Emily Carmichael - How To Lasso A Cowboy

“He probably would have hanged me had it not been for Danny and Micah, who broke into the jail and freed me. Now they’re wanted as well. We’ve been hiding out since.”

Seth tried to subdue his anger. “Abe tells me he’s grabbing other ranches.”

“I expect him to leave the army soon. He’s already starting to bankrupt the men he brought to Texas. His bank loaned them money, now it’s foreclosing on them. Once out of the army, he can get their land for even less than they paid for it.”

“How?”

“Rustling, for one. He’s making sure no one can meet their payments.”

“I thought you-”

“We’re taking a few cows from Delaney’s friends and giving the meat to some families,” he said. “But the main rustling is being done by Delaney. At first he just offered way below market prices; the fools he lured here took them. Then they caught on, refused to sell to him. So he’s rustling cattle and blaming it on us. More than a few homes and barns have been burned. Horses stolen.”

“Why haven’t you left?”

“Marilee. And you and the twins,” he said simply. “Everyone believed you were dead when we didn’t hear anything for so long. Everyone but Pa and me. I kept hoping one of you would return, and someone had to be here to tell you what happened. But I couldn’t keep Marilee with me, not being hunted like I am. I wasn’t ready to leave her with McGuire one day longer than necessary. The only hope I had was to expose Delaney and clear my name.” He looked at Seth. “Now that you’re here, you can take Marilee.”

“She doesn’t know me,” Seth said.

“You’ve seen her?”

“Yes.”

“She’s all right? I’m told she is, but…” Agony was in Dillon’s tightlipped frown. “There was no one else to take her.”

Seth glanced around at his brother’s companions scattered around the room.

Dillon apparently saw the question in his eyes. “Their families are either dead or under attack. There’s hardly a ranch that hasn’t been hit. Homes and barns burned. Ranchers killed. But the McGuires are safe enough for now, safe until Delaney leaves the service and takes their land as well.” He laughed bitterly. “For the moment, Marilee is safer with a carpetbagger than one of our own.”

“Elizabeth McGuire was attacked on the way to town by four masked men. They gave the rebel yell.”

The men looked at each other. “It wasn’t us,” Micah Roberts said.

Dillon’s face went white. “Was Marilee with her?”

“No. I came along. The horse had bolted. I was able to stop it before she was hurt. The attackers turned and ran when they saw me. She might well have been killed.”

Dillon stared at him. “You saved McGuire’s daughter.”

Seth shrugged. “She might have been all right on her own.”

“That’s Delaney’s style. That and the men who work for him. They like picking on the defenseless, then run when confronted,” Micah said. “You still as good with a gun as you used to be?”

Seth shrugged. “Not much practice in the past year.”

“But you saw Marilee?” Dillon asked again.

“Yes-and it sent her running into the house. She was scared to death of me. I agreed to take it slow, to let her get used to me before I took her. Abe offered me the use of the old Keller place.”

“How did she look?”

“Beautiful. I expected a baby. Nearly five years makes a lot of difference.”

“And Miss McGuire? What did you think of her?”

“She seems kind enough. Marilee apparently trusts her.” He couldn’t add that his own sister didn’t trust him.

“She’s plain, according to talk, yet Delaney seems to have his eyes set on her for some reason.”

“She’s not exactly plain. Her eyes…” He stopped suddenly.

“Her eyes?” her brother prompted.

Seth shrugged. “They’re quite pretty.”

“A carbetbagger’s daughter? You have been at war a long time, brother.”

Unaccountably, Seth took offense. Not for himself but for the woman who was taking care of his sister. “Watch your mouth, younger brother. She’s been good to our sister.”

Dillon looked at him for a long time, almost like he still didn’t believe he was real. He reached out and touched his shoulder. “It’s just the three of us now. You and Marilee and me.”

“I’m going to get us together again,” Seth said.

“And our land.”

“And our land,” he confirmed.

Dillon held out his hand. Seth clasped it. Then pulled his brother into his arms and hugged him.

He was halfway home.

ELIZABETH cooked supper, wondering when her father would arrive home.

The big pot of stew was simmering. It was the most thrifty meal she could make, and the most tasty, with her little inside garden of herbs. She went upstairs to Marilee’s room.

