The WESTWARD Christmas BRIDES COLLECTION: 9 Historical Romances Answer the Call of the American West

by Wanda E. Brunstetter, Susan Page Davis, Melanie Dobson, Cathy Liggett, Vickie McDonough, Olivia Newport, Janet Spaeth, Jennifer Rogers Spinola

  Only this time there was a desperation to her prayers, to the quiet partaking. In Maryland she had eaten the bread from her plenty, following the lines and motions almost by rote. The lifting of the cup, the stifling of a yawn.

  Holy bread, for the hundredth time.

  Only now she tasted every crumb then searched her dirty apron—and even the muddy ground between the reeds—for any fallen fragments.

  Had she ever needed anything like this?

  Had she ever needed Him like this, when all else around her failed?

  “You didn’t eat,” she said suddenly. She pointed to Jacob in accusation.

  “Ah.” Jacob smiled. “I’m watching my weight. It’s a health regimen of mine.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that.” Juliet spoke forcefully.

  “Why are you worried? I thought you didn’t care a bit about what I do. You’ve made that quite clear.”

  “I don’t care.” Juliet crossed her arms stubbornly. “But you’ll faint along the trail, and then how will we know where to go? Besides, you’re too heavy to carry.”

  “I’m not going to faint.” Jacob laughed. “Want to know my secret, Juliet, since you’re dying to know?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m certainly not dying to know.”

  “Oh yes you are. And here’s the secret.”

  Jacob leaned forward to speak, and suddenly—before he opened his mouth—Juliet knew what he was going to say. She felt it, in a strange wave of premonitory coolness that washed over her, both familiar and startling at the same time:

  “‘Man shall not live,’ ” whispered Jacob, “‘by bread alone.’”

  And Juliet heard herself finish it: “‘But on every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.’ ”

  “You got it.” The smile lines at the corners of Jacob’s eyes creased.

  “I knew that already.” Juliet tried to calm the trembling tingle that quivered in her stomach and feigned indifference instead. Scorn, even. “It’s nothing new. But I certainly appreciate a Southerner trying to school me in the ways of the divine.”

  “You’re welcome, ma’am.” Jacob tipped his hat. “’cause you sure need it.”

  She breathed faster, seething. “You’re a horrible man, you know that?”

  “Yep.” Jacob plucked a dried leaf from one of the reeds, stuck it in his mouth like a piece of hay, and gnawed on the end. “Good thing God forgives.”

  And he flopped down on the cold ground with his arms under his head then dropped his hat over his face.

  November 1

  More days had passed than Juliet could count; she’d lost track—they all blended into a dull blur of exhaustion and soaking rainfalls that later turned into sleet and then snow. With a shudder, she remembered how they had huddled under a sodden quilt for hours at the edge of a bluff, motionless, as a Cheyenne war party passed by, and hiked by lantern light when the rain let up—interrupting a pack of wolves snarling over a felled deer.

  Then the stars had disappeared for two days, and Jacob had to navigate via landmarks from his much-marked map: the outline of a ridge, a portion of an overgrown trail once rutted deep by wagons.

  Silas had shot a thin fox, the first fresh meat since Juliet could remember, and they roasted it over a makeshift spit in thin, sputtering snow. The air turned bitterly cold, with biting winds, and tiny pellets of ice had lashed their cheeks and fingers red. When Posy’s feet had hurt too much to walk, they stopped to build a small fire and heat Juliet’s last remaining jug of precious water for tea. So now they rested under barely sheltering trees, waiting for a chilling mist to lift.

  Elijah and Violet and Victoria slept in an exhausted pile, open-mouthed—Victoria having cried herself to sleep from hunger and cold.

  “The Crow scouts will probably kill us before we even reach camp, won’t they?” Juliet said, shivering under the damp quilt. “Maybe it’s better that way—just to end it. I’m so tired.”

  Jacob smiled again as he watched her, the firelight catching a shaft of red-brown in his eye. The color of cherry wood, a gleam of polished chestnut.

  “Trust in the Lord, Juliet.”

  The feeble fire hissed and sputtered, and a wisp of smoke curled upward. “Trust Him to do what? He’s let more than one believer die gruesomely along the way, you know.”

