A Mail-Order Christmas Bride

by Livia J. Washburn

  Banning’s grin went away, replaced by a frown.

  “What? What the hell did you just—”

  The man’s companion, who was burly and dark, with a thick mustache hanging over his mouth, took hold of Banning’s arm and steered him back toward the hitch rail.

  “Let it go, Jake,” he rumbled. “You’re drunk.”

  “But Dobbsy, did you hear the way that gal talked to me?”

  “I’d say you’re lucky you didn’t get worse’n that. Let’s go.”

  Banning glared at Abby and Shawn, but he allowed his friend to lead him away. Shawn cupped a hand under Abby’s elbow and urged her toward the store.

  “Range trash like that ought to be beneath your notice,” he said quietly.

  “I know. I have a bit of a temper.”

  Shawn said, “That’s a good thing, sometimes. Like when you helped Wes against those bullies.”

  “I see that bullying is a common tendency among the grown-ups around here, as well as the children.”

  “It’s a common tendency everywhere, no matter how old folks are, unfortunately.”

  Shawn’s voice held a bleak note as he said that. Another sign that he had endured pain in the past, Abby thought.

  “Just out of curiosity, who were those two?” she asked.

  “Frank Dobbs and Jake Banning. They’ve got a little spread east of town, but they don’t really work much at it. And rumor has it that some of the stock wearing their brand didn’t start out that way.”

  “You mean they’re...what’s the word? Rustlers?”

  “Could be. Don’t know for sure and hope I never find out, because that’d mean they’ve left me and mine alone.”

  He had spoken up to defend her simply because she was a woman, Abby knew. But now she found herself wondering what it would feel like to have Shawn Killian defend her because he considered her to be his. Mixed emotions went through her. She had always considered herself an independent woman, perfectly capable of taking care of herself. But from time to time, it might be nice to have a man be protective of her because he cared about her, even if it wasn’t strictly necessary.

  A wagon parked in front of the store had several crates and bags of supplies piled in the back. Abby assumed the vehicle belonged to Shawn, and he confirmed that by saying, “I’ll help you up, then fetch Wes from inside.”

  “Oh!” Abby said. “We didn’t get my bags from the stagecoach office.”

  “Sorry. I clean forgot. I’ll go get them—”

  “And I’ll get Wes,” Abby finished.

  Shawn nodded and said, “All right. I guess that’ll work.” He looked around, then added, “Banning and Dobbs are gone, so they won’t bother you.”

  “They wouldn’t, anyway. I wouldn’t let them.”

  Shawn smiled, relieving the previously grim cast of his face.

  “I believe you,” he said.

  While he set off toward the stage line office, Abby climbed the steps to the loading dock and went to the door of the establishment. The inside of the store was rather gloomy. The aisles between shelves holding all sorts of goods were narrow. She followed one of them to the back of the store and found Wes there. He had left off examining pocket knives through the glass of a display case and now had his attention focused on the candy behind the glass of another case.

  “Wes, your father’s ready to go,” Abby said to him.

  He started to turn toward her, saying, “All right, Ma—”

  Then he stopped with a sharply indrawn breath, and Abby remembered what he’d said earlier about his mother dying. Obviously, for a moment he had reacted instinctively to a woman’s voice summoning him, and now he looked stricken.

  He tried to rush past her, but she caught hold of his shoulder and stopped him. Looking down at him, she smiled and said, “It’s all right, Wes. I understand. You don’t need to be upset. You can even cry if you want to.”

  His back stiffened. He said, “No, ma’am. Wouldn’t do no good.”

  “But if you need to...”

  Her voice trailed off as he shook his head stubbornly.

  Sensing that it was time to move on, Abby said, “All right. I’m going out to your ranch with you, you know.”

  “You are? Really?”

  “That’s right. I’m going to stay with you and your father for a short time until I can arrange to go back where I came from. Is that all right with you?”

