McKettrick's Choice (3 page)

G
ABE FIGURED
he must be hallucinating. Roy, the jailer, was standing just on the other side of the cell doors with a covered tray in his hands, and the savory smells coming from under that checkered dish towel made Gabe's mouth water and his belly rumble.

He sat up, blinking, and swung his legs over the edge of the cot.

Grumbling, the jailer set the food down on the floor and fumbled with his keys. Not for the first time, Gabe considered overpowering him—which would be easy—and taking his chances getting past the guards outside—which would
not
be so easy. He'd most likely get himself gut-shot if he tried.

“That friend of yours must have himself quite a bank account,” Roy muttered, pushing the door open cautiously and shoving the tray inside with his foot. “That there's a fancy dinner from over the hotel.”

Roy slammed the cell door shut and locked it, while Gabe went for the grub. “I'll be damned,” he murmured, crouching to toss back the dish towel. It was beef all right, and prime rib to boot. There were potatoes, a mountain of them, swimming in gravy, and green beans cooked up with bacon and onion.

The blood drained from Gabe's head.

Roy tarried. “I wouldn't have figured you
had
a friend,” he said.

Gabe sat on the side of the cot, the tray of food in his lap. His hand shook as he took up a fork. “What are you having for supper tonight, Roy?” he asked.

“What I'm having for supper ain't none of your never-mind,” Roy said, but he still didn't seem to be in any hurry to go on about his business. Maybe he was sucking in the smell of that feast.

Gabe cut off a chunk of beef with the side of his fork. Tender as stewed cloud. He damn near swooned when he took that first bite.

“Who is that feller, anyhow?” Roy persisted.

“Ain't none of your never-mind,” Gabe answered with his mouth full.

“You're pretty cocky for somebody about to be strung up.”

Gabe was busy savoring a second forkful of prime rib, so he didn't bite on the gibe. His stomach seized on the food, growled for more.

“Hope you ain't thinkin' he can get you out of here. Nobody could do that, short of the governor.”

The mashed potatoes were as good as the beef, and the gravy—well, it was fare fit for angels. “You'd better get yourself ready for some real trouble,” Gabe said, chewing. “Holt Cavanagh, he's like a freight train when he sets his mind on something. If I were you, I'd stay off the tracks.”

Roy paled, which gave Gabe almost as much satisfaction as the food. “Cavanagh? Same name as that rancher, the one who's been tanglin' with the Templeton bunch?”

Gabe smiled, though the mention of the name
Templeton made all his old injuries take to aching again. “Same name,” he said.

“They can't be related,” Roy fretted.

Gabe forked up some beans and a big hunk of bacon.

“Can't they?”

 

J
OHN
C
AVANAGH'S
old heart nearly stopped when he looked up and saw the rider at the edge of the hayfield, with the last rays of the setting sun framing man and horse. He rubbed his stubbly chin, leaning on the long-handled scythe, and squinted into the glare.

Tillie, working beside him, let her scythe fall into the grass. “That's Holt,” she whispered, and began to run, fairly tripping on the hem of her calico skirt. She fell once, got up again and went right on running.

It couldn't be Holt, John thought. He was up in the Arizona Territory, helping to run the family ranch and raising up a daughter.

The rider swung down from the saddle as Tillie barreled toward him, and held his arms out wide. Tillie gave a shout of joy and flung herself into them.

God in heaven. It
was
Holt.

John let his own scythe fall, though he was not a man to be careless with tools, and hurried toward the pair, moving as fast as his rheumatism would allow.

Holt swung Tillie around in a circle and planted a smacking kiss on her forehead. She was laughing and crying, both at once, and hugging Holt's neck as if she'd drown if he let her go.

“Holt,” John said, drawing up at the edge of the field and fair choking on the word.

The familiar grin flashed. “Yes, sir. It's me, all right.”

John took a step toward him, still disbelieving. His
vision blurred, and his throat closed up so tight he couldn't have swallowed a hayseed, even with good whiskey to wash it down.

Holt stroked Tillie's back; she still hadn't turned loose of his neck. “I see my little sister is all grown-up,” he said.

Hope swelled up inside John Cavanagh, hope such as he hadn't felt in a year of Sundays. “You figurin' on stayin'?” he asked, and ran an arm across his mouth.

“Until you run me off,” Holt replied, and grinned again.

“Go ahead and hug him, Pa,” Tillie said joyously. “It's the only way you'll believe he's real.”

John took another step, stumbling a little, and put his arms around the man he still thought of as his son. The two of them clung for a moment, and John felt tears on his old black face.

“Come on inside,” he managed when they drew apart again. “With you here, Tillie's like to cook up a storm.”

Holt was looking around the place, taking in the sagging barn, the downed fences, the skinny cattle and slat-ribbed horses.

