A Creed Country Christmas

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Just me,” Juliana said. “I shouldn’t have gotten attached to them—I was warned about that when I first started teaching—but I couldn’t help it.”

  A solution occurred to Lincoln—after all, he was a lawyer—but even in the face of Juliana’s despair, talking about it would be premature. His right hand rose of its own accord from her shoulder to her cheek. She did not resist his caress.

  “After Christmas,” he said, very quietly, “we’ll find a way to straighten this out. In the meantime, we’ve got two turkeys, a tree—” he indicated the wardrobe with a motion of his head “—and enough presents to do Saint Nicholas proud. For now, set the rest aside.”

  She gazed up at him. “You are a remarkable man, Lincoln Creed. A remarkable man with a remarkable daughter.”

  Embarrassed pleasure suffused Lincoln. “I think we’d better go and have supper.”

  Juliana smiled. “I think we’d better,” she agreed.

  SUPPER WAS A BOISTEROUS AFFAIR with so many people gathered around the table, their faces bathed in lantern light and shadow. And to Juliana’s surprise—she forced herself to try some, in order to set a good example for the children—the bear meat turned out to be delicious.

  Tom and Joseph did the dishes, while Gracie sat in a rocking chair nearby, feet dangling high above the floor, reading competently from Oliver Twist.

  Juliana, banking the fire in the cookstove for the night, stole a glance at Tom and noted that he was listening with close and solemn interest.

  Gracie finally read herself to sleep—Billy-Moses and Daisy had long since succumbed, and Lincoln had carried them to bed, one in each arm—and Tom seemed so letdown that Joseph took the book gently from the little girl’s hand and picked up where she’d left off.

  Juliana hoisted Gracie out of the chair and felt a warm ache in her heart when the child’s head came to rest on her shoulder.

  She met Lincoln in the corridor leading to the bedrooms. She thought he might take Gracie from her, but he stepped aside instead, his face softening, and watched in silence as she carried his daughter to her bed. A lamp glowed on the nightstand, and Theresa, a pillow propped behind her, was reading one of Gracie’s many books.

  Juliana set Gracie on her feet, helped her out of her dress and into her nightgown.

  Gracie, half awake and half asleep, murmured something and closed her eyes as Juliana tucked her in, kissed her forehead, and then Theresa’s.

  She took the book from Theresa’s hands with a smile, and extinguished the lamp, aware all the while of Lincoln standing in the doorway, watching.

  He stepped back again, to let her go by, and smiled when she shivered in the draft and hugged herself.

  “I want to show you something,” he said.

  Curious, she allowed him to lead her to the end of the hallway, where he opened a door, stepped inside and lit a lamp, causing soft light to spill out at Juliana’s feet. She hesitated, then followed, and drew in a breath when she saw a porcelain bathtub with a boiler above it, exuding the heat and scent of a wood fire.

  Juliana hadn’t enjoyed such a luxury since she’d left her grandmother’s mansion in Denver. There, she’d taken gaslights and abundant hot water for granted. Since then, she’d survived on sponge baths and the occasional furtive dunk in a washtub.

  “I mean to put in a commode and a sink come spring,” Lincoln said, sounding shy. “They say we’ll have electricity in Stillwater Springs in a few years.”

  Juliana was nearly overcome. She put a hand to her heart and rested one shoulder against the door frame.

  He moved past her, their bodies brushing in the narrow doorway.

  Heat pulsed at Juliana’s core.

  Without another word, Lincoln Creed left her to turn the spigots, find a towel and fetch her nightgown and wrapper from the toasty bedroom, where Daisy and Billy-Moses were already deeply asleep.

  The bath was a wonder. A gift. Juliana sank into it, closed her eyes and marveled. When the water finally cooled, she climbed out, dried herself off and donned her nightclothes. A bar of light shone under the door to the room she supposed was Lincoln’s, and if it wouldn’t have been so brazen, she would have knocked lightly at that door, opened it far enough to say a quiet “Thank you.”

  Instead, she made her way back to the kitchen, walking softly.

  Joseph was still reading from Oliver Twist, seated at the table now, and Tom was still listening, smoking his pipe and gazing into space as though seeing the story unfold before his eyes.

