‘‘You found the message posted by my sister-in-law, Nichole McLain?’’ Wes pulled a chair out for Allie then motioned for her to sit down. He did the same as he waved the bartender for drinks.
‘‘I’ve followed a dozen dead-end trails looking for one child.’’ Hardy returned to his chair, but his gaze never left Allie’s face. ‘‘I was one of the men who found the burned settlement back in ’52. We’d had a skirmish with the Comanches near the Sabine River and figured they were still angry when they came across Catlin and his people. The bodies had been burned but, near as we could figure, one was missing. One child. We weren’t even sure if it was a boy called Jimmy or a girl called Allie. The Catlins had a kid every spring, regular as clockwork. Near as I remember, Jimmy wasn’t even a year older than Allie.’’
‘‘Then, if she’s a member of the Catlin family, her parents are dead?’’ Wes had hoped he’d find a parent still living who would take her in with loving arms.
‘‘She’s Allie Catlin,’’ Hardy whispered. ‘‘Looks just like her grandma did when I first saw Victoria. I’d been hired as a scout back before the Republic. We brought part of Austin’s original three hundred settlers from the San Marcos River to the lower part of the Lavaco. About a dozen families. They was all afraid of the Karankawas then, hadn’t met up with the Apaches and Comanches. Most of them were upper-class, educated people. They didn’t take to the hard life.’’
The old man leaned back in his chair as his mind slipped into the past. ‘‘I remember it being powerful hot that summer, with the river sluggish and trees so thick with Spanish moss you had to fight your way to the water. I was heading down for a drink when a little slip of a woman came running toward me yelling like she was about to be scalped by a war party.’’
Hardy laughed, a low rumbling kind of sound that comes from one who laughs little in life. ‘‘Well, with my gun in one hand and a knife in the other, I hurried to save her. But the little lady didn’t need saving. She was so mad she grabbed my gun and disappeared into the moss.
‘‘A minute later, I heard a shots. Then, before I could follow, she was out of the foliage trading my empty gun for my knife. This time, I followed only a few steps behind. The sight I saw when I reached the river is as clear in my mind as if it were yesterday. There sat Victoria Catlin, proclaimed as one of the fairest beauties in the South, straddling a gator. She was stabbing him with my knife like she was fighting for her life, but that old gator was already dead.’’
Hardy raised one bushy eyebrow and winked at Allie. ‘‘She was still swearing and steaming when I pulled her off the poor critter. It seems the alligators down by the river loved the settlers’ hunting dogs for dinner. Only this one made the mistake of eating Miss Victoria’s pet.’’
Wes smiled. ‘‘Sounds like she was quite a woman.’’ He couldn’t help but think of Allie sitting atop Vincent about to stab him.
Hardy shook his head. ‘‘Miss Victoria is quite a woman. Outlived so many husbands she had to enlarge the family plot. Never took a one of their names after the first. Always said it wasn’t worth changing her monogram for something as temporary as marriage. Bore six children by Catlin, three boys and three girls.
‘‘The girls all died before they were grown. James, her oldest, was killed in the raid in ’52, like I said. Darron died at Shiloh. Michael, her baby, is in his forties now, but he doesn’t cast much of a shadow as a man. I figured if I could ever find James’s one survivor, Victoria’s only grandchild, she might die thinking she’d done something worthwhile in this life. From the size of the bones, we figured either Allie or James Junior lived.
‘‘James told me once that he ordered his wife to send the children to the woods if trouble came. So I spent the best part of a week looking, but no child. By the time we caught up with the war party, they’d traded off any captives.’’
Allie listened without expression to the old man’s story, not allowing hope to grow within her. She’d lived through too much to believe anything good was about to happen. The man seemed to think she had a brother named James, but that didn’t sound familiar to her. She remembered a boy, but James or even Jimmy didn’t seem to fit as his name.
Hardy looked at her, his whiskey eyes liquid with unshed tears. ‘‘Will you go with me to see Miss Victoria tomorrow? I’d give half of the time I have left on earth to see her face when she looks at you.’’
