The McKettrick Legend (9 page)

Sierra didn't know precisely what was happening, and she was still unsettled by Liam's claims of seeing a boy in old-time clothes, but she wasn't ready to bring up the subject with an outsider, whether that outsider had a medical degree or not.

Dr. O'Meara had reviewed Liam's records, since they'd been expressed to her from the clinic in Florida, and she wanted to make sure he had an inhaler on hand. She'd promised to call in a prescription to the pharmacy in Indian Rock, and they'd made an appointment for the following Monday afternoon.

Now Liam was in the study, watching TV, and Travis was out side split ting wood for the stove and the fire places. If the power went off again, she'd need firewood for cooking. The generator kept the furnace running, along with a few of the lights, but it burned a lot of gas and there was always the possibility that it would break down or freeze up.

Travis came in with an armload just as she was starting to prepare lunch.

Watching him, Sierra thought about what Eve had said on the phone earlier. Travis's younger brother had died horribly, and very recently. He'd left his job, Travis had, and come to the ranch to live in a trailer and look after horses.

He didn't look like a man carrying a burden, but appearances were deceiving. Nobody knew that better than Sierra did.

“What kind of work did you do, before you came here?” she asked, and then wished she hadn't brought the subject up at all. Travis's face closed instantly, and his eyes went blank.

“Nothing special,” he said.

She nodded. “I was a cocktail waitress,” she told him, because she felt she ought to offer him something after asking what was evidently an intrusive question.

Standing there, beside the antique cookstove and the wood box, in his leather coat and cowboy hat, Travis looked as though he'd stepped through a time warp, out of an earlier century.

“I know,” he said. “Meg told me.”

“Of course she did.” Sierra poured canned soup into a sauce pan, stirred it industriously and blushed.

Travis didn't say anything more for a long time. Then, “I was a lawyer for McKettrickCo,” he told her.

Sierra stole a sidelong glance at him. He looked tense, standing there holding his hat in one hand. “Impressive,” she said.

“Not so much,” he countered. “It's a tradition in my family, being a lawyer, I mean. At least, with everyone but my brother, Brody. He became a meth addict instead, and blew himself to kingdom-come brewing up a batch. Go figure.”

Sierra turned to face Travis. Noticed that his jaw was hard and his eyes even harder. He was angry, in pain, or both.

“I'm so sorry,” she said.

“Yeah,” Travis replied tersely. “Me, too.”

He started for the door.

“Stay for lunch?” Sierra asked.

“Another time,” he answered, and then he was gone.

1919

It was near sunset when Doss and Tobias rode in from the Jessup place, and by then Hannah was fit to be tied. She'd paced for most of the afternoon, after it started to snow again, fretting over all the things that could go wrong along the way.

The horse or the mule could have gone lame or fallen through the ice crossing the creek.

There could have been an avalanche. Just last year, a whole mountainside of snow had come crashing down on to the roof of a cabin and crushed it to the ground, with a family inside.

Wolves prowled the countryside, too, bold with the desperation of their hunger. They killed cattle and some times people.

Doss hadn't even taken his rifle.

When Hannah heard the horses, she ran to the window, wiped the fog from the glass with her apron hem. She watched as they dismounted and led their mounts into the barn.

She'd baked pies that day to keep from going crazy, and the kitchen was redolent with the aroma. She smoothed her skirts, patted her hair and turned away so she wouldn't be caught looking if Doss or Tobias happened to glance toward the house.

Almost an hour passed before they came inside—they'd done the barn chores—and Hannah had the table set, the lamps lighted and the coffee made. She wanted to fuss over Tobias, check his ears and fingers for frost bite and his fore head for fever, but she wouldn't let herself do it.

Doss wasn't deceived by her smiling restraint, she could see that, but Tobias looked down right relieved, as though he'd expected her to pounce the minute he came through the door.

“How did you find Widow Jessup?” she asked.

“She was right where we left her last time,” Doss said with a slight grin.

Hannah gave him a look.

