Tracie Peterson, Tracey V. Bateman, Pamela Griffin, JoAnn A. Grote

by Prairie Christmas Collection

  She was surprised when a man hurried out to intercept them on the road. He had a short, neatly clipped beard and although his clothes were little more than patched rags, he was clean.

  Ward pulled the wagon to a stop, setting the brake. He reached down to the man, a smile lighting his features.

  “Howdy, Adam. I’d like you to meet my wife, Rose.” Ward nodded toward the other man. “The Comptons are our nearest neighbors.”

  Brown eyes sparkled with friendliness as the man reached out a hand. “Howdy, ma’am.”

  Rose returned his smile. “Mr. Compton.”

  “How’s the family?” Ward asked him. “See for yourself.”

  Over his shoulder, Rose could see a woman and two children hurrying their way. The woman stopped beside the wagon and shyly handed Rose a bundle. “For you. A wedding present.”

  Rose was stunned. She knew that news here on the prairie traveled as fast as a wildfire, so she shouldn’t have been surprised. But she was.

  Taking the bundle, Rose unwrapped it, revealing a small loaf of bread. She could feel Ward’s eyes on her. When she looked his way, there was something indefinable in his eyes.

  “Thank you.” She acknowledged the woman’s friendliness with a smile that brought a quick one in return.

  “This here’s Alice,” Adam told her, the pride evident in his voice. “She’s my missus. And this here’s Alicia and Andrew. Twins.” He ruffled the boy’s hair good-naturedly, but Andrew pulled away.

  “Aw, Pa!”

  Adam grinned at his son. “Thinks he’s too growed up, now that he’s turned six.”

  Rose smiled at the play between father and son. It was obvious that this was a very close and loving family. Her gaze settled on little Alicia, a perfect replica of her mother. Blond ringlets cascaded down the child’s back in abundance, and her periwinkle blue eyes smiled timidly at Rose.

  “Won’t you come in and have a bite to eat? You must be hungry after traveling so far.”

  Rose was about to answer the woman when she felt a sudden pressure on her knee. Turning startled eyes on Ward, she found his hand gripping her knee but his look was fixed on Alice.

  “We can’t today, Alice. We still have a long way to go. Besides, Rose fixed us something to eat for the trip.”

  That was certainly true, Rose thought, but Ward was being unneighborly to say the least. Everyone on the prairie shared with each other, helped each other, and looked forward to each other’s company.

  She opened her mouth to disagree with his statement, but he suddenly fixed her with a steely eye. She snapped her lips together, turning back to Alice and smiling with regret.

  Ward made as if to leave, but suddenly stopped as though he had just thought of something. He turned to Adam.

  “Adam, I was wondering if you might be willing to help me gather some logs from the river. My cabin is much too small now that I’m a married man.” Both men exchanged amused glances. “I thought since it was winter and all, you might have some free time to help me. If so, I thought since we would be cutting and hauling logs for my cabin, we might just as well do so for you, too. Now, I can’t pay you, but I figured if you helped me, I could help you and we could call it even.”

  A sudden light entered Adam’s eyes and he straightened his shoulders. When Rose looked at Alice she saw the same shine reflected in her eyes.

  “I reckon that’d be a fair trade,” Adam agreed. “When do you want to start?”

  “Is tomorrow too soon?”

  Adam grinned. “I’ll be there at first light.”

  Nodding, Ward lifted the reins again and clucked to the horses. They hadn’t traveled far when Rose rounded on Ward.

  “I can speak for myself, you know. It would have been nice to share a meal with the Comptons.”

  Ward’s lips lifted slightly in an amused smirk. “I wondered how long it would take before you launched your attack.”

  “I’m not attacking,” she huffed, “but you weren’t being very neighborly.”

