by A Western Family Christmas Christmas Eve; Season of Bounty; Cowboy Scrooge
In reply, Joe Junior merely shrugged his scrawny shoulders.
“And you won’t have time to work,” Justin continued. “Not if you’re going to school.”
Ivy gasped. “Going to school?” She whirled around, flustered. “But I thought…”
Justin beamed a grin as big as the plains at her. “I never said a word about anyone going anywhere! I just brought you all into town for some shopping.”
She gazed back in amazement at the store, which seemed a lot less sinister and more welcoming now. Before she could get her head straight, however, Justin had already stepped down, pulled the children out of the back, and handed the reins to Joe Junior for the boy to tie down. “Since you’re so eager to work,” he quipped to the boy.
Then he stepped over to Ivy and offered her his hand. “Would you care to peruse the offerings with me?”
Ivy laughed. She barely recognized the man with the carefree, flirtatious grin. He looked almost as much a boy as Linus, who was already pressed face to glass against the store’s front window, gawking at an elaborately carved rocking horse that was nearly as big as he was.
She felt a silly thrill herself as she walked into the musty store that smelled of coffee, cinnamon, new muslin and aged cedar shelves.
“Weil, weil…lookee here!” Hank exclaimed. “It’s Justin, with a whole heap of company. What you doin’ back so soon?”
Justin hesitated. Then he looked over at Linus on that rocking horse, and a big, beaming smile came over him again. “What do you think I’m here for? It’s nearly Christmas, isn’t it?”
For a moment it appeared Hank was either going to expire from shock, or gloat, or run outside to call over some witnesses to Justin’s transformation. Ivy almost wanted him to, because she herself could hardly believe what she was seeing. But knowing a sale when he had one, Hank’s businessman’s head soon took over and he rushed out from behind the counter.
Justin was inspecting Linus’s rocking horse. “Wouldn’t you rather have a real horse?” he asked the little boy.
Linus’s face collapsed in disappointment.
“I would!” Joe Junior exclaimed. Then, when everyone looked over at him, he blushed. “Someday,” he added bashfully.
Linus still clung desperately to the wooden variety. Justin laughed. “Something smaller, maybe,” he urged his nephew, pulling him off and distracting him with a shelf lined with toys.
Though, to be honest, Ivy couldn’t say who was the most distracted, Justin or his young relatives. For the next thirty minutes, he was completely absorbed in toys—wooden pull toys, colorfully painted tin toys that had parts that moved when he pushed them along the shelf, a marionette that he skillfully made dance almost as if he were a born showman. He decided nothing would do for Sophie but a doll, even though the girl protested that she was too old for them. Which made Ivy wonder if Sophie had ever had one. She plucked at the rag dolly Hank handed her as if she didn’t know what to do with the thing.
Justin didn’t like it anyway. “That’s not what we need,” he told Hank. “Don’t you have one of those dollies with a pretty dress and a face that’s realistic?”
Hank looked at Justin as if he’d grown two heads. Ivy was beginning to wonder herself. “A china doll, you mean?”
Justin’s face lit up. “That’s it! Don’t you have one of those?”
“Well…” Hank rummaged around in back of his counter and found a flowered box. When he pulled off the rib-boned lid and brought forth a dazzling princess of a doll, with golden blond hair and a delicate face with blue painted eyes and a dress of white shot through with gold, they all let out a collective gasp.
“That’s just perfect!” Justin exclaimed. He held it up to Sophie for her approval.
The girl looked numb. “What would I do with it?”
Justin glanced back at the princess in her box and nodded. “Maybe she’s right,” he said to Hank with a meaningful wink. “Now for clothes!”
“What about my horsie?” Linus yelled after him.
Justin laughed. “Some other time, maybe,” he said to Linus, pulling him off the toy. “Right now we’ve got to get you suited up. And buy you some new boots!”
And that’s what he proceeded to do. Justin bought boots for all of them, and hats and mittens and mufflers. New britches and cotton shirts, coats and woolen socks. When Sophie declared she wouldn’t wear a flowered dress, he found a plaid one just right for her, and bought her some velvet ribbons of red and green to wear in her hair.
