Читать книгу A Lawman's Christmas: A McKettricks of Texas Novel - Linda Lael Miller - Страница 9

The snow was coming down harder and faster when Clay returned to Blue River from the high ridge, where he’d breathed in the sight of his land, the wide expanse of it and the sheer potential, Outlaw strong and steady beneath him.

Dusk was fast approaching now, and lamps glowed in some of the windows on Main Street, along with the occasional stark dazzle of a lightbulb. Clay had yet to decide whether or not he’d have his place wired for electricity when the time came; like the telephone, it was still a newfangled invention as far as he was concerned, and he wasn’t entirely sure it would last.

At the livery stable, Clay made arrangements for Outlaw and then headed in the direction of the Bitter Gulch Saloon, where he figured the mayor and the town council were most likely to be waiting for him.

Most of the businesses were sealed up tight against the weather, but the saloon’s swinging doors were all that stood between the crowded interior and the sidewalk. A piano tinkled a merry if discordant tune somewhere in all that roiling blue cigar smoke, and bottles rattled against the rims of glasses.

The floor was covered in sawdust; the bar was long and ornately carved with various bare-breasted women pouring water into urns decorated with all sorts of flowers and mythical animals and assorted other decorations.

Clay removed his hat, thumped the underside of the brim with one forefinger to knock off the light coating of snow and caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the chipped and murky glass of the mirror in back of the bar.

He didn’t commonly frequent saloons, not being much of a drinker, but he knew he’d be dropping in at the Bitter Gulch on a regular basis, once he’d been sworn in as marshal and taken up his duties. Douse the seeds of trouble with enough whiskey and they were bound to take root, break ground and sprout foliage faster than the green beans his ma liked to plant in her garden every spring.

One glance told him he’d been right to look for Mayor Ponder and his cronies here—they’d gathered around a table over in the corner, near the potbellied stove, each with his own glass and his own bottle.

Inwardly, Clay sighed, but he managed a smile as he approached the table, snow melting on the shoulders of his duster.

“Good to see you, Clay,” Mayor Ponder said cordially, as one of the others in the party dragged a chair over from a nearby table. “Sent a boy to fetch your trunk from the depot,” the older man went on, as Clay joined them, taking the offered seat without removing his coat. He didn’t plan on staying long. “You didn’t say where you wanted your gear sent, so I told Billy to haul it over to the jailhouse for the time being.”

“Thanks,” Clay said mildly, setting his hat on the table. At home, the McKettrick women enforced their own private ordinance against such liberties, on the grounds that it was not only unmannerly, but bad luck and a mite on the slovenly side, too.

“Have a drink with us?” Ponder asked, studying Clay thoughtfully through the shifting haze of smoke. The smell of unwashed bodies and poor dental hygiene was so thick it was nearly visible, and he felt a strong and sudden yearning to be outside again, in the fresh air.

Clay shook his head. “Not now,” he said. “It’s been a long day, and I’m ready for a meal, a hot bath and a bed.”

Ponder cleared his throat. “Speaking of, well, beds, I’m afraid the house we offered you is still occupied. We’ve been telling Dara Rose that she’d have to move when we found a replacement for Parnell, but so far, she’s stayed put.”

Dara Rose. Clay smiled slightly at the reminder of the fiery little woman who’d burst through the door of that shack a couple of hours before when he showed up with Edrina, stormed through a flock of cacophonous chickens and let him know, in no uncertain terms, that she wasn’t at all glad to see him.

There had been no shortage of women in Clay McKettrick’s life—he’d even fallen in love with one, to his eventual sorrow—but none of them had affected him quite the way the widow Nolan did.

“No hurry,” Clay said easily, resting his hands on his thighs. “I can get a room at the hotel, or bunk in at the jailhouse.”

“The town of Blue River cannot stand good for the cost of lodgings,” Ponder said, looking worried. “Having that power line strung all the way out here from Austin depleted our treasury.”

One of the other men huffed at that, and poured himself another shot of whiskey. “Hell,” he said, with a hiccup, “we’re flat busted and up to our hind ends in debt.”