  Jacob studied her there in the firelight, and his smile faded. “You cry out in your sleep,” he whispered, and then he leaned close so that only she could hear. “Did you know that?”

  “Me?” Juliet sat up straighter.

  “Yes, you.” He looked sad as he twiddled a stray twig in his fingers. “You talk about stopping the bleeding or removing a bullet. About infection and chloroform. Things a young woman should know nothing about.”

  Juliet didn’t answer. She simply looked away. “Why do you care?” she finally asked. “And you snore, anyway.”

  Jacob ignored her comment. “You’ve seen too much. More than I realized.” His eyes looked tender, pained. “I’m sorry if I’ve been harsh with you, Juliet. But don’t harden your heart toward God. We made this mess—not Him.”

  Juliet swallowed and swallowed again. Her heart trembled.

  “Papa’s not well, Jacob,” she finally stammered then scooted quickly away from the fire. “I don’t know if he’ll make it much longer, and I’m out of camphor. I used the last on William Henderson.”

  Jacob still watched her. Then he stared into the fire, snapping the twig between his fingers.

  Suddenly Juliet raised a finger to her lips and listened. She’d heard something: a whisper, a rustling in the underbrush. And she whirled around in time to see a man leap forward, his rifle pointed straight at her head.

  Chapter 8

  Hands up,” the man barked, and two other ghostly figures appeared from the mist, both with rifles bearing down on them. “Now, or I’ll shoot.”

  Juliet gasped. Jacob put his hands up without a word, nodding for everyone else to do the same. She slowly lifted her hands.

  “Who are you folks anyway?” The grizzled man with the rifle leaned forward, his face terrible and gaunt with a long, unkempt beard. A missing front tooth. The limp tail of a dirty coonskin cap hung over one shoulder.

  “We’re from the wagon train that’s marooned south of here. We’re trying to reach help.” Jacob spoke boldly. “And who are you?”

  “None of your concern.” The man lowered his rifle slightly and began pawing through Juliet’s bags. She started to protest, but Jacob reached over and squeezed her arm tight. She froze, hardly daring to breathe.

  “Can you help us get to the Crow outpost, sir?” Jacob spoke again, and one of the other men produced a pistol, holding it against Jacob’s head. “I guess not, then, huh?”

  The man with the coonskin cap laughed. “That’s a good one, son.” He winked, but Juliet saw ice in his eyes. He swung the rifle around at them all, his voice harsh. “Give me everything you’ve got. All your money and food, and guns, too. All your jewelry. Ev’rything. Shoes. Now.”

  She was supposed to walk again, in bare stockings, and everything felt cloudy. “Are they gone yet?” Sleet stung her cheek, and she couldn’t stop shivering. Her feet tingled with cold, and she watched the bright sky fade into gray and then black. She dreamed of someone calling out to her across the hills—in a voice that sounded like Robert’s—and the sky exploding with a million tones of ruby. A carpet of light unfurling across the sky, rippling and sparkling like colorful ice.

  “That’s the northern lights,” she heard Jacob whisper in her ear.

  The world spun, black and red, dazzling with light—shivering, the chatter of teeth—movement shifting uphill and downhill under her frozen feet, sleet stinging her face. Until she felt the hard ground under her cheek and could not remember how to move.

  This, thought Juliet in a spiral of ebbing thoughts, must be what it’s like to die. Sparkling snowflakes rained over her field of vision like diamonds against gray.

  Miracl
es. Jacob had spoken of miracles. And yet they had not come.

  She felt herself lifted, carried. The sound of wind in her ears. A deafening weightlessness, a floating. And then nothing.

  November 7

  Brilliant light crept through Juliet’s eyelashes like the crack under a door then spread brighter and brighter until she squinted and turned away. When she managed to squeeze one eye open, all Juliet saw was blue. Brilliant, pulsing blue through a hole over her head.

  “Jacob?” She tried to sit up, groping for an arm, a piece of ground. “Papa? Where’s Papa? Where are the children?”

  She must have lurched too sharply, because the circle of sky spun like a cyclone, tilting dangerously to one side.

  Gentle hands straightened her and smoothed her hair, and someone pressed a cup of something warm and bitter-smelling to her lips. She tried to push it away, but her fingers felt heavy, slow, and they slipped on the bowl.

