McKettrick's Choice (14 page)

Lorelei's appetite was gone; she shook her head when Holt offered her a plate.

“Eat,” he said impatiently. “We might run across a lot worse than a dead doll along the trail, and you won't be any good if you're hungry.”

She accepted the plate. Another time, she might have argued, but at that moment she felt as broken as poor Tillie's little Pearl.

Holt started to walk away, then stopped, in the grip of some afterthought, and turned back. “Thanks,” he said.

Lorelei was puzzled, and her face must have shown it.

“For looking after Tillie,” he explained.

She swallowed, tried to smile and failed. A strange thought shouldered its way into her mind. If she felt this undone over burying a doll, what must her father have felt seeing William laid in his grave?

“I thought you were going to kill that cowboy,” she said, without thinking.

“I might have, if you and Tillie hadn't been there.”

She believed him.

“Eat your breakfast,” he repeated. “We don't have all day.”

When the meal was over, the cowboys broke camp, exchanging glances but not quite daring to ask about the man who was missing.

Lorelei was trying to work out how to connect saddle and mule when Rafe approached and took over the task.

“I ought to do that myself,” Lorelei said, but without much conviction.

“Watch me,” he said, “and you'll get the idea.”

She watched, and when it was over, she didn't know any more about saddling a mule than she had before.

“What happened out there, with Tillie and that cowboy?” Rafe asked, as he helped Lorelei mount up.

She settled herself astride the animal, took a light grip on the reins and immediately discovered that her palms were sore from holding onto them for dear life the morning before. “From what I could gather, he tried to kiss her. That's what he claimed, anyway. She must have struggled and dropped the doll.” Lorelei's eyes burned at the memory of Tillie's grief; even now, the young woman was stricken, kneeling in the back of her father's wagon and gripping the tailgate, her gaze fixed on Pearl's grave.

Rafe watched as Holt climbed into the saddle and calmed Traveler with a pat to its glistening neck. The animal was skittish, yearning to run. Strength and violence seemed to course through the gelding's very veins.

“That explains the scrapes on my brother's knuckles,” Rafe mused.

Lorelei remembered the cold conviction in Holt's face when he'd said he would have killed the cowboy if it hadn't been for her and Tillie, and shivered.

Holt gave the order, and the party mounted up. Rafe sighed philosophically and mounted his gelding. John Cavanagh released the brake lever on the wagon and whistled to the team, Sorrowful riding beside him on the seat and casting the occasional look back at Tillie as the rig and horses rolled forward.

Melina drew her pony up beside Lorelei. A floppy straw hat shielded her face from the sun, casting a netted shadow.

“Poor Tillie,” she said, biting her lip.

Lorelei could only nod.

They rode past the place where she and Holt had found Tillie the night before. To Lorelei's secret relief, they followed the stream instead of crossing it. The pace was slower than the day before, but just as grueling, because the farther south they traveled, the rougher the terrain became.

Trees gave way to scrub brush and cacti, and the glare of the sun beat down on Lorelei's head, even through her hat, until her skull began to pound from the inside. Off in the distance, a cloud of smoke bloomed against the sky.

“Indians?” Lorelei asked, trying to hide her dread, when Captain Walton joined her and Melina. They were bringing up the rear, not even keeping pace with the wagon, and she suspected he'd been sent back to hurry them along.

“Not likely,” the Captain said. “Mostly Comanches around here, and they don't generally give themselves away like that. They favor an ambush. Scream like demons escaping from hell when they're on you, though.”

Lorelei swallowed and straightened her spine.

“They won't bother with us,” Melina said. No doubt she'd noticed Lorelei's reaction and wanted to reassure her. “We don't have anything worth stealing. When we come back through with the cattle, that's when we'll have to be careful.”

Oh, Lord, Lorelei thought.

The smoke plume billowed and grew.

“Maybe it's a wildfire,” she fretted.

“More likely it's a homestead,” the Captain suggested, relentlessly realistic.