Ponder flushed, and his big whiskers quivered along with those heavy jowls of his. “We can pay the agreed-upon salary,” he stated, after glaring over at his colleague for a long moment. “Seventy-five dollars a month and living quarters, as agreed.” He paused, flushed. “I’ll speak to Mrs. Nolan in the morning,” he clarified. “Tell her she needs to make other arrangements immediately.”

“Don’t do that,” Clay said, quietly but quickly, too. He took a breath, slowed himself down on the inside. “I don’t mind paying for a hotel room or sleeping at the jail, for the time being.”

The little group exchanged looks.

Snow spun at the few high windows the Bitter Gulch Saloon boasted, like millions of tiny ghosts in search of someplace to haunt.

“A deal,” Ponder finally blustered, “is a deal. We offered you a place to live as part of your salary, and we intend to keep our word.”

Clay rubbed his chin thoughtfully. His beard was coming in again, even though he’d shaved that morning, on board the train. Nearly cut his own throat in the process, as it happened, because of the way the car jostled along the tracks. “Where are Mrs. Nolan and her little girls likely to wind up?” he asked, hoping he didn’t sound too concerned. “Once they’ve moved out of that house, I mean.”

“Ezra Maddox offered for her,” said another member of the council. “He’s a hard man, old Ezra, but he’s got a farm and a herd of dairy cows and money in the bank, and she could do a lot worse when it comes to husbands.”

Clay felt a strange stab at the news, deep inside, but he was careful not to let his reaction show. He felt something for Dara Rose Nolan, but what that something was exactly was a matter that would require some sorting out.

“Ezra ain’t willing to take the girls along with their mama, though,” imparted the first man, pouring himself yet another dose of whiskey and throwing it back without so much as a shudder or a wince. The stuff might have been creek water, for all the effect it seemed to have going down the fellow’s gullet. “And he didn’t actually offer to marry up with Dara Rose right there at the beginning, either. He means to try her out as a housekeeper before he makes her his wife. Ezra likes to know what he’s getting.”

Someplace in the middle of Clay’s chest, one emotion broke away from the tangle and filled all the space he occupied.

It was pure anger, cold and urgent and prickly around the edges.

What kind of man expects a woman to part with her own children? he wondered, silently furious. His neck turned hot, and he had to release his jaw muscles by force of will.

“Dara Rose is a bit shy on choices at the moment, if you ask me,” Ponder put in, taking a defensive tone suggesting he was a friend of Ezra Maddox’s and meant to take the man’s part if a controversy arose. With a wave of one hand, he indicated their surroundings, including the half dozen saloon girls, waiting tables in their moth-eaten finery. “If she turns Ezra down, she’ll wind up right here.” He paused to indulge in a slight smile, and Clay underwent another internal struggle just to keep from backhanding the mayor of Blue Creek hard enough to send him sprawling in the dirty sawdust. “Can’t say as I’d mind that, really.”

Clay seethed, but his expression was schooled to quiet amusement. He’d grown up playing poker with his granddad, his pa and uncles, his many rambunctious cousins, male and female. He knew how to keep his emotions to himself.

Mostly.

“And you a married man,” scolded one of the other council members, but his tone was indulgent. “For shame.”

Clay pushed his chair back, slowly, and stood. Stretched before retrieving his hat from its place on the table. “I will leave you gentlemen to your discussion,” he said, with a slight but ironic emphasis on the word gentlemen.

“But we meant to swear you in,” Ponder protested. “Make it official.”

“Morning will be here soon enough,” Clay said, putting his hat on. “I’ll meet you at the jailhouse at eight o’clock. Bring a badge and a Bible.”

Ponder did not look pleased; he was used to piping the tune, it was obvious, and most folks probably danced to it.

Most folks weren’t McKettricks, though.

Clay smiled an idle smile, tugged at the brim of his hat in a gesture of farewell and turned to leave the saloon. Just beyond the swinging doors, he paused on the sidewalk to draw in some fresh air and look up at the sky.

