McKettrick's Choice (17 page)

Lorelei was mildly pleased by that, though she didn't know why.

The Captain, sitting cross-legged in the grass, was
shuffling a deck of well-worn playing cards. “Anybody want into this game?” he asked, looking directly at Lorelei.

Recalling his cryptic remarks about holding and folding, Lorelei approached. “Sure,” she said, sitting down to the Captain's left, Indian style. She removed her hat and set it aside. Took another bite of her apple.

Mr. Kahill and another cowboy joined the circle. “Deal us in,” the second man said.

Rafe ambled over, his thumbs hooked under his gun-belt. “Watch out, Lorelei,” he said cheerfully. “Don't let these rascals relieve you of your money.”

“I reckon she can count on beginner's luck,” the Captain observed, glancing at Holt.

Lorelei couldn't resist doing the same. Holt sat with his back to the trunk of a tree, glowering. He tossed aside the apple he'd been eating and got to his feet with a disturbing grace that made Lorelei remember her scandalous dreams and catch fire all over again.

The Captain shuffled and reshuffled the cards and let Lorelei cut them before he dealt.

“No tricks,” Holt said ominously, looming over them. His back was to the west, so he cast an impressive shadow.

The Captain smiled, though he didn't look up from his business. “What makes you think I'd trick anybody?” he asked.

“Experience,” Holt answered. He moved to stand behind Lorelei, squatted.

She felt the strength and substance of him along the surface of her flesh, and her breathing quickened a little.
Please, God,
she prayed silently,
don't let him notice.

She watched the other players pick up their cards and did the same with her own, fanning them out in her hand.
Holt reached over her shoulder and rearranged two of them, forming a trio of jacks.

“Everybody ante up,” the Captain said. “Dimes to start.”

Lorelei's money was in her bedroll. She was about to excuse herself, to fetch some change when Holt tossed a dime into the center of the circle.

“Hold,” he said, close to her ear. The heat of his breath made the skin on her nape tingle and, for some reason, she imagined what it would feel like if he kissed her there.

The thought was a mistake. It sent a spike of heat shooting down through Lorelei, clear into the ground. Her three jacks, two of diamonds and four of spades felt slippery in her hand, and her heart galloped like a runaway horse.

Mr. Kahill tossed in his cards. “Fold,” he said.

The Captain and the other cowboy ruminated.

“Hit me,” the cowboy said.

Lorelei braced herself. She hadn't expected the game to be violent.

“How many?” the Captain asked.

“Two,” the cowboy answered. Discarding a pair of cards, face-down.

Lorelei's hand tightened.

“Easy,” Holt said. “Raise 'em.”

It was probably good advice. The problem was that Lorelei didn't know what it meant.

Holt threw four nickels into the little cluster of dimes.

Mr. Kahill had shifted to one side, and he leaned back on his elbows, chewing on a blade of grass and staring at Lorelei's face.

“Hell,” said the other cowboy, and threw down his cards.

“See it and raise you two,” the Captain said, flipping two shiny dimes into the pile.

Lorelei was mystified.

Holt shifted behind her, but he didn't prompt her.

She turned her head to look at his face.

He grinned and came up with another forty cents. “See your two, raise you two more,” he said.

Lorelei began to sweat, and not just because the stakes were mounting. Poker had a language all its own, it seemed, and she didn't speak a word of it.

“Call,” the Captain said.

“Lay down your cards,” Holt told Lorelei, when she just sat there.

With a little flourish, all bravado, Lorelei showed her hand.

“Three of a kind,” Holt said.

The Captain grimaced. “A pair of aces,” he replied.

“Like I said, beginner's luck.”

“Not to mention a little help from the boss here,” Kahill observed languidly.

“Take the pot, Lorelei,” Holt said evenly. “It's yours.”

She hesitated, then gathered up the money. “It's really yours,” she said.

“Damn straight,” Kahill remarked.

“I'd shut up if I were you,” Rafe put in, from the sidelines.

