Shotgun Bride (4 page)

N
ever one to decide weighty matters on the spur of the moment, Kade didn’t give Becky an answer right away. They each had another whiskey, and he stewed over the offer through the evening and most of the night.

For all his deliberating, he was no closer to a decision the next morning. On the one hand, he belonged on the Triple M the way stones belong to a creek bed, and he knew it. On the other, he was fascinated with the law, having studied it for as long as he could remember, and the chance to exercise some of that knowledge had a certain appeal.

He took his breakfast with Becky and John in the hotel dining room, and promised to settle on a course soon.

The journey to the ranch was tedious, and when Kade and Jeb finally rode across the creek and up to the house, Angus was waiting on the front porch, as if he’d been expecting them. The old man looked like the scrapings from last week’s batch of pinto beans, dry and gray and oddly concave, as if he were shrinking away from his own hide. He sat in a rocker with a robe draped over his legs, but a spark gleamed in his blue eyes as he watched his sons approach. It was pure cussedness, that spark, and not to be mistaken for fatherly affection, but seeing it reassured Kade a little, all the same. Angus McKettrick still had some fight in him, which meant the earth still revolved around the sun and summer still came after spring.

For most of the ride out from town, Kade had wrangled with the idea of taking the marshal’s job, trying the case in his mind, arguing for and against, making no attempt to strike up a conversation with Jeb. Now, seeing his pa, he set the quandary aside.

“I ought to send the pair of you packing for worrying us the way you did,” Angus growled with a cantankerous gesture of one hand. Being a contrary sort, he liked to bitch, even when he’d gotten what he wanted. “After a good old-fashioned horsewhipping, that is.”

Concepcion slipped out the door to stand behind him, one competent brown hand resting lightly on his shoulder. She didn’t offer a welcome, but Kade still cherished a fleeting and distracted hope that she wouldn’t refuse to cook or wash for them, as she’d done in the past whenever they’d gotten on her bad side. She’d been keeping house on the Triple M since before their mother died, when they were boys, and in many ways she’d taken up where Georgia McKettrick had left off. Life would have been grim around the place without her around to soften things up a little.

Jeb swung down from the saddle first, leaving the reins to dangle, a go-to-hell grin on his face. Like Kade, he’d had a bath the night before at the hotel, but he still looked like a prospector gone to seed.

“I missed you, too, Pa,” Jeb said.

Kade dismounted, more resigned than anything. He wasn’t glib like Jeb, and he’d had a lot on his mind just since returning to Indian Rock, between the tin star he’d been offered, all those brides on his tail, and the grief brewing between the Triple M and Cavanagh’s outfit. Making idle conversation was beyond him.

“I’m disinclined to claim either one of you,” Angus fussed. “You call yourselves McKettricks? You look like a couple of road agents.”

Jeb laughed, opening the front gate and leaving it to swing back against Kade’s middle when he tried to follow. “And you look like a bony-kneed old lady, sitting there under that lap robe. Where’s your knitting?”

Angus tried to keep his dudgeon up, but even he couldn’t help grinning a little, for all his sour mien. Jeb could bullshit a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher into dancing a jig with the devil, if he put his mind to it. That was a gift Kade didn’t possess, and when his guard was down, he envied it mightily.

As the two brothers mounted the wide porch steps, a ranch hand came to collect the horses, and Angus levered himself to his feet with a creaking sound that might have come from either the chair or his dry, old joints. Concepcion stayed close, Kade noticed, but didn’t make the mistake of helping the old man rise.

“I hear there’s a fight brewing,” Kade said, because if he didn’t speak up before Jeb started yammering in earnest, he wouldn’t get a word in edgewise.

“You heard right,” Angus said, reddening. His jugular vein stood out, and his right temple pulsed. “It’s that half brother of yours that’s behind it, too. I’d stake my life on it. Damn pigheaded cuss.”

“Wonder where he gets that?” Kade asked lightly.

Concepcion gave him a reproachful look and spoke for the first time. “Same place you did, I would say.”

Angus put out a hand, and Kade shook it. Old coot’s grip was still stout as an ape’s; could be he was putting on a good part of this peakedness, just to get himself some sympathy and attention.

Concepcion led the way into the house, prattling about scissors and razors. She was bent on dispensing shaves and haircuts, and once she got a notion like that into her head, the deed was as good as done.

Jeb and Kade paused to hang their coats, hats, and gun belts on the hall tree just inside the front door, and Angus tarried, keeping an eye on them. Maybe he thought they’d make a run for it if he didn’t keep them corralled.

“Where the
hell
have you boys been?” he demanded in a raspy whisper. “I figured you both for dead, you were gone so long. And not a word to put my mind at ease. Either one of you ever heard of the telegraph?”

Kade shoved a hand through his hair. “We’re both too mean to die, Pa,” he said. “Just like you. And I figured if I sent a wire, you’d moan and holler about the extravagance.”

