McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [135]
“You put a couple of pieces of bread together, with some bacon between,” Heddy told Tillie. “Can’t have Miss Lorelei fall off her mule from hunger.”
“Yes’m,” Tillie said. Dandling Pearl on her hip, she crossed to the stove to do as she was bidden.
“You’re just going to leave?” Lorelei marveled, getting out of her chair to make a hasty trip to the outhouse. “What about your animals? What about your chickens?”
“Gave ’em to the neighbors,” Heddy said dismissively. “Pack of trouble, anyhow. Now hurry up with you. Nobody in this outfit is in any mood to wait while you dawdle.”
Lorelei rushed out. She was washing her hands and face at the pump when John Cavanagh drove in with the wagon. His grin was as broad as Heddy’s, but it faded when he took in Lorelei’s calico dress. Sorrowful barked a happy greeting from behind the box.
“You plannin’ to ride twelve hours on a mule in that getup?” John asked.
“If I could have two minutes to change—”
Mr. Cavanagh shook his head. “Herd’s already moving. We got to catch up as it is.” He got down from the wagon box, marched into the barn and came out leading Seesaw and carrying his saddle and bridle over one shoulder.
Lorelei listened, her heart thundering, and heard the distant complaints of all those cattle. Felt the faint tremor of their passing in the ground, through the soles of her shoes. John threw the saddle into the wagon and tied Seesaw to one side, humming cheerfully under his breath.
Heddy, Melina and Tillie marched out of the house, possessions bundled. Tillie handed Lorelei the bacon and bread, then hoisted Pearl into the back of the wagon, scrambling up after him. John solicitously helped Heddy up into the box, then Melina.
“You comin’ or not?” Heddy called, looking back at Lorelei, but not sparing a glance for her fine house, with all its simple treasures.
Lorelei hurried behind the wagon, handed her breakfast up to Tillie to hold, and climbed in with her and the baby and the bags of beans. John released the brake lever, and the buckboard shot forward so suddenly that Lorelei would have fallen on her face if Tillie hadn’t taken a strong grip on her arm.
She rode with her legs dangling over the lowered tailgate, holding on tightly with one hand and eating her breakfast with the other.
Goodbye, Laredo, she thought, with mixed emotions, as they rattled and jolted down the main street of town, still mostly empty at that early hour. The windows of the shops and businesses were pinkish-purple, reflecting the first light of the morning. They passed a church, and the attendant cemetery, and then they were in open country.
Dust roiled as John drove straight through the center of the herd. Lorelei drew her legs back, lest she be gouged by one of those long-horned cattle, and Tillie helped her snap the tailgate into place.
After that, she rummaged through her pack for trousers and a shirt, and wriggled into the pants as inconspicuously as she could. The cowboys were too busy to look at her, but she wasn’t about to take off her dress and put on the shirt, so she contented herself with the odd mixture of garments she was already wearing.
“Heddy’s going to be my mama,” Tillie told her, when they reached the front of the herd, and there was a lull in the noise. “Soon as they come across a preacher.”
Lorelei reached out to take the baby for a while. He pulled at her hair, with a chubby little hand, and cheered her up immeasurably. “Does that make you happy?” she asked, unsure of Tillie’s feelings on the matter of her father’s sudden and imminent remarriage.
Tillie’s smile was sudden, and brilliant as a flash of sunlight on clear water. “Yes’m,” she said. “Now I can get a husband of my own. Give Pearl a daddy. I reckon I’d marry up with Holt, if he wasn’t my brother. Sort of. Anyhow, he’s sweet on you.”
Lorelei nearly swallowed her tongue. Pearl planted a sticky kiss on her cheek and chortled, and she hugged him close. “Tillie Cavanagh,” she teased, carefully avoiding the subject of Holt, sweet on her or otherwise. “I didn’t