McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [142]
Melina started to speak, stopped herself and nodded.
“You go on,” John Cavanagh said, when Holt hesitated. “Heddy and me, we’ll look after the rest of the outfit till you get back.”
Holt nodded, glanced in Lorelei’s direction and rode off.
With the wranglers guarding the herd, the task of getting Rafe and the cowboy into the Cavanagh house fell to John and the Captain. Lorelei, Heddy and Melina went in ahead, to make a place for them. Tillie followed, carrying the baby, who was already sound asleep on her shoulder.
They settled the wrangler on the horsehair sofa, since it was too short for Rafe. He took his rest on a pallet on the floor, and seemed glad of it.
“Good to be out of that wagon,” he murmured, when Lorelei crouched beside him with a ladle of water from the pump over the kitchen sink.
“Drink this,” she urged, holding the back of his head so he could manage a few sips.
Within moments, he was asleep. It was probably a welcome respite, after traveling so many miles over a winding, bumpy trail.
Tillie took the baby upstairs, the dog at her heels, and didn’t come down again.
John and the Captain busied themselves outside, putting the team and wagon up for the night, and Heddy had gone straight to the kitchen, just as if she’d lived in that house all her life.
Lorelei approached warily, because she hoped there might be tea brewing and she needed some. Melina followed.
Heddy was stuffing kindling into the cookstove, her motions quick, confident and a little angry.
“I could drink a barrel of coffee and eat a whole buffalo,” the older woman said, without turning around.
“Melina, kindly see what’s in that big cupboard over there that we can cook up. Lorelei, you sit yourself down at that table so I can chew you out proper.”
Lorelei pulled back a chair and sank into it, resigned.
Melina bustled over to the cupboard and pulled open the doors, revealing jars of preserves—green beans, corn, stew meat, something that looked like chicken.
Heddy finished building the fire and reached for the coffeepot, marching to the sink to pump water with furious motions of her right arm.
Lorelei braced herself. Too tired to fight back, she was basically at Heddy’s mercy.
When the pot was filled, and coffee had been measured in, Heddy turned to regard Lorelei, her hands resting on her ample hips, her face stormy as a tornado sky. “That was just plain foolhardy, what you did today,” she said, glowering. “I never seen the like of it, in all my born days.”
Lorelei wanted to lower her head, but her pride wouldn’t let her do it.
“Did you do any thinkin’ before you lit out on that consarned mule to save Holt McKettrick from them Comanches?” Heddy demanded.
“No, ma’am,” Lorelei said. And it was true. She hadn’t thought—not even as far as “saving” Holt. She’d known only one thing—that she had to be there, whatever happened.
“I don’t suppose it occurred to you that with you underfoot, he had one more thing to worry about? He had a fight on his hands, with Rafe down and all that shootin’ goin’ on, and on top of all that, he had to protect you!”
This time, Lorelei did lower her head.
Heddy put a hand under her chin and made her look up at her. To Lorelei’s amazement, the woman was smiling.
“Damnation,” she said, “I’d have done the same thing, if I was your age and my man was in trouble!”
Lorelei stared at her, too confounded to speak.
Heddy patted her cheek. “You’d make Holt a fine wife,” she finished. “Let’s hope he has the horse sense to know that.”
Lorelei flushed. Opened her mouth. Closed it again.
Heddy turned and went back to the stove. Melina, carefully avoiding Lorelei’s gaze, had lined the worktable with jars of Tillie’s canned food.
“I’ll make us some slum-gooey,” Heddy decided.
Lorelei found her voice again, maybe because the subject seemed a safe one. “Slum-gooey? What’s that?”
“Mixture of whatever comes to hand,” Heddy replied jovially, rummaging in another cupboard until she found a huge cast-iron kettle. “I’m going to need a lot more grub than this,