use awk print statement for two files

Hello,
is there a way to use the awk print statement on two files at once? I would like to take two columns from one file, and one column from another file and print them as consecutive columns to a third file. Seems simple...as in:

file 1

1  a
2  b
3  c
4  d
5  e

file 2

1  t 
2  u
3  v
4  w
5  x

output file

1  a  t
2  b  u
3  c  v
4  d  w
5  e  x

who has an idea how to do this? With awk or other?
Thanks.

paste file1 file2 | awk '{print $1, $2, $4}'

With awk:

awk 'NR == FNR {
  _[$1] = $2; next
  }
{
  print $0, _[$1]
  }' file2 file1

If the files are sorted:

join file1 file2

Thanks a lot, I think that does the job.