McKettrick's Choice (32 page)

An hour of hard travel brought them to the Cavanagh ranch.

The cattle grazed peacefully on the grassy range, their long journey over. Cowboys rode herd, easy duty, after the rigors of the trail.

The Captain turned to Holt. “How many men you figure we'll need, back at the house?”

“All we can get,” Holt replied. “Leave five of them with the cattle, and tell them to be ready for anything.”

Captain Jack nodded, and veered off to palaver with the cowpunchers.

Holt, Frank and Gabe kept going, Gabe still far in the lead. He had cause to hurry. His woman and his baby were waiting for him.

“Like the old days,
amigo,
” Frank said. “Gabe racing the wind, you and me a few lengths behind, getting our brains ready for a fight.”

Holt nodded. He'd left a part of himself behind in San Antonio, with Lorelei. He hoped what remained would be equal to all that was ahead.

Gabe's borrowed horse stood in the front yard when they arrived, placidly nibbling grass, reins dangling.

“Seem a little quiet to you?” Frank asked thoughtfully.

The hairs on the back of Holt's neck were standing up like bristles on a boar. “Yeah,” he said grimly. The place looked deserted, as if some great wind had blown through, carried everybody away.

They left the horses with Gabe's, drew their pistols as they went inside.

Silence.

“Rafe!” Holt called, from the foot of the stairs. His voice echoed through the familiar rooms.

No response.

Gabe appeared on the landing, pale under all that
jailhouse grime. Shook his head. “Nobody around,” he said.

“Shit,” Frank muttered. “You suppose we're too late?”

A faint whine reached Holt's ears. The dog? “Sorrowful?”

A yip.

Holt called again, raising his voice, barely catching the responding yelp. He followed the sound, Frank and Gabe right behind him.

Melina's cot was still in the kitchen, but empty.

The dog. Where was the dog? Holt whistled through his teeth.

Sorrowful began to bark, tentatively at first, then with rising excitement.

The noise rose through the floorboards, from the root cellar.

Holt dashed out the back way, rounded the house, and holstered his gun so he could use both hands to raise the cellar doors. The moment he'd laid them aside, Sorrowful leaped out at him, covered in cobwebs.

“Anybody down there?” Frank rasped. He didn't care much for holes in the ground. In the meantime, Holt bolted down the three rickety steps, into the dank gloom.

There was a squall, and as his eyes adjusted, Holt made out Melina, huddled in a corner, with a gag over her mouth. Her eyes were wide and frightened. Gabe pushed past him to release her.

Holt was almost afraid to look for the others. He made himself do it.

John, watching him with furious intensity. Heddy beside him. Both of them bound and gagged.

Frank rushed to turn them loose.

Rafe lay in the far corner, sprawled behind some dusty crates.

“They hit him in the head, Holt,” John said hastily, the moment his mouth was uncovered. “He put up a hell of a fight, for a man with one arm in a sling.”

Holt dropped to his knees beside his brother. Hesitated, then reached out to touch the base of Rafe's throat. There was a pulse.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
there was a pulse.

“Rafe?” he repeated, almost strangling on the name.

Rafe stirred, opened one eye, then the other. A grin lifted the corner of his mouth. “You sure took your sweet time getting here,” he said.

It was the second time that day that Holt had felt the whole world grind to a sudden stop—the first had been when he went to the Fellows' house, after learning that the judge was dead, looking for Lorelei, and found her with Templeton, the barrel of a gun pressed to her throat, cocked and ready to fire.

Now, here was Rafe, spread out on the cellar floor, with a goose-egg the size of a spittoon sprouting on the side of his head.

Holt doubled over, his arms clasped across his middle.

“Kahill took Tillie and Pearl,” Heddy blurted, like somebody just coming to the surface after a long time under water.

John was already scrambling up the cellar steps.

Holt got to his feet, hauling Rafe with him.

“Somebody saddle my horse,” Rafe said, blinking when they stepped into the sunlight.

“The hell,” Holt bit out. “You're staying here with Melina and Heddy and the baby.”

Rafe swayed on his feet, put both hands to his head.

Holt steered him toward Heddy, who was rallying fast. “Look after my lunkhead of a brother,” he said. “If he tries to come after us, hit him with whatever's handy.”

Heddy nodded soberly.

