War at Fire Creek by Cameron Judd

Author:Cameron Judd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2004-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Charlotte Canaday had walked all the way from Fire Creek to the Carrigan ranch house in the deepest late hours of the night, and when she was greeted at the door by Patrick Carrigan as Keefer Riley left, she was so weary that she nearly collapsed in his arms. He led her back to his office room and sat her on the sofa there. She looked up at him with hooded, bleary eyes, leaned over, and lay on her side. In moments, despite the news and the letter she had come to deliver, she was sound asleep. But a minute later, she stirred a little, opened her eyes again, and sat up, pulling from beneath her shawl a crumpled envelope, which she extended toward Carrigan. Her hand trembled, and her fingers lost their grip on it. The envelope fell to the floor as her head sank to the sofa again and her eyes closed once more.

Patrick eyed the envelope, the back side of which was turned up. He knelt and picked the envelope up and turned it over. His name was written on the front in a strong and familiar-looking hand, but he didn’t recognize it at once.

The envelope had not been opened, as best he could tell. He opened it now, removed the letter inside, and began to read.

Dear Lord, it was a letter written to him by his own son, Patrick Junior, who had left this place many months before after an argument with his father! Patrick had been unsure what had become of his son since and prayed for him frequently. He read carefully, squinting his eyes and sometimes wiping away tears. Not all of what he read pleased him. Pat apparently was, at the time of writing, preparing to marry a young woman. The senior Carrigan was not glad to learn this, for the woman he wanted his son to marry was the one now sleeping on his sofa, still wearing the ring Pat had given her as a token of an engagement he now considered broken and defunct.

Patrick had looked forward to the day Charlotte Canaday would become Charlotte Carrigan, wife of his son, Pat. Even after Pat left and the engagement was broken, the father had retained hope that his son would eventually come to his senses and return to Charlotte.

Other portions of the letter, however, revealed news that Patrick was astonished to learn and quite pleased by. Pat wrote of having met two cousins, sons of his father’s late brother, and described the help they had given him at great risk to themselves. These two brothers, Joseph and Liam Carrigan, were searching for Patrick, the letter said, wanting to meet in the flesh the uncle they had never known. He was sending the letter by them, he wrote.

The letter had a tone of friendly reconciliation, a son making peace with a father after a time of separation and hostility. The disputes that had divided him from his son had weighed on the

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