns and scrapes and the bite of insects.” She handed Carly a salve that smelled of lard and camomile.
“Thank you.”
Two Hawks winced as she washed the several long thin slashes and spread the salve over the welts, but he didn’t make a sound of complaint.
“I’m sorry this happened, Two Hawks,” Carly said when they were finished. “I wish I had gotten there sooner.”
For the first time, he smiled. “You were very brave, Sunflower. Don Ramon will not find another wife so courageous as you.”
A sudden mist of tears sprang into her eyes. Carly blinked hard to push them away. “How is he, Two Hawks?” she asked softly.
“He is different now that you are gone. He does not smile as he used to. I think he wishes for you to come home.”
Oh, God.“You’re wrong, Two Hawks. That is the last thing Don Ramon wants.”
