“I thought it didn’t snow in Texas,” Sawyer said, after stretching and letting go with a lusty yawn. Clay patted the dog, reassured him with a few quiet words and lit one of the two lanterns he had on hand. “What are you doing here, Sawyer?” he countered gruffly.
“I was catching up on my shut-eye,” Sawyer replied affably, grinning that cocky grin that sometimes made Clay want to backhand his cousin, “until you came banging through the door and disturbed me.”
Clay lit the other lantern, the one that stood on the bookcase, and then went to the stove to build up the fire. The last time he’d seen his cousin and one-time best friend, they’d had words, not just about Annabel, but about a few other things, too.
“You’re a long way from home, cousin,” Clay finally remarked.
“So are you,” Sawyer answered, perching on the edge of Clay’s desk now, with his arms folded. The youngest son of Clay’s uncle Kade, and aunt Mandy, Sawyer had the fair hair and dark blue eyes that ran in intergenerational streaks through the McKettrick bloodline.
Clay shut the stove door with a clang and rustled up some leftovers for Chester, who seemed to have decided that the surprise visitor made acceptable company.
Which just went to show what a dog knew about anything, Clay thought glumly. Most of them liked everybody, and Chester was no exception.
“I’m going to ask you once more,” Clay said evenly, “just once, what you’re doing here, and if I don’t get a clear answer, I swear I’ll toss you behind bars on a trespassing charge.”
Sawyer chuckled. “I’m just passing through,” he said. “Since I was in your neck of the woods, I decided to board my horse in San Antonio and take the train to Blue River, see how you’re faring and all.”
“I’m faring just fine,” Clay responded, “so you can get on tomorrow’s train, if it makes it through, and go right back to San Antonio.”
Sawyer strolled to the window, in no evident hurry to get there. He had the born horseman’s rolling, easy stride. “Good thing I didn’t bring the horse,” he said, as though Clay hadn’t as good as told him, straight out, that he wasn’t welcome. “We’d probably be out there in the blizzard someplace, freezing to death.” A visible shudder moved through his lean, agile form, but he didn’t turn around. “Like I said, nothing anybody ever told me about Texas prepared me for ass-deep snow.”
Clay ladled water into the coffeepot, a dented metal receptacle coated with blue enamel, and set it on top of the potbellied stove. Then he commenced to spoon ground coffee beans into it, along with a pinch of salt to make the grounds settle after the stuff brewed. “That’s the thing about weather,” he said, at considerable length. “It’s unpredictable.”
Sawyer finally turned around, but he lingered at the window, frost-coated and all but opaque behind him. “Annabel Carson got married soon after you left,” he said, gruffly and with care.
“Not to you, it appears,” Clay said, turning his back to the stove and absorbing the heat.
Sawyer made a sound that might have been a chuckle, though it contained no noticeable amusement. “Not to me,” he confirmed. “She got hitched to Whit Taggard, over near Stone Creek. You know, that banker in his fifties, with more money than one man ever ought to have? She swears it’s a love match.”
“You came all the way to Blue River to tell me that?” Clay asked, strangely unmoved by news that probably would have devastated him not so long ago. Chester had finished his meal of leftovers from the hotel dining room and gone to curl up on his blanket. The wind howled and hissed under the eaves, as if it were fixing to raise the roof right off that old jailhouse and carry it next door, if not farther.
“No,” Sawyer said. “I came all the way to Blue River because your mama’s been worried about you, and I love my aunt Chloe.”
Clay sighed. “I already sent Ma and Pa a wire,” he said, mildly exasperated. “They know I’m fine.”
“Your saying it and their knowing it for sure are two different things, Clay,” Sawyer went on, his tone reasonable and quiet, as if he were calming a jittery horse or a cow mired in deep mud and struggling against the ropes meant to pull it onto dry ground. “It’s not every day a man picks up and leaves the place and the people he’s known all his life.”
Clay had no answer for that, had already done all the explaining he ever intended to do, where the decision to put home behind him for good—at least as far as living there—was concerned, anyhow. Much as he loved his granddad and his pa and his uncles, he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life taking orders from them. He wanted to build and run his own outfit, marry and have sons and daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
“You hungry?” Clay asked, hoping to get the conversation going in another direction.