It was snow-shrouded and dark, that sky, and Clay wished for a glimpse, however brief, of the stars.

He’d come to Blue River to start a ranch of his own, marry some good woman and raise a bunch of kids with her, build a legacy comparable to the one his granddad had established on the Triple M. Figuring he’d never love anybody but Annabel Carson, who had made up her mind to wed his cousin Sawyer, come hell or high water, he hadn’t been especially stringent with his requirements for a bride.

He wanted a wife and a partner, somebody loyal who’d stand shoulder to shoulder with him in good times and bad. She had to be smart and have a sense of humor—ranching was too hard a life for folks lacking in those characteristics, in his opinion—but she didn’t necessarily have to be pretty.

Annabel was mighty easy on the eyes, after all, and look where that got him. Up shit creek without a paddle, that was where. She’d claimed to love Clay with her whole heart, but at the first disagreement, she’d thrown his promise ring in his face and gone chasing after Sawyer.

Even now, all these months later, the recollection carried a powerful sting, racing through Clay’s veins like snake venom.

Crossing the street to the town’s only hotel, its electric lights glowing a dull gold at the downstairs windows, Clay rode out the sensation, the way he’d trained himself to do, but a remarkable thing happened at the point when Annabel’s face usually loomed up in his mind’s eye.

He saw Dara Rose Nolan there instead.

BY THE TIME DARA ROSE got up the next morning, washed and dressed and built up the fires, then headed out to feed and water the chickens and gather the eggs, the snow had stopped, the ground was bare and the sky was a soft blue.

She hadn’t slept well, but the crisp bite of approaching winter cleared some of the cobwebs from her beleaguered brain, and she smiled as she worked. Her situation was as dire as ever, of course, but daylight invariably raised her hopes and quieted her fears.

When the sun was up, she could believe things would work out in the long run if she did her best and maintained her faith.

She would find a way to earn an honest living and keep her family together. She had to believe that to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

This very day, as soon as the children had had their breakfast and Edrina had gone off to school, Dara Rose decided, flinging out ground corn for the chickens, now clucking and flapping around her skirts and pecking at the ground, she and her youngest daughter would set out to knock on every respectable door in town if they had to.

Someone in Blue River surely needed a cook, a housekeeper, a nurse or some combination thereof. She’d work for room and board, for herself and the girls, and they wouldn’t take up much space, the three of them. What little cash they needed, she could earn by taking in sewing.

The idea wasn’t new, and it wasn’t likely to come to fruition, either, given that most people in town were only a little better off than she was and therefore not in the market for household help, but it heartened Dara Rose a little, just the same, as she finished feeding the chickens, dusted her hands together and went to retrieve the egg basket, hanging by its handle from a nail near the back door.

Holding her skirts up with one hand, Dara Rose ducked into the tumbledown chicken coop and began gathering eggs from the straw where the hens roosted.

That morning, there were more than a dozen—fifteen, by her count—which meant she and Edrina and Harriet could each have one for breakfast. The remainder could be traded at the mercantile for salt—she was running a little low on that—and perhaps some lard and a small scoop of white sugar.

Thinking these thoughts, Dara Rose was humming under her breath as she left the chicken coop, carrying the egg basket.

She nearly dropped the whole bunch of them right to the ground when she caught sight of the new marshal, riding his fancy spotted horse, reining in just the other side of the fence, a shiny nickel star gleaming on his worn coat.

It made him look like a gunslinger, that long coat, and the round-brimmed hat only added to the rakish impression.

Already bristling, Dara Rose drew a deep breath and rustled up a smile. It wasn’t as if the man existed merely to irritate and inconvenience her, after all.

The marshal, swinging down out of the saddle and approaching the rickety side gate to stroll, bold as anything, into her yard, did not smile back.

Dara Rose’s high hopes shriveled instantly as the obvious finally struck her: Clay McKettrick had come to send her and the children packing. He’d want to move himself—and possibly a family—in, and soon. The fact that he had a fair claim to the house did nothing whatsoever to make her feel better.

