McKettrick's Choice (4 page)

“M
AC
K
AHILL,”
the cowboy said, as Holt and John loaded Tillie's purchases into the back of the buckboard. “You don't remember me, do you?”

“Can't say as I do,” Holt replied, hoisting a fifty-pound bag of pinto beans off the sidewalk.

“We rode together, a time or two,” Kahill told him.

“I was part of Cap'n Jack Walton's bunch.”

Holt stopped, giving Kahill a thoroughly doubtful once-over. “You were a Ranger?”

Kahill flashed a grin. “No. I just fetched and carried. Took care of the horses. I was fourteen at the time.”

Holt squinted. “You were that towheaded kid with the freckles, always tripping over his feet and wiping his nose on his shirtsleeve?”

Kahill laughed. “You recollect correctly,” he said. He turned to John, then to Tillie, touching the brim of his hat both times. “I apologize for your poor treatment in the general store, folks. I surely don't countenance such deeds.”

“It troubles me a little,” Holt told Kahill bluntly, “that you didn't step in.”

“I didn't have to,” Kahill replied good-naturedly. “You did.”

“I think we ought to hire him,” John said, rubbing his chin.

The kid had tended horses on a few trips into Indian Territory. So what? That had been a long time back. Today, on the other hand, he'd been a party to Tillie's mistreatment, if only indirectly, and it seemed mighty convenient, after the fact, to claim he'd been about to take matters in hand with the clerk. “Why?” Holt asked.

“Because we're desperate,” John said simply.

Kahill's grin didn't slip. “I reckon I've had more enthusiastic welcomes in my time,” he confessed. “I'm good with a gun, I've herded my share of longhorns and I need a job.”

“Thirty a month, a bed in the bunkhouse and grub,” Holt said grimly.

“You provide your own horse and gear.”

“Done,” Kahill said, and put out his hand.

Holt hesitated, then extended his own.

 

G
ABE LOOKED MORE
like his old self than he had the day before. He was still in need of yellow soap, clean clothes and a week of good meals, but he was coming along.

“That was a damn fine supper you sent over last night,” he said. “Thanks.” His gaze moved past Holt to John. Tillie was waiting up front, in the marshal's office, the ass-end of a jail being no place for a woman.

“How-do, Mr. Cavanagh. You're lookin' spry, for an old soldier.”

He and John shook hands through the bars.

“I reckon I'll be returning the compliment,” John said, “once you've been out of this cage for a month or two.”

“I had another visitor first thing this morning,” Gabe said, keeping his voice low. “Judge Alexander Fellows.”

That caught Holt's interest. “What did he have to say?”

“That they're moving me to a cell on the other side of the stockade,” Gabe answered. “So I can watch my gallows being built.”

Holt felt his back teeth grind, and he must have stiffened visibly, because John gave him a sidelong, knowing look. “Easy,” he warned. “We've got the better part of a month to straighten this out.”

“You'll understand,” Gabe intoned, “if that doesn't sound like a real long time to me.”

“I ran into your lawyer yesterday before I rode out to John's place,” Holt said. “Worthless as tits on a boar, and he's pretty friendly with the judge.”

“You've got the right of that,” Gabe said. “That wedding dress Miss Lorelei burned in the square yesterday? Bannings was supposed to be the bridegroom.”

Somehow, remembering Lorelei calmly watching that bonfire with her chin high and her arms folded cheered Holt up a little. It amazed him that a woman like Miss Fellows—beautiful, spirited, and obviously intelligent, even if she did lack the common sense to know how fast a blaze like that could spread—would even consider hitching herself to a waste of hide and hair like Creighton Bannings.

“He mentioned that when we met,” Holt said. “Seemed to believe the lady would come around to his way of thinking, sooner or later.”

Gabe gave a snort of laughter. “I'd say later,” he replied. “About a week after the Second Coming.”

Holt raised an eyebrow, curious. “You seem to know Miss Fellows pretty well,” he observed.

“We don't travel in the same social circles,” Gabe said, “but, yeah, I know her.”

“How?”

“She feeds an old dog behind the Republic Hotel. So did I. Now and then, we ran into each other.”

“And you just happened to strike up a conversation?”

“I like to talk to a pretty woman whenever I get the chance—even if she has the disposition of a sow bear guarding a cub.”

Before Holt could offer a comment, a door creaked open at the far end of the corridor, where there was light and fresh coffee and freedom. The yearning for all those things was stark in Gabe's face. “She came to the trial every day,” he went on pensively. “Sat right in the front row, and favored me with a smile whenever the judge and Bannings weren't looking.”

Holt absorbed this, unsure of how he felt about it. On the one hand, the thought stuck under his skin like a burr. On the other, Lorelei Fellows was the judge's daughter, and possibly sympathetic to Gabe's cause. Maybe she knew something that might come in handy when the appeal was filed.