  Without making a sound, Juliana retreated, smiling to herself.

  That night, she slept soundly.

  THE SNOW HAD STOPPED BY DAWN, but it reached Lincoln’s knees as he made his way toward the barn. Even the draft horses would have a hard time getting through the stuff, but the cattle had to be fed, and that meant hitching up the sled and loading it with hay.

  Lincoln thought of Wes, hoped his brother had made it safely home to the Diamond Buckle Saloon. There would be no finding out for a while, since the roads would be impassable.

  He thought about Juliana, and how pleased she’d been when he’d shown her the bathtub. His mother had insisted on installing the thing, saying she was tired of heating water on the stove and bathing in the kitchen, ever fearful that some man would wander in and catch her in “the altogether.”

  At the time, he’d thought it was plain foolish, a waste of good money, but then Beth—destined to die in just a few short months—had pointed out that she’d had a bathtub of her very own back in Boston, and she missed it.

  Lincoln had ridden to town the same day and placed an order at Willand’s Mercantile. Weeks later, when the modern marvel arrived by train, shipped all the way from Denver in a crate big enough to house a grand piano, half the town had come out to the ranch to see it unloaded and set up in the smallest bedroom.

  Husbands pulled Lincoln aside to complain; they were being hectored, they said. Now the wife wanted one of those infernal contraptions all her own.

  He’d sympathized, and proffered that a bathtub with a boiler was a small price to pay for a peaceful household. Hell, it was worth the look of delighted disbelief he’d seen on Juliana’s face when she saw it.

  Guilt struck him again like the punch of a fist as he entered the barn, lit a lantern to see by so the work would go more quickly. He’d bought that bathtub for Beth, not Juliana.

  The cow began to snuffle and snort, wanting to be milked.

  Lincoln soothed her with a scratch between the ears and gave her hay instead. Once he’d fed all the horses and Wes’s mule, he undertook the arduous task of hauling water from the well to fill the troughs.

  By the time he’d finished that, milked and started back toward the house, bucket in hand, it was snowing again.

  For a moment, Lincoln felt weary to the core of his spirit. Ranching was always hard work, always a risk, but in weather like this, with cattle on the range, it could be downright brutal.

  Finding Juliana in the kitchen, and the coffee brewed, he felt better.

  Tom was nowhere around, though, and that was unusual enough to worry Lincoln. He was about to ask if Juliana had seen him when Tom came out of his room just off the kitchen, tucking his flour-sack shirt into his pants.

  “Too much reading,” he said. “That Oliver feller has me worried.”

  Lincoln chuckled, poured himself some coffee. “What’s for breakfast?” he asked. “Gruel?”

  Tom looked puzzled, but Juliana smiled. “How about oatmeal?” she suggested brightly.

  “No gruel?” Lincoln teased.

  She laughed. “You haven’t tasted my oatmeal.”

  The gruel, he soon discovered, would have been an improvement.

  Joseph, turning up rumpled at the table, made a face when he saw it. “Is there any of that bear hash left?” he asked, his tone plaintive.

  Only Tom accepted a second bowl of oatmeal.

  When the three men left the house, they met Ben Gainer in the yard, and he looke
d worried. His freckles stood out against his pale face and his brownish-red hair stuck out in spikes under his hat. “Rose-of-Sharon is feelin’ poorly this morning,” he said.

  “You’d better stay with her, then,” Tom said quietly.

  “I told her she ought to let you come and see if the baby’s on its way, but she said—” Ben fell silent, blushed miserably. Turned his eyes to the snowy terrain and looked even grimmer than before.

  All of them knew what Rose-of-Sharon Gainer had said. She didn’t want an Indian tending her, no matter how “poorly” she might feel.

  “It’s all right, Ben,” Tom told the boy. “Things get bad, you send Joseph out to the range to fetch me.”

  Glumly, stamping his feet to get the circulation going, Ben nodded, his breath making puffs of steam in the air, like their own. “With all this snow, I don’t see how I could get to town to bring back the doctor.” Joseph had turned to Tom. “Don’t I get to go with you? Out to the range?”

  “Mike can do that. You’ll stay here and help Art load the sled with hay.”

