Emily Carmichael - How To Lasso A Cowboy

Then he would pay a few calls.

He would find his brother and sister.

Then he would reclaim his family’s heritage.

If it was the last thing he did.

ELIZABETH TOOK A deep breath as the stranger rode away.

Not a stranger. Marilee’s brother.

Her hand shook as she replaced the rifle on the shelf above the fireplace.

Had she done the right thing?

The intruder had looked dangerous. Even if he was who he said he was, his father had threatened a government official. His brother was an outlaw who had been rustling their cattle. This man had looked more than capable of both.

Marilee was safe here.

Elizabeth told herself she couldn’t just hand the child over to someone she didn’t even know for sure was related to her young charge.

He would be back, though, if he was who he said he was. He would find out in town that she had taken the youngest Sinclair into his former home.

But she hadn’t wanted to let him into the house. She and her father had been threatened repeatedly. And maybe he wasn’t even telling the truth. Maybe he was a friend of the past owners, trying only to get inside. She kept telling herself that.

She had heard of the Sinclairs, knew there were three brothers missing, but when they hadn’t been heard from for months and months, the town and military officials believed them dead.

Why hadn’t he returned earlier if he were really Seth Sinclair? And where were the other brothers? Would they join with the one already outlawed?

If only her father had a few more men, but they’d had difficulty finding good experienced hands. Most local men were Texans to the bone, resentful of the new government and the Northerners who had come south. “Carpetbaggers,” the McGuires and other newcomers had been called more than once. It was a swearword in Texas. She had been told- unkindly-what it meant, that it referred to people who got off a train or a stagecoach with nothing but a carpetbag in hand and ready to steal anything they could from hardworking farmers and ranchers.

Major Delaney had assured her and her father that the rebs had forfeited their land when they left it to fight against the Union, that they couldn’t pay the taxes, and if loyal citizens like her father didn’t buy it for pennies on the dollar, then someone else would.

She had never liked the idea, but her father glowed with the prospect of being a landowner, a “squire,” he would say, such as those who had forced him from Ireland.

In a life marked by one failure after another, he’d finally found his pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. He had a way of ignoring the hatred in the community and enjoyed, instead, the company of others like him: men and women lured south by Major Delaney, who headed the Union forces in the Texas hill country.

Her father loved this land. As opposed to some other areas of Texas they’d traversed, it was green, veined by streams and dotted by trees. With the land came cattle. Even horses. He had never ridden before and it had taken weeks before he could sit a horse without falling off or being thrown. Elizabeth had never seen him so determined.

Interest had always quickly died before. He was a typical Irishman, full of charm and blarney. He’d always been immensely likable. But he had never stuck to anything before. He would always turn to drink, instead. He hadn’t done that here. She prayed he wouldn’t.

Still, she didn’t like the guilt that nibbled at her.

She reassured herself that the man who had ridden up to the ranch was a traitor to his country. He looked like a brigand, and he certainly didn’t look like someone who could care for a child. Marilee was finally losing the tight, pinched look she’d had since seeing her father die, and the fierce nightmares that had kept her screaming night after night were becoming less frequent.

If he is who he claims, he has every right to her.

But what would it do to Marilee?

And to me?

Elizabeth had given up on any idea of becoming a mother. She had once wanted children more than anything else. But she moved with her father from one location to another, often searching for him in taverns, before he lost what little money she and, sometimes, he earned. He’d had to leave Boston just ahead of the law after becoming embroiled in a dubious scheme.

Then he had met a man in a Chicago tavern who had made him an offer he could not refuse. On behalf of a third party, the man said he was looking for men to go to Texas. Land was available. Good land.

Land had always been her father’s dream. All his getrichquick schemes had been for land. When one after another failed, he drank more heavily.

Elizabeth loved him. He’d been both mother and father to her after her mother died on the voyage from Ireland. He could have abandoned her, but somehow he’d always found a woman-usually a widow-who would look after her. Some more carefully than others. All with the hope that Michael McGuire would marry them. Then one night he would leave, taking his daughter with him and often as many of the widow’s possessions as he could carry.

