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taking the marshal’s job, trying the case in his mind, arguing for and against, making no attempt to strike up a conversation with Jeb. Now, seeing his pa, he set the quandary aside.
    “I ought to send the pair of you packing for worrying us the way you did,” Angus growled with a cantankerous gesture of one hand. Being a contrary sort, he liked to bitch, even when he’d gotten what he wanted. “After a good old-fashioned horsewhipping, that is.”
    Concepcion slipped out the door to stand behind him, one competent brown hand resting lightly on his shoulder. She didn’t offer a welcome, but Kade still cherished a fleeting and distracted hope that she wouldn’t refuse to cook or wash for them, as she’d done in the past whenever they’d gotten on her bad side. She’d been keeping house on the Triple M since before their mother died, when they were boys, and in many ways she’d taken up where Georgia McKettrick had left off. Life would have been grim around the place without her around to soften things up a little.
    Jeb swung down from the saddle first, leaving the reins to dangle, a go-to-hell grin on his face. Like Kade, he’d had a bath the night before at the hotel, but he still looked like a prospector gone to seed.
    “I missed you, too, Pa,” Jeb said.
    Kade dismounted, more resigned than anything. He wasn’t glib like Jeb, and he’d had a lot on his mind just since returning to Indian Rock, between the tin star he’d been offered, all those brides on his tail, and the grief brewing between the Triple M and Cavanagh’s outfit. Making idle conversation was beyond him.
    “I’m disinclined to claim either one of you,” Angus fussed. “You call yourselves McKettricks? You look like a couple of road agents.”
    Jeb laughed, opening the front gate and leaving it to swing back against Kade’s middle when he tried to follow. “And you look like a bony-kneed old lady, sitting there under that lap robe. Where’s your knitting?”
    Angus tried to keep his dudgeon up, but even he couldn’t help grinning a little, for all his sour mien. Jeb could bullshit a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher into dancing a jig with the devil, if he put his mind to it. That was a gift Kade didn’t possess, and when his guard was down, he envied it mightily.
    As the two brothers mounted the wide porch steps, a ranch hand came to collect the horses, and Angus levered himself to his feet with a creaking sound that might have come from either the chair or his dry, old joints. Concepcion stayed close, Kade noticed, but didn’t make the mistake of helping the old man rise.
    “I hear there’s a fight brewing,” Kade said, because if he didn’t speak up before Jeb started yammering in earnest, he wouldn’t get a word in edgewise.
    “You heard right,” Angus said, reddening. His jugular vein stood out, and his right temple pulsed. “It’s that half brother of yours that’s behind it, too. I’d stake my life on it. Damn pigheaded cuss.”
    “Wonder where he gets that?” Kade asked lightly.
    Concepcion gave him a reproachful look and spoke for the first time. “Same place you did, I would say.”
    Angus put out a hand, and Kade shook it. Old coot’s grip was still stout as an ape’s; could be he was putting on a good part of this peakedness, just to get himself some sympathy and attention.
    Concepcion led the way into the house, prattling about scissors and razors. She was bent on dispensing shaves and haircuts, and once she got a notion like that into her head, the deed was as good as done.
    Jeb and Kade paused to hang their coats, hats, and gun belts on the hall tree just inside the front door, and Angus tarried, keeping an eye on them. Maybe he thought they’d make a run for it if he didn’t keep them corralled.
    “Where the hell have you boys been?” he demanded in a raspy whisper. “I figured you both for dead, you were gone so long. And not a word to put my mind at ease. Either one of you ever heard of the