“She was fresh out of firewood,” Tobias expounded importantly, unwrapping himself, layer by layer, until he stood in just his trousers and shirt, with melted snow pooling around his feet. “It's a good thing we went down there. She'd have froze for sure.”

Doss looked tired, but his eyes twinkled. “For sure,” he confirmed. “She got Tobias here by the ears and kissed him all over his face, she was so grateful that he'd saved her.”

Tobias let out a yelp of mortification and took a swing at Doss, who side stepped him easily.

“Stop your rough housing and wash up for supper,”
Hannah said, but it did her heart good to see it. Gabe used to come in from the barn, toss Tobias over one shoulder and carry him around the kitchen like a sack of grain. The boy had howled with laughter and pummeled Gabe's chest with his small fists in mock resistance. She'd missed the ordinary things like that more than anything except being held in Gabe's arms.

She served chicken and dumplings, in her best Blue Willow dishes, with apple pie for dessert.

Tobias ate with a fresh-air, long-ride appetite and nearly fell asleep in his chair once his stomach was filled.

Doss got up, hoisted him into his arms and carried him, head bobbing, toward the stairs.

Hannah's throat went raw, watching them go.

She poured a second cup of coffee for Doss, had it waiting when he came back a few minutes later.

“Did you put Tobias in his night shirt and cover him with the spare quilt?” she asked, when Doss appeared at the bottom of the steps. “He mustn't take a chill—”

“I took off his shoes and threw him in like he was,” Doss interrupted. That twinkle was still in his eyes, but there was a certain wariness there, too. “I made sure he was warm, so stop fretting.”

Hannah had put the dishes in a basin of hot water to soak, and she lingered at the table, sipping tea brewed in Lorelei's pot.

Doss sat down in his father's chair, cupped his hands around his own mug of steaming coffee. “I spoke to Tobias about our getting married,” he said bluntly. “And he's in favor of it.”

Heat pounded in Hannah's cheeks, spawned by indignation and something else that she didn't dare think about. “Doss McKettrick,” she whispered in reproach, “you shouldn't have done that. I'm his mother and it was my place to—”

“It's done, Hannah,” Doss said. “Let it go at that.”

Hannah huffed out a breath. “Don't you tell me what's done and ought to be let go,” she protested. “I won't take orders from you now or after we're married.”

He grinned. “Maybe you won't,” he said. “But that doesn't mean I won't give them.”

She laughed, surprising herself so much that she slapped a hand over her mouth to stifle the sound. That gesture, in turn, brought back recollections of the night before, when Doss had made love to her, and she'd wanted to cry out with the pleasure of it.

She blushed so hard her face burned, and this time it was Doss who laughed.

“I figure we're in for another blizzard,” he said. “Might be spring before we can get to town and stand up in front of a preacher. I hope you're not looking like a watermelon smuggler before then.”

Hannah opened her mouth, closed it again.

Doss's eyes danced as he took another sip of his coffee.

“That was an insufferably
forward
thing to say!” Hannah accused.

“You're a fine one to talk about being forward,” Doss observed, and repeated back something she'd said at that very height of her passion. “That's
enough,
Mr. McKettrick.”

Doss set his cup down, pushed back his chair and stood. “I'm going out to the barn to look in on the stock again. Maybe you ought to come along. Make the job go faster, if you lent a hand.”

Hannah squirmed on the bench.

Doss crossed the room, took his coat and hat down from the pegs by the door. “Way out there, a person could holler if they wanted to. Be nobody to hear.”

Hannah did some more squirming.

“Fresh hay to lie in, too,” Doss went on. “Nice and soft,
and if a man were to spread a couple of horse blankets over it—”

Heat surged through Hannah, brought her to an aching simmer. She sputtered something and waved him away.

Doss chuckled, opened the door and went out, whistling merrily under his breath.

Hannah waited. If Doss McKettrick thought he was going to have his way with her—in the
barn,
of all places—well, he was just…

She got up, went to the stove and banked the fire with a poker.

