McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [43]
Mac was chewing on a matchstick, and he rolled it from one side of his mouth to the other. He waited a beat too long to say, “Yes, sir, I’ll do that.” Hesitated again before he took Chief’s reins in one hand and the Appaloosa’s in the other.
“Thanks,” Holt said, as Kahill started to lead the animals away, toward the barn.
“Anytime,” Kahill drawled in response.
John headed for the house, but Holt and Rafe tarried, staring after Kahill and the horses.
Rafe spoke in an undertone. “What rock did he crawl out from under?”
MELINA WAS IN the kitchen, peeling potatoes for supper, and Captain Jack sat at the table, playing solitaire and nursing a glass of John’s best whiskey. The Captain had a cot in the bunkhouse, and Melina shared Tillie’s room.
By Holt’s count, the place was getting a bit too crowded.
He introduced Rafe all over again. Melina nodded, without smiling, and went back to her potato peeling. Holt knew by the way she bit her lower lip that she wanted to ask about Gabe, but for some reason, she held back. He moved toward her, meaning to confide that Navarro was in good health, though in a sour mood.
“I knew your pa,” the Captain told Rafe. “Liked old Angus McKettrick, even if he was a bit of a rough customer.”
On his way past Tillie, who was coming out of the pantry with a pie tin balanced on each palm, Holt stopped so suddenly that the two of them nearly collided. It was Rafe who saved the pies.
Holt had ridden with Walton the whole time he was in the Rangers, and the Captain had never said a word about knowing the old man. Not one damn word.
“What did you just say?” he snapped.
The Captain grinned, pleased with himself. “Didn’t I mention that?”
Rafe put the pies on the table, his glance moving from the Captain to Holt. Curious, and a little amused.
“No,” Holt ground out, “you didn’t mention it!”
“Knew your ma, too,” the Captain said. “Pretty little thing. Not too sturdy, though.”
Rafe hung his hat from a peg on the wall, next to the door.
The silence was thick as mud.
“Old Dill, now, that uncle of yours,” the Captain went on, with a little shake of his head. “Not worth a tinker’s damn.”
Holt’s mouth fell open. He closed it again, shot a look in John’s direction.
“I didn’t tell him any of this,” Cavanagh was quick to say.
Rafe pulled back a chair and sat down, admiring Tillie’s peach pies.
Holt sank into a chair of his own. “Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked the Captain. “All those years on the trail, fighting Comanches, sleeping in the mud, picking weevils out of the damned flour when there was anything to eat besides beans, and you never thought to mention—”
“You didn’t ask me,” the Captain interrupted.
Rafe chuckled at that. Tillie set a cup of coffee in front of him, along with a plate and fork, then sliced the pie and gave him a piece the size of an anvil.
He thanked her cordially, took up his fork and turned his gaze back to Walton. “How well did you know our pa?” he asked, chewing.
THAT NIGHT, while Rafe was settling his oversized frame in the bed next to Holt’s, he turned chatty as a spinster at a tea party.
“How’d you come to live with John Cavanagh?” he asked, after a hearty sigh of contentment. He’d probably slept along the trail all the way down from the Triple M and was glad to stretch out on a real mattress again.
“What the hell do you care?”
Rafe chuckled. “I don’t, really,” he said. “But since it obviously isn’t something you want to talk about, I mean to persist until you tell me.”
Holt sighed eloquently. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rafe lying there with his hands behind his head, smiling up at the ceiling. He did have the look of a man who could yammer all night if he felt disposed to do so.
“I ran away from home when I was sixteen. John caught me stealing eggs out of his chicken coop, figured I needed seeing to and took me in. Are you satisfied?”
“Nope,” Rafe said. “There’s more I want to know. Like how a black man came to own a place like this.