Marilee, holding a doll possessively, was sitting again in a corner.

“Marilee, supper’s ready.”

The girl looked up at her with huge blue eyes. “Did he go?”

Elizabeth stooped down. “You don’t have to be afraid. The man you met is your brother, and he loves you.”

Marilee shivered. “He has a gun.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean he is a bad person.”

“I don’t know him.”

“That’s because he has been gone a very long time.”

“Where’s Dillon?” Marilee asked plaintively.

The question again. The one that wouldn’t go away. The one she’d repeated at least once a day since she had started to talk again.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. She held out her hand. “Let’s go down to supper, then I’ll read you a story.”

Marilee finally stood and took her hand, following soundlessly as she allowed Elizabeth to lead her down the steps.

What was it about Seth Sinclair that frightened his sister? He had indeed frightened even herself this morning when he appeared. But later he’d been oddly protective.

But Marilee still feared him and that was enough to convince Elizabeth to keep her close.

She would protect Marilee. With her life, if necessary.

IF DILLON WAS right about Delaney’s plans, then the

McGuires were in trouble.

If they were in trouble, his sister was in trouble.

Seth told himself that was his only concern.

Yet the image of Miss McGuire standing in the doorway of his home with the damned rifle, then her attempts to stop a runaway horse and her coolness afterward had impressed him. She had courage, the kind that could get her killed.

He did not want her killed. Or harmed.

Her father, though, was an entirely different story.

Or was it?

Regardless, he knew he had to warn Elizabeth McGuire.

Would she believe him? Or would she feel that he was just trying to get her and her father off the land?

Even if he did, how in hell could he buy the land back?

A wave of hopelessness washed over him. He needed money. He needed it fast. He could see no way of getting it, not without breaking the law and that, he knew, would play into Delaney’s hands. He hadn’t left one prison to go into another.

He tried to brush away those thoughts as he used the trail he knew so well. He had stayed the night at the cabin, talking for hours with Dillon, catching up on all their old neighbors and even the newcomers.

Seth had the seeds of a plan in mind, but he didn’t tell Dillon. Not until he felt at ease in his own mind that it would work. He didn’t think even the Yankee army would tolerate theft on a grand scale. The question, though, was proof. Delaney would continue to blame the rustling on Dillon and his friends, on unreconstructed rebels.

He rode by the old Keller place which Abe had said he could use. It had a sturdy ranch house, once well tended by someone who, like his family, loved Texas, loved the land. Now it looked like too many of the Southern soldiers he’d met on the long way home. It looked, in fact, probably as he had when he first met Elizabeth McGuire. Faded and dirty and most definitely having seen better times.

Would Marilee be happy there? Could she ever accept him? Perhaps if Dillon was with him.

He had to clear Dillon’s name first.

And Elizabeth? Damn it, but he wished she hadn’t touched a tender place somewhere deep inside. It was an emotion he thought long dead after the Wilderness.

Seth used water from the pump outside to wash, then changed into the one clean shirt he had left. He had purchased a change of clothes at the general store, a transaction that further depleted his already dismal purse.

There was an old mirror in one of the rooms and he used it to shave.

He barely recognized the man that stared back at him. His face looked gaunt, his cheeks hollow. His eyes were cold as they weighed the face.

No wonder he’d frightened his sister.

He didn’t look anything like his father or brother, and his mother had died at Marilee’s birth. He didn’t have Dillon’s light hazel eyes and dark hair, the same features their father had.

His face had hardened; the softness of youth gone. It came of commanding men, of sending them into battle where they might-and did-die. It came from leaving too many on the battlefield and in the prison, where hunger was a constant and fever took as many lives as bullets and cannonballs had.

Given that, could he ever provide the nurturing a small child required? The nurturing and sense of safety she deserved?

Would she be better off with the McGuire woman?

The thought was unbelievably painful, but it continued to play in his mind.

And his heart.

Perhaps today his sister would open up to him, or at least acknowledge him. Until she did, he would have a huge hole in his heart.

ELIZABETH slept restlessly. She had stayed at Marilee’s side until she had gone to sleep.

After leaving for her own bed, she still listened for the nightmares before drifting off into an uneasy sleep. At some time, she heard her farther come in the house. By the loud sounds, she knew he had been drinking.