McKettrick's Choice

“I’ll tend to the horses and then join you,” the Captain said, leaning from the saddle to catch hold of the Appaloosa’s reins. “After that, I’d accept a drink if you’re offering one.”

Holt merely nodded.

The Captain set out on his errand, and Holt squired Melina into the courthouse and up the stairs to the jail.

“No women allowed,” announced old Roy, sitting in a corner next to the window, watching the rain and whittling.

Holt ignored him. Took the keys down off the hook next to the inside door.

“Wait just a minute,” Roy protested. “Didn’t you hear what I said?”

“I heard,” Holt replied, working the lock and then putting the keys back in their place. “I just don’t give a damn.”

Melina streaked through the opening, and Holt followed.

“I could send for the marshal!” Roy called after them.

“He’s just downstairs, testifying in Judge Fellows’s courtroom.”

“You do that,” Holt replied, quickening his pace to catch up with Melina.

She strode past the other cells as if she knew exactly where Gabe was—and maybe she did.

Gabe was waiting at the front of his cell. “I told you I wanted her to stay in Waco!” he hissed, glaring at Holt.

“Maybe you should have told her,” Holt retorted.

“Why didn’t you send word, Gabe?” Melina asked, getting as close to the bars as she could with that stomach of hers. Holt could still feel it pressing against his back, during the long ride from Waco. “I did send word,” Gabe answered. His voice was harsh, but his eyes consumed Melina, and he reached through the bars to lay a hand to her cheek. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Melina, you shouldn’t have come here.”

“How could I stay away?” she demanded, covering his hand with her own.

“I’ll see if the Cap’n’s back from the livery stable,” Holt said, turning to go.

Gabe drew in a sharp breath. “The Cap’n? He’s with you?”

“I ran into him in Waco. He’s getting the horses some water and feed. He’ll be in for a word once you and Melina are through talking.”

Gabe nodded. “Did you ask him about Frank? Has the Cap’n seen him, or heard anything?”

Holt had broached the subject to Walton on the way out to the Parkinson place. Now, he shook his head. “He’s got no more idea where Corrales is than we do.”

A ruckus started up out in the front office, and Holt figured the Captain had completed the horse business. He backtracked with some haste, for fear Walton would lose patience with old Roy and get them all thrown in jail.

Sure enough, the Captain had the other man by the shirt collar, slammed up against the wall. Roy’s eyes were bugging out and he was sputtering, his wind cut off by Captain Jack’s grip.

“Let him go,” Holt said, without particular urgency.

“You left that star behind in Waco, remember?”

With a flourish, the Captain released the jailer and watched with interest as he struggled for breath.

“We got rules around here!” Roy wailed. “And you can’t just go around chokin’ folks!”

“The hell I can’t,” the Captain said. “You got any whiskey in this place?”

CHAPTER 13

THE FREIGHT WAGON had already arrived when Lorelei, Angelina and Raul got to the ranch, and it was stuck up to its axels in mud. Raul drew the buckboard up alongside and leaped down.

“I put the load inside that old house there!” the driver shouted, in an effort to be heard over the torrent. “Help me unhitch this team.”

Raul nodded, and Angelina and Lorelei climbed down on their own. Lorelei would have stayed with the men, but Angelina took her arm and dragged her out of the rain.

“It’s an omen,” the older woman said, with conviction, when they stood under the relative shelter of the leaking roof.

Lorelei bent to open the rusted door of the woodstove, and it creaked on its hinges. “Is that a mouse’s nest?” she asked, peering inside.

“Madre de Dios,” said Angelina.

Lorelei shut the stove and turned to survey the piles of provisions, mostly in crates stacked helter-skelter around the room. She picked up a shiny new ax and tested its heft, then set it carefully in a corner. “We won’t need a fire, anyway. It’s hot as the far corner of Hades, even with this rain.”

Angelina went to the door, probably watching for Raul.

Lorelei bent over the tent pole, thinking it was the size of a ship’s mast, and wondered if the canvas could be unwrapped and draped over the roof. Then she picked through the crates until she found the shiny new coffeepot. It was good-sized, for she expected to entertain as soon as she was settled. And the ranch hands—once she hired them and bought some cattle—would want their coffee.

“We’ll have to have a fire after all,” she said, starting for the door.

Angelina turned to look at her. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Why, to set the pot in the rain,” Lorelei said, surprised.

Angelina opened her mouth, closed it again, and went out to join Raul and the driver, who were hobbling the horses.

Lorelei centered the pot in the middle of the dooryard, pleased with the prospect of hot coffee, and went back inside. Purposefully, she emptied a crate, splintered it into manageable pieces with the ax and poked uncertainly at the mouse’s nest. Nothing scurried or squeaked, so she assumed it was abandoned.

She had a nice blaze going when Angelina returned and let out a little shriek.

“Lorelei,” she cried, rushing over and tugging open the stove door. “The chimney!”

Lorelei frowned, assessing the crooked metal pipe disappearing through the roof. Smoke began to billow out through the opening in the stove and seep through heretofore invisible gaps in the pipe.

“For heaven’s sake,” she marveled.

Angelina stabbed at the fire with the handle of Lorelei’s brand-new broom, chattering in Spanish. “Water,” she coughed. “Get me some water!”

Lorelei hesitated, confused, then dashed outside to get the coffeepot, already half-full of rain. She handed it to Angelina, who promptly flung the contents into the stove. There was a puny sizzle, and then Angelina straightened, shutting the squeaky little door against the smoke.

“From now on,” Angelina said evenly, “I will make the coffee.”