“The story goes”—Duncan smiled at Em—“that our grandfather fell in love when he touched her hand beneath the book.”
“They were barely twenty when they married and settled at Whispering Mountain.” Em picked up the story. “They had kids and started the ranch, but the strange thing is, my grandfather on my papa’s side died thirteen years after he married at another mission called Goliad.”
Duncan glanced at the cooks, who looked as if they’d lost the thread of the conversation. “Goliad wasn’t much of a battle compared to the Alamo. The men were shot by firing squad, but they died for Texas. Some say it made the rest of Texas so mad that Houston’s men yelled, ‘Remember the Alamo’ and ‘Remember Goliad’ as they overtook Santa Ana’s camp a few months later.”
As the others talked on, Duncan thought of his adopted grandfather. All Andrew McMurray ever wanted was his family and his ranch, yet he’d given it all up to stand and fight for Texas. All Duncan wanted was the adventure, the fight, but he knew with all the men gone from Whispering Mountain, he might have to go home and stay for a while. He’d have to give up his freedom for the ranch. Strange how one man’s dream is another’s prison.
He finally realized why his cousins had never married. There hadn’t been time. The little ranch Andrew and Autumn McMurray started had grown so huge it threatened to consume the family. Duncan didn’t want to think about his responsibility.
As thunder stormed outside and rain pounded, the priest showed the women to their rooms in the hallway called the Sisters’ Wing. The rooms were all small, meant for one person. When Anna saw that she had a lock on the inside of her door, she smiled for the first time.
Duncan stepped inside and set her tiny bundle of clothes down. “Will you be all right in here?”
She nodded, looking around the simple room as if it were grand.
“I’ll tap on your door when it’s almost time to leave.”
He left her there, almost sad that she didn’t need him tonight. Moving along a winding veranda, he finally crossed a courtyard and joined the men bunking in the shed. It was cold, but dry.
“Where’s your shadow?” Sumner asked when Duncan reached the circle of their lantern.
“I’ve been replaced by a lock.”
“She’s safe tonight,” Wyatt said, “but I don’t think it would be a bad idea that we post a guard. I’m not sure one lock at the gate will keep anyone out who wants to kill us.”
They all agreed.
Duncan knew he wouldn’t sleep until they were back in Austin—or even better, he thought, back at Whispering Mountain. Anna would be safe there while they looked for her relatives.
CHAPTER 33
LEWT TOOK THE FIRST WATCH. HE’D BEEN RESTLESS all day. Em was never out of his sight, but he felt like she was moving farther and farther away from him. He tried to think of something to say to her, but the angry words they’d yelled at each other in camp the night before still hung in the air.
She wasn’t avoiding him so much as ignoring him. It was as if he’d disappeared in her vision. Maybe in her memory as well.
He thought of going to her, but he didn’t want to frighten her. That, and the fact that she might shoot him outright if he stepped over the invisible line that stood between them like a ten-foot wall. The days at the ranch seemed a million years away, and the afternoon they’d shared under the cottonwoods seemed more like a dream.
Lewt walked the grounds for a while, then settled in a passageway where he could see both the front gate and the back wall of the mission. The rain had turned into a drizzle, tapping off the buildings into the mud like the sound of a hundred clocks ticking at once.
He leaned against the wall, feeling like his life was this passage and he had no idea which way to go. He’d saved a great deal of money during the ten years he’d been at the top of his game as a gambler. If he quit and bought some business, he’d always be that gambler who tried to go legitimate. No one would truly trust him.
Something caught the corner of his eye. Someone silently moving through the dark hallway where the women were being housed.
Lewt lifted his rifle and waited. Reason told him anyone meaning harm would come from the outside, not the