McKettrick's Choice (29 page)

“Bet Holt could have bitten a nail in two when he saw you in the middle of an Indian fight,” Melina said.

Lorelei would have preferred not to discuss the subject, but there was a long ride ahead before they reached the Cavanagh ranch, and she knew Melina would keep plaguing her until she answered. “He was a little displeased,” she admitted, rather stiffly. Her throat was parched with dust and fear, and her ears were filled,
not with the complaints of several hundred thirsty, trail-weary cattle, but with the sound of guns going off and the furious screams of all those Indians. She wondered if she'd ever get that out of her head, or the image of Rafe with that arrow jutting out of his arm.

Another few inches to the right, and the wound might have been fatal.

And it could just as easily have been Holt who was hit, instead of Rafe.

Melina snorted, unaware of the upheaval inside Lorelei. “‘A little displeased'? I've never seen a man look like that—white around the mouth, and like his skin had been pulled tight—and I've seen plenty. If he didn't have to worry about another Indian attack, and protecting all of us
and
the herd, he'd still be yelling at you.”

“He did
not
yell at me.” Lorelei straightened in the saddle. “He wouldn't dare.”

Melina actually laughed. One would think, after they'd been set upon by Indians and Rafe and another man had been grievously injured, she would be in a more circumspect state of mind. “For a smart woman,” she said, “you sure can be stupid sometimes.”

Lorelei reddened. “Whose side are you on, anyway?” she sputtered. “I thought you were my friend!”

“I
am
your friend,” Melina replied. “When you crawled out from under that wagon, jumped on Seesaw and rode after the men, I was so scared I almost died. I figured those Indians would get you for sure.”

Lorelei looked sideways at Melina and saw a tear slip down her cheek.

And she said what she hadn't been able to say to Holt.

“I'm sorry.”

Melina scrubbed at her face with the back of one
grubby hand. “Maybe you are, and maybe you're just saying that. Either way, I'm so mad I could snatch you bald-headed, and you'd better stay out of Heddy's way for a while, too, because she's likely to take a switch to you.”

“Heddy would have done the same thing I did if it had been John out there, set upon by Comanches. So would you, if it had been Gabe—”

“But it was Holt,” Melina pointed out, as Lorelei realized what she was saying and gulped back the rest of the sentence.

Lorelei kept her gaze turned forward, watching Holt. He was riding with Frank Corrales and the Captain now, and they all had their rifles out of the scabbards and ready to fire. As they reached the rocky place where the Indians had hidden, they readied themselves visibly for another fight, and they didn't even try to avoid the bodies in the trail.

In another few minutes, the wagon and side riders would pass, and then the herd. Lorelei closed her eyes against the images that aroused, but they only rose up bloodier and more vivid than before.

They traveled between the great rocks, the herd breaking into streams behind them, but there was no new attack, not then, and not when they came out into the open again. Lorelei drew back on Seesaw's reins, partly because she wanted to check on Rafe and the other man, and partly because she knew Melina would start up the earlier conversation again if she didn't.

Rafe's shirt was soaked with blood, but he'd raised himself partway up to sit with his back against the wagon box, his good hand supporting his wounded arm. The cowboy wasn't faring as well; he grimaced at every bump, and his narrow, too-youthful face was pale behind
the obligatory coating of trail dirt. Tillie had made a bed for the baby in an old tool crate, and she knelt next to the other wrangler, pushing Sorrowful away when he tried to lick the man's hand.

Heddy turned in the wagon seat and skewered Lorelei with a look that said she'd have a few things to say, herself, when the opportunity presented itself.

Lorelei pulled her hat brim down over her eyes and concentrated on Rafe. “I suppose you're furious with me, too,” she called, over the din, “just like everybody else.”

He grinned. “No, Miss Lorelei,” he shouted back. “I think you're brave to the point of stupidity, but I kind of like that in a person.”

Lorelei laughed, something she'd never thought she'd do again after all that had happened that day. “You'll have a spectacular story to tell once you get back to the Triple M,” she replied, and instantly felt sad, because when Rafe went back to the Arizona Territory and the family ranch, Holt would go, too.