Gabe stood in the grass, holding his infant son, while Melina leaned against his side. Frank took her arm, led her gently into the house. Rafe followed under his own power, staggering a little.

Holt wanted to ride, but he waited, watching Gabe. Envying him a little.

“My boy. He's something, isn't he?” Gabe marveled hoarsely. Then, without waiting for an answer, he carried the child inside. Returned a moment later, with his arms empty and his eyes full.

At that instant, John burst out of the barn, mounted on Melina's spotted pony, just as the Captain arrived with seven of the wranglers.

Holt and Frank ran for their horses.

S
EESAW WAS STILL
tethered to the front fence. Lorelei waited until the undertaker arrived, with two assistants, causing enough of a stir to distract Angelina, and made a run for it.

Angelina was quicker than Lorelei expected, and dashed into the street, shouting for her to come back.

She gave Seesaw her heels and headed for the Templeton ranch.

The ride was long, but the mule never slowed, never stumbled, the whole rough way. Lorelei listened for gunshots with her whole being as she rounded the last bend, praying she wasn't too late. There had been two deaths already that day, her father's and Mr. Templeton's. She was determined that there would be no more.

Oaks and maples lined the driveway leading up to Templeton's fine, rustic house. Lorelei thought of her own trees, burned to specters, and felt a surge of rage.

A rider came up alongside her, from behind, and she was wrenched off Seesaw's back and onto the other mount before she could react. Mac Kahill smiled down at her.

“Welcome to the Templeton ranch, Miss Fellows,” he said cordially.

Lorelei squirmed, but it was no use. Both her arms were pinned.

Kahill laughed. “Life,” he said, “is full of sweet surprises.”

She found her voice. “Let me go!”

He spurred his horse toward the house. “Not a chance of that,” he told her. He dumped her to the ground, a few feet from the porch steps, and dismounted before she could get up, grabbing her hard by the arm. He paused, listening. “Hear that?” he asked mildly.

Lorelei held her breath. Riders.

“They're on their way, boys,” Kahill called out, and a dozen men appeared, streaming out of the house, rifles ready. “Get ready for a shindig.”

“Holt,” Lorelei whispered.

“Hope you won't miss him too much,” Kahill said, and flung her toward the steps.

“This ain't no time for sparkin',” one of the men remarked, leering, as Kahill grabbed the back of Lorelei's shirt and propelled her inside, through an entryway, and up a grand set of stairs.

At the top, he took both her hands, bound them together with his bandana, and pushed her to the floor with such force that she struck her head against something. Stars swam in front of her eyes, and darkness rose up around her, gulped her down whole.

She awakened, maybe seconds later, maybe minutes, dazed and sick to her stomach. Gunfire erupted outside, and she sat up, her heart in her throat.

Tillie raced past her, running down the stairs. “My pa is out there!” she screamed. “Don't nobody hurt my pa!”

Lorelei blinked, sure she must be hallucinating. “Tillie!” she screamed, in abject horror. “No!”

Tillie disappeared through the front door.

Another volley of gunfire, followed by a howl of enraged grief, rising above the other sounds.

“Your woman is in there, McKettrick!” It was Kahill's voice, taunting. Full of frenzied hatred. “The kid, too!”

Desperate, Lorelei finally wriggled free of the bond on her wrists. She got to her feet, collapsed, and got up again.

Bullets shattered the windows and thudded into the floor of the entry hall.

“Have it your way, Mr. Boss Man!” Kahill shouted. Lorelei watched, stricken, as he stepped over the threshold, overturned the fancy lamps on the long bureau just inside the door, and tossed a lighted match into the spilled kerosene.

The blaze caught on the fancy Oriental rug and raced toward the walls.

Pearl,
she thought, suddenly and with a clarity that slammed into her middle like a sledgehammer. She tried to orient herself, hurried along the upstairs corridor, flinging open doors. So many doors.

Smoke billowed up from downstairs, and the gunfire went on, deafening, ceaseless. It sounded as if two armies were clashing outside, and Tillie had gone straight into the melee, but Lorelei couldn't think about that now. Couldn't think of the cry of sorrowing fury she'd heard a moment afterwards. She had to find Pearl.