If John hadn't been so damn glad to see the boy, he might have felt shame. Time enough later on to answer all those questions he saw brewing in Holt's face. Tell him how Templeton and the bankers were trying to force him out.

Right now, there were more important things to be said.

“You bring me a picture of that little girl of yours?” John demanded, hobbling along between Holt and Tillie as the three of them made for the house.

Holt took a wallet from his inside pocket and pulled out a daguerreotype.

John snatched it from his hand and paused, right in the middle of the path, to have himself a look. “She's the image of Olivia,” he said, just before his throat closed up again.

“Let me see,” Tillie pleaded. “Let me see!”

Reluctantly, John handed over the likeness.

Tillie gave a little cry, drinking in the image with her eyes. “You should have brought her,” she wailed. “Why didn't you bring her?”

Holt laid a gentle hand on Tillie's shoulder. She was twenty-eight years old, but simple-minded as a child. Something to do with the troubles her mother had bringing her into the world.

“It's too far,” Holt said quietly. “And she's going to school.” He glanced toward his horse, grazing happily in the good Texas grass. At least they still had the grass. “I brought you something, though. It's in my saddlebags—left-hand side.”

Tillie picked up her skirts and ran for the gelding, supper forgotten, for the moment at least.

“Frank Corrales sent me a letter,” Holt said, watching as Tillie unbuckled the saddlebag and plunged an eager hand inside. “Said somebody was trying to force you off your land. Looks like he knew what he was talking about.”

Tillie pulled out a doll with long dark ringlets and skin the same coffee color as her own.

“Where the devil did you find a colored doll?” John asked.

“Bought it along the way,” Holt said, watching fondly as Tillie hugged the doll to her flat chest and danced around in a circle. In the next instant, he looked somber
again. “Who's after the land, John? Gabe told me his version, but I want to hear it from you.”

John rubbed his chin. Once Holt got his mind around something, there was no getting it loose. “Man named Templeton. His place borders this one, and he wants the grass for his fancy English cattle.” Tears welled in John's eyes as he watched Tillie. Where would they go, if they left this ranch?

Four of John's children were buried here, and so was Ella, his angel of a wife. There'd been as much blood and sweat fall on the land as rain, and more than a few tears, too.

“The banker's his friend,” John went on, when he could. “They called my loans. Tried to cut off my water supply, too. Even rustled some of my cattle, though I can't prove it.”

Holt laid a hand on John's back. He didn't speak, but he didn't need to. John knew his intentions well enough.

“You can't fight them, Holt,” John said, because he knew how Holt's mind worked. “There must be three dozen men riding for that ranch, and they're fierce as Comanches on the warpath.”

Tillie was on her way back, beaming and hugging that doll for all she was worth.

“Maybe,” Holt said. “But I reckon I'm at least twice that ornery.”

L
ORELEI WAITED
until after her father had left the house the next morning before unlocking her bedroom door and making for the back stairs. Angelina, the family's long-time cook and housekeeper, turned from the gleaming cookstove to favor her with an encouraging if somewhat strained smile.

“I was about to bring your breakfast on a tray,” Angelina said, in gentle reprimand. “Do you know it's past ten o'clock?”

The mere idea of food made Lorelei shudder, and she was only too aware of the time; she'd been watching the clock on her vanity table since just after sunrise. “Where's Maria?” she asked, and was ashamed that she'd almost whispered the words.

Angelina's generous mouth pursed.
“Puta,”
she muttered. “She is gone—good riddance to her.” In case she'd offended heaven by calling the errant housemaid a whore, the woman crossed herself in a hasty, practiced motion.

Lorelei stood behind a chair at the kitchen table, realizing she'd been gripping the back of it with such force that her knuckles stood out, the skin white with stretching. “Father sent her away?”

Angelina made a face and waved a plump, dismissive hand. “Men are no good at sending
las putas
away. I told her to get out, or I'd work a chicken curse and make her sprout feathers full of lice.”

In spite of the lingering tension, and a strange and totally irrational disappointment that the judge hadn't been the one to dismiss Creighton's little baggage from under his roof, Lorelei laughed. “You
didn't.
”

“I did,” Angelina confirmed with satisfaction, motioning for Lorelei to take her customary place at the table. When she complied, the older woman poured a cup of freshly brewed tea and set it in front of her. “Drink. Your breakfast is almost ready. Hotcakes, brown on the edges, just the way you like them.”

Lorelei lifted the china tea cup in both hands, fearing she'd spill it if she didn't take a firm hold. “I don't want anything to eat,” she said, after a restorative sip.

