Linda Lael - Mckettrick's Choice

THE 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.

“I 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.

“It’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.

“Madre 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 a fire, 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.

“We’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?”

“Why, 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 going when Angelina returned and let out a little shriek.

“Lorelei,” she cried, rushing over and tugging open the stove door. “The chimney!”

Lorelei frowned, assessing the crooked metal pipe disappearing through the roof. Smoke began to billow out through the opening in the stove and seep through heretofore invisible gaps in the pipe.

“For heaven’s sake,” she marveled.

Angelina stabbed at the fire with the handle of Lorelei’s brand-new broom, chattering in Spanish. “Water,” she coughed. “Get me some water!”

Lorelei hesitated, confused, then dashed outside to get the coffeepot, already half-full of rain. She handed it to Angelina, who promptly flung the contents into the stove. There was a puny sizzle, and then Angelina straightened, shutting the squeaky little door against the smoke.

“From now on,” Angelina said evenly, “I will make the coffee.”

Lorelei snatched up a blanket and waved it, but the smoke met the veil of rain at the door and rolled back inside.

Thunder shook the roof.

“A bad omen,” Angelina reiterated, crossing herself.

“Nonsense,” Lorelei said, reclaiming the broom. “With a little straightening up, this house will be cozy.”

Raul came inside, followed by the driver. Both of them were drenched, but then so were Lorelei and Angelina.

“I smell smoke,” said the driver.

They all sat down on crates and stared at each other.

“I believe I’ll ride one of them horses back to town,” the freight man said presently. “Plenty of other mounts, if you all want to go along.”

Raul looked longingly toward the door.

“I’m staying right here,” said Lorelei.

“That’s your privilege, ma’am,” the fellow answered, rising from his crate. Raul stared down at his hands, and Angelina shook out her skirts.

The driver took his leave, and Lorelei rose to watch him go. He mounted one of the four horses, abandoning his wagon, and set out for San Antonio. The remaining three followed along, without benefit of a lead rope.

“He would have been much wiser to spend the night,” she observed. “He could be struck by lightning along that road, and, anyway, he’ll have to come back to get his wagon.”

Neither Angelina nor Raul spoke, or even looked in her direction.

It was up to her, Lorelei decided, to set a cheerful tone. “Raul,” she said, bending to pick up the coffeepot Angelina had dropped after putting out the flames. “Perhaps you could make a bonfire in that copse of oak trees next to the water. We’ll need one for cooking.”

Raul looked at her as though she’d just risen from the dead.

“A bonfire?” he echoed.

Angelina sighed. “Just do it,” she said forlornly.

Raul went out.

“We’d better get into dry clothes,” Lorelei said. “Warm as it is, we could take a chill. I’ll brew up a nice pot of tea.”

“How do you plan to do that?” Angelina asked reasonably.

“Why, I’ll just catch rain water—or get some from the creek—and set it on the fire to boil.”

“And how will you go to and from this fire without getting wet all over again?”

“Oh,” said Lorelei.

“Yes,” said Angelina. “Oh.”

Raul was gone for perhaps a quarter of an hour, and when he returned, he looked defeated.

“There is no dry firewood,” he said.

Lorelei and Angelina, wearing dry clothes, sat on crates, brushing the rain out of their hair.

“We shall have to do without our tea,” Lorelei said bravely.

IN THE DAMP, thin light of dawn, Lorelei gazed up at the cobwebs swathing the ceiling rafters like entangled ghosts. She’d slept in her clothes, on a pallet of blankets, and her skin was peppered with chigger bites. On the other side of the ranch house, which was, she admitted to herself, really just a cabin, Angelina and Raul slumbered on, their soft snores interweaving.

The remnants of last night’s rain dripped through holes in the roof, the chimney was still stopped up with birds’ nests, dirt and layers of soot and she would have sold her soul for a cup of hot, fresh coffee.

By now, her father knew that she’d not only defected from his household and claimed her property and what remained of her funds, but stolen his servants as well. He was probably livid. No, no probably about it, she thought, squaring herself to face reality.

Judge Alexander Fellows was surely in a fury, and even now taking steps to deal with his rebellious daughter.

Isaac Templeton’s vast spread sprawled on one side of her little ranch, and Holt McKettrick’s on the other. For all her brave thoughts to the contrary, a range war was a very real possibility, and if it happened, Lorelei would most likely be caught square in the middle.

She didn’t know how to ride. She didn’t know how to shoot.

She didn’t own a single cow, or a horse.

So why, she wondered, smiling, did she feel so exhilarated?

“GOOD GOD,” said Holt McKettrick, right out loud, when, riding along the creekbank, with Tillie’s dog trotting along behind his horse, he saw Lorelei Fellows kneeling on the other side, splashing her face with water.

She couldn’t have heard him; he was still a hundred yards away, at least, but she looked up, just the same, and took him in with a visible lack of enthusiasm.

The dog, spotting her, barked exuberantly and plunged right into the stream, paddling toward her for all he was worth.

Lorelei’s sour expression turned sweet as she watched Sorrowful make his way across. He came up onto the bank beside her and shook off the creek water with a mighty effort, making her laugh aloud, the sound ringing like church bells of a Sunday morning.