The Christmas Brides

by Linda Lael Miller

  “I’m going forward to the engine, for coal,” Morgan said, taking up a bucket.

  Lizzie thought of the conductor and engineer, lying frozen where they’d died. She thought of Mr. Christian, bravely making his way through snow that would be up to his waist in some places, over his head in others. The last, tattered joy of her Christmas dream faded away.

  She simply nodded, and concentrated on drinking her coffee.

  “Lizzie,” Whitley said, when Morgan had gone, “come and sit here beside me.”

  The others were still sleeping. After a moment’s hesitation, Lizzie crossed the caboose to join Whitley.

  “Have you forgiven me?” Whitley asked, very quietly. His hazel eyes glowed with earnest affection; he really was a good person, Lizzie knew.

  “I guess you were just scared,” she said.

  “I acted like a fool,” Whitley told her.

  Lizzie said nothing.

  Shyly he took her hand. Squeezed it. “Now I’ve got to start the courtship all over again, don’t I? I’ve botched things that badly.”

  “C-courtship?” Lizzie had looked forward to Whitley’s proposal for months, dreamed of it, rehearsed the experience in her imagination, practiced her response. How many, many ways there were to say “yes.” Now, something had changed, forever, and she knew it had far more to do with meeting Dr. Morgan Shane than anything Whitley had said or done since the avalanche. It wouldn’t be fair, or kind, to pretend otherwise.

  “Tell me I haven’t lost you for good, Lizzie,” Whitley said, tightening his grip on her hand as he read her face. “Please.”

  Just then, John Brennan began to cough so violently that Lizzie bolted off the seat and rushed across the caboose to help him sit up. The fit eased a little, but Lizzie felt desperately helpless, standing there patting the man’s back while he struggled to breathe.

  Whitley, meanwhile, got to his feet and stumped over to offer his flask. “It’s just water,” he said, when Lizzie looked at it askance, recalling all the whiskey he’d consumed from the vessel earlier.

  She took the flask, opened it, held it to John’s gray lips until he’d taken a few sips. After several tense moments, he seemed nominally better. Lizzie tested his fore head for fever, using the back of her hand as she’d seen Lorelei do so many times, and found it blazing hot.

  Despair threatened Lizzie again. She swayed slightly on her feet, and Whitley caught hold of her arm just as Morgan returned, on a rush of cold wind, lugging a scuttle full of coal.

  Time seemed to stop, just for a moment, as abruptly as the train had stopped when the avalanche struck.

  Morgan carried the coal to the stove, crouched and tossed a few handfuls in on top of the last of the dry firewood.

  Then the children woke up, and baby Nellie Anne began to wail for her breakfast. Whitley made his slow way back to the other side of the caboose, lowered himself onto the seat. Lizzie performed what ablutions she could, brushing her hair and pinning it up again, then grooming Ellen’s hair, too. Mrs. Thaddings took Wood row out of his cage so he could perch on her shoulder, ruffling his feathers and muttering bird prattle.

  “Where’s Mr. Christmas?” Jack asked, very seriously, as they all made a breakfast of leftover soup, crackers and goose liver pâté. Mrs. Halifax, clearly regaining her strength, had melted snow to wash her children’s hands and faces, and they looked scrubbed and damp. “He said he’d teach me and Ellen to play five-card stud.”

  “He’ll do no such thing,” Mrs. Halifax said, but she smiled. Then she turned questioningly to Morgan. “Where is Mr. Christian?” she asked.

  “He’s making for Stone Creek,” Whitley said, before Morgan could reply. “He should have stayed here.”

  Both Lizzie and Morgan gave him ironic looks—he’d broken his leg on a similar errand, after all—and he subsided, at least briefly.

  Lizzie glanced at the windows overlooking the broad valley, hundreds of feet below the train’s precarious perch on the mountainside. “At least the snow has stopped,” she mused. “The traveling won’t be any easier, but he’ll be able to see where he’s going.”

  Once the improvised meal was over, time seemed to crawl.

  Mrs. Thaddings introduced Ellen and Jack to Woodrow, and they stared at him in fascination.

  “If he was a homing pigeon,” Ellen observed, bright child that she was, “he could go for help.”