“I had fried chicken over at the hotel, soon as I’d checked in and stowed my gear,” Sawyer answered, with a shake of his head. He looked around at the humble quarters Clay presently called home, sighed. “Nobody can accuse you of living high on the hog, I reckon,” he finished, sounding weary now.
Clay shoved a hand through his hair, recalling the difficult trek back from Dara Rose’s place. It had taken him and Chester the better part of half an hour to cover the five hundred yards or so between the jail and that snug little house.
Once he’d warmed up, had some coffee and put on long johns and an extra layer of clothes, he meant to venture out again, track down that family Dara Rose had mentioned—the O’Reillys—and see for himself that they were warm and had something to eat. He figured it was his duty, as marshal, to see that folks made it through when there was an emergency like that snowstorm, especially women and children.
“Finding your way back to the hotel in this blizzard might be tricky,” Clay told his cousin, in his own good time. “You can bunk in the cell there if you want.”
One side of Sawyer’s mouth quirked upward in a grin. “And give you a prime opportunity to lock me up, soon as I shut my eyes, and then drop the key down a deep well? Not likely, cousin.”
“You sorely overestimate my ability to tolerate your company,” Clay responded dryly. “The sooner you’re on your way, the happier I’m going to be.”
Sawyer didn’t reply right away, which was a telling thing, because he was usually quick to shoot off his mouth. There was a whole other side to Sawyer, though—one nobody, including Clay, really knew much about.
“You must know I never laid a hand on your girl, Clay,” Sawyer said, as a chunk of wood crackled and splintered to embers inside the stove. “So what exactly is it about me that sticks in your craw? We used to be as close as brothers.”
Too warm now that he’d been standing near the stove for a while, Clay moved on to his desk, reclaimed the creaky wooden chair, sat back in it with his hands cupped behind his head. Chester, lying nearby on his blanket pile, gave a single, chortling snore, and another piece of wood collapsed in the fire, with a series of sharp snaps.
“You come here,” Clay answered presently, “uninvited, I might add, and let on that I’m a grief to the family, like some prodigal son off squandering his birthright in a far country, and then you have the gall to ask what sticks in my craw? It’s the hypocrisy of it. You’re a gunslinger, Sawyer, a hired gun. Little better than an outlaw, most likely. It might even be that if I went through all these wanted posters on my desk, I’d come across a fair likeness of your face.”
“I’m not an outlaw,” Sawyer said flatly. “You know that.”
“Do I?” Clay asked. “You blow through the Triple M every few years like a breeze—just long enough last time to turn my girl’s head—and then, one fine day, a telegram comes in, and you’re gone again, without a word to anybody. Like you know somebody’s picked up your trail so you’d better be moving on, pronto.”
Sawyer sighed again, and it came out raspy. “I don’t reckon anything I say is going to get through that inch-thick layer of bone you call a skull,” he said. “You made up your mind about me a long time ago, didn’t you, cousin?”
There was no denying that. “I reckon I did,” Clay replied quietly, feeling wrung out. “You can tell Ma and the rest of the family that you’ve seen me and I’m fine. Seems to me that your business here is finished.”
Even as he spoke those words, Clay wondered what the real reason for Sawyer’s visit might be. Blue River was too far out of his cousin’s way for this to be about Annabel, or a favor to Clay’s ma and pa.
Sawyer crossed to the door, took his hat and canvas duster down from their pegs and put them on. Then he hesitated, one hand on the old-fashioned iron latch. “You’re right,” he said, with more sadness than Clay had heard in his voice since they were ten years old and Sawyer’s dog took sick and died. “I guess there’s no getting back on your good side. I’ll be on tomorrow’s train, if it gets here, and you can get on with whatever the hell it is you think you’re doing.”
With that, Sawyer opened the door and went out, letting in a blast of snow-speckled cold that reached into the deepest parts of Clay and held on.
He almost relented, almost called Sawyer back—but in the end, he figured it was best to let him go.