  When he turned her way, his green eyes were serious. “You’re right. I wasn’t being very neighborly, but for good reason.” He motioned to the loaf of bread that Alice Compton had handed her. “That bread was probably their allotment for the week. Since the drought this past summer and the grasshoppers the year before, Adam hasn’t fared very well. He still has three years left to prove up, and if things don’t change, he’ll lose his claim. You saw the condition of their clothes. They can barely afford to feed themselves, much less clothe themselves. But they’re a very proud family. Adam feels if he can’t make things work, then they just weren’t meant to be. He won’t accept ‘charity.’ “

  Rose considered the loaf of bread in her lap. What a sacrifice! “Why didn’t you say something? I wouldn’t have accepted this.”

  He turned away from her, studying the white prairie around them. Puffs of frost billowed out of his mouth and nostrils and he pulled his hat lower on his head to ward off the cold. “I wouldn’t hurt Alice for the world. I’ll find a way to make it up to them.”

  He remained quiet after that, and Rose observed him silently. Ward, it would seem, had a far larger heart than he gave himself credit for. Her first thought had been to condemn. She dropped her chin and stared at her fingers. If the Lord had wanted to teach her humility, He had certainly found an effective way of doing it.

  She had never known hunger herself. Papa had brought money with him when he first settled here on the prairie, so when the crops were scarce, the money had been there. It only now occurred to her that he must have been using that money little by little to make her life more comfortable. She felt ashamed of herself for not seeing it sooner.

  She wrapped the loaf of bread gently, as though it were some great treasure, as in a sense, it was.

  Chapter 4

  Adam showed up as he said he would, at first light. Ward had been awake for hours and had already taken care of the chores and fed the livestock. The cabin itself hadn’t been nearly as unsatisfactory as Rose was expecting, but it was only one large room with very little in the way of furniture. The fact that there was only one bed had caused her serious qualms until Ward began making himself a pallet on the floor next to the fireplace.

  Feeling guilty, but relieved nonetheless, Rose had prepared an elaborate supper to make amends. The whole evening had been an ordeal in itself, but one lighthearted moment had occurred at supper time that had relieved Rose of much of her dread of her husband, though at the time it had caused her a moment of panic.

  She had poured him his third cup of coffee and was just turning away when he cleared his throat. Turning back, one eyebrow raised in question, she noticed Ward’s nervousness. Suddenly, she began to feel rather nervous herself.

  “Rose, there’s something I need … I have to … well, we’re going to be married a long time, God willing, and you just gotta know.”

  When he stopped, Rose waited expectantly, not realizing that she was holding her breath.

  His chin lifted in determination, his eyes intent. “I’m sorry, Rose, but I just can’t abide coffee.”

  Her breath rushed out of her in a gasp. Is that what this was all about? And here she had been expecting … what? She wasn’t quite sure, but suddenly her relief lent a sparkle to her eyes, and she grinned at him.

  “I’m not offended, Ward,” she told him lightly. “Fact is, I can’t stand the stuff myself.”

  His shoulders relaxed, and his mouth curled slowly into a heart-stopping smile. “The way you continually fed me the stuff, I never would have guessed.” He shook his head, grinning. “Well, we should save a good deal of money on that commodity, then,” he finally told her.

  Rose shook her own head as she began clearing the table. “And all this time you’ve been forcing yourself to drink it whenever you came to our place. You should have told me. I thought all men drank coffee. Papa certainly loved it.”

  His smile was sheepish. “My pa taught me to never say anything against a woman’s coo
kin’.”

  Rose shook her head again, just thinking about it now as she watched Ward hitching the team to the wagon. With Adam’s wagon, they would be able to haul twice as much wood and wouldn’t have to make as many return trips. It should save time all around, and the sooner the other rooms were added, the better it would be in her opinion. She hated the fact that Ward had to sleep on the cold, dirt floor.

  Ward returned to the cabin to retrieve his leather gloves. He paused beside Rose on his way back out the door. “You sure you’re gonna be all right here by yourself?”

  She nodded. “I’ll just unpack some of my things, if that’s okay with you.”

