by A Western Family Christmas Christmas Eve; Season of Bounty; Cowboy Scrooge
She straightened, resolving to play her hand for all it was worth. When she spoke, she injected an emotional quaver into her voice. “Thank you so much, Mayor Nutly.”
“Nulty.”
“Oh yes.” She looked demurely over those assembled. “Thank you all so much. I’ll never forget the kindness of the good people of Otis. Naturally, I’m heartbroken. Shocked. But I want you to know I’ll cherish Josiah’s memory.” She sniffed for effect. “And of course, if there’s any little thing I can do, any matter regarding my beloved’s estate…that is, if he left anything behind…” She glanced back at Nulty. “You understand?”
The mayor grinned. “Indeed I do, Miss Ryan. And I must say, he did leave something else for you.”
Ivy’s heart beat like a rabbit’s. She’d heard of good luck, but this was too much! The mayor took her hand and the crowd parted for them, as if she were a queen and they were her subjects. What did Josiah leave me? she wondered greedily. A house? She’d always dreamed of having a house! No more landlords barking for their money every week, no sharing facilities with filthy neighbors, no…
“Here you are, Miss Ryan,” the mayor announced with a flourish. “Josiah Murphy’s legacy.”
Ivy came to an abrupt halt and spun on her heel, confused. She didn’t see anything. They were just standing on the edge of the dusty street, such as it was. “What is this, a gag?”
Mayor Nulty repeated his grand gesture so that this time Ivy focused on three towheaded children standing beside them. She hadn’t taken any more notice of them than she would have three scrawny cats skulking in an alley. “Joe Junior, Sophie, Linus—meet your new mama!”
The children directed unblinking glares at her.
Ivy’s mouth dropped open in horror. She was paralyzed, speechless, stunned. She’d never seen such filthy ragamuffins. They were different ages—the oldest around ten, the girl seven or eight, and the littlest boy perhaps four—yet they were undoubtedly of the same undesirable tribe. All had limp, colorless hair, sun-reddened skin, and cornflower-blue eyes. They were also scrawny thin, with knobby knees and elbows poking out of the holes in the patched and repatched soiled rags they wore. They resembled human weeds more than actual children. And the mayor was saying she was now their mother?
“Oh, no! No sir!” She took a step back and began shaking her head, flapping her hands and stuttering out every form of negative she could think to utter. She wasn’t about to be trapped into this! “These kids are not my responsibility!”
Though she was practically shouting, the mayor seemed not to hear. “Joe Junior, ain’t you gonna say hello to your new mama?”
“Stop calling me that!” Ivy exclaimed. “I’m not their mama! Josiah never even told me he had kids!”
Nulty just chuckled. “But surely you like children, Miss Ryan.”
She put her hands on her hips. “Wrong again, Nutly. I took care of my sister and three little brothers and don’t intend on minding a stranger’s whelps now. Not a chance!”
The mayor was beginning to appear more desperate. “Sophie, Linus—don’t you have a greeting for Miss Ryan?”
The little girl followed her older brother’s lead and squinted in proud, mute hostility at Ivy. But the littlest, on whose face mucus and dirt had combined to form an elaborate mask, swaggered right up to Ivy. After a moment’s intense thought, he reached back his leg then let fly at Ivy with a swift kick to her shin.
Ivy jumped back, yowling in pain. “Ouch! You little bugger!” The boy darted out of her reach.
“There now!” the mayor exclaimed approvingly. “You’re getting acquainted already.”
“Acquainted, my granny! That little kid comes near me again, I’ll whale the tar out of him.”
“I can tell you have a real way with children.” Nulty turned back to the crowd. “It’s all settled, folks. The Murphy brats—er, children—will trouble us no more.”
A heartfelt cheer went up among the citizens of Otis. Ivy could just imagine what kind of trouble he was talking about. Towheaded scamps is what these kids were! When the townspeople began to retreat, she stumbled after them. “Listen, you!” she called to the mayor. “You can’t do this! These kids aren’t mine!”