THE SNOW LAY LIKE A THICK, glittering mantle over the countryside when Dara Rose went out to feed the chickens, carrying the egg basket and a jug to refill their water pan, but the sky was the purest blue, cloudless and benign. As quickly as it had arisen, the storm was over; water dripped rhythmically from the edges of the roof, and the path to the henhouse was slushy under the soles of her high-button shoes.
Hope stirred, springlike, in Dara Rose’s heart, as she crossed the yard. She could hear the chickens clucking away in the coop, wanting their breakfast and their liberty from a long night of confinement.
Using the side of her foot, Dara Rose cleared a patch of ground for the birds and let them out while she ducked inside to fetch the water pan. Pleased to see that every member of her little flock had survived, she scattered their feed and then went on to collect the eggs.
There were six—a better count than the day before, though still less than she’d hoped for—and Dara Rose set each one carefully in the basket and returned to the house.
Edrina and Harriet were up and dressed, Edrina full of glee because she didn’t have to go to school that day, and Harriet equally happy to have a playmate.
Dara Rose took off her bonnet and cloak, hung them up, washed her hands at the pump in the sink and put a pot of water on to boil, for oatmeal.
In the middle of the meal, a knock sounded at the front door.
Frowning, wondering who would be out and about so early, with the snow still deep enough to make traveling through it a trial, she pushed back her chair, told the children to finish eating and behave themselves and hurried through the small parlor. On some level, she realized, she’d hoped to find Clay McKettrick standing on her tiny porch, but this only came to her when she saw Mayor Wilson Ponder there instead.
Through the glass oval in the door, the older man’s face looked purposeful, and a little grim.
Dara Rose opened the door. “Mayor Ponder,” she said, not bothering to hide her surprise. He’d arrived, she saw now, looking past him to the street, in a sleigh drawn by two sturdy mules. “Come in.”
“I won’t tarry,” Ponder said gravely, with a distracted tug at the brim of his bowler hat. He remained where he was, forcing Dara Rose to stand in the bright cold of the doorway and wait to hear what business he had with her. “I know this isn’t a convenient time, what with the blizzard and all, but frankly, I’m not comfortable putting the task off any longer.” He reddened slightly, though that might have been because of the weather, and not any sense of chagrin, and his muttonchop whiskers wobbled as he prepared to go on. “The town purchased this house for the use of the marshal, Mrs. Nolan, and if Clay McKettrick doesn’t mean to use the place, well, we—the town council, that is—would prefer to sell it.”
Dara Rose felt the floor shift under her feet, but she kept her shoulders squared and even managed not to shiver at the cold, and the news the mayor had just delivered.
“Oh,” she said, hugging herself and wishing for her cloak, wishing for summer and better times. “Do you have a prospective buyer?”
“Ezra Maddox wants the property,” Mayor Ponder said, after more whisker-wriggling. “He’s offering two hundred and fifty dollars cash money and, what with bringing in electricity, the town could use the funds.”
Ezra Maddox owned a farm, Dara Rose thought, dazed and frustrated and quite cornered. What did the man want with a run-down house miles from his crops and his dairy cows?
By now, everyone knew Clay had decided to live over at the jailhouse. Could it be that Mr. Maddox was simply trying to force her hand by buying the house out from under her? Was he hoping she would give in and accept his offer of a so-called housekeeping job, possibly followed by marriage, and send her children away in the bargain?
Dara Rose seethed, even as cold terror overtook her. “How long until we have to move?” she asked, amazed at how calm she sounded.
Mayor Ponder hesitated before he answered, perhaps ashamed of that morning’s mission. On the other hand, he’d gone to all the bother of hitching mules to a sleigh to get there bright and early, which did not indicate any real degree of reluctance on his part. “Ezra’s mighty anxious to take possession of the place,” he finally said. “But since Christmas is just two weeks away, well, he’s—we’re—willing to let you stay until the first of the year.”
Dara Rose gripped the door frame with one hand, thinking she might actually swoon. Behind her, in the kitchen, the girls’ voices rang like chimes as they conducted some merry disagreement, laced with giggles.
“Well, then,” Dara Rose managed, meeting the mayor’s gaze, seeing both sympathy and resolve there, “that’s that, isn’t it? Thank you for letting me know.”
With that, she shut the door in his face.
