McKettrick's Choice. Linda Miller Lael

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.”

      “Maybe,” Holt agreed. “And maybe you figured a man who made a habit of feeding a starving dog wouldn’t be inclined to butcher a rancher and his wife just for something to do of an evening.”

      Even under the brim of the hat, he saw her eyes shift away from his face, then back again. “He’s going to hang,” she said flatly. “If you knew my father, you wouldn’t waste your time thinking otherwise.”

      “If you knew me,” Holt answered, “you wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

      She took a step toward him, index finger raised for shaking, then stopped. Sighed heavily. Her shoulders sagged a little. “I don’t know who you think you are, Mr. McKettrick, but you don’t want to come up against my father and—my father.”

      “Your father and Isaac Templeton?” Holt prompted.

      “Is that what you were going to say?”

      Color suffused her face. “Just leave. Go back to your wife and children.”

      “I don’t have a wife,” Holt said. “My daughter is with people who love her. And I’m not leaving until I’ve finished my business here.”

      Lorelei opened her mouth, closed it. Smacked the now-empty dishpan against her thigh in apparent frustration. Turned away.

      He whistled to the dog, and she spun about, watching as the hound trotted over to lick his hand.

      “Don’t tease him,” she said anxiously.

      “I’m not teasing him. I’m taking him back to my ranch. We could use a good watchdog.”

      She almost smiled, Holt decided, but damned if she didn’t catch herself in time. “His name is Sorrowful,” she said, in a soft voice. She was a complicated woman, Holt decided. Setting fire to wedding dresses, watching murder trials and loving an abandoned dog enough to bring him supper scraps.

      Holt ruffled the critter’s floppy, misshapen ears. “Howdy, Sorrowful. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

      “Since when do you have a ranch around here?” she pressed, sounding worried. “I know everybody in this county, and you’re a stranger to me.”

      “Since I bought the Cavanagh place,” Holt answered, watching for a reaction.

      Her throat worked. “Next to Mr. Templeton’s spread,” she murmured.

      “You friendly with him, too?” Holt asked lightly. “Or maybe your father is.”

      She bristled. “What are you implying, Mr. McKettrick?”

      He shrugged one shoulder. “Nothing, Miss Fellows. Nothing at all. Now, if I were you, I’d get on home. There are lots of unsavory types in San Antonio these days.”

      She looked him over. “I’m well aware of that,” she said. Then she stiffened her spine, and hitched up her chin again. “You’d better be good to my dog,” she finished. She turned on one heel and marched away into the gathering twilight.

      Sorrowful lived up to his name and gave a forlorn whimper, watching Lorelei go.

      Holt felt like doing the same.

      “A DOG!” Tillie cried joyously, a couple of minutes later, when Holt hoisted the mutt into the back of the buckboard, where he immediately commenced to sniffing the groceries.

      “Sure enough,” agreed John, not so joyously. “He the kind to kill chickens?”

      Tillie was already unwrapping