Kahill looked up at him, his expression bland, and then shrugged.

Lorelei started to get up, but Holt put a hand on her shoulder.

“Here,” the Captain said, after gathering up the deck
and shuffling it again. “Let me show you how this works, Miss Lorelei.” He demonstrated various groupings of cards—three of a kind, two pairs, something called a royal flush.

“Who's in?” he asked, when he'd finished.

“I am,” Lorelei said.

“Not me,” said the cowboy.

“Me, either,” added Mr. Kahill, but he didn't move.

Rafe sat down in the cowboy's place, and Holt joined the circle, too.

Everybody anted up another dime.

The cards were dealt, and with each one she picked up, Lorelei sat a little straighter.

“Aces high, jacks wild,” the Captain announced.

Lorelei didn't know what that meant, but she knew that the ten, jack, queen, king and ace, all in the same suit, were good.

“Hold,” she said, pressing them to her chest.

“You look a little too confident for my tastes,” Rafe said. “I fold.”

“She could be bluffing,” the Captain surmised, studying Lorelei with an intensity that would have been disturbing under any other circumstances. He added three dimes to the pot.

Holt followed suit, without comment, and so did Lorelei. She hoped she was right; there was over a dollar in the pot, and that was a lot of money.

Rafe had moved around behind Lorelei to study her cards.

“Don't help me,” she said, with a so-there glance at Mr. Kahill, who only grinned and plucked himself another blade of grass to chew on.

“Raise you,” said the Captain, and added a dollar bill.

Lorelei's eyes widened, and she held her breath.

“See it,” Holt said, and did the same.

Lorelei bit her lip, looked back at Rafe. He didn't bat an eyelash.

Kahill watched her. They all did.

She threw in all her winnings from the first game.

“Call,” the Captain said.

Lorelei showed her cards.

Holt gave a hoot of laughter, and the Captain swore under his breath.

“Did I win?” Lorelei asked.

“Yes,” Rafe said. “You sure did.”

Lorelei scooped up her winnings, then paid Holt back what he'd advanced her at the beginning.

“I reckon that's enough poker for now,” the Captain said, reaching for his hat.

“You would reckon that,” Holt told him. He got to his feet and offered Lorelei a hand. After a moment's hesitation, she took it. It was as if she'd gripped a lightning bolt.

She blushed and looked away, but she felt his grin on her face, warm as the noonday sun.

“I'd better look in on Tillie,” she said, and walked away. To her mingled dismay and pleasure, Holt matched his strides to hers.

“What's the matter with Tillie?” he asked.

Lorelei sighed. “She's just a little overwrought, that's all.”

“Why?”

Lorelei stopped, faced him. “Why?” she echoed. “Because she's been through a lot in the last few days. We all have.”

“Tillie's tougher than most of the men I know. If she's sick, Lorelei, you'd better tell me.”

Lorelei wished she hadn't mentioned Tillie at all. It felt like a betrayal, just talking about her, but Holt had obviously dug in his heels. He wasn't going to settle for less than the truth.

“She's frightened,” Lorelei admitted quietly, not wanting anyone else to overhear. It was bad enough that she was telling Holt. “This place bothers her. She said she could see the other monks, and they were all dead.”

Holt let out his breath. “Christ,” he said.

“Is she given to—well—seeing things?”

“Yes,” Holt replied, but he was already heading for the sleeping quarters the padre had set aside for the women.

Lorelei hurried after him, suddenly anxious. “Don't question her now, Holt—please.” It cost her plenty, adding that “please.”

“She's upset.”

“That's exactly why I want to see her,” he answered, without slowing down. He would have gone right in and confronted Tillie, Lorelei was sure, if he hadn't seen Mr. Cavanagh over by the wagon, plucking the chickens they'd bought from the Davises earlier that day.

Holt changed course abruptly.

Lorelei paused, then dashed in to check on Tillie herself.

She was curled up on the middle cot, with the baby, both of them sleeping soundly. Sorrowful lay on the floor beside them, keeping a mournful watch. Seeing Lorelei, he let out a whimper.