She ought to be relieved by that knowledge, but she wasn't.

“I think you'd tell it better,” Rafe said, jolting her out of her sudden introspection. “I can just see Emmeline and Mandy and Chloe all hovering around you, with their ears bent to hear the tale.”

Emmeline, Mandy and Chloe. The McKettrick wives. Without even knowing the women, Lorelei envied them out of all proportion to reason and good sense. They had husbands, a home, children of their very own. They belonged.

Lorelei swallowed hard. “I'd better get back to Melina,” she said, when she thought the words wouldn't come out of her throat riding on a sob.

“Wait,” Rafe said, trying to sit up even straighter and wincing from the pain.

Lorelei waited, though she wanted to bolt. Whatever Rafe was about to say, she suddenly didn't want to hear it.

“Holt was scared today,” he told her. “He'll never admit it, but between me getting shot and you showing up on that mule, with the bullets and arrows flying every which way—well, it was just about more than he could take.”

Lorelei bit her lower lip.

“I haven't known you all that long, Miss Lorelei,” Rafe went on, “but in the time we've been acquainted, I've never seen you give up on anything you wanted. Don't start with Holt.”

She pretended she hadn't heard that last part, over all the uproar of the wagon, the horses and a few hundred cattle, and went to rejoin Melina.

It was full dark, with just a slice of moon to provide light, when John Cavanagh gave a ringing shout of delight and slowed the wagon. Lorelei knew, with a lifting of her tired, battered heart, that the rangeland spread out before them was his own.

The stream up ahead, glittering darkly, was the same one that ran past her property. She was almost home, and she'd brought fifty head of cattle with her.

Her jubilation faded a little when she remembered that she might not be staying. It all depended on whether or not she'd conceived a child with Holt—she'd know soon enough, since her monthly, always regular as a Swiss clock, was due in another few days. If it didn't come, she'd sell her ranch to the newly formed McKettrick Cattle Company, buy Heddy's rooming house and find a way to get back to Laredo.

Was Laredo far enough away?

The cattle surged past the wagon on all sides, drawn to the stream, fairly trampling each other in their desperate thirst. They would have grass aplenty now, and they could rest. This was a considerable consolation to Lorelei.

When they'd all passed, Lorelei got down from Seesaw just to feel the ground under her feet. Holt wheeled his gelding around and rode back to the wagon.

“Can you make it to town tonight, Rafe, or should I fetch the doctor out here?”

“I reckon I could travel a ways,” Lorelei heard Rafe say, “but I'm not sure about this cowpuncher, here. I think he's had about all he can take.”

“I'll get the doc, then,” Holt answered. Then, for good or for ill, he noticed Lorelei, standing nearby, watching the herd lining the bank of the stream. “Well, Miss Fellows,” he added. “That's your land on the other side, isn't it? I'll have the men drive your cattle across when they've had their fill of water, but you'd probably better spend the night here.”

Lorelei was too tired to argue the point, though the truth was, she wanted to sleep under her own roof, rustic as the accommodations were. “Whatever you say, Mr. McKettrick,” she said, looking up at him. His shoulders blocked out a good bit of the starry Texas sky.

She thought she saw his jaw tighten, but she couldn't be sure, for the shadows. If he meant to say anything, Melina interrupted before he formed the words.

“I want to go to town with you,” she told Holt. “So I can see Gabe.”

He shifted in the saddle. “Tomorrow will be soon enough, Melina,” he said carefully. “I'll take you in first thing.”

Melina laid a small hand on Holt's boot. “I need to know he's all right.”

“Frank and I will look in on him,” Holt answered.

“I might be asleep when you get back from town,” Melina protested.

“If you are,” Holt promised, “I'll wake you. I've got to go now, Melina. Fetch the doc.”

Melina started to speak, stopped herself and nodded.

“You go on,” John Cavanagh said, when Holt hesitated. “Heddy and me, we'll look after the rest of the outfit till you get back.”

Holt nodded, glanced in Lorelei's direction and rode off.