  There was a protest brewing in the boy’s face, but it soon dissolved. He sighed and went on toward the barn.

  They hauled the first load of hay out to the range half an hour later, and found the cattle in clusters, instinctively sharing their warmth and blocking the wind as best they could. The air they exhaled rose over them like smoke from a chimney.

  The creek was slushy, but it flowed.

  They went back to the barn for another load of feed, and then another. Tom scanned the surrounding plain for wolf or coyote tracks, and found none.

  They headed back and met a panicked Joseph, all but stuck in snow reaching to his midthighs and waving both arms.

  Lincoln, driving the team while Tom rode behind him on the sled, felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach.

  The boy shouted something, but Lincoln couldn’t make out the words. It didn’t matter. Something was wrong, that was all he needed to know.

  He drove the draft horses harder, and Tom scrambled off the sled and crow-hopped his way through the snow toward the boy.

  Chapter Five

  Lincoln heard the screams as he left the horses with Joseph to be unhitched, led to their stalls, rubbed down and fed. He followed Tom toward the cabin out by the bunkhouse, moving as fast as he could.

  Glancing once toward the main house, he saw Gracie and Theresa standing at the window, both their faces pale with worry.

  The cabin was only about eight by eight feet, so it was impossible to overlook the straining form in the center of the bed. Juliana was seated nearby, holding Rose-of-Sharon Gainer’s hand and speaking softly, and the sight of her calmed Lincoln a little.

  Nothing was going to calm Ben, though.

  He paced at the foot of the bed, frenzied, shoving both hands through his hair every few steps. He looked like a wild man, some hermit from the high timber, baffled by his new surroundings.

  “You go on over to the big house,” Tom told the young husband firmly. “You’ll be of no help to us here.”

  Ben set his jaw, glanced at his weeping, sweating wife, and looked as though he might throw a punch. Finally, though, he bent over Rose-of-Sharon, kissed her forehead and did as he’d been told, putting on his coat, passing Lincoln without a word or a look and closing the cabin door smartly behind him.

  Lincoln, unsure of whether to stay or follow right on Ben’s heels, stood just inside the door, turning his gaze to the pitiful little Christmas tree with its strands of colored yarn and awkwardly cut paper ornaments. Two packages, wrapped in brown paper and tied with coarse twine, lay bravely beneath it.

  “Breathe very slowly, Rose-of-Sharon,” he heard Juliana say, her voice soft and even, but underlaid with a tone of worry.

  Lincoln slowed his own breathing, since the idea seemed like a good one.

  “You’ll be all right,” Tom told the girl.

  Rose-of-Sharon, a pretty thing with glossy brown hair, was well beyond fussing over letting an Indian attend her. “Is—is the doctor coming?” she asked, between long, low moans and ragged breaths it hurt to hear.

  Lincoln thought of the snow, so deep now that the draft horses had had all they could do to get through it, plodding to and fro as they hauled hay to the cattle.

  “Yes,” Tom lied, rolling up his sleeves and inclining his head slightly in Juliana’s direction. “He’s on his way for sure.”

  An unspoken signal must have gone from Tom to Juliana. She nodded and raised the bedclothes.

  The sheets and Rose-of-Sharon’s nightgown were crimson.

  Lincoln turned his back, busied himself building up the fire in the little stove that served for both cooking and heating the cabin. Because the chinking between the logs of the structure was good and the ceiling was low, the room would stay warm.

  Rose-of-Sharon shrieked, and the sound scraped down Lincoln’s insides like a claw. For a few moments, it was Beth lying in that bed, not Ben Gainer’s child-bride.

  He wondered again if he ought to leave, get out from underfoot the way Ben had, but something held him there. He’d go if Tom told him to; otherwise, he’d remain. Do what he could, which was probably precious little.

  “Put some water on to heat,” Tom said from the fraught void behind Lincoln. “Then go to the house for my medicine bag.”

  Lincoln nodded—no words would come out—found a kettle, went outside to pack it full of snow, since the water bucket was empty, and set it on the stove. He carried the bucket to the well next, worked to fill it, carried it back inside. Next, he made his way to the house, frustrated by the slow going, found all the kids and Ben gathered at the kitchen table, staring down at their hands.

