McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [131]
Holt glanced toward Laredo, though this time he wasn’t thinking about Lorelei. It was Melina who filled his mind, and that baby she was carrying. “I couldn’t say,” he said. “We’ll have to ask him, soon as we get back. And he isn’t going to hang, Cap’n. If I know one thing for sure, it’s that.”
The Captain smiled slightly, and gave an almost imperceptible nod of approval.
“I reckon Navarro will want to make a home for himself and his woman,” John reflected, still petting the dog.
“If he doesn’t, I mean to tear off a strip of his hide.”
Frank chuckled. “Gabe with a wife and a kid. Now, there’s a picture.”
Holt rubbed the back of his neck, felt a stirring in the pit of his stomach. It usually meant he should be on the lookout for trouble, that feeling, but now that Lorelei had to be taken into account, nothing was that cut-and-dried. “We’ll have the papers drawn up soon as we get back to San Antonio,” he said. “In the meantime, we’ve got a lot of miles still to cover, and a Comanche for every one of them.” He reached for a stick he’d selected earlier, for the purpose, and sketched a map in the dirt. Everybody leaned in to peer at it. “I figure this is the easiest route, back the way we came.” He scratched it out, drew another. A few pairs of eyes widened. “Not much water and damn little grass, but it’s open country most of the way. Only a few places where the Indians might jump us, and Rafe and I can scout those out ahead of time.”
Frank frowned. “Jesu Cristo, Holt,” he muttered. “That’s tough ground. Nothing but rocks, briars and snakes. Those cattle will be nothing but guts and bones by the time we get through there—if those Comanche devils let us pass, which they’re not likely to do.”
“They’ll be expecting us to go the other way,” Rafe mused.
“It doesn’t matter what they expect,” Holt said moderately. “All they have to do is watch us, like they’ve been doing ever since we set out on this trip. With a wagon, two women and over five hundred head of cattle, we’d be hard to miss, on any account. But I figure this is the best trail—it’s more dangerous, but it’s faster. We could cross it in three days, with a little luck.”
Rafe frowned. “You can plan on damn little of that,” he said.
“You have a better idea?” Holt asked mildly. Rafe might be younger than he was, but he had experience driving cattle, having grown up on the Triple M, and while he wasn’t book-smart, like their brother Kade, he was practical to the bone.
Rafe considered the question carefully, then sighed. “Nope,” he said. Then he grinned. “I’d sure like to keep this hair on my head, though. Emmeline likes to run her fingers through it.”
Holt chuckled, though he felt a tightening inside. If he didn’t bring Rafe back to his Emmeline, safe and sound, he reckoned he’d never get over it. Never be able to face her or the old man, waiting up there in Arizona, hoping for word from Texas and probably trying to divine his and Rafe’s whereabouts on some map.
“Everybody’s in, then?” Holt asked. “If any one of you wants to stay right here in Laredo and call it good, there’ll be no hard feelings on my part.”
“In,” said the Captain, pulling a deck of cards from his vest pocket.
“In,” voted John, solemn as St. Peter overseeing the last judgment.
“Nothing better to do,” Frank put in, with a wicked grin. He was still favoring those sore ribs of his, but other than that, he seemed fitter with every passing day. He wasn’t cut out to do his recuperating on a cot in his pa’s house, counting how many chickens pecked their way across the threshold.
That left Rafe. “Laredo’s a fine town,” he said affably, “but it’s not the Triple M and it hasn’t got Emmeline. Sooner we get these bawling critters up the trail to San Antonio, the better.”
Holt stood, rubbed out the dirt-map with the sole of his right boot. “It’s decided, then,” he said. He nodded to the Captain, already shuffling his deck. “Don’t be keeping these boys up half the night playing poker,