McKettrick's Choice (11 page)

Melina smiled, blew on her tea, and took a sip. “I didn't say I would ride the brute myself. I said I would teach
you
to ride him.”

“I'm not certain I have the nerve to try again,” Lorelei confessed. Holt McKettrick's interference notwithstanding, she'd been terrified when that mule started to buck.

“Sure you do,” Melina said confidently. “What's his name?”

“Seesaw,” Lorelei answered, remembering the way that freight man had smirked when she'd handed over the thirty-five precious dollars.

Melina laughed. “That suits him, all right,” she said, and sought the creature with thoughtful eyes. “He's been beaten some. Probably starved, too. Any creature, whether it has two legs or four, will balk when scared. We just have to show him we don't mean him any harm, and he'll come around.”

“I wish I had some grain,” Lorelei said. As a child, she used to watch Raul tending her father's carriage horses; sometimes, he'd allowed her to feed them oats and grain from the palm of her hand.

“You have sugar,” Melina said practically. “You put some in our tea.”

Lorelei brightened from the inside out. Sugar cost the earth, but if it would make a friend of the demon Seesaw, she could spare a little.

Both women set aside their tea and got to their feet at the same time.

Lorelei went inside, poured the coarse brown crystals into her palm and headed for the mule.

“Here, Seesaw,” she said sweetly.

The mule, still grazing under the oak tree, eyed her suspiciously.

“I have sugar,” Lorelei cajoled.

His ears twitched. He bent his head to the ground and cropped off a mouthful of grass.

“Don't move too quickly,” Melina counseled.

Lorelei took a cautious step forward, holding out the handful of sugar. “I have something for you,” she called.

Seesaw raised his head again, snuffled.

“Careful,” Melina said, leaning against another tree to watch.

Lorelei advanced slowly.

Seesaw brayed, but companionably, and came to meet her.

R
AUL WAS GRAY
around the gills by the time Rafe and Holt unloaded him at the office of Dr. Elias Brown, on a shady side street in San Antonio. His head lolled to one side as they eased him out of the wagon bed and set him on his feet, supporting his slight weight between them. In truth, he was light enough to carry, but they understood that half out of his head with pain, a man wanted to preserve his dignity.

The doctor burst from the house just as they were reaching the front gate, a picket affair with a faulty catch, and at first sight of him, Holt thought he was a towheaded boy. Brown probably wasn't four feet tall, even wearing boots, and his head was damn near the size of a watermelon.

As the doctor sprinted down the walk, Holt took note of the gray hair and beard and the stethoscope dangling almost to his knees.

“I'll be damned,” Rafe muttered, from the other side of Raul, and Holt would have nudged him silent with an elbow if he could have.

“I'm a dwarf,” the doctor said straight out, apparently
dispensing with the obvious so that they could all get down to the case at hand. “What's happened to Raul?”

Angelina, silent the whole way in, let fly with a burst of Spanish.

Dr. Brown shook his head, but his eyes were gentle. “Now, Angelina,” he said, “you know anything other than
hola
and
adios
is beyond my ken.” He turned his attention to Holt and Rafe. “Bring him inside.”

“He was thrown from a mule,” Rafe said belatedly. Clearly it had taken him a while to get past the shock of meeting a doctor who barely reached his waist. “I figure he's cracked some ribs. Maybe even broken a few.”

“What were you doing on a mule?” Brown demanded of Raul, looking back over one shoulder as he led the way up the walk and onto the spacious front porch. “You're not getting any younger, you know.”

Raul gave a strangled laugh, and blood trickled out of his mouth. His knees buckled and he almost went down, even with Rafe on one side and Holt on the other, each with one of his arms around their neck.

Angelina gasped and crossed herself, her lips moving in some silent petition. Holt hoped the appropriate saint was on duty; like Rafe, he'd seen plenty of injuries like Raul's, and the bleeding wasn't a good sign. Could be something had come unstuck in there.

The interior of the house was blessedly cool, and shadowy because most of the shutters were closed. The entryway had been turned into a waiting room of sorts, with chairs lining two walls.

“This way,” Dr. Brown said, and stepped through an archway on the left, into what would have been a parlor in another house of that considerable size. The examining table was built low to the ground; in fact, Holt knocked a shin against it as he and Rafe laid Raul down.

Angelina began to weep, a small, mewling sound that was hurtful to hear.

“Go on back to the kitchen,” Brown told her, kindly but with a firmness that was not to be disregarded. “Jane will make you some tea.” He was running his hands, not the small ones you'd expect of such a little man but big mitts, out of proportion to the rest of his body. He paused and murmured something. “Oh, hell, I forgot. My sister is away, taking care of Aunt Tootie. You'll have to brew the stuff yourself.”