Lorelei shuddered.

“You ladies had best hurry it up,” urged the Captain, and even he was beginning to look worried now. He rode through the cluster of cowboys to join Holt and Rafe, who were in the lead.

Lorelei peered through the dust, stirred by the hooves of so many horses, trying to guess, by the motions of their hands and heads, what the three men were talking about.

Finally, Holt reined the Appaloosa around and came back to speak to the cowboys. They immediately fanned out, three on either side of the wagon.

Holt drew up alongside the wagon and spoke to John.

“See that little ravine down there?” he said, pointing at a large gash in the earth, gouged out by some ancient upheaval.

The smell of smoke mingled with the dust, and Lorelei swore she could feel the heat of that fire, even though she couldn't see the flames.

“I see it,” John confirmed.

“I want you to hole up in there while Rafe, the Cap'n and I do some scouting up ahead,” Holt said. His gaze shifted to Lorelei. “I don't suppose you know piss-all about guns.”

“I can learn,” Lorelei said, swelling with indignation. It was true that she'd never handled a firearm, but he didn't have to be rude about it.

Holt shook his head and turned his attention back to John. “Keep the women close to the wagon,” he went on. “Give them each a rifle and show them how to load it. And make sure they don't shoot each other.”

Lorelei flushed with a mixture of stark fear and righteous offense.

Holt chuckled grimly, resettled his hat and rode off to join Rafe and the Captain.

John sent the team high-stepping down a steep incline, bumping toward the ravine, while Holt, Rafe and the Captain rode hard for the fire. The cowboys stayed back, their rifles drawn and resting across the pommels of their saddles, forming a broad circle around the wagon.

When they'd reached the bottom of that great hole in the ground, John jumped down from the wagon and lowered the tailgate. Tillie and the dog wedged themselves back into a corner.

Mr. Cavanagh, meanwhile, dragged a long wooden crate within reach, raised the lid and lifted out one rifle, then another. Lorelei dismounted after Melina, and rubbed her sweating palms down the legs of her trousers just before John thrust a rifle into them.

The thing was heavy, and Lorelei had to stiffen her knees to keep from stumbling.

“Tillie, get over here,” John snapped. “You've got to show these ladies how to handle a gun!”

“I thought you were going to—” Lorelei began.

“No time,” John said, rounding the wagon to climb into the box and reclaim his own rifle from under the seat. Most likely, it was already loaded. “Tillie-girl, you stop that mopin' and do as you're told!”

With that, Mr. Cavanagh made his way up the ravine, rifle in hand.

Tillie blinked, crawled to the tailgate, and got down.

“You do it like this here,” she told Lorelei, taking a gun from the crate and expertly popping it open to shove in a shell with one motion of her thumb.

Melina apparently didn't need instruction; she helped herself to a rifle of her own, loaded it and sighted in on
a pile of rocks on the other side of the ravine. Without a moment's hesitation, she pulled the trigger.

The shot boomed like thunder, the sound bouncing off the walls of the ravine. Sorrowful howled piteously, and John and a couple of the cowboys rushed to peer down at the three women.

Melina smiled and lowered the rifle. “Just making sure the bullets are good,” she called up to them.

“I don't know if I can do this,” Lorelei said.

“You will if there's a Comanche coming at you,” Melina replied.

“Here,” Tillie urged, and handed Lorelei the rifle she'd just loaded. “You try it.”

Lorelei recoiled instinctively, then thought about Comanches and took a firm hold.

“There's another shot coming!” Melina called to the men above. “Everybody stay back!” She should have been afraid, by rights, but her eyes glittered with excitement.

Lorelei's arms shook as she raised the gun, the way she'd seen Melina do, and fired at random. Sorrowful yowled and shinnied under the wagon. The rifle kicked, almost knocking Lorelei to the ground, and she knew she'd have a bruise where the stock struck her shoulder.

“You took off a hunk of the buckboard,” Tillie said, impressed.