Jeb offered no comment for once, but he was smirking a bit, always a bad sign, as he strolled past his father and brother and headed for the kitchen, where Concepcion was surely setting up her own barbershop.

When they were alone, Angus slapped Kade on the shoulder. “Thanks for finding Jeb,” he said, low and confidential.

“I had to look under a lot of rocks to do it,” Kade replied lightly. “I figured he’d turn up sooner or later, though, and sure enough, he did.” In point of fact, he’d found his kid brother playing poker in the back room of a Tombstone whorehouse, drunker then hell, but he didn’t see any benefit in elaborating. Not then, at least. The knowledge might come in handy later, though.

A blast of stove heat and the smells of good home-cooking struck Kade as he entered the kitchen a few moments later, and he began to think he might be able to round up his stray wits after all, make some sense of things, once he’d assuaged his empty stomach.

Concepcion already had Jeb plunked down in a chair in the middle of the room, with a checkered tablecloth wrapped around his shoulders, and the scissors snipped busily in her hand as she tried to make up her mind where to start. Kade ignored his brother and fetched the basin from the back porch, ladled in some hot water from the reservoir on the side of the stove, and sharpened a razor against a strop.

Locks of Jeb’s dirt-blond hair lay on the floor by the time Kade had finished shaving, and the two of them switched places.

Jeb got through grooming first, making quick work of his own beard, and poured himself a cup of strong coffee, leaning against the sink as he watched Kade getting sheared. “I’m surprised you’ve been able to hold in the big news all this time, Brother,” he said, with a glint of merry devilment in his eyes.

“What big news is this?” Concepcion wanted to know, but she didn’t pause in her combing and whacking.

Kade darted a warning look in Jeb’s direction, but he knew beforehand that it wouldn’t do any good. Once Jeb opened his yap, the words just stampeded right out, and it was get out of the way or be trampled.

Jeb saluted him with the coffee mug. “My big brother is about to be married. Soon as he figures out which of his many admirers to take up with, that is.”

Concepcion stopped cutting, and Angus, who had stationed himself in his customary chair at the head of the table with coffee of his own, perked up like a mossy-antlered old buck catching something on the wind.

“That so?” he said. The idleness in his tone didn’t fool Kade; Angus wanted his boys married, and he wanted them to be fathers, just barely in that order, probably. Rafe was out front in the race to win the ranch, since he had the wife, if not the child, but win or lose, it would take an act of Congress to get himself and Jeb off the hook. Yes, sir. The old man would see them settled down, right and proper, in their turns, or there would be hell to pay.

“There’re six of them,” Jeb marveled, with that mocking grin still plastered across his face. Kade would have liked to knock it off, but Concepcion had him pretty well hog-tied with two corners of the tablecloth tied behind his neck, and besides, she was armed with scissors. “And then there’s the job offer.”

“Six of them?”
Angus asked, still snagged on the plentitude of brides, and he looked so thunderstruck that Kade couldn’t tell whether he was pleased or aghast. “What the deuce would one man want with six women?”

Jeb’s grin turned engaging. He’d saved himself many a trouncing with that grin—and brought on a lot more. “You
are
getting old, Pa.”

Angus frowned at that, but then a look passed between the old man and Concepcion, like quicksilver, that made Kade sit up a little straighter in his chair. He would have bet Jeb hadn’t noticed—he was too busy being a horse’s ass, but Kade stuck the exchange away in the back of his mind, to be considered later on.

“What’s this about a job offer?” Angus demanded, stone-faced. To his way of thinking, his sons belonged on the Triple M ranch, and nowhere else. Life might have been simpler for Kade if he hadn’t agreed; he’d probably be practicing law in San Francisco or working for the Pinkerton Agency by now, if it weren’t for his love of the land.

“I might fill in for John Lewis awhile,” Kade said, glaring at Jeb, warning him with his eyes that there would be a reckoning, and sooner, rather than later.

“It seems to me, Jeb McKettrick,” Concepcion said when a space opened in the conversation, so she could herd a few words through it, “that you ought to be doing some courting yourself, instead of tormenting your brother.”

Jeb’s grin broadened, and he shrugged. “It just may be,” he said, smooth as cream rising on new milk, “that I’ve already got a wife.” He held up his left hand and, sure as hell, there was a gold band on the appropriate finger. No doubt he’d used it to keep the brides at bay, back in town.

The room was so still that if it hadn’t been for a piece of wood crumbling in the belly of the stove, Kade would have sworn he’d gone deaf as a post.

“I
f you’ve taken a wife,” Angus challenged his youngest son, being the first to recover, “where is she?” After all, anybody could buy a ring, and Jeb was just crafty enough to do it.