“I don't care what you want,” Angelina replied crisply, and went back to the stove. “Your papa, he is very angry. You will need all your strength to deal with him.” She paused in her deft labors, regarding Lorelei as though she were a jigsaw puzzle with one piece missing. “Why did you do it? Why did you burn your wedding dress for all of San Antonio to see?”

“You know why, Angelina,” Lorelei said.

“I am not asking why you did not marry Mr. Bannings,” Angelina pointed out. “He is a coyote dropping, not a man. What I want to know is, if you had to burn the dress, why do it in front of the whole town? Now, all the women will be gossiping, and all of the men will avoid you.”

Lorelei took another sip of tea, then sighed. “The men would do well to avoid me,” she said, with a trace
of humor, “and the women would gossip, one way or the other.”

“It was a foolish thing to do,” Angelina maintained, setting the plate of hotcakes and scrambled eggs down in front of Lorelei with an eloquent thump. “People will say you are
loco
in the head.”

Lorelei twisted her hands in her lap. Her father's words echoed in her mind.
I fear you are not quite sane.
Would he actually go so far as to commit her to an asylum? Surely not—she'd defied him many times in the past, and he'd never sent her away. On the other hand, he'd never threatened to, either, and there was no question that he had the judicial power to do it. As a female, she had about as many legal rights as the old hound that slept behind the Republic Hotel, waiting for scraps from the kitchen.

“Is that what
you
think, Angelina? That I'm a madwoman?” She held her breath for the answer.

Angelina spat a Spanish expletive. “Of course not,” she added, when she'd stopped sputtering. “But I
know
you, Conchita. These others, they do not. They will talk about this for years!”

Lorelei took up her fork, only to push her rapidly cooling eggs apart into little, unappetizing heaps. “I was just so—angry.”

“Sí,”
Angelina agreed, laying a hand on Lorelei's shoulder. “This temper of yours, it will bring you to grief if you do not learn to control it.” She gave a gusty sigh.

“It is done now, and there is no changing it. We will have to deal with the consequences.”

“Father is furious,” Lorelei said, with resignation. “He threatened to have me locked away in a madhouse, and I'm fairly certain he wasn't joking.”

Angelina blinked, and in that instant her whole
demeanor changed.
“Madre de Dios,”
she muttered, and crossed herself again, and then twice more for good measure. “This is more serious than I thought.”

Lorelei's mouth went dry. She'd spent much of the night in frantic speculation, but she'd expected Angelina to soothe her fears, not compound them. “What am I going to do?” she murmured, more to herself than the housekeeper.

“For the time being, you must stay out of your father's way,” Angelina counseled gravely. She paused, thinking, then shook her head. “No,” she reflected. “I do not think he would actually do this thing. The scandal would be too great. After yesterday, he will not be looking for more of that.”

The clatter of horses' hooves and the rattle of carriage wheels rolling up the driveway silenced them both.

Angelina rushed to the bay window overlooking the long crushed-shell driveway.
“Vaya!”
she cried. “Go. It is the judge, and Mr. Bannings is with him!”

Lorelei nearly overturned her chair in her haste to be gone, but then her pride got the better of her good sense, as it so often did.

“No,” she said. “I will not run away like some rabbit startled in the carrot patch.”

“Lorelei,” Angelina whispered, her eyes pleading.

Lorelei planted her feet.
“No,”
she repeated, but her heart was hammering fit to shatter her breastbone, and she felt sick to her stomach.

She heard the carriage doors closing, heard her father and Creighton talking in earnest tones. Oddly, though, another voice supplanted those, an echo rising suddenly in her brain.

It belonged to Holt McKettrick.

Are you crazy?

 

H
OLT TOOK PLEASURE
in the look of surprise on the banker's face when he looked up and saw him standing there, with John Cavanagh beside him.

A moment too late, the man shoved back his swivel chair and stood, extending a hand in greeting. The fancy name plate on his desk read G. F. Sexton. He was probably no older than Jeb, but already developing jowls and a paunch. That was a banker's life for you, Holt thought. Too easy.

“Mr. Cavanagh!” Sexton cried, fixing his attention on John. “It's good to see you.”

John regarded the pale, freckled hand for a long moment, then shook it. “Under the circumstances,” he said, “it's good to see you, too.” Sexton's gaze shifted to Holt, full of wary curiosity.

Holt didn't offer a handshake, or an explanation. “We're here about those loans you called,” he said.

A flush stole up Sexton's neck, if that narrow band of pallid flesh could be called a neck, and pulsed along the edge of his jaw. “You understand, of course, that business is business—”

“I understand perfectly,” Holt said.

Sexton tugged at his celluloid collar. A fine sheen of sweat glimmered on his forehead. His gaze kept flitting back and forth between Holt's face and John's, skittish about lighting too long on either one. “I'm afraid the foreclosure is quite legal, if you've a mind to discuss that,” the banker said. He consulted the calendar on the wall behind his chair. “In two weeks, the ranch will be sold for outstanding debts.”

