McKettrick's Choice by Linda Lael Miller Page B

to lay a hand to her cheek. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Melina, you shouldn’t have come here.”
    â€œHow could I stay away?” she demanded, covering his hand with her own.
    â€œI’ll see if the Cap’n’s back from the livery stable,” Holt said, turning to go.
    Gabe drew in a sharp breath. “The Cap’n? He’s with you?”
    â€œI ran into him in Waco. He’s getting the horses some water and feed. He’ll be in for a word once you and Melina are through talking.”
    Gabe nodded. “Did you ask him about Frank? Has the Cap’n seen him, or heard anything?”
    Holt had broached the subject to Walton on the way out to the Parkinson place. Now, he shook his head. “He’s got no more idea where Corrales is than we do.”
    A ruckus started up out in the front office, and Holt figured the Captain had completed the horse business. He backtracked with some haste, for fear Walton would lose patience with old Roy and get them all thrown in jail.
    Sure enough, the Captain had the other man by the shirt collar, slammed up against the wall. Roy’s eyes were bugging out and he was sputtering, his wind cut off by Captain Jack’s grip.
    â€œLet him go,” Holt said, without particular urgency.
    â€œYou left that star behind in Waco, remember?”
    With a flourish, the Captain released the jailer and watched with interest as he struggled for breath.
    â€œWe got rules around here!” Roy wailed. “And you can’t just go around chokin’ folks!”
    â€œThe hell I can’t,” the Captain said. “You got any whiskey in this place?”

CHAPTER 13
    T HE FREIGHT WAGON had already arrived when Lorelei, Angelina and Raul got to the ranch, and it was stuck up to its axels in mud. Raul drew the buckboard up alongside and leaped down.
    â€œI put the load inside that old house there!” the driver shouted, in an effort to be heard over the torrent. “Help me unhitch this team.”
    Raul nodded, and Angelina and Lorelei climbed down on their own. Lorelei would have stayed with the men, but Angelina took her arm and dragged her out of the rain.
    â€œIt’s an omen,” the older woman said, with conviction, when they stood under the relative shelter of the leaking roof.
    Lorelei bent to open the rusted door of the woodstove, and it creaked on its hinges. “Is that a mouse’s nest?” she asked, peering inside.
    â€œMadre de Dios,” said Angelina.
    Lorelei shut the stove and turned to survey the piles of provisions, mostly in crates stacked helter-skelter around the room. She picked up a shiny new ax and tested its heft, then set it carefully in a corner. “We won’t need afire, anyway. It’s hot as the far corner of Hades, even with this rain.”
    Angelina went to the door, probably watching for Raul.
    Lorelei bent over the tent pole, thinking it was the size of a ship’s mast, and wondered if the canvas could be unwrapped and draped over the roof. Then she picked through the crates until she found the shiny new coffeepot. It was good-sized, for she expected to entertain as soon as she was settled. And the ranch hands—once she hired them and bought some cattle—would want their coffee.
    â€œWe’ll have to have a fire after all,” she said, starting for the door.
    Angelina turned to look at her. “Where do you think you’re going?”
    â€œWhy, to set the pot in the rain,” Lorelei said, surprised.
    Angelina opened her mouth, closed it again, and went out to join Raul and the driver, who were hobbling the horses.
    Lorelei centered the pot in the middle of the dooryard, pleased with the prospect of hot coffee, and went back inside. Purposefully, she emptied a crate, splintered it into manageable pieces with the ax and poked uncertainly at the mouse’s nest. Nothing scurried or squeaked, so she assumed it was abandoned.
    She had a nice blaze