He waved a pudgy hand dismissively. “They aren’t ours, either, Miss Ryan.”
“But they must have some other relatives!”
He shook his head. “None. At least, the children don’t seem to know if they do or not. They don’t talk, you see.”
Marvelous! “But—”
“He was your intended, wasn’t he?”
“I’d changed my mind, damn it!”
“But he spoke most eagerly of your arrival.”
“I’ll bet!” The man had obviously spent his last dime trying to import some sucker of a woman to look after his three little angels. She shook her head then looked down at the ring in her hand. “Here, take this back! I don’t want the man’s ring or his kids!”
The mayor drew back as if the ring were poison. “You can’t put the children out on the street. Don’t you have a heart?”
He was a fine one to talk about heart! “Heart!” She practically spat the word. As far as she could tell, heart was what caused most of women’s problems. Wasn’t losing her heart to that pickpocket Zack Hamilton what had landed her in women’s prison? “What’s heart good for? I don’t have money, Mr. Nulty, and I don’t want any kids. I wasn’t even planning on staying here in Otis!”
The mayor raised his brows in surprise. “Oh, we don’t want you to stay here—good gracious, no! We expect you to take the children and leave.”
She sighed in frustration. “Haven’t you been listening? I have no intention of keeping Josiah Murphy’s brood. And even if I did, I wouldn’t have the money to leave here. I don’t have any money. Not a red cent!”
“Frankly, Miss Ryan, that isn’t our problem.”
’ ‘It will be your problem if me and these kids are stuck begging on your streets from now till doomsday!”
Nulty’s brows knit together and he convened an impromptu conference with several of his townspeople. When he turned back around, he beamed broadly at her with his stumpy teeth. Ivy assumed this meant more bad news.
“The good people of Otis have agreed to take up a collection for your behalf. Be at my office tomorrow morning.”
Ivy stamped her foot in frustration. The man had her between the devil and the deep, and he knew it. If she took this money, she would be accepting responsibility for these kids. But if she didn’t take it, what was she going to do?
As if seeking advice, she looked at the Murphy children, but three pairs of pale blue eyes squinted back at her impassively. It was almost as if they didn’t care whether anyone helped them or not. They were steeled for disappointment. Expecting it.
As much as she wanted to turn and run, money or no money, and head for the hills, she just didn’t have the…
Heart. Damn! Maybe she was crazy, but something in those dirty little mugs of theirs tugged at her at just the wrong moment, clinching her fate.
Not as if she had any choice in the matter. She needed that Otis collection as much as they did. She and the three Murphy orphans were joined like two cars on an ill-fated train.
“Where’s your office?” she asked the mayor resentfully.
Nulty pointed to one of the weathered gray buildings that lined the single street of Otis. “There.” The building’s sign read Dentist & Undertaker.
She crossed her arms as gloom settled over her. How appropriate! She might need an undertaker herself after a day with these kids.
By sundown Ivy knew without a doubt why Josiah Murphy couldn’t find a woman within two thousand miles to marry him. She was exhausted. All day she’d been running. Running from the barber whose window Joe Junior had broken. Chasing after Linus, who scampered off every time her back was turned. Evading the merchant from whom Sophie had swiped an apple. Frankly Ivy had been shocked at the girl’s resourcefulness. Other than her theft,
Sophie’s main occupation was to stand stock-still and squint angrily at her new keeper until Ivy wanted to scream.
So far not one of them had spoken to her. She would have doubted they could talk at all except she’d heard them whispering among themselves when they thought she wasn’t paying attention.
A mere seven hours after she’d arrived in Otis, Ivy wanted nothing more than to remain collapsed in the unraveling cane back chair and bemoan the day she’d ever left Boston. Josiah’s landlord had informed Ivy that Josiah had died thirty dollars in arrears, a debt the landlord was willing to forgive as long as Ivy promised to vacate the premises the next day. She was ready to vacate the man’s rat infested fire trap that very instant, except she wouldn’t have money till tomorrow. And once she had some money, she didn’t know where she was going. And even if she did know where to go, she couldn’t go anywhere till she found Joe Junior, who had vanished sometime around dusk. Just vanished!
