Shotgun Bride (15 page)

H
olt was seated alone at the far table, drawing on a cheroot and admiring his winnings, when Kade thrust open the swinging doors of the Bloody Basin Saloon and stalked toward him.

He must have taken note of the expression on Kade’s face; from inside, it felt like a brand, etched deep and still smoldering. Whatever his perception, Holt didn’t move, he just sat there, lounging, pleased with himself and all the world. He was the spawn of Angus McKettrick, all right, born convinced that he knew his way through life from beginning to end, and certain of every step along the path.

It was like looking in a mirror. The realization thundered through Kade, and in the wake of it, he sent everything flying—chips, bills, cards, and all—with a swift kick to the underside of the table. Only then did Holt get to his feet, easylike but watchful. He didn’t go for his gun. “Now
that,
little brother,” he said, exaggerating his down-South drawl, “was out-and-out rude.”

“You’re no brother of mine,” Kade said, though he knew it wasn’t the truth. He wondered at the heat of the rage burgeoning inside of him, knew it had its roots in something older and more elemental than Gig Curry’s claim that he was on the Circle C payroll. It was a blood-and-marrow bond, one he didn’t want to recognize and couldn’t ignore.

“We’ve got the same father, God help us,” Holt replied, still unruffled. Something glinted in his chameleon eyes, though, hard and cold as the barrel of a carbine. No doubt, he had his own reservations about an affinity he wouldn’t have chosen. “In most folks’ books, that makes us brothers. What’s all this hoop-a-la about, anyway?”

A lot of other men were in that saloon, but it might have been empty of everything but mice and cooties, judging by the silence pounding in Kade’s ears. “I’ve got a man named Curry over in my jail.” The fingers of Kade’s right hand closed and then opened again; it scared him how much he wanted to draw on Cavanagh right then and there, and devil take the consequences.

“Good place for him,” Holt said. “But I confess I’m having some trouble reckoning up what that has to do with me.”

Kade thought of the Fees’ homestead, nothing but a pile of charred logs now, the broken and blackened skeleton of a poor man’s dreams. He thought of the Triple M brand, burned into the trunk of a tree, and for no reason he could get a handle on, of his mother, falling sick after taking a harmless spill in the creek and dying the next day. Before he knew it, he’d landed a haymaker in the middle of Holt Cavanagh’s face, a face too much like his own for ready acceptance, and sent him wheeling backward.

A murmur rose from the customers, but they were nothing but a droning blur to Kade. The whole world pulsed around him, like the heart of a monster buffeting the breath from his lungs.

“You hired him,” he heard himself say as Holt got to his feet, bleeding from the mouth and feeling for loose teeth with one hand.
“That’s
what it has to do with you.”

Holt’s hand came away smudged with blood. To Kade’s furious amazement, the son of a bitch laughed. “You pack one hell of a punch, for a rich man’s brat. Maybe I’ll claim you after all.”

“Why’d you do it?”

“Why’d I do what?” Holt snapped back, and it did look as though he was finally getting riled. About time, by Kade’s assessment. “Hire Curry? I needed ranch hands.”

“You paid him to help you bring down the Triple M. He set fire to the Fee place, on your say-so, and laid the blame on us.”

Holt spat, but there was no sign of a tooth flying, more’s the pity. “The hell, you say. I didn’t tell him to set any fire. As for seeing the Triple M go under, well, it seems to me there’d be no effort required. All I have to do is sit back and let you boys and the old man run the place into the ground. You’re making a fine job of it, as far as I can tell.”

“Are you going to fight or not?”

“No,” Holt said with maddening patience, “I’m not, and you’d better be glad of it,
little brother,
because getting your ass kicked from one end of this saloon to the other might just undermine your reputation as a big, tough lawman. We wouldn’t want that, would we?”

“I
want
this settled,” Kade said, feeling his ears heat up a little as a ripple of laughter moved through the Bloody Basin. “Here and now.”

“And you figure my giving you a thrashing in front of God and everybody else would accomplish the purpose?”

“I
figure
you’re a low-down, chickenshit bastard.”

“And
I
figure you’re a hothead with manure for brains,” Holt answered mildly. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to wear out my knuckles trying to pound some sense into you. You’re probably not worth the aggravation anyhow.” The Texan locked gazes with Kade. “You going to help me pick up this money, or go right on making a fool of yourself?”

“It’s your money. You pick it up.”

“You and I are going to come to terms over this one day soon, little brother,” Holt warned as he sifted through the sawdust, spit, and peanut shells for cards and coins and bills of currency. “Watch your back.”

“What’s wrong with right now?”

Holt grinned, fat lip and all. “I’d like to thrash you, but it’s a private matter, between you and me. No need to make a spectacle of it.”

Kade seethed. “Suppose I just tie into you?”

“I’ll take the beating without raising a hand to you, and you’ll look like the fool you undoubtedly are,” Holt said, getting to his feet. “You’re wanting a fight, and I’ll give it to you for sure, but not here, and not now.” He set handfuls of coins and currency on the green-felt surface beside him. “Meantime, you could use some help. You’re up to your eyeballs in shit. How about swearing me in as a deputy?”