He was just
right,
that was what he was.

She chose her biggest shawl, wrapped herself in it, and hurried after him.

Present Day

As soon as Sierra put supper on the table that night, the power went off again. While she scram bled for candles, Liam rushed to the nearest window.

“Travis's trailer's dark,” he said. “He'll get
hypothermia
out there.”

Sierra sighed. “I'll bet he comes back to see to the furnace, just like he did this morning. We'll ask him to have supper with us.”

“I see him!” Liam cried glee fully. “He's coming out of the barn, with a lantern!” He raced for the door, and before Sierra could stop him, he was outside, with no coat on, galloping through the deepening snow and shouting Travis's name.

Sierra pulled on her own coat, grabbed Liam's and hurried after him.

Travis was already herding him toward the house.

“Mom made meat loaf, and she says you can have some,” Liam was saying, as he tramped breathlessly along.

Sierra wrapped his coat around him, and would have scolded him, if her gaze hadn't collided unexpectedly with Travis's.

Travis shook his head.

She swallowed all that she'd been about to say and hustled her son into the house.

“I'll start the generator,” Travis said.

Sierra nodded hastily and shut the door.

“Liam McKettrick,” she burst out, “what were you thinking, going out in that cold without a coat?”

In the candlelight, she saw Liam's lower lip wobble. “Travis said it isn't the cowboy way. He was about to put his coat on me when you came.”

“
What
isn't the ‘cowboy way'?” she asked, chafing his icy hands between hers and praying he wouldn't have an asthma attack or come down with pneumonia.

“Not wearing a coat,” Liam replied, downcast. “A cowboy is always prepared for any kind of weather, and he never rushes off half-cocked, without his gear.”

Sierra relaxed a little, stifled a smile. “Travis is right,” she said.

Liam brightened. “Do cowboys eat meat loaf?”

“I'm pretty sure they do,” Sierra answered.

The furnace came on, and she silently blessed Travis Reid for being there.

He let himself into the kitchen a few minutes later. By then Sierra had set another place at the table and lit several more candles. They all sat down at the same time, and there was something so natural about their gathering that way that Sierra's throat caught.

“I hope you're hungry,” she said, feeling awkward.

“I'm starved,” Travis replied.

“Cowboys eat meat loaf, right?” Liam inquired.

Travis grinned. “This one does,” he said.

“This one does, too,” Liam announced.

Sierra laughed, but tears came to her eyes at the same time. She was glad of the relative darkness, hoping no one would notice.

“Once,” Liam said, scooping a helping of meat loaf onto his plate, his gaze adoring as he focused on Travis, “I saw this show on the Science Channel. They found a cave man, in a block of ice. He was, like
fourteen thousand
years old! I betcha they could take some of his DNA and clone him if they wanted to.” He stopped for a quick breath. “And he was all blue, too. That's what you'll look like, if you sleep in that trailer tonight.”

“You're not a kid,” Travis teased. “You're a forty-year-old wearing a pygmy suit.”

“I'm
really
smart,” Liam went on. “So you ought to listen to me.”

Travis looked at Sierra, and their eyes caught, with an almost audible click and held.

“The generator's low on gas,” Travis said. “So we have two choices. We can get in my truck and hope there are some empty motel rooms at the Lamp light Inn, or we can build up the fire in that cookstove and camp out in the kitchen.”

Liam had no trouble at all making the choice. “Camp out!” he whooped, waving his fork in the air. “Camp out!”

“You can't be serious,” Sierra said to Travis.

“Oh, I'm serious, all right,” he answered.

“Lamp light Inn,” Sierra voted.

“Roads are bad,” Travis replied. “
Real
bad.”

“Once on TV, I saw a thing about these people who froze to death right in their car,” Liam put in.

“Be quiet,” Sierra told him.

“Happens all the time,” Travis said.

Which was how the three of them ended up bundled in sleeping bags, with couch and chair cushions for a makeshift mattress, lying side by side within the warm radius of the wood-burning stove.

