After the chickens were fed and had retreated into their coop to roost for the night, Dara Rose made a simple supper of baked potatoes and last summer’s string beans, boiled with bits of salt pork and onion, for herself and the girls, and the three of them sat at the table in the kitchen, eating by the light of a kerosene lantern and chatting quietly.
The subject of St. Nicholas did not come up again, thankfully. In Dara Rose’s humble opinion, Clement C. Moore had a lot to answer for. By writing that lengthy and admittedly charming poem, “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” he’d created expectations in children that many parents couldn’t hope to meet.
Instead, Edrina recounted her visit to the O’Reillys’ after lunch, and fretted that it wasn’t fair that she had to wash the blackboard every single day for a week when all she’d done was defend herself against that wretched Thomas. Large flakes of snow drifted, like benevolent ghosts, past the darkened window next to the back door, and brought a sigh to hover in the back of Dara Rose’s throat.
Winter. As a privileged only child, back in Massachusetts, she’d loved everything about that season, even the cold. It was a time to skate and sled and build castles out of snow and then drink hot chocolate by the fire while Nanny told stories or recited long, exciting poems about shipwrecks and ghosts and Paul Revere’s ride.
Had she ever really lived such a life? Dara Rose wondered now, as she did whenever her childhood came to mind.
“Mama?” Edrina said, breaking the sudden spell the sight of snowflakes had cast over Dara Rose. “Did you hear what I said about Addie O’Reilly?”
Dara Rose gave herself an inward shake and sat up a little straighter in her chair. “I’m sorry,” she said, because she was always truthful with the children. “I’m afraid I was woolgathering.”
Edrina’s perfect little face glowed, heart-shaped, in the light of love and a kerosene lantern. “She’s really sick,” she informed her mother, in a tone of good-natured patience, as though she were the parent and Dara Rose the child. “Mrs. O’Reilly told me she has romantic fever.”
Dara Rose did not correct Edrina. She was too stricken by the tragedy of it, the patent unfairness. Rheumatic fever. Was there no end to the sorrows and hardships visited on that poor family?
“That’s dreadful,” she said.
“And Addie gets lonely, staying inside all the time,” Edrina went on. “So I said Harriet and I would come to visit on Saturday morning. We can, can’t we, Mama? Because I promised.”
Dara Rose’s heart swelled with affection for her daughter, and then sank a little. It was like her spirited Edrina to make such an offer, and follow through on it, too, whether or not she had her mother’s permission. When Edrina made a promise, she kept it, which meant she was really asking if Harriet could go with her.
As far as Dara Rose knew, rheumatic fever wasn’t contagious, but heaven only knew what other diseases her children might contract during a visit to the O’Reilly house—diphtheria, the dreaded influenza, perhaps even typhoid or cholera.
“You mustn’t promise such things, in the future, without speaking to me first,” Dara Rose told Edrina, hedging. “I feel as sorry for the O’Reillys as you do, Edrina, but there are other considerations.”
“And it stinks over there,” Harriet interjected solemnly, her nose twitching a little at the memory.
Dara Rose had lost her appetite, which was fine, because she’d had enough to eat, anyway. “Harriet,” she said. “That will be enough of that sort of talk. It is not suitable for the supper table.”
Harriet sighed. “It’s never suitable,” she lamented.
“Hush,” Dara Rose told her, her attention focused, for the moment, on her elder daughter. “You may visit the O’Reillys on Saturday morning,” she stated, rising to begin clearing the table. “But only because you gave your word and I would not ask you to break it.”
“If I hadn’t promised, you wouldn’t let me go?” Edrina pressed. She’d never been one to quit while the quitting was good, a trait she came by honestly, Dara Rose had to admit. She had the same shortcoming herself.
“That’s right,” she replied, at some length. “I have to think about your safety, Edrina, and that of your sister.”
“My safety? The O’Reillys wouldn’t hurt us.”