  “Sure,” the boy answered without hesitation. A smile suddenly lit his face. “Say, it’ll be Christmas pretty soon. You reckon you can stay with us until after that?”

  “Well...I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “That’d be good,” Wes said, nodding. “Christmas’d be better if it wasn’t just Pa and me.”

  “We’ll see,” Abby told him. She did some quick calculations in her head. Considering how long it would take a letter to get to Philadelphia and to get a response from there, she thought she would definitely be here through Christmas.

  She found herself looking forward to it.

  Chapter 4

  Wes was being good about the whole thing, Shawn thought. He had worried a little that his son wouldn’t like the idea of Abby Demarest staying with them. Wes seemed to have adjusted fairly well to his mother’s death and to their new life here in Texas, but Shawn wouldn’t have blamed him for being upset if he thought his father was trying to replace his mother.

  Of course, that wasn’t what was going on at all, and Shawn made that clear to the boy during the drive out to the ranch. It was just a matter of circumstances working out this way. Miss Demarest needed some help, and it was the gentlemanly thing to do.

  Wes started out riding between them on the wagon seat, but they hadn’t gone very far before he complained that it was too crowded and climbed over the back of the seat to ride in the wagon bed, sitting on one of the crates.

  It had been crowded with all three of them on the seat, and after that Shawn was able to spread out more. He tried to leave a respectable distance between him and Abby, but from time to time the wagon’s swaying made his right knee bump against her left one. He apologized every time until she finally said, “Oh, for goodness’ sake, it’s all right, Mr. Killian.”

  “Shawn,” he said. “You told me to call you Abby, so I reckon you need to call me Shawn.”

  “I’d be happy to. Just stop apologizing whenever you touch me the least little bit.”

  He would have enjoyed touching her more than just the least little bit, he realized, and that thought made him clear his throat and frown at the rumps of the team plodding along in front of the wagon.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  “Nope,” he said. “Nothing wrong.”

  Just...unexpected. He hadn’t felt this way in a long time, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d never felt such emotions again. That’s how he figured things would be.

  Life had a way of throwing things at a man that he never saw coming until the last second, though.

  Wes started talking about Christmas. He sounded excited, and Shawn was glad to hear that. The last holiday had been miserable for both of them, sunk in grief as they were, and he had feared that it would never be the same again. Now, Wes seemed to be anticipating Christmas as much as ever.

  “And I sure hope Santa Claus is gonna bring me that pocket knife,” he said. “I like to whittle, and Pa lets me borrow his knife sometimes, but if I had a knife of my own, I could whittle whenever I wanted to.”

  Abby turned to smile at him and asked, “Are you any good at it?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I can take a chunk of wood and whittle ’most any sort of animal out of it. Pa says they look so real you’d almost think they was alive.”

  Shawn nodded and said, “He’s talented, all right. Got an artistic streak in him, I guess you could say. He didn’t get it from me, though.”

  “Yeah, my ma could paint pictures and stuff,” Wes said. “She was real good.”

  He didn’t sound upset, and Shawn
was pleased that Wes was starting to be able to talk about his mother and remember the good things about her without being overwhelmed by sorrow. That was what she would have wanted.

  Would she have wanted the same thing for him, he asked himself?

  Shawn didn’t let himself dwell on that question. He flapped the reins against the horses’ backs and got the team moving a little faster. Out here away from town the wind was even stronger and colder, and it would be good to reach the ranch and get inside before they were all chilled to the bone.

  The spread came in sight a short time later. The house, barn, corrals, and smokehouse lay about a mile in front of a long ridge. Shawn pointed to the buildings and said, “That’s our place. I bought it from the widow of the old pioneer who started the spread years ago. Our range runs all the way back to that ridge. There’s a good creek along the base of it, so the stock have water. We’ve got a dependable well here at the house.”

  He was saying we and our refer to himself and Wes, he mused, but if he really had sent for a mail-order bride, like those folks back in Philadelphia obviously believed he had, then the terms would have included Abby, as well. It wasn’t going to be that way, but under different circumstances it might have been.