With the wranglers guarding the herd, the task of getting Rafe and the cowboy into the Cavanagh house fell to John and the Captain. Lorelei, Heddy and Melina went in ahead, to make a place for them. Tillie followed, carrying the baby, who was already sound asleep on her shoulder.

They settled the wrangler on the horsehair sofa, since it was too short for Rafe. He took his rest on a pallet on the floor, and seemed glad of it.

“Good to be out of that wagon,” he murmured, when Lorelei crouched beside him with a ladle of water from the pump over the kitchen sink.

“Drink this,” she urged, holding the back of his head so he could manage a few sips.

Within moments, he was asleep. It was probably a welcome respite, after traveling so many miles over a winding, bumpy trail.

Tillie took the baby upstairs, the dog at her heels, and didn't come down again.

John and the Captain busied themselves outside,
putting the team and wagon up for the night, and Heddy had gone straight to the kitchen, just as if she'd lived in that house all her life.

Lorelei approached warily, because she hoped there might be tea brewing and she needed some. Melina followed.

Heddy was stuffing kindling into the cookstove, her motions quick, confident and a little angry.

“I could drink a barrel of coffee and eat a whole buffalo,” the older woman said, without turning around.

“Melina, kindly see what's in that big cupboard over there that we can cook up. Lorelei, you sit yourself down at that table so I can chew you out proper.”

Lorelei pulled back a chair and sank into it, resigned.

Melina bustled over to the cupboard and pulled open the doors, revealing jars of preserves—green beans, corn, stew meat, something that looked like chicken.

Heddy finished building the fire and reached for the coffeepot, marching to the sink to pump water with furious motions of her right arm.

Lorelei braced herself. Too tired to fight back, she was basically at Heddy's mercy.

When the pot was filled, and coffee had been measured in, Heddy turned to regard Lorelei, her hands resting on her ample hips, her face stormy as a tornado sky. “That was just plain foolhardy, what you did today,” she said, glowering. “I never seen the like of it, in all my born days.”

Lorelei wanted to lower her head, but her pride wouldn't let her do it.

“Did you do any thinkin' before you lit out on that consarned mule to save Holt McKettrick from them Comanches?” Heddy demanded.

“No, ma'am,” Lorelei said. And it was true. She hadn't thought—not even as far as “saving” Holt. She'd known only one thing—that she had to be there, whatever happened.

“I don't suppose it occurred to you that with you underfoot, he had one more thing to worry about? He had a fight on his hands, with Rafe down and all that shootin' goin' on, and on top of all that, he had to protect
you!
”

This time, Lorelei did lower her head.

Heddy put a hand under her chin and made her look up at her. To Lorelei's amazement, the woman was smiling.

“Damnation,” she said, “I'd have done the same thing, if I was your age and my man was in trouble!”

Lorelei stared at her, too confounded to speak.

Heddy patted her cheek. “You'd make Holt a fine wife,” she finished. “Let's hope he has the horse sense to know that.”

Lorelei flushed. Opened her mouth. Closed it again.

Heddy turned and went back to the stove. Melina, carefully avoiding Lorelei's gaze, had lined the worktable with jars of Tillie's canned food.

“I'll make us some slum-gooey,” Heddy decided.

Lorelei found her voice again, maybe because the subject seemed a safe one. “Slum-gooey? What's that?”

“Mixture of whatever comes to hand,” Heddy replied jovially, rummaging in another cupboard until she found a huge cast-iron kettle. “I'm going to need a lot more grub than this, Melina,” she went on. “Them cowpokes ain't eaten all day, and one hell of a day it's been!”

Lorelei got to her feet, moving like a sleepwalker, and helped Melina carry jars to Heddy, who was busily screwing off the lids and dumping all manner of things into the kettle to heat.

The cowboys came inside in relays, gobbling up the slum-gooey and swilling down coffee. Lorelei thought she did well not to fall face-first into her plate.

