McKettrick's Choice (9 page)

T
HERE WAS STILL
no word from the governor.

Holt resigned himself to a trip to Austin, even though he couldn't spare the time, and proceeded to hunt down a lawyer. He had bad luck with that, too. None of the three candidates for the job were willing to say so outright, but they were all afraid of Judge Fellows, Isaac Templeton or both.

He went to see Gabe, bringing the dog along with him.

Gabe wouldn't so much as glance his way, let alone talk. He just sat there on his cot, hands clasped, staring at the wall. Playing the stoic savage.

“I told you,” Holt said miserably, “that Melina wouldn't stay in Waco, once she knew you were behind bars.”

Gabe didn't answer. Didn't move.

“To hell with you, then,” Holt said. “Hang if you want to.”

He didn't mean it, and Gabe knew that as well as Holt did, but he was wasting his time trying to get that damn Indian to see reason.

He took himself off to the nearest saloon, the dog beside him, and ordered a whiskey. A man stepped up
beside him, but Holt didn't trouble himself to see who it was.

“Well, hell,” drawled a familiar voice. “Looks like I was right to come. From the looks of you, that mangy hound dog is the only friend you've got.”

Holt stiffened, turned his head, full of hope and wild annoyance.

His brother Rafe, trail-worn and dirty, with several days' worth of beard casting a dark shadow over half his face, raised his glass in an easy salute. “Aren't you going to welcome your favorite brother to Texas?” he asked.

Holt felt a corner of his mouth kick upward. “Who says you're my favorite brother?” he countered. Truth was, he was a little choked up, and damned if he wanted Rafe to know it.

Rafe laughed. “I'm the one who rode all the way down here to make sure your sorry ass was all right,” he said. “I reckon that entitles me to be the favorite.”

Holt frowned as the implications of Rafe's presence started hitting home, one right after another. “You've got a wife and baby at home. You shouldn't have left them.”

“And I've got a brother here, even if he
is
a cussed bastard,” Rafe said affably, refilling his glass from Holt's bottle. “Emmeline and the baby are fine, and they've got a whole family of other McKettricks looking after them. You, on the other hand, seem to have nobody but this old dog.”

Sorrowful gave a little whine. Holt plucked a pickled egg from the crock on the bar and fed it to him.

“How's Lizzie?” Holt asked, fishing for a second egg.

“Fine,” Rafe answered, shaking his head as Sorrowful gulped it down. “She misses you, but Pa's buying her a
surrey all her own, and Concepcion lets her help with little Katie after school every day, so she's feeling pretty frisky.”

Katie was their baby sister, just two years old and already talking back to everybody, including the old man, with the best of them.

“Did Pa put you up to this?”

Rafe grinned. “Nope. Kade and Jeb and I drew lots.”

“And you lost?”

Rafe slapped him on the back. “I shouldn't admit it, since you're already bigheaded,” he said, “but I won.”

Holt swallowed. The dog pawed at his leg, wanting another pickled egg. Holt refused the request with a shake of his head, and Sorrowful lay down with a philosophical sigh.

“I saw the gallows they're building outside the courthouse,” Rafe said quietly. “I reckon that means your friend is still behind bars.”

Glumly, Holt nodded. “Yeah,” he said, discouraged all over again.

Rafe set his glass down on the bar. “What else is going on?”

“I bought John Cavanagh's ranch,” Holt answered, after weighing the matter in his mind for a few moments.

Rafe narrowed his eyes. “You bought a ranch? I thought you figured on coming back to the Triple M when you got things squared away down here.”

“I haven't changed my mind about that. John's not getting any younger, though, and his back was to the wall. The bank was about to take the whole outfit and hand it over to a rancher named Templeton.” The bartender offered another bottle, and Holt shook his head, laid a
few coins on the bar. “When the time comes, I'll deed the place back to him and ride for Arizona.”

“If you wanted to help Cavanagh,” Rafe wondered aloud, “why didn't you just give him the money to pay off the bank?”

Holt sighed. “Templeton was bearing down hard on John. I guess I was looking to draw his fire.”

Rafe rubbed the back of his neck. Sighed. “I reckon that makes sense,” he said with a slow grin, “in a McKettrick sort of way. You got a bunkhouse on this ranch of yours? I could use a hot bath and about twelve hours' sleep.”