’ ‘Never thought I’d see the day when you yd be buying holiday ribbon!” Hank couldn’t help gloating.
Justin took the criticism with a laugh and glanced over at Ivy. “Well, I’ve got to buy even more—we haven’t started on Miss Ryan.”
Ivy had been happy watching Justin on his spree but felt herself go pale as all the attention turned to her. She was even more appalled when the children jumped up and down in excitement. “Yea! New clothes for Ivy, too!”
“Oh, no,” she protested. “I don’t need anything.”
“Nonsense,” Justin said. “Do you think we like looking at you in those same two dresses all the time?” He turned to the children for confirmation. “Well, do we?”
“No!” they cried gleefully. And then they were off like racehorses, pawing at bolts of cloth, poring over patterns, pulling bonnets off hat racks and dropping them onto her head. Ivy felt under siege, but of course she was dazzled by the attention. How could she not be? She had never waltzed into a store and simply pointed out what she wanted. In the past, she had usually coveted an item for months, squirreling away pennies till she could afford it, if she ever could. Usually she ended up buying something cheaper, less appealing. But Justin was all generosity, insisting on the finest cloth, the newest pattern, the best stockings.
“And the prettiest hat,” he said. He walked over to the display again and picked out a green velvet hat that Ivy had been looking at when she’d first come into the store. She hadn’t thought he’d been watching her!
She shook her head. It was such a frivolous item! The lush green velvet was gathered loosely with a brown ribbon at the brim and festooned with a cluster of bright red berries. “I couldn’t. Something practical, maybe…” She tried to show enthusiasm for a functional straw bonnet.
Justin’s face screwed up in distaste. “You don’t want that!”
She laughed. “How do you know?”
“Because you showed up in that silly blue hat—a more impractical object I’ve never seen.”
“Well, I’ve changed,” she declared.
“You’ll have to save your own pennies for a granny bonnet, then,” he said, and he left her looking longingly at the green velvet, which was really what she’d been hoping for all along. Served her right for not just coming out and saying so!
“All right, Justin,” Hank interrupted. “You want that I should wrap all this up now?”
“Not just yet” Justin said. “I forgot the most important purchase.”
The children, already dazed from all the attention, looked up at him blankly. Between the clothes and some silly toys and trinkets filling the counter, they seemed to have no concept of what other treats could be in store. Even Ivy couldn’t think of one more thing that they could want.
“Candy!” he reminded them.
Linus’s face lit up joyfully, and when a full trio of gleeful shouts went up, filling the room with that squealing happiness, Ivy had to bite her lip to hold tears back. They sounded so happy. They really sounded like children. So much so that she was beginning to believe in Christmas miracles.
She smiled as Justin pulled peppermint sticks out of tall jars. Perhaps the turnaround in him was the biggest miracle of all. But would it last?
Christmas Eve was one surprise after another, but perhaps the first big one came when John Tall Tree, after an absence of a few hours, came through the front door hauling a ceiling high cedar tree.
“Fool white man does not know how to hono
r one of the oldest traditions of his own people—” John said, displaying his evergreen proudly, “the Christmas tree!” He’d even hammered two crossed boards into the trunk so it would stand proud and straight in the corner of the parlor.
Arnie came in dragging up the rear. “I tried pointing out to John that we’d never had a tree here before,” he declared to Ivy almost apologetically. “I don’t know how the boss man’s gonna take this.”
Ivy crossed her arms. “He’ll take it and like it!”
In fact, given Justin’s jolly mood these days, she was surprised he hadn’t thought of a Christmas tree himself. But today he was too busy taking Joe Junior out riding on his new pony, which he had sneaked off and bought from a nearby rancher the day before. Joe Junior, naturally, was over the moon.
When they had carefully placed the tree in the corner, Arnie was still shaking his head, and now Wink joined him. “Never had one of these before,” Wink intoned ominously.
