Bride of the Wolf. Susan Krinard

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ wide-open land all around him, beckoning.

      One last trip to the house, and he would shake the dust of the Pecos off his boots forever.

      “Adiós, Jed,” he said, touching the brim of his hat.

      For the first time in three years, Jedediah McCarrick didn’t answer.

       “SOMEONE’S COMIN’ TO Dog Creek.”

      Sean could still hear Jed’s voice as he guided Ulysses down the steep slope of the draw. “She’ll be makin’ things different here,” the old man had said. “With her and the money I got from the sale, I’m goin’ to make Dog Creek what it ought to be. No more debt, Sean. No more money wasted on your gamblin’ and them bad ideas you talked me into.”

      Only it hadn’t quite gone as Jed had planned. The coyotes and buzzards had done such a good job that Jed was already unrecognizable. Only his clothes and his gold tooth would identify him now.

      Sean kept his distance and began looking for the saddlebags. He searched under every rock and bush, scraped at every rough spot in the dirt, circled the area in every direction until he knew he had to stop if he wanted to get back before the sun rose.

      Cursing, Sean gripped the carved ivory handle of his gun and wished he had something to shoot. For the dozenth time he went over the encounter in his mind, searching for a clue, a hint of what Jed had been thinking when he’d hidden his money.

      The old man had surprised Sean when he’d sent the letter asking his nephew to meet him at the western border of the ranch. Jed had made sure to arrive on the very day he’d promised. He’d planned it all carefully, just so he could give Sean the news.

      Sean closed his eyes and leaned over the saddle horn. The first words had been a shock. He’d always had what he wanted from the old man before. The allowance, the education back East … everything but the life he deserved. The life Jed owed him. The life he could have when he sold Dog Creek to the Blackwells.

      Now that was all undone. Sean had shouted at Jed, cursed him, even pleaded at the end. For once Jed hadn’t backed down.

      “You think you’re gettin’ the ranch,” he’d said. “You ain’t gettin’ a penny, not of this money or off the property. As soon as we’re married, it’s all goin’ to her.”

      Some woman he’d found in an advertisement for mail-order brides. A female so desperate that she would expose herself in a newspaper, begging for a man to support her. A bitch from some little town in Ohio who had no claim on anything belonging to the McCarricks.

      Sean had only meant to scare the old man at first. He’d pulled his gun and asked Jed where he’d put the money.

      But Jed hadn’t talked. Sean had almost shot him then and there, until he realized just how stupid that would be.

      It had to look like an accident, of course. One shot past the horse’s ear was all it took. Jed was damn fond of the bronc, but he should have known it had never been fully broken. It tossed Jed so hard that Sean didn’t have to lift a finger to finish the job, though he’d had to work a little harder to drive the horse far enough away that he could run it over a convenient cliff.

      He’d meant to stay and look for the saddlebags. But he hadn’t been thinking clearly. Now he was paying for his lapse.

      Jerking sharply on the reins, Sean turned Ulysses for home. The saddlebags might be lost to him, but he wasn’t about to give up on the rest. He’d already gone looking for the will Jed had spoken of, searching the house as soon as he could manage it without being seen.

      But there had been no will, only a handful of receipts and random papers stashed in a hole in the wall behind the massive kitchen range that Jed had hauled in all the way from San Antonio.

      Sean nicked Ulysses’s sides with his spurs, and the stallion leaped into a run. The cursed thing had to be somewhere. Maybe Jed had it filed away in some bank for safekeeping. If it was anywhere to be found, Sean would find it.

      He rode at a reckless pace back to the house, running Ulysses to complete exhaustion. Most of the other hands, including Renshaw, were still on the range, and Maurice was nowhere in sight. Sean rubbed Ulysses down and returned to the tiny foreman’s cabin he’d taken when Holden moved into the house with Jed. He threw a chair across the room, smashed the mirror over the washstand and nearly put his fist through the window. When he could think again, he sat on the edge of the bed and composed his thoughts to an icy calm.

      Jed had said the woman would be arriving on the next stage. The stage only came to Javelina twice a month, and Jed had been dead less than a week. Another was due in a matter of days. Rachel Lyndon would arrive expecting to marry a settled rancher who would provide for her needs.

      But Jed was gone and she had no lawful claim on Dog Creek. If Sean planned things right, Rachel Lyndon could be encouraged to turn right around and go back to where she came from.

      Sean allowed himself a smile and stretched until his bones popped. He would have a little talk with the drifter who’d come by the other day looking for work. Like most men, he was a sheep, easily led and ready to obey a man who knew how to balance bribery and threat.

      Whistling a tune he’d heard last week at the Blackwells’, Sean went to clean himself up.

       Chapter One

      THE BABY THRUST its tiny fists in the air and wailed.

      “It’s yours,” Polly said, pushing the bundle toward Heath. “Frankie said so right before she died.”

      Frankie was dead. It was strange to think the woman he’d visited every month for two years, who’d given him what his body had to have, was gone. For just a minute he almost felt sorry. Whore that she was, she’d done nothing to deserve dying before her time.

      But this …

      Heath backed away, staring at the red and wrinkled face.

      His? It wasn’t possible.

      But it was. The last time he’d seen Frankie had been about eleven months ago. Heath didn’t know a damn thing about babies, but he thought this one was pretty new.

      “He’s two months old,” Polly said impatiently, holding the baby closer to her chest. “Frankie died bringin’ him into the world. The least you can do is own up to your part in it.”

      The letter in Heath’s pocket was fit to burn a hole through his vest. It had been waiting for him at the house the day he’d found Jed. He’d gotten only a handful of letters before, all from the old man. Never one like this.

      Come right away, the letter said in Frankie’s stiff, uneven writing. You have a son.

      The first thing he’d done was laugh. Frankie was a whore, but she did like her little jokes. Only after he’d read it twice more did he start to think she meant it.

      If he’d been in his right mind, he would have ridden north, the way he’d planned, crossing the Pecos at Horsehead and heading into the Llano Estacado before anyone knew he wasn’t coming back.

      He didn’t know if it was the human part of him or the СКАЧАТЬ