Which had better be soon, if Gabe's gallows was going up on the other side of the stockade.

 

S
URE ENOUGH,
she was there, behind the Republic Hotel, with a battered dishpan full of supper scraps. The dog, an old yellow hound with a notch bitten out of one ear and signs of mange, gobbled them up eagerly.

Holt stepped out of the shadows. “Evening, Miss Fellows,” he said.

She started, almost dropped the pan, but she recovered quickly enough. “Mr. Cavanagh,” she said coolly. “Or is it McKettrick? I've heard both.” She wore an old calico dress and a tattered shawl, and the brim of a man's hat
hid her face. Evidently, feeding the dog was something she did in secret.

“I go by McKettrick now,” he said. “But you can call me Holt.”

“If I choose to,” Lorelei agreed. “Which I don't.”

He laughed. “Fair enough,” he said.

She bent, stroked the dog's head as he lapped up the scraps. There was something tender in the lightness of her hand, something that made Holt's breath catch.

“What do you want, Mr. McKettrick?” A corner of her fine mouth twitched ever so slightly. “As you can see, there are no fires to put out.”

“Gabe told me you went to the courthouse every day during his trial. I guess I'd like to know why, considering that you didn't seem all that kindly disposed to him yesterday. I believe you referred to him as a horse thief and a killer?”

She regarded him steadily. “The people he murdered were decent. Maybe I just wanted to see that justice was done.”

“Maybe,” Holt agreed. “And maybe you figured a man who made a habit of feeding a starving dog wouldn't be inclined to butcher a rancher and his wife just for something to do of an evening.”

Even under the brim of the hat, he saw her eyes shift away from his face, then back again. “He's going to hang,” she said flatly. “If you knew my father, you wouldn't waste your time thinking otherwise.”

“If you knew me,” Holt answered, “you wouldn't be so sure of that.”

She took a step toward him, index finger raised for shaking, then stopped. Sighed heavily. Her shoulders sagged a little. “I don't know who you think you are,
Mr. McKettrick, but you don't want to come up against my father and—my father.”

“Your father and Isaac Templeton?” Holt prompted.

“Is that what you were going to say?”

Color suffused her face. “Just leave. Go back to your wife and children.”

“I don't have a wife,” Holt said. “My daughter is with people who love her. And I'm not leaving until I've finished my business here.”

Lorelei opened her mouth, closed it. Smacked the now-empty dishpan against her thigh in apparent frustration. Turned away.

He whistled to the dog, and she spun about, watching as the hound trotted over to lick his hand.

“Don't tease him,” she said anxiously.

“I'm not teasing him. I'm taking him back to my ranch. We could use a good watchdog.”

She almost smiled, Holt decided, but damned if she didn't catch herself in time. “His name is Sorrowful,” she said, in a soft voice. She was a complicated woman, Holt decided. Setting fire to wedding dresses, watching murder trials and loving an abandoned dog enough to bring him supper scraps.

Holt ruffled the critter's floppy, misshapen ears. “Howdy, Sorrowful. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Since when do you have a ranch around here?” she pressed, sounding worried. “I know everybody in this county, and you're a stranger to me.”

“Since I bought the Cavanagh place,” Holt answered, watching for a reaction.

Her throat worked. “Next to Mr. Templeton's spread,” she murmured.

“You friendly with him, too?” Holt asked lightly. “Or maybe your father is.”

She bristled. “What are you implying, Mr. McKettrick?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Nothing, Miss Fellows. Nothing at all. Now, if I were you, I'd get on home. There are lots of unsavory types in San Antonio these days.”

She looked him over. “I'm well aware of that,” she said. Then she stiffened her spine, and hitched up her chin again. “You'd better be good to my dog,” she finished. She turned on one heel and marched away into the gathering twilight.

Sorrowful lived up to his name and gave a forlorn whimper, watching Lorelei go.

Holt felt like doing the same.

 

“A
DOG
!” Tillie cried joyously, a couple of minutes later, when Holt hoisted the mutt into the back of the buckboard, where he immediately commenced to sniffing the groceries.

“Sure enough,” agreed John, not so joyously. “He the kind to kill chickens?”

Tillie was already unwrapping the leftovers from the fancy supper they'd taken in the dining room of the Republic Hotel and offering them to the hound.

“He's the kind to let us know if anybody's sneaking around outside the house of a night,” Holt answered, climbing up to take the reins. He released the brake lever with one foot and urged the team into motion.

He looked up at the stockade as they passed. It gave him a lonely feeling to know Gabe was in there, even if he was feasting on the fried chicken dinner and whole strawberry pie sent over for his supper.

“He can sleep in my room,” Tillie said.

