The Christmas Brides: A McKettrick Christmas

“We’ve always thought it was the other way around,” Lizzie said. “John Henry is so funny, and so smart. He can ride any horse on the ranch, draw them, too, so you think they’ll just step right off the paper and prance around the room, and when he grows up, he means to be a telegraph operator.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting him, along with the rest of the McKettricks,” Morgan told her. His gaze had strayed to Whitley, narrowed, then swung back to Lizzie’s face.

Something deep inside her leapt and pirouetted. Morgan wanted to meet her family. But of course it wasn’t because he had any personal interest in her. Her uncle Kade had encouraged him to come to Indian Rock to practice medicine, and the McKettricks were leaders in the community. Naturally, as a newcomer to town, Morgan would seek to make their acquaintance. Her heart soaring only moments before, she now felt oddly deflated.

Morgan stood. “I’d better go outside again,” he said. “See what I can round up in the way of fuel. What firewood we have isn’t going to last long, but there’s a fair supply of coal in the locomotive.”

Lizzie hated the thought of Morgan braving the dangerous cold again, but she knew he had to do it, and she was equally certain that he wouldn’t let her go in his stead. Still, she caught at his hand when he would have walked away, looked up into his face. “How can I help, Morgan?”

His free hand moved, lingered near her cheek, as though he might caress her. But the moment passed, and he did not touch her. “Maybe you could rig up some kind of bed for John, on one of these bench seats,” he said quietly. “He used up most of his strength just getting here. He’s going to need to lie down soon.”

Lizzie nodded, grateful to have something practical to do.

Morgan left.

Lizzie sat a moment or so longer, then stood, straightening her spine vertebra by vertebra as she did. Fat flakes of snow drifted past the windows of the train, and the sky was darkening, even though it was only midday.

Papa, she thought. Hurry. Please, hurry.

Lizzie made up John Brennan’s makeshift bed on one of the benches, as near to the stove as she could while still leaving room for her or Morgan to attend to him. He gave her a grateful look when she awakened him from an uncomfortable sleep and helped him across the car to his new resting place. Using two of the four blankets from the freight car as pillows, she tucked him in between the remaining pair. Laid a hand to his forehead.

His skin was hot as a skillet forgotten over a campfire.

“I could do with some water,” he told Lizzie. “My canteen is in my haversack, but it’s been empty for a while.”

Lizzie nodded. “Dr. Shane brought in some snow a while ago. I’ll see if it’s melted yet.”

“Thank you,” Mr. Brennan said. And then he gave a wracking cough that almost bent him double.

“Is he contagious?” Whitley wanted to know. He stood at her elbow, his book dangling in one hand.

“I only wish he were,” Lizzie answered coolly. “Then you might catch some of his good manners and his generosity.”

“Don’t you think we should stop bickering?” Whitley retorted, surprising her. “After all, we’re all in danger here, the way that sawbones tells it.”

“Are you just realizing that, Whitley?” Lizzie asked. “And Dr. Shane is not a ‘sawbones.’ He’s a physician, trained in Berlin.”

“Well, huzzah for him,” Whitley said bitterly. Apparently, his suggestion that they make peace had extended only as far as Lizzie herself. He was going to go right on being nasty. “I swear he’s turned your head, Lizzie. You’re smitten with him. And you don’t know a damn thing about the man, except what he’s told you.”

“I know,” Lizzie said moderately, “that when this train was struck by an avalanche, he didn’t think of himself first.”

Whitley’s color flared. “Are you implying that I’m a coward?”

The peddler, Ellen and Jack looked up from their game.

John Brennan went right on coughing.

Woodrow, back in his cage, spouted, “Coward!”

“No,” Lizzie replied thoughtfully. “I’ve watched you play polo, and you can be quite brave. Maybe ‘reckless’ would be a better term. But you are selfish, Whitley, and that is a trait I cannot abide.”

He gripped her shoulders. Shook her slightly. “Now you can’t ‘abide’ me?” he growled. “Why? Because you’re a high-and-mighty McKettrick?”

A click sounded from somewhere in the car, distinctive and ominous.

Lizzie glanced past Whitley and saw that the peddler had pointed a small handgun in their direction.

“Unhand the lady, if you please,” the man said mildly.

Ellen and Jack stared, their eyes enormous.

“Don’t shoot,” Lizzie said calmly.

Whitley’s hands fell to his sides, but the look on his face was cocky. “So you’re still fond of me?” he asked Lizzie.

