McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [9]
Fellows’s mouth tightened. “The Indian.”
Holt did some tightening of his own, but it was all inside, out of the judge’s sight. “The Texas Ranger,” he said.
The other man shrugged. “I’m afraid Mr. Navarro’s past glories, whatever they might be, were rendered meaningless by the murder of a settler and his wife. He butchered them with a Bowie knife and then stole their horses.”
“He didn’t kill anybody,” Holt maintained. “Or steal any horses.”
“You’re entitled to your opinion, Mr. McKettrick,” Fellows said, with false regret. “However, as I said, your friend has determined his own fate. The knife used to cut those poor souls to ribbons was his, and the horses were found penned up outside that lean-to he calls a home.”
Holt didn’t bother to argue. He knew conviction when he butted heads with it. Evidently, Judge Fellows was as unreasonable and ill-tempered as his daughter. “Who represented him? During the trial, I mean?”
“Creighton Bannings,” the judge said, nodding toward the front walk, visible through the long leaded-glass window beside the front door. “Here he is now.”
Holt turned, frowning thoughtfully. Bannings. Where had he heard that name before? The answer tugged at the edge of his mind, staying just out of reach.
There was a brief, obligatory knock, then Bannings strolled in, fidgeting with his tie. He was tall, as tall as Holt, but leaner, and his clothes, though expensive, were rumpled. The face, fine-boned and too pretty, was as familiar as the name, but Holt still couldn’t place the man.
“Holt McKettrick,” Holt said.
“I remember you as Cavanagh,” Bannings replied. He put out a hand, hail fellow well met, and Holt hesitated a moment before shaking it.
“I guess I ought to remember you, too,” Holt allowed, “but I can’t say as I do.”
Bannings smiled, showing white but crooked teeth. “We got into a fight once, at a dance, over a girl. I believe we were sixteen or seventeen at the time. John Cavanagh hauled you off me by the scruff of your neck.”
It all came back to Holt then, clear as high-country creek water. So did the enmity he’d felt that night, when he’d found Mary Sue Kenton crying behind her pa’s buckboard because Bannings, down from Austin to visit his country cousins, had torn her sky-blue party dress.
Holt felt a rush of primitive satisfaction, recalling the punch he’d landed in the middle of Bannings’s smug face five minutes after he’d turned Mary Sue over to the care of a rancher’s wife. For a reason he couldn’t define, he glanced toward the stairs, where he’d last seen Lorelei.
“I understand you defended Gabe Navarro,” he said, after wrenching his brain back to the business at hand.
Bannings grimaced, resigned. “I fear I wasn’t successful,” he admitted.
Holt’s gaze strayed to the judge, shot back to Bannings. “You a friend of the family?” he asked.
“I’m about to marry the judge’s daughter, Lorelei,” Bannings said.
Holt gave him credit for confidence. “Given the fact that she set fire to her wedding dress in a public square this afternoon,” he ventured, “it would seem there’s been a change in plans.”
Bannings looked pained, but the expression in his eyes was watchful. “Lorelei has a temper,” he admitted. “But she’ll come around.”
Having been a witness to the burning of all that lace and silk, Holt had his doubts, but he hadn’t come here to discuss what he considered a private matter. “Gabe Navarro,” he said, “is an old friend of mine. We were Rangers together. He’s innocent, and he’s being treated like a dog. Just now, I’m wondering why you didn’t file an appeal.”
“How do you know I didn’t?”
“I read the paperwork over at the courthouse,” Holt said. “Along with the clerk’s notes. Seems to me, you didn’t put up much of an argument.”
Bannings glanced questioningly at the judge, which confirmed a few suspicions on Holt’s part. Gabe’s trial had been a monkey show, as sorry as the case against him.
“I did my best,” Bannings said, a little defensively.
“I’m thinking