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She heard the carriage doors closing, heard her father and Creighton talking in earnest tones. Oddly, though, another voice supplanted those, an echo rising suddenly in her brain.
It belonged to Holt McKettrick.
Are you crazy?
HOLT TOOK PLEASURE in the look of surprise on the banker’s face when he looked up and saw him standing there, with John Cavanagh beside him.
A moment too late, the man shoved back his swivel chair and stood, extending a hand in greeting. The fancy name plate on his desk read G. F. Sexton. He was probably no older than Jeb, but already developing jowls and a paunch. That was a banker’s life for you, Holt thought. Too easy.
“Mr. Cavanagh!” Sexton cried, fixing his attention on John. “It’s good to see you.”
John regarded the pale, freckled hand for a long moment, then shook it. “Under the circumstances,” he said, “it’s good to see you, too.” Sexton’s gaze shifted to Holt, full of wary curiosity.
Holt didn’t offer a handshake, or an explanation. “We’re here about those loans you called,” he said.
A flush stole up Sexton’s neck, if that narrow band of pallid flesh could be called a neck, and pulsed along the edge of his jaw. “You understand, of course, that business is business—”
“I understand perfectly,” Holt said.
Sexton tugged at his celluloid collar. A fine sheen of sweat glimmered on his forehead. His gaze kept flitting back and forth between Holt’s face and John’s, skittish about lighting too long on either one. “I’m afraid the foreclosure is quite legal, if you’ve a mind to discuss that,” the banker said. He consulted the calendar on the wall behind his chair. “In two weeks, the ranch will be sold for outstanding debts.”
Holt indulged in a slow smile. “Will it?” he asked softly.
Sexton took a half step back. “Mr. Cavanagh owes—”
“Ten thousand dollars,” Holt interrupted, and laid a telegram from his bank in Indian Rock on the desk.
“They’re sending a draft by wire. You should have it by tomorrow morning.”
Sexton got even redder. He fumbled in his breast pocket for spectacles, put them on, read the telegram and blanched. “My God,” he said, and sank heavily into his chair.
“There’ll be another draft sent to First Cattleman’s, up in Austin,” John put in. “You see, my son here just bought my place, lock, stock and barrel. I could have deposited the money here, I reckon, but—you’ll understand, business being business—that I had some concerns about its safekeeping.”
The banker was a few horse-lengths behind. “Your son?” he squeaked.
Holt swallowed a laugh.
“Foster son,” John relented, having had his fun. “Holt’s taken his real daddy’s name—McKettrick—but he went by Cavanagh for a good part of his life.” He braced his work-worn hands on the edge of Sexton’s desk and leaned in. “You tell Mr. Templeton he’ll find Holt a sight harder to deal with than an old black man and a slow-witted girl.”
“Mr. Templeton?” Sexton croaked. “What does he have to do with this?”
“A whole lot, I reckon,” John said smoothly. “You ever think about punchin’ cattle for a livin’, Mr. Sexton? Mr. McKettrick, here, he’s hirin’. Lookin’ for thirty men or so. A season in the saddle might put some color in your cheeks.”
“My knees are bad,” Sexton said fretfully.
“I reckon your conscience smarts some, too,” John replied. “If you’ve got one, that is.” He turned to Holt, his eyes gleaming with the old spirit. “Best we be goin’. Tillie’ll be through at the general store, and there’s Gabe to be looked in on before we head back out to the ranch. Make sure he’s getting the meals my son arranged for, over to the Republic Hotel.”
Sexton rallied. His train was still back a couple of stations. “Austin’s a long ways from here. You might want to reconsider that deposit, Mr. Cavanagh.”
“Then again,” John answered lightly, “I might not.”
Holt chuckled.
“What about you, Mr. McKettrick?” Sexton asked anxiously, standing up again. Even on his feet, he was knee-high to a burro, but he was still steaming along. “You’ll need banking services, I’m sure.”
Holt, in the process of turning away, paused. John had already gained the door.
“You’ve got more guts than I would have given you credit for, Mr. Sexton,” he said. “Goodbye. And don’t forget to give my best regards to Isaac Templeton.”
He joined John on the wooden sidewalk.
“Damn,” John said jubilantly, “that felt good.”