  “I need to find Papa. And that man took the children’s shoes.”

  Someone put the cup to her mouth again, with urgent words, and this time Juliet let in a sip of something warm and savory, like broth. She tried to drink, and it sloshed down her chin and the front of her dress.

  A woman’s voice spoke softly as she mopped Juliet’s chin and steadied the cup, but Juliet understood none of what she said. She closed her eyes and drank again, feeling a stinging, voracious warmth spread through her stomach, all the way to her toes.

  From the corner of her eyes she watched hands lift a brittle cake of flat-baked bread and break it in half, splintering crumbs.

  Man shall not live by bread alone….

  Juliet reached for the bread like a starving woman then crammed shaky handfuls of it into her mouth. She blinked again as she tried to make the blurry shapes and figures merge into one.

  The hands that held the bread weren’t Posy’s. They were brown hands with short pink nails. Laced at the wrist with a leather bracelet studded with animal teeth.

  The shapes began to merge, to straighten, and Juliet found herself looking up at a conical flap of leather hide stretched taut against poles. A single shaft of sunlight filtered across the darkened room so that warmth poured on the side of her face.

  The skin lodge, or tepee, of the Crow.

  “Juliet.” Posy appeared so suddenly that Juliet startled before she looked up into her friend’s pale and freckled face. “We’re here. We’re all here.” She placed a hand on Juliet’s arm, and the lodge poles began to ripple again. “Hush, Juliet. You’re safe.”

  The woman who held the bread moved with a soft tinkling sound as her hair fell over her shoulder and brushed against beaded buckskin and rows of colorful necklaces. Thick, black, shiny hair, like the gleaming wing of a raven, and skin the color of maple sugar. Her belly rounded under her buckskin dress like a curved vase—heavy with child.

  “Thank you,” Juliet murmured with weak lips to the woman, to Posy. “Thank you. Thank you so much.” She couldn’t stop saying it; the sensation of a full, warm stomach and soft blankets beneath her made her want to weep.

  “I don’t understand. Did they take us prisoner?” Juliet tried to sit up, and Posy reached out to help. “Who is she?”

  The woman said something to Posy in a low and guttural voice, with lilting words that rose and fell, then handed Posy the bread, patting it into her hand. She pushed it gently toward Juliet with a nod.

  “Her name’s Áxxaashe—’sun’—and she wants me to feed you.” Posy thanked her and took the bread, breaking it into small pieces. “They’ve been taking care of you for three days now. If it wasn’t for the Crow scouts, we’d have died in the snow.”

  Juliet let Posy place a chunk of still-warm bread in her mouth and chewed. She reached hungrily for more with shaking hands. “No, Posy—I remember. Those men took everything and left us there. We didn’t eat for days.”

  “And the Crow scouts found us.” Posy broke off another piece of bread. “They gave us blankets off their own shoulders. And food, Juliet—we ate from their own packs, right at their feet, like starving coyotes. Strips of dried buffalo, thick fried corn cakes.” Her eyes fluttered closed. “I could have kissed their moccasins. In fact, I was so out of my mind I probably did.”

  Juliet’s mouth felt dry. “But I thought the Crow were going to …”

  “I know.” Posy looked down. “We all did. But they not only brought us here to their camp, but they carried you. Did you know that? They carried you the rest of the way, through the early hours of the morning.”

  “The northern lights,” Juliet whispered. “I remember.”

  “And they carried the children and me, too, when our legs gave out in the snow from cold and hunger. Jacob caught a fever and started talking nonsense, and Silas couldn’t stop shivering.”

  Juliet chewed slowly. “I don’t understand why they’d do that for us. We didn’t even have anything to give them! Not a coin or a gun. Nothing.”

  “I don’t understand it either.” Posy shrugged and broke off another piece of bread. “They had pity on us, I guess—they’re just kind folks. Jacob said relations between the Crow and most travelers through Montana had been generally friendly, and I guess he was right.”

  The tepee flap stirred in a cool breeze, and Juliet caught a glimpse of the camp outside: tall tepees painted with stripes and running horses, all bristling at the top with the tips of lodge poles. Cook fires smoked, and buckskin-clad boys played with a hoop, running and shouting—several dogs yapping at their feet.