“You probably won't get the sleep,” Holt allowed, grinning back. He'd never have asked Rafe to come down to Texas, but, at the same time, he was glad of his company. “I'll heat the water for the bath myself, though. Consider it a community service.”

Rafe gave a hoot of laughter. “Well, unless you've got some other business in town, we'd better ride. We can reason out some kind of plan on the road.”

Sorrowful got to his feet as Rafe and Holt turned to leave the bar.

Rafe's gelding, Chief, was tied to the hitching rail out front, and Holt was irritated with himself for not having noticed the horse earlier. None of the McKettrick horses were branded, but the familiar mark, three
M
's, interwoven, was tooled into the leather of Rafe's saddle, for anybody to see.

“Aren't you forgetting something?” Rafe asked, untying Chief and mounting up with the ease of a man who'd been riding longer than he'd been walking on his own two feet.

Holt climbed into the saddle and whistled to the dog. Sorrowful jumped up in front of him and perched on the
pommel like a bird on a branch. “Like what?” he asked, honestly baffled.

“Like Margaret,” Rafe said.

Holt swore under his breath. He ought to be shot for a rounder, the way he treated women. First he'd gone off and left Olivia alone and carrying his baby, then he'd completely forgotten the mail-order bride he'd sent for and courted and finally abandoned.

Rafe's grin flashed white in his unwashed face. “No need to fret about her, Big Brother,” he said. “Seth Bates, over on the Southern Cross, asked her to dance right after you rode out. When the preacher finally showed up, Margaret put her fancy gown back on and married old Seth on the spot.”

“I'll be damned,” Holt said, thinking he was a son of a bitch for being irritated. “Didn't take her long.”

Rafe laughed. “I guess she had her mind set on getting married that day. Hell, we had the cake right there handy, and the preacher, and all those people dressed up and primed to celebrate. Seemed like a practical decision to me.”

They headed for the outskirts of town, following the river road.

There was a ripping sound. The dog looked up at him with confidence in his charitable nature, and Holt decided the pickled eggs had been a bad idea.

 

“W
HAT WAS SHE LIKE
?” Lorelei asked numbly. Seated on a rock down by the stream, she held a cup of Angelina's tea in both hands. “Was my mother really insane?”

Angelina stared out at the water, watching light frolic on the surface. “No,” she said, in a tone of remembrance. “It began after William was born. She grew morose. Wouldn't eat and wandered the house at all hours of the
night, as if she'd misplaced something and wanted to find it. The judge was patient at first—took her to doctors as far away as Houston. They said it sometimes happened after a woman had a child, and there was nothing they could do. She was better for a while, and then—”

“And then she had me,” Lorelei murmured. “Is that what you were going to say?”

Angelina met her gaze. Her eyes were swollen with misery. “Yes,” she answered. “She used to push you around in a little carriage, then leave you places and forget where. Once, when I'd gone to do the marketing, she decided to give you a bath, and then got distracted and went off to do something else. You would have drowned if little William hadn't climbed up onto a stool and pulled you out of that basin.”

Lorelei closed her eyes.

“The judge sent her away, then—to this ranch. Said her own people would have to look after her. But poor William cried so—sometimes he couldn't catch his breath, he'd get so wrought up. Night and day, he called for her. So, finally, your father brought her back home.” Lorelei waited.

“When you were three, Selma finally broke down completely.” Angelina choked, dashed at her cheek with the back of one hand. “William fell out of a tree in the backyard—just a little gash to his head, but there was a lot of blood. Didn't even knock him out. When Selma saw him lying there, stunned and bleeding, she started screaming and didn't stop until Dr. Carson came and gave her medicine. She didn't speak at all then—didn't seem to know any of the rest of us were there. Even seeing that William was all right didn't bring her around. She just sat in that rocking chair in the parlor and
stared at the wall, like she saw horrible things happening there.”

Lorelei put a hand over her mouth, waiting out a wave of emotion. “How long did Mama live, after she went to the asylum?”

“Six months or so,” Angelina said, watching the stream again. “Then one day a letter came, saying she was gone.”

Lorelei leaned forward, spilling her tea to the ground, and pressed her face to her knees. She was full of sorrow, fair bursting with it, but no tears would come. Angelina stroked her back.

“There, now,” she said.