The baby was in the last bedroom, sitting on a blanket on the floor, his face crumpled with silent sobs. Lorelei snatched him up, burst out into the corridor again, chok
ing on smoke, looked wildly around for a rear stairway, but there was none.

There was only one way out.

By the time she reached the landing, the smoke was dense, and flames were leaping everywhere. A wall of heat met her as she tried to descend the stairs, bent low, gripping Pearl in both arms. The roar of the fire was thunderous, but beyond it lay a world of sudden and peculiar silence.

It was over, she thought.

She and Pearl were going to die, together, in a burning house.

But she had reckoned without Holt McKettrick.

Through the shifting smoke, she saw, or thought she saw, that big Appaloosa of his come right through the front door. Holt bent low over the animal's neck, spurred him up the broad stairs, and leaned down to grab her around the waist. Holding Pearl as tightly as she could, Lorelei felt herself hoisted onto Holt's horse. Brave as she was, she squeezed her eyes shut as they fairly flew down the burning steps; if that animal hadn't already been named, she thought, with frantic detachment, he ought to be called Pegasus.

Instinctively, she bent low as they bolted through the doorway, over the porch, into the fresh air and sunlight.

There were bodies on the grass, but Frank and the Captain and Gabe Navarro were still standing upright. Then she saw Tillie, shot through the chest. John was kneeling on the ground, rocking her in his arms, tears streaming down his face.

“No,” Lorelei croaked, her throat parched from the smoke and the fear, holding Pearl even more tightly.

“No.”

Holt leaned to set Lorelei on the ground, and she swayed on her feet, stricken with grief. He dismounted, touched her shoulder, just briefly, as he passed, knelt next to Tillie, facing Mr. Cavanagh. “She's gone,” he said quietly.

Tillie's eyes stared sightlessly at the sky.

John let out a long, plaintive wail of grief and protest.

Lorelei put a hand to her mouth, to stifle a sob, and the Captain took Pearl from her arms.

Mr. Cavanagh clung to Tillie.

“We've got to take her home now, John,” Holt said.

A long time passed. Then John nodded, very slowly, and allowed Holt to lift Tillie's body off the ground.

Lorelei remembered little of the sad, seemingly endless trip back to the Cavanagh place. She rode Seesaw, and Holt carried Tillie on the Appaloosa, as gently as if she were a sleeping child. The Captain brought Pearl, and Gabe stayed close to John.

It was all there was to do, for any of them. Keep riding. Keep breathing. Keep groping from one heartbeat to the next.

One week later

H
OLT CROUCHED BESIDE
Tillie's grave, marked with the simple wooden cross John had carved himself, and tied Lizzie's blue ribbon around one of the bars. He'd done everything he came to Texas to do—gotten Gabe out of jail, found Frank Corrales, put the Cavanagh ranch back on its feet, but at what cost?

He rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “I'm sorry, Tillie,” he said, grinding out the words.

“It's not your fault, Holt,” Rafe said, from somewhere behind him. Holt hadn't heard his brother approach.

Holt picked his hat up off the ground, put it on, and stood. He wasn't ready to face Rafe just yet, Rafe or anybody else. “You ready to ride for home?” he asked. John was grieving, but he'd be all right, with Heddy to love him through the rough spots. Gabe and Melina were properly married, and already making plans to build a cabin on the site of Lorelei's ranch house.

He didn't let his thoughts stray beyond that burned cabin, to the woman herself.

“I'm ready,” Rafe allowed, “and Frank's saddled up, too. I reckon the question is, are
you
ready?”

At last, Holt turned. Rafe was watching him, arms folded, eyes wise. Seeing half again too much.

“I've done all the damage I could,” Holt said, with a slight shrug and an attempt at a grin, which fell flat.

“You're just going to go off and leave Lorelei?”

Holt took his hat off again, turned it in his hands. Lorelei was inside the house, with Heddy and Melina, doing the kinds of things women did after a death. Cooking. Crying. Talking quietly. “You heard her. She means to buy Heddy's place in Laredo and go into the room-and-board business.”

“You could talk her out of that, and you know it.”

Holt sighed. “I wouldn't be doing her any favors.” He gestured in that direction, with his hat. “She needs a different kind of man. One who won't get her shot at.”