“Shhh,” she said, and bent to pat his head.

Tillie stirred, made a soft sobbing sound in her throat.

Lorelei unfolded a blanket and covered her gently before leaving.

Sorrowful followed, his toenails clicking on the spotless stone floor.

The padre had joined Holt and Mr. Cavanagh, watching benignly as the chickens were made ready for the skillet. “Brother Lawrence will be sorely disappointed,” he said. “He was planning on venison stew for supper.”

Lorelei glanced toward the building where the kitchen was housed. There was no smoke coming from the chimney, and the windows were shuttered. She took a faltering step in that direction.

“We don't want to impose on your good will,” Mr. Cavanagh said, smiling. “It would be a favor if you'd join us for fried chicken, here in a little bit. We're gonna have spuds, too. Soon as Holt builds me a fire, I'll put it all on to cook.”

Holt looked exasperated, as well as worried, and Lorelei wondered how much Mr. Cavanagh had told him about Tillie's troubling state of mind. “Where do you want this fire?” he ground out.

“Maybe Brother Lawrence wouldn't mind if we used his cookstove,” Mr. Cavanagh speculated companionably, looking at the padre.

“Why, he'd be honored, I'm sure,” the padre said. “You go right ahead into the kitchen. Tell him I sent you.”

Holt grabbed Lorelei's arm as he passed. “You can help,” he said, dragging her along.

She stumbled to keep up, baffled. “What are you—”

He propelled her along, but when they reached the door of the kitchen, he stepped in front of her and entered first.

She took a deep breath on the threshold, then stepped in after him.

No Brother Lawrence. No venison stew.

Holt strode over to the stove, touched it. “Stone-cold,” he said, and wrenched open the door, started stuffing kindling inside. At least there was a supply of that.

Lorelei put a hand to her throat. “What's going on around here?” she asked, in a voice that was smaller than she would have liked.

“Hell if I know,” Holt answered. He took a match from the metal box fixed to the adobe wall next to the stove and struck it against the floor before putting it to the kindling. “If I had to hazard a guess, though, I'd say that old friar is crazier than a tick.”

“You think he's here alone?”

In her mind, Lorelei heard Tillie's voice.
They're all dead…I can see through them…I don't like dead people.

“Have you seen anybody else?” Holt asked, rather snappishly.

“Well, no, but—”

“Or maybe you think there are ghosts everywhere, like Tillie does?”

Lorelei frowned and put her hands on her hips. “Now just a minute—”

He stood and faced her, and his shoulders, usually so straight, slackened a little. “There aren't many things that spook me,” he said, “but this does.”

Lorelei was taken aback. “You're afraid?”

“I didn't say that.” He looked away, then met her gaze again, with some effort, it seemed to her.

“If the padre is cr—insane,” Lorelei said, “it doesn't necessarily follow that he's dangerous. He seems kindly to me. And pretty lonely, too.”

“We oughtn't to leave him here,” Holt told her, or maybe he was telling himself, because he sounded dis
tracted. “He wouldn't have a chance against a pack of Comanches.”

Lorelei's throat ached. She wanted to weep, thinking of the padre wandering around the compound alone after they'd gone, talking to a lot of invisible monks. “You're right,” she said. “About leaving him behind, I mean. But I don't think he'd go willingly, and it wouldn't be right to force him.”

Holt opened the stove door again and threw in a few chunks of wood. “No,” he admitted, but grudgingly, “it wouldn't.”

Mr. Cavanagh came in, carrying four plucked chickens in one hand, with the padre right behind him.

“Brother Lawrence must have stepped out,” the latter said.

“I reckon he's with the others,” Mr. Cavanagh replied easily.

H
OLT TOOK
the midnight watch, climbing the ladder into the bell tower above the chapel to survey the moonlit landscape. Rafe, claiming he couldn't sleep, soon joined him. Below, all was quiet—John slumbered under the wagon, the women took their rest in the small adobe chamber the friar had set aside for the purpose and the rest of the crew had bedded down in the orchard, spreading their bedrolls under the fruit-laden trees.