  “We might have to eat him,” Jack said solemnly, “if we run out of food.”

  Mr. Thaddings, who hadn’t said much up until then, chuckled and shook his head. “He’d be pretty stringy,” he told the boy.

  “Stringy,” Woodrow affirmed, spreading his wings and squawking once for emphasis.

  Amused, Lizzie busied herself tending to John Brennan, while Morgan paced the center of the car and Mrs. Halifax discreetly nursed the baby, her back to everyone. Presently, when Woodrow retired to his cage for a nap, Jack and Ellen shyly approached Whitley, and sat themselves on either side of him.

  He sighed, met Lizzie’s gaze for a long moment, then flipped back to the front of the book he’d nearly finished, and began reading aloud. “‘It was the best of times—’”

  And so the morning passed.

  At midafternoon, a knock sounded at the door of the caboose.

  Hope surged in Lizzie’s heart—her father and uncles had come at last—but even before she opened the door, she knew they wouldn’t have bothered to knock. They’d have busted down the door to get in.

  Mr. Christian stood on the small platform, frost in his eyebrows, his whiskers, his lashes. He clutched a very small pine tree in one hand and gazed into Lizzie’s face without apparent recognition, more statue than man.

  Morgan immediately moved her aside, took hold of the peddler by the arms, and pulled him in out of the cold.

  “Tracks are blocked,” Mr. Christian said woodenly, as Morgan took the tree from him and set it aside. “I had to turn back—”

  Morgan began peeling off the man’s coat, which appeared to be frozen and made a crackling sound as the fabric bent. Mr. Thaddings helped with the task, while Mrs. Thaddings rushed to fill a mug with coffee. Mr. Christian still seemed baffled, as though surprised to find himself where he was. Perhaps he wondered if he was in the caboose at all, or in the midst of some cold-induced reverie.

  “Frostbite,” Morgan said, examining the peddler’s hands. “Lizzie, get me snow. Lots of snow.”

  Confounded, Lizzie obeyed just the same. She hurried out, filled the front of her skirt with as much snow as she could carry, returned to find that Morgan had settled Mr. Christian on the bench seat, as far from the stove as possible. She watched as Morgan took the snow she’d brought in, packed it around the peddler’s hands and feet.

  The process was repeated several more times, though when Mr. Thaddings saw that Lizzie’s dress was wet, he took over the task, using the coal scuttle.

  Mr. Christian lay on the train seat, shivering, wearing only his long johns by then, staring mutely up at the roof of the car. He still did not seem precisely certain where he was, or what was happening to him, and Lizzie counted that as a mercy. She was relieved when Morgan finally gave the poor man an injection of morphine and stopped packing his extremities in snow.

  “The children,” Mr. Christian murmured once. “The children ought to have some kind of Christmas.”

  Tears scalded Lizzie’s eyes. She had to turn away, and while Morgan was monitoring the patient’s heartbeat, she sneaked out of the car, unnoticed by everyone but Whitley.

  He started to raise an alarm, but at one pleading glance from Lizzie, he changed his mind.

  She made her way to the baggage car and, after some lugging and maneuvering, began opening trunks until she’d found what she sought. Her fine woolen coat, the paint set she’d brought all this way to give to John Henry, shawls and stockings. A pipe she’d bought for her father. A book for her grandfather. A pocket watch she’d intended to give to Whitley. Next, she looted Whitley’s trunk, hel
ped herself to his heavy overcoat, more stockings and warm underwear. When a tiny velvet box toppled from the pocket of the coat, Lizzie’s heart nearly stopped.

  She bent, picked up the box, opened it slowly. A shining diamond ring winked inside. More tears came; so Whitley had intended to propose marriage over the holidays. Lizzie tucked her old dreams inside that box with the ring, closed it, set it carefully back in Whitley’s trunk.

  When she’d taken a few moments to recover, she bundled the things she’d gathered into Whitley’s coat and made her way outside again, along the side of the train, into the caboose.

  Her return, like her departure, caused no particular stir.

  She set her burden aside and went to stand in front of the stove, trying to dry the front of her dress. John Brennan was already down with pneumonia, Whitley’s leg was in splints, Mrs. Halifax sported a sling, and now poor Mr. Christian was nearly dead of frostbite. It wouldn’t do if she added to their problems by taking sick herself.

