High Country Bride

by Linda Lael Miller

  Rafe took a couple of deep breaths, and his ribs felt as though he’d just been kicked by a mule. He hoped they weren’t cracked, since the night was still young.

  He felt a tap on his shoulder—Jeb—but he had a fist ready when he turned around, and he sent his brother rolling across the barnyard. Jeb came up hard against the horse trough, and was back on his feet in a heartbeat.

  They went at each other like two bulls—his little brother, Rafe thought ruefully, had grown up while he wasn’t looking, and acquired himself a mean punch—and finally had to call the thing a draw. The two of them were evenly matched.

  “Buy you a drink?” Jeb asked, breathing hard and bleeding, as he put an arm around Rafe’s shoulders.

  “Don’t mind if you do,” Rafe replied.

  The cowboys cheered that, too, the fickle bastards. Then one of them brought Rafe’s horse out, saddled and ready to ride. He found it harder than usual to swing up onto Chief’s back, but since Jeb was having the same problem with his mount, his pride didn’t suffer.

  Kade appeared, riding Raindance, as unruffled and smoothly turned out as if he’d just been to church.

  “Where the hell were you when the fight was going on?” Jeb wanted to know.

  Kade grinned. “Watching,” he said. “Rafe, that woman of yours is going to skin you if you go to town. You know that, don’t you?”

  Red handed up Rafe’s hat, and he settled it on his head at a go-to-hell angle. “If I stay,” he said, “Emmeline and I are bound to have harsh words. It wouldn’t be gentlemanly of me to take a chance.”

  Jeb laughed. “Last one past the Indian graveyard buys the whiskey,” he said.

  And the race was on.

  Emmeline gathered the discarded sheets from the grass, grabbing them up haphazardly, bunching them in her arms. Her eyes burned with furious tears but she would not cry. By God, she would not cry.

  When the last of the bed linens had been collected, she marched into the house with them, the laughter of the cowboys, long since silenced, ringing in her ears. She had never in her life been so humiliated as when Rafe had sent her away like a child, then ridden off to town with his brothers.

  There was no telling what they’d do when they got therean>

  She sniffled and raised her chin when she found Concepcion there in the kitchen, waiting for her. She’d already brewed a pot of tea and set out two cups.

  Emmeline deposited the sheets, which would probably have to be laundered again, since she’d hurled them onto the ground in her rush to stop the fight between Rafe and Jeb.

  “They nearly killed each other,” she said, when she trusted herself to speak without losing her dignity completely.“And then they rode into town together!”

  Concepcion smiled calmly. “I heard,” she said, pouring the tea.

  “I’ll bet they’ll be gone all night,” Emmeline fretted.

  “Probably,” Concepcion agreed.

  “There is certain to be more fighting.”

  Concepcion spoke mildly. “Is that what you’re really worried about?”

  Emmeline sat down hard on the bench. “No,” she admitted.

  “I thought not. Don’t fret so, Emmeline. Rafe married you, even it was by proxy, and that means something to him. He’s building a house for you. He’ll come straggling in sometime tomorrow, probably, beat-up, hungover, and otherwise pure as the driven snow.”

  A sweet, fierce hope rose in Emmeline’s heart. “Well,” she said, “he needn’t think he can get away with treating me the way he did.”

  Concepcion patted her hand. “Drink your tea,” she said sweetly.

  * * *

  Holt sat upright in bed, eating the scrambled eggs Concepcion had made for his breakfast. She stood just inside the door now, while Angus drew up a chair.

  “I told them,” Angus said. The old man looked gaunt.

  Holt didn’t trouble himself to hide the bitter satisfaction he felt. “I gathered that,” he said, “when I heard that row in the yard last night. Tell me, did the three of them kill each other, leaving me an only child?”

  Concepcion let out her breath, muttered something in Spanish.

  Holt made no attempt to translate; her tone communicated all he needed to know.

  “They took the news moderately well at first,” Angus said, with a long sigh.“I should have known all hell would break loose once they had time to think it over.”

