McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [52]
“I wish I had some grain,” Lorelei said. As a child, she used to watch Raul tending her father’s carriage horses; sometimes, he’d allowed her to feed them oats and grain from the palm of her hand.
“You have sugar,” Melina said practically. “You put some in our tea.”
Lorelei brightened from the inside out. Sugar cost the earth, but if it would make a friend of the demon Seesaw, she could spare a little.
Both women set aside their tea and got to their feet at the same time.
Lorelei went inside, poured the coarse brown crystals into her palm and headed for the mule.
“Here, Seesaw,” she said sweetly.
The mule, still grazing under the oak tree, eyed her suspiciously.
“I have sugar,” Lorelei cajoled.
His ears twitched. He bent his head to the ground and cropped off a mouthful of grass.
“Don’t move too quickly,” Melina counseled.
Lorelei took a cautious step forward, holding out the handful of sugar. “I have something for you,” she called.
Seesaw raised his head again, snuffled.
“Careful,” Melina said, leaning against another tree to watch.
Lorelei advanced slowly.
Seesaw brayed, but companionably, and came to meet her.
CHAPTER 20
RAUL WAS GRAY around the gills by the time Rafe and Holt unloaded him at the office of Dr. Elias Brown, on a shady side street in San Antonio. His head lolled to one side as they eased him out of the wagon bed and set him on his feet, supporting his slight weight between them. In truth, he was light enough to carry, but they understood that half out of his head with pain, a man wanted to preserve his dignity.
The doctor burst from the house just as they were reaching the front gate, a picket affair with a faulty catch, and at first sight of him, Holt thought he was a towheaded boy. Brown probably wasn’t four feet tall, even wearing boots, and his head was damn near the size of a watermelon.
As the doctor sprinted down the walk, Holt took note of the gray hair and beard and the stethoscope dangling almost to his knees.
“I’ll be damned,” Rafe muttered, from the other side of Raul, and Holt would have nudged him silent with an elbow if he could have.
“I’m a dwarf,” the doctor said straight out, apparently dispensing with the obvious so that they could all get down to the case at hand. “What’s happened to Raul?”
Angelina, silent the whole way in, let fly with a burst of Spanish.
Dr. Brown shook his head, but his eyes were gentle. “Now, Angelina,” he said, “you know anything other than hola and adios is beyond my ken.” He turned his attention to Holt and Rafe. “Bring him inside.”
“He was thrown from a mule,” Rafe said belatedly. Clearly it had taken him a while to get past the shock of meeting a doctor who barely reached his waist. “I figure he’s cracked some ribs. Maybe even broken a few.”
“What were you doing on a mule?” Brown demanded of Raul, looking back over one shoulder as he led the way up the walk and onto the spacious front porch. “You’re not getting any younger, you know.”
Raul gave a strangled laugh, and blood trickled out of his mouth. His knees buckled and he almost went down, even with Rafe on one side and Holt on the other, each with one of his arms around their neck.
Angelina gasped and crossed herself, her lips moving in some silent petition. Holt hoped the appropriate saint was on duty; like Rafe, he’d seen plenty of injuries like Raul’s, and the bleeding wasn’t a good sign. Could be something had come unstuck in there.
The interior of the house was blessedly cool, and shadowy because most of the shutters were closed. The entryway had been turned into a waiting room of sorts, with chairs lining two walls.
“This way,” Dr. Brown said, and stepped through an archway on the left, into what would have been a parlor in another house of that considerable size. The examining table was built low to the ground; in fact, Holt knocked a shin