“You ever see another monk? Besides the padre, I mean?” Rafe asked.

“I don't reckon there are any,” Holt said. “The old codger's short a few rosary beads, for a fact.”

Like a bear, Rafe scratched his back against the corner of one of the four open archways surrounding the gleaming chapel bell. “I wouldn't say this to anybody but you,” he confided, “but there are moments when I'm not sure the friar's any more real than his Christian brothers.”

“Now that's just plain ridiculous,” Holt answered, though down deep he wasn't so sure. He'd seen some strange things in his travels, things he couldn't explain, and therefore chose not to think about. Most of the
time, anyhow. He straightened, glad of a distraction, as something in the distance caught his eye.

“What?” Rafe asked, coming to attention.

“Indians,” Holt said. There were six of them, mounted on nimble ponies, taking shape out of the shadows. One by one, they drew up, maybe two hundred yards from the gate.

Rafe moved to ring the bell, the agreed-upon signal that would rouse the other men for a fight.

Holt held up one hand to stay him. “Wait,” he rasped.

The braves seemed poised at the outside perimeter of an invisible circle—their horses fidgeted, as if unwilling to come closer.

“What the hell?” Rafe murmured.

“Look at them,” Holt answered, never taking his eyes off the riders. “They're scared.”

“Scared? I never heard of a Comanche being scared of anything. They've been watching us—they know we'd be no threat to them in a fight, with the women and that wagon slowing us down.”

He couldn't have made a case for what he was thinking. It was instinct, and guesswork, but it rang true, so he said it. “It's not us they're worried about. It's this place.”

Rafe frowned, peered out at the visitors. “I don't like this,” he said. “Most likely, they mean to jump us as soon as we pull out of here tomorrow morning.”

“I'm not so sure of that,” Holt mused. “They're superstitious as hell. There's a good chance they think we're bad medicine, if we'd spend the night inside this mission.”

Rafe frowned. “Seems to me you're assuming a lot,” he said. Unconsciously, he shoved a hand through his
hair—perhaps remembering poor Horace Jackson's fate and reflecting that he'd prefer to keep it.

Holt started down the ladder, gripping the rungs with one hand, carrying his rifle in the other.

“Where the devil do you think you're going?” Rafe growled, starting down after him.

“Out there,” Holt answered, reaching the bottom and striding for the gates, which loomed on the other side of the courtyard.

“The hell you are!” Rafe protested. “Unless you're looking to get an arrow in your gizzard—”

“If I'm right,” Holt said, raising the heavy latch, “it means we have a clear trail to Laredo.”

“And if you're wrong,” Rafe countered, in an outraged whisper, “it means you'll be dead!”

Not bothering with a reply, Holt swung the gate open and stepped through. Rafe followed, but he wasn't happy about it, and he had his rifle at the ready.

The Indians didn't move, except to control their nervous ponies. Devils that they were, the Comanches were the best horsemen Holt had ever seen. It was as if they became part of the animal the moment they mounted, took over its mind and heart, made its four legs their own.

“Jesus, Holt,” Rafe ground out, when Holt kept walking toward the little band of Indians. “You're as loco as the padre!”

“Maybe,” Holt said. He kept an eye on the Comanches the whole time, especially the obvious leader, but none of them moved to pull an arrow from the full quivers on their backs, or reach for a knife.

Rafe stuck with him, though he clearly didn't appreciate being called upon to do it. Given his druthers, Holt would have preferred his brother to stay inside the gates,
where it was reasonably safe, but he knew it would be a waste of time and breath to ask. Disgruntled as he was, it probably never occurred to Rafe to back down.

Since Holt didn't know just what constituted the edge of that imaginary circle, he came to an easy stop about twenty yards from the Indians.

The leader spat to one side, but he didn't ride in, and he didn't raise his bow. His attention sliced back and forth from the rifle Holt carried to his face, his painted features stiff with angry confusion.