She looked down wearily at the remaining two snuggled on the bare mattress like two puppies and wondered whether these could be the same children who’d run her ragged all day. She’d thought Linus, with his ability to dart off and squeeze himself into impossibly small hidey holes like a cockroach, would never run out of steam. And it was a relief to be spared Sophie’s glare, which seemed to pierce right through Ivy, exposing her flaws. Of which there were many.
Oh, Ivy admitted it. She’d never been the best daughter, sister or friend. Too busy looking for an angle for herself. Growing up in mostly two room flats with four siblings tended to make her dream of escape. And when she finally had gotten out and was making a little money for herself as a maid, she’d met up with Zack Hamilton. The cocky young fellow had promised her the moon, then plunged her back down to reality in a great big hurry. Jail was about as realistic as Ivy cared to get.
The irony was, sitting in a cold cell with five other women, she’d actually missed that two room flat with the folks at home. She missed her family now, too, especially little sister, Carol. Though only two years younger than Ivy, and shouldering responsibility beyond her years, Carol had always had a laugh ready when things seemed the most bleak, a song on her lips when the day was at its dreariest. Months ago, Ivy had hoped to make good in her job so she could buy Carol a few nice things. Maybe a new dress for Christmas.
So much for that cock-eyed dream.
She pushed herself reluctantly out of her chair to embark on her hunt for Joe Junior. Some leftover instinct from her years at home made her scan the room with an eye to the children’s safety. The meager fire she’d managed to build had burned itself out long ago, and Sophie and Linus wouldn’t awaken anytime soon. There were no locks on the doors, yet she doubted there was a criminal wandering around Otis with an eye to kidnapping Linus or Sophie.
If there was, good luck to him.
When she crept out of the shack, she wrapped her coat tightly around her against the chilly wind. What a place this was! Land as flat as a pancake, where the sun beat down warm during a December day then turned into a cold blast after dusk. She couldn’t help harkening back to Boston, which was at least predictably miserable all winter long. Maybe now there was fresh snow on the ground and air pungent with the comforting, homey smell of chimney fires. Soon men would be stacking up spindly cedar trees on street corners for people to transform into Christmas trees. Otis definitely lacked a festive, holiday air.
Then again, Otis lacked everything.
She walked along toward town, peering into corners of houses for signs of Joe Junior. She poked her head into the one barroom in town, but didn’t see him there. She investigated the town from one end to the other—not much of a task—and wound up at the lean to by the train tracks. Where the heck could Joe Junior have got himself off to?
She heard a cough and whirled in the direction of the sound, startled. Sophie, her blue eyes as big as saucers, stared at her steadily from about five feet away.
Had she been following her all this time? Ivy was about to tell the girl to go home when suddenly Sophie spoke to her for the first time.
“You’re leaving us, aren’t you.”
The words, though spoken in a child’s voice, were uttered in a tone of stark desolation and finality—the resignation of a child used to a hard life that was just about to turn a little bit harder.
Ivy knew it well. One day about six years ago, she’d awakened to find her second stepmother gone. Not that there was any love lost between that old bag and herself, but at least the old bag had been someone older, someone who could help them. Without her stepmother, most of the responsibility for the family had fallen onto Ivy’s shoulders, then Carol’s.
Ivy closed her eyes, willing herself to stop thinking of her family, to stop the band that seemed to be squeezing around her chest. But when she opened them again, Sophie was still staring at her implacably. And that band squeezed a little tighter.
If she’d been smart, Ivy would have left Otis straight away, Mayor Nulty and his child-sluffing scheme be damned. Or maybe tomorrow, when the mayor handed her the town’s collection, she would have hotfooted it for the nearest town big enough to have an orphanage and dumped her charges on any one who would take them. A part of her would have liked to think she was at least that good at looking out for herself. Because she honestly didn’t see what chance she would have at starting a new life if she had to tote these three kids around with her all the time.