“Not deliberately,” Dara Rose allowed, “but it isn’t the most sanitary place in the world, and you might catch something.”
Although she didn’t mention it, she was thinking of the diphtheria outbreak two years before, during which four children had perished, all of them from one family.
“Is that suitable talk for the supper table?” Harriet asked sincerely.
“Never mind,” Dara Rose said. “It’s time you both got ready for bed. Shall I walk with you to the outhouse, or are you brave enough to go on your own?”
Edrina scraped back her chair, rose to fetch her coat and Harriet’s from the pegs near the back door. Her expression said she was brave enough to do anything, and protect her little sister in the bargain.
“Maybe that’s why Addie’s so lonesome,” Edrina said, opening the door to the chilly night, with its flurries of snow. “Because everybody is afraid of catching something if they visit.”
Chagrin swept over Dara Rose—out of the mouths of babes—but she assumed a stern countenance. “Don’t stand there with the door open,” she said.
Later, when the children were in bed, and she’d read them a story from their one dog-eared book of fairy tales and heard their prayers—Harriet put in another request for the doll from the mercantile—kissed them good-night and tucked them in, Dara Rose returned to the kitchen.
There, she took the two letters Mr. McKettrick had delivered earlier from her apron pocket, and sat down.
The kerosene in the lamp was getting low, and the wick was smoking a little, but Dara Rose did not hurry.
She knew the plump missive was from her cousin, Piper, who taught school in a small town in Maine. She meant to save that one for last, and she took the time to weigh it in her hand, run her fingers over the vellum and examine the stamp before setting it carefully aside.
She opened the letter from the Wildflower Salve Company first, even though she knew it was an advertisement and nothing more, and carefully smoothed the single page on the tabletop.
Her eyes widened a little as she read, and her heart fluttered up into her throat as her excitement grew.
Bold print declared that Dara Rose was holding the key to financial security right there in her hand. She could win prizes, it fairly shouted. She could earn money. And all she had to do was introduce her friends and neighbors to the wonders of Wildflower Salve. Each colorfully decorated round tin—an elegant keepsake in its own right, according to the Wildflower Salve people—sold for a mere fifty cents. And she would get to keep a whopping twenty-five cents for her commission.
Dara Rose sat back, thinking.
Twenty-five cents was a lot of money.
And there were prizes. All sorts of prizes—toys, household goods, luxuries of all sorts—could be had in lieu of commissions, if the “independent business person” preferred.
Out of the goodness of their hearts, the folks at the Wildflower Salve Company, of Racine, Wisconsin, would be happy to send her a full twenty tins of this “medicinal miracle” in good faith. If for some incomprehensible reason her “friends and relations” didn’t snap up the whole shipment practically as soon as she opened the parcel, she could return the merchandise and owe nothing.
Five dollars, Dara Rose thought. If she sold twenty tins of Wildflower Salve, she would earn five dollars—a virtual fortune.
The kerosene lamp flickered, reminding her that she’d soon be sitting in the dark, and Dara Rose set aside “the opportunity of a lifetime” to open the letter from Piper.
A crisp ten-dollar bill fell out, nearly stopping Dara Rose’s heart.
She set it carefully aside, and her hands trembled as she unfolded the clump of pages covered in Piper’s lovely cursive. The date was nearly eight months in the past.
“Dearest Cousin,” the missive began. “News of your tragic misfortune reached me yesterday, via the telegraph…”
Piper’s letter, misplaced all this time, went on to say that she hoped Dara Rose could put the money enclosed to good use—that the weather was fine in Maine, with the spring coming, but she already dreaded the winter. How were the girls faring? Did Dara Rose intend to stay on in “that little Texas town,” or would she and the children consider coming to live with her? The teacher’s quarters were small, she wrote, bringing tears to Dara Rose’s eyes, but they could make do, the four of them, couldn’t they? There were crocuses and tulips and daffodils shooting up in people’s flower beds, Piper went on to relate, and the days were distinctly longer. For all that, alas, she was lonesome when she wasn’t teaching. She’d been briefly engaged, but the fellow had turned out to be a rascal and a rounder, and there didn’t seem to be any likely prospects on the horizon.
