“What do you think of that tree?” he asked Sarah. It was a pitiful excuse for a tree, but it was a pine.
She shook her head.
“Look, if I’m going to traipse all over this mountain looking for a tree, you’re going to have to talk to me.”
The kid watched him out of silent eyes.
“You ought to know by now I won’t hurt you. Even Samson likes you.”
She still didn’t speak.
“Okay, let’s go back.”
Before he could turn General Burnside around, she said, “It’s not pretty,” just as if she’d been talking all along. “Let’s go higher.”
As they wound their way up the mountainside, Joe decided that women got the hang of being female at an early age. Boys didn’t figure out what it meant to be a man until much later. By the time they started courting, the girls had a ten-year head start. It was like shooting fish in a pond.
He headed General Burnside up a slope toward a patch of green about a mile away. Samson disappeared down a canyon.
Joe was letting himself get distracted. A dangerous thing. It was time he went back to looking for the gold and got out of here. He was getting too settled.
He was starting to like where he was.
He’d forgotten what being on a farm was like. For years he’d thought only of his mother and the man she threw him out for. But being here reminded him of the things he had liked about the farm. It seemed strange to him now, but he liked the way he was living. He didn’t even mind the chores. He was beginning to get ideas about how to improve things, ideas about what Mary ought to do come spring. He’d enjoyed teaching Sarah how to milk Queen Charlotte. Hell, he’d sworn he’d never milk another cow after he left the farm. But there was something solid and comfortable about their big brown bodies. And it sure as hell was nice to have butter to put on his biscuits.
“Do you like that man?” Sarah asked.
“What man?”
“The one who came to the house this morning.”
“No reason to dislike him.”
“I don’t like him. He makes Mary sad.”
“How’s that?”
“She gets all jumpy whenever he comes. She mumbles a lot after he’s gone. I think she’s afraid of that woman.”
“I think your ma is just afraid they’ll try to take too much care of her.”
“Mary doesn’t need anybody to take care of her. She has me.”
Joe thought it was a nice thing for a little girl to say, but Sarah had no idea just how much a woman needed someone to take care of her. He didn’t see how Mary was going to make out by herself.
“Do you always call your ma Mary?”
“Mary says she loves me like a mama, but she knows I have a real mama who’s gone to heaven and is waiting for me there.”
That would teach him to stick his nose in where it didn’t belong.
“I bet she’d like it, though. She won’t think you’re forgetting your real ma, but women like to be called Ma. It’s just not the same when you call her Mary.”
“If you were married to her, would you want me to call you Pa?”
That nearly knocked him out of his saddle. No messing around. The kid had cut to the heart of the matter.
Joe wanted to marry Mary. He had fallen in love with her when she fainted while pointing a rifle at him. He’d just been dancing around the issue since then, trying to fool himself and everybody else.
“Yes. If I were married to Mary, I’d want you to call me Pa. I’d like having a little girl like you. I know Pete’s your real pa, but I’d want you to call me Pa because that’s how I’d feel about you.”
Joe realized that he’d stayed away from women because he didn’t believe in love. He’d never felt it. His mother and Flora had talked about it all the time, but he didn’t want any part of the destructive emotion they felt.
Mary and Sarah loved each other in an entirely different way. Wasn’t it possible they could love him as well?
Don’t be a fool. You’re on the run. You can’t stay here or anywhere else.
“Let’s look up there,” Sarah said, pointing to a clump of green even more distant than the one he had picked out.
Samson climbed out of the canyon and came to join them.
“Why is Christmas so important to you?” Joe asked.
“Mama told me she was going to die,” Sarah began. She looked up at Joe. “But she said she wouldn’t really be gone. She said she was going to stay with Père Noël, far away where I couldn’t see her. She said Père Noël brought things from mommies to their little girls so they would know they hadn’t forgotten them. She said she would send me something every Christmas.”
Sarah looked away.
“Last year Papa said we couldn’t have Christmas. He said it was foolish. He said Père Noël was a lie and Mama was just telling me a story so I wouldn’t cry. He said she was gone away and I’d never hear from her again. He wouldn’t even let me put a ribbon on the door so Père Noël could find our house.”
She looked up at Joe once more.
“He didn’t come. I put out my shoes, but there was nothing in them. Do you think Papa was right?”
Joe decided that if anybody’d ever deserved to die by slow torture, it was Pete Wilson. “No. Père Noël probably couldn’t find you among all these cactus. I’m sure he’s got all your presents saved up. He’s going to look extra-special hard this year to make sure he doesn’t miss you again. We’ll put an extra-big bow on the door. We can leave a light in the window, too. We’re a long way from town, you know.”
“You really think he’ll come?”
“I’m sure of it. Now we’d better find that tree and get back home, or we’ll never get it decorated.”
