The McKettrick Legend: Sierra's Homecoming. Linda Miller Lael
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to look him full in the face. “I’d hide up in the hills some where,” he said, with the conviction of innocence. “Maybe that canyon where Kade and Mandy faced down those outlaws.”
Doss suppressed a smile. He’d grown up on that story him self, and to this day, he wondered how much of it was fact and how much was legend. Mandy was a sharpshooter, and she’d given Annie Oakley a run for her money, in her time. Kade had been the town marshal, with an office in Indian Rock back then, so maybe it had happened just the way his pa and uncles related it.
“Mighty cold up there,” he told the boy mildly. “Just a cave for shelter, and where would you get food?”
Tobias’s shoulders slumped a little, under all that wool Hannah had swaddled him in. If the kid took a spill from the mule, he’d probably bounce. “I could hunt,” he said. “Pa taught me how to shoot.”
“McKettricks,” Doss replied, “don’t run away.”
Tobias scowled at him. “They don’t live in Missoula, either.”
Doss chuckled, in spite of the heavy feeling that had settled over his heart after he and Hannah had made love and stayed there ever since. Gabe was dead, but it still felt as if he’d betrayed him. “They live in all sorts of places,” Doss said. “You know that.”
“I won’t go, anyhow,” Tobias said.
Doss cleared his throat. “Maybe you won’t have to.”
That got the boy’s full attention. His eyes were full of questions.
“I wonder what you’d say if I married your ma.”
Tobias looked as though he’d swallowed a lantern with the wick burning. “I’d like that,” he said. “I’d like that a lot!”
Too bad Hannah wasn’t as keen on the prospect as her son. “I thought you might not care for the idea,” Doss confessed. “My being your pa’s brother and all.”
“Pa would be glad,” Tobias said. “I know he would.”
Secretly, Doss knew it, too. Gabe had been a practical man, and he’d have wanted all of them to get on with their lives.
Doss’s eyes smarted something fierce, all of a sudden, and he had to pull his hat brim down. Look away for a few moments.
Take care of Hannah and my boy, Gabe had said. Promise me, Doss.
“Did Ma say she’d hitch up with you?” Tobias asked, frowning so that his face crinkled comically. “Last night I said she ought to, and she said it wouldn’t be right.”
Doss stood in the stirrups to stretch his legs. “Things can change,” he said cautiously. “Even in a night.”
“Do you love my ma?”
It was a hard question to answer, at least aloud. He’d loved Hannah from the day Gabe had brought her home as his bride. Loved her fiercely, hopelessly and honorably, from a proper distance. Gabe had guessed it right away, though. Waited until the two of them were alone in the barn, slapped Doss on the shoulder and said, Don’t you be ashamed, little brother. It’s easy to love my Hannah.
“Of course I do,” Doss said. “She’s family.”
Tobias made a face. “I don’t mean like that.”
Doss’s belly tightened. The boy was only eight, and he couldn’t possibly know what had gone on last night in the spare room.
Could he?
“How do you mean, then?”
“Pa used to kiss Ma all the time. He used to swat her on the bustle, too, when he thought nobody was looking. It always made her laugh, and stand real close to him, with her arms around his neck.”
Doss might have gripped the saddle horn with both hands, because of the pain, if he’d been riding alone. It wasn’t the reminder of how much Hannah and Gabe had loved each other that seared him, though. It was the loss of his brother, the way of things then, and it all being over for good.
“I’ll treat your mother right, Tobias,” he said, after more hat-brim pulling and more looking away.
“You sound pretty sure she’ll say yes,” the boy commented.
“She already has,” Doss replied.
Present Day
More snow began to fall at midmorning and, worried that the power would go off again, and stay off this time, Sierra gathered her and Liam’s dirty laundry and threw a load into the washing machine. She’d telephoned Liam’s doctor in Flag staff, from the study, while he and Travis were filling the dish washer, but she hadn’t mentioned the hallucinations. She’d heard the piano music herself, after all, and then Eve had made such experiences seem almost normal.
Sierra didn’t know precisely what was happening, and she was still unsettled by Liam’s claims of seeing a boy in old-time clothes, but she wasn’t ready to bring up the subject with an outsider, whether that outsider had a medical degree or not.
Dr. O’Meara had reviewed Liam’s records, since they’d been expressed to her from the clinic in Florida, and she wanted to make sure he had an inhaler on hand. She’d promised to call in a prescription to the pharmacy in Indian Rock, and they’d made an appointment for the following Monday afternoon.
Now Liam was in the study, watching TV, and Travis was out side split ting wood for the stove and the fire places. If the power went off again, she’d need firewood for cooking. The generator kept the furnace running, along with a few of the lights, but it burned a lot of gas and there was always the possibility that it would break down or freeze up.
Travis came in with an armload just as she was starting to prepare lunch.
Watching him, Sierra thought about what Eve had said on the phone earlier. Travis’s younger brother had died horribly, and very recently. He’d left his job, Travis had, and come to the ranch to live in a trailer and look after horses.
He didn’t look like a man carrying a burden, but appearances were deceiving. Nobody knew that better than Sierra did.
“What kind of work did you do, before you came here?” she asked, and then wished she hadn’t brought the subject up at all. Travis’s face closed instantly, and his eyes went blank.
“Nothing special,” he said.
She nodded. “I was a cocktail waitress,” she told him, because she felt she ought to offer him something after asking what was evidently an intrusive question.
Standing there, beside the antique cookstove and the wood box, in his leather coat and cowboy hat, Travis looked as though he’d stepped through a time warp, out of an earlier century.
“I know,” he said. “Meg told me.”
“Of course she did.” Sierra poured canned soup into a sauce pan, stirred it industriously and blushed.
Travis didn’t say anything more for a long time. Then, “I was a lawyer for McKettrickCo,” he told her.
Sierra stole a sidelong glance at him. He looked tense, standing there holding his hat in one hand. “Impressive,” she said.
“Not so much,” he countered. “It’s a tradition in my family, being a lawyer, I mean. At least, with everyone but my brother, Brody. He became a meth addict instead, and blew himself to kingdom-come brewing up a batch. Go figure.”
Sierra turned to face Travis. Noticed that his jaw was hard and his eyes even harder. He was angry, in pain, or both.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Yeah,” Travis replied tersely. “Me, too.”
He started for the door.
“Stay for lunch?” Sierra asked.
“Another time,”