Holt laughed and slapped him on the back. “Let’s collect Tillie and pay Gabe a visit. How long do you figure we have before Templeton comes to call?”
John made a show of taking out his watch. He’d fought on the Union side during the war, and the timepiece, a gift from his captain, was the only memento he’d kept from his days as a Buffalo Soldier, except, of course, for that chunk of cannonball lodged deep in his right thigh. “I reckon he’ll get word by sundown.”
“You think he’ll order a raid on the herd?”
Cavanagh shook his head. “Not without sizing you up first,” he said. “Mr. Templeton, he likes to have the facts in his possession before he makes a move.”
They stepped into the cool dimness of the general store, and the typical mercantile smells of clean sawdust, saddle leather, onions and dust greeted them.
Holt scanned the room for Tillie, found her standing alone at the counter, with a pile of goods stacked in front of her, while the clerk jawed with a cowboy a few feet away. Tillie might as well have been one of the outdated notices pinned to the wall for all the attention she was getting, and her eyes were huge as she watched Holt and her father approach.
“What can I do for you—gentlemen?” the clerk inquired.
“You can wait on the lady, for a start,” Holt said, with a nod toward Tillie.
“I don’t see no lady,” the clerk replied. Scrawny little rooster.
Holt smiled broadly, reached across the counter, took a good, firm hold on the man’s shirtfront and thrust him upward, off the floor. “Then there’s something wrong with your eyesight, my friend,” he drawled, as John stepped between him and the cowhand. “You might want to invest in a pair of those fine spectacles on display in the front window.”
“Mac,” the clerk choked. “Ain’t you gonna do somethin’?”
“No, sir,” Mac said cheerfully, and Holt turned his head long enough to take in the cowboy. “I reckon you’ve got this coming.” He turned easily, resting his weight against the counter. “You Holt McKettrick?” he asked.
“I heard on the street that you might be looking for ranch hands.”
Holt eased the clerk down onto the balls of his feet. “I might be,” he said.
The clerk scrambled along the counter to face Tillie with a feverish smile. “Mornin’, ma’am,” he said. “What can I do for you today?”
CHAPTER 6
“MAC KAHILL,” the cowboy said, as Holt and John loaded Tillie’s purchases into the back of the buckboard. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
“Can’t say as I do,” Holt replied, hoisting a fifty-pound bag of pinto beans off the sidewalk.
“We rode together, a time or two,” Kahill told him.
“I was part of Cap’n Jack Walton’s bunch.”
Holt stopped, giving Kahill a thoroughly doubtful once-over. “You were a Ranger?”
Kahill flashed a grin. “No. I just fetched and carried. Took care of the horses. I was fourteen at the time.”
Holt squinted. “You were that towheaded kid with the freckles, always tripping over his feet and wiping his nose on his shirtsleeve?”
Kahill laughed. “You recollect correctly,” he said. He turned to John, then to Tillie, touching the brim of his hat both times. “I apologize for your poor treatment in the general store, folks. I surely don’t countenance such deeds.”
“It troubles me a little,” Holt told Kahill bluntly, “that you didn’t step in.”
“I didn’t have to,” Kahill replied good-naturedly. “You did.”
“I think we ought to hire him,” John said, rubbing his chin.
The kid had tended horses on a few trips into Indian Territory. So what? That had been a long time back. Today, on the other hand, he’d been a party to Tillie’s mistreatment, if only indirectly, and it seemed mighty convenient, after the fact, to claim he’d been about to take matters in hand with the clerk. “Why?” Holt asked.
“Because we’re desperate,” John said simply.
Kahill’s grin didn’t slip. “I reckon I’ve had more enthusiastic welcomes in my time,” he confessed. “I’m good with a gun, I’ve herded my share of longhorns and I need a job.”
“Thirty a month, a bed in the bunkhouse and grub,” Holt said grimly.
“You provide your own horse and gear.”
“Done,” Kahill said, and put out his hand.
Holt hesitated, then extended his own.
GABE LOOKED MORE like his old self than he had the day before. He was still in need of yellow soap, clean clothes and a week of good meals, but he was coming along.