Angelina sniffled. “I don't want to leave Raul,” she said.

“Vaya,”
Raul told her.
Go.

After another few moments of hesitation, Angelina shuffled off.

Holt and Rafe glanced at each other and tacitly decided they ought to make themselves scarce, too. Having no yen for tea, they returned to the shady front porch. Rafe lit a cheroot, drew deeply on the smoke.

“I thought you gave that up when little Georgia was born,” Holt said, feeling testy and needing to take it out on somebody.

“I did,” Rafe said. “Emmeline won't allow tobacco within fifty feet of the house.” He paused, his brow creased. “I don't know how you get a damn thing done around here. If somebody isn't trying to intimidate us with a dozen gunmen, they're getting themselves thrown from mules.”

Holt sighed, took off his hat, shoved a hand through his hair. It was gritty with trail dust and damp with sweat, and moreover needed cutting. “Thirty-one days until Gabe hangs,” he said, “and not a word from the governor. No sign of Frank Corrales. And if we don't hire some cowboys and buy some cattle to restock John's herd, the
ranch will go under anyway. I'd have to be three men, instead of one, to get it all done.”

“Two McKettricks,” Rafe said, “are enough to do just about anything. I say we ride north, see the governor, then head down to that place you know in Mexico, buy some cattle and hire some men to ramrod them back across the border. Along the way, we can ask after this Corrales fella.”

“That means leaving Tillie and John alone and pretty much defenseless.”

“We could bring them along.”

“Good idea,” Holt scoffed. “That way, Templeton and his men can just ride in and raze the place to the ground as soon as we disappear over the hill. You got any other brilliant suggestions?”

Rafe was confident as a peacock with its tail feathers spread. “No,” he said, “and you haven't got any other choice, as far as I can see.”

“I hate it when you're right,” Holt said, and he was dead serious.

“I know,” Rafe replied smoothly. “Best you get over it.”

Holt gave a low, bitter laugh, and even that much was against his will. “You know what I think? I think you and Jeb and Kade got together up there on the Triple M and decided I might just have it a little too easy down here. Figured one of you better hightail it to Texas and complicate matters as much as possible.”

Rafe grinned. “You've got it all wrong, Big Brother. What we decided was, you'd be too damned proud and stubborn to ask for help even if you were naked, slathered in honey and up to your hind-end in red ants. I'm here, and I'm not leaving until it's finished, one way or
the other. Besides, I gave Lizzie my word that I'd bring your sorry hide back home before the snow flies.”

Holt touched his shirt pocket, where he kept the hair ribbon his daughter had given him just before he left, and felt a painful yearning to see her again. Hell, he even wanted to lay his sore eyes on his brothers, and that crotchety old man of theirs.

Rafe laid a hand on his shoulder. “I think the doc will be a while with Raul. Let's go see if we can rustle up a couple of out-of-work cowhands. They could hold down the Cavanagh place while we're on the trail.”

Holt thrust out a sigh, resettled his hat. It wasn't much of an idea, but it was better than standing there on the porch, jawing and fretting.

“Maybe Cap'n Walton would agree to stay behind, keep an eye on things.”

Holt was the first to the gate. “Hell will sprout petunias first,” he said. He untied Traveler from the side of the wagon and climbed into the saddle. Rafe went around and did the same with Chief.

Rafe laughed. “Except for his size, he reminds me of Pa.”

“Yeah,” Holt agreed. “Damn the luck.” He shifted in the saddle, glad for a break from that wagon seat.

“Let's stop at the telegraph office first,” he said, just as if the subject were open to negotiation, which it wasn't.

“Maybe there'll be some word from Austin about Gabe's new trial.”

As it turned out, there was a telegram waiting for Holt. And it was from the governor's office.

Trouble was, the news was all bad.

The governor was back East in Washington, hobnobbing with that unruly bunch in Congress.

In the meantime, Holt concluded, Texas was on its
own, and Gabe Navarro was up shit creek, good and proper.

Disheartened, Holt and Rafe headed for the jail.

Gabe was still in a surly mood, but now he was vocal about it. Holt couldn't rightly decide whether that was an improvement or a setback.

“I told you not to let Melina come here!” he raged, never troubling himself with a howdy-do. “She should have stayed in Waco!”

“Melina is fine where she is,” Holt said, hoping it was true. He'd left her with Lorelei, and God only knew what the pair of them were up to by now.