  He lifted a hand and pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear. His voice was so soft, it sent shivers of awareness throughout her entire being. “This is your place now, too. Remember?” When he bent and kissed her cheek softly, Rose thought her heart would surely come to a standstill. “Make it into a home,” he continued. “I haven’t had a real one in a long while, and I know you have the knack.”

  With that, he left her standing there gaping at his retreating back.

  By the time Ward had returned, Rose had unpacked most of her possessions, though there was little room in the small cabin to accommodate them. On the mantle above his fireplace, she placed her parents’ anniversary clock, surrounding it with her own pair of silver candlesticks that Papa had bought for her twentieth birthday.

  She had thought of adding her memory quilt to Ward’s spartan bed, not only for the warmth but to add some cheerful color to this otherwise drab cabin. In the end, she had thought better of it. Perhaps there would be a time when she could look at the coverlet without feeling so much pain, but now was not that time. So she had carefully folded the quilt and returned it to her chest.

  Over the next few days, Ward and Rose grew accustomed to each other’s presence. Their conversation became less stilted, more natural, and before long they were conversing together as though they had been friends a long time, as indeed they really had, though they had not considered it so at the time.

  In the evenings when Rose would pull out her Bible for her daily devotions, Ward would continue with his own work. He would clean the halters and oil them against the weather, or sharpen the tools he would need come planting time. Eventually he asked her to read aloud, and though she was surprised, she nonetheless readily agreed. It became an evening ritual that Rose looked forward to.

  Ward still slept on his pallet by the fire, and Rose felt guiltier and guiltier about making him do so, especially when he spent such long, hard hours felling trees and she did so little. But when she had suggested switching beds, she had been met with such a cold look of outrage that she didn’t dare suggest it again.

  It was now a week into December, and suddenly Christmas loomed largely on Rose’s horizon. The holiday didn’t strike the same chord of joy that it usually did, however, and she wondered just how she and Ward should spend it. It was the day set aside to remember Christ’s birth, but Rose didn’t think her Lord would really mind if she didn’t celebrate just this once. After fretting about it several more days, she decided that she would just ignore Christmas this year. She was fairly certain Ward would agree with her.

  In this she was wrong. When she suggested it to him, Ward told her that he had already invited the Comptons to spend Christmas with them. “I’m sorry,” he told her, although he didn’t look it. “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

  Peeved, Rose told herself that he had no way of knowing how she felt since he was never around to talk about such things. She stopped in her tracks, realizing just how much she had been missing him when he was away. Of course, that was logical. It was lonely out here on the prairie, she reasoned, ignoring her heart when it tried to presume otherwise.

  As she was preparing for bed that night, she happened to catch Ward’s regard fixed intently on her as she brushed her long hair her usual one hundred strokes. Her fingers grew clumsy as they always did when he looked at her in such a way, and she dropped the brush.

  Cheeks filling with color, she lifted it from the dirt and shook it out. Reluctantly, she looked at her husband again only to find him stirring the logs in the fire in preparation for the night. She curled down among her covers and tried to get her heart to steady into its normal rhythm. It was a long time before sleep found her.

  The cold breeze from the cabin door closing roused Rose in the middle of the night. Sitting up, she tried to rub the sleep from her eyes, wondering what time it was and what had disturbed her.

  She could barely make out the hands on the anniversary clock in the dying light from the fire. Twelve-twenty. Ward’s covers were thrown back and his bed was empty. Heart jumping in alarm, she hastily climbed from her own warm cocoon and slid into her robe.

  Opening the door, she scanned the area to see where Ward could have gone. A light glimmered faintly from the barn, and closing the door behind her, Rose headed in that direction.

  By the time she reached the barn she was shivering with cold. She opened the door, swiftly closing it behind her. When she turned around she found Ward staring at her in surprise.

  “What are you doing out here? Get back to the house! You’ll freeze in that getup.”

  Ignoring him, she moved forward to where he was kneeling. “I thought something might be wrong.”