1919

H
ANNAH AND
D
OSS RETURNED
separately from the barn, by tacit agreement. Hannah, weak-kneed with residual pleasure and reeling with guilt, pumped water into a bucket to pour into the near-empty reservoir on the cookstove, then filled the two biggest kettles she had and set them on the stove to heat. She was adding wood to the fire when she heard Doss come in.

She blushed furiously, unable to meet his gaze, though she could feel it burning into her flesh, right through the clothes he'd sweet-talked her out of just an hour before, laying her down in the soft, surprisingly warm hay in an empty stall, kissing and caressing and nibbling at her until she'd begged him to take her.

Begged
him.

She'd carried on something awful while he was at it, too.

“Look at me, Hannah,” he said.

She glared at Doss, marched past him into the pantry and dragged out the big wash tub stored there under a high shelf. She set it in front of the stove with an eloquent
clang.

“Hannah,” Doss repeated.

“Go upstairs,” she told him, flustered. “Leave me to my bath.”

“You can't wash away what we did,” he said.

She whirled on him that time, hands on her hips, fiery with temper. “Get out,” she ordered, keeping her voice down in case Tobias was still awake or even listening at the top of the stairs. “I need my privacy.”

Doss raised both hands to shoulder height, palms out, but his words were juxtaposed to the gesture. “If we're going to talk about what you need, Hannah, it's not a bath. It's a lot more of what we just did in the barn.”

“Tobias might hear you!” Hannah whispered, outraged. If the broom hadn't been on the back porch, she'd have grab bed it up and whacked him silly with it.

“He wouldn't know what we were talking about even if he did,” Doss argued mildly, lowering his hands. He approached, plucked a piece of straw from Hannah's hair and tickled her under the chin with it.

She felt as though she'd been electrified, and slapped his hand away.

He laughed, a low, masculine sound, leaned in and nibbled at her lower lip. “Good night, Hannah,” he said.

A hot shiver of renewed need went through her. How could that be? He'd satisfied her that night, and the one be fore. Both times he'd taken her to heights she hadn't even reached with Gabe. The difference was, she'd been Gabe's wife, in the eyes of God and man, and she'd
loved
him. She not only wasn't married to Doss, she didn't love him. She just
wanted
him, that was all, and the realization galled her.

“You've turned me into a hussy,” she said.

Doss chuckled, shook his head. “If you say so, Hannah,” he answered, “it must be true.”

With that, he kissed her forehead, turned and left the kitchen.

She listened to the sound of his boot heels on the stairs,
heard his progress along the second-floor hallway, even knew when he opened Tobias's door to look in on the boy before retiring to his own room. Only when she'd heard his door close did Hannah let out her breath.

When the water in the kettles was scalding hot, Hannah poured it into the tub, sneaked upstairs for a towel, a bar of soap and a night gown. By the time she'd put out all the lanterns in the kitchen and stripped off her clothes, her bath water had cooled to a temperature that made her sigh when she stepped into it.

She soaked for a few minutes, and then scrubbed with a vengeance.

It turned out that Doss had been right.

She tried but she couldn't wash away the things he'd made her feel.

A tear slipped down her cheek as she dried herself off, then donned her night gown. She dragged the tub to the back door and on to the step, drained it over one side and dashed back in, covered with goose flesh from the chill.

“I'm sorry, Gabe,” she said, very quietly, huddling by the stove. “I'm sorry.”

Present Day

Travis was building up the fire when Sierra opened her eyes the next morning. “Stay in your sleeping bag,” he told her. “It's colder than a meat locker in here.”

Liam, lying between them through out the night, was still asleep, but his breathing was a shallow rattle. Sierra sat bolt-upright, watchful, holding her own breath. Not feeling the external chill at all, except as a vague biting sensation.

Liam opened his eyes, blinked. “Mom,” he said. “I can't—”

Breathe,
Sierra finished the sentence for him, replayed it in her mind.

Mom, I can't breathe.

She bounded out of the sleeping bag, scram bled for her purse, which was lying on the counter and rummaged for Liam's inhaler.