Gabe had been clenching the bars of his cell in both hands; now, he thrust himself away and began to prowl back and forth. At least he had the room to do that, since they'd moved him from the other hole in the wall, but with the gallows clearly visible through the one window, Holt didn't reckon it as an advantage.

“You been getting regular meals?” he asked.

“Yes,” Gabe spat. Ungrateful, that's what he was. And purely cussed. He jabbed a thumb in Rafe's direction.

“Who's this yahoo?”

Holt explained. At least Gabe could still spot a yahoo when he saw one.

Rafe didn't put out a hand, and neither did Gabe. They just stood there, each one sizing up the other and, from the looks on their faces, finding him just shy of suitable. Gabe finally turned his head and spat.

“I came to tell you we'll be on the trail a while,” Holt said into the uncomfortable silence. “We'll scare up a decent lawyer along the way and get you out of here.”

Gabe's expression was bleak, and not, Holt suspected, because he thought he was being left high and dry, with his death just a month away. He thrived on fresh air,
open spaces and the feel of the sun on his face as much as any man Holt had ever known, and it must have half killed him, knowing he couldn't go along with Holt and Rafe.

“You find Frank,” Gabe said. “Maybe there's a chance for him, if you get to him in time. See that Melina and the baby are taken care of, and don't let these bastards bury me in a churchyard.”

Holt was taken aback and couldn't think what to say.

Rafe had no such problem. “You sound like a man who's fixing to give up,” he told Navarro. “You've got a nasty disposition, but I didn't figure you for a chickenshit.”

Gabe hurled himself at the bars, would have come through them if he could, just to get Rafe by the throat.

Rafe grinned. “Maybe there's hope for you after all,” he said.

L
ORELEI BIT HER LOWER LIP,
closed her eyes for a moment, and climbed up onto the crate. Melina held Seesaw by his halter and nodded encouragement. They'd spent most of the afternoon making friends with the beast, leading him around and around in ever-widening circles and rewarding him with sugar every time he showed the slightest inclination toward obedience.

Hiking up her skirts and muttering a prayer, Lorelei swung her right leg over the mule and landed as gently as possible on his back.

A great shudder ran through his obstinate body, and Lorelei held her breath. She might meet Raul's fate, or even William's, in the next heartbeat, but she might also succeed.

The decision was Seesaw's.

Melina gripped the halter rope, her eyes big.

Seesaw made a whinnying sound, curling his lips back.

Lorelei gripped his coarse mane in both hands and waited.

Melina tugged at the rope and made a soft clicking sound with her tongue.

Seesaw took a tentative step, then another. He paused, quivering again, perhaps considering his choices.

“Nice donkey,” Lorelei said hopefully.

“Don't make any sudden moves,” Melina counseled.

Lorelei relaxed a little. “Hand me the rope,” she said in a pleasant tone, calculated to be soothing to the undecided animal. “Then walk away. If he starts bucking, there's no point in both of us getting hurt.”

Melina stood on tiptoe to give Lorelei the rope. It prickled against her palm.

“Easy,” Melina whispered, backing slowly out of Seesaw's range. “Touch your heels to his sides, but not hard. You don't want to startle him.”

Lorelei held her breath and then did as she was told.

Seesaw ambled toward the creek.

Lorelei was overjoyed. She was riding! But then she tried to turn the creature to one side, pulling cautiously on the rope, and he plodded on.

“Stop, please,” Lorelei said brightly, afraid to raise her voice.

Seesaw plodded on, down the rocky bank and right into the water.

Fresh panic assailed Lorelei. She didn't know how to swim.

The mule began to paddle in ever-widening circles, moving a little closer to the middle each time.

“Lorelei!” Melina cried, from the shore behind her.

“Stop!”

“I'm trying!” Lorelei shouted back, as exasperated as she was afraid.

Seesaw paddled around in a circle, and that was when Lorelei saw the McKettrick brothers riding full-speed toward the bank. Melina had to rush out of their way as
they passed, and still they came, splashing up a glittering spray as they gained the water.

The mule brayed gleefully, and must have planted all four feet on the streambed, for he gave a great leap, and Lorelei plunged into the water. The weight of her skirts pulled her under, and she came up gasping for breath.

Holt leaned down from the saddle, extending his hand.

Lorelei clasped at it with both her own and held on for dear life, sputtering and choking as he dragged her up and set her down hard in front of him. She blinked, nearly blind with creek water, and saw Rafe catch hold of Seesaw's halter rope and turn his horse toward shore.

Lorelei would have sworn the man was grinning, but she decided she must be imagining things. Surely the near drowning of a human being was not a source of amusement, even for ruffians like these.

