Page 113 of Texas Glory
Rawley had put on his jacket, but now he stood like a statue, staring at the door, gasping for breath. Cordelia extended her hand toward him. “Come on, Rawley. It sounds as though this last gift was too big to wrap.”
He shook his head vigorously. “I don’t want a horse. I don’t want to have to leave.”
“You don’t have to leave, son,” Dallas said.
Cordelia’s heart lurched at the word—son—spoken with such ease.
“Then why you givin’ me a horse if you don’t want me to ride it outta here?”
“How else are you gonna ride over my range and count my cattle for me?”
Panic delved into Rawley’s dark eyes. “I don’t know how to count.”
“Can you tie a knot in a rope?”
Rawley nodded vigorously.
“Then I can teach you to count.”
Cordelia slammed her eyes closed. Dallas would teach Rawley as he’d once planned to teach his own son. She wondered if he was even aware that he was saying to Rawley things that he’d planned to say to his own son.
But Rawley didn’t carry Dallas’s blood; he wasn’t a Leigh. Yet, she couldn’t help but wonder if this child of misfortune could possibly fill the gaping hole in their hearts.
Opening her eyes, she wrapped her hand around Rawley’s. “We’d better look this horse over before you start making plans. You might not even want to keep him.”
Rawley nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, I wanna keep him. Even if he’s butt ugly.”
Dallas cleared his throat and a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “You’re too easy to please, Rawley.”
They walked to the porch, hand in hand, a family that might have been, a bittersweet reminder of what would never be.
Tethered to the veranda railing, a brown and white spotted horse nickered.
Rawley released Cordelia’s hand and walked to the edge of the veranda. Dallas continued to hold her hand tightly. She ached to have his arm come around her, to find again the intimacy they had shared as they had anticipated the birth of their child.
Rawley spun around, disbelief in his eyes. “He’s mine?”
“He’s yours,” the three brothers said at once.
They exchanged looks, and Cordelia saw a bond between them that didn’t exist between her brothers.
“Because he looks like someone splashed paint on him, he’s known as a paint or pinto,” Amelia explained. “You’ll need to give him a name.”
“Spot!” Maggie cried as she wrapped her hands around the veranda beam and leaned back. “Spot’s a good name.”
Rawley looked at her as though she’d lost her mind. “Spot? That ain’t no name for a horse.”
She crinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue. “What then?”
Rawley furrowed his brow. “My ma was Shawnee. Could I call him Shawnee?”
Amelia released a small cry and stumbled against Houston, her hand pressed against her stomach.
“I don’t got to call him that!” Rawley yelled. “You can name him!”
Houston wrapped his arms around his wife as she began gasping for air. Dallas’s hand tightened around Cordelia’s.
“What’s wrong?” Houston asked, a thread of panic in his normally calm voice.
