The McKettrick Legend Read Online Free Page B

“Tobias is my son, and I will not have you telling me how to raise him!”
    Doss slapped the saddle bags over one shoulder and stepped back, his hazel eyes narrowed. “He’s my nephew—my brother’s boy—and I’ll be damned if I’ll let you turn him into a sickly little whelp hitched to your apron strings!”
    Hannah stiffened. “You’ve said quite enough,” she told him tersely.
    He leaned in, so his nose was almost touching hers. “I haven’t said the half of it, Mrs. McKettrick.”
    Hannah side stepped him, marching for the house, but the snow came almost to her knees and made it hard to storm off in high dudgeon. Her breath trailed over her right shoulder, along with her words. “Supper’s inan hour,” she said, without turning around. “But maybe you’d rather eat in the bunk house.”
    Doss’s chuckle riled her, just as it was no doubt meant to do. “Old Charlie’s a sight easier to get along with than you are, but he can’t hold a candle to you when it comes to home cooking. Anyhow, he’s been gone for a month, in case you haven’t noticed.”
    She felt a flush rise up her neck, even though she was shivering inside Gabe’s old woolen work coat. His scent was fading from the fabric, and she wished she knew a way to hold on to it.
    â€œSuit yourself,” she retorted.
    Tobias shoved a chunk of wood into the cookstove as she entered the house, sending sparks snapping up the gleaming black chimney before he shut the door with a clang.
    â€œWe were only building a fort,” he grumbled.
    Hannah was stilled by the sight of him, just as if somebody had thrown a lasso around her middle and pulled it tight. “I could make biscuits and sausage gravy,” she offered quietly.
    Tobias ignored the olive branch. “You rode down to the road to meet the mail wagon,” he said, without meeting her eyes. “Did I get any letters?” With his hands shoved into the pockets of his trousers and his brownish-blond hair shining in the wintry sunlight flowing in through the windows, he looked the way Gabe must have, at his age.
    â€œOne from your grandpa,” Hannah said. Methodically, she hung her hat on the usual peg, pulled off her knitted mittens and stuffed them into the pockets of Gabe’s coat. She took that off last, always hating to part with it.
    â€œWhich grandpa?” Tobias lingered by the stove, warming his hands, still refusing to glance her way.
    Hannah’s family lived in Missoula, Montana, in a bighouse on a tree-lined residential street. She missed them sorely, and it hurt a little, knowing Tobias was hoping it was Holt who’d written to him, not her father.
    â€œThe McKettrick one,” she said.
    â€œGood,” Tobias answered.
    The back door opened, and Doss came in, still carrying the saddle bags. Usually he stopped outside to kick the snow off his boots so the floors wouldn’t get muddy, but today he was in an obstinate mood.
    Hannah went to the stove and ladled hot water out of the reservoir into a basin, so she could wash up before starting supper.
    â€œCatch,” Doss said cheer fully.
    She looked back, saw the saddle bags, burdened with mail, fly through the air. Tobias caught them ably with a grin.
    When was the last time he’d smiled at her that way?
    The boy plundered anxiously through the bags, brought out the fat envelope post marked San Antonio, Texas. Her in-laws, Holt and Lorelei McKettrick, owned a ranch outside that distant city, and though the Triple M was still home to them, they’d been spending a lot of time away since the beginning of the war. Hannah barely knew them, and neither did Tobias, for that matter, but they’d kept up a lively correspondence, the three of them, ever since he’d learned to read, and the letters had been arriving on a weekly basis since Gabe died.
    Gabe’s folks had come back for the