McKettrick's Choice. Linda Miller Lael

like Joan of Arc bound to the stake.”

      Gabe Navarro laughed, and then a cautious titter spread through the gathering of spectators.

      At last, the starch came back into Lorelei’s knees, and she was able to turn and walk away, holding her head high and her shoulders straight. She looked neither left nor right, and the crowd wisely parted for her, though they stared after her, she knew that much. She felt their gazes like a faint tremor along the length of her spine. Felt Holt Cavanagh’s, too.

      She lengthened her stride and, as soon as she’d turned a corner, leaving the square behind, she hoisted her singed skirts and stepped up her pace, wishing she could just keep on going until she’d left the whole state of Texas behind.

      By the time she reached her father’s front gate, Lorelei was sure Holt Cavanagh—whoever he was—had heard all the salient details of her scandalous story.

      Today was to have been her wedding day.

      The cake was baked, and gifts had been arriving for weeks.

      The honeymoon was planned, the tickets bought.

      Every church bell in San Antonio was poised to ring out the glad tidings.

      It would have been carried out, too, the whole glorious celebration—if the bride hadn’t just found her groom rolling on a featherbed with one of the housemaids.

      “WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?” Holt demanded of his old friend when he’d bribed his way past a reluctant deputy and followed a warren of narrow hallways to find Gabe’s cell. The place was hardly bigger than a holding pen for a hog marked for slaughter; a prisoner could stand in the center and put a palm to each of the side walls, and the board floor was so warped that the few furnishings—a cot, a rusted enamel commode and a single chair—tilted at a disconcerting variety of angles. The stench made Holt’s eyes water.

      “Damned if I rightly understand it.” Gabe gripped the bars as if to pry them apart and step through to freedom. The jovial grin he’d displayed during the burning wedding dress spectacle in the square below his one window was gone, replaced by a grim expression. Being locked up like that would be an ordeal of the soul for most men, but Holt reckoned it as a special torture for Gabe; he’d lived all his life in the open. Even as a boy, if the stories could be believed, Navarro wouldn’t sleep under a roof if he could help it. “How’d you know I was here?”

      “Frank sent a rider up to the Triple M with a message.”

      Gabe let go of the bars, poised to prowl back and forth like a half-starved wolf on display in a circus wagon, but there wasn’t room. His jawline tightened, and his eyes narrowed. “You’ve seen Frank?”

      Holt frowned. “Not yet. I just rode in.”

      Gabe shook his head like a man bestirring himself from a grim vision. “Maybe he’s alive after all, then.”

      “What do you mean, ‘Maybe he’s alive’? You been thinking he might be otherwise?”

      Gabe’s broad shoulders sagged. “Hell if I know,” he said. “I haven’t seen him since the night I was brought in. A month ago, maybe, just after sundown, a dozen men jumped us in an arroyo, where we’d made camp. Beat the hell out of me with rifle butts and whatever else they had handy, and just before I blacked out, I heard a shot. I figured they’d killed Frank.”

      Holt cursed. The pit of his belly seized with the force of a greased bear trap springing shut, and his hands knotted into fists. “You know who they were?”

      Gabe gave a mirthless laugh. “Way they snuck up on us, I figured they had to be Comanches, or at least Tejanos. I didn’t see much, but up close, I reckoned them for white men. My guess is they were hired guns, or maybe drifters.”

      “Hired by whom?”

      At last, the grin was back. It steadied Holt, seeing the old insolence, the old defiance, in his friend’s face and bearing. “‘Whom’?” Gabe taunted. “Well, now, Holt, it seems you must have fallen in with some fancy folks since you left Texas, if you’re using words like ‘whom.’”

      “Answer the question,” Holt retorted. “Which brand were they riding for?”

      Gabe let out his breath. His long hair, black as jet, was tangled and probably crawling with lice; his buckskin trousers and flour-sack shirt were stiff with dirt and rancid sweat. Once as robust as a prize bull pastured with a harem of prime heifers, Gabe was gaunt, with deep shadows under his eyes.

      “I can’t say for sure,” he said at last. “But if I was laying a wager, I’d put my chips on the Templeton outfit. They’re the ones been devilin’ John Cavanagh and some of the other ranchers, too.”

      “Templeton?” the name was unfamiliar to Holt, even though he’d run cattle around San Antonio himself, once upon a time, and thought he knew everybody.

      “Isaac Templeton,” Gabe said, gripping the bars again, giving them a futile wrench with both hands. “He bought out T. S. Parker a couple of years ago.” Navarro paused, squinting as he studied Holt’s face. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “You mean to ride out there and ask a lot of questions. Don’t do it, Holt. The place is a snake pit.”

      “Whatever happened to ‘one riot, one Ranger’?” Holt asked.

      Gabe looked him over. “You’re not a Ranger anymore,” he said quietly. “You’ve been up North, living like a rich man. I can tell by your clothes, and that horse you rode into the square just now.” Navarro tried to smile but failed. “Besides, with Frank dead or holed up someplace nursing a bullet wound, you’re the only hope I have of getting out of here before Judge Fellows puts a noose around my neck. Can’t have you getting yourself gunned down in the meantime.”

      Gabe’s assessment stung a little, but Holt reckoned there might be some truth in it. He worked hard on his corner of the Triple M, but he’d been eating three squares and sleeping in featherbeds for a few years. When he was a Ranger, then an independent cattleman, things had been different.

      “Maybe you’ve gone soft, Navarro,” he said, “but I’m still meaner than a scalded bear. If you met my old man, you’d see just what kind of rawhide-tough, nail-chewing son of a bitch I’m cut out to be.”

      Gabe seemed pleased by this remark, and Holt had the feeling he’d just passed some kind of test. “I’d like to meet your old man,” Navarro said. “’Cause that would mean I was a long ways from this hellhole.”

      Holt reached between the bars, laid a hand on Gabe’s shoulder. “If I have to dynamite this place, I’ll get you out. And I’ll find Frank.”

      “I believe you,” Gabe said simply. “Make it quick, will you? These walls are beginning to feel a lot like the sides of a coffin.” A bleak expression filled his eyes. “I can’t see but a little patch of sky, and I can hardly recall how it felt to walk on solid ground.”

      Holt felt a constriction in his throat. Briefly, he tightened his grip on his friend’s shoulder. “Remember what the Cap’n used to say. This fight will be won or lost in the territory between your ears.”

      Gabe chuckled, albeit grimly. “You suppose he’s still out there someplace—old Cap’n Jack, I mean?”

      “Hell, yes,” Holt replied, without hesitation. “He’s too damn ornery to die, just like my old man.”

      A door creaked open at the far end of the winding corridor.

      “Time’s up,” the deputy called.

      Holt ignored him. “Anything I can bring you?”

      “Yeah,” Gabe said. “A chunk of meat the size of Kansas. All I get in here is beans.”

      “Accounts for the smell,” Holt replied.

      “You comin’?” the deputy demanded. “I don’t want to get into no trouble for lettin’ you stay too long.”