  Truth to tell, Holt wasn’t really all that concerned about his half-brothers’ hurt feelings, not at the moment, anyway. His leg felt like it had been beaten to a mash with a sledgehammer and then set on fire, and the walls of that bedroom were closing in on him, inch by inch. The one bright spot was sweet little Emmeline. Damned if she wasn’t married to the son and heir.

  He smiled a private smile. “You’ll forgive me, Mr. McKettrick,” he said, “if I don’t wax sentimental over my brothers’ sad plight.” After all, Rafe, Kade, and Jeb had enjoyed the luxuries of a fine home, a birthright, and a family.

  If they had to do some fancy thinking now, well, so be it.

  “There are bound to be some hard feelings,” Angus said. He cleared his throat, glaed at Concepcion, probably seeking courage, and went on. “It’ll take time for everybody to come to terms with the situation. Still, you’re bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, and there’s a place for you, Holt, right here on the Triple M.”

  Holt had already weighed the meaning of the ranch’s name in his mind, having little else to do besides stare at the ceiling and grit his teeth against the pain. He was planning on passing the morning ahead by counting leaves on the oak tree outside his window. “The Triple M,” he reflected aloud.“I reckon that’s a reference to your three sons.” He put just the slightest emphasis on the word three.

  “Yes,” Angus said, leaning forward in his chair. “That’s what it means. But a name is just that—a name. Do you mean to stay on when your leg heals up, or not?”

  The bottle of laudanum rested on the bedside table. Holt reached for it, yanked out the cork, and drank. He’d asked for morphine a few minutes earlier, and Concepcion had refused, saying he couldn’t have another shot for a couple of hours yet. Now, he could see her out of the corner of one eye, looking as though she’d like to snatch the medicine from his hand and put it somewhere out of his reach. He set it back on the bedside table.

  “I haven’t exactly decided,” he replied at last, watching Angus’s face.

  His father was a tough old geezer, Holt had to give him that much. “That’s your choice,” he said, rising from his chair.“If you just came here to make trouble, well, rest assured, you’ve accomplished your purpose.”

  Holt raised an eyebrow, poked at the remains of his eggs, now cold, with the tines of his fork. “That Chandler fellow,” he said carefully. “You manage to buy him out, like you were planning?”

  That perked the old man right up.“How did you know about that?” he demanded, in a rasp.

  Holt smiled.“There was some talk in the bunkhouse.”

  “You.” Angus almost growled the word. “You were the outsider who bought that place out from under me. Chandler wouldn’t give me a name.”

  “Yup,” he said.“I might be willing to sell, though.”

  Angus narrowed his eyes. God, Holt was enjoying this. “How much?” he said, proving what Holt had suspected all along. Angus wanted the Chandler place and wanted it bad. Maybe it was because of the springs that fed the creek flowing past the McKettrick place; why, if a man were to dam that up somehow, and set the water flowing in another direction, the Triple M would be hurting in no time.

  The figure Holt named was twice what he’d paid, which was considerable.

  Concepcion drew in her breath.

  “That’s robbery,” Angus snapped.

  “Water’s valuable,” Holt said, with a shrug. “Good as gold out here.”

  “When I get my hands on Buck Chandler,” Angus rumbled,“I’m going to squeeze the greedy little sum’bitch out of
his hide like a sausage out of its skin. He knew I had first claim on that land. We made the agreement months ago.”

  Holt sighed philosophically. “Folks can be cicious,” he allowed.“Especially when there’s money involved.”

  Angus didn’t answer. He just closed a fist around the laudanum bottle and set it on top of the dresser, over on the far side of the room. Concepcion stepped aside, without a word, to let the big man pass into the corridor, but then she lingered. Her dark eyes blazed as she looked at Holt.

  “What are you trying to do to him?” she demanded, in a fierce whisper.

  Holt set the plate of eggs on the table, where the laudanum had been. He wondered if he could hobble over to the chest of drawers without breaking his other leg, and maybe his neck, in the process. He didn’t answer her question directly.“Business is business,” he said.

  She waggled a forefinger at him. “You’ve set fire to a wasps’ nest,” she warned, “and you’re bound to get stung, Holt McKettrick!”