“That was a damn fine supper you sent over last night,” he said. “Thanks.” His gaze moved past Holt to John. Tillie was waiting up front, in the marshal’s office, the ass-end of a jail being no place for a woman.
“How-do, Mr. Cavanagh. You’re lookin’ spry, for an old soldier.”
He and John shook hands through the bars.
“I reckon I’ll be returning the compliment,” John said, “once you’ve been out of this cage for a month or two.”
“I had another visitor first thing this morning,” Gabe said, keeping his voice low. “Judge Alexander Fellows.”
That caught Holt’s interest. “What did he have to say?”
“That they’re moving me to a cell on the other side of the stockade,” Gabe answered. “So I can watch my gallows being built.”
Holt felt his back teeth grind, and he must have stiffened visibly, because John gave him a sidelong, knowing look. “Easy,” he warned. “We’ve got the better part of a month to straighten this out.”
“You’ll understand,” Gabe intoned, “if that doesn’t sound like a real long time to me.”
“I ran into your lawyer yesterday before I rode out to John’s place,” Holt said. “Worthless as tits on a boar, and he’s pretty friendly with the judge.”
“You’ve got the right of that,” Gabe said. “That wedding dress Miss Lorelei burned in the square yesterday? Bannings was supposed to be the bridegroom.”
Somehow, remembering Lorelei calmly watching that bonfire with her chin high and her arms folded cheered Holt up a little. It amazed him that a woman like Miss Fellows—beautiful, spirited, and obviously intelligent, even if she did lack the common sense to know how fast a blaze like that could spread—would even consider hitching herself to a waste of hide and hair like Creighton Bannings.
“He mentioned that when we met,” Holt said. “Seemed to believe the lady would come around to his way of thinking, sooner or later.”
Gabe gave a snort of laughter. “I’d say later,” he replied. “About a week after the Second Coming.”
Holt raised an eyebrow, curious. “You seem to know Miss Fellows pretty well,” he observed.
“We don’t travel in the same social circles,” Gabe said, “but, yeah, I know her.”
“How?”
“She feeds an old dog behind the Republic Hotel. So did I. Now and then, we ran into each other.”
“And you just happened to strike up a conversation?”
“I like to talk to a pretty woman whenever I get the chance—even if she has the disposition of a sow bear guarding a cub.”
Before Holt could offer a comment, a door creaked open at the far end of the corridor, where there was light and fresh coffee and freedom. The yearning for all those things was stark in Gabe’s face. “She came to the trial every day,” he went on pensively. “Sat right in the front row, and favored me with a smile whenever the judge and Bannings weren’t looking.”
Holt absorbed this, unsure of how he felt about it. On the one hand, the thought stuck under his skin like a burr. On the other, Lorelei Fellows was the judge’s daughter, and possibly sympathetic to Gabe’s cause. Maybe she knew something that might come in handy when the appeal was filed.
Which had better be soon, if Gabe’s gallows was going up on the other side of the stockade.
SURE ENOUGH, she was there, behind the Republic Hotel, with a battered dishpan full of supper scraps. The dog, an old yellow hound with a notch bitten out of one ear and signs of mange, gobbled them up eagerly.
Holt stepped out of the shadows. “Evening, Miss Fellows,” he said.
She started, almost dropped the pan, but she recovered quickly enough. “Mr. Cavanagh,” she said coolly. “Or is it McKettrick? I’ve heard both.” She wore an old calico dress and a tattered shawl, and the brim of a man’s hat hid her face. Evidently, feeding the dog was something she did in secret.
“I go by McKettrick now,” he said. “But you can call me Holt.”
“If I choose to,” Lorelei agreed. “Which I don’t.”
He laughed. “Fair enough,” he said.
She bent, stroked the dog’s head as he lapped up the scraps. There was something tender in the lightness of her hand, something that made Holt’s breath catch.
“What do you want, Mr. McKettrick?” A corner of her fine mouth twitched ever so slightly. “As you can see, there are no fires to put out.”
“Gabe told me you went to the courthouse every day during his trial. I guess I’d like to know why, considering that you didn’t seem all that kindly disposed to him yesterday. I believe you referred to him as a horse thief and a killer?”
She regarded him steadily. “The people he murdered were decent. Maybe I just wanted to see that justice was done.”