  Everyone settled into sort of a stupor after that.

  Lizzie, now dry, turned to gaze out the windows. The sun was setting, and there was no sign of an approaching rescue party. She drew a deep breath.

  It was still Christmas Eve, whatever the circumstances, and Lizzie was determined to celebrate in some way.

  Soon the sky was peppered with stars, each one shining as brightly as the diamond ring Whitley had meant to place on her finger. The snow glittered, deep and pristine, under those spilling stars, and the scent of the little pine tree Mr. Christian had somehow cut and brought back spiced the air.

  Morgan looted the freight car again, and returned with a stack of new blankets and the spectacular Christmas ham they’d all agreed not to eat, just the day before. He fetched more coal and built up the fire, and they feasted—even John Brennan and Mr. Christian managed a few bites.

  As the moon rose, spilling shimmering silver over the snow, Morgan stuck the trunk of the tiny tree between the slats of Mr. Christian’s empty crate, and Whitley donated his watch chain for a decoration. Lizzie contributed several hair ribbons from her handbag, along with a small mirror that seemed to catch the starlight. Mrs. Thaddings contributed her ear bobs.

  They sang, Lizzie starting first, Mrs. Halifax picking up the words next, her voice faltering, then John and Whitley and the children. Even Woodrow joined in.

  “‘O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie…’”

  “We ain’t gettin’ our oranges,” Jack announced stoically, as his mother tucked him and Ellen into the quilt bed, after many more carols had been sung. “There’s no stockings to hang, and St. Nicholas won’t find us way out here.”

  Ellen gazed at the little tree as though it were the most splendid thing she’d ever set eyes on. “It’s Christmas, just the same,” she said. “And that tree is right pretty. Mr. Christmas went to a lot of trouble to bring it back for us, too.”

  Jack sighed and closed his eyes.

  Ellen gazed at the tree until she fell asleep.

  Morgan moved back and forth between John Brennan and Mr. Christian. He’d given Whitley more laudanum after supper, when the pain in his injured leg had contorted his face and brought out a sheen of sweat across his forehead. Mr. and Mrs. Thaddings, having settled Woodrow down for the night, read from a worn Bible.

  Watching them, Lizzie marveled at their calm acceptance. It seemed that, as long as they were together, they could face anything. She knew so little about the couple, and yet it would be obvious to anyone who looked that the marriage was a refuge for them both.

  She wanted to be like them. To get old with someone, to live out an unfurling ribbon of years, as they had.

  Presently, she turned to Morgan.

  “I thought they’d come,” Lizzie confided, very quietly. She was kneeling in front of the tree by then, breathing in the scent of it, remembering so many things. “I thought my family would come.”

  Morgan moved to sit cross-legged beside her. He said nothing at all, but simply listened.

  A tear slipped down Lizzie’s cheek. She dashed it away with the back of one hand. Straightened her spine.

  “Maybe in the morning,” she said.

  “Maybe,” Morgan agreed, gently gruff.

  She got to her feet, retrieved the bundle she’d brought from the baggage car earlier. She folded Whitley’s expensive overcoat neatly, placed it beneath the tree. John Henry’s paint set went next, and then the pocket watch. Her beautiful velvet-collared coat found its way under the tree, too, and so did the pipe and the book and a few other things, as well.

  She sat back on her heels when she’d finished arranging the gifts. Was surprised when Morgan reached out and took her hand.

  “Lizzie McKettrick,” he said, “you are something.”

  She bit her lower lip. Glanced in Whitley’s direction to make certain he was asleep. He seemed to be, but he might have been “playing possum,” to use one of her grandfather’s favorite terms.

  “He’s going to ask me to marry him,” she said, without intending to speak at all.

  Morgan was silent for a long moment. Then he replied, “And you’ll say yes.”

  She shook her head, unable to look directly at Morgan.

  “Why not?” Morgan asked, his voice pitched low. It seemed intimate, their talking in the semidarkness, now that the lamp had been extinguished, the way her papa and Lorelei so often did, late at night, when they were alone in the kitchen, with the stove-fire banked low and the savory smell of supper still lingering in the air.