  Holt felt as if one of those theoretical wasps had just stung him on the ass, but of course he didn’t admit to it. And he sure didn’t have any inclination to explore the fact that he liked hearing himself called by the name he’d been born with, the name he’d coveted in vain for so many years. “I came here because I wanted a look at the man who sired me,” he said evenly.“That was the only reason.”

  “Nonsense,” Concepcion replied. “You must have known he would recognize you. You look exactly as he did, when he was younger.”

  On the contrary, Holt had known nothing of the kind. He’d been too young, when Angus left, to remember him, and if his aunt had had any tintypes of the man, she’d never shown them to Holt. Maybe, though, on some level, his real aim in coming to the Triple M had been to find out if Angus McKettrick would look at him, and see in him some reflection of himself.

  “You are angry, and I suppose I can understand that,” the woman went on, her voice quieter now, but just as angry, and picking up more and more of a Spanish inflection as the words tumbled faster and faster from her lips. “But as God is my witness, if any harm comes to that good man because of you, I’ll see that you rue the day you set foot on this land!”

  “Do my half-brothers know you’re sleeping with dear old Daddy?” he asked.

  She stomped over and slapped him, hard, and with no apparent regard for his injuries. “There are things I will not tolerate,” she said evenly, “and talk like that is one of them.”

  He simply looked at her.

  Her voice dropped to a furious whisper. No apology was forthcoming, it seemed. “What do you think will happen when you turn your back on him, and on this place he’s spent his life’s blood and his sweat to build? When you cause your brothers to turn theirs as well? You will break his heart!”

  “Rafe, Kade, and Jeb aren’t going anywhere,” he said. “They’re too smart for that. As for Pa, well, he was able to put me clean out of his mind for better than thirty years. He shouldn’t have any trouble doing it again.”

  She looked at him with a strange combination of compassion and contempt. “You are so sure you understand Angus, and what he did. Well, you have no idea what he’s gone through, what he’s sacrificed, and you’re too busy feeling sorry for yourself to think about his side of the story!”

  “I can name one thing he’s sacrificed,” Holt replied. “Me.” He yawned.“Is it time for my medicine yet?”

  Kade and Rafe watched blearily as Jeb collected his horse from the livery stable in Indian Rock, hauled himself painfully up into the saddle, and reined toward the south, never even raising his hand to wave farewell. He seemed downright ungrateful, after all the drinks they’d bought him last night, on account of his winning the horse race by passing the graveyard before anybody else.

  “Think we ought to go after him?” Rafe asked. His head throbbed, and he was nauseated, and his troubles wouldn’t even begin ’til he got home and had to face Emmeline.

  Kade pulled his hat brim down low, probably to shield his eyes from the bright sunlight, and shook his head.“I’d sooner rope a mountain lion, tie some string around his balls, and try to teach him tricks,” he said.“That would be easier, and a whole lot less dangerous.”

  “You know,” Rafe observed, studying his brother, “unlike Jeb and me, you came out of this without a scratch or bruise. How’d that happen?”

  “I was always the smart one,” Kade said, with a slight smirk, and spurred his horse in the direction of home.

  Rafe caught up to him. He was beginning to feel fractious again, even though he was painfully sober. “You know, I get the sense that you’re up to something, Brother, and that troubles me greatly.”

  Kade didn’t so much as glance at Rafe. His eyes were fixed on the road ahead. “You’d better get that baby started,” he warned.“There just might be some other new developments in this contest, besides our brother Holt.”

  Rafe frowned. “Like what?” he growled, feeling a touch less brotherly than he had moments before.

  Kade grinned.“Jeb’s not just going off half-cocked, Big Brother,” he said. “He’s got a plan. Or maybe I should say, we’ve got a plan.”

  “What plan?” Rafe asked.

  Kade still didn’t spare him a glance, but Rafe would have sworn his brother was humming the wedding march under his breath.

  Emmeline, newly in charge of egg gathering, pretended not to see Rafe and Kade riding across the creek toward the house and walked on to the chicken coop, her back straight, her basket swinging in one hand. If that reprehensible man thought he was going to be welcomed back with open arms after the scene he’d made, he was deluded.

