Page 33

T wenty- T wo

“He won’t say another word, Josh.” Sheriff Stockwood had left his prisoner firmly locked up.

“He first wants to talk to the lawyer his pa is bringing in from Sacramento. I can’t force the man to talk.

He can sit silently straight through his trial if he wants.

His pa told me they’re waiting for the lawyer even if his son has to stay in jail for a couple of days. ”

Josh’s mouth twisted with disgust. “I’d hoped we’d have him on his way to San Quentin before too long.”

“I heard some of what he said to you in the hotel. He tells a good story.”

Josh’s face flushed with anger. “If you—”

Sheriff Stockwood held his hands up in surrender.

“Don’t worry. I take Mrs. Hart’s word for everything.

A woman don’t cast herself out of a train without good reason.

But like I said, he tells a good story. His lawyer will believe him, as he’s being paid to.

Then they’ll talk to the judge, who knows only what he’s told.

Maybe you should get a lawyer too, someone who’ll help you tell your side of the story. ”

“Do victims of a crime or witnesses to a crime need lawyers?” Tilda came close to Josh and leaned against him. “I thought that was just for the person charged with a crime.”

Josh wrapped his arm around her.

The sheriff shrugged. “First time I ever heard tell of such a thing.”

“If we can trust you to keep him locked up, Sheriff, we’re going home.” Josh raised his voice for the benefit of Carl Cabril and his family. “To think we came to your door to invite you to share the noon meal with us.”

Carl turned, his face flushed with anger.

It was all Josh could do not to roll his eyes. Instead, he jabbed a finger straight at Carl. “That makes two times we were wrong to trust your family. The Cabrils who aren’t headed to prison should head on back to New York City.” Josh looked down to see Tilda nodding with a fierce look in her eyes.

“Whether you’re my blood relations or not,” Tilda said, looking at Maddie, and Josh saw a trace of longing in her eyes, “you’re not my family.

I don’t see how I could trust any of you ever again.

” She turned back to Josh, and the fierceness in her expression had faded, replaced by pure happiness. “Yes, let’s go home.”

“Sheriff, whenever the kidnapper is done talking to his flashy lawyer, send us a wire out to the ranch, would you? We’ll ride into town to testify at the trial.

Let us know the lawyer’s name, too. Zane’s got connections in Sacramento.

He can get the measure of the man they hire as fast as Michelle telegraphs the former governor to ask what kind of sidewinder we’re facing. ”

With that, Josh and his wife left the jailhouse.

* * * *

Josh saw Ellie near the back door of the ranch house, swinging off her horse, a piece of paper in hand. Josh got close enough to hear her say the words “mining claim in the name of Graham MacKenzie.”

Cord held his grandpa’s horse while Mayhew dismounted, looking mighty tired.

It was only a moment before Thayne and Lock came running toward Ellie and Brody. School must be out because the children were milling around outside the school.

Annie came from the school, holding Caroline’s hand.

Zane and Michelle were there. Zane was questioning Ellie.

Michelle hung back, listening, which caught Josh’s attention because she usually took charge of family conversations—that is, if someone needed to take charge.

When it came to ranch talk, she didn’t pretend she knew more than the rest of them.

Going by the excitement on Lock’s face, there was a good chance they weren’t talking about moving cattle to better grass.

Still, Michelle, for all her inclinations to be a leader, just stayed back and watched.

“I need to talk to Michelle about the governor,” Josh said, “but first I want to see what Ellie found. We can’t go back out looking for treasure until after the trial, but next time we’ll head into the wilderness and finally reach the end of Graham MacKenzie’s map.”

“They sure seem excited. You’d think they’d found a bucket of gold,” Tilda remarked as she tethered her horse to the hitching post.

He realized she was all healed up from her kidnapping. Brody looked well from being shot. Everyone was healthy again. Maybe all the wild goings-on around here were finally over.

Ellie saw them and squealed. She ran over and flung her arms around Tilda. “Welcome to the family.”

Tilda grinned and hugged Ellie tight. It was a big old contrast to the way she’d acted around Maddie.

Brody strode over next and shook Josh’s hand. “The Hart family is growing.”

For some reason that drew Josh’s attention to Michelle again. She caught him looking at her and gave him a rather faint version of her usual smile. She said, “I think it’s going to grow a bit more very, very soon.”

In all the ruckus, her quiet words exploded like a stick of dynamite in the middle of a pile of rocks.

Zane whipped around so fast his hat fell off. He rushed to her side.

Annie sent Caroline into the house and went straight to Michelle and placed an arm across her back.

Brody, the doctor in their midst, said, “How far apart are the contractions?”

“Less than every ten minutes. I’ve been in labor since before the noon meal.”

“You what ?” Zane’s voice cracked like a whip.

Everyone jumped except Michelle, who simply patted Zane on the arm.

“Are you having a contraction now?” Brody asked.

“It just finished.”

“It’s around three o’clock. If you’ve been laboring for three hours...”

“More like six.”

“What?” Zane said again, this time much louder. Sweeping Michelle into his arms, he said, “Lead the way, Brody.”

Michelle slapped him gently on the chest, smiling up at him. “I can walk.”

“Yep, I reckon you can. But for right now, you don’t have to.”

Brody, taking charge, snapped, “Lock, go fetch my doctor bag.”

He nodded and took off at a run.

“Annie, the boys can watch Caroline if you want to come and help, but a birthing is no place for a child.”

