McKettrick's Choice

Lorelei snatched up a blanket and waved it, but the smoke met the veil of rain at the door and rolled back inside.

Thunder shook the roof.

“A bad omen,” Angelina reiterated, crossing herself.

“Nonsense,” Lorelei said, reclaiming the broom. “With a little straightening up, this house will be cozy.”

Raul came inside, followed by the driver. Both of them were drenched, but then so were Lorelei and Angelina.

“I smell smoke,” said the driver.

They all sat down on crates and stared at each other.

“I believe I’ll ride one of them horses back to town,” the freight man said presently. “Plenty of other mounts, if you all want to go along.”

Raul looked longingly toward the door.

“I’m staying right here,” said Lorelei.

“That’s your privilege, ma’am,” the fellow answered, rising from his crate. Raul stared down at his hands, and Angelina shook out her skirts.

The driver took his leave, and Lorelei rose to watch him go. He mounted one of the four horses, abandoning his wagon, and set out for San Antonio. The remaining three followed along, without benefit of a lead rope.

“He would have been much wiser to spend the night,” she observed. “He could be struck by lightning along that road, and, anyway, he’ll have to come back to get his wagon.”

Neither Angelina nor Raul spoke, or even looked in her direction.

It was up to her, Lorelei decided, to set a cheerful tone. “Raul,” she said, bending to pick up the coffeepot Angelina had dropped after putting out the flames. “Perhaps you could make a bonfire in that copse of oak trees next to the water. We’ll need one for cooking.”

Raul looked at her as though she’d just risen from the dead.

“A bonfire?” he echoed.

Angelina sighed. “Just do it,” she said forlornly.

Raul went out.

“We’d better get into dry clothes,” Lorelei said. “Warm as it is, we could take a chill. I’ll brew up a nice pot of tea.”

“How do you plan to do that?” Angelina asked reasonably.

“Why, I’ll just catch rain water—or get some from the creek—and set it on the fire to boil.”

“And how will you go to and from this fire without getting wet all over again?”

“Oh,” said Lorelei.

“Yes,” said Angelina. “Oh.”

Raul was gone for perhaps a quarter of an hour, and when he returned, he looked defeated.

“There is no dry firewood,” he said.

Lorelei and Angelina, wearing dry clothes, sat on crates, brushing the rain out of their hair.

“We shall have to do without our tea,” Lorelei said bravely.

IN THE DAMP, thin light of dawn, Lorelei gazed up at the cobwebs swathing the ceiling rafters like entangled ghosts. She’d slept in her clothes, on a pallet of blankets, and her skin was peppered with chigger bites. On the other side of the ranch house, which was, she admitted to herself, really just a cabin, Angelina and Raul slumbered on, their soft snores interweaving.

The remnants of last night’s rain dripped through holes in the roof, the chimney was still stopped up with birds’ nests, dirt and layers of soot and she would have sold her soul for a cup of hot, fresh coffee.

By now, her father knew that she’d not only defected from his household and claimed her property and what remained of her funds, but stolen his servants as well. He was probably livid. No, no probably about it, she thought, squaring herself to face reality.

Judge Alexander Fellows was surely in a fury, and even now taking steps to deal with his rebellious daughter.

Isaac Templeton’s vast spread sprawled on one side of her little ranch, and Holt McKettrick’s on the other. For all her brave thoughts to the contrary, a range war was a very real possibility, and if it happened, Lorelei would most likely be caught square in the middle.

She didn’t know how to ride. She didn’t know how to shoot.

She didn’t own a single cow, or a horse.

So why, she wondered, smiling, did she feel so exhilarated?

“GOOD GOD,” said Holt McKettrick, right out loud, when, riding along the creekbank, with Tillie’s dog trotting along behind his horse, he saw Lorelei Fellows kneeling on the other side, splashing her face with water.

She couldn’t have heard him; he was still a hundred yards away, at least, but she looked up, just the same, and took him in with a visible lack of enthusiasm.

The dog, spotting her, barked exuberantly and plunged right into the stream, paddling toward her for all he was worth.

Lorelei’s sour expression turned sweet as she watched Sorrowful make his way across. He came up onto the bank beside her and shook off the creek water with a mighty effort, making her laugh aloud, the sound ringing like church bells of a Sunday morning.

It did something to Holt, hearing her erupt with joy like that. Caused a soft, subtle shift inside him.

That riled him.

Setting his jaw, he urged Traveler into the water and crossed.

Lorelei paid him no notice; she was busy having a reunion with the dog.

He felt a sting, watching them, and this did not have a positive effect upon his disposition.

“What the devil are you doing out here?” he asked Lorelei, getting down from the Appaloosa and leaving the horse to drink from the stream.

Lorelei was nose to nose with that dog, ruffling his ears and laughing, and she took her time answering. Got to her feet, fussed over Sorrowful a while longer and patted her hair. Her fine breasts rose when she did that, and Holt felt another sharp shift, somewhere in his middle.

“I live here,” she said.

Holt scanned the property and found it sorry to behold. The house was on a tilt, and the barn, such as it was, had probably collapsed before Santa Ana massacred one hundred and eighty-five brave men at the Alamo. There were two wagons, one of them stuck axel-deep in drying mud, and the other dripping rainwater through the floorboards. A pair of town horses, pretty but essentially useless, grazed alongside the stream, and there wasn’t a cow to be seen.