McKettrick's Choice

LORELEI WATCHED from her bedroom window as the judge climbed into the buggy Raul had hitched up for him, the way he did every weekday morning and most Saturdays, took up the reins and set out for the main part of town. He would not return home until late in the day, as he had court cases to hear.

Once he’d rounded the corner onto the road that ran alongside the river curling through town, she sprang into action.

Kneeling, she pulled out the valise she’d packed the night before from under the bed. A rap at her door startled her so that she nearly choked on an indrawn breath, but she recovered quickly. “Angelina?”

The door opened, and the housekeeper stood on the threshold. Her eyes traveled to the valise, while Lorelei scrambled to her feet.

“You are really going to do this,” Angelina marveled.

“Yes,” Lorelei said firmly.

“Mr. Sexton, from the bank, will be waiting on the courthouse steps to tell the judge what you’re planning. And he will put a stop to it.”

Lorelei hoisted the valise in one hand, reflecting upon her interview with Mr. Sexton the afternoon before. She’d gone directly to the bank, after her visit to the property, and he’d been pleased to see her—until she’d made it clear that she had no intention of signing her inheritance over to Mr. Templeton.

“I would like to see my account,” Lorelei had said, standing her ground.

“The judge has strictly forbidden—”

“I don’t care what the judge has forbidden,” she’d interrupted.

Sexton had sighed, rummaged until he found the proper ledger and licked a fingertip before flipping through the pages.

“You have two thousand, seven-hundred and twenty-two dollars and seventy-eight cents,” he’d said, with the utmost reluctance.

Lorelei, peering over his shoulder, had already deduced that. She’d blinked at the sum, then her gaze had shifted to the debit column. Judging by the long list of tidy figures, her father had made regular withdrawals over the past ten years.

“I’m afraid I must insist that Judge Fellows’s wishes be respected,” Sexton had said, closing the book. His jowls were flushed, his eyes skittish.

Lorelei had insisted that the funds be moved to another account, and when Sexton balked, she threatened to fetch the constable. At last, he’d relented, but with the greatest reluctance.

She’d narrowed her eyes at him as she prepared to leave the bank with a purseful of cash and move on to the mercantile. “If you run to my father,” she’d warned, “I’ll move every cent to another bank and have you audited.”

Now, facing Angelina as she was about to leave her bedroom and the house as well, perhaps for the very last time, Lorelei, having recounted the conversation to the older woman, shook her head. “He wouldn’t dare go to my father,” she said.

“Mr. Sexton is afraid of the judge, like almost everyone else in San Antonio,” Angelina maintained, a bit frantically, but she stepped aside to let Lorelei pass into the corridor. “If you had any sense at all, you would be, too.”

“It’s my land, and my money,” Lorelei maintained, starting down the rear stairway. “Are you and Raul coming with me or not?”

Angelina crossed herself, but she nodded. “My cousin Rosa is coming to look after the judge,” she said. “Still—”

Lorelei opened the back door and peered toward the carriage house. “Where is Raul?” she fretted. “Mr. Wilkins promised to deliver my order by noon. We have to be there to meet the wagons.”

Mr. Wilkins, as it happened, was not among the judge’s many admirers. He’d been a vocal supporter of the other candidate during the last election and had written several letters to the editor of the local newspaper complaining about the decisions Judge Fellows had handed down. The merchant had been suspicious at first, then pleased to keep quiet about the wagonload of provisions and supplies Lorelei had purchased and paid for on the spot.

Raul came out of the carriage house, driving the buckboard. Even from a distance, his lack of enthusiasm was readily apparent.

Lorelei felt a pang. Her father was a difficult man, but he was aging and perhaps even ill. He could get along without her just fine, but losing Angelina and Raul would be a blow.

“If you want to stay here and look after Father,” she said, “I’ll understand.”

Angelina dragged a valise of her own from its hiding place in the pantry. “And let you go off alone, to live in the wilderness, with wolves and savages and outlaws and the Madre only knows what else? No. Rosa and her Miguel will take our places.”

“I promise you will not regret this,” Lorelei said, well aware that the statement was a rash one. Once the judge realized she’d not only taken her funds out of his keeping but helped herself to his housekeeper and handyman, he would be enraged.

Angelina looked doubtful but resolved. “I think I already regret it,” she said. Raul came to the door, looking woebegone, and claimed both the valises. “By all the saints and angels, when your father learns of this, the ground will shake.”

As if to lend credence to Angelina’s words, thunder clapped in the near distance. The horses nickered and tossed their heads, and Lorelei looked up at the sky as she descended the back steps. Fast-moving gray clouds were gathering over San Antonio, churning with mayhem.

Angelina looked up as well and opened her mouth to speak, but at the look Lorelei gave her, she held her tongue.

Raul helped his wife onto the wagon seat, then Lorelei, before climbing up to take the reins.

“Cheer up,” Lorelei said. “This is a new beginning.”

Five minutes later, the rain began.

MELINA STARED mutely at the gallows, a raw wood structure, half-finished, shimmering in the heavy rain. She was soaked to the skin, as was Holt himself, and the Captain, but she seemed oblivious to everything but the mechanism where Gabe was slated to hang.

She’d ridden behind Holt all the way down from Waco and refused to stop at the Cavanagh place to rest, put on dry clothes and wait for the rain to let up. Watching her now, Holt wished he’d taken her there anyway.

She shivered in the downpour, hair dangling in wet strands down the sides of her face, looking bedraggled and small in Holt’s coat.

Still mounted, the Captain lifted the collar of his canvas duster. “Warm as bathwater,” he said of the rain, his voice pitched low. “Just the same, we’d best get that woman someplace dry.”

Holt swung a leg over the Appaloosa’s neck and jumped to the ground. He said her name quietly, reached out to lay a hand on her slight shoulder.

She shrugged him off. “I want to see Gabe,” she said. “Right now.”

“There he is,” the Captain said. “That window, yonder.”

Both Holt and Melina looked up. Sure enough, Gabe was gazing down at them, his face like chiseled stone, his hands grasping the bars.

Melina took a step toward him, staggered a little.

Reaching out, Holt caught hold of her arm.

“Where is the way in?” Melina wanted to know.

“Tomorrow,” Holt reasoned.

She shook her head, and water flew from the thick tendrils of hair. “Now,” she said, laying both hands on her belly.

“Might as well show her inside,” the Captain said. “If you don’t, we’ll be at this all day.”

The old man was right. Melina was already prowling back and forth like a caged cat, and she looked as though she’d climb the drain pipe if that was what she had to do to get to Gabe.

Holt took her arm, and this time he didn’t let her pull away. Gabe stared down from his cell, looking as if he might chew his way past those bars and jump two stories to the ground. “This way,” Holt said.