“You're not supposed to just haul off and shoot,” Melina put in, less genially. “We're lucky that bullet didn't ricochet off the wall of the ravine and kill one of us.”

“
You
shot at the rocks,” Lorelei pointed out defensively. She was dizzy with contained fear and something
else, too—a sense of power. She could protect herself if she had to, and the knowledge of that was heady. “
I
know what I'm doing,” Melina fired back.

Sorrowful belly-crawled his way out from under the wagon, looked around carefully. Tillie laughed, and the sound was beautiful to Lorelei, even with all their lives in danger.

John leaned over the edge of the ravine. “Are you women through shootin'?” he asked, glowering.

“Yes, sir,” Melina called back, shading her eyes with one hand. She'd lost her hat somewhere along the way, and her dark hair was coming down from its pins, tumbling around her shoulders.

“Well, good,” John said. “Let's hope the Comanches didn't hear it!”

“Oh, my Lord,” Lorelei whispered.

“Holt's gonna be good and mad,” Tillie confided, grinning.

Lorelei found a flat rock and sat down. She'd rather deal with an angry Holt McKettrick than a Comanche raiding party, but not by much.

 

T
HEY FOUND
the rancher first, lying on his back next to the horse trough, with an arrow jutting from his chest. He'd been scalped, and the flies were already gathering.

“Christ,” Rafe said.

Holt got down off Traveler and crouched to lay the backs of his fingers to the man's throat, though he knew he wouldn't find a pulse. The pit of his stomach quivered, and he swallowed the bile that rushed into the back of his throat. Riding with the Rangers, he'd seen a hundred of these raids if he'd seen one. But it wasn't the sort of thing a man ever got used to.

Kahill, the Captain and one of the other men approached the blazing house, and Kahill peered through the open doorway, his bandana pressed to his face. They all reeled away, coughing from the smoke.

“There's a woman in there, and two little girls,” Kahill said, then retched in the dirt. The Captain looked haunted.

Holt rushed for the door and was met with a wall of heat. Before the flames forced him back, he saw the bodies. The woman still gripped a pistol in one charred hand; he knew she'd shot the children and then herself. Given what Holt knew about Comanches, he didn't blame her.

“Sweet Jesus,” he said, as Rafe met him in the middle of the yard and handed him a canteen.

Kahill staggered to the trough and splashed his face with water. Then he looked at the dead rancher and took to retching again.

“What do we do now?” Rafe asked quietly, watching Holt drink. “Go after them?”

“Not with three women and a wagon slowing us down,” Holt said, wiping his mouth. “And we sure as hell can't leave them in that ravine.”

Rafe scanned the small homestead. If there'd been horses or a milk cow, the Comanches had helped themselves to them. The shed was still standing, though.

“Better have a look in there,” Holt said.

“Might be a shovel,” Rafe agreed, frowning. “We have to bury these folks.”

Holt wanted to say there wasn't time, because there wasn't, but he knew they couldn't leave the bodies. He turned to Kahill, who was gray around the mouth.

“Take a couple of men and go back for the others,” he said. “We'll spend the night here.”

Kahill nodded and mounted up. Rafe pushed open the creaky shed door as the three men rode out at a gallop. He and Holt both peered inside. Holt blinked, unable to see anything at first.

Moment by moment, he made out a barrel, then a stack of wood and tools hanging on the far wall. There was a wheelbarrow, too, and a flash of movement inside it.

“What the hell?” Rafe whispered.

Holt stepped over the high threshold, walked over to the wheelbarrow and looked inside.

“I'll be damned,” he said, and broke into a grin.

T
HE BABY WAS NAKED,
except for a diaper fashioned from a piece of scrap calico. It gurgled, kicking both feet and clutching at the air with plump little fists, and its head bristled with a thatch of fine, wheat-colored hair, curly and moist with sweat.

“It's a kid,” Rafe said, sounding confounded.

“I gathered that much,” Holt replied. “You pick it up. You've been around babies.”