“Mornin’,” he said, standing directly in front of her now, and pulling politely at the brim of his hat before taking it off.

“Good morning,” Dara Rose replied cautiously, still mindful of her rudeness the day before and the regret it had caused her. Her gaze moved to the polished star pinned to his coat, and she felt an achy twinge of loss, remembering Parnell.

Poor, well-meaning, chivalrous Parnell.

Greetings exchanged, both of them just stood there looking at each other, for what seemed like a long time.

Finally, Marshal McKettrick cleared his throat, holding his hat in both hands now, and the wintry sun caught in his dark hair. He looked as clean as could be, standing there, his clothes fresh, except for the coat, and his boots brushed to a shine.

Dara Rose felt a small, peculiar shift in a place behind her heart.

“I just wanted to say,” the man began awkwardly, inclining his head toward the house, “that there’s no need for you and the kids to clear out right away. I spent last night at the hotel, but there’s a cot and a stove at the jail house, and that will suit me fine for now.”

Dara Rose’s throat tightened, and the backs of her eyes burned. She didn’t quite dare to believe her own ears. “But you’re entitled to live here,” she reminded him, and then could have nipped off her tongue. “And surely your wife wouldn’t want to set up housekeeping in a—”

In that instant, the awkwardness was gone. The marshal’s mouth slanted in a grin, and mischief sparkled in his eyes. They were the color of new denim, those eyes.

“I don’t have a wife,” he said simply. “Not yet, any how.”

That grin. It did something unnerving to Dara Rose’s insides.

Her heartbeat quickened inexplicably, nearly racing, then fairly lurched to a stop. Did Clay McKettrick expect something in return for his kindness? If he was looking for favors, he was going to be disappointed, because she wasn’t that kind of woman.

Not anymore.

“It’s almost Christmas,” Clay said, assessing the sky briefly before meeting her gaze again.

Confused, Dara Rose squinted up at him. Christmas was important to Edrina and Harriet, as it was to most children, but it was the least of her own concerns.

“Do you need spectacles?” Clay asked.

Taken aback by the question, Dara Rose opened her mouth to speak, found herself at a complete loss for words and pressed her lips together. Then she shook her head.

Clay McKettrick chuckled and reached for the egg basket.

It wasn’t heavy, and the contents were precious, but Dara Rose offered no resistance. She let him take it.

“Where did Edrina learn to ride a horse?” he asked.

They were moving now, heading slowly toward the house, as though it were the least bit proper for the two of them to be behind closed doors together.

Dara Rose blinked, feeling as muddled as if he’d spoken to her in a foreign language instead of plain English. “I beg your pardon?”

They stepped into the small kitchen, with its slanted wall and iron cookstove, Dara Rose in the lead, and the marshal set the basket of eggs on the table, which was comprised of two barrels with a board nailed across their tops.

“Edrina was there to meet Outlaw and me when we got off the train yesterday,” Clay explained quietly, keeping his distance and folding his arms loosely across his chest. “The child has a way with horses.”

Dara Rose heard the girls stirring in the tiny room the three of them shared, just off the kitchen, and such a rush of love for her babies came over her that she almost teared up. “Yes,” she said. “Parnell—my husband—kept a strawberry roan named Gawain. Edrina’s been quite at home in the saddle since she was a tiny thing.”

“What happened to him?” Clay asked.

“Parnell?” Dara Rose asked stupidly, feeling her cheeks go crimson.

“I know what happened to your husband, ma’am,” Clay said quietly. “I was asking about the horse.”

Dara Rose felt dazed, but she straightened her spine and looked Clay McKettrick in the eye. “We had to sell Gawain after my husband died,” she said. It was the simple truth, and almost as much of a sore spot as Parnell’s death. They’d all loved the gelding, but Ezra Maddox had offered a good price for him, and Dara Rose had needed the money for food and firewood and kerosene for the lamps.

Edrina, already mourning the man she’d believed to be her father, had cried for days.

