McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [75]
“Sugar will not provide proper nourishment,” Lorelei said. With that, she lifted the lid off the pot of cold beans left over from that morning and, in turn, from the night before. She found a clean cup and plunged it into the pot, then located a spoon, and used that to mash the stuff into a pulp.
Melina smiled, wiped her forehead with one hand, and surrendered the child to Tillie, after instructing her to sit down on a small keg. Lorelei crouched and offered the child a taste of the beans.
He made a face, widened his ice-blue eyes, and then, waving both hands, sampled the fare.
Lorelei beamed at him. “Good boy,” she said.
Tillie looked enormously pleased. “Pearl is a very good boy.”
HOLT, HAVING COME TO the water barrel fixed to the side of the wagon and found the ladle missing, rounded the tailgate to search for it. Seeing Lorelei on her lovely haunches, smiling and spooning something into the boy’s mouth, stopped him with the efficacy of a blow to the stomach.
She was still clad in trail clothes, and covered with half the dirt that lay between San Antonio and this Godforsaken homestead. Her hair was tumbling down from beneath her hat in untidy loops. The sight should not have been profound—but it was.
The moment, there in the midst of some of the worst carnage he’d ever seen, was a holy one.
He caught his breath.
She sensed his presence then, and looked away from the child’s face to meet his eyes.
He cleared his throat. “Where’s the ladle?” he asked, because that was all that came to mind.
Her mouth twitched slightly. “About six inches from your right hand, Mr. McKettrick,” she said mildly, and went back to what she was doing.
Holt felt himself color up, and he was glad as hell that she wasn’t looking at him anymore, even though he’d felt the shift of her gaze like a tearing-away of flesh. “Thanks,” he grumbled, snatching up the ladle, which rested in plain sight on the floorboards of the wagon and would have bitten him if it had been a snake, and headed back to the water barrel. He drank his fill, then sluiced a couple of ladles’ full down the back of his neck.
“Pearl likes beans a whole lot,” Tillie called.
Pearl, Holt thought. Wasn’t it bad enough that the kid had lost his whole family in an Indian raid? Did he have to be saddled with a female name into the bargain?
Rafe wandered over, appropriated the ladle, and wet his own whistle. “We’ve got the graves dug, and the Cap’n and I brought the woman and the little girls out of the embers. That’s a job I’ll see again in my nightmares.” He took more water and, as Holt had done, poured it down the back of his neck. “Seems like somebody ought to say a few words.”
“I’ll do it,” said John, wiping his sweating, sooty face with his bandana as he approached. He hadn’t done much digging, but he’d gathered piles of stones to cover the graves, in the hope that the wild animals wouldn’t get to them. “I can’t say as I have much to say on God’s behalf just now, though.”
“Just ask the Lord if maybe He’d trouble Himself to let four souls pass through the pearly gates,” Rafe said.
“Though from the looks of things around here, I’d say He was away from home, or maybe laid up with the gout.”
If the subject hadn’t been so serious, Holt might have laughed. Rafe was a believer, but not an agreeable one, for the most part, and he had a contentious theology all his own. Holt, on the other hand, was undecided. Sometimes, when he looked out over a broad, green valley, he figured there had to be a God of some kind. On days like that one, his thoughts tended to come down on one of two possibilities: either there was no God at all, or He was a hardhearted old coot who didn’t really give a damn about much of anything.
IT WAS SUNSET by the time the graves were covered. The men stood with their hats off, and John Cavanagh said a brief prayer. “Lord, we don’t know what these folks’ names were. We hope to find out, once we get to Laredo. We thank You that this little boy—Pearl—was spared. Receive these innocent souls unto Your bosom. Amen.”
“Amen,” Lorelei murmured, holding Pearl,