Holt's arm felt like a barrel hoop around her, and she took an improper pleasure in the hard wall of his chest, pressed against her back. Once they'd reached the bank, he set her on her feet and glared down at her, his hair and clothes dripping, his eyelashes spiked with water. His horse shook itself, and Lorelei's vision blurred again, briefly, from the spray.

“Are you all right?” Holt demanded. His voice was low-pitched, with a raspy edge.

Lorelei tried to wring out her skirts. “Yes, thank you,” she said, not quite daring to look at him again, now that she'd averted her eyes. “Did you notice? I rode the mule.”

Rafe laughed, somewhere nearby.

“Oh, I noticed, all right,” Holt said dangerously. He got down off the back of that enormous horse and stood facing her.

“I'm sure once he's over his tendency to head for the creek,” Lorelei babbled on, “Seesaw will make a fine mule.”

“He'd have to go some to be a better one than you,” Holt retorted.

Lorelei lifted her chin. “There is no need to be rude,” she pointed out.

“Apparently, there is,” Holt said, and took an ominous step toward her. “You don't seem to understand anything else.”

“When have you tried any other approach?” Lorelei countered.

“I'll be goddamned!” He took another step, and Lorelei didn't back up, but not because she wasn't alarmed. She wasn't sure how close she was to the water, that was all.

“There is a very good chance of that,” she said huffily, and tried to go around him.

He stepped into her path.

“Don't you dare kiss me again!” Lorelei cried.

“Believe me, I wouldn't think of it!”

“The hell you wouldn't,” Rafe put in.

Holt flailed at his brother with his hat but didn't take his eyes off Lorelei's face. “You stay out of this!” he roared.

“What do you want?” Lorelei sputtered furiously.

“An apology? All right, then—I'm sorry you had to get wet!”

“Is there any coffee?” Rafe wanted to know.

“Are you
trying
to kill yourself?” Holt ranted on, sparing his brother another halfhearted wave of the hat, as though he were a pesky fly.

“Lorelei and I will make some,” Melina said eagerly,
rushing in to grasp Lorelei's hand and drag her toward the house. “Right now.”

“Why does he always show up at the worst possible time?” Lorelei hissed, once they were inside. She'd ducked behind a blanket suspended from one of the roof beams and began peeling off her sodden clothes.

“I'd say it was the
best
possible time,” Melina answered, busy at the stove. “If they hadn't come along when they did, you probably would have drowned.”

A lump rose in Lorelei's throat and, for a moment, she was stricken to utter stillness at the thought of her own untimely demise. Would anyone mourn her? she wondered. Not her father, surely. Not Creighton Bannings.

Suddenly cold, standing there in her soaked bloomers and camisole, she began to shiver. Her teeth chattered so that she feared she might be suffering some sort of convulsion—next, she'd bite off her tongue.

Raul and Angelina would have wept at her funeral, she consoled herself, snatching dry clothes from one of the everlasting boxes.

Raul and Angelina.

How could she have forgotten?

She peered around the edge of the blanket, careful of her modesty. Holt and Rafe were standing outside the door, both of them gesturing, arguing about something in hoarse undertones.

“How is Raul?” Lorelei called, struggling into her spare calico.

Both Holt and Rafe turned toward her, as though surprised to find her there. Holt's expression darkened.

“It's kind of you to ask,” he drawled. “I wondered when you'd finally get around to it.”

Rafe shook his head, plainly exasperated with his brother. “We stopped by Doc Brown's before we left
town,” he said, quite kindly. “Raul's going to be laid up a while. Angelina plans to keep house for the doc in return for their room and board. She says there's room for you, too.”

Lorelei put a hand to her throat, silently thanking God and all his angels that she hadn't killed or crippled Raul by buying that accursed mule.

Holt stepped into the doorway, leaned against the frame. His wet clothes hugged his body, stirring things inside Lorelei that were better left to lie fallow. “Not that you'd have the good sense to take her up on the offer,” he said.

Lorelei stiffened. “I have a perfectly good home right here,” she replied.

“Yes,” Holt shot back, but quietly, “and tomorrow is a bright new day. Maybe you can find still another way to break your damn fool neck.”

“Holt,” Rafe protested.

“You can't stay here by yourself,” Holt persisted, ignoring him.

“I'm not by myself,” Lorelei reasoned, making sure she was properly buttoned up before stepping from behind the blanket. “Melina is here. Not that it's any of your business anyway.”

Holt gave a derisive snort. “Oh,
well,
” he said. “That decides it. Two women, one of them pregnant, and the other with no more sense than God gave a fence post, against Templeton and whatever other outlaws might be running the roads.” Lorelei reddened.
A fence post?