“No,” Lizzie replied, watching his obnoxious grin fade as the word sank in. “I’m not the least bit fond of you, Whitley. But a shot could start another avalanche.” Whitley reddened.

The peddler lowered the pistol, allowing it to rest on top of his sample case, under his hand.

“I’m catching the first train out of this godforsaken country!” Whitley said, shaking a finger under Lizzie’s nose. “I should have known you’d turn out to be—to be wild.”

Lizzie drew in her breath. “‘Wild’? If you’re trying to insult me, Whitley, you’re going to have to do better than that.” She jabbed at his chest with the tip of one index finger. “And kindly do not shake your finger at me!”

The peddler chuckled.

“Wild!” Woodrow called shrilly. “Wild!”

The door at the rear of the caboose opened, and Morgan came in, stomping snow off his boots. He carried several broken tree branches in his arms, laid them down near the stove to dry, so they could be burned later. His gaze came directly to Lizzie and Whitley.

“I’m leaving!” Whitley said, forcing the words between his teeth.

“That might be difficult,” Lizzie pointed out dryly, “since we’re stranded.”

“I won’t stay here and be insulted!”

“You’d rather go out there and die of exposure?”

“You think I’m a coward? I’m selfish? Well, I’ll show you, Lizzie McKettrick. I’ll follow the tracks until I come to a town and get help—since your highfalutin family hasn’t shown up!”

“You can’t do that,” Morgan said, the voice of irritated moderation. “You wouldn’t make it a mile, whether you followed the tracks or not. Anyhow, in case you haven’t been listening, the tracks are buried under snow higher than the top of your head.”

“Maybe you’re afraid, Dr. Shane, but I’m not!” Whitley looked around, first to the peddler, then to poor John Brennan. “I think we should all go. It would be better than sitting around in this caboose, waiting to fall over the side of a mountain!”

Ellen raised a small hand, as though asking a question in class. “Are we going to fall over the mountain?” she asked. Jack nestled close against his sister’s side, pale, and thrust a thumb into his mouth.

“You’re frightening the children!” Lizzie said angrily.

Morgan raised both hands in a bid for peace. “We’re not going to fall off the mountain,” he told the little girl and Jack, his tone gentle. But when he turned to Whitley, his eyes blazed with temper. “If you want to be a damn fool, Mr. Carson, that’s your business. But don’t expect the rest of us to go along with you.”

Little Jack began to cry, tears slipping silently down his face, his thumb still jammed deep into his mouth.

“Stop that,” Ellen told him, trying without success to dislodge the thumb. “You’re not a baby.”

Whitley grabbed up his blanket, stormed across the car and flung it at Ellen and Jack. Then he banged out of the caboose, leaving the door ajar behind him.

Lizzie took a step in that direction.

Morgan closed the door. “He won’t get far,” he told her quietly.

“Come here to me, Jack,” Mrs. Halifax said. She’d finished feeding and burping the baby, laid her gently on the seat beside her; Nellie Anne was asleep, reminding Lizzie of a cherub slumbering on a fluffy cloud.

Jack scrambled to his mother, crawled onto her lap.

Lizzie felt a pinch in her heart. She’d held her youngest brother, Doss, in just that way, when he was smaller and frightened by a thunderstorm or a bad dream.

“I have some goods in the freight car,” the peddler said, tucking away the pistol, securing his case under the seat and rising. He buttoned his coat and went out.

Lizzie helped Ellen gather the scattered cards from their game. Mrs. Halifax rocked Jack in her lap, murmuring softly to him.

Morgan checked the fire, added wood.

“He’ll be back,” he told Lizzie, when their gazes collided.

He was referring to Whitley, of course, off on his fool’s errand.

Lizzie nodded glumly and swallowed.

When the peddler returned, he was lugging a large wooden crate marked Private in large, stenciled letters. He set it down near the stove, with an air of mystery, and Ellen was immediately attracted. Even Jack slid down off his mother’s lap to approach, no longer sucking his thumb.

“What’s in there?” the little boy asked.

The peddler smiled. Patted the crate with one plump hand. Took a handkerchief from inside his coat and dabbed at his forehead. Remarkably, in that weather, he’d managed to work up a sweat. “Well, my boy,” he said importantly, straightening, “I’m glad you asked that question. Can you read?”

Jack blinked. “No, sir,” he said.

“I can,” Ellen piped up, pointing to a label on the crate. “It says, ‘Property of Mr. Nicholas Christian.’”