“Not unless you scrub him down with lye soap first, he can't,” John decreed. Clearly, he had misgivings where the dog was concerned, but Holt was confident he'd come around in time. John was a tenderhearted man, though he liked to pretend otherwise.

Holt pondered how different things were as they headed out of town.

Once, he'd thought of the Cavanagh place as home.

Now, home was the Triple M. He wondered how Lizzie was getting along, and the old man and those three knuckleheaded brothers of his.

Margaret Tarquin never crossed his mind, but Lorelei Fellows sure cut a wide swath through his thoughts.

T
HE WEDDING GIFTS,
each one labeled for return to its original owner with many wrapped to mail, filled the twelve-foot table in the formal dining room. They teetered on chairs, crowded the long bureau top and took up most of the floor as well.

Lorelei surveyed the loot with relief. “That's the last of them, then,” she told Angelina, dusting her hands together. “Raul can start loading them into the wagon.”

Angelina, having wended her way in from the kitchen traveling a path between the packages, shook her head at the sight. “Now what?” she asked.

Lorelei consulted the watch pinned to the bodice of her crisply pressed shirtwaist. After the interview with her father and Creighton in the kitchen yesterday morning, her resolution had wavered a little. The judge hadn't mentioned an asylum, thankfully, but he did rant about the shame she'd brought upon the family name and threaten to confine her to the house until she'd come to her senses.

“I'm due at the Ladies' Benevolence Society meeting in half an hour,” she said, and patted the tidy chignon at the back of her head. “I'd sooner run the gauntlet
in a Comanche camp. Unfortunately, I don't have that option.”

Angelina's eyes rounded, then narrowed. “What are you thinking, doing such a thing? Those old biddies will eat you alive!”

“They'll try,” Lorelei said, with false good cheer.

“Then why serve yourself to them like a sponge cake?”

“If I avoided them,” Lorelei reasoned, “they would call me a coward. And, worse, they'd be right.”

Angelina sighed. “I suppose there is no talking you out of this.”

Lorelei looked at her watch again. “If I don't hurry, I'll be late,” she said. With that, she took herself to the entryway, where her handbag awaited on the table next to the door, and left the freighting of the gifts to Angelina and her husband.

“Be careful,” Angelina fretted, hovering at her elbow.

Lorelei kissed the other woman's creased forehead. “I don't know how,” she answered, and left the house.

The membership of the Ladies' Malevolence Society, as Lorelei privately referred to them, met once a month, in the spacious parlor of Mrs. Herbert J. Braughm, for tea, social exchange and precious little benevolence. Lorelei attended faithfully, for three reasons. Number one, they didn't want her there. Thus, being a member constituted an exercise in principle. Number two, it was the best way to keep up with the doings in San Antonio. Number three, on admittedly rare occasions, the group actually did something constructive.

It was a ten-minute walk to the Braughm house, and the weather was muggy. Inwardly, Lorelei dragged her feet every step of the way.

Outwardly, she was the very personification of dignified haste.

Mrs. Braughm's maid, Rosita, actually gaped when she opened the door to her.

Lorelei smiled and waited expectantly to be admitted.

Rosita ducked her head and stepped back to clear the way. “The ladies,” she said, in accented English, “are in the garden.”

“Thank you,” Lorelei said, adjusting her spotless gloves and shifting her handbag from her left wrist to her right. Her very bones quavered, but her voice was steady.

Mrs. Braughm's garden was gained through a set of French doors, standing open to the weighted air. Plump roses nodded, almost as colorful as the hats and dresses of the women seated around pretty white tables, sipping tea and nibbling at dainty refreshments. The chatter ceased the moment Lorelei stepped onto the tiled patio.

She straightened her spine and smiled.

“Why, Lorelei,” Mrs. Braughm said, too loudly. The legs of her chair scraped shrilly as she stood, small and fluttery, to greet an obviously unexpected guest.

“I hope I'm not late,” Lorelei said, meeting the gazes of the other guests, one at a time. Most were cold, but she saw a glimmer of sympathy in some of the younger faces.

“Of course not,” Mrs. Braughm chirped. “Come, sit down. Have some tea. We were just about to start.”

No one moved, and every extra chair held a handbag, a knitting basket, or a small, watchful dog.

Mrs. Eustacia Malvern, who had held the meetings at her home on Houston Street until the task had become
too much for her, reached for her cane and used it to steady herself as she raised her considerable bulk out of her chair. Her Pekinese, Precious, took the opportunity to stand on its hind legs and lick the whipped cream off Mrs. Malvern's dessert.

“What we were just about to do,” Mrs. Malvern said, ignoring the dog, “was review our standards of membership.”

Murmurings were heard, here and there. No one dared look directly at Lorelei, who stood still and straight, waiting.

