McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [67]
Having so much on her mind, she had expected to toss and turn a while; instead, she plunged into sleep like someone hurled headfirst down a well.
A stirring awakened her, somewhere in the depths of the night.
Crickets chirped outside the mission, and a coyote howled in the distance. Except for those things, the silence was vast, a dark cloak spread over the sprawling landscape. What, then, had brought her out of that fathomless, dreamless slumber?
Lorelei raised herself onto her elbows and squinted, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. If it hadn’t been for the moon, strained by the colored windows and pouring through the open doorway, she wouldn’t have been able to see at all.
Melina lay sleeping, moonlight illuminating the soft contours of her face. She was still clutching her rosary.
Tillie and Sorrowful were gone.
Lorelei put a hand to her throat as a sense of alarm surged up from her insides. There was no clear reason to be afraid, but she was.
She flung back her blankets, pulled on her high-button shoes and scrambled to her feet. Outside the door, she paused, listening hard, trying to get some idea which way they might have gone. If she shouted Tillie’s name, she’d awaken the whole camp. She choked, swallowing her own voice.
They’d probably gone to the supply wagon, she decided, calming down a little. Yes, that was it. Tillie must have gotten hungry, or perhaps she’d had a bad dream and wanted to be near her father. Physically, she was a woman, but in every other way Tillie was a child.
Lorelei rushed for the wagon, peered under it.
John Cavanagh slept in the grass, snoring lightly. There was no sign of Tillie.
A touch at her elbow made Lorelei jump, and she whirled to see Holt standing behind her, hair and clothes rumpled, yawning.
“What’s the matter?”
Before she could think of an answer, for she was still half-asleep herself, Sorrowful began to bark, somewhere in the endless dark that surrounded them.
Lorelei drew a mental bead on the sound. “It’s Tillie,” she explained, hurrying over the rough ground, Holt taking long strides beside her. “She’s wandered off someplace.”
Sorrowful’s barking intensified, and there was a frantic note to it that made both Lorelei and Holt break into a full run. Lorelei couldn’t hope to match his pace; her feet kept catching on roots and sinking into unseen holes. Still, she raced on. Once, she caught the flash of moonlight on the barrel of Holt’s .45 as he drew it, and a chill spun its way up her spine.
When she came to the stream bank, Lorelei was breathless with exertion and fear. There was Tillie, on her knees on the ground, her face buried in both hands. One of the cowboys stood over her, his hands out in a conciliatory gesture, and Sorrowful bounded around them in a circle.
Holt shoved his pistol back into his holster, grabbed the cowboy by the back of his collar and flung him away from Tillie.
“What happened here?” he demanded.
Tillie raised her head, and the moonlight glimmered in the tears on her face. “He broke Pearl,” she said, with plaintive sorrow. “He broke Pearl. She’s dead.”
Holt whirled on the cowboy.
“I didn’t do nothin’, boss,” the young man said, backing away.
Lorelei regained her breath and hurried to Tillie, kneeling beside her, gathering her close. Tillie clung to her with both arms, sobbing into her shoulder, and Sorrowful ceased his barking to lie down nearby, with a sympathetic whimper.
“Tillie,” Lorelei whispered, holding the girl tightly and watching Holt and the drover over her head. “Tillie, did he hurt you?”
“All I wanted was a little kiss,” the cowboy complained.
“What am I going to do without Pearl?” Tillie wailed.
Holt drew back his fist and struck the other man, first in the face, then in the belly. The cowboy knelt in the grass, vomiting. “I think you done knocked out one of my teeth!” he cried, when he’d stopped gagging.
Holt got him by the shirt and hauled him back to his feet.
Lorelei held her breath.
“Get your