Dara Rose read the whole letter and then immediately read it again. Besides Edrina and Harriet, Piper was the only blood relation she had left in all the world, and Dara Rose missed her sorely. Holding the letter, seeing the familiar handwriting spanning the pages, was the next best thing to having her cousin right there, in the flesh, sitting across the table from her.
But what must Piper think of her? Dara Rose fretted, after a third reading. She’d written this letter so long ago, and sent such a generous gift of money, only to receive silence in return.
The lantern guttered out.
Dara Rose sighed, folded the letter carefully and tucked it back into its envelope. She took the ten-dollar bill with her to the bedroom, where the girls were sound asleep, and placed it carefully between the pages in her Bible for safekeeping.
She undressed quickly, since the little room was cold, and donned her flannel nightgown, returned to the kitchen carrying a lighted candle stuck to a jar lid and dipped water from the stove reservoir to wash her face. When that was done, she brushed her teeth at the sink and steeled herself to make the trek to the outhouse, through the snowy cold.
When she got back, she locked the door, used the candle to light her way back to the bedroom, blew out the flame and climbed into bed with her daughters.
She was tired, but too excited to fall asleep right away.
She had ten precious dollars.
The Wildflower Salve Company had offered her honest work.
She’d as good as—well, almost as good as—spent an evening with her cousin and dearest friend, Piper.
And Marshal Clay McKettrick had the bluest eyes she’d ever seen.
THE JAILHOUSE, CLAY SOON discovered, was a lonely place at night.
He’d already had supper over at the hotel dining room—chicken and dumplings almost as good as his ma’s—and he’d paid a visit to Outlaw, over at the livery stable, too. He’d even sent a telegram north to Indian Rock, to let his family know he’d arrived and was settling in nicely.
That done, Clay had filled the water bucket and set up the coffeepot for morning, then filled the wood box next to the potbellied stove. There being no place to hang up his clothes, he left them folded in his travel trunk, there in the back room, where the bed was. Most of his books hadn’t arrived yet—he had a passel of them and they had to be shipped down from Indian Rock in crates—and he couldn’t seem to settle down to read the one favorite he’d brought along on the train, Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. He must have read that book a dozen times over the years, and he never got tired of it, but that night, it failed to hold his interest.
He kept thinking about Dara Rose Nolan, the gold of her hair and the fiery blue spirit in her eyes. He thought about her shapely breasts and small waist and smooth skin and that flash of pride that was so easy to arouse in her.
And the same old question plagued him: Why in the devil would a man with a wife like that squander his time in a whorehouse, the way her husband had done?
Nobody could help dying, of course, but they had at least some choice about where they died, didn’t they? It was simple common sense—folks didn’t turn up their toes in places they hadn’t ventured into in the first place.
Knowing he wouldn’t sleep, anyhow, Clay strapped on his gun belt, shrugged into his duster and reached for his hat.
He was the marshal, after all.
He’d just take a little stroll up and down Main Street and make sure any visiting cowpokes or drifters were minding their manners. If anybody needed arresting, he’d throw them in the hoosegow and start up a conversation.
What he really needed, he supposed, stepping out onto the dark sidewalk, was a woman. Someone like Dara Rose Nolan.
Maybe he’d get himself a dog—that would provide some companionship. He’d have to do all the talking, of course, but he liked critters. He’d grown up with all manner of them on the ranch.
Yes, sir, he needed a dog.
He hadn’t even reached the corner when he heard the first yelp.
He frowned, stopped to pinpoint the direction.
“Dutch, you kick that dog again,” he heard a male voice say, “and I’ll shoot you, ’stead of him!”