The question so surprised Kade that his bloodlust subsided a little. “What do you know about being a lawman?”

“I was a Texas Ranger for close to ten years. I daresay I learned a thing or two, riding for the Republic.”

“Sounds like he’s qualified, Kade,” Jeb said from somewhere nearby. “I’d jump at the offer if I were you.”

Kade turned his head and glared at his kid brother. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

Jeb spread his hands and grinned ingenuously. “Free country.”

Kade turned and stormed out, looking neither to the right nor to the left. Both Jeb and Holt were right on his heels, and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

“W
hy would you want to help us?” Rafe asked Holt straight out half an hour later, when the four of them stood in front of the jailhouse, conferring. It was good and dark by then, and the Bloody Basin was doing a brisk business down the street. Harry was inside, sound asleep on one of the cots in the second cell, and Kade had personally walked Mandy back to the hotel. Or, more accurately, he’d strong-armed her, taking her by the elbow and marching her along the sidewalk. She’d called him names no nun had ever heard.

“Call it Christian duty,” Holt said, standing with one foot braced on the edge of a horse trough. He was sporting a split lip, Kade noted with grudging satisfaction, though it still galled him plenty that Holt hadn’t thrown a punch in return. “It’s just too damn sad to watch you people fumbling around like a bunch of beetles in the bottom of a barrel.”

Rafe took a step toward their half brother, and Jebput out an arm to stop him. To Kade’s surprise, Rafe subsided, though for a moment there, it was anybody’s guess whether he’d land square in Jeb’s middle. He wasn’t the sort to suffer interference gladly.

“It’s no secret that you’ve got a grudge against us,” Jeb told Cavanagh reasonably, and if he’d feared reprisal from Rafe, he gave no sign of it. That was typical, given the way he lived, hell-bent for tomorrow, as if he didn’t have a history of getting his butt whupped by his older brothers. “You expect us to believe that you’ve turned softhearted all of the sudden?”

Holt smiled idly and turned his gaze to Kade. A warning was in it. “At least one of you is prone to believe just about anything, it appears.” Holt heaved a melodramatic sigh. “Listen,” he went on after ruminating awhile, “we all know there’s no love lost between the four of us, but it would kill the old man to part with that ranch, and that’s a fact. We’ve got our differences, he and I, but he’s still my father, damn his bristly hide, and I can’t just stand by and watch him go under.” He paused, thoughtful again. “Without me, you haven’t got a chance in hell of getting back that money before the bills fall due. So let’s put aside our grievances for the time being and get this thing done.”

“What’s in it for you?” Rafe asked suspiciously. The same question was in Kade’s mind, and probably Jeb’s, too.

Cavanagh shrugged. “I’ve hated Angus McKettrick for as long as I can remember. Now that I’ve actually clapped eyes on the old coot, well, that fire in my belly comes and goes. For the moment, I reckon I’m just tired of being at the mercy of that half-wild kid I used to be, the one who got left behind. In my own way, I’d be putting
paid
to a lot of things. Once that’s done, maybe I’ll sell out and move on.”

Rafe, Jeb, and Kade were all silent for a few moments, assimilating what Cavanagh had said, weighing one thing against another. In a ring-tailed, back-assward McKettrick kind of way, it made sense.

Kade reckoned he should have gotten more pleasure out of the prospect than he did. Another matter to puzzle over, if he ever got the time. “We want that land,” he said.

Holt grinned again, though his eyes were hollow. “I reckon you do. You’re used to getting what you want, aren’t you?” He paused, enjoying his advantage. “The way the old man’s got things set up, two of you are going to be at loose ends one day soon, even if we manage to pull this thing out of the privy. I almost regret that I won’t be around to watch you scramble.”

A short silence ensued, during which Kade wondered how long he’d have to wait for that fight Cavanagh had promised him.

“You were really a Ranger?” Jeb asked out of the blue. There was still a lot of kid in him, even if he was nearly twenty-eight years old. It made Kade think of Harry, and how proud he was of the tin star Kade had given him. Hell, maybe he should try to find one for Jeb, too, stuff it into the toe of a red flannel sock, and say it was from Saint Nick.

“Yup,” Holt said. “I was a major.”

“Why’d you give it up?” Rafe asked, skeptical. “Rangering is a hard life, but there must be some satisfaction in it.”

Holt was quiet for a long time. “I had my reasons,” he said, and Kade knew from the way he spoke—it was pure Angus McKettrick, that tone of voice—that they’d get no more out of him on the subject, no matter how long they deviled him about it. Still, Kade wondered about the smoky specters he’d glimpsed in his half brother’s eyes.

“Tell me again why we ought to trust you any further than we can spit?” Kade asked.

The ghosts were still there when Holt met his gaze, though it was a direct look, and steady. “Because you don’t have a choice.”

Kade suppressed an unseemly urge to fling his hat down and grind it into the dirt with the heel of his boot.

