Texas Blue Read Free Page B

Terry’s Rangers with his friends and fought. Few thought he’d make it home alive, but Sage never doubted. She just said that he’d promised he would. Three months after the war ended, he walked onto the ranch. He was so thin she didn’t recognize him at first, but once he was home they promised never to be more than yelling distance apart.
    Duncan slowed his horse to a walk and smiled. Memories of the McMurrays, his family, kept him warm. He and Teagen’s girls were the oldest of the children, and it was probably time they all married and settled down. He only hoped at least one of the three men he sent north on the train would prove a match. They were all from good families, and none had a drinking or gambling problem. Boyd Sinclair already ran his family ranch, Davis Allender was well educated, and Walter Freeport the Fourth came highly recommended by a friend of his father.
    Deep down Duncan knew none of them were good enough. No man ever would be. At different times in his childhood he’d hated all three girls and loved each one. Emily, just older than him, had been his best friend when they’d been about twelve. They’d ridden the ranch and built forts all one summer, but after she went away to finishing school she barely spoke to him. Rose always drove him crazy bossing him around, but he knew she’d be at his side if trouble came. And then there was Bethie. Who couldn’t love Beth? Sometimes he’d just stare at her, wondering how she could have been born so beautiful. He was in love with her until the fourth grade when she started calling him Duckie instead of Duck. A nickname of Duck was hard enough to live down. Calls of Duckie from the other guys got him into a dozen fights that year and cured him of loving Bethie.
    “You’re getting behind, McMurray,” Wyatt Platt said as he passed like a shadow in the darkness.
    “Just resting my horse, Wyatt. I’ll catch up,” Duncan answered. His body might be heading into a fight, but tonight his mind was only on thoughts of home.
    “I almost rode right into you. With that black horse you’re darn near invisible.” Wyatt never learned to whisper. He talked as he lived, at full volume.
    Duncan laughed. “I could say the same about you, but I’ve been smelling you for half a mile. Did you ever think about giving the folks around you a break and taking a bath?”
    “Is it spring?” the shadow beside him asked. “My ma always sewed me into my long johns in late September and didn’t cut them off me until March. She swears that’s why she raised six of the healthiest kids in Tennessee.”
    Duncan laughed. “More likely no one with a cold would get within ten feet of you. All those brothers and sisters still alive?”
    “Yeah, all except me are married and raising families.”
    “Did you have any trouble getting the girls married off? I got these three cousins who don’t seem to take to the idea much. They’re all in their twenties and some folks are commenting that they’re getting pretty ripe on the vine.”
    “Nope,” Wyatt answered. “My oldest sister was married to three different men during the war. She figured whichever one came home first was the keeper. Course, she packed up and left for Texas the day after the first one arrived just in case the other two didn’t see it that way.”
    “He didn’t mind that she’d been two-timing him with two other men?”
    Wyatt laughed. “I never heard him say. He did tell me once that he was lucky he didn’t have to pay for the lessons her third husband taught her about how to act under the covers. They’re living down by Galveston and last I heard they had so many kids they stopped naming them and just started numbering. So, I’m guessing what she learned they’re still practicing.”
    Duncan smiled with his friend. Wyatt was five years older and tough as thick jerky, but he never believed in giving up. He’d die fighting.
    Wyatt’s shadow moved on, vanishing in the night. Duncan wouldn’t