“Maybe that's why I've never married,” Lorelei said, straightening as she drew a deep breath. “Maybe I'd go crazy, too, if I had babies.”

“Child,” Angelina scolded tenderly. “There is no reason to think such a thing.” But when she met Lorelei's gaze, her eyes were worried.

H
OLT TOOK CARE
to go around Lorelei's place, lest he run into her again. The decision, though prudent, left him feeling oddly disjointed. He'd seen that buggy racing along the trail earlier, after his bath in the creek, and guessed who was driving it: the judge, mad as a wet cat.

Holt and Rafe crossed the creek more than a mile downstream, the dog still riding with Holt. When they rode into the dooryard at John's place, Tillie appeared on the porch, and her face lit up when she saw Sorrowful. He let out a yelp of delight and loped toward her.

Rafe looked on curiously as Tillie knelt, so she and the hound could wrestle in the tall grass. John came out on the porch and raised a tentative hand to Holt. No doubt he figured Rafe for a cowboy, hired in town.

“Where's Mr. Cavanagh?” Rafe asked.

“That's him,” Holt answered.

Old Angus McKettrick had done one thing right; he'd raised his three younger sons to measure a man by what he did, not the color of his skin. Rafe, Kade and Jeb were equally ornery to just about everybody.

“I'll be damned,” Rafe said. “You never said he was a black man.”

“You never asked,” Holt replied, dismounting. By then, Holt's foster father was within earshot. “John, meet my brother, Rafe McKettrick.”

Rafe nodded. “Mr. Cavanagh,” he said.

A broad smile broke over John's face. He thrust out a hand, and Rafe shook it.

“There's a powerful resemblance,” John said.

Rafe's grin was even broader than John's. “Since I don't reckon you really intended to insult me right out of the chute like that,” he said, “I will not take that remark to heart.”

John laughed, hooked his thumbs under his suspenders. “You come all the way from the Arizona Territory?”

“Yes, sir,” Rafe said. “I did.”

“I'll show you to the bunkhouse,” Holt told him.

“You can't put your own brother in the bunkhouse,” John protested. “There's a spare bed in your room. He can sleep there.”

Rafe passed Holt a sidelong glance. “Thanks,” he said.

John turned to address his daughter. “Tillie, stop messin' with that dog and put on some coffee. Get them peach pies out of the pantry, too.”

Tillie scrambled to her feet, rubbing her hands off on her skirts and looking Rafe over. “Who's that man?” she wanted to know.

“Rafe McKettrick, ma'am,” Rafe said, taking off his hat and giving a polite nod. “Pleased to meet you.”

She took a wary step toward them. “You bring me anything from town, Holt?” she wanted to know.

Holt pulled a penny bag of gumdrops from his shirt pocket and held it out to her. “You save those until after supper,” he said, knowing she wouldn't. Ever since
Tillie'd been no taller than the pump handle, she'd had a penchant for gumdrops.

“She's not quite right in the head,” John said regretfully, after she dashed into the house to make the coffee and get out the pies.

“If she can bake a peach pie,” Rafe reasoned, “she's right enough.”

At that, John smiled again. “She's a good girl,” he said fondly.

Right about then, Kahill came out of the bunkhouse. Holt wondered why he wasn't out looking for strays with the other six men he'd hired. Hoped Mac hadn't grown up to be a slacker.

“You sick or something?” Holt asked.

Rafe looked on, pulling off his leather gloves. He didn't introduce himself.

Kahill responded with a crooked grin. “No, sir, Mr. McKettrick. I only came back because my horse threw a shoe.” He looked up, checking the sky. “It's about quitting time anyhow, so I just stayed.”

John spoke up. “I'd appreciate it if you'd put up these horses,” he said. “Rafe here's had a long, hard ride.”

Mac was chewing on a matchstick, and he rolled it from one side of his mouth to the other. He waited a beat too long to say, “Yes, sir, I'll do that.” Hesitated again before he took Chief's reins in one hand and the Appaloosa's in the other.

“Thanks,” Holt said, as Kahill started to lead the animals away, toward the barn.

“Anytime,” Kahill drawled in response.

John headed for the house, but Holt and Rafe tarried, staring after Kahill and the horses.

Rafe spoke in an undertone. “What rock did he crawl out from under?”