Clay, having located the disturbance, pushed his coat back to uncover the handle of his .45 and stepped into the alley.
It was dark, and the snow veiled the moon, but light struggled through the filthy windows of the buildings on either side, and he could make out two men, one holding a pistol, standing over a shivering form huddled close to the ground.
“Hold it right there,” Clay said, in deadly earnest, when the man with the pistol raised it to shoot. “What’s going on here?”
The dog whimpered.
“Nothin’, Marshal,” one of the men answered, in a drunken whine. “The poor mutt’s half-starved, just a bag of bones. We figured on putting it out of its misery, that’s all. Meant it as a kindness.”
“Get the hell out of here,” Clay said. He could not abide a bully.
The two men responded by turning on their heels and running in the other direction.
Clay waited until they were out of sight before he put the .45 back in its holster and approached the dog. “You in a bad way there, fella?” he asked, crouching to offer a hand.
The animal sniffed cautiously at his fingers and whimpered again.
“Where’d you come from?” Clay asked, gently examining the critter for broken bones or open wounds. He seemed to be all right, though his ribs protruded and his belly was concave and he stunk like all get-out.
The dog whined, though this time there was less sorrow in the sound.
“You know,” Clay told the animal companionably, “I was just thinking to myself that what I need is a dog to keep me company. Now, here you are. How’d you like to help me keep the peace in this sorry excuse for a town?”
The dog seemed amenable to the idea, and raised himself slowly, teetering a little, to his four fur-covered feet. He had burrs stuck in his coat, that poor cuss, and there was no telling what color he was, or if he leaned toward any particular breed.
“You come on with me, if you can walk,” Clay said. “I brought home what was left of my supper, and it seems to me you could use a decent meal.”
With that, he turned to head back toward the sidewalk. The dog limped after him, pausing every few moments, as though afraid he’d committed some transgression without knowing about it.
Back at the jailhouse, Clay got a better look at the dog, after lighting a lantern to see by, but seeing didn’t help much. The creature was neither big nor little, and he had floppy ears, but that was the extent of what Clay could make out.
Glad to have something to do, not to mention some companionship, Clay poured the remains of his chicken and dumplings onto the one tin plate he possessed and set it on the floor, near the stove.
The dog sniffed at the food, looked up at Clay with the kind of uncertainty that breaks a decent person’s heart and waited.
“You go ahead and have supper,” Clay said gently. “I imagine you could use some water, too.”
Slowly, cautiously, the dog lowered his muzzle and began to eat.
Clay walked softly, approaching the water bucket, and ladled up a dipperful.
The dog lapped thirstily from the well of the dipper, then returned to his supper, clearly ravenous, licking the plate clean as a whistle.
Clay carried in more water from the pump out back, heated it bucket by bucket on the potbellied stove and finally filled the washtub he’d found in one of the cells. He eased the dog into the warm water and sluiced him down before lathering his hide with his own bar of soap.
The animal didn’t raise any fuss, he simply stood there, shivering and looking like nothing so much as a half-drowned rat. Gradually, it became clear that his coat was brown and white, speckled like a pinto horse.
Clay dried him off with one of the two towels he’d purchased earlier, over at the mercantile, hefted him out of the tub and set him gently on his feet, near the stove.
The dog looked up at him curiously, head tilted to one side.
Clay chuckled. “Now, then,” he said. “You look a lot more presentable than you did before.”
The dog gave a single, tentative woof, obviously unsure how the remark would be received in present company.
Clay leaned to pat the animal’s damp head. “What you are,” he said, “is a coincidence. Like I told you, I was thinking about how much I’d like to have a dog, and then you and I made our acquaintance. But since ‘coincidence’ would be too much trouble for a name, I figure I’ll call you Chester.”
“Woof,” said Chester, with more confidence than before.
Clay laughed. “Chester it is, then,” he agreed.