  Through the clearing, Juliet heard the sudden rise and fall of familiar children’s voices in song, over the rhythmic pounding of what sounded like a mallet on hard grains, and her head turned. “The children. Violet and Victoria and Elijah. They can’t have made it here alive, can they?”

  “They’re out playing with the kids,” said Posy. Sunlight illuminated the side of her face. “Elijah has a cold and Violet’s pretty weak, but after a few good meals they’re up and around.”

  “I can’t believe it.” Juliet covered her face with her hands, feeling the tears come. “I just can’t.”

  “God’s miracle, I guess.”

  “Jacob said we’d see miracles, but I didn’t think it was possible. Not after so much misery.”

  “Don’t give up.” Posy kissed the top of her head. “Sometimes all we have is the tiniest crumb of faith, and it’s enough to last us through the famine until God shows up. Remember—Elijah lived for a year on nothing but bread.”

  “Bread again,” Juliet whispered, remembering Jacob’s hands splitting the hard loaves.

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind.” She wiped her wet cheeks. “Where’s Papa?”

  “Can’t you hear him snoring? He’s right over there. Sleeping like a bear.”

  Juliet shook off her blanket and crawled over to Papa’s sleeping figure, nestled under woven blankets the colors of sun and rain, all yellows and blues. His thin gray-white hair spilled over his forehead, messy as stacks of scattered straw, and framed bushy eyebrows that wrinkled in what seemed to be a pleasant dream.

  “Papa?” Juliet whispered. She listened to his steady breathing and smoothed his curly hair.

  “See? I told you. He’s fine. Rest.” Posy spoke gently as she helped her back to her blanket. “He’s sleeping. Don’t wake him. And you need to get your strength back, too.”

  “What about Silas? Have you seen him?”

  “Oh, Silas.” Posy looked down, and her voice softened ever so slightly. “I reckon he’s all right. He’s been shivering a lot still, but he was eating a while ago like he hadn’t seen his stomach in a week. Poor, sweet fellow.” She sighed and covered her mouth with her hand.

  Juliet thought for a second that Posy’s freckled cheeks flushed ever so slightly. Or was her vision still giving her fits?

  Wait a second. “Did you just call Silas sweet?” Juliet twisted around to see Posy.

  “What?” Posy wrinkled her nose. “Me? ‘Course not! Silas ain’t swee
t. He’s rotten like the rest of ’em. You know how men are! And listen. There’s some bad news, too, about Jacob.” She changed subjects and spoke so quickly that it took Juliet a second to register her words. “He’s still pretty sick. Worst of all of us, and … well, you’ll just have to see for yourself. I reckon you’ll know what to do.”

  “Jacob’s still sick?” Juliet caught her breath.

  “Juliet, do you think he’ll be all right, so long as he keeps on eating?” Posy gripped her arm suddenly, her eyes bright as if with tears. “I mean, he’s stopped shivering and all, but how are we to know if he’s really all right inside?”

  “Who, Jacob?”

  Posy’s gaze floundered back down to her hands. “Well, him, too, of course, but …”

  Juliet’s eyes fixed on her friend until it dawned on her slowly—the way Posy had folded Silas’s blanket with extra neatness, her blue eyes bright as she looked at him over the rim of her tin cup.

  “You’re worried about Silas.” Juliet meant to ask it as a question, but it came out as a statement.

  Posy jerked her head up. “Me? Shucks, no—not like that, anyway. What’s a matter with you, Juliet? You must still be sick—that’s all. Hush and eat some more.” She picked up the bowl and fed Juliet a few more mouthfuls of soup, effectively ending the conversation since Juliet couldn’t talk with a full mouth.

  “You didn’t tell me if anybody here speaks English,” Juliet interrupted after swallowing down the broth in a gulp for air.

  “Not but a couple of words. They speak French though.”

  Juliet groaned. “I was terrible in French. My teacher laughed in my face.”

  “I know a little from one of our old farmhands,” said Posy. “A Huguenot from France. Couldn’t speak a lick of English, but sakes alive, the man knew how to make good cheese.” She shoved the bowl at Juliet’s mouth again. “Here. Have some more.”

  “Where’s Jacob?” Juliet coughed down the last of the broth and grabbed the bowl. “Will you take me to him?”