I
T WAS AFTER DAWN
when Holt and Dr. Elias Brown rode out of San Antonio, the doc bumping along on a fat pony, with his medical bag tied to the horn of his saddle. Holt was in a glum mood—Elias had been occupied tending a gunshot wound when Holt had reached his house, and could not leave his patient until the injured man was past the crisis point. He'd gone to the jailhouse next, Holt had, and spent the rest of the night trying to haul Gabe out of a mental tar pit. Nothing would cheer him. Not the news that they'd found Frank in Reynosa, banged up but on the mend, and brought him back as far as John's place. Not the several visits Gabe had had from R. S. Beauregard during Holt's absence, and the assurance of a second trial. Not even the knowledge that Melina had come through the long journey unscathed.

Holt's spirits sank even lower when he and the doc topped the rise above Lorelei's place and saw what was left of her house—cinders, charred wood and scorched earth. Trees, still standing, but burned to grim and twisted skeletons.

The doc let out a low whistle of exclamation, survey
ing the blackened tangle of timbers where the cabin had been. The fire had traveled clear to the creek bank.

Holt nudged the Appaloosa hard with the heels of his boots, plunging down the hillside to dismount in the dooryard. The dirt around the remains of the house was pocked with the hoofprints of at least a dozen horses, proving what he'd already guessed—that this blaze had not been the result of a stray spark or a lightning bolt. It had been deliberately set. Chances were, if he rode the boundaries, he would see where the raiders had taken steps to contain it, keep it from moving onto Templeton's land.

Doc bounced down from the road to join him, sweeping off his hat and running a forearm across his broad, sweating brow. “Indians?” he asked, looking around at the wreckage with a grim expression. That was the first thing everybody thought when they came across this kind of destruction, and not without reason. Older, wiser Comanches had accepted the fact of the white man's encroachment, but there were still bands of renegades, fighting on in the face of defeat. Nobody knew that better than Holt did.

He shook his head in belated reply to the doctor's one-word question. “Not unless they've taken to shoeing their horses,” he said. The ruin of the place galled him plenty, but it was the thought that Lorelei could have been there when it happened that fairly stopped his heart and trapped his breath in his throat. She'd have been in the middle of it, too, if she hadn't insisted on going on the cattle drive despite his objections.

“Doesn't look like there's much of anything we can do here,” Elias observed. “Best we get on to Cavanagh's, so I can see to your brother Rafe and that cowboy with the broken leg.”

Holt nodded, wondering how he was going to tell Lorelei that the house she'd pinned so many of her hopes on was gone. Wishing he could protect her, somehow, some way, from the harsh reality. At the same time, knowing it couldn't be done.

They crossed the wide stream in silence, and rode hard when they reached the other side.

Lorelei met them at John's gate, clad in a calico dress and pacing anxiously. “Thank God you're finally here,” she blurted, with a note of contention in her voice, as though they'd dallied along the way, maybe to pick field daisies or just admire the countryside.

Holt was down off his horse before he thought about dismounting. “Rafe?” he demanded. “Is Rafe all right?”

Something gentled in Lorelei. Her fiery gaze cooled, and the small muscles in her face relaxed. “Rafe's fine,” she said, shifting her gaze to the doc and wringing her hands as she went on. “It's Melina. She's been in hard labor since sunrise. Heddy says the baby should have been here by now, given the state Melina's in. She thinks there's something wrong.”

Elias didn't wait to hear more. He rode up to the house at a good clip, untied his medical bag, sprang down from the saddle and hurried inside.

Holt swung one leg over Traveler's neck and slid to the ground, facing Lorelei. It was time to tell her about the raid on her ranch, and he searched for the words. There seemed to be a scant supply.

She searched his face. “What is it?” she asked, very softly, and without using much breath.

“Your place,” he said. “It's been burned.”

He saw her throat work as she swallowed, and wished to God, once again, that he could have spared her this.
For all the times they'd locked horns, for all the times he'd deliberately baited her, just to watch her get mad, delivering such news was among the most difficult things he'd ever had to do. And that was saying something.

She put her hands to her ears, lowered them again. “I thought I heard you say—”

“Somebody put a torch to the house, Lorelei,” Holt reiterated miserably. It felt a lot like pulling that arrow shaft out of Rafe's arm, saying the hard but necessary truth. As with Rafe, he wanted to take the pain on himself, but he could only share it. “Burned away most of the grass, too.”