“That,” the peddler said, “would be me. Nicholas Christian, at your service.” He doffed his somewhat seedy bowler hat, pressed it to his chest and bowed. He turned to Jack. “You ask what’s in this box? Well, I’ll tell you. Christmas. That’s what’s in here.”

“How can a whole day fit inside a box?” Ellen demanded, sounding at once skeptical and very hopeful.

“Why, child,” said Nicholas Christian, “Christmas isn’t merely a day. It comes in all sorts of forms.”

Morgan, having poured a cup of coffee, watched the proceedings with interest. Mrs. Halifax looked troubled, but curious, too.

“Are you going to open it?” Jack wanted to know. He was practically breathless with excitement. Even John Brennan had stirred upon his sickbed to sit up and peer toward the crate.

“Of course I am,” Mr. Christian said. “It would be unthinkably rude not to, after arousing your interest in such a way, wouldn’t you say?”

Ellen and Jack nodded uncertainly.

“I’ll need that poker,” the peddler went on, addressing Morgan now, since he was closest to the stove. “The lid of this box is nailed down, you know.”

Morgan brought the poker.

Woodrow leaned forward on his perch.

The peddler wedged one end of it under the top of the crate and prized it up with a squeak of nails giving way. A layer of fresh wood shavings covered the contents, hiding them from view.

Lizzie, preoccupied with Whitley’s announcement that he was going to follow the tracks to the nearest town, looked on distractedly.

Mr. Christian knelt next to the crate, rubbed his hands together, like a magician preparing to conjure a live rabbit or a white-winged dove from a hat, and reached inside.

He brought out a shining wooden box with gleaming brass hinges. Set it reverently on the floor. When he raised the lid, a tune began to play. “O little town of Bethlehem…”

Lizzie’s throat tightened. The works of the music box were visible, through a layer of glass, and Jack and Ellen stared in fascination.

“Land,” Ellen said. “I ain’t—” she blushed, looked up at Lizzie “—I haven’t never seen nothin’ like this.”

Lizzie offered no comment on the child’s grammar.

“It belonged to my late wife, God rest her soul,” Mr. Christian said and, for a moment, there were ghosts in his eyes. Leaving the music box to play, he plunged his hands into the crate again. Brought out a delicate china plate, chipped from long and reverent use, trimmed in gold and probably hand-painted. “There are eight of these,” he said. “Spoons and forks and butter knives, too. We shall dine in splendor.”

“What’s ‘dine’?” Jack asked.

Ellen elbowed him. “It means eating,” she said.

“We ain’t got nothin’ to eat,” Jack pointed out. By then, the crackers and cheese Lizzie had found in the cupboard were long gone, as were the canned foods pirated from the freight car.

“Oh, but we do,” replied Mr. Christian. “We most certainly do.”

The children’s eyes all but popped.

“We have goose-liver pâté.” He produced several small cans to prove it.

Woodrow squawked and spread his wings.

Jack wrinkled his nose. “Goose liver?”

Ellen nudged him again, harder this time. “Whatever patty is,” she told him, “it’s vittles for sure.”

“Pah-tay,” the peddler corrected, though not unkindly. “It is fine fare indeed.” More cans came out of the box. A small ham. Crackers. Tea in a wooden container. And wonderful, rainbow-colored sugar in a pretty jar.

Lizzie’s eyes stung a little, just watching as the feast was unveiled. Clearly, like the things stashed in her travel trunk, these treasures had been intended for some one in Indian Rock, awaiting Mr. Christian’s arrival. A daughter? A son? Grandchildren?

“Of course, having recently enjoyed a fine repast,” Mr. Christian said, addressing Ellen and Jack directly, but raising his voice just enough to carry to all corners of the caboose, “we’d do well to save all this for a while, wouldn’t we?”

“I don’t like liver,” Jack announced, this time managing to dodge the inevitable elbow from Ellen. “But I wouldn’t mind havin’ some of that pretty sugar.”

Morgan chuckled, but Lizzie saw him glance anxiously in the direction of the windows.

“Later,” Mr. Christian promised. “Let us savor the anticipation for a while.”

Both children’s brows furrowed in puzzlement. The peddler might have been speaking in a foreign language, using words like repast and savor and anticipation. Raised hardscrabble, though, they clearly understood the concept of later. Delay was a way of life with them, young as they were.

Lizzie moved closer to Morgan, spoke quietly, while the music box continued to play. “Whitley,” she said, “is an exasperating fool. But we can’t let him wander out there. He’ll die.”