“Better take them with us,” Rafe said, edging past Holt to stand near Melina. “You got any whiskey to put in that coffee?”

“I wouldn't dream of going anywhere with either of you,” Lorelei said.

Rafe arched a dark eyebrow and accepted the mug of coffee Melina offered. She added a generous dollop of Raul's whiskey, standing on tiptoe to do it. “Not even if it meant a chance to buy cattle and hire cowpunchers, so you could turn this place into a real ranch?”

Lorelei's heartbeat quickened. She didn't dare look at Holt, though she felt his temper like another presence in the room.

“That would be different,” she said guardedly.

“Oh, no, it wouldn't,” Holt argued.

Lorelei looked at Melina. “Could you manage it—a cattle drive, I mean? In your condition?”

Melina's smile was luminous. “Sure I could,” she said.

“No,” Holt maintained, “you couldn't.”

“Would you rather leave them here?” Rafe asked, after a noisy sip from his mug.

“What if she has that baby on the trail?” Holt wanted to know. A muscle leaped in his jaw.

“What if she has it here?” Rafe countered. “All alone except for the lively Miss Fellows?” He toasted Lorelei affably with his coffee mug, as if to say there was no offense intended. “I figure the two of them could get into all kinds of trouble on their own. Who knows what they might take it into their heads to do?”

Lorelei flushed with indignation and a strange, dizzying hope. She
wanted
to go on the trail drive, wanted it with a staggering intensity—even if it did mean being in close proximity with Holt McKettrick for an indeterminate length of time. It was her chance—maybe her
only
chance—to buy the cattle and hire the men she needed.

She waited, staring at Holt.

“You don't know how to ride,” he said.

“I can learn,” she replied.

He sighed. “Give me some of that whiskey,” he said. “Hold the coffee.”

Was he weakening? Lorelei couldn't tell. She held her breath while Melina poured more of Raul's liquor into a cup and held it out to Holt.

He downed it all in a single gulp, shuddered with a curious mixture of satisfaction and shock.

“There will be Indians,” he told her, wiping his mouth with the back of one hand.

“I'm not afraid,” Lorelei insisted. It was a lie, of course, but if people never did anything frightening, how could they expect to get anywhere? She'd spent her life marking time, waiting for something,
anything,
to change. Now, she was through waiting. She was prepared to take risks and make mistakes and deal with the consequences.

“You should be,” Holt said reasonably. “Do you have any idea how many things can go wrong on a cattle drive?”

She didn't, actually, which was probably a mercy, in her opinion.

“You might be carried off by Comanches. You might be bitten by a snake, or thrown from a horse. You might be trampled to death in a stampede, or drowned crossing a river. Only I might not be there to pull you out.”

Lorelei drew a deep breath—it felt as if it went clear to her toes—and let it out slowly. “If those things don't stop you,” she said, “why should they stop me?” Rafe grinned.

Melina folded her arms, her head tilted to one side, watching Holt expectantly.

Holt rubbed the back of his neck.

“Oh, the hell with it,” he said. “Get your things together. We'll pass the night at John's, and leave at dawn.”

“Which one of us is going to break that mule to ride?” Rafe asked, half an hour later, nodding toward Seesaw, who was nibbling grass a few yards away. He'd saddled Melina's pony, and tied her pitiful bundle of belongings behind the cantle. Holt had already sent Lorelei back to the house twice, to lighten her pack, and he was purely exasperated—with her, for wanting to take a party dress and dancing slippers on a trail drive, with himself, for agreeing to take her along, and with Rafe for bringing up the whole lame-brained idea in the first place.

“I thought we'd leave him here,” Holt said. He figured it would be better if he didn't look at Rafe for a while, because looking at him would make him want to take a few strips out of his miserable hide. “Lorelei can ride with Tillie.”

“Miss Fellows will never agree to that,” Rafe replied, cocksure as usual. “That's her mule, and if she's said it once, she's said it half a dozen times…she paid thirty-five dollars for him and she wants her money's worth.”

Lorelei came out of the ranch house with her rigging, hopefully minus the frilly getup and the collected works of Mr. William Shakespeare she'd tried to sneak past him on the first round.

Holt bit the proverbial bullet. “We won't need the mule,” he told her.

“He's mine, and he's going,” Lorelei replied.

Rafe chuckled. He loved to be right, the bastard. “God
damn
it,” Holt bit out. “Last time I looked, I was still running this outfit, and you'll do what I tell you,
Miss
Fellows.”

“Within reason,” Lorelei allowed, with stiff grace. “I paid—”

“I know, I know,” Holt broke in, wholly disgusted.