“There were never children in the house before,” John pointed out in irritation. “Someone must teach white children their own customs.”
Ivy merely smiled at the men’s arguments and showed Linus and Sophie how to string popcorn to make a garland. With the exception of herself, no one seemed truly to have adjusted to the change in Justin. People still looked at him suspiciously when he bellowed with laughter, or blinked in confusion when he spoke eagerly of the Christmas dinner. It was almost as if no one believed a man could change so much.
But she did. Because she’d changed, too. Certainly three weeks ago she had never dreamed she could fall in love with a man she considered a heartless ogre who delighted in his role of her tormenter, but somehow the unthinkable had come to pass. The horrible part now was that he wasn’t encouraging her. In the past week he hadn’t touched her, certainly not kissed her or even spoken a single flirtatious word. She was in love with Justin all on her own, and every day that passed seemed to intensify her feelings.
When Justin came back into the house with Joe Junior not long before dinner, the two beamed at the
Christmas tree almost conspiratorially. “That’s just what we needed, isn’t it, Joe?”
Joe Junior shoved his hands into his pockets and turned his red, happy face to Ivy. “Sure is!”
She looked from nephew to uncle suspiciously, wondering what on earth they had up their sleeves now. They were acting like little kids—and only one of them had an excuse!
John managed to stay calm when they showed up late for his dinner, suppressing sly giggles, but Ivy was wary of them all through the meal, which, given the amount of food they had prepared, seemed to last forever. They had a roast beef, a ham and a wonderful stuffed duck. John had cooked up every kind of vegetable he could lay hands on—black-eyed peas, cabbage, carrots and two kinds of potatoes. Plus there was bread, and chocolate cake for dessert. Enough bounty to feed half of Texas.
This was the first instance that there was still food on the table when the meal was over. Ivy stood and started clearing the plates but was stopped by Justin.
“Leave those a while. There’s something you’d all better come see.”
Everyone tramped into the parlor. A collective cry of delight went up when they saw what he’d led them out for—presents under the tree! Several boxes with ribbons and Linus’s rocking horse lay beneath the cedar’s lowest boughs. And that was just what was under the tree. On the tree were smaller packages and pouches attached with bows to branches. Everyone crowded around, careful not to have their feet smashed by an exuberantly rocking Linus.
Sam was the first to rip open his gift—a new pair of fine thick leather gloves. Wink got a pipe and a whole pouch of tobacco, which pleased him to no end. “Good quality, too!” he exclaimed excitedly. John received a long box, which he accepted with much grumbling about white man’s traditions, until he found himself admiring a sleek new ivory-handled knife. Then his face went especially stern in appreciation. Arnie got banjo strings and a brand-new mouth organ. Within moments, lively music was added to the festive atmosphere.
As Ivy stood back looking at the confused jumble, everyone talking at once, tunes tumbling easily from Arnie, she wondered if this could be the same place she’d entered weeks before. Then she saw Sophie tentatively pull the top of a flowered box and knew the world had changed. Inside was the princess doll, looking even more pristine and out of place among all the cowhands than it had in the store. The girl’s pale face froze in disbelief as she gaped at her new treasure.
Wink bent over to compliment her. “Why, that’s about the best-looking dolly I’ve ever seen!” he exclaimed, and everyone agreed as Sophie finally flushed with pleasure. “Would you let me dance with her?”
Sophie clasped her new possession in a panic. “Oh, she doesn’t dance, Wink!”
Everyone laughed.
“There’s another present there,” Justin pointed out to Ivy.
She turned to him, feeling her face go pink, and looked into his delighted eyes. Some holiday demon must have possessed him.
“No, Justin, you’ve given me so much already. My new dress…”
His brown eyes took in her waspwaisted creation from her shoulders to her toes. She’d rushed to finish it for today, and the hands had all complimented her lavishly on her needlework, but she hadn’t gone pink from pleasure in the wake of their compliments as she did now as Justin kept staring at her.
“It’s very pretty, Ivy. You’re almost as good-looking as Sophie’s doll.”