Morgan sighed. “I was just thinking I’d better go and bring him back before he gets lost.”

“I’m going, too. It’s my fault he’s here at all.”

“You’re needed here,” Morgan replied reasonably, with a slight nod of his head toward John Brennan. “I can’t be in two places at once, Lizzie.”

“I wouldn’t know what to do if Mr. Brennan had a medical crisis,” Lizzie said. “But I do know how to follow railroad tracks.”

Morgan rested his hands on Lizzie’s shoulders, just lightly, but a confounding sensation rushed through her, almost an ache, stirring things up inside her. “You’re too brave for your own good,” he said. “Stay here. Get as much water down Brennan as you can. Make sure he stays warm, even if the fever makes him want to throw off his blankets.”

“But what if he—?”

“What if he dies, Lizzie? I won’t lie to you. He might. But then, so might all the rest of us, if we don’t keep our heads.”

“You’re exhausted,” Lizzie protested.

“If there’s one thing a doctor learns, it’s that exhaustion is a luxury. I can’t afford to collapse, Lizzie, and believe me, I won’t.”

Wanting to cling to him, wanting to make him stay, even if she had to make a histrionic scene to do it, Lizzie forced herself to step back. To let go, not just physically, but emotionally, too. “All right,” she said. “But if you’re not back within an hour or two, I will come looking for you.”

Morgan sighed again, but a tiny smile played at the corner of his mouth, and something at once soft and molten moved in his eyes. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. And then, after making only minimal preparations against the cold, he left the caboose.

Lizzie went immediately to the windows, watched him pass alongside the train. Keep him safe, she prayed silently. Please, keep him safe. And Whitley, too.

John Brennan began to cough. Lizzie fetched one of the cups, dashed outside to fill it with snow, set it on the stove. The chill bit deep into her flesh, gnawed at her bones.

Ellen and Jack whirled like figure skaters to the continuing serenade of the music box, Mr. Christian having demonstrated that it could play many different tunes, by virtue of small brass disks inserted into a tiny slot. Woodrow seemed to dance, inside his cage. Mr. and Mrs. Thaddings took in the scene, smiling fondly.

“I’m burnin’ up,” Mr. Brennan told Lizzie, when she came to adjust his blankets. “I need to get outside. Roll myself in that snow—”

Lizzie shook her head. She had no medical training, nothing to offer but the soothing presence of a woman. “That’s your fever talking, Mr. Brennan,” she said. “Dr. Shane said to keep you warm.”

“It’s like I’m on fire,” he said.

How, Lizzie wondered, did people stand being nurses and doctors? It was a sore trial to the spirit to look helplessly upon human suffering, able to do so little to relieve it. “There, now,” she told him, near to weeping. “Rest. I’ll fetch a cool cloth for your forehead.”

“That would be a pure mercy,” he rasped.

Lizzie took her favorite silk scarf from her valise, steeled herself to go outside yet again.

Mr. Thaddings stopped her. Took the scarf from her hands and made the journey himself, shivering when he returned.

The snow-dampened scarf proved a comfort to Mr. Brennan, though the heat of his flesh quickly defeated the purpose. Lizzie, on her knees beside the seat where he lay, turned her head and saw that Zebulon Thaddings had brought in a bucketful of snow. Gratefully, she repeated the process.

“It would be a favor if you’d call me by my given name,” Mr. Brennan told her. His coughing had turned violent, and he seemed almost delirious, alternately shaking with chills and trying to throw off his covers. “I wouldn’t feel so far from home thataways.”

Lizzie blinked back another spate of hot tears. “You’ll get home, John,” she said, fairly choking out the words. “I promise you will.”

A small hand came to rest on her shoulder. She looked around, saw Ellen standing beside her. “I could do that,” the child said gently, referring to the repeated wetting, wringing and applying of the cloth to John’s forehead. “So you could rest a spell. Have some of that tea Mr. Christmas made.”

Lizzie’s first instinct was to refuse—tending the sick was no task for a small child. On the other hand, the offer was a gift and oughtn’t to be spurned. “Mr. Christmas?” she asked, bemused, distracted by worry. “Don’t you mean Mr. Christian?”

Ellen smiled, took the cloth. Edged Lizzie aside. “Here, now, Mr. Brennan,” the little girl said, sounding like a miniature adult. “You just listen, and I’ll talk. Me and my ma and my brother Jack and my little sister, Nellie Anne, we’re on our way to the Triple M Ranch—”

Lizzie got to her feet, turned to find Mr. Christian holding out a mug full of spice-fragrant tea, hot and strong and probably laced with the very expensive colored sugar.