 

M
ELINA WAS IN
the kitchen, peeling potatoes for supper, and Captain Jack sat at the table, playing solitaire and nursing a glass of John's best whiskey. The Captain had a cot in the bunkhouse, and Melina shared Tillie's room.

By Holt's count, the place was getting a bit too crowded.

He introduced Rafe all over again. Melina nodded, without smiling, and went back to her potato peeling. Holt knew by the way she bit her lower lip that she wanted to ask about Gabe, but for some reason, she held back. He moved toward her, meaning to confide that Navarro was in good health, though in a sour mood.

“I knew your pa,” the Captain told Rafe. “Liked old Angus McKettrick, even if he was a bit of a rough customer.”

On his way past Tillie, who was coming out of the pantry with a pie tin balanced on each palm, Holt stopped so suddenly that the two of them nearly collided. It was Rafe who saved the pies.

Holt had ridden with Walton the whole time he was in the Rangers, and the Captain had never said a word about knowing the old man. Not one damn word.

“What did you just say?” he snapped.

The Captain grinned, pleased with himself. “Didn't I mention that?”

Rafe put the pies on the table, his glance moving from the Captain to Holt. Curious, and a little amused.

“No,” Holt ground out, “you didn't mention it!”

“Knew your ma, too,” the Captain said. “Pretty little thing. Not too sturdy, though.”

Rafe hung his hat from a peg on the wall, next to the door.

The silence was thick as mud.

“Old Dill, now, that uncle of yours,” the Captain went
on, with a little shake of his head. “Not worth a tinker's damn.”

Holt's mouth fell open. He closed it again, shot a look in John's direction.

“I didn't tell him any of this,” Cavanagh was quick to say.

Rafe pulled back a chair and sat down, admiring Tillie's peach pies.

Holt sank into a chair of his own. “Why didn't you say anything?” he asked the Captain. “All those years on the trail, fighting Comanches, sleeping in the mud, picking weevils out of the damned flour when there was anything to eat besides beans, and you never thought to mention—”

“You didn't ask me,” the Captain interrupted.

Rafe chuckled at that. Tillie set a cup of coffee in front of him, along with a plate and fork, then sliced the pie and gave him a piece the size of an anvil.

He thanked her cordially, took up his fork and turned his gaze back to Walton. “How well did you know our pa?” he asked, chewing.

 

T
HAT NIGHT
, while Rafe was settling his oversized frame in the bed next to Holt's, he turned chatty as a spinster at a tea party.

“How'd you come to live with John Cavanagh?” he asked, after a hearty sigh of contentment. He'd probably slept along the trail all the way down from the Triple M and was glad to stretch out on a real mattress again.

“What the hell do you care?”

Rafe chuckled. “I don't, really,” he said. “But since it obviously isn't something you want to talk about, I mean to persist until you tell me.”

Holt sighed eloquently. Out of the corner of his eye,
he saw Rafe lying there with his hands behind his head, smiling up at the ceiling. He did have the look of a man who could yammer all night if he felt disposed to do so.

“I ran away from home when I was sixteen. John caught me stealing eggs out of his chicken coop, figured I needed seeing to and took me in. Are you satisfied?”

“Nope,” Rafe said. “There's more I want to know. Like how a black man came to own a place like this. On the ride out here, you said this ranch measures a thousand acres. That's a lot of land. Must have cost plenty, even in the old days.”

“Before the war,” Holt said, letting his mind reach back and take hold of what he remembered, “John was a slave. He joined up with the Buffalo Soldiers, and he and two other men came upon a couple of wounded Rebels one day, in a gully. His friends wanted to bayonet them and be done with it. John wouldn't have it, and when the Yanks rode out, he stayed behind to do what he could for the Rebs. One of them asked him to get word to his folks, out here in Texas, once he died. John stayed with those boys until they'd breathed their last, and then, figuring he'd catch hell from his captain for consorting with the enemy if he went back to camp, he decided to keep his promise in person, instead of writing a letter. Along the way, he met his wife—she was running away from a plantation in Tennessee. When the two of them finally got to San Antonio, the dead Rebel's mother had already passed on from worry and yellow fever, and his father was sickly. Said the news of his boy's death would be the finish of him, and it was, but before he gave up the ghost, he deeded his homestead and a hundred head of cattle over to John.” Holt paused. “Is that enough, or
would you like to hear something else that's none of your damned business?”