Rafe shook his head. “Seems to me, you need to make a choice, here. Ride out, leave a good woman behind, like you did once before, and regret it for the rest of your days. Or have the plain grit to claim what you want and take your chances, just like the rest of us.”

Frank came out of the barn, leading their three
horses, saddled and ready for the long trip ahead. Holt pretended an interest in the event. The goodbyes had all been said—except the one to Lorelei. There would be no looking back.

Lorelei was going to be fine. Gabe and the Captain would get her safely to Laredo, since she was hell-bent on going, and taking little Pearl, now called John Henry, by general consensus, along with her. She had a backbone, Lorelei did, and one of the best minds Holt had ever run across. She'd make her way in the world. Probably marry a good man who wouldn't drag her off on trail drives through Comanche country.

“Say something, Holt,” Rafe prodded gruffly. “Better yet,
do
something.”

“It's best for her if I just go.”

“I know you think that, but she might be of another opinion. For God's sake, at least ask her.”

Frank drew up with the horses. Holt stared toward the house for a few moments, then looked back at Tillie's grave. “Mount up,” he said. “We're burning daylight.”

Rafe scowled, snatched Chief's reins from Frank's hands, and swung up into the saddle. Frank hesitated, then got on his own horse, a bay gelding bought in town. The two of them waited a moment or two, then rode off.

Holt put his foot in the stirrup, gripped the saddle horn in one hand.
Ride away,
he thought, and hoisted himself onto Traveler's back. Lorelei had renamed the gelding Pegasus—said he could fly.

Holt smiled a little as he reined the eager horse toward the road.

Rafe's words unraveled in his mind.
Seems to me, you need to make a choice, here. Ride out, leave a good
woman behind, like you did once before and regret it for the rest of your days…

He looked back, saw Lorelei standing on John and Heddy's front porch, her head high, watching him.

He moved to raise a hand, the only farewell he figured he could manage, then let it drop back to his side. She didn't move, didn't call out. She merely looked at him, and from that distance he couldn't make out her expression.

His throat tightened. Frank and Rafe were probably halfway to Arizona by then, and still he sat there, in the saddle, unable to go in one direction, or the other.

The least he could do was say goodbye.

He rode back.

Lorelei didn't move, just stood there, gripping the rail of the porch, the wind playing softly in the loose tendrils of dark hair around her face and neck.

“Think you could love a trail boss?” he heard himself ask. Nobody was more surprised by that question than he was.

Her mouth wobbled, and her eyes brimmed with tears. “Yes,” she said.

Holt got down off the horse, approached her, stood just shy of the flower bed, one of the many things Tillie had left behind to mark her passing. He looked up at her. “It'll be a hard ride, up to Arizona,” he warned quietly.

She broke loose with a shaky smile. “I'm used to that,” she said. “Do you love me, Holt McKettrick?”

He grinned. “Yes, ma'am,” he said. “I believe I do.”

She felt her way along the railing, as though she wasn't sure she could stand without holding on, then suddenly flew down the steps and hurled herself into his arms.

He laughed out loud, spun her around in a circle of swirling calico skirts, and then kissed her soundly. It
was an ordinary kiss, and yet it made something shift inside Holt, a healing, painful shift, like the setting of a broken bone.

“It won't be easy, being my wife,” he said, when he figured he could speak without making a fool of himself.

“I'm not looking for ‘easy,'” she replied, very softly.

“Good thing,” he told her.

Rafe and Frank were back, looking on with stupid grins on their faces. Heddy and John appeared on the porch, along with Gabe, Melina and their baby boy. The Captain was there, too, holding little John Henry like he was born to play nursemaid.

Lorelei pulled free of Holt, held her arms out for John Henry. The Captain handed him over, with smiling reluctance.

“I'll get your things,” Heddy told Lorelei, but she was looking straight at Holt. “Got them ready, just in case this hardheaded galoot came to his senses.”

“I'll saddle up the mule,” Gabe said, and made for the barn.

It happened that fast. One minute, Holt was set to ride out for the Triple M with Rafe and Frank his only companions. The next, he was taking on a woman and a child, and he knew it was for good.

Lorelei linked her arm through his, still holding John Henry. “You're an impossible man, Holt McKettrick,” she said, “but God help me, I do love you with my whole heart and soul. If you'll stand by me, then I'll stand by you.”

He kissed her again. “It's a deal,” he said.