McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [73]
Holt watched the wagon approaching. When the women arrived, they could look after the baby while the men dug. “Somebody cover that body,” he said, with a nod at the dead rancher. “I don’t want Lorelei or any of the others to see what those bastards did.”
“Not much we can do to hide it,” the Captain said.
“I’ll go out to meet them. Get a blanket and tell them to hold up a few minutes before they come in.”
Holt merely nodded again, took a grip on one of the shovels and headed for a copse of oak trees nearly. The little clearing at the center would do for a plot as well as any other.
Rafe sat down nearby, on a rock, holding the baby. “He must have put up a fuss when he heard all that ruckus,” he mused thoughtfully. “Guess it was just good luck or the grace of God those Indians didn’t hear him.”
“They might not have killed a baby boy,” Holt answered, jamming the shovel into hard ground. “The girls on the other hand—that doesn’t bear thinking about.”
“Makes me want to go home,” Rafe admitted. “See that Emmeline and little Georgia are all right.”
“I feel the same about Lizzie,” Holt said. “But we’re in this thing now, and we’ve got to see it through. Anyway, if there’s one thing we can be sure of, it’s that Pa and Kade and Jeb will look after our womenfolk like they were their own.”
Rafe spared a slight grin. “Hell,” he said. “Far as those three are concerned, a McKettrick is a McKettrick, born that way or married in. I pity the poor fool who thinks otherwise.”
Holt felt a slackening in the muscles between his shoulders as he shoveled up more dirt. There weren’t many things he was sure of in this life, but he knew Rafe was right. If anybody came after a McKettrick, he had best be prepared to deal with the whole outfit, and win or lose, it would be a fight to remember.
The Captain rode out to meet the wagon, as he’d said he would, and came back with an armload of blankets. He covered the rancher with a gentleness that belied his many years of doing hard battle with every enemy he came across, and then fired his six-gun into the air as a signal to John to bring the wagon in.
“Did you see that?” Rafe asked.
For a moment, Holt was confused. “See what?” he asked, with some irritation, as some of the other men took up shovels and spades and joined in the digging.
“This baby didn’t bat an eye when that gun went off,” Rafe said, studying the child. “I don’t reckon he can hear.”
LORELEI’S GAZE went right to the baby nestled against Rafe’s shoulder, but before she could even get down off Seesaw’s back, Tillie was on the ground and running, Sorrowful bounding along behind her.
Lorelei and Melina exchanged glances and rode to the edge of the copse.
Tillie stood staring at the child with her eyes wide and her mouth open. She seemed struck with wonder, like a shepherd coming upon the Nativity.
Rafe smiled at her. “Do you want to hold him?” he asked quietly, while Holt paused to rest on the handle of his shovel and watch. He was up to his knees in the dirt, and Lorelei reckoned the digging for a bad sign. She looked around uneasily.
“What’s his name?” Tillie demanded, as though that were a factor in her decision to touch him or not.
“Don’t know,” Rafe said.
The child tugged at a lock of Rafe’s dark, sweat-matted hair.
Lorelei’s gaze connected with Holt’s. It required an effort, but she broke away and took in the scene she’d been trying to ignore. She saw the shape of a man beneath one of the blankets the Captain had requested, and knew by the graves being dug, and the way some of the men were staring at the burned cabin and shaking their heads, that something truly horrible had happened here.
Bile surged into the back of her throat, scalding like acid, and she swallowed, willing herself not to throw up.
“He’s got to have a name,” Tillie insisted, her voice rising a little. The baby began to cry, an odd, thwarted sound. “Everybody needs a name.”
“You pick one, then,” Rafe said.
“Pearl,” Tillie replied resolutely. Nobody argued.
Melina stepped up to Rafe and held out her