But the fact was, she hadn’t thought of running. And now, looking into Sophie’s big blue eyes, owl wide in the moonlight, there was a lump in her throat as big as a brick. The same lump she’d felt when she’d said goodbye to Carol for the last time. It took her so by surprise, she almost choked on it.
“I’m not going to leave you in the lurch.” Once spoken, the words became a solemn vow. She didn’t know how she would manage it, but she would find these kids a home.
Sophie tilted her head skeptically. “Then why’re you waitin’ for the train?”
“I wasn’t waiting for it. I was looking for Joe Junior. “
“He sure idn’t gonna be on it. ‘Sides, it doesn’t even come till tomorrow.”
The kid could talk well enough once she got started. “Well, where is he?” Ivy asked. “Not that I miss his companionship, mind you, but I did tell the mayor of this cockamamy town I’d look after him.”
The girl shrugged. “He likes horses. Maybe he’s at the livery stable.”
“I looked there.”
Sophie nodded. “Then I bet he’s gone to find a prairie dog.”
“A what?”
“Prairie dog.”
Ivy only had the vaguest notion of such a creature. “Has Joe Junior taken it into his head to have a prairie dog for a pet?” she asked, a little perturbed. She didn’t intend to go traveling with three kids and their pet!
Sophie shook her head, clearly perplexed. “Not for a pet. For breakfast.”
Nausea burned in Ivy’s throat. Rodents for breakfast! Had she really come to this? Dear lord, what was she going to do?
She might have even spoken that last thought aloud. In fact, she might have wailed the plea skyward, entreating any deity within shouting distance for guidance.
But guidance, this time, came in the thin form of Sophie Murphy. The little girl shuffled her bare feet for a moment in indecision before again looking Ivy solemnly in the eye. “I ain’t supposed to tell you this. I swore to Joe Junior I wouldn’t, even took a solemn oath.”
“Tell me what?” Ivy said, a little incuriously. She was still too distracted by the prospect of dining on roast prairie dog, and she didn’t hold out much hope that Sophie’s revelation would be a bombshell.
But it was. In fact, it was a bolt out of the blue.
“Me, Joe Junior and Linus?” Sophie said. “Well, we got an uncle.”
Ivy almost thought her knees would crumple beneath her. “Hallelujah!”
Sophie shook her head. “He’s a real bad man…evil…you probably won’t want to meet him.�
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Wrong again. Ivy didn’t care if the man was Attila the Hun. She was just itching to meet this uncle of theirs!
Chapter Two
Justin Murphy idled at the notions counter at Tomlin’s Mercantile, gazing curiously at a cheery array of ribbons and bows in holiday colors—red and green and shiny gold. It was as close to a Christmas display as he was likely to get this year, or any other year. His ranch, the Bar M, didn’t exactly go berserk with Christmas cheer. At most, folks finished up their chores a little early and relaxed awhile. John Tall Tree usually cooked up something special, if only so the old Indian could righteously take Justin to task for depending on a “heathen” to honor the white people’s traditions.
But Justin dreaded the holiday. No matter how he mentally readied himself, December twenty-fifth always made him feel torn to pieces. For a whole day he was reminded of being a child, of the parents he’d lost too young, and the big brother he’d lost too late. What was the use in remembering those things? Those recollections had nothing to do with the life he’d made for himself. He was a bachelor with no family. He had a ranch to run, workers to pay and, in good times, a profit to be made. Looking back, he’d learned, was a waste of time.
He glanced up and caught Hank Tomlin beaming a full denture grin at him. “Thinkin’ of buying yourself some pretty hair ribbons, Justin?”
Justin sprang away from the display. He shrugged his shoulders, annoyed at having been caught, then cleared his throat. “Don’t know why you waste shelf space on things like that, Hank.”
Hank chuckled. “Haven’t you heard? It’s Christmas.”
Justin harrumphed. “Sure, for one day. How the heck are you going to sell all this stuff?”
The storekeeper drew on his pipe. “Oh, the ladies like to deck themselves out for that one day, Justin. ‘Sides, they can use ribbons to decorate trees, maybe a package or two. You know…do things up right.”