Michelle said wryly, “Unless they’re really young.”

Brody kept on issuing orders. “Gretel, boil water and bring plenty of clean towels. Thayne will give you scissors and a cord to boil. Ellie, you and I need to wash thoroughly. Zane, we’ll be with you as soon as we can.”

Josh said to Tilda, “You want to watch a baby be born?”

She shook her head and very definitely said, “No. Maybe I can help get a meal on.”

Gretel came to the back door. “Zane will be kicked out pretty soon. He’ll need company. Tilda, I’d appreciate some help, though I suppose half our number will miss supper. We’ll leave something warming for them, even if it has to wait all night. Beef stew keeps well, so we’ll make that.”

“All night?” Tilda’s voice was just barely shy of a scream. “Having a baby takes all night?”

Josh had sat in the house a few nights while Brody delivered babies. Michelle had delivered a few before Brody came. So Josh had an idea of how long it took for a baby to be born. Apparently, no one had ever informed Tilda of such things. He wondered what else she didn’t know.

“For now,” said Gretel, “there’s coffee and strudel.

Come on in, everyone. The main thing with babies is to be patient.

” As a mother of two little ones, Gretel likely knew more than all the rest of them combined, including maybe the ones upstairs with Michelle.

“We might as well get on with being patient right now.”

Lock and Thayne came sprinting back from the doctor’s office. Gretel stopped them long enough to get the things Brody had ordered to be boiled. Then she leapt out of the way because they weren’t exhibiting one speck of the patience Gretel had just called for.

As they were thundering up the stairs, Gretel said, “I’d offer them strudel too, but I was afraid I’d turn them aside from their mission if I had.”

Brody and Ellie came rushing down the stairs and into the washroom at the back of the house. Thanks to Michelle and her sister, they had an indoor shower bath with hot and cold running water. It was a modern house in all respects.

Mayhew said, “I could stand to wash up, too. I was on that trip with Brody and Ellie.”

Josh said to Tilda, “I wonder if there’s room in this house for all of us to sleep.”

Mayhew cleared his throat. “Cord and I could ride to town and stay in the hotel.”

“Nonsense. There’s plenty of room,” Gretel said, “when you consider Michelle, Zane, Brody, and Ellie probably won’t sleep tonight. And if they do, they’ll go to the doctor’s office for the night. I’ll make sure they take the MacKenzie boys with them.”

Josh clapped Mayhew on the shoulder, and a puff of dust rose up from the old man’s coat. He could stand to clean up for a fact. “We’ve got plenty of room for everyone. No need to go to town. Anyhow, Dorada Rio is lousy with those low-down Cabrils, so they might try and kidnap you.”

Cord turned to stare at Josh for a second. “Did you say their name is Cabrillo?”

That struck them all to silence.

“No...” Tilda sounded hesitant. “It’s Cabril.” Then she and Josh exchanged a long look.

“Those names are just close , right?” Josh said. “They’re not the same name.”

Mayhew rubbed the back of his neck. “Lots of immigrants coming to this country changed their names, either to fit in better or to simplify the spelling.”

“Seems farfetched that the name could possibly be connected to this mess.” Josh closed his eyes and inhaled long and slow because he knew what he needed to do. “We have to talk to your troublesome father again.”

Cord said, “You know a lot about Captain Cabrillo, Tilda. Not a name most folks usually know, even those that study history. Why is that?”

Shaking her head, Tilda said, “My adoptive father loved history. He had a collection of history books at the house, and I read when I had a spare moment, which wasn’t often.

I had a lot of chores. I loved reading about history, especially about the Spanish sailors.

They interested me far more than Cortés in Mexico or the explorers who followed Lewis and Clark’s expedition to Oregon.

Cabril, Cabrillo ... is it possible? I never knew my last name as a child, not that I can remember.

But I was young when I was left on the streets to fend for myself, or so my brother told me.

It’s very likely I knew my full name at one point. Cabril...”

She said the name as if wishing she could summon her long-ago memories. “Maybe Cabrillo touched a chord in me. Maybe it was familiar.”

“You got turned out on the streets of New York City as a four-year-old?” Cord’s voice squeaked as he said the words.

“That’s what I’ve been told. My mother was a mistress to Carl Cabril. He rejected her when he married. He sent her money for the three children she bore him, and my mother had a taste for gin and thought twins were too much trouble.”

“If your father did change his name from Cabrillo to Cabril, might he have done it recently?” Mayhew asked. “Or maybe he used an old family name with a mistress to hide his true name? His hair and eyes are dark, so he could be of Spanish heritage.”

Tilda had those same dark features. So did her twin sister and her big oaf of a brother.

Silence stretched as they all tried to put the puzzle together with a few of the bigger pieces missing.

Thayne poked his head out the back door. “Gretel’s poured coffee. Are you coming in?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. The strudel was too strong a lure.

“We need to ask your pa about this,” said Josh, “but I’m not going to town while Michelle’s bringing my second-ever little family member into the world. It’s been a long time since Caroline was born. Maybe we can get a cavalry unit to back us and go into town tomorrow.”

“We weren’t going to tell them about our treasure hunt, remember?” Tilda said.

“If it is his name, he might know the family history.” Josh could smell the strudel now. He decided to forget about all this until tomorrow.

“Or at least be really interested in it.” Tilda took his hand and held on as if he were her anchor.

He liked that. He squeezed her hand tight and started with her for the back door, ready for some coffee and strudel.