Holt grinned. “Why don't you come inside?” he asked, in his rusty dialect. “Plenty of good scalps in there just going to waste.”

The brave looked him over with contempt—most likely for his faulty command of the Comanche language—but his manner was sending another message, too. Fear.

“Of course, there are ghosts, too,” Holt went on. He took one more step, well aware that he was risking a hell of a lot more than his own hide. All these Comanches had to do, if they took a mind, was ride him and Rafe down. They'd get off a couple of shots, bring down as many as half of them before they bit the dirt, but the battle would be lost just the same, and the people inside might be slaughtered. On top of that, there were probably a hundred more renegades waiting out there in the darkness.

The Indians hesitated, then backed up their ponies.

Holt felt a rush of triumph. “For all you know,” he went on, “the two of us are ghosts, too. Bad medicine. Very bad medicine.”

Rafe didn't say anything, but Holt could feel the tension coiling him up like a spring. Chances were, if the
Comanches didn't kill him and do some barbering, Rafe would, once this was over.

All of the sudden, the head warrior let out a blood-curdling whoop and thrust one fist toward the sky.

“I'd say it's been nice knowing you,” Rafe breathed, knowing you,” Rafe breathed, “if it didn't mean I'd go straight to hell for lying.”

The moment itself seemed to shiver with a variety of unsettling possibilities. Then, yapping like a pack of coyotes after a rabbit, the Indians reined their ponies around and scattered into the night. As the chilling cries and the hoofbeats receded, a stirring rose from inside the mission walls.

“We won't see them again this side of Laredo,” Holt said.

Rafe gave him a hard shove to the shoulder. “God
damn
it,” he snarled. “If we weren't standing out here in the open like the pair of fools we are, I swear I'd kick your ass on the spot!”

“You're welcome to try,” Holt said, listening for the sleek whistle of arrows before turning his back on the vanished war party. When he was satisfied that he wouldn't catch a shaft of supple wood between the shoulder blades, he started back for the gates.

Lorelei and Melina were waiting inside, both in nightgowns, with blankets around them. John and the Captain were handy, too, suspenders dangling, armed with rifles.

“Injuns?” the Captain asked, facing Holt while Rafe latched the gates again.

“Crazy,” Rafe muttered.

Holt nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said, out of habit. He'd ridden with the Captain for a long time, after all, and taken orders from him. “Six of them. More out in the countryside waiting for a signal to attack, I figure.”

Lorelei stood close enough that he could have reached out and pulled her into his arms, and the desire to do just that shook him the way a half-dozen Comanches could never do. “Attack?” she whispered. “I didn't think they would make war at night.”

“They'll ‘make war' anytime it's convenient,” he told her. “I don't think they'll bother us again, at least not until we're on the other side of Laredo. By then, they'll have figured out that we're bluffing.”

She frowned, one hand clenching the blanket closed at her throat.

Holt felt an unholy need ripple through him. He'd wanted plenty of women in his life, and he'd had most of them, but there was something different about the way he wanted this one. There was an element of need about it, more than physical, and that scared the bejesus out of him.

“You damn fool,” John rasped, lowering his brow at Holt. “I ought to horsewhip you for going out there like that!”

The Captain grinned. “Now, John,” he soothed. “It was a stupid trick, no saying it wasn't, but it worked. That's what matters.”

John stood face-to-face with Holt, with the back of his hand raised, like he meant to use it.

Holt stood his ground. There were two men in all the world who could strike him and get away with it. Angus McKettrick was one, and John Cavanagh was the other.

Cavanagh's eyes flashed, but he slowly lowered his hand. “Them cowboys back there,” he grumbled, by way of diffusing his temper. “Not a one of them could find his hind-end with his hat. Lucky we didn't have to depend on them in a fight.”

Holt risked a crooked grin. “Tell 'em to bed down again,” he said, addressing Rafe, who was still fuming a little himself. “It'll be dawn in a few hours, and it's still a full day's pull to Laredo.”