Holt indulged in a slow smile. “Will it?” he asked softly.

Sexton took a half step back. “Mr. Cavanagh owes—”

“Ten thousand dollars,” Holt interrupted, and laid a telegram from his bank in Indian Rock on the desk.

“They're sending a draft by wire. You should have it by tomorrow morning.”

Sexton got even redder. He fumbled in his breast pocket for spectacles, put them on, read the telegram and blanched. “My God,” he said, and sank heavily into his chair.

“There'll be another draft sent to First Cattleman's, up in Austin,” John put in. “You see, my son here just bought my place, lock, stock and barrel. I could have deposited the money here, I reckon, but—you'll understand, business being business—that I had some concerns about its safekeeping.”

The banker was a few horse-lengths behind. “Your son?” he squeaked.

Holt swallowed a laugh.

“Foster son,” John relented, having had his fun. “Holt's taken his real daddy's name—McKettrick—but he went by Cavanagh for a good part of his life.” He braced his work-worn hands on the edge of Sexton's desk and leaned in. “You tell Mr. Templeton he'll find Holt a sight harder to deal with than an old black man and a slow-witted girl.”

“Mr. Templeton?” Sexton croaked. “What does he have to do with this?”

“A whole lot, I reckon,” John said smoothly. “You ever think about punchin' cattle for a livin', Mr. Sexton? Mr. McKettrick, here, he's hirin'. Lookin' for thirty men or so. A season in the saddle might put some
color
in your cheeks.”

“My knees are bad,” Sexton said fretfully.

“I reckon your conscience smarts some, too,” John replied. “If you've got one, that is.” He turned to Holt,
his eyes gleaming with the old spirit. “Best we be goin'. Tillie'll be through at the general store, and there's Gabe to be looked in on before we head back out to the ranch. Make sure he's getting the meals my son arranged for, over to the Republic Hotel.”

Sexton rallied. His train was still back a couple of stations. “Austin's a long ways from here. You might want to reconsider that deposit, Mr. Cavanagh.”

“Then again,” John answered lightly, “I might not.”

Holt chuckled.

“What about you, Mr. McKettrick?” Sexton asked anxiously, standing up again. Even on his feet, he was knee-high to a burro, but he was still steaming along. “You'll need banking services, I'm sure.”

Holt, in the process of turning away, paused. John had already gained the door.

“You've got more guts than I would have given you credit for, Mr. Sexton,” he said. “Goodbye. And don't forget to give my best regards to Isaac Templeton.”

He joined John on the wooden sidewalk.

“Damn,” John said jubilantly, “that felt good.”

Holt laughed and slapped him on the back. “Let's collect Tillie and pay Gabe a visit. How long do you figure we have before Templeton comes to call?”

John made a show of taking out his watch. He'd fought on the Union side during the war, and the timepiece, a gift from his captain, was the only memento he'd kept from his days as a Buffalo Soldier, except, of course, for that chunk of cannonball lodged deep in his right thigh. “I reckon he'll get word by sundown.”

“You think he'll order a raid on the herd?”

Cavanagh shook his head. “Not without sizing you up first,” he said. “Mr. Templeton, he likes to have the facts in his possession before he makes a move.”

They stepped into the cool dimness of the general store, and the typical mercantile smells of clean sawdust, saddle leather, onions and dust greeted them.

Holt scanned the room for Tillie, found her standing alone at the counter, with a pile of goods stacked in front of her, while the clerk jawed with a cowboy a few feet away. Tillie might as well have been one of the outdated notices pinned to the wall for all the attention she was getting, and her eyes were huge as she watched Holt and her father approach.

“What can I do for you—gentlemen?” the clerk inquired.

“You can wait on the lady, for a start,” Holt said, with a nod toward Tillie.

“I don't see no lady,” the clerk replied. Scrawny little rooster.

Holt smiled broadly, reached across the counter, took a good, firm hold on the man's shirtfront and thrust him upward, off the floor. “Then there's something wrong with your eyesight, my friend,” he drawled, as John stepped between him and the cowhand. “You might want to invest in a pair of those fine spectacles on display in the front window.”

“Mac,” the clerk choked. “Ain't you gonna do somethin'?”

“No, sir,” Mac said cheerfully, and Holt turned his head long enough to take in the cowboy. “I reckon you've got this coming.” He turned easily, resting his weight against the counter. “You Holt McKettrick?” he asked.

“I heard on the street that you might be looking for ranch hands.”

Holt eased the clerk down onto the balls of his feet. “I might be,” he said.

The clerk scrambled along the counter to face Tillie with a feverish smile. “Mornin', ma'am,” he said. “What can I do for you today?”