The McKettrick Legend: Sierra's Homecoming

Doss’s belly tightened. The boy was only eight, and he couldn’t possibly know what had gone on last night in the spare room.

Could he?

“How do you mean, then?”

“Pa used to kiss Ma all the time. He used to swat her on the bustle, too, when he thought nobody was looking. It always made her laugh, and stand real close to him, with her arms around his neck.”

Doss might have gripped the saddle horn with both hands, because of the pain, if he’d been riding alone. It wasn’t the reminder of how much Hannah and Gabe had loved each other that seared him, though. It was the loss of his brother, the way of things then, and it all being over for good.

“I’ll treat your mother right, Tobias,” he said, after more hat-brim pulling and more looking away.

“You sound pretty sure she’ll say yes,” the boy commented.

“She already has,” Doss replied.

Present Day

More snow began to fall at midmorning and, worried that the power would go off again, and stay off this time, Sierra gathered her and Liam’s dirty laundry and threw a load into the washing machine. She’d telephoned Liam’s doctor in Flag staff, from the study, while he and Travis were filling the dish washer, but she hadn’t mentioned the hallucinations. She’d heard the piano music herself, after all, and then Eve had made such experiences seem almost normal.

Sierra didn’t know precisely what was happening, and she was still unsettled by Liam’s claims of seeing a boy in old-time clothes, but she wasn’t ready to bring up the subject with an outsider, whether that outsider had a medical degree or not.

Dr. O’Meara had reviewed Liam’s records, since they’d been expressed to her from the clinic in Florida, and she wanted to make sure he had an inhaler on hand. She’d promised to call in a prescription to the pharmacy in Indian Rock, and they’d made an appointment for the following Monday afternoon.

Now Liam was in the study, watching TV, and Travis was out side split ting wood for the stove and the fire places. If the power went off again, she’d need firewood for cooking. The generator kept the furnace running, along with a few of the lights, but it burned a lot of gas and there was always the possibility that it would break down or freeze up.

Travis came in with an armload just as she was starting to prepare lunch.

Watching him, Sierra thought about what Eve had said on the phone earlier. Travis’s younger brother had died horribly, and very recently. He’d left his job, Travis had, and come to the ranch to live in a trailer and look after horses.

He didn’t look like a man carrying a burden, but appearances were deceiving. Nobody knew that better than Sierra did.

“What kind of work did you do, before you came here?” she asked, and then wished she hadn’t brought the subject up at all. Travis’s face closed instantly, and his eyes went blank.

“Nothing special,” he said.

She nodded. “I was a cocktail waitress,” she told him, because she felt she ought to offer him something after asking what was evidently an intrusive question.

Standing there, beside the antique cookstove and the wood box, in his leather coat and cowboy hat, Travis looked as though he’d stepped through a time warp, out of an earlier century.

“I know,” he said. “Meg told me.”

“Of course she did.” Sierra poured canned soup into a sauce pan, stirred it industriously and blushed.

Travis didn’t say anything more for a long time. Then, “I was a lawyer for McKettrickCo,” he told her.

Sierra stole a sidelong glance at him. He looked tense, standing there holding his hat in one hand. “Impressive,” she said.

“Not so much,” he countered. “It’s a tradition in my family, being a lawyer, I mean. At least, with everyone but my brother, Brody. He became a meth addict instead, and blew himself to kingdom-come brewing up a batch. Go figure.”

Sierra turned to face Travis. Noticed that his jaw was hard and his eyes even harder. He was angry, in pain, or both.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“Yeah,” Travis replied tersely. “Me, too.”

He started for the door.

“Stay for lunch?” Sierra asked.

“Another time,” he answered, and then he was gone.

1919

It was near sunset when Doss and Tobias rode in from the Jessup place, and by then Hannah was fit to be tied. She’d paced for most of the afternoon, after it started to snow again, fretting over all the things that could go wrong along the way.

The horse or the mule could have gone lame or fallen through the ice crossing the creek.

There could have been an avalanche. Just last year, a whole mountainside of snow had come crashing down on to the roof of a cabin and crushed it to the ground, with a family inside.

Wolves prowled the countryside, too, bold with the desperation of their hunger. They killed cattle and some times people.

Doss hadn’t even taken his rifle.

When Hannah heard the horses, she ran to the window, wiped the fog from the glass with her apron hem. She watched as they dismounted and led their mounts into the barn.

She’d baked pies that day to keep from going crazy, and the kitchen was redolent with the aroma. She smoothed her skirts, patted her hair and turned away so she wouldn’t be caught looking if Doss or Tobias happened to glance toward the house.

Almost an hour passed before they came inside—they’d done the barn chores—and Hannah had the table set, the lamps lighted and the coffee made. She wanted to fuss over Tobias, check his ears and fingers for frost bite and his fore head for fever, but she wouldn’t let herself do it.

Doss wasn’t deceived by her smiling restraint, she could see that, but Tobias looked down right relieved, as though he’d expected her to pounce the minute he came through the door.

“How did you find Widow Jessup?” she asked.

“She was right where we left her last time,” Doss said with a slight grin.

Hannah gave him a look.

“She was fresh out of firewood,” Tobias expounded importantly, unwrapping himself, layer by layer, until he stood in just his trousers and shirt, with melted snow pooling around his feet. “It’s a good thing we went down there. She’d have froze for sure.”

Doss looked tired, but his eyes twinkled. “For sure,” he confirmed. “She got Tobias here by the ears and kissed him all over his face, she was so grateful that he’d saved her.”

Tobias let out a yelp of mortification and took a swing at Doss, who side stepped him easily.

“Stop your rough housing and wash up for supper,” Hannah said, but it did her heart good to see it. Gabe used to come in from the barn, toss Tobias over one shoulder and carry him around the kitchen like a sack of grain. The boy had howled with laughter and pummeled Gabe’s chest with his small fists in mock resistance. She’d missed the ordinary things like that more than anything except being held in Gabe’s arms.

She served chicken and dumplings, in her best Blue Willow dishes, with apple pie for dessert.

Tobias ate with a fresh-air, long-ride appetite and nearly fell asleep in his chair once his stomach was filled.