The Man from Stone Creek. Linda Lael Miller

rested a light hand on Ben’s shoulder. “The child’s in a state,” she pointed out, as if Mungo didn’t have eyes in his head to see that for himself.

      The boy shuddered. He was fragile, as his mother had been, God rest her soul. Elsie had died having him, and sometimes Mungo still felt a pang of grief when he recollected her. For the most part, though, he was glad to be shut of Elsie, same as he was his first wife. Hildy’d given him three strong sons, but she’d been good for nothing much besides. Tended to weeping spells and fits of sorrow. Always pining for the home folks back in Pennsylvania, that was Hildy. One day, with winter coming on, like it was now, he’d herded Garrett, Landry and Rex to town for boots. Hildy had taken his best hunting rifle, gone around behind the chicken coop, stuck the barrel in her mouth and pulled the trigger.

      Blew the whole back of her head off, and he’d found her like that.

      The memory made him set his jaw. “I don’t like to encourage weakness in my boys, Undine,” he said firmly. “That dog’s small now, but he’ll be big as a yearling calf before you know it.”

      Undine tilted her head to one side and gave him that look, the one she got when she meant to have her way. “Ben can keep him in his room for now. You’ll never even know he’s here.”

      By that time, Ben was staring up at Undine, openmouthed, his eyes round with amazement.

      “Say it’s all right, Mungo,” Undine crooned.

      Ben was breathing easier. He turned his gaze slowly back to his father’s face. “I’ll take Neptune to school with me, come Monday mornin’,” he said on a rush of air. “That way, he won’t be getting underfoot around here all day.”

      “A dog’s got no business in a schoolhouse,” Mungo groused, testy because he knew he’d been bested. He’d never have given in to the boy, but Undine had ways of making a man wish he’d done otherwise if he went against her grain.

      “I can’t leave him here, Pa,” Ben told him. “They’ll hurt him if I do.”

      Mungo cursed. “All right,” he said. “All right! But if I trip over that mutt one time—”

      A smile lit Ben’s face. “You won’t, Pa. I promise you won’t.” With that he ran for the back stairs, still squeezing that infernal pup.

      “He’ll grow up to be just like that Singleton fella, if this keeps on,” Mungo muttered. He shook his head just to think of one of his sons, with Donagher blood flowing in his veins, mewling over some stray bitch’s get found by the side of the road. It would have been a far better thing, to his mind, if Garrett and Landry had drowned that useless hank of hair and hide and been done with it.

      Undine stepped in close, put the cool, smooth palms of her hands to either side of his face. “You’re too hard on him,” she said, breathing the words more than saying them. “He’s barely twelve years old, Mungo.”

      “When I was twelve years old,” Mungo rumbled, “I was mining coal in Kentucky. Supporting my ma and two sisters.” It still plagued him sometimes, the memory of those hard and hopeless days—never saw the sunshine, it seemed, or drew in a breath of clean air. One day, he’d just had enough. Laid down his shovel for good and headed west, working as a roustabout for the Army as far as Ohio, then taking whatever job he could to patch together a living.

      In time, he’d saved up a good bit of money, and then, when he was twenty-one, he’d struck it lucky in the California gold fields and bought himself the beginnings of the vast cattle ranch he owned today. Still troubled his conscience, now and then, the way he’d left Ma and the girls to look out for themselves, but he reckoned they’d managed. He’d sent them money, when he could, but never got so much as a letter back to say thanks.

      It was like his mother to hold a grudge, and mostly likely she was dead by now anyway. He wondered sometimes how his sisters had fared, if they’d married and had children, but he’d long since resigned himself to not knowing.

      Undine touched his top shirt button, brought him back from his somber wanderings. “Times are different now,” she said. “Folks live gentler than they used to.”

      “You’re in a kindly frame of mind today,” Mungo remarked fondly, resting his forehead against Undine’s.

      She smiled, pulling back to look into his eyes. “Maybe it would be a good thing,” she said, very quietly, “to send Ben away to school. There are some fine places in San Francisco. We could take him there, get him settled, and have ourselves a little honeymoon trip in the bargain.”

      Mungo frowned. “That would cost a pretty penny,” he said.

      “The boy would be making his own way in no time,” Undine reasoned. Again she smiled, and even though Mungo knew he was being handled like a hog balking at a gate, he didn’t mind. “And you’d never miss the money. You’re the richest man in this part of the Arizona Territory, if not the whole of it. And I would so enjoy being fitted for some fine dresses, instead of ordering ready-mades out of Maddie Chancelor’s silly catalogs.” She sighed and her eyes glistened, wistful and faraway. “Sometimes I get such a loneliness for the city, stuck out here the way we are, it’s like an ache inside me. Makes me just about frantic to get away.”

      Her words struck a chill in the depths of Mungo’s crusty soul. Undine was like a brightly plumed bird, a spot of color in a grim landscape. Without her, the days would be a hollow round of hard work, and the nights—well, they’d be unbearable.

      “You’re not thinkin’ about leavin’ me, are you?” he asked, his voice so hoarse it felt like rusty barbed wire coming out of his throat. He’d met Undine on a cattle buying trip up toward Phoenix, a year before, wooed her with what geegaws he could find in the shops, and brought her home as his wife. She’d been reluctant, until he’d shown her the size of the herd he and the boys would be driving back down to Haven.

      “A lady thinks about all sorts of things,” she admitted. “Please, Mungo. If I have to pass the winter in this place, I might go mad.”

      Talk of madness made Mungo profoundly uneasy, deep in his spirit. Undine didn’t know about Hildy and the way she’d given up on living; he’d told her very little about his two previous marriages, other than to say that Garrett, Landry and Rex were by his first wife and Ben by his second.

      “The boys can handle the ranch for a few months,” Undine wheedled, looking up at him with imploring, luminous eyes.

      Mungo huffed out an exasperated breath. “Leave them in charge,” he said, “and we’d be lucky if we came back to an inch of land and a bale of moldy hay next spring.”

      “You’ve got that banker, Mr. James, to ride herd on them,” she replied. He knew by her tone that she was stepping lightly, picking her way from one idea to the next, though she’d long since mapped out the route in her mind. She bit her plump lower lip. “I might just have to go by myself if you won’t come with me.”

      Mungo was no fool. He knew that if Undine wanted to go to San Francisco, or anywhere else, she’d find a way to do it, with or without him. He’d never dared to ask how she’d wound up in Phoenix, but he was pretty sure it had to do with some man. “I’ll think about it,” he said in a low voice, but it felt as if the words had been torn out of him, like a stubborn stump wrenched from the ground by a team of mules.

      She brightened, pretty as a pansy after a summer rain. “Good,” she whispered. “That’s good.”

      * * *

      SAM SADDLED the nameless horse an hour after sunset, consulted the written instructions the major had given him before he’d left Stone Creek, even though he knew them by heart. Across the river, on the Mexican side, he was to find a certain cantina, order a drink and wait. He’d be told where to go from there, to meet up with Vierra.

      The river was wide, shallow and washed with starlight. He made the crossing without getting his pant legs wet above the knee, though his boots filled to overflowing.

      On