Mr. Christmas. Maybe Ellen had gotten the peddler’s name right after all.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE COLD WAS BRUTAL, the snow blinding. Morgan slogged through it, following the rails as best he could. It was in large part a guessing game, and he had to be careful to stay away from the bank on the left. That presented a challenge, since he couldn’t be entirely certain where it was.

Carson, the damn fool, had left footprints, but they were filling in fast, and the man was clearly no relation to the famous scout with the same last name. Tracking him was more likely to lead Morgan to the bottom of the ravine than the nearest town.

Cursing under his breath—the wind buffeted it away every time he raised his head—Morgan kept going, ever mindful of the passing of time. If he took too long finding Carson and bringing him back, he knew Lizzie would make good on her threat to mount a one-woman search. John Brennan was too sick to stop her, let alone make the trek in her stead, and the peddler, well, he was a curious fellow, now guarding that sample case of his as if it contained the Holy Grail, now serving up goose-liver pâté and other delicacies on fancy china plates. He might keep Lizzie in the caboose, where she belonged, or send her out into the blizzard with his blessings. Morgan, by necessity an astute observer of the human animal, wasn’t sure the man was completely sane.

Lizzie. In spite of his own situation, he smiled. What a hardheaded little firebrand she was—pretty. Smart as hell. Calm in a crisis that would have had many females—and males, too, to be fair—wringing their hand kerchiefs and bewailing a cruel fate. He hadn’t been joking when he’d said she’d make a good nurse.

Now, in the strange privacy of a high-country blizzard, he could admit something else, too—if only to himself. Lizzie McKettrick would make an even better doctor’s wife than she would a nurse.

He felt something grind inside him, both painful and pleasant.

It was sheer idiocy to think of her in such intimate terms. They barely knew each other, after all, and she was set on teaching school, married or single. On top of that, she’d been fond enough of Whitley Carson to bring him home to her family during a sacred season. Her irritation with Carson would most likely fade, once they were all safe again. She’d forget the man’s shortcomings soon enough, when the two of them were sipping punch beside a big Christmas tree in some grand McKettrick parlor.

The realization sobered Morgan. He felt something for Lizzie, though it was far too soon to know just what, but opening his time-hardened heart to her would be foolhardy. Rash. Until this trip, Morgan Shane had never done anything rash in his life. A week ago, even a few days ago, he wouldn’t have considered taking the kind of stupid chance he was in the midst of right now, bumbling into the maw of a storm that might well swallow him whole.

Yes, he was a doctor, and a dedicated one. He was a pragmatist’s pragmatist, in a field where the most competent were bone skeptical. He believed that, upon reaching the age of reason, everyone was responsible for their own actions, and the resultant consequences. Therefore, if Whitley Carson was stupid enough to set off looking for help in the middle of a snowstorm, he had that right. From Morgan’s perspective, his own duty, as a man and as a physician, lay with John Brennan, Mrs. Halifax and her children, the peddler, the Thaddingses, and Lizzie.

Hell, he even felt responsible for the bird.

So why was he out there in the snowstorm, when he knew better, knew the hopelessness of the task he’d undertaken?

The answer made him flinch inside.

Because of Lizzie. He was doing this for Lizzie. Whatever her present mood, she loved Carson. Bringing the man home to the bosom of her fabled clan was proof of that.

Flesh stinging, Morgan kept walking. His feet were numb, and so were his hands. His ears burned as though someone had laid hot pokers to them, and every breath felt like an inhalation of flame. He fumbled for the flask Nicholas Christian had given him earlier, managed to get the lid off, and took a swig, blessing the bracing warmth that surged through him with the first swallow.

He found Carson sprawled in the snow, just around a bend.

Was he dead?

Morgan’s heartbeat quickened, and so did his half-frozen brain. He crouched beside the prone body, searched for and found a pulse.

Carson opened his eyes. “My leg,” he scratched out. “I think I’ve broken my leg…slipped on the tracks… almost went over the side—”

Morgan confirmed the diagnosis with a few practiced motions of his hands, even though his wind-stung eyes had already offered the proof. He opened the flask again, with less difficulty this time, and held it to Carson’s lips. “I’ll get you back to the train,” he said, leaning in close to be heard over the howl of the wind, “but it’s going to hurt.”