Rafe laughed. “In the three years I've known you,” he said, “I don't believe I've ever heard you say that many words all together, let alone at once. I reckon I'll just content myself with that.”

“Good.” Holt jerked the covers up to his neck and rolled onto his side, turning his back to the other bed.

“There's one more thing, though,” Rafe said.

“What?”
“I snore.”

He sure as hell did.

 

H
OLT,
R
AFE AND
J
OHN
were on the range the next morning, trying to haul a bawling heifer out of a mud hole with rope and cursing, when the riders appeared. A dozen of them, lining the rim of the nearest hill like a Comanche war party.

“Company,” muttered Rafe, brushing the butt of his .45 with the backs of his fingers.

Three of the riders started down the gentle slope—a fat man in a fancy suit, flanked by two cowhands with rifles resting across the pommels of their saddles.

“Isaac Templeton,” John said quietly. “He'll be put out that you didn't go over to his place for a visit, Holt.”

“Will he, now?” Holt breathed, keeping his eyes on the man in the middle.

Templeton stopped a dozen yards away, pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat off his broad, whiskered face. “Holt McKettrick, unless I miss my guess,” he said.

Holt didn't answer.

“It's customary for a newcomer to greet his neighbors with a proper how-do-you-do,” Templeton said. His
beady gaze drifted to Rafe, who had drawn his pistol. “I'd put that away if I were you. As you can see, my men have the advantage, carrying rifles as they are. You pull that trigger, and you'll be dead before you hit the ground.”

“Maybe,” Rafe said. “But I'll put a bullet through your heart on the way down.”

Holt thought of Emmeline, Rafe's wife, and little Georgia. He stepped between Rafe and Templeton. His brother spat a curse, and Holt knew there would be a row later—if he and Rafe were lucky enough to live that long.

“Your business is with me,” he told the Englishman. The cow bawled, still stuck fast and probably wondering why nobody was doing anything about it.

Templeton gave a slight, vicious smile. His gaze flickered briefly to John, lit on Rafe for a moment, then bored into Holt. “We've gotten off to a poor beginning,” the big man said. “I want this land. I'm prepared to pay handsomely for it. Neither I nor my men mean you any harm.”

“Send them away, then,” John said.

Templeton hesitated, then waved the men off.

Reluctantly, they wheeled their horses around and went to join the rest of the bunch, up on top of the hill.

“I'm not selling,” Holt told Templeton.

Templeton wiped his brow again and sighed. “I fear I have offended you, bringing these cowpunchers along,” he said, with a poor attempt at regret.

“Those aren't cowpunchers,” Rafe put in tersely.

“They're hired guns.”

Again, Templeton sighed. “I'm trying to be reasonable,” he said. “Perhaps I should have approached Miss Fellows first. You do know that she's moved onto the old Hanson place?”

Holt's back teeth came down so hard they nearly severed his tongue. “You stay away from her,” he said.

Templeton raised a bushy eyebrow, and his mustache, the size of a horse's tail, quivered. He leaned forward to rest his thick arms on the horn of his saddle. “Sweet on her, are you?” he asked smoothly. “Well, well.” He ruminated a bit, studying Holt as if he were a hair in his soup. “You're new around here, so I guess it's my neighborly duty to warn you that Miss Lorelei is a known hellcat. Unstable, too.”

Holt took a step toward him, felt Rafe's fingers close on his upper arm.

“She's a silly woman,” Templeton confided, with gentlemanly resignation. “Probably thinks she can make that place pay, with two Mexicans to help her and no cattle. She'll come around to my way of thinking soon enough.” He paused thoughtfully. “Maybe I ought to marry her. Send her off to England to live with my mother.” He laughed, savoring some private thought. “Serve them both right.”

Holt felt heat surge up his neck to throb along his jawline, and he silently cursed himself. It was one thing for the Englishman to get under his hide, and another to let him know it.

“I'd give Miss Lorelei credit for more sense than to take up with the likes of you,” Holt said.

“Would you?” Templeton asked pleasantly. “She took up with Creighton Bannings. That tells me she's not too choosey, and the judge, well—he'd do just about anything to marry her off. Especially if it meant he'd get the twenty-five thousand dollars I'm willing to pay for that land.” He lowered his voice. “Financial problems, you know. It's a shame.”