FOURTEEN
“UNTIE HIM!” THE LITTLE LADY ORDERED. ALL THE meekness of when she'd first entered the kitchen had disappeared along with most of the trail dust. “Untie him right now, Wes McLain.”
Karlee glanced at the savage, now tied to a chair with Wes standing on one side and Wolf on the other. Both men looked like they'd fought a tornado and lost.
“I'm not going to untie him, Allie,” the scarred man grumbled. “He'll kill me. It seems he's not too happy at the thought of my being his brother-in-law.”
The woman glared at Wolf as though she expected him to follow orders even if the scarred man did not.
“Don't look at me.” Wolf held his hands in the air in surrender. “I ain't even kin, and he don't like me. I'm not untying him without four Rangers to back me up. I'm also not getting in the middle of an argument between a husband and wife.”
Allie glared at them both then knelt in front of the wild boy. She placed her hands on his knees and spoke to him softly, in a language no one else in the room understood.
The boy shook his head and pulled at his ropes. He gave no hint of understanding what she was trying to tell him.
Adam walked behind the chair. “You're going to have to untie him soon and let me doctor those wrists or he'll have an infection.”
“He's so wild,” Wolf mumbled. “I'm surprised he didn't gnaw his own arm off to escape. He bit me so many times I probably got hydrophobia.”
Wes pulled Allie gently to her feet. “I know it hurts you to see him tied, darling, but it's the only way. He'd kill us all if he had the chance.”
Allie tried once more speaking to him in Apache, but he wouldn't answer. His eyes spoke volumes though. He hated her and everyone in the room. All he wanted was to be as far away from them as possible.
“I could take him down and put him in one of the cells at the jail downtown,” Wolf offered. “Then at least he wouldn't be tied.”
Allie's eyes filled with tears. “You can't put him in a cage. You can't.”
“Then he stays tied,” Wolf insisted. “I'm too old to fight him again tonight. One of us will have to stay up to keep an eye on him. If he gets free, he'll murder us in our sleep.”
Allie tried again to speak to the boy. He didn't answer but held his chin proudly as though daring them to kill him.
“All right.” Allie reached to touch his face, but he jerked his head back. “I'm too tired to argue. He stays tied tonight, and I'll try again tomorrow. I should make coffee and we'll take shifts watching him.”
“No.” Wolf winked at Karlee standing in the doorway with Adam by her side. “Let Karlee make the coffee. She makes it so strong, it stands up beside a man all night and keeps him awake.”
“Karlee?” Allie turned and noticed her for the first time.
“Karlee McLain,” Adam corrected. “It seems Daniel married again while we weren't looking.”
All at once everyone started hugging Karlee. Allie patted her face and welcomed her. Wes swung her around and planted a kiss on her cheek. Adam's warm hug was too long and tight to be anything but sincere.
“We're mighty glad to have you in the family.” Adam smiled. “We've all be hoping our little brother would find love again.”
Wes shoved Wolf. “Tell us all about it, Wolf. I have a feeling you know the details of this secret marriage.”
Wolf scrubbed his face with cold water. “ 'Course I do,” he mumbled beneath the towel. “I was the best man.”
Karlee held her breath. Now the charade would be over. Wolf would tell them why they married, and the family would no longer have to act happy. She'd been just a means to an end and nothing more. She wasn't part of their family, only a necessary tool to hold it together.
“It was a simple wedding.” Wolf lowered the towel and stared at Karlee. “And, to my recollection, it was the most normal wedding any of you McLains ever had.”
Wolf didn't say another word.
Wes began telling the details of how he and Allie married in the middle of a near gunfight, with Allie holding a knife in her hand. Adam laughed about Daniel marrying him and his wife while they were tied up in a cellar waiting for Wes to be hung as a horse thief.
Karlee found the stories unbelievable and wonderfully distracting. She asked questions, and the men talked first of their lives now and then of Daniel as a boy. They were his big brothers, so they thought they had a right to tell everything, good and bad, that ever happened to Danny.
They talked of May, for she could not be separated from their brother's past. They told of how she followed him home from school when he was six and how they all loved her, and how he'd chopped the barn down the night she died giving birth to the twins.
Karlee didn't mind the stories. Somehow it felt warm inside to know that the man who was now her husband had been capable of such love once.
Allie warmed the stew. While the others ate, she tried to feed the young man she believed to be her brother. Over and over she called him John, but he never even looked up when she said the name.
He refused to eat. When she addressed him in Apache, he lost some of the fire in his eyes, but nothing more.
Karlee did the dishes. Just after dark, Valerie and her mother brought home sleeping girls with powdered-sugar smiles.
Wes excused himself to care for the horses while Adam checked on Daniel. Wolf spread his bedroll beside the boy's chair and stretched out, listening to Allie talk to her brother. No one knew what she said, but Karlee guessed Allie was reliving every detail of her and John's life in the settlement and describing the day of the raid.
When the twins had been put to bed, Karlee returned to ask Allie and Wes to take her room for the night. She wanted to be near Daniel, she told them.
Wes put his arm around Allie's small shoulder and pulled her to her feet. “We'll try again tomorrow,” he said in a voice kinder than Karlee would have thought the hard man would ever use. “We both need rest.”
Allie nodded, her body leaning into him for support. “But if he doesn't respond,” Wes led his wife toward the door, “we may have to face the possibility that he's not your brother. The Rangers recover many former captives every year.”
“His hair is darker than I remember,” Allie admitted. “The eyes are the same color, but they are filled with such hate. And there's a scar on his chest about where I remember he'd been wounded.”
“There are scars all over his body,” Wolf added.
“He doesn't look Apache.” Wes tried to comfort her. “Even if he's not your brother, he's not full-blood Apache like he claims.”
Karlee studied the boy more closely. The savage looked Apache to her, but then she wasn't sure she'd ever seen one. Maybe she was looking more at his actions and dress, or lack of it. In truth, if his hair was cut and he wore regular clothes, he would appear like most young men his age. Only, most young men his age didn't look at everyone as if they planned to slice them up for stew meat.
Wes pulled Allie into a hug. “We've come a long way. Let's get some rest.”
They moved upstairs leaving Wolf and Karlee alone in the kitchen with the boy, who appeared to have fallen asleep in his chair.
Karlee lowered the wick on the table lamp. “You didn't tell them why Daniel and I married.” She straightened the tablecloth so she didn't have to gaze directly at Wolf. “I was wondering why.”
“I didn't figure it was anyone's business. A marriage is a marriage.”
“But don't you think they'll know we're not in love when Daniel recovers?”
Wolf huffed. “I don't know. Half the couples I see don't look like they're in love. I figure love's something you make up your mind to be in, not something you fall into. That probably explains why I'll always be single. There ain't never going to be a woman who makes up her mind on loving me.”