  “It looks nice,” Abby said.

  “Well, it’s just a little greasy-sack outfit, but we like it. Reckon it’s home now. Isn’t that right, Wes?”

  “Yes, sir,” the boy said. “I like it here.”

  Shawn drove the wagon up in front of the house, which was a neat frame cottage with a gallery along the front. Abby said, “I was expecting...no offense, but I was expecting something a little more...primitive.”

  “Like a double log cabin with a dogtrot in between?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what that is.”

  “A lot of the early settlers built like that, but the fella who started this ranch and built this house, he was from back in New England somewhere. I reckon he wanted the place to remind him of home. So he paid to have boards freighted out here and built it the way he wanted.”

  “Well, it’s very nice,” she said.

  Wes had already jumped down from the back of the wagon. Shawn called to him, “Take something inside with you when you go. The sooner we get these supplies unloaded, the sooner we can put away the team and wagon. I’m sure the horses would like to get in a nice warm barn with some hay.”

  “Yes, sir,” Wes said as he picked up a sack of sugar from the back.

  Shawn set the brake and looped the reins around the lever. Then he jumped lithely to the ground and circled behind the wagon to come up on Abby’s side of the seat.

  “I’ll give you a hand,” he said, reaching up to her.

  “Thank you,” she told him. She rested her hands on his shoulders while he took hold of her at the waist with both hands. Helping her down was just being polite, he told himself, but his grip on her trim waist sure felt natural—and good.

  He swung her down from the wagon and had just set her on her feet when something came around the corner of the house, let out an unholy squawk, and charged at them.

  “Whoa!” Shawn exclaimed. He moved quickly to get between Abby and the big, ungainly bird as it continued to raise a racket. It pecked at his shins, but the thick leather of his high-topped boots protected him.

  “Get outta here, you crazy goose!” Shawn shouted at the bird as he waved his arms. He grabbed his hat and swung it at the angry fowl. The bird retreated but kept squawking indignantly.

  Shawn realized that Abby was clutching his upper left arm with both hands. He didn’t mind.

  “What in the world is wrong with that bird?” she asked. Her eyes were still wide with surprise, he saw when he looked at her.

  “Chester’s a little...off in the head, I guess you’d say. Don’t know why. He’s always been that way. Some of the time he’s all right, but then other times he’ll attack anything he lays eyes on. Men, horses, cows, it doesn’t matter. He seems to think he can take on the whole world and lick it.” Shawn shrugged. “But he eats scorpions and kills snakes, so Wes and I figure he’s worth keeping around. You just need to keep an eye out for him.”

  “I certainly will,” Abby promised.

  Wes came out of the house and asked, “Was Chester up to his tricks again, Pa? I thought I heard him carryin’ on.”

  “I reckon he was just welcoming Miss Demarest,” Shawn replied with a grin. “That was his way of saying howdy-do.”

  Abby said, “I’d hate to see what sort of greeting he’d give to someone he didn’t like.”

  That made both Shawn and Wes laugh. It was a sound that hadn’t been heard too often on this ranch, and Shawn was pleased to hear it.

  Chapter 5

  Abby insisted on cooking supper. She knew she was fairly good in the kitchen, and besides, she told Shawn and Wes, “I want to do something to earn my keep around here until I go back east.”

  Wes said around a mouthful of biscuit, “I hope that’s not too soon. The biscuits Pa cooks are hard enough to skip across a pond. Not like this. This is really good.”

  Abby thanked him with a smile, while Shawn said, “Hey, I do the best I can. Cooking’s just not my strong suit, I reckon.”

  “Well, you don’t have to worry about that while I’m here.”

  Over the next couple of days, she had more of an impact than just in the kitchen. While Shawn and Wes were out tending to the stock, she swept and mopped, took down the curtains on the windows, beat the dust out of them, and put them back up, washed the windows themselves, and generally cleaned the place from top to bottom. She took on some of the chores, too, such as feeding the chickens—and avoiding Chester the goose while doing so.