They had climbed several thousand feet. There were pines and junipers all around to choose from.
Sarah stopped and pointed to a ledge fifty feet above their heads. “There, that’s the tree I want.”
* * *
Mary saw them when they topped the ridge a mile away—Joe on his big gelding, a big man silhouetted against the landscape; Sarah on the pinto, a little girl who looked even smaller next to Joe; Samson, sniffing rocks in his never-ending quest for coyotes. And the tree. It was tied to Sarah’s pony. It almost enveloped the child.
The baby turned over. Mary put her hand on her stomach. She was feeling funny today. The baby seemed to have moved lower in her body. It caused her to waddle like a duck. Just the thing to make a man like Joe look on her with approval.
She had given up pretending she didn’t like him. Watching him riding patiently with Sarah conjured up even warmer emotions.
She loved Joe Ryan.
She still found it hard to believe a man like him existed. All the other men in her life had ended up being pretty much alike—rotten. She had given up hoping to find anybody different. Then, just when she felt she could carry on alone, Joe Ryan had come into her life and upset everything. He was exactly the kind of man she wanted.
But she couldn’t have him.
If she were a sensible woman, she would marry Brother Samuel. He wasn’t a warm man, but he was a kind one. He would prove to be stubborn in many ways, but a clever woman could probably handle him quite easily. And she was a clever woman.
But she didn’t want Brother Samuel, even if he weren’t a preacher, even if Sister Rachel weren’t his sister. She wanted an escaped convict who was on the run. That made her real clever.
They stopped. Apparently Joe had to readjust the tree. She wondered where they’d found it. They had been gone for most of the day. It was nearly eight o’clock. The sun had dipped beyond the western hills, leaving streaks of orange, mauve, and a deep purply-black across the sky. She had become worried about them. She had been sitting on the porch for nearly two hours.
The fire in the stove woul
d have gone out. Dinner would be cold. But that didn’t matter now. Joe would be home in a little while. She could warm everything up.
Yes, Joe was coming home. This was where he belonged, where she felt he wanted to be, where she wanted him to be. But the world outside wouldn’t let him stay.
She picked up her pen and began, with swift, sure strokes, to create a picture of Sarah and Joe silhouetted against the evening sky.
While she waited, she had tried to think of what she might do to help him. She had racked her brain for any possible clue to where Pete had hidden the gold. She had even thought of hiding Joe. There were miles of hills in which a man could lose himself. But she knew Joe wouldn’t agree to that. He had come here to clear his name. He would never consider marrying her until he had.
And she wanted to marry Joe. She wanted him to be her husband, her lover, the father of the child she carried, the other children she hoped to have. She didn’t know what she could do, but she made up her mind not to give up hope. She’d never thought a man like Joe existed, but he did. There had to be a way to keep him.
She flipped the page and began a second picture as Joe and Sarah rode into the yard.
Sarah seemed hardly able to contain her excitement. She flitted around the cabin, talking enough to make up for several months of silence.
“I bet it’s the biggest Christmas tree in Arizona,” she said.
Joe leaned the tree against the wall, then made a stand for it. It almost reached the ceiling. The branches spread out three feet on either side of the trunk.
“I’m sure it is,” Mary agreed.
“We found dozens of other trees,” Joe told her, “but she wouldn’t be satisfied with any of them. She had to have the one growing on the highest ledge.”
“It was the prettiest.”
“You should have seen me clambering up the rocks like a mountain goat,” Joe said. “Nearly broke my neck.”
“It’s beautiful,” Mary said, “but a smaller one would have been nice. There’s hardly enough room left for us.”
“You can put lots of pictures on it,” Sarah said, “lots more than that other old tree.”
That other old tree had been shoved into the stove, its existence forgotten and unlamented.
“Joe said we could put ribbons all over it,” Sarah told Mary. “I can’t reach the top. Will you lift me, Joe?”
“If you don’t stop dancing about, he’s liable to hang you from the ceiling,” Mary said.
“No, he won’t. He said he’d like having a little girl like me. He said if he was married to you, he’d want me to call him Papa.”
The escalation of tension was tangible. Joe kept his eyes on his work. He laid the tree on its side and measured the stand to make sure it fit. “Any marrying man would like a kid like Sarah,” he said as he drove a nail through the stand into the bottom of the tree. “She rides like she was born to it.” He drove in a second nail. “She’ll probably learn to rope cows before she’s ten.”
“Will you teach me?”
The tension increased another notch.
Joe nailed one of the braces, turned the tree over, and nailed the second. “It’s like Brother Samuel said, it’s not proper to have a man like me hanging around.” He nailed another brace. “I should have left by now.” He nailed the last brace. He stood the tree up before he dared glance at Mary. “Some men just aren’t born to settle down.”
