Sierra's Homecoming (9 page)

“Pa used to kiss Ma all the time. He used to swat her on the bustle, too, when he thought nobody was looking. It always made her laugh, and stand real close to him, with her arms around his neck.”

Doss might have gripped the saddle horn with both hands, because of the pain, if he'd been riding alone. It wasn't the reminder of how much Hannah and Gabe had loved each other that seared him, though. It was the loss of his brother, the way of things then, and it all being over for good.

“I'll treat your mother right, Tobias,” he said, after more hat-brim pulling and more looking away.

“You sound pretty sure she'll say yes,” the boy commented.

“She already has,” Doss replied.

Present Day

More snow began to fall at mid-morning and, worried that the power would go off again, and stay off this time, Sierra gathered her and Liam's dirty laundry and threw a load into the washing machine. She'd telephoned Liam's doctor in Flagstaff, from the study, while he and Travis were filling the dishwasher, but she hadn't mentioned the hallucinations. She'd heard the piano music herself, after all, and then Eve had made such experiences seem almost normal.

Sierra didn't know precisely what was happening, and she was still unsettled by Liam's claims of seeing a boy in old-time clothes, but she wasn't ready to bring up the subject with an outsider, whether that outsider had a medical degree or not.

Dr. O'Meara had reviewed Liam's records, since they'd been expressed to her from the clinic in Florida, and she wanted to make sure he had an inhaler on hand. She'd promised to call in a prescription to the pharmacy in Indian Rock, and they'd made an appointment for the following Monday afternoon.

Now Liam was in the study, watching TV, and Travis was outside splitting wood for the stove and the fireplaces. If the power went off again, she'd need firewood for cooking. The generator kept the furnace running, along with a few of the lights, but it burned a lot of gas and there was always the possibility that it would break down or freeze up.

Travis came in with an armload just as she was starting to prepare lunch.

Watching him, Sierra thought about what Eve had said on the phone earlier. Travis's younger brother had died horribly, and very recently. He'd left his job, Travis had, and come to the ranch to live in a trailer and look after horses.

He didn't look like a man carrying a burden, but appearances were deceiving. Nobody knew that better than Sierra did.

“What kind of work did you do, before you came here?” she asked, and then wished she hadn't brought the subject up at all. Travis's face closed instantly, and his eyes went blank.

“Nothing special,” he said.

She nodded. “I was a cocktail waitress,” she told him, because she felt she ought to offer him something after asking what was evidently an intrusive question.

Standing there, beside the antique cookstove and the wood box, in his leather coat and cowboy hat, Travis looked as though he'd stepped through a time warp, out of an earlier century.

“I know,” he said. “Meg told me.”

“Of course she did.” Sierra poured canned soup into a saucepan, stirred it industriously and blushed.

Travis didn't say anything more for a long time. Then, “I was a lawyer for McKettrickCo,” he told her.

Sierra stole a sidelong glance at him. He looked tense, standing there holding his hat in one hand. “Impressive,” she said.

“Not so much,” he countered. “It's a tradition in my family, being a lawyer, I mean. At least, with everyone but my brother, Brody. He became a meth addict instead, and blew himself to kingdom-come brewing up a batch. Go figure.”

Sierra turned to face Travis. Noticed that his jaw was hard and his eyes even harder. He was angry, in pain, or both.

“I'm so sorry,” she said.

“Yeah,” Travis replied tersely. “Me, too.”

He started for the door.

“Stay for lunch?” Sierra asked.

“Another time,” he answered, and then he was gone.

1919

It was near sunset when Doss and Tobias rode in from the Jessup place, and by then Hannah was fit to be tied. She'd paced for most of the afternoon, after it started to snow again, fretting over all the things that could go wrong along the way.

The horse or the mule could have gone lame or fallen through the ice crossing the creek.

There could have been an avalanche. Just last year, a whole mountainside of snow had come crashing down on to the roof of a cabin and crushed it to the ground, with a family inside.

Wolves prowled the countryside, too, bold with the desperation of their hunger. They killed cattle and sometimes people.

Doss hadn't even taken his rifle.

When Hannah heard the horses, she ran to the window, wiped the fog from the glass with her apron hem. She watched as they dismounted and led their mounts into the barn.

She'd baked pies that day to keep from going crazy, and the kitchen was redolent with the aroma. She smoothed her skirts, patted her hair and turned away so she wouldn't be caught looking if Doss or Tobias happened to glance toward the house.

Almost an hour passed before they came inside—they'd done the barn chores—and Hannah had the table set, the lamps lighted and the coffee made. She wanted to fuss over Tobias, check his ears and fingers for frostbite and his forehead for fever, but she wouldn't let herself do it.

Doss wasn't deceived by her smiling restraint, she could see that, but Tobias looked downright relieved, as though he'd expected her to pounce the minute he came through the door.

“How did you find Widow Jessup?” she asked.

“She was right where we left her last time,” Doss said with a slight grin.

Hannah gave him a look.

“She was fresh out of firewood,” Tobias expounded importantly, unwrapping himself, layer by layer, until he stood in just his trousers and shirt, with melted snow pooling around his feet. “It's a good thing we went down there. She'd have froze for sure.”

Doss looked tired, but his eyes twinkled. “For sure,” he confirmed. “She got Tobias here by the ears and kissed him all over his face, she was so grateful that he'd saved her.”

Tobias let out a yelp of mortification and took a swing at Doss, who sidestepped him easily.