A
ngus sat in the chair at his desk, and the set of his shoulders, so broad and strong only a season before, so dejected now, nearly broke Concepcion’s spirit. She stepped in behind him, laid her hands on either side of his neck. She wouldn’t have chosen to love this difficult man, but she’d lost her heart to him a long time before, watching him grieve for his lost Georgia. His sorrow had been a fierce and relentless thing, but through it all, he’d looked after his boys, in his rough way, and he’d held on to the ranch with a tenacity most mortals couldn’t imagine, let alone match. One night, way back when, he’d come to her for solace, and she’d given it. They’d been together, in secret, ever since.

“A penny for your thoughts, Mr. McKettrick,” she offered softly.

He gave a grim chuckle and reached up to lay a hoary palm to her wrist. “I reckon I could use one right about now,
Mrs.
McKettrick. A penny, I mean.”

She didn’t have to stoop to kiss the top of his head, even though he was sitting and she was standing. He was a big man, her Angus, and not just physically. He was an old lion, and the soul of honor. “You have faced hard times before,” she reminded him gently, “and always you have come through them. This will be no different.”

He sighed and pulled her gently around to sit on his lap. “It’s not the ranch that’s worrying me,” he confided, when she’d settled in, laying her head on his shoulder. “Concepcion, you were right—I’ve turned my own sons one against the other. I wish I’d listened to you and left things as they were, given them each a fair share of the land.”

She straightened his collar. “They are your boys,” she said quietly, “with your good blood flowing in their veins. No matter what happens, they will find their way.”

He didn’t answer, which meant he wasn’t convinced.

“You could call the whole thing off,” she suggested, knowing even as she spoke what his reply would be. She knew the terrain of this man’s mind and heart better than her own.

“A deal,” Angus said, “is a deal. It wouldn’t be fair to Rafe to go back on my word now.”

She stroked his rough cheek. Even though he shaved every morning, at her insistence, he still had stubble by suppertime. He was a man in the fullest sense of the word, and the fire he’d kindled in Concepcion burned as hot as it ever had. It had been the subject of many a confession, the passion she bore him. “I wonder sometimes if we ought to tell them we are married,” she confessed. The previous summer, during a party celebrating Rafe and Emmeline’s union, the two of them had sneaked off and gotten hitched on a whim, swearing Father Herrera and their witnesses to silence. Concepcion had never regretted that night for a moment, though she wondered sometimes if Angus did. He’d cared deeply for both his other wives, Holt’s mother, Ellie, and Georgia, and she knew he still suffered over the losses, though he tried not to let on.

“Far as I’m concerned,” Angus said with a grim chuckle, turning his head to plant a husbandly kiss on her mouth, “you can have an announcement carved into the wall of Horse Thief Canyon or stand on the roof of the Cattleman’s Bank and shout it to the whole territory.”

Her heartbeat quickened slightly. “Really?”

“I love you, Concepcion,” he said without hesitation, “and I’m proud that you’re my wife. I’d have broken the news before now, but I figured you mightn’t want folks to know a fine woman like you had taken up with an old warhorse like me.”

She laughed, though tears were in her eyes, turning his grizzled face to a reflection shimmering on water. “‘Old,’ you say?” she teased. “Well, Senor McKettrick, suppose—just suppose—that Emmeline was not the only woman in this family with a baby growing under her heart?”

A log collapsed in the fireplace behind them; Concepcion heard sparks crackling in the chimney. Outside, a raw, blustery wind blew, rattling the windows of a house that was as sturdy as the man who had built it with his own two hands.

He held her a little away and studied her face. “Concepcion, if this is a joke—”

She giggled, feeling like a girl, instead of a woman of nearly forty, settled and thoroughly married. “I thought it was the change of life,” she said shyly, “but I am sick in the mornings and I think my belly is beginning to swell.”

A smile dawned in Angus’s hard features, pushing back the shadows. “Glory be,” he said, marveling. “I don’t believe it!”

At his response, Concepcion was seized by joy. She hadn’t expected this, had indeed feared that he might accuse her of being faithless, lying with another, younger man. “I am hoping for a girl,” she said, and blushed. “We have enough men around here already.”

Angus threw back his head and shouted with exuberant laughter. “A child!” he crowed, jubilant. His blue eyes, so worried of late, shone with pride. “Yours and mine!”

“Sí,”
she said softly.

He unbuttoned the bodice of her dress and slipped a hand inside to cup her breast. She gave a little moan as he caressed her. “I reckon we ought to take ourselves upstairs and do a little celebrating,” he said, chafing her muslin-covered nipple to attention with the side of his thumb.

“It was our
celebrating
that got us into this,” Concepcion said, gasping between the words. She was a girl again, in his arms, and the familiar passion besieged her senses.

He set her on her feet, rose from the chair.

Concepcion did not bother to close her bodice; to do so would be impractical, since he would only open it again the moment the bedroom door closed behind them.

He gave her bottom a proprietary swat. “Get moving, woman. I’m of a mind to have my way with you.”

“Old bull,” Concepcion said, but she headed for the stairs, her steps quick and light as those of an eager bride, and Angus was right behind her.