He began to wheeze, and when Sierra turned to rush back to him, she saw a look of panic in his eyes.

“Take it easy, Liam,” she said, as she handed him the inhaler.

He grasped it in both hands, all too familiar with the routine, and pressed the tube to his mouth and nose.

Travis watched grimly.

Sierra dropped on to her knees next to her boy, put an arm loosely around his shoulders.
Let it work,
she prayed silently.
Please let it work!

Liam lowered the inhaler and stared apologetically up into Sierra's eyes. He could barely get enough wind to speak. He was, in essence, choking. “It's—I think it's broken, Mom—”

“I'll warm up the truck,” Travis said, and banged out of the house.

Desperate, Sierra took the inhaler, shook it and shoved it back into Liam's hands. It
wasn't
empty—she wouldn't have taken a chance like that—but it must have been clogged or somehow defective. “Try again,” she urged, barely avoiding panic herself.

Outside, Travis's truck roared audibly to life. He gunned the motor a couple of times.

Liam struggled to take in the medication, but the inhaler simply wasn't working.

Travis returned, picked Liam up in his arms, sleeping bag and all, and headed for the door again. Sierra, frightened as she was, had to hurry to catch up, snatching her coat from the peg and her purse from the counter on the way out.

The snow had stopped, but there must have been two feet of it on the ground. Travis shifted the truck into four-wheel drive and the tires grabbed for purchase, finally caught.

“Take it easy, buddy,” he told Liam, who was on Sierra's lap, the seat belt fastened around both of them. “Take it real easy.”

Liam nodded solemnly. He was drawing in shallow gasps of air now, but not enough.
Not enough.
His lips were turning blue.

Sierra held him tight, but not too tight. Rested her chin on top of his head and prayed.

The roads hadn't been plowed—in fact, except for sloping drifts on either side, Sierra wouldn't have known where they were. Still, the truck rolled over them as easily as if they were bare.

What if we'd been alone, Liam and me? Sierra thought frantically. Her old station wagon, a snow-covered hulk in the driveway in front of the house, probably wouldn't have started, and even if it had by some miracle, the chances were good that they'd have ended up in the ditch some where along the way to safety.

“It's going to be okay,” she heard Travis say, and she'd thought he was talking to Liam. When she glanced at him, though, she knew he'd meant the words for her.

She kept her voice even. “Is there a hospital in Indian Rock?” She and Liam had passed through the town the day they arrived, but she didn't remember seeing anything but houses, a diner or two, a drug store, several bars and a gas station. She'd been too busy trying to follow the hand-drawn map Meg had scanned and sent to her by email—the McKettricks' private cemetery was marked with an X, and the ranch house an uneven square with lines for a roof.

“A clinic,” Travis said. He looked down at Liam again, then turned his gaze back to the road. The set of his jaw
was hard, and he pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his coat and handed it to Sierra.

She dialed 411 and asked to be connected.

When a voice answered, Sierra explained the situation as calmly as she could, keeping it low-key for Liam's sake. They'd been through at least a dozen similar episodes during his short life, and it never got easier. Each time, Sierra was hysterical, though she didn't dare let that show. Liam was taking his cues from her. If she lost it, he would, too, and the results could be disastrous.

The clinic receptionist seemed blessedly unruffled. “We'll be ready when you get here,” she said.

Sierra thanked the woman and ended the call, set the phone on the seat.

By the time they arrived at the town's only medical facility, Liam was struggling to remain conscious. Travis pulled up in front, gave the horn a hard blast and was around to Sierra's side with the door open before she managed to get the seat belt unbuckled.

Two medical assistants, accompanied by a gray-haired doctor, met them with a gurney. Liam was whisked away. Sierra tried to follow, but Travis and one of the nurses stopped her.

Her first instinct was to fight.

“My son needs me!” She'd meant it for a scream, but it came out as more of a whimper.