And stood trembling, there in the small parlor, until she heard his footsteps retreating on the porch.
“Mama?” Harriet, light-footed as ever and half again too perceptive for a five-year-old, was standing directly behind her. “Can we get a dog? Edrina says we don’t need another mouth to feed, but a puppy wouldn’t eat very much, would it?”
All of Dara Rose’s considerable strength gave way then, like a dam under the strain of rising water. She uttered a small, choked sob, shook her head and fled to the bedroom.
Dara Rose seldom cried—even at Parnell’s funeral service, she’d been dry-eyed—but she was only human, after all.
And she’d come to the end of her resources, at least for the moment.
So she sat on the edge of the bed she shared with her daughters—Parnell had slept on the settee in the parlor—covered her face with both hands and wept softly into her palms.
CLAY WAS HAVING BREAKFAST over at the hotel dining room—bacon and eggs and hotcakes, with plenty of hot, fresh coffee—when Sawyer wandered in, looking well-rested and clean-shaven, his manner at once affable and distant.
“Mind if I join you?” he said, pulling back a chair opposite Clay and sitting down before Clay could answer. He picked up the menu and studied it with the same grave concentration their illustrious granddad reserved for government beef contracts.
Politicians and pencil pushers, Angus had been known to remark, on the occasions he did business with such officials. A man would have to be simpleminded to trust a one of them.
“Make yourself at home,” Clay said, dryly and long after the fact. He hadn’t slept much the night before, thanks to Dara Rose and Sawyer’s unexpected presence and the long slog through the snow to the O’Reilly place.
He’d found them huddled around a poor fire like characters in a Dickens novel, wrapped in thin blankets. They’d had fried eggs for supper, Mrs. O’Reilly had told him, and those were all gone, and he was welcome to what was left of yesterday’s pinto beans if he was hungry.
Clay had thanked her kindly and said he’d already had supper, which happened to be the truth, though he would have lied without a qualm if it hadn’t been, and then he’d carried in most of their dwindling wood supply to dry beside the homemade stove. Before coming to the hotel for breakfast that morning, he’d stopped by the mercantile, pounded at the front door until the storekeeper let him in, and purchased a sackful of dried beans, along with flour, sugar, a pound of coffee and assorted canned goods for the O’Reillys. He’d paid extra to have the food delivered before the store was open for business.
Now, sitting across from his pensive cousin in a warm, clean, well-lighted place where good food could be had in plenty, he felt vaguely ashamed of his own prosperity. While the McKettricks didn’t live grandly, they didn’t lack for money, either. Clay had never missed a meal in his life, never had to go without shoes or wear clothes that had belonged to somebody else first. Unlike the O’Reilly children, and too many others like them, he’d had a strong, committed father, backed up by three uncles and a granddad.
The cook, a round-bellied man who doubled as a waiter, came over to the table to greet Sawyer and take his order.
Sawyer simply pointed toward Clay’s plate and said, “That looks good.”
The cook nodded and went away.
Sawyer sat there, easy in his hide, dressed like a prosperous gambler. Instead of his usual plain shirt and even plainer denim trousers, he sported a suit, complete with a white shirt, a string tie and a brocade vest. “You look miserable this morning, cousin,” he said cheerfully, “but something tells me it isn’t remorse over the uncharitable welcome you offered last night.”
Clay gave a raw chuckle, void of mirth. His appetite was gone, all of a sudden, and he set down his knife and fork, pushed his plate away. “It definitely isn’t remorse,” he said.
Sawyer helped himself to a slice of toasted bread and bit into it, chewed appreciatively. Though his eyes twinkled, his voice was serious when he replied, “You could still go back to the Triple M, you know. They’d welcome you back into the fold with open arms and shouts of ‘hurrah.’”
“I’ll pay them a visit one of these days,” he said. “There aren’t any hard feelings on my side.”
“Nor theirs, either.” Sawyer shoved a hand through his unruly dark-gold hair, which was always a little too long. “You’re lucky, Clay,” he said, his gaze moving to the window next to their table. “Pa and Granddad can’t seem to make up their minds whether to kill the fatted calf in my honor or take a horsewhip to me.” He frowned, squinted at the foggy glass. “I think somebody’s trying to get your attention,” he observed.