  Milking the placid old milk cow seemed a little beyond her ability, but she would have been willing to give it a try if Shawn would show her how. When she suggested that at supper one evening, though, he shook his head and said, “You don’t need to bother with that. I sort of figured you’d be our guest while you’re here, but you’ve been working all the time.”

  “I haven’t minded,” she told him. “Honestly, I’ve enjoyed it.”

  And that was the truth. She liked knowing she was making things better for Shawn and Wes.

  “Anyway, you probably won’t be here long enough to worry about learning how to milk a cow,” Shawn went on.

  She could tell that he didn’t mean to hurt her by that comment, but surprisingly, it did. She had been well aware that she wasn’t a permanent addition around here, but after the time she had spent with Shawn and Wes, she realized that she was going to be sad when the time came for her to leave. There had been moments while she was working that she found herself humming and thinking about what it would be like to just stay here with the two of them from now on, the circumstances that had brought her here be damned!

  But that could never be...could it?

  Abby tried to keep herself distracted from those thoughts by decorating the house for Christmas. A few small pine trees grew on a hill not far from the house. She gathered fallen pine cones and arranged them on the mantle over the fireplace. She took some of the pine boughs and weaved them together to form a garland. It wouldn’t last long before drying out, but Christmas was only a few days away. She found a bush with bright red berries growing on it and tied some of them to the garland to make it even more colorful and festive.

  She rolled out the gingerbread dough and got Wes to help her cut gingerbread men from it. He proved to be as talented at that as he was at whittling. The gingerbread men were adorable, Abby thought.

  “I’ve been workin’ on something for a while,” Wes announced that evening. “Can I show you, Abby?”

  He had picked up the habit of calling her by her given name, and while Shawn had tried to stop him at first, saying it was disrespectful, Abby didn’t mind and assured them it was all right.

  She nodded and told the boy, “Whatever it is, I’d love to see it, Wes.”

  He went to his room and came back a
minute later with a wooden figurine in his hand. He held it up to show Abby, and her breath caught in her throat as she recognized the quality of the workmanship.

  “It’s Old Saint Nick,” Wes said. “You know, Santa Claus.”

  “Yes,” Abby said. “I can see that. You’ve done a wonderful job on this, Wes.”

  The figurine was highly detailed, right down to the beard hanging over Santa Claus’s chest and the buttons on his coat and the buckle on his belt.

  “You think I could put him up on the mantle with those pine cones?”

  “I think that would be a perfect place for him. I’m not sure you can reach that high, though. I can set him up there for you.”

  “Shoot, I’ll just get a stool to stand on.” He pressed the figurine into Abby’s hand. “Here, you hold him for a minute.”

  While Wes was gone to fetch a stool, Abby looked over at the table, where Shawn sat with a solemn but largely unreadable expression on his face. Was he thinking about his late wife and the way Wes would have shown off the intricately carved figure to her if she had still been alive? Or was something else on his mind?

  Wes came back with a three-legged stool, set it in front of the fireplace, where flames crackled merrily, and hurried over to Abby to reclaim Santa Claus. He climbed up on the stool with it and carefully placed it on the mantle, adjusting it a couple of times before he was satisfied with its position.

  Then he looked back over his shoulder at Abby and said, “We’ll leave him up here until after Christmas. And then I want you to have him, Abby.”

  “Me?” She touched a hand to her bosom. “Why, I couldn’t do that, Wes, he belongs to you.”

  “But I want you to have him. I want you to take him back east with you, so you’ll never forget the one Christmas you spent with us.”

  “That’s very sweet of you.” She knew she couldn’t turn down the offer without hurting his feelings. And she didn’t want to turn it down, she realized. No matter how things turned out here, she wanted to remember her trip to Texas and the time she had spent with this father and son.