“I see,” Clay said gravely, a bright smile breaking over his handsome face like a sunrise as Edrina and Harriet hopped into the room and hurried to stand by the stove, wearing their calico dresses but no shoes or stockings.

“Do we have to go live in the poorhouse now?” Harriet asked, groping for Edrina’s hand, finding it and evidently forgetting that the floor was cold enough to sting her bare feet. In the dead of winter, the planks sometimes frosted over.

To Dara Rose’s surprise, Clay crouched, putting him self nearly at eye level with both children. He kept his balance easily, still holding his hat, and when his coat opened a ways, she caught an ominous glimpse of the gun belt buckled around his lean hips.

“You don’t have to go anywhere,” he said, very solemnly.

Edrina’s eyes widened. Her unbrushed curls rioted around her face, like gold in motion, and her bow-shaped lips formed a smile. “Really and truly?” she asked. “We can stay here?”

Clay nodded.

“But where will you live?” Harriet wanted to know. Like her sister, she was astute and well-spoken. Dara Rose had never used baby talk with her girls, and she’d been reading aloud to them since before they were born.

“I’ll be fine over at the jailhouse, at least until spring,” Clay replied, rising once again to his full height. He was tall, this man from the Arizona Territory, broad through the shoulders and thick in the chest, but the impression he gave was of leanness and agility. He was probably fast with that pistol he carried, Dara Rose thought, and was disturbed by the knowledge.

It was the twentieth century, after all, and the West was no longer wild. Hardly anyone, save sheriffs and marshals, carried a firearm.

“I’m going to school today,” Edrina announced happily, “and I plan on staying until Miss Krenshaw rings the bell at three o’clock, too.”

Clay crooked a smile, but his gaze, Dara Rose discovered, had found its way back to her. “That’s good,” he said.

“Why don’t you stay for breakfast?” Edrina asked the man wearing her father’s badge pinned to his coat.

“Edrina,” Dara Rose almost whispered, embarrassed.

“I’ve already eaten,” Clay replied. “Had the ham and egg special in the hotel dining room before Mayor Ponder swore me in.”

“Oh,” Edrina said, clearly disappointed.

“That’s a fine horse, mister,” Harriet chimed in, her head tipped way back so she could look up into Clay’s recently shaven face.

Dara Rose was still trying to bring the newest blush in her cheeks under control, and she could only manage that by avoiding Clay McKettrick’s eyes.

“Yes, indeed,” Clay answered the child. “His name’s Outlaw, but you can’t go by that. He’s a good old cay use.”

“I got to ride him yesterday, down by the railroad tracks,” Edrina boasted. Then her face fell a little. “Sort of.”

“If it’s all right with your mother,” Clay offered, “and you go to school like you ought to, you can ride Outlaw again.”

“Me, too?” Harriet asked, breathless with excitement at the prospect.

Clay caught Dara Rose’s gaze again. “That’s your mother’s decision to make, not mine,” he said, so at home in his own skin that she wondered what kind of life he’d led, before his arrival in Blue River. An easy one, most likely.

But something in his eyes refuted that.

“We’ll see,” Dara Rose said.

Both girls groaned, wanting a “yes” instead of a “maybe.”

“I’d best be getting on with my day,” Clay said, with another slow, crooked grin.

And then he was at the door, ducking his head so he wouldn’t bump it, putting on his hat and walking away.

Dara Rose watched through the little window over the sink until he’d gone through the side gate and mounted his horse.

“We don’t have to go to the orphanage!” Harriet crowed, clapping her plump little hands in celebration.

“There will be no more talk of orphanages,” Dara Rose decreed briskly, pumping water at the rusty sink to wash her hands.

“Does Mr. McKettrick have a wife?” Edrina piped up. “Because if he doesn’t, you could marry him. I don’t think he’d send Harriet and me away, like Mr. Maddox wants to do.”

Dara Rose kept her back to her daughters as she began breakfast preparations, using all her considerable willpower to keep her voice calm and even. “That’s none of your business,” she said firmly. “Nor mine, either. And don’t you dare pry into Mr. McKettrick’s private affairs by asking, either one of you.”