Clay looked, and there, on the other side of that steamed-up window, was Edrina, practically pressing her nose to the glass. She waved one unmittened hand and retreated a step.
“I’ll be damned,” Clay muttered, gesturing for the child to come inside.
“Who’s the kid?” Sawyer wanted to know.
“Friend of mine,” Clay answered, as Edrina scampered toward the entrance to the dining room.
She hurried over to the table, face flushed with cold and purpose, and stood there like a little soldier.
“Mama’s crying,” she said. “Mama never cries.”
Clay scraped back his chair, took Edrina’s small hands into his own, trying to chafe some warmth into them. “Where’s your bonnet?” he fussed, trying to process the idea of Dara Rose in tears. “You aren’t wearing any mittens, and your coat is unbuttoned—”
“I was in a hurry,” Edrina told him, with a little sigh of impatience. She spared Sawyer the briefest glance, then looked back at Clay with a proud plea in her eyes. “You’ll come home with me, won’t you? Right now? Because Mama is crying and Mama never, ever cries.”
“Go on,” Sawyer said to Clay. “I’ll settle up for your breakfast.”
Clay got up, retrieved his duster from the back of the chair beside his and his hat from the seat and put them on. “What’s the matter with her?” he asked, more worried than he could ever remember being before. “Is she sick?”
Gravely, Edrina took his hand, tugged him in the direction of the door. “I don’t know,” she said fretfully. “Maybe. But she was fine while we were having our oatmeal. Then Mr. Ponder stopped by, and they talked, and when Harriet asked Mama if we could please get a dog, Mama commenced to blubbering and ran right out of the room.”
Outside, the snow was melting under a steadily warming sky, but it was still deep. Clay curved an arm around Edrina’s waist, much as he had done with Chester the night before, and set off for Dara Rose’s place with long strides.
DARA ROSE MARCHED herself out into the kitchen, pumped cold water into the basin she kept on hand and splashed her face repeatedly while Harriet watched her solemnly from the doorway.
“Are you through crying, Mama?” the child asked, very softly.
Dara Rose felt ashamed. Now she’d upset Edrina and Harriet, and for what? A few moments of self-pity?
“I’m quite through,” she said, drying her still-puffy face with a dish towel. “And I haven’t the slightest idea what came over me.” She hugged Harriet, then frowned, looking around. “Where is Edrina?”
Harriet bit her lower lip, clearly reluctant to answer.
“Harriet?” Dara Rose said, taking her little girl gently but firmly by the shoulders. “Where is your sister?”
Harriet’s eyes were huge and luminous. “She went to fetch Mr. McKettrick,” she finally replied.
Alarm rushed through Dara Rose, and not just because a glance at the row of hooks beside the back door revealed that Edrina had gone off through the deep snow without her bonnet or her mittens. She was just reaching for her own cloak when she heard footsteps on the front porch—boots, stomping off snow.
Clay knocked, but then he came right in, carrying Edrina. His gaze locked with Dara Rose’s as he set the little girl down and pulled the door closed behind him.
She’d never seen a man look so worried before, not even when Parnell came to that settlement house in Bangor, Maine, to claim her and the children. They’d been mere babies then, Edrina and Harriet, and memories of their real father, Parnell’s younger brother, Luke, soon faded.
“Are you sick?” Clay demanded, in the same tone he might have employed to confront a drunk with disorderly conduct.
Dara Rose wasn’t sick, except with mortification. “I’m quite all right,” she said, but she didn’t sound very convincing, even to herself. She shifted her attention to her elder daughter, letting her know with a look that she was in big trouble. “I apologize for any inconvenience—”
Clay’s neck reddened, and his eyes narrowed. “I’d be obliged if you girls would wait in the kitchen,” he said, though he never looked away from Dara Rose’s face.
Edrina and Harriet, always ready with a protest when she made such a request, fled the room like rabbits with a fox on their trail.
“That little girl,” Clay said, in a furious whisper, one index finger jabbing in the general direction of the kitchen a few times, “was so worried about you that she braved all that snow to find me and bring me here. So don’t think for one minute that you’re going to put me off with an apology for any inconvenience.”