  Sure enough, she heard his voice outside the coop, even over the squawking of the hens. He was talking to his horse.

  Good thing, she reflected loftily. The horse was far more likely to answer him than she was.

  She reached under a hen, collected two large brown eggs, and set them carefully in her basket. When she’d first undertaken the task, she’d been afraid of the chickens but now, after just a few days, she approached the roost confidently.

  “Emmeline?”

  Rafe’s shadow fell across the floor of the hen house, and the layers began to cackle and fret. Red feathers filled the air.

  Emmeline turned around slowly, saw her husband looming in the small, uneven doorway. He had the nerve to smile at her, too, just as if nothing had happened between them.

  She took one of the eggs out of the basket and lobbed it at him, taking great pleasure in the way it splattered on the middle of his chest, and in the shocked expression on his face. A slimy double yolk ran down his front, and she was emboldened, by her good aim, to throw another.

  Rafe let out a furious whoop. “Damn it, Emmeline,” he said.

  She hit him in the forehead with the next one.

  He wiped his face, took a step toward her. “Why, you little—”

  “You stay back, Rafe McKettrick,” she warned. She was out of ammunition, but he didn’t have to know that. “I swear I’ll let you have it again if you take another step.”

  For a moment, he looked as though he’d call her bluff. Then, to her great relief, he turned and strode away, covered in raw egg, leaving her alone with a flock of highly disgruntled hens.

  “Why, bless your heart,” Angus said, in response to Phoebe Anne’s shy inquiry that night at supper, “of course there’s still going to be a party.”

  Emmeline, who was still studiously ignoring her errant husband, smiled at Phoebe Anne. “You’ll wear the blue dress, won’t you? The one Becky and I picked out in town?”

  Phoebe Anne shifted a little on the bench next to Kade, looking uncomfortable.“Concepcion was kind enough to lend me the money I need to get back home. I was thinking maybe I ought to leave right away.”

  “Is that what you want?” Concepcion asked gently. “The party will be a memorable one.”

  Phoebe Anne lowered her eyes. “I don’t know that it would be proper for me to act
in a frivolous way, after what happened.” She looked around the table, from one face to another.“I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but—”

  An awkward silence descended.

  In the end, Kade was the one to break it. He laid a hand on Phoebe Anne’s forearm.“One way or the other,” he said quietly,“we’ll understand. If you’re ready to leave for home, I’ll drive you to town and put you on the stage myself.”

  Emmeline, stealing a glance at Rafe from under her lashes, saw him narrow his eyes as he watched the exchange between Phoebe Anne and his brother.

  Tears sprang to Phoebe Anne’s eyes. “I don’t have much to pack up. I could be ready tomorrow—Pa and Mam are going to need my help on the farm, so the sooner I can get there, the better.”

  “Fine,” Kade said.“Tomorrow it is.”

  Angus was determined to steer matters onto cheerier ground. Since Holt’s injury, and the subsequent revelations, he’d been subdued, so it was nice to know he was looking forward to a social event. “We’ll set some men to working on building that dance floor first thing in the morning,” he said.

  Rafe tried to catch Emmeline’s eye, but she dodgis glance.

  Kade swung a leg over the bench and stood, carrying his plate and utensils to the sink. “Folks will come from miles around,” he said, “if only to find out if the rumors are true: Rafe’s married, and Angus McKettrick really has himself another son.”

  Angus’s jaw tightened, and a frightening flush surged up his neck. His jovial mood was gone.“You got anything else to say, Son?” he demanded. “If you do, let’s hear it, right now.” A vein bulged in his temple. “By God, at least you have the guts to stand your ground. That’s more than I can say for Jeb.”

  Rafe’s eyes flashed at this, but he said nothing. Kade, on the other hand, spoke right up. “Jeb always thought every word that came out of your mouth was gospel,” he told their father evenly. He stood beside Angus’s chair now, leaning down, his voice pitched low. “When he found out different, well, I guess it set him back a ways.”

  Angus sighed. “You think you have to defend your brother to me? I’m his father, dammit. Nobody on the face of this earth cares more about him than I do!”