Using a rough blanket from the cot in the jail cell, Clay fashioned a bed for the dog, close to the stove. Chester sniffed the cloth, stepped gingerly onto it, made a circle and settled down with a sigh.
“’Night,” Clay said.
Chester closed his eyes, sighed again and slept.
THE HENS HAD ONLY LAID three eggs between the lot of them, Dara Rose discovered the next morning, when she visited the chicken coop, but she wasn’t as disappointed by this as she normally would have been.
She had ten dollars tucked between the leaves of her Bible—a fortune.
And she had a future, a bright one, as Blue River, Texas’s sole distributor of Wildflower Salve. All she had to do was fill out the coupon and mail it in, and before the New Year, she’d be in business.
Granted, there weren’t a lot of people in Blue River, but there were plenty of surrounding farms and ranches, and those isolated women would be thrilled to purchase salve in a pretty tin, especially after she explained the benefits of regular use.
Not that she knew exactly what those benefits were, but the Wildflower Salve people had promised to send a training guide along with her first shipment.
As soon as she’d gotten Edrina off to school, she intended to write a long letter to Piper, explaining that her letter had been accidentally misplaced all this time, and she’d only received it the day before, and that was why her answer was so late in coming. Of course she’d thank her cousin profusely for the generous gift of ten dollars, and bring Piper up-to-date where she and the girls were concerned.
Her mind bumbled back and forth between the planned letter and her impending career in merchandising like a bee trapped inside a jar while she prepared oatmeal for breakfast, toasted bread in the oven and officiated over a debate between Edrina and Harriet, concerning whose turn it was sleep in the middle of the bed that night.
Neither one wanted to, and Dara Rose finally said she’d take the middle, for heaven’s sake, and what had she done to deserve two such argumentative daughters?
After breakfast, Dara Rose and Harriet bundled up to walk Edrina to school. Normally, Edrina managed the distance on her own, but today, Dara Rose wanted a word with Miss Krenshaw.
“I’m already being punished,” Edrina fussed, as the three of them hurried along a road hoary with frost and hardened snow. “I told you I have to stay after and wash the blackboard. So why do you need to talk to Miss Krenshaw, when you know all that?”
Dara Rose hid a smile. She was holding Harriet’s hand, and trying to pace herself to the child’s much shorter strides. “I merely want to inquire about the Christmas pageant,” she replied. There was always some sort of program at the schoolhouse, whether it was carol singing, a Nativity play or an evening of recitals, and everyone attended.
“Oh,” said Edrina, still sounding not only mystified, but apparently a little nervous, too.
Dara Rose wondered if there was something her daughter should have told her, but hadn’t.
“Do you think it will snow again, Mama?” Harriet asked, tilting her head way back to look up at the glowering sky. “Christmas is less than two weeks away, and St. Nicholas will need a lot of snow, since he travels in a sleigh.”
“Goose,” Edrina said, nudging her sister with one elbow. “There isn’t any St. Nicholas, remember?”
“Edrina,” Dara Rose interceded gently.
“I’m pretending, that’s all,” Harriet said, with a toss of her head. “You can’t stop me, either.”
“Pretending is stupid,” Edrina said. “It’s for babies.”
Dara Rose stopped, and both her children had to stop, too, since she was holding Harriet’s hand at the time and it was easy to catch Edrina by the shoulder and halt her progress.
“Enough,” Dara Rose said firmly.
They began to walk again.
THE SKY WAS HEAVY and gray that morning when Clay left Chester to digest the leftovers from his hotel dining room breakfast within the warm radius of the jailhouse stove and headed over to the livery stable to fetch Outlaw.
It was cold and getting colder, so Clay raised the collar of his duster as he led the saddled gelding out into the road. There had been snow during the night, leaving a hard crust on the ground, and there would be more, judging by the weighted clouds brooding overhead, but the ride was a short one and he’d be back in Blue River before any serious weather had a chance to set in.