  He shifted his position next to his mare, Beauty, who was lying on her side, her flanks heaving. Rose’s eyes widened in surprise. “Is she foaling?”

  The look Ward focused on the mare was grim. “Yes,” he told her shortly. “Now go back to the house.”

  “Is something wrong with her?”

  “She’s breech,” he told her through gritted teeth. “Now, for heaven’s sake, get out of here.”

  Rose looked from the heaving mare back to Ward. She could sense his desperation. Not only was the foal valuable, Ward truly cared for his animals.

  “No,” she answered him firmly, moving closer to his side. “I want to help. Just tell me what to do.”

  He looked as though he were about to argue when Beauty whinnied in pain. Giving Rose brief instructions, he turned his full attention back to the mare.

  They worked together, side by side, until the first fingers of dawn were spreading across the sky. Just when she thought all hope was lost, Ward managed to turn the foal slightly, enough to allow it to pass through the birth canal.

  Only moments later, a wet and bloody but triumphant colt struggled to get to his feet.

  “It’s a boy!” Rose exulted. “A beautiful baby boy!”

  Ward shook his head slightly as he wiped his hands on a rag, his lips turning up into a reluctant smile.

  Now that the excitement was over, Rose found herself trembling with the below-freezing temperatures. Although the barn was relatively warm compared to the great outdoors, it was much too cold for someone standing in her nightgown and robe.

  Ward noticed her shivering and came quickly to her side. Pulling his own sheepskin jacket from the stall where he had left it, he wrapped it securely around her. His eyes found hers and held. “Thanks for your help. I couldn’t have done it without you,” he told her softly.

  Rose swallowed hard against his fingers where they clutched his jacket together at her throat. Her eyes were drawn to his as they darkened in response to hers. He leaned forward and lifting her chin with his thumbs he pressed his lips warmly against hers.

  Rose went from freezing to feeling as though her entire being were on fire. When Ward wrapped his strong arms around her, she leaned her full weight against him, knowing that her own legs would be useless as support.

  She thought the moment would never end, in fact hoped that it wouldn’t, but Ward pulled away when he heard Adam’s wagon entering their yard.

  He dropped his arms, stepping back from her, something undefined in his eyes. Rose shivered against the returning cold, her mind filled with a mixture of wonder and confusion, and turning, she fled back to the cabin.

  For
the next several days Ward took pains to avoid being alone with Rose as much as possible. She jumped whenever he entered a room, and she sensed he knew it had to do with that moment in the barn. The friendly rapport they had established had vanished, but she realized that what was done couldn’t be undone. She would have to do something to make him comfortable again.

  Ward was clearly surprised when Rose followed him out to the wagon the next day.

  “Do you think I can ride with you to Alice’s today?”

  Since he and Adam had accumulated enough logs to build a cabin, Ward had insisted that Adam have first priority. Pride battled stubbornness, and stubbornness had won out. Rose had had no doubt of the outcome. Ward had a tendency to have his own way, one way or another.

  The two men working together should have most of the cabin raised by that evening, barring unforeseen circumstances. Alice would be ecstatic.

  Ward studied Rose a moment as she quietly awaited his answer. Her coat was buttoned tightly against the bitter cold and she was clutching a bundle in her arms. He hesitated, but she knew he really had no reason to refuse her.

  “Sure. Climb up.”

  He helped her into the wagon, reaching into the back to grab the blanket he kept there. He dropped it over her knees, fitting it snugly against her sides. When his eyes met hers, Rose felt there was a moment when it seemed as if the entire earth held its breath.

  Turning quickly away, Ward picked up the reins and snapped them against the horses’ flanks.

  When they reached the Comptons’ soddie, Alice met them outside, her face wreathed in smiles of welcome.

  “Howdy! I’m so glad you came,” she told Rose, her voice filled with pleased expectation. Little Alicia stood shyly watching from the doorway, but her brother Andrew pushed his way forward to stand beside the wagon.