“Tell 'em yourself,” Rafe snapped, but he headed for the orchard. Like as not, the conversation would turn in the direction Holt wanted.

John waved a dismissive hand at Holt and turned to leave, bound, no doubt, for the soft, sweet grass under the wagon. Melina, too, slipped away.

The Captain and Lorelei lingered.

“I'll take the next watch,” the Captain said, studying Holt. “You'd best get some sleep yourself.” With that, he took himself off to the bell tower. Holt heard the old man's boot heels thumping up the rungs of the ladder.

Lorelei stood still as a pillar in one of those Greek temples Holt had seen etchings of, in books. She might have been made of alabaster, the way the moonlight glowed on her skin, but, thanks to those leeches, Holt knew only too well that she was flesh and blood.

She swallowed visibly, and Holt watched her throat work. Imagined what it would be like to kiss that place at the base of her neck where her pulse jumped.

“You could have gotten yourself killed,” she said.

“But I didn't.”

She moved slightly, as if to approach him. Then, damn the luck, she stopped herself. “What's going to happen to the padre, after we leave here tomorrow?”

Holt drew a deep breath, let it out. Suddenly, he felt weary to the bone, as if he could sleep as long as Rip Van Winkle and still need another day in his bedroll. “My guess is, he'll disappear into thin air,” he answered, and he was only half-kidding.

“I asked him to go with us,” Lorelei confided bleakly.

“He said he couldn't leave the brothers.”

“We can't force him, Lorelei,” Holt said, sort of herding her back toward the place where she and the others were bunking. He didn't dare take her arm. If he touched her, he figured their flesh would fuse from the heat. “He's got a right to decide for himself.”

They'd reached the doorway of the women's quarters. Holt didn't allow his mind to travel over the threshold.

Crickets, silent the last little while, suddenly chattered.

Lorelei bit her lower lip, then suddenly stepped in close and slipped both her arms around Holt's neck. He went rigid, like a wild bronco in a chute, about to be ridden for the first time.

She planted a kiss on his mouth, too quick and too light, and then, before he could think what to do or say, she pulled back and dashed inside.

He stood where she'd left him, waiting to come to his senses.

It was a long time happening.

 

T
HE SUN WAS
already blazing in the sky, though it wasn't yet seven o'clock by Lorelei's bodice watch, when two of the cowboys swung the mission gates open wide for the party to pass through.

Mounted on Seesaw, her hastily consumed breakfast weighing heavily in her stomach, Lorelei looked back at the padre, stationed by the fountain, smiling with benign sadness and waving farewell.

She drew up just inside the gates, letting the wagon and the last riders go by. A flash of sunlight hit the frolicking water in the fountain, and just for the merest frac
tion of a moment, Lorelei would have sworn she saw another robed figure beside the padre.

She blinked, and when she looked again, only the priest was there, standing alone.

The Texas sun was fierce, she reminded herself, and pulled her hat brim down to better shade her eyes. Once she'd ridden through the gate, the tall doors swung shut, and she heard the latch fall into place.

A shiver moved through her, and she nudged Seesaw into a trot, catching up with Melina. Tillie and the baby were in the back of the wagon, and Tillie stared back at the mission as though she expected it to dissolve before her eyes.

The morning was uneventful, hot and seemingly endless.

Lorelei watched the hillsides for Indians, and every time her thoughts wandered to the brazen way she'd kissed Holt the night before, she drove them back, like so many sheep about to stumble into a tar pit.

In the early afternoon, they came to another stream and stopped long enough to rest and water the livestock. They ate the cold fried chicken left from last night's supper, and then went on.

Lorelei longed for the sight of Laredo the way a pilgrim might long for the New Jerusalem. It was nearly sundown when the place finally took shape in the distance, and for a few moments she feared it must be a mirage.

Holt called the party to a halt on the outskirts of town, before the dirt trail gave way to a cobble-stoned street. Bringing a wagon and all those horses and mules to a stop was a noisy affair, but finally, it was done.