Dara Rose stared at him. “Why are you so angry?” she finally asked. And why does it thrill me to see you like this?
“I’m not angry,” Clay rasped out, wrenching off his Wyatt Earp–style hat and flinging it so that it landed on the settee, teetered there and dropped to the floor. “Damn it, Dara Rose, whatever went on here this morning scared your daughter half to death, and since Edrina is the most courageous kid I’ve ever come across, I got scared, too.”
The thrill didn’t subside, and Dara Rose prayed her feelings didn’t show. “I lost my composure for a moment,” she confessed, as stiffly proud as a Puritan even as her heart raced and her breath threatened to catch in the back of her throat and never come loose. “Believe me, I regret it. I certainly didn’t mean to frighten the children—”
“Well,” Clay said, in earnest, “you did. And I’m not leaving here until you tell me what Ponder said to you that made you go to pieces the way you did.”
Dara Rose swallowed, looked down at the floor. Right or wrong, Clay meant what he said—that much was obvious from his tone and his countenance. He wouldn’t be going anywhere until she answered him.
“Dara Rose?” He was standing close to her now, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders. He smelled of fresh air, snow and something woodsy. “Tell me.”
She knew she ought to pull away from him, ought to look anywhere but up into his face, but she couldn’t manage either response. “Mayor Ponder stopped by to tell me that, since you don’t want this house, the town council plans to sell it to Ezra Maddox for two hundred and fifty dollars,” she said. It was remarkable how calm she sounded, she thought, when her insides were buzzing like a swarm of bees smoked out of their hive. “We have to be out by the first of the year.”
“That son of a—” Clay ground out, before catching himself.
Dara Rose felt tears burning behind her eyes again, and she was determined not to disgrace herself by shedding them. “I have ten dollars,” she said, like someone talking in their sleep. “And I’ve saved some of the egg money. It won’t take us far, but it’s enough to leave town.”
“Where would you go?” Clay immediately asked.
“I don’t know,” Dara Rose replied honestly. “Somewhere.”
“The town isn’t going to sell this house,” Clay said.
“Of course they are,” Dara Rose argued, though not with any spirit.
“I’m the marshal,” Clay told her, “and under the terms of our agreement, I’m entitled to living quarters. It just so happens that I’ve decided I’d rather live here than in the jailhouse.”
Dara Rose’s jaw dropped, and it took her a moment to recover. A long moment. “But, we couldn’t… Where would the children and I—?”
Clay hooked a finger under her chin. “Right here,” he said. “You and Edrina and Harriet could live right here, with me—if you and I were married.”
Dara Rose nearly choked. “Married?”
“It wouldn’t do for us to live under the same roof other wise,” Clay said reasonably.
“But, we’re nearly total strangers—”
“For now,” Clay went on, when her words fell away, “it would be a private arrangement. All business. I won’t press you to bed down with me, Dara Rose. This place is too small for such shenanigans, anyhow, with the girls around.”
Dara Rose couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It was Parnell, all over again. Clay was offering a marriage that wasn’t a marriage, offering shelter and safety and respectability. But unless she wanted to send her children away and move in with Ezra Maddox, she couldn’t afford to refuse.
“Why?” she asked, barely breathing the word. “Why would you want to do this, Clay McKettrick?”
He smiled at her. Tucked a tendril of hair behind her right ear, where it had escaped its pins. “I want a wife,” he said, as though that explained everything, instead of raising dozens, if not hundreds, of new questions.
“But you said the marriage wouldn’t be real.”
“It won’t be, at first,” Clay told her. Where did he get all that certainty, all that confidence? All that audacity? “But maybe, with time…”
“What if nothing changes?” Dara Rose broke in, feeling almost as though she needed to shout to be heard over the thrumming of her heartbeat, though of course she didn’t shout, because the children would have heard.
“Then there’ll be no harm done,” Clay said. “We’ll have the marriage annulled, I’ll set you and the girls up in decent circumstances somewhere far from Blue River, and we’ll go our separate ways.”
No harm done? He spoke so blithely.
Was the man insane?
Possibly, Dara Rose decided. But he was also an infinitely better bet than Ezra Maddox.