She glanced at Wes, but he was staring down into the drink a bartender had brought him. Allie didn’t know what to do, but it seemed to matter so much to the old man that she nodded.
‘‘I’ll call for you at nine.’’ A touch of the manners he’d learned in youth laced through Maxwell Hardy’s voice. ‘‘Thank you, Miss Allyce Meghan Catlin. After all these years, a simple letter brought you home.’’
‘‘I’ll be coming along,’’ Wes interrupted. ‘‘Just to see that she’s left in safe hands. She’s been through a great deal. I promised her that much.’’
The old sheriff looked at Wes as if he were intruding. ‘‘All right, Mr. McLain. I’ll call for you both. The ranch is about a two-hour ride from here. I assume you have horses, but a bullet I took in the leg a few years back prevents me from riding in anything but a buggy.’’
Hardy stood and gathered his gloves and hat to leave. He downed the last of his liquor. ‘‘Don’t tell anyone else in town why you’re here. There are those who might give quite a lot to see that no grandchild of Victoria’s ever reaches her ranch.’’
He left without explaining.
Wes ordered two bowls of the new kind of stew, called chili, he’d learned to eat on trail drives. They didn’t say a word as they waited. Wes drank another shot of whiskey and Allie stared at her hands. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to get her hopes up. He’d heard stories of families rejecting captives who’d lived with the Indians. He’d even seen a father once turn his back on his two daughters after they’d been returned to civilization. They were better off dead and, as far as he was concerned, they were, the father had said. The girls had cried and clung to him, but he’d pulled away and left them without another word.
Wes didn’t want to think about such a scene happening with Allie.
The boy who’d brought the tub to their room carried out two huge bowls of chili. He set them down in front of Wes and hurried away as if still embarrassed by the maid having struck him in front of Wes and Allie.
Breaking the silence, Wes mumbled, ‘‘Eat up,’’ as he shoved the first bite in his mouth. ‘‘They say this stuff was invented because the meat turns bad on the trail drives. Put enough peppers and chili powder in with it and the hands don’t notice.’’
Allie didn’t look at him as she tasted the meal.
The boy returned with a glass of milk for her and another whiskey for Wes.
‘‘Thanks, kid,’’ Wes said.
The boy faced him with a man’s measure of courage. ‘‘Not kid. My name’s Jason.’’
Wes always allowed a man, even a young one, his due of respect unless he proved he didn’t deserve it. ‘‘Thanks, Jason. Tell your mother this is mighty good chili.’’
Jason stood an inch taller as if bracing against the north wind. ‘‘I ain’t got no ma or pa.’’
Allie looked up. ‘‘No tribe?’’
He knew what she was asking. ‘‘No one, but I don’t need them. I’m fine on my own.’’
He was on the edge of manhood, too old to ask for a handout and too young to earn his keep.
‘‘Well.’’ Wes chose his words carefully. ‘‘We’re new in town and need a little advice. If you’d allow me to buy you supper, I’ve a heap of questions I need answering about the locals.’’
Jason brightened. ‘‘I know everyone in these parts.’’ He hesitated, glancing at the bowls, then smiled. ‘‘I suppose I got a slow enough spell to help you out.’’
In less time than Wes thought possible, the boy had fetched his own bowl of chili and a glass of milk. But he waited to eat until he’d answered a few questions.
While the boy ate, Wes learned all about the people called Catlin. According to Jason, Maxwell Hardy was an old sheriff down on his luck. He might be too poor to afford a full bottle of whiskey, but he was still more gentleman than any man in town.
Jason had heard of Victoria Catlin, but never seen her. Folks said the last time she left her house was to bury her son from the war. Some said she was crazy, others thought she’d just got tired of living and was holed up waiting to die. She had a little mouse of a sister who came in for supplies now and then.
What he’d heard of Michael Catlin wasn’t good. Folks still talked about the wild pranks he pulled in his youth. Sheriff Hardy kept him out of jail more than once and, talk was, Hardy went to Mexico about ten years back to keep Michael from swinging for murder.
Michael came back wilder than ever, and Hardy returned with a bullet still lodged in his leg. Brady was too quiet