Both girls sighed at this.

“Go get your shoes and stockings on,” Dara Rose ordered, setting the cast-iron skillet on the stove, plopping in the last smidgeon of bacon grease to keep the eggs from sticking.

“I need to go to the outhouse,” Harriet said.

“Put your shoes on first,” Dara Rose countered. “It’s a nice day out, but the ground is cold.”

The children obeyed readily, which threw her a little. She was raising her daughters to have minds of their own, but that meant they were often obstinate and sometimes even defiant.

Parnell had accused her of spoiling them, though he’d indulged the girls plenty himself, buying them hair ribbons and peppermint sticks and letting them ride his horse. Edrina, rough and tumble as any boy but at the same time all girl, was virtually fearless as well as outspoken, and trying as the child sometimes was, Dara Rose wouldn’t have changed anything about her. Except, of course, for her tendency to play hooky from school.

Harriet, just a year younger than her sister, was more tentative, less likely to take risks than Edrina was. Too small to really understand death, Harriet very probably expected her papa to come home one day, riding Gawain, his saddlebags bulging with presents.

Dara Rose’s eyes smarted again and, inwardly, she brought herself up short.

She and the girls had been given a reprieve, that was all. They could go on living in the marshal’s house for a while, but other arrangements would have to be made eventually, just the same.

Which was why, when she and the girls had eaten, and the dishes had been washed and the fires banked, Dara Rose followed through with her original plan.

She and Harriet walked Edrina to the one-room schoolhouse at the edge of town, and then took the eggs to the mercantile, to be traded for staples.

It was warm inside the general store, and Harriet became so captivated by the lovely doll on display in the tinsel-draped front window that Dara Rose feared the child would refuse to leave the place at all.

“Look, Mama,” she breathed, without taking her eyes from the beautiful toy when Dara Rose approached and took her hand. “Isn’t she pretty? She’s almost as tall as I am.”

“She’s pretty,” Dara Rose conceded, trying to keep the sadness out of her voice. “But not nearly as pretty as you are.”

Harriet looked up at her, enchanted. “Edrina says there’s no such person as St. Nicholas,” she said. “She says it was you and Papa who filled our stockings last Christmas Eve.”

Dara Rose’s throat ached. She had to swallow before she replied, “Edrina is right, sweetheart,” she said hoarsely. Other people could afford to pretend that magical things happened, at least while their children were young, but she did not have that luxury.

“I guess the doll probably costs a lot,” Harriet said, her voice small and wistful.

Dara Rose checked the price tag dangling from the doll’s delicate wrist, though she already knew it would be far out of her reach.

Two dollars and fifty cents.

What was the world coming to?

“She comes with a trunk full of clothes,” the storekeeper put in helpfully. Philo Bickham meant well, to be sure, but he wasn’t the most thoughtful man on earth. “That’s real human hair on her head, too, and she came all the way from Germany.”

Harriet’s eyes widened with something that might have been alarm. “But didn’t the hair belong to someone?” she asked, no doubt picturing a bald child wandering sadly through the Black Forest.

“People sometimes sell their hair,” Dara Rose explained, giving Mr. Bickham a less than friendly glance as she drew her daughter toward the door. “And then it grows back.”

Harriet immediately brightened. “Could we sell my hair? For two dollars and fifty cents?”

“No,” Dara Rose said, and instantly regretted speaking so abruptly. She dropped to her haunches, tucked stray golden curls into Harriet’s tattered bonnet. “Your hair is much too beautiful to sell, sweetheart.”

“But I could grow more,” Harriet reasoned. “You said so yourself, Mama.”

Dara Rose smiled, mainly to keep from crying, and stood very straight, juggling the egg basket, now containing a small tin of lard, roughly three-quarters of a cup of sugar scooped into a paper sack and a box of table salt, from one wrist to the other.

“We’ll be on our way now, Harriet,” she said. “We have things to do.”