Rafe hesitated, just the same. Then he rubbed his big hands together, as though the task required friction, and leaned down to lift the child from its bed of straw. “It's wet,” he said. Evidently, matters such as that fell to his wife, Emmeline, at home; he did not seem to know what to do. “Maybe hungry, too.”

“Damn,” Holt marveled. “She must have hid it here—the woman, I mean.”

Gingerly, Rafe tucked a finger under the front of the sodden diaper and peered inside. “We can stop calling him ‘it,'” he said. “This here is a little boy.”

Finding that baby alive made up for a lot, in Holt's mind. There were still bodies to bury, and the task would be a grim one, but here was the proof that life will always
find a way to push through. Reminded him of a wild-flower he'd seen once, in the high-country of Arizona, growing right up through a flat rock, with no apparent regard for impossibility.

“What are we going to do with him?” Rafe asked. It was a reasonable question, once you got past the obvious fact that they'd have to take the infant as far as the next town. In the meantime, he'd need feeding, and diapers.

“We ought to reach Laredo in a day or two,” Holt said.

“Maybe he's got folks there.”

“And maybe he doesn't,” Rafe replied gravely. He nodded toward the house. “Everything's burned up. We don't even know this family's last name.”

“There ought to be some property records in Laredo. A deed or a homestead claim, maybe. Our part is to get him there. The law will do the rest.”

Rafe laid the baby back down in the straw, pulled off his bandana and set about unpinning the scrap of calico. The effort was an awkward one, but he managed the diaper change, and Holt was impressed.

“Maybe she left a letter or something,” Holt said, chagrined because he hadn't been of any practical help.

“The boy's mother, I mean.”

Rafe looked skeptical, holding the baby against one broad shoulder. “I don't reckon she had time for that,” he said. “I'm trying not to think about how things might have turned out different if we'd gotten here sooner.”

Holt nodded. “Me, too,” he said quietly. Then he frowned. “Why do you figure she didn't hide the little girls out here, too?”

Rafe shook his head. “Most likely, they were real scared, and raising a fuss. If they carried on, the raiders would have heard them and come right for this shed.”

Holt was still perplexed. “The missus must have been
expecting somebody to come along later. He'd have died of starvation or exposure, left alone like that.”

“Maybe she didn't think that far,” Rafe answered sadly. “It's not like those red devils gave notice that they'd be stopping by to massacre everybody they ran across. Christ, I wish we'd been just an hour or two faster on the trail.”

Holt laid a hand on his brother's shoulder. “We weren't. That's the fact of the matter. Even if we had been, there's no guarantee we could have held them off. From the number of tracks out there, I'd say there were at least three dozen of them.”

“Comanches?” Rafe asked. Sometimes, raids like this were blamed on the Indians, when the real culprits were white men, with an ax of their own to grind. Arrows were easy enough to come by—even a schoolboy could make one—and any cold-hearted son of a bitch with a knife could scalp somebody.

“Probably,” Holt said. “The horses were unshod.”

They stepped out into the brutal sunshine, Holt having gathered what shovels and spades were available, Rafe bringing up the rear with the baby. The fire was dying down now, burning itself out. Just the same, it would be hours before they could safely remove the burned bodies and give them proper burial.

John's wagon was rolling toward them, maybe a quarter of a mile distant, and raising plenty of dust. Captain Jack approached, squinting at the child.

“Well,” he said. “Look what you found. Poor little cuss.”

Holt nodded glumly and looked around for a good place to dig four graves. “We'd best get the holes ready,” he said.

The Captain cocked a thumb toward the cabin, just as
the roof caved in. Sparks flew heavenward, the way Holt hoped the spirits of that woman and those two innocent little girls had done. “Smart lady,” the old man said. “She managed to hide one of them, anyhow, God rest her.”

Holt watched the wagon approaching. When the women arrived, they could look after the baby while the men dug. “Somebody cover that body,” he said, with a nod at the dead rancher. “I don't want Lorelei or any of the others to see what those bastards did.”