He loved her with totality and she did the same, cooling her conscience with the knowledge that what he did he did for her.

This piece of land-McGuire land-had broken that pattern. She had seen a new clarity in his eyes, new determination. He worked harder than he’d ever worked. He had learned to ride, to mend a fence. He had hope. Real hope this time.

And she had Marilee.

No one was going to take either away.

SETHrode into Canaan, a small farming town twenty miles east of his ranch.

By God, it was still his ranch.

Like everything else in Texas, Canaan had changed. Union uniforms were everywhere. He took fierce pride in his own worn Confederate gray trousers. They were all that survived imprisonment and the journey that followed it. The rest of his uniform was long gone.

He wore a worn shirt and a thin coat against a wind that had grown cold. He remembered the quick change of weather in fall. One day as sweet as a day in May, the next ferocious winter.

He considered the few coins he had. Enough to buy Chance some deserved oats and himself a bath and shave. Perhaps then he wouldn’t scare women and children.

Some clean clothes. Perhaps he would feel halfway human again.

His thoughts went back to the woman standing in the doorway of his house. He didn’t like the way she kept intruding into his thoughts.

Still, he admired her courage.

Hell, any Texas woman would have done the same.

And yet it had been obvious to him that she’d not been born and raised to confront hostile men with a rifle.

The streets of the town were filled, but mostly with uniforms. His stomach muscles tightened. He had never believed in the war and had watched the clouds approach over four years ago with apprehension. Yet there had never been a question of not going with his brothers and his friends. He was fighting for his state, not against the Union. His family had never had slaves, but he had firmly believed that Texas had the right to write its own destiny.

It had been prison that had turned duty into hatred. He had watched men die needlessly because of sickness and starvation. Now he had only contempt for the occupying army.

There were new buildings. He thought about riding to the sheriff ’s office but decided his best course of action was the saloon. Abe Turling would fill him in on everything. He always knew everyone’s business.

He dismounted and tied the reins to a hitch post and went inside.

In the past, he had always been surrounded by friends on entering the saloon. Now his gaze found only unfamiliar faces.

A few Union officers sat at a table with two men Seth didn’t recognize. One was thin with a pale complexion and sour expression. The other was a large man with a goatee. One man stood alone at the end of the bar. With a start, Seth noticed the stranger wore a marshal’s badge.

No one else.

But Abe stood in back of the bar, looking at him with narrowed eyes, obviously trying to decide whether he meant trouble or not. Abe Turling had never permitted trouble in his establishment.

Seth strode to the empty end of the bar, ignoring the curious stares directed his way.

Abe moved toward him, a frown on his face.

“Abe? Don’t recognize a good customer?”

Abe stared at him for a moment, then a smile split his lips.

“Seth. Ain’t you a sight for sore eyes.” His gaze quickly surveyed the room, then returned to Seth. “We figured you for dead.” He poured Seth a glass of whiskey. “Looks like you need this, boy.”

Seth hadn’t been a boy in a very long time but he took the glass and took a deep swallow.

He started to dig in his pocket, but Abe shook his head. “On the house.”

Abe was uncommonly frugal and had never been known to give a drink on the house.

Seth’s puzzled glance was met with a warning expression, then a gesture of his head indicated Seth should go into a back room used for private poker games.

Seth nodded, took another swallow, and Abe turned away to another customer.

Seth watched for several moments. Eyes glanced over him, then dismissed him as a saddle tramp. He gulped down the rest of the whiskey, realizing that not only had Abe donated the drink, he’d donated a glass of his good stuff.

It burned its way down his throat and warmed his stomach, then he went into the hall and opened the door to the private room.

He had played poker here many a night. It was reserved for the locals, for a handful of friends who wanted to play serious poker without onlookers. Seth had always sat in the same chair. His friends, Nathaniel, Gabe, and Quin, sat in the others. The fifth seat switched around.