“We'll need your name and that of the patient,” a clerk in formed her, advancing with a clip board. “And of course there's the matter of insurance—”

Travis glared the woman into retreat. “Her
name,
” he said, “is McKettrick.”

“Oh,” the clerk said, and ducked behind her desk.

Sierra needed something, anything, to do, or she was going to rip apart every room in that place until she found
Liam, gathered him into her arms. “My purse,” she said. “I must have left it in the truck—”

“I'll get it,” Travis said, but first he steered her toward a chair in the waiting area and sat her down.

Tears of frustration and stark terror filled her eyes. What was happening to Liam? Was he breathing? Were they forcing the hated tube down into his bronchial passage even at that moment?

Travis cupped her face between his hands, for just a moment, and his palms felt cold and rough from ranch work.

The sensation triggered something in Sierra, but she was too distraught to know what it was.

“I'll be right back,” he promised.

And he was.

Sierra snatched her bag from his hands, scrabbled through it to find her wallet. Found the insurance card Eve had sent by express the same day Sierra agreed to take the McKettrick name and spend a year on the Triple M, with Liam. She might have kissed that card, if Travis hadn't been watching.

The clerk nodded a little nervously when Sierra walked up to the desk and asked for the papers she needed to fill out.

Patient's Name. Well, that was easy enough. She scrawled Liam Bres—crossed out the last part, and wrote McKettrick instead.

Address? She had to consult Travis on that one. Everybody in Indian Rock knew where the Triple M was, she was sure, but the people in the insurance company's claims office might not.

Occupation? Child.

Damn it, Liam was a little boy, hardly more than a baby. Things like this shouldn't happen to him.

Sierra printed her own name, as guarantor. She bit her lip when asked about her job. Unemployed? She couldn't write that.

Travis, watching, took the clip board and pen from her and inserted, Damn good mother.

The tears came again.

Travis got up, with the forms and the clip board and the insurance card, in scribed with the magical name and carried them over to the waiting clerk.

He was halfway back to Sierra when the doctor re appeared.

“Hello, Travis,” he said, but his gaze was on Sierra's face, and she couldn't read it, for all the practice she'd had.

“I'm Sierra McKettrick,” she said. The name still felt like a garment that didn't quite fit, but if it would help Liam in any way, she would use it every chance she got. “My son—”

“He'll be fine,” the doctor said kindly. His eyes were a faded blue, his features craggy and weathered. “Just the same, I think we ought to send him up to Flag staff to the hospital, at least over night. For observation, you understand. And because they've got a reliable power source up there.”

“Is he awake?” Sierra asked anxiously.

“Partially sedated,” replied the doctor, exchanging glances with Travis. “We had to perform an intubation.”

Sierra knew how Liam hated tubes, and how frightened he probably was, sedated or not. “I have to see him,” she said, prepared for an argument.

“Of course” was the immediate and very gentle answer.

Sierra felt Travis's hand close around hers. She clung, in stead of pulling away, as she would have done with any other virtual stranger.

A few minutes later they were standing on either side of Liam's bed in one of the treatment rooms. His eyes widened with recognition when he saw Sierra, and he pointed, with one small finger, to the mouth piece of his oxygen tube.

She nodded, blinking hard and trying to smile. Took his hand.

“You have to spend the night in the hospital in Flag staff,” she told him, “but don't be scared, okay? Because I'm going with you.”

Liam relaxed visibly. Turned his eyes to Travis. Sierra's heart twisted at the hope she saw in her little boy's face.

“Me, too,” Travis said hoarsely.

Liam nodded and drifted off to sleep.

The doctor had ordered an ambulance, and Sierra rode with Liam, while Travis followed in the truck.

There was more paper work to do in Flag staff, but Sierra was calmer now. She sat in a chair next to Liam's bed and filled in the lines.

Travis entered with two cups of vending-machine coffee, just as she was finishing.

“Thank you,” Sierra said, and she wasn't just talking about the coffee.

“Wranglers like Liam and me,” he replied, watching the boy with a kind of fretful affection, “we stick together when the going gets tough.”