“Not much we can do to hide it,” the Captain said.

“I'll go out to meet them. Get a blanket and tell them to hold up a few minutes before they come in.”

Holt merely nodded again, took a grip on one of the shovels and headed for a copse of oak trees nearly. The little clearing at the center would do for a plot as well as any other.

Rafe sat down nearby, on a rock, holding the baby. “He must have put up a fuss when he heard all that ruckus,” he mused thoughtfully. “Guess it was just good luck or the grace of God those Indians didn't hear him.”

“They might not have killed a baby boy,” Holt answered, jamming the shovel into hard ground. “The girls on the other hand—that doesn't bear thinking about.”

“Makes me want to go home,” Rafe admitted. “See that Emmeline and little Georgia are all right.”

“I feel the same about Lizzie,” Holt said. “But we're in this thing now, and we've got to see it through. Anyway, if there's one thing we can be sure of, it's that Pa and Kade and Jeb will look after our womenfolk like they were their own.”

Rafe spared a slight grin. “Hell,” he said. “Far as those three are concerned, a McKettrick is a McKettrick, born that way or married in. I pity the poor fool who thinks otherwise.”

Holt felt a slackening in the muscles between his shoulders as he shoveled up more dirt. There weren't many things he was sure of in this life, but he knew Rafe was right. If anybody came after a McKettrick, he had best be prepared to deal with the whole outfit, and win or lose, it would be a fight to remember.

The Captain rode out to meet the wagon, as he'd said he would, and came back with an armload of blankets. He covered the rancher with a gentleness that belied his many years of doing hard battle with every enemy he came across, and then fired his six-gun into the air as a signal to John to bring the wagon in.

“Did you see that?” Rafe asked.

For a moment, Holt was confused. “See what?” he asked, with some irritation, as some of the other men took up shovels and spades and joined in the digging.

“This baby didn't bat an eye when that gun went off,” Rafe said, studying the child. “I don't reckon he can hear.”

 

L
ORELEI'S GAZE
went right to the baby nestled against Rafe's shoulder, but before she could even get down off Seesaw's back, Tillie was on the ground and running, Sorrowful bounding along behind her.

Lorelei and Melina exchanged glances and rode to the edge of the copse.

Tillie stood staring at the child with her eyes wide and her mouth open. She seemed struck with wonder, like a shepherd coming upon the Nativity.

Rafe smiled at her. “Do you want to hold him?” he asked quietly, while Holt paused to rest on the handle of his shovel and watch. He was up to his knees in the dirt, and Lorelei reckoned the digging for a bad sign. She looked around uneasily.

“What's his name?” Tillie demanded, as though that were a factor in her decision to touch him or not.

“Don't know,” Rafe said.

The child tugged at a lock of Rafe's dark, sweat-matted hair.

Lorelei's gaze connected with Holt's. It required an effort, but she broke away and took in the scene she'd been trying to ignore. She saw the shape of a man beneath one of the blankets the Captain had requested, and knew by the graves being dug, and the way some of the men were staring at the burned cabin and shaking their heads, that something truly horrible had happened here.

Bile surged into the back of her throat, scalding like acid, and she swallowed, willing herself not to throw up.

“He's got to have a name,” Tillie insisted, her voice rising a little. The baby began to cry, an odd, thwarted sound. “Everybody needs a name.”

“You pick one, then,” Rafe said.

“Pearl,” Tillie replied resolutely. Nobody argued.

Melina stepped up to Rafe and held out her arms. “He wants feeding,” she said. “I'll give him some sugar water. Find something to cover him up, too, so the sun doesn't fry him like a trout in a skillet.”

Rafe hesitated, then surrendered the baby. He stood, stretched and reached for Holt's shovel. Holt's fingers locked around the handle, but then he let go.

He approached Lorelei, holding his hat in both hands.