Raised in the high country, where a soft, slow, feathery snowfall could turn into a raging blizzard within a span of ten minutes, he had a sense of what signs he ought to look out for, as well as those he could safely ignore.
Today, all the indications—the direction of wind, the foul promise of the darkening sky, the way the cold bit through the heavy canvas of his duster—inclined a man toward caution.
He let Outlaw have his head once they were out of town, let the horse run for the sheer joy of it, and they soon reached their destination, the flat acres where Clay intended to erect a house and a barn.
There, he dismounted and left Outlaw to catch his breath and graze on the scant remains of last summer’s grass, paced off the perimeters of the house and marked the corners with piles of small rocks. He did the same for the barn, then stood a while, the wind slicing clear to his marrow, and imagined the place, finished.
The house, a kit he’d sent away to Sears, Roebuck and Company for, amounted to a sensible rectangle, the kind he could easily add on to as the years went by, with windows on all sides, white clapboard walls and a shingled roof. He’d have to hire some help to put the thing together, of course, but he planned to do a lot of the work with his own hands, and that included everything from laying floorboards to gathering rock for the fireplace and then mortaring the stones together.
With the McKettrick family expanding the way it had been for some years, Clay had helped build several houses, and put up additions, too. The kit wouldn’t arrive until late April, but he’d need to have the foundation ready, and the well dug, too.
Of course, a lot depended on what kind of winter they were in for—Blue River was in the Hill Country, and therefore the climate wasn’t as temperate as it was in some parts of Texas—but he could already feel the heft of a shovel in his hands, the steady strain in his muscles, and he was heartened.
Next year at this time, he promised himself, he’d be ranching, right here on this land. He’d have a wife and, if possible, a baby on the way. Christmas would be getting close, and he’d go out and cut a tree and bring it into the house to be hung with ornaments and paper garlands, and there would be a fire crackling on the hearth—
But that was next year, and this was now, Clay reminded himself, with a sigh. He assessed the sky again, then whistled, low, for Outlaw.
The horse trotted over, reins dangling, and Clay gathered them and swung up into the saddle.
“We’ve got our work cut out for us,” he told the animal.
The snow began coming down, slowly at first and then in earnest, when they were still about a mile outside of town, and by the time he and Outlaw reached the livery, it was hard to see farther than a dozen feet in any direction.
Zeb Dooley, the old man who ran the stable and adjoining blacksmith’s shop, came out to meet him. Taking Outlaw’s reins as soon as Clay had stepped down from the saddle, Zeb shouted to be heard over the rising screech of the wind. “Best head on over to the jailhouse or the Bitter Gulch, Marshal, because this blow is bound to get worse before it gets better!”
Clay took the reins back. “I want to look in over at the schoolhouse,” he called in reply. “Make sure the children are all right.”
Zeb, clad for the cold in dungarees and a heavy coat, shook his balding head. “Miss Krenshaw will keep them there ’til it’s safe to leave. The town makes sure there’s always a stash of firewood and grub, in case they need it.”
Clay’s worries were only partially allayed by Zeb’s reassurance. A storm like this sure as hell meant trouble for somebody, and he didn’t feel right about heading for the jailhouse to hunker down with Chester and wait it out, not just yet, anyway.
Clay turned away, mounted up again, bent low over Outlaw’s neck to speak to him and started for the far edge of town.
He rode slowly, Outlaw stalwartly shouldering his way through the thickening snow, up one street and down another, until he’d covered all of them. Nobody called out to him as he passed, and lantern light glowed in most of the windows so, after half an hour, he and the horse felt their way back to the livery.
There was no sign of Zeb, and the big double doors of the stables were latched and rattling under the assault of the wind.
Clay opened them, led Outlaw inside and into his stall, gave him hay and made sure his water trough was full. Then he retraced his steps, latched the doors again and walked, wind-battered, toward the jailhouse.