Page 16 of Native Hawk
But they’d taken refuge in Hupa so they could raise their half-breed twins in peace. Sakote, their father, doted on his white wife, and Mattie’s eyes still lit up when she gazed on her native husband.
Drew wanted that kind of love—eventually.
In the meantime, he’d put up with having a reputation as a ne’er-do-well and a womanizer, flitting like a greedyxontah-yayliwh, bumblebee, from flower to flower. People never understood that it was just the kind of life a poker player led, especially when you were agoodpoker player. You had to keep moving.
One day he’d settle down, build a big ranch house with a white picket fence, fill it with a brood of little Hawks, and wake up every morning to a warm and welcoming wife who was as pretty as a bisque doll.
But for the moment, why would he chain himself to one town and one woman when females and fortune were always calling from around the bend?
“There it is,” Chase said, nodding to the stage stop ahead.
He and Chase had come from Hupa yesterday by wagon. Today they’d take the stage from Redding to Chico, and then hire a buggy to take them up the hill to Paradise. The trip would take all day. But that was fine with Drew. He’d just as soon sneak into town after dark. Nothing attracted quite as much attention as a pair of six-foot-tall half-breed twins. And the last thing he wanted to do was attract attention.
Drew resisted the urge to glance behind him one last time. With any luck, the sheriff would guess Drew was in the next state. He’d never dream that the man he was looking for was currently less than a dozen miles from the Winsome Saloon.
He flipped his pocket watch out. It was 6:30. The stage left at 7:00.
It would be after midnight when they arrived at their final destination. He wondered if there’d be any good late night card games in Paradise.