“Stop your roughhousing and wash up for supper,” Hannah said, but it did her heart good to see it. Gabe used to come in from the barn, toss Tobias over one shoulder and carry him around the kitchen like a sack of grain. The boy had howled with laughter and pummeled Gabe's chest with his small fists in mock resistance. She'd missed the ordinary things like that more than anything except being held in Gabe's arms.

She served chicken and dumplings, in her best Blue Willow dishes, with apple pie for dessert.

Tobias ate with a fresh-air, long-ride appetite and nearly fell asleep in his chair once his stomach was filled.

Doss got up, hoisted him into his arms and carried him, head bobbing, toward the stairs.

Hannah's throat went raw, watching them go.

She poured a second cup of coffee for Doss, had it waiting when he came back a few minutes later.

“Did you put Tobias in his nightshirt and cover him with the spare quilt?” she asked, when Doss appeared at the bottom of the steps. “He mustn't take a chill—”

“I took off his shoes and threw him in like he was,” Doss interrupted. That twinkle was still in his eyes, but there was a certain wariness there, too. “I made sure he was warm, so stop fretting.”

Hannah had put the dishes in a basin of hot water to soak, and she lingered at the table, sipping tea brewed in Lorelei's pot.

Doss sat down in his father's chair, cupped his hands around his own mug of steaming coffee. “I spoke t Tobias about our getting married,” he said bluntly. “And he's in favor of it.”

Heat pounded in Hannah's cheeks, spawned by indignation and something else that she didn't dare think about. “Doss McKettrick,” she whispered in reproach, “you shouldn't have done that. I'm his mother and it was my place to—”

“It's done, Hannah,” Doss said. “Let it go at that.”

Hannah huffed out a breath. “Don't you tell me what's done and ought to be let go,” she protested. “I won't take orders from you now or after we're married.”

He grinned. “Maybe you won't,” he said. “But that doesn't mean I won't give them.”

She laughed, surprising herself so much that she slapped a hand over her mouth to stifle the sound. That gesture, in turn, brought back recollections of the night before, when Doss had made love to her, and she'd wanted to cry out with the pleasure of it.

She blushed so hard her face burned, and this time it was Doss who laughed.

“I figure we're in for another blizzard,” he said. “Might be spring before we can get to town and stand up in front of a preacher. I hope you're not looking like a watermelon smuggler before then.”

Hannah opened her mouth, closed it again.

Doss's eyes danced as he took another sip of his coffee.

“That was an insufferably
forward
thing to say!” Hannah accused.

“You're a fine one to talk about being forward,” Doss observed, and repeated back something she'd said at that very height of her passion.

“That's
enough,
Mr. McKettrick.”

Doss set his cup down, pushed back his chair and stood. “I'm going out to the barn to look in on the stock again. Maybe you ought to come along. Make the job go faster, if you lent a hand.”

Hannah squirmed on the bench.

Doss crossed the room, took his coat and hat down from the pegs by the door. “Way out there, a person could holler if they wanted to. Be nobody to hear.”

Hannah did some more squirming.

“Fresh hay to lie in, too,” Doss went on. “Nice and soft, and if a man were to spread a couple of horse blankets over it—”

Heat surged through Hannah, brought her to an aching simmer. She sputtered something and waved him away.

Doss chuckled, opened the door and went out, whistling merrily under his breath.

Hannah waited. If Doss McKettrick thought he was going to have his way with her—in the
barn,
of all places—well, he was just…

She got up, went to the stove and banked the fire with a poker.

He was just
right,
that was what he was.

She chose her biggest shawl, wrapped herself in it, and hurried after him.

Present Day

As soon as Sierra put supper on the table that night, the power went off again. While she scrambled for candles, Liam rushed to the nearest window.

“Travis's trailer's dark,” he said. “He'll get
hypothermia
out there.”

Sierra sighed. “I'll bet he comes back to see to the furnace, just like he did this morning. We'll ask him to have supper with us.”

“I see him!” Liam cried gleefully. “He's coming out of the barn, with a lantern!” He raced for the door, and before Sierra could stop him, he was outside, with no coat on, galloping through the deepening snow and shouting Travis's name.

Sierra pulled on her own coat, grabbed Liam's and hurried after him.

Travis was already herding him toward the house.

“Mom made meat loaf, and she says you can have some,” Liam was saying, as he tramped breathlessly along.

Sierra wrapped his coat around him, and would have scolded him, if her gaze hadn't collided unexpectedly with Travis's.

Travis shook his head.

She swallowed all that she'd been about to say and hustled her son into the house.

“I'll start the generator,” Travis said.

Sierra nodded hastily and shut the door.

“Liam McKettrick,” she burst out, “what were you thinking, going out in that cold without a coat?”

In the candlelight, she saw Liam's lower lip wobble. “Travis said it isn't the cowboy way. He was about to put his coat on me when you came.”

“
What
isn't the ‘cowboy way'?” she asked, chafing his icy hands between hers and praying he wouldn't have an asthma attack or come down with pneumonia.

“Not wearing a coat,” Liam replied, downcast. “A cowboy is always prepared for any kind of weather, and he never rushes off half-cocked, without his gear.”

Sierra relaxed a little, stifled a smile. “Travis is right,” she said.

Liam brightened. “Do cowboys eat meat loaf?”

“I'm pretty sure they do,” Sierra answered.

The furnace came on, and she silently blessed Travis Reid for being there.