  “Because it wouldn’t be right,” Lizzie said. “For Whitley or for me. He’s a good man, Morgan. He really is. He deserves a wife who loves him.”

  Morgan didn’t answer. Not right away, at least. “These are trying circumstances, Lizzie—for all of us. Don’t make any hasty decisions. You’ll have a long time to regret it if you make the wrong ones.”

  Again, Lizzie glanced in Whitley’s direction, then down at her hands, knotted atop the fabric of her ruined skirts. “Maybe I’m not cut out to be married anyhow,” she ventured. “Some people aren’t, you know.”

  She felt his smile, rather than saw it. “It would be a waste, Lizzie, if you didn’t marry. But I agree that you’re better off single than tied to the wrong man.”

  “My pupils,” Lizzie mused. “They’ll be my children.” Even as she said the words, a soft sorrow tugged at her heart. She so wanted babies of her own, sons and daughters, bringing the kind of rowdy, chaotic joy swelling the walls of the houses on the Triple M.

  “Will they be enough, Lizzie?” Morgan asked, after a lengthy silence. “Your pupils, I mean?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered sadly.

  Morgan squeezed her hand again. “You have time, Lizzie. You’re a beautiful woman. If you and Whitley can’t come to terms, you’ll surely meet someone else.”

  Lizzie feared she’d already met that “someone else,” and he was Morgan. Normally a confident person, she suddenly felt out of her depth. The McKettricks were certainly prominent, and they were wealthy, but they lived in ranch houses, not mansions. Nobody dressed for dinner, or employed servants, or rode in fancy carriages, as Morgan’s people surely had. She’d attended Miss Ridgley’s, where she’d learned which fork to use with which course of a meal, how to embroider and entertain, and after that she’d gone to San Francisco Normal School. Morgan had studied medicine abroad. Estranged from his mother or not, he would be at home in high society, while Lizzie would be considered a frontier bumpkin at worst, one of the nouveaux riches at best.

  “Lizzie?” Morgan prompted, when she didn’t reply to his comment.

  “I was just wondering why you’d want to live and work in a place like Indian Rock, instead of Chicago or New York or Philadelphia or Boston,” she said. “Don’t you miss…well…all the things there are to do in places like that?”

  “Such as?”

  “Concerts. Art museums. Stores so big you have to climb stairs to see everything they sell
.”

  Morgan chuckled. “Do you miss concerts and museums and shopping, Lizzie?”

  “No,” she said. “San Francisco is beautiful—I really enjoyed being there. I made a lot of friends at school. But there were times when I was so homesick, I wasn’t sure I could stand it.”

  Morgan caressed her cheek with the backs of his knuckles, his touch so gentle that a hot shiver went through her. “I guess I’m homesick, too,” he said, “but in a different way. The home I want is the one I never had—the one I’m hoping to find in Indian Rock.”

  Lizzie’s throat thickened. It was only too easy to picture Morgan as a small child, having Christmas dinner in the kitchen of some yawning mausoleum of a house, with only the family cook for company. On the other hand, things would be different in Indian Rock—once word got around town that the new doctor didn’t have a wife, the scheming and flirtations would begin. Meals would be cooked and brought to his door in baskets. He’d be invited to Sunday suppers, and unmarried women for miles around would suddenly develop delicate ailments requiring the immediate attention of the attractive new physician.

  Thinking of it made Lizzie give a very unladylike snort.

  In the moonlight, she saw Morgan’s right eyebrow rise slightly, and a smile played at one corner of his mouth. “Now, what accounts for that reaction, Lizzie McKettrick?” he asked.

  She loved it when he called her by her full name, though she could not have said why. But she was mightily embarrassed that she’d snorted in front of him, like an old horse nickering for oats. “You won’t be single long,” she said. “Once you get to Indian Rock, I mean.”

  She regretted the statement instantly; it revealed too much. Like a contentious colt, it had bolted from the place she contained such things and kicked up a fuss inside Lizzie.

  Again, that crooked little smile from Morgan. “I think I’d like to be married,” he mused, surprising her yet again; she’d thought she was getting used to his blunt way of speaking. “A lovely wife. A passel of children. It all sounds very good to me right now, but maybe I’m just being sentimental.”