McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [143]
Lorelei got to her feet, moving like a sleepwalker, and helped Melina carry jars to Heddy, who was busily screwing off the lids and dumping all manner of things into the kettle to heat.
The cowboys came inside in relays, gobbling up the slum-gooey and swilling down coffee. Lorelei thought she did well not to fall face-first into her plate.
CHAPTER 36
IT WAS AFTER DAWN when Holt and Dr. Elias Brown rode out of San Antonio, the doc bumping along on a fat pony, with his medical bag tied to the horn of his saddle. Holt was in a glum mood—Elias had been occupied tending a gunshot wound when Holt had reached his house, and could not leave his patient until the injured man was past the crisis point. He’d gone to the jailhouse next, Holt had, and spent the rest of the night trying to haul Gabe out of a mental tar pit. Nothing would cheer him. Not the news that they’d found Frank in Reynosa, banged up but on the mend, and brought him back as far as John’s place. Not the several visits Gabe had had from R. S. Beauregard during Holt’s absence, and the assurance of a second trial. Not even the knowledge that Melina had come through the long journey unscathed.
Holt’s spirits sank even lower when he and the doc topped the rise above Lorelei’s place and saw what was left of her house—cinders, charred wood and scorched earth. Trees, still standing, but burned to grim and twisted skeletons.
The doc let out a low whistle of exclamation, surveying the blackened tangle of timbers where the cabin had been. The fire had traveled clear to the creek bank.
Holt nudged the Appaloosa hard with the heels of his boots, plunging down the hillside to dismount in the dooryard. The dirt around the remains of the house was pocked with the hoofprints of at least a dozen horses, proving what he’d already guessed—that this blaze had not been the result of a stray spark or a lightning bolt. It had been deliberately set. Chances were, if he rode the boundaries, he would see where the raiders had taken steps to contain it, keep it from moving onto Templeton’s land.
Doc bounced down from the road to join him, sweeping off his hat and running a forearm across his broad, sweating brow. “Indians?” he asked, looking around at the wreckage with a grim expression. That was the first thing everybody thought when they came across this kind of destruction, and not without reason. Older, wiser Comanches had accepted the fact of the white man’s encroachment, but there were still bands of renegades, fighting on in the face of defeat. Nobody knew that better than Holt did.
He shook his head in belated reply to the doctor’s one-word question. “Not unless they’ve taken to shoeing their horses,” he said. The ruin of the place galled him plenty, but it was the thought that Lorelei could have been there when it happened that fairly stopped his heart and trapped his breath in his throat. She’d have been in the middle of it, too, if she hadn’t insisted on going on the cattle drive despite his objections.
“Doesn’t look like there’s much of anything we can do here,” Elias observed. “Best we get on to Cavanagh’s, so I can see to your brother Rafe and that cowboy with the broken leg.”
Holt nodded, wondering how he was going to tell Lorelei that the house she’d pinned so many of her hopes on was gone. Wishing he could protect her, somehow, some way, from the harsh reality. At the same time, knowing it couldn’t be done.
They crossed the wide stream in silence, and rode hard when they reached the other side.
Lorelei met them at John’s gate, clad in a calico dress and pacing anxiously. “Thank God you’re finally here,” she blurted, with a note of contention in her voice, as though they’d dallied along the way, maybe to pick field daisies or just admire the countryside.
Holt was down off his horse before he thought about dismounting. “Rafe?” he demanded. “Is Rafe all right?”
Something gentled in Lorelei. Her fiery gaze cooled, and the small muscles in her face relaxed. “Rafe