Tears glimmered in her eyes. “No,” she whispered.

Holt took her by the shoulders, as gently as he could. He was afraid she'd crumple to the ground if he didn't hold her upright. “There were plenty of tracks—I reckon when I follow them, they'll lead straight to Isaac Templeton's front door.”

She put a hand to her mouth, and a sob escaped her throat, so ragged and so raw that it gouged at Holt's well-guarded heart with the impact of a lance. “Isaac Templeton's front door,” she said, when she'd recovered enough to speak, “or my father's?”

He longed to pull her close and hold her, but the stiffening in her spine and the way she twisted out of his grip put paid to the idea before he could follow through on it. “Lorelei,” he said, anguished.

She turned her back, walked toward the house with quick steps, one hand pressed to her mouth.

Holt had no use for Judge Alexander Fellows after the way he'd railroaded Gabe, but he found it hard to believe the man—any man—would visit that kind of vengeance on his own daughter. Watching Lorelei disappear into
the house, he pulled Lizzie's ribbon from his vest pocket and smoothed it between his thumb and forefingers, like a talisman.

 

T
HE MOMENT
she stepped back over the threshold of John Cavanagh's house and another of Melina's agonized shrieks met her ears, Lorelei set aside all that Holt had just told her. She would simply have to deal with it later.

Melina lay on a cot in the kitchen, where she'd been since just before the sun rose, her back arched, her face contorted and slick with sweat. Dr. Brown had already examined her; now, he was washing up in a basin of hot water, provided by an anxious and harried Heddy.

The doctor looked Lorelei over briefly as he accepted the towel Heddy had ready for him and dried his hands. “We're about to get down to serious business in here, Miss Fellows,” he said evenly, his face calm. “If you're fixing to swoon or carry on or some such, I would appreciate your leaving. If you've a mind to be of help, on the other hand, then get yourself some fresh water and scrub every bare inch of flesh with that lye soap there. Heddy, you fill some kettles and set them on to boil, then find me some clean cloth. Sheets will serve, if you've got them, but they won't be good for much when we're done.”

Lorelei hesitated only a moment—she'd never seen a baby born, by easy means or difficult ones—and she
did
feel a bit light-headed. Because Melina was her friend, and because she knew she wouldn't be able to live with herself if she failed either mother or baby, now of all times, she went over to the basin, threw its sudsy contents out the back door and poured fresh, scalding hot water
into it from the teakettle Heddy kept simmering on the stove.

Heddy rushed up the back stairs, bent on fulfilling her own errand.

Lorelei hardly felt the shock of that hot water, plunging her hands into it the way she did.

“I'm scared, Lorelei,” Melina confessed, gasping, visibly bracing herself for another of the ferocious contractions she'd been enduring for so many hours. “I want Gabe.”

“You've got us,” Lorelei said, kindly but firmly, drying her hands and face. “For right now, that's going to have to do.”

Another pain seized Melina then; she bared her teeth, and her small hips rose high off the cot. Heddy had stripped her down earlier, put one of John's shirts on her to serve as a gown. The garment fell open as she screamed, revealing her belly, hard and round and knotted, burgeoning with the elemental struggle of a child breaking through the last barrier to life.

“Can't you do something?” Lorelei pleaded, in a whisper, as Dr. Brown supported the small of Melina's back with one hand and peered between her legs.

“Yes,” the doctor said, with terse efficiency, “I can get this baby out, and the sooner, the better. Open my bag. You'll find a bottle of ether inside. Give me that first, then get out the carbolic acid and that small leather case. My scalpels are inside—pour the rest of the water from that teakettle over them, if there's any left, and for Jove's sake, be careful when you handle them. They're sharp.”

Lorelei did as she was told, and then washed again.

Heddy returned with an old sheet, worn thin by time and use but clean.

“Tear it into strips,” the Doc said. He'd doused his handkerchief in the ether Lorelei had taken from his bag, and the pungent scent of it filled that steamy kitchen.