“As you know,” Eustacia went on, “we have certain criteria.” Among other things, Mrs. Malvern was Creighton's second cousin, Lorelei recalled. Raul was probably loading her wedding gift, a silver compote, into the back of the wagon at that very moment.

Lorelei did not speak. Bees buzzed from flower to flower, their drone growing louder with every passing moment.

Mrs. Malvern took in the gathering. The dog finished the whipped cream and went for a tea cake.

“I think we are all agreed, Miss Fellows, that you are not our sort.”

 

N
OT OUR SORT
.

Standing there in Mrs. Braughm's lush garden, surrounded by the cream of San Antonio society, Lorelei felt a sting of mortification and, conversely, not a little exhilaration. “Do you speak for everyone?” she asked mildly.

No one spoke. No one met Lorelei's gaze, save Mrs. Malvern, who seemed intent on glaring a hole right through her.

With a delicate lapping sound, the Pekinese began
to drink tea from the old woman's cup. Except for that, the hum of a few bees and the nervous tinkle of a cup against a saucer, the silence was absolute.

“Very well, then,” Lorelei said. With that, she turned, keeping her shoulders and spine as straight as she could, and took her leave.

She couldn't go home, not yet.

She might have visited her old friend, Sorrowful, behind the Republic Hotel, but now even the dog was gone. He would surely be better off on the Cavanagh place, with regular feeding and room to run, but the knowledge of his absence was a thrumming ache in her heart.

It was sad indeed, she reflected, when a person's truest friend was an old war veteran of a dog.

Pausing in the shade of an oak, Lorelei pulled a lace-trimmed handkerchief from beneath her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself,
she scolded silently.
You still have Angelina.

She hadn't heard the horse approaching, and by the time she realized she wasn't alone, it was too late.

“Morning, Miss Fellows,” said Holt McKettrick, swinging down from the back of a fine-looking Appaloosa gelding. “Maybe I'm mistaken, but you give the appearance of being a damsel in distress.”

Lorelei's throat ached. Her eyes felt puffy and red, and the edges of her nostrils burned. It galled her that this man, of all people, had to be the one to catch her weeping. “I'm perfectly fine,” she said, with a sniff.

His smile was slow and easy, and it pulled at something deep inside her. “Whatever you say,” he allowed. His eyes twinkled with good-natured skepticism.

“How do you expect to make that ranch pay if you
spend all your time in town?” Lorelei challenged, taking in his fine suit.

He chuckled, belatedly removing his hat. The band, made of hammered silver, caught the light and made it dance. “I'll make it pay, all right,” he said, with quiet confidence. “And it happens I have business in town.”

Lorelei knew she should simply walk away, but she couldn't find it within herself to do that, so she simply stood there, with one gloved hand against the trunk of the oak tree. “How is Sorrowful faring?” she asked. It was a safe topic, as far as she could tell.

Again, that slow, lethal grin. His teeth were good—white and straight. He'd probably never had a cavity in his life. “Sorrowful,” he said, “is glad of a bed behind the stove and table scraps twice a day. He's a fair hand at chasing rabbits, too.”

Lorelei smiled. “Good,” she said.

“You're welcome to visit him anytime, if you're so disposed.”

“Thank you,” she replied softly.

“I could see you home,” Holt ventured, turning the fancy hat in his hands.

She shook her head. “I don't think I'm ready to go there just yet,” she said.

He didn't press for a reason. “Well, I guess I'd better get along.”

He turned, put a foot in the stirrup and mounted with an ease Lorelei couldn't help admiring. She yearned to ride, just get up on a horse's back and race over the ground, travel as far and as fast as she could, with the wind buffeting her face and playing in her hair. Her father had forbidden her that pleasure, along with many others, claiming it was not a suitable enterprise for a lady.

In reality, it was because her older brother, William,
had been thrown from a pony when he was nine. He'd struck his head on a rock and died three days later. The judge's mourning had been terrible to behold.

Holt tilted his head to one side, watching her face. “Something the matter?”

Lorelei was swamped with memories—her father's utter grief. All the mirrors in the house draped in black crepe. The sound of the rifle shot, ringing through the heavy air of a summer afternoon, as William's pony was put down.

All of this had happened the day she turned six. Raul had led away the little spotted Shetland that was to have been her birthday gift, later admitting that he'd given it to a rancher.

Child that she was, she'd mourned the lost pony more than William, at the time, and the recollection of that caused a sharp pang of guilty sorrow.

She sighed. “No,” she lied, catching hold of his question, left dangling in the air for a long moment. “Nothing's wrong.”

“I don't believe you,” Holt answered quietly.

Then he took the reins in one hand, touched the brim of his hat and went on, toward town.

Lorelei stared after him, wondering when he'd leave San Antonio and go back to wherever he'd come from.