She laughed self-consciously.
“It’ll look even better with what’s in that box,” he added with a grin.
She couldn’t resist going over and opening the box then, though she probably wouldn’t have been able to resist in any case. Justin’s mood seemed to have infected everyone. She undid the fat velvet ribbon and pulled off the lid to the round box and found herself staring at that coveted green hat. It was elegant and elaborate and impossibly impractical. And she loved it!
She jumped up and modeled her new creation to the delight of everyone. Never in her life had she owned something so frivolous and silly and beautiful. And never had she expected the twinkle in a man’s dark eyes to make her want to weep with equal parts joy and longing.
“Thank you, Justin!” She beamed a smile at him, wondering if she could press a kiss to his cheek without the others raising their brows.
But she didn’t have the nerve. She just smiled at him, and when he ducked his head and went over to rock Linus on his wooden horse, she felt the unhappy stab of a missed opportunity.
Long past the time when everyone else went to bed, Ivy found herself unable to sleep. Though she was careful not to make a sound, her whole body seemed to hum as she picked up ribbon and rolled the pieces into tidy balls or retied them onto the tree. She could have stayed up forever breathing in the evergreen smell.
There was a chuckle from the doorway. “Do you ever stop working?”
She spun in surprise. She’d thought she was the only one up, but there stood Justin at the kitchen door, his face red from the cold outside. He’d obviously been out in the barn, probably milking early so the men wouldn’t have to on Christmas day.
“I couldn’t sleep. This was the nicest holiday I’ve ever spent anywhere,” she declared.
His whole face seemed to light up as he stepped closer to her. “I’m glad.”
“But you shouldn’t have bought me that hat,” she said. “It was present enough for me to see everyone so happy.”
“That’s how I felt watching you opening that hatbox,” he replied. “That was all the gift I needed.”
She blushed, remembering she had a gift for him, too. “Stay right here,” she commanded, then turned and ran back to the little room she shared with Linus and Sophie. Her place in bed now was taken by Princess Cornelia, the name conferred by Sophie on her new friend. She smiled at the children and then reached into her bag for the muffler she’d stayed up nights knitting. It seemed rather homespun to her after the
elaborate gifts that he’d given everyone, and she hadn’t had time to tie a nice ribbon around it, but she preferred to give it to him now, when no one else was around.
When she came skidding breathlessly back up to him he was still dutifully rooted in the same spot by the Christmas tree. She brought the muffler from behind her back and watched anxiously as he took it from her and unfolded it. In the privacy of her room the scarf had appeared huge, but now, in his big hands, the width seemed barely adequate.
And yet he reacted to the simple gift as if she’d just handed him a gold mine. His eyes shone as he looked up at her. “You made this?” he asked with awe.
Suddenly she felt stupidly proud, but only because his overly impressed expression made her so. “Yes.”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “Ivy, it’s wonderful.” Swiftly he bent and touched his lips to hers.
A quick kiss, a thank you, was all it was meant to be. She could tell because he immediately pulled back, but only a fraction. For a breathless moment, they stood frozen, their lips only inches apart, the world silent and still around them.
Her eyes flew shut. For an instant it felt as if she were teetering on a precipice, and if he’d lifted his hands from her shoulders she would have collapsed backward, falling into oblivion.
Instead, Justin pulled her forward, drawing her to him. Instinctively she tipped up on her toes and was rewarded by the firm pressure of his mouth on hers. Joy and desire sang through her. She had wanted this so, needed to feel his lips against hers as proof that her longing for him wasn’t wrong or misguided. Feeling him against her, she knew that she had been right. That this was right.
He deepened the kiss, plundering her mouth with his tongue, and she reveled in the intimacy. In spite of the dying fire in the stove, a glorious heat built inside her, warming her utterly. She’d never known a mere kiss could make her feel so weightless, so free.
Justin felt it, too. All at once he lifted her into his arms, then twirled in a circle. They were still kissing, their lips inviolably attached, but they chuckled together, giddy with new love.