'You're not coming into Martha's house until you strip. She'll make me help with spring cleaning all over again if I let you track in half the mud in Texas. You swam the Guadalupe instead of taking the bridge, didn't you?'
'It's faster,' Travis answered as he fried to pass her.
She didn't move.
He raised an eyebrow. 'You can't mean I'm to strip out here? Don't you think I'm a little old for that?'
'We've both seen you, and all your old parts, a thousand times.' Sage moved to the door. 'I'll tell Martha to have food ready by the time you're finished. You'll find soap on the washstand. I'll bring out a towel and a clean set of your clothes.'
Travis swore as he moved to the side of the house. He'd stripped off all but his pants when she reappeared with a towel and clothes smelling of the cedar chest he'd left them in almost two years before.
Sage studied him. 'These should still fit. You don't look a pound fatter. You've got a new scar on your shoulder.'
'Took a bullet in a battle on the border last year. It went right through, so didn't see any need in worrying the family.'
Sage nodded as if he made sense. 'You're tanned so dark, if one of the cowhands rides by, he might shoot you for an Apache.'
He didn't smile. 'I am Apache.'
'Half,' Sage said. 'Just like all of us.'
Travis pulled water from the well. Though Sage tried, her words never made him feel better. His high cheekbones and dark eyes marked him as mixed blood while his siblings could have been as Irish as their last name. 'Lucky me,' he mumbled as he splashed water over his head. 'Maybe they'll shoot the half that's Apache. Problem is, which half would that be?'
When he shook the water from his hair, Sage had gone. He grabbed the lye soap and began to scrub away a month's worth of trail dust.
Martha came out once to ask if he wanted a steak or ham. The chubby little woman didn't even smile at him, which didn't surprise Travis. Martha hadn't liked any of the McMurray boys since the day she arrived from New Orleans in answer to an ad. Teagen told Travis once that Martha had just gotten out of prison when she'd traveled to Texas for the job, but the boys had to hire her because she'd been the only one who applied after their mother died. She'd loved baby Sage dearly, but made the brothers sleep in the barn most of that first summer until they decided to act 'house-broke' as she called it.
To Travis's knowledge, Martha had never left the grounds around the house, but she stood before Teagen each month and took her pay in cash. She would quote Travis her list of supplies before he went to town and insisted on paying for any items for her personal use. In the eighteen years since his parents died, food had been on the table every meal. Good, hot, solid food. That, Travis decided, said more than a smile.
'You going to the Spring Dance?' Travis yelled as Martha turned to go back inside.
'No,' she answered simply. 'Sage is waiting to cut your hair. Best show some sense and get out of the rain before God mistakes you for a tree and strikes you with lightning.'
Travis was so wet he hardly noticed it had started to rain. 'I know,' he said, remembering what followed all her warnings. 'If I get dead, it'll mean more work for you.'
'Right,' she mumbled into the thunder.
He grabbed his clothes and made it to the porch just as a downpour hit. The log home his father built stood solid against the storm as Travis dressed on the wide porch. Ten years ago they'd finished out the second floor for the men, but everyone called the main part of the house Martha's. From the moment she arrived, she'd treated the place like her own. That first year 'Don't get mud on my clean floors' had been a constant echo around the place. A few years later, when Teagen and Travis had been almost men, she'd added, 'No smoking or drinking in my house.' They'd challenged her only once and watched their supper fed to the hogs.
Travis smiled when he entered the house. Nothing had changed. His father's tartan carried from Ireland still hung on the north wall. The beads his mother wore at her wedding were looped across the McMurray Clan colors. An Apache girl and an Irish boy had fallen in love and stood against the world.
He crossed to the kitchen and wasn't surprised Martha had cooked a table full of food. While the storm raged, Travis ate and talked of his life as a Ranger. Martha stood by the stove acting as if she wasn't listening. Sage sat across the table taking in every word. If she'd been born a boy, she'd be riding with him by now, for Andrew McMurray taught his children to love Texas-he'd even died for its freedom.
After dinner Travis watched the sun set over the newly washed earth as he smoked one of Teagen's thin cigars on the porch. He was full and cleaned up to a point that he almost looked like a gentleman. Almost, he thought, for there was no amount of scrubbing that could take the wildness out of him. Part of him had to roam, had to live on the edge, had to be alone. He knew, without a doubt, that the west section nearest the hills would never have a house built on it even though the brothers called it Travis's. His place would remain pasture land forever.
Sage moved up beside him. 'Teagen and Tobin probably won't make it in tonight, what with the storm. They'd come if they knew you were here.'
Travis smiled down at his little sister. 'They're staying away because they fear you'll badger them about going to the dance.'
She shrugged. 'Maybe. Maybe they finally decided to climb Whispering Mountain and sleep on the summit.'
Travis looked west to where the hills were almost mountain height. One stood out, purple in the night. 'Maybe none of us will ever climb the mountain.' He and his siblings had all grown up on the legend. The Apache believed that when a man slept on the summit of Whispering Mountain, he'd dream his future.
'Father did,' Sage reminded Travis. 'Right after he brought mother here, he climbed the mountain one night.'
'He dreamed his death,' Travis whispered into the evening shadows, wondering what it must have been like for his father, newly married and not yet eighteen, to have dreamed that he would die before he turned thirty and leave his family behind.
Sage slipped her arm through her brother's and stared at the mountain. 'The dream saved us,' she said, as if she'd been old enough to remember. 'If he hadn't dreamed, he wouldn't have prepared. If he hadn't left Teagen all the detailed plans, the three of you wouldn't have been able to save the ranch.'
Travis closed his eyes, wondering how long he'd have to live before the memories would fade. His fattier had gone to fight for Texas Independence. He'd left them alone as he headed for a mission called Goliad. Andrew McMurray had lined his sons up on the porch and hugged each one. Travis remembered thinking his father might crush his ribs with his hold. Then he told them to look in his desk for instructions if something happened to him. 'Don't forget,' he'd said as he rode off to join the fight for Texas.
Three months later they got word that he'd been killed with hundreds of other Texans at a little mission. That night, the boys had gathered round their father's desk and opened the bottom drawer. His letter began, 'If you are reading this, I'm not coming back.' The writing was bold, direct, just as their father had always been. 'Take care of your mother, and no matter what, hold the ranch.'
The letter explained how Autumn, being Apache and a woman, could never claim the land as hers. But if the boys could keep everyone away until Teagen turned eighteen, then he could claim the ranch.
The last words written to Teagen, eleven, Travis, ten, and Tobin, just barely six, were simple: 'Today, my sons, you have to become men.'
Sage pulled Travis back to the present. 'I wish I'd been there to help,' she whispered as she rubbed her cheek against his shoulder.
'No, you don't. It was bad. He'd taught us to shoot and to ride. He'd built his ranch so that no one could come near the center. But there was nothing he could have done to prepare us for the men who came to take our land by force. As soon as word circulated that he was dead, there were those who thought they could step on the land and take all we owned.'
Travis finished his cigar and said good night. He knew he wouldn't sleep, but he needed to be alone. The memories of those early days were too thick in his head to allow him to be good company. Sage seemed to understand.
Tomorrow he'd take her to the dance and try to make the best of it, but tonight he'd walk the boundary of Whispering Mountain Ranch with a rifle in his hand. He'd long since grown taller than his weapon, but memories