Lorelei watched, almost paralyzed with fear, as he pressed it gently over Melina's nose and mouth.

“Hold this,” he commanded, and Lorelei realized he was referring to the cloth and moved to obey.

Melina's feverish eyes rolled back in her head, then closed, and her body, tormented for so long, went limp.

Dr. Brown reached for one of the scalpels, fished from the boiling hot water with a pair of tongs, and grasped the handle. Lorelei looked on, wide-eyed, as he swabbed Melina's belly with carbolic acid, paused to take a deep breath, as if centering himself in that small, misshapen body of his, and then cut through Melina's distended flesh with one long, continuous stroke of the blade.

Blood spurted, and Lorelei swayed on her feet, stunned by the metallic smell, so strong that it reached her taste buds. She steadied herself by sheer force of will. Heddy was busy at the hazy edge of her vision, but Lorelei could not look away from the doctor and that hideous incision.

Melina groaned.

“Add another drop or two of that ether to the cloth,” Dr. Brown barked, deepening the first incision with another deft motion of his scalpel.

Bile scalded the back of Lorelei's throat, and her knees turned to jelly, but she groped for the bottle. Her hand shook as she gripped it.

“Just a little, now,” the doctor warned, without looking up. “Too much will kill her.”

A cry of despairing terror rose up within Lorelei, but she choked it down, wrestled to hold it inside. Care
fully squeezed a minimal amount of ether from the glass dropper onto the cloth covering Melina's face.

Doc suddenly gave a hoot of exultant laughter, both hands deep inside Melina's belly. “There's the little cuss now,” he said jubilantly, and raised up a tiny, bloody human being, waving its arms and legs as if trying to climb the cord attaching it to Melina. “Got ourselves a strapping boy, here.” With that, he hooked a finger inside the baby's mouth, then held him upside down by his ankles and gave the infant a light swat on the bottom.

Melina and Gabe's newborn son squalled with outraged effrontery.

“Glory be,” Heddy breathed from somewhere in the shivering blur surrounding Melina, that cot, the baby and the doctor up to his elbows in blood.

Lorelei's knees buckled again. She stiffened them, again by an act of will, watching through a sheen of tears as the doctor laid the infant on Melina's chest, tied and cut the cord, and began suturing the wound shut. Heddy knelt on the opposite side of the cot from Dr. Brown, one big hand holding the squirming child so it wouldn't fall.

Melina stirred, moaned softly.

“More ether?” Lorelei whispered.

The doctor shook his head. “I'll be through here in a few minutes. She'll be hurting when she comes around, but my guess is, she won't mind it much when she gets a look at that baby boy.”

Lorelei bit her lower lip, marveling at the infant, even though he didn't look all that prepossessing at the moment. He snuffled against Melina's bosom, all four limbs still moving, and made a soft, mewling sound. “A little laudanum, perhaps?” she ventured, thrummingly aware, in every fiber of her being, of that hip-to-hip
incision, now being closed with catgut stitches and a huge needle.

“Laudanum might get into the milk,” Dr. Brown said. “She's tough. She'll be under the weather for a few weeks, then good as new.” He raised his eyes only when he'd tied off the last suture. “Don't just stand there,” he grumbled. “One of you, wash that baby so he'll be presentable when his mama wakes up.”

Heddy gathered up the child, crooning to him.

Dr. Brown nodded to Lorelei, and she set the ether-tinged cloth aside.

“You can go out back and tell the men this part's over,” he said, with a slight smile.

Lorelei drew a deep breath, smoothed her hair and skirts, and headed for the outside door. Holt, Frank Corrales, the Captain and Mr. Cavanagh were all standing under the same oak tree, talking quietly, but the gestures of their hands and the set of their shoulders betrayed their worry.

She smiled, picked up her skirts, and descended the two steps to the ground. “Melina's had her baby,” she announced, even as the bad news Holt had brought her earlier rushed back into her mind, demanding its due. “It's a boy.”

Holt's worry-creased face came alive with a dazzling grin. “
That
ought to cheer Gabe up considerably,” he said, slapping Frank on the back at the same time.