“Yeah,” Kade echoed. “Where is she?” He hadn’t seen any sign of a bride since he’d hooked up with Jeb down in Tombstone, nor had he caught a glimmer of the wedding band, but that didn’t mean the sidewinder wasn’t hiding a woman away someplace and planning to spring her on them all at the worst possible moment; hell, she might already be breeding.

Jeb was ruminating on his answer, and enjoying the process a mite too much for Kade’s taste, when the subject fell by the wayside all on its own. A wagon rolled up outside, raising a clamor, and Concepcion left off clipping to stand on tiptoe and peer out the window over the sink.

“It’s Rafe and Emmeline,” she announced, without turning around. “And they’ve got the little nun with them.”

Kade closed his eyes, shook his head. He supposed he could tolerate Rafe, and he was out-and-out fond of Emmeline, like the rest of the family, but he had real misgivings about the nun. She wasn’t what she appeared to be, which meant she was living a lie, and Kade had no patience with liars. Besides, she made him jittery.

There was some stomping on the porch, and then the back door swung open and Emmeline came in, followed by Sister Mandy and, finally, Rafe. He looked even bigger than usual, in contrast to two middling-sized women.

Emmeline was smiling, her cheeks pink with fresh air and cold, and she made a beeline for Angus, who, besotted, had risen to his feet in honor of her presence. She stretched to kiss his stubbly cheek.

“Are you happy now, Angus McKettrick?” she demanded with bright affection. “You’ve got all your rascal boys rounded up and roped in.”

Angus chuckled and kissed her forehead, his big, gaunt hands resting lightly on her shoulders. “It’s you I’ve missed most,” he said shyly. Then he looked past her to Rafe, who’d enjoyed the status of firstborn son, until Holt Cavanagh had turned up, anyhow. He wasn’t quite so sure of himself now, old Rafe, for all that he was first in line to run the ranch and, therefore, Kade’s and Jeb’s lives. “Took you long enough to fetch your wife home where she belongs,” Angus told him, his gaze straying once to the gold glint on Jeb’s ring finger. He wasn’t happy if he wasn’t grousing about something.

Rafe smiled, but when he linked gazes with first Kade, then Jeb, the expression didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Emmeline’s a hard woman to reason with, Pa,” he said. “It takes a team of oxen to drag her away from that hotel.”

Throughout all this, Sister Mandy stayed quiet, keeping to the fringes and looking as though she’d like to bolt for the timberline as soon as there was a gap in the throng.

Concepcion was having none of that. She took the girl’s hands into her own. “Amanda Rose,” she said, catching Mandy’s eye and holding it. “What a fine surprise. You will be paying us a long visit,
sí?”

Rafe had gone to the stove to pour coffee for himself and Emmeline; when he offered some to Mandy, she demurred. “She’s come to help out over at the house,” he said with portent. “Emmeline’s taking a rest from the hotel, letting Clive do the managing for a while, and Becky, when she’s not off gallivanting with the marshal.”

Emmeline colored up a little and Kade knew, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, that it wasn’t because of Rafe’s remark about Becky’s romance with John Lewis. In his mind’s eye, he saw his dream of running the Triple M retreat into the mists.

“Tell them,” Rafe urged his wife gently, and when he looked at her, his chest seemed to expand, and pride glowed in his face.

She bit her lower lip and dropped her head, but when she raised it again, her eyes were shining with happy tears. “We just came from Doc’s office. Rafe and I are expecting a child.”

Angus let out a whoop of joy, and Concepcion, tears flowing, gathered Emmeline into her arms, hugging her fiercely. Soon after she and Rafe had moved to the new house, over beyond the creek, there’d been talk of a baby coming, but that had evidently ended in disappointment. This, Kade knew, was different.

Rafe stood still, watching his brothers. Waiting for their reaction.

Kade crossed the room, gave him a good-natured shove to the shoulder, then shook his hand. “Congratulations, Rafe,” he said, the words scraping his throat as they passed.

“You mean that?” Rafe wanted to know.

“Hell, yes. But you still can’t have the ranch.”

Rafe laughed out loud at that.

Jeb came forward. “Damn right you can’t,” he said, as he and Rafe shook hands. “I’ll be the one to run this place, not either of you sorry greenhorns.”

“See what you have done, Angus McKettrick?” Concepcion piped up, but the reprimand was jolly. She dried her eyes hastily on the hem of her ever-present apron. “You have turned your own sons against each other.”

“Well, it got them off their backsides, didn’t it?” Angus asked. “Hallelujah, I’m finally going to have a grandchild! When is this blessed event supposed to occur, Emmeline?”

Flustered and beautiful, Emmeline beamed. “Sometime in November, according to Doc.” She paused, exchanged a glance with Rafe, and went on, “Put away whatever you’re cooking. You’re all to come to dinner across the creek tonight, and I won’t abide excuses. We’re going to celebrate!”

No one could refuse Emmeline when she was smiling that way, Kade thought, and sure enough, nobody tried.