  For some reason, the sight left him stricken, unable to move for a few moments. When he managed to break the spell, he headed for Tom’s room, really more of a lean-to, and grabbed the familiar buckskin pouch from its place under the narrow bed. Joseph’s pallet, fashioned of folded quilts and blankets, lay crumpled against the inside wall.

  Leaving the room, he nearly collided with Ben.

  “Rose-of-Sharon?” Ben asked, his voice hoarse, his eyes hollow with quiet frenzy.

  “Too soon to know,” Lincoln said, and sidestepped past him.

  “I’m going for the doctor,” Ben said, following him to the back door.

  Lincoln turned. “No,” he said. “You’d never make it that far, and even if you did, old Doc Chaney wouldn’t budge in this weather.”

  “My wife could die!”

  Lincoln looked past him, his gaze connecting with Gracie’s. She was white with terror, no doubt remembering Beth’s passing, and he longed to go to her, assure her everything would be all right.

  The problem was, it might not.

  Lincoln laid a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Yes,” he said gravely, because nothing but the stark truth would have done. “She could die. But there’s no point in your freezing to death somewhere between here and Stillwater Springs, whether she does or not. Besides, if Rose-of-Sharon and the baby survive this, they’ll need you.”

  Ben considered that, swallowed hard and gave a grudging nod.

  Lincoln turned and bolted out the door, wading hard for the cabin, the long strap of Tom’s medicine pouch pressing heavy into his shoulder.

  JULIANA HAD NEVER, in the whole of her life, been so frightened. At the same time, she was oddly calm, as though another self had risen within her, pushed the schoolmarm aside and taken over.

  The scene was nightmarish, with all that blood, and poor Rose-of-Sharon shrieking as though she were being torn apart from the inside.

  When Lincoln returned with the bag Tom had sent him for, Tom took the bag, plundered it, solemn-faced, then brought out a smaller pouch with strange markings burned into it. His own hands covered in blood, he extended the pouch to Juliana and instructed her to put a pinch of the seeds under Rose-of-Sharon’s tongue.

  Trembling, she obeyed.

  “Don’t swallow,” Tom told th
e girl. “It’ll ease the pain some, in a few minutes, and then we’ll see about getting that baby born.”

  “Am I going to die?” Rose-of-Sharon pleaded, her eyes ricocheting between Juliana and Tom. She looked so small and so young—no more than fifteen or thereabouts. It was only too common for girls of her station to marry at an early age. “Is my baby going to die?”

  Tom spoke in the Indian way, some of his syllables flat. “No,” he said, with such certainty that Juliana glanced up at him. She saw the determination in his face, at once placid and stalwart. “But this could take a while. You’ll have to be as brave as you can.”

  Rose-of-Sharon bit down hard on her lower lip, nodded, her skin glistening with perspiration, her eyes catching Juliana’s, begging. Hold on tight, they seemed to say. Don’t let me go.

  “I’m here,” Juliana said, in the same tone she’d used when one of the children was sick or frightened in the night. She squeezed Rose-of-Sharon’s small hand. “I’m right here, Rose-of-Sharon, and I’m not going anywhere.”

  The words, spoken so quietly, were at complete odds with her every instinct. Given her druthers, Juliana would have jumped up and run out into the snow, turning in blind, frantic circles, gasping at air and screaming until her throat was raw.

  What was calming her?

  Surely, it was necessity, at least in part. Tom’s quiet confidence helped, too. In the main, though, it was knowing Lincoln was there, feeling his presence through the skin of her back, as surely as she felt the heat from the stove.

  He seemed as strong and immovable as any of the mountains rising skyward in the distance.

  Tom asked for a basin, once the water had been heated, and instructed Lincoln to prepare more. Juliana bathed Rose-of-Sharon, helped her into her spare nightgown, while Tom removed the soiled sheets, replacing them with a blanket.

  And Rose-of-Sharon’s travails continued.

  Between keening screeches of pain, her body straining mightily, she rested, eyes closed, pale lips moving constantly in wordless prayer or protest.

  The light shifted, dimmed, became shadow-laced.