The Man from Stone Creek by Linda Lael Miller Read Free Book Online Page B

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.
    â€œThe 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.”
    â€œYou’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.”
    Â 
    S AM 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 the far bank, in a copse of whispering cottonwoods, he dismounted, emptied the boots and pulled them back on. He’d have to sleep in them tonight; if he took them off, he’d never get them on again. Best to let them dry to the contours of his feet, the way they had a hundred times before.
    Sam swung back up into the saddle, headed slowly for the little cluster of lights where the trees gave way to open ground, and the village of Refugio. Here the buildings were mostly adobe, with a few teetering wooden shacks interspersed, and even though he probably could have hurled a stone back across the border, the two places were as different as Santa Fe and Boston.
    He found the cantina easily, drawn by the sound of a guitar, and left the horse standing in the dooryard, among the burros and other mounts already there, nibbling on patches of grass. Two of the horses, he noticed, bore the distinctive Donagher brand, a D with a bar through it. Major Blackstone had sketched it for him, on the margin of his orders.
    The lintel over the cantina door was low and Sam ducked his head as he entered. The clientele was mostly Mexican, as were the bartender and the girl serving drinks, but the cowboys standing at the bar were outsiders, like him. The pair of them turned their heads as Sam took a place at an empty table, their eyes narrowed with interest.
    He nodded a greeting, wondering if the men were Mungo Donagher’s sons, or simply rode for his outfit. A spread that size required a lot of range help.
    The girl took her time traipsing over to him through the smoky gloom. She wore a white dress, set off her smooth brown shoulders, and her dark hair was wound into a tight knot at the back of her head. She smiled, with a virgin’s shyness, and asked in Spanish what his pleasure would be.
    Sam was briefly reminded of Bird, selling herself as well as liquor across the river at Oralee Pringle’s