“It's a far cry from the life you're used to, isn't it?” he asked. There was no disdain in his tone or manner; he was simply pointing out a lamentable fact.

“Yes,” she said bleakly, thinking of the tea parties she'd attended in San Antonio prior to her ignoble expulsion from the Ladies' Benevolence Society, of the smooth, crisp sheets on her bed in the judge's house. She'd spent the majority of her days reading or sewing or playing the spinet. The hardest decision she'd been called upon to make was whether to wear a bonnet when she went out to the shops, or what Angelina ought to fix for supper. “There—there was a massacre?”

Holt might have made something of the fact that the answer to her question was patently obvious, but he didn't. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand and thrust out a sigh.

“Four people are dead,” he told her, straight out. “A woman and two little girls in the cabin, and that's the man of the family under that blanket.”

Lorelei closed her eyes. The heat of that place was intense, as though a crack had opened in the earth and hell itself had broken through. The smells were enough to turn her stomach, and the sounds of those shovels, striking stone…

She shuddered, and felt Holt's hands close on her shoulders. When she opened her eyes, his face was inches from her own. His skin was brown from years in the sun, she noticed, and his features had hardened in the brief time since she'd seen him leave camp that morning.

“We'll be in Laredo in a day or so,” he told her.

“Maybe you've seen enough now to convince you that life in San Antonio wasn't so bad, even with your father calling all the shots.”

She blinked. “I can't go back,” she said.

“I know you had words with him,” Holt reasoned, “but he's your father. He'll take you in.”

“I don't want to be ‘taken in'!” Lorelei burst
out in a fierce whisper. “I was safe in that house—I had everything I needed and most of what I wanted. But I wasn't
alive!
I was just marking time, waiting for things to change. Waiting for something—anything—to happen. I won't go back to that!”

A muscle bunched in Holt's jaw, and his grip on her shoulders tightened.

“Maybe if you looked under that blanket over there, you'd change your mind,” he growled. “This isn't a game,
Miss
Fellows. This is what it's really like out here!”

Lorelei pulled away and half-stumbled toward the body on the ground. “Oh, God,” she whispered.

“Come away,” Holt said, in a tone that might have been gentle if it hadn't been for the fierce urgency underlying the words.

She nodded miserably.

“What—what can I do to help?”

“Stay out—”
Stay out of the way,
he'd been about to say. But he stopped himself. “See if Melina needs help with the baby,” he said. “And keep Tillie occupied. She'll get underfoot if you don't.”

Lorelei bit her lower lip. “It doesn't seem like much,” she said, after a quick nod.

“It's what there is,” he replied, and turned away from her, striding back toward the trees, where the graves were being dug.

For a long moment, she stood staring down at that blanket-covered body. Then, after straightening her shoulders, Lorelei headed for the wagon.

The tailgate was lowered, and Melina sat in the wagon bed, legs dangling, attempting to interest the baby in a twisted bit of cloth, soaked in sugar water. Tillie hovered, and Lorelei could see restraint quivering in every line
of her lithe body—she wanted to reach out and take the child into her own arms.

“He needs milk,” Lorelei said.

“You see a cow around here anyplace?” Melina countered, though not unkindly.

If there had been a cow, the Indians had taken it, along with whatever other livestock the homesteaders had possessed. There wasn't even a chicken in sight.

“Sugar will not provide proper nourishment,” Lorelei said. With that, she lifted the lid off the pot of cold beans left over from that morning and, in turn, from the night before. She found a clean cup and plunged it into the pot, then located a spoon, and used that to mash the stuff into a pulp.

Melina smiled, wiped her forehead with one hand, and surrendered the child to Tillie, after instructing her to sit down on a small keg. Lorelei crouched and offered the child a taste of the beans.

He made a face, widened his ice-blue eyes, and then, waving both hands, sampled the fare.

Lorelei beamed at him. “Good boy,” she said.

Tillie looked enormously pleased. “Pearl is a
very
good boy.”