Joe set the tree in the corner.
Sarah’s face broke into an ear-to-ear grin, and she jumped up and down, clapping her hands in her excitement. “It will be the most beautiful tree in Arizona. I know it will.”
“We’ll certainly do our best,” Mary said, coming out of her trance. “I’ll make the bows. You and Joe can tie them on.”
“Give me one. Give me one,” Sarah begged, too excited to be silent.
Mary quickly made a bow and handed it to the child.
“Lift me up,” Sarah said to Joe. “Lift me high.”
Mary’s fingers flew, cutting ribbon and making bows as fast as she could, but nearly every other fiber of her being was focused on Joe. Time and time again he lifted Sarah as if she weighed nothing, good-naturedly joining in her excitement, talking to her as though she was the most important person in his life.
The child blossomed under his attention. It was hard to remember the scared, silent, hollow-eyed child she’d found when she became Pete’s wife. Joe might think he wasn’t meant to settle down, but he had the key to Sarah’s heart.
And her own. She watched those powerful arms lift the child and longed to feel them wrapped around her. She saw his smile, felt the warmth of his caring. His presence transformed everything around him—her, Sarah, the cramped and cold cabin. Mary felt warm and protected. She felt happy and content. She felt a longing so intense that it blocked out the pain in her back.
“That’s all the ribbon,” she said. “It’s time for the pictures. Make sure you tie them on the tips of the branches so they’ll hang right.”
“You can do that,” Joe said.
“I think I’ll watch.”
Sarah took her hand and pulled. “Please, you help too.”
Mary started to get up, but the pain in her back grew worse.
“I’d better sit down. I think I did too much today.”
“I told you I’d fix dinner when I got home,” Joe said, worry clouding his eyes.
“You’ve done that often enough. Besides, I thought you’d like something warm after a long, cold ride. Only then I let it get cold.”
“We came home too late.”
Home! He’d said it. He couldn’t be as untouched as he acted. He might not think he was a family man, but that was probably because things hadn’t worked out for him in the past. That didn’t mean he couldn’t be a family man now.
The ugly fact of his uncompleted prison term reared its head, but Mary pushed it aside. Given time, they could find an answer to that. The real problem was how Joe felt.
She shifted position to ease the pain in her back. She wished the baby hadn’t settled so low. It made it easier for her to breathe, but it put extra pressure on her spine.
Almost instinctively she reached for her drawing pad. Of all the scenes she had rendered with her pen, this was the most important. She regretted having no colors. Without them, there was no way to capture the golden quality of the light that illuminated the cabin. It was impossible to show the drab, ordinary nature of Joe’s clothes in contrast to the vibrant love of life that glowed in his eyes. It was impossible to show the transformation that had taken place in Sarah.
Most important of all, it was impossible to show the difference he had made in her life. Black and white had been all she needed before. That was how she’d viewed the world. But Joe had changed all that. He had brought spirit and passion into her life. He had brought love.
It was impossible to show that without color.
She looked down at her drawing. She hadn’t missed anything—the cabin, the tree, Sarah, even herself in the corner. But Joe was at the heart of the picture. Without him, this would have been just one more in a long string of dismal evenings.
“Your mother is drawing again,” Joe said to Sarah. “Let’s see what she’s doing this time.”
Mary turned the page over quickly. “I’m trying to get you two and the Christmas tree in the same picture. That one didn’t turn out the way I expected. Stop trying to look over my shoulder. I can’t concentrate when you do that.”
“I can’t help it,” Joe said. “I can’t get over the way you make a picture appear—like magic.”
Nothing like the magic you’ve wrought, Mary thought.
But as Mary turned her attention to her drawing, she realized that there was something missing.
There were no presents under the tree.
Joe thought about the presents,
too. He imagined Mary had something hidden away for Sarah, but it couldn’t be much. She hadn’t been able to get to town, and Christmas was only three days off.
He paused on his walk to the barn. The night was radiant. The full moon flooded the landscape with light. It wasn’t the warm light of the day, and it was too weak to vanquish the shadows, but it was beautiful nonetheless. There was a ghostly stillness that was comforting, as though all the troubles of the world were held at a safe distance by some almighty hand. Countless stars winked in the dark canopy of the sky, their tiny lights friendly and cheerful.
Samson trotted up. “Are you taking the night off?” Samson licked Joe’s hand. “Don’t come oiling up to me. I know you like Mary better than me. I can’t say I blame you, but I’m not going to forgive you, either. I know she’s prettier than I am, but we’ve been together for six years. I even rescued you from that drunken old squatter. I was planning on taking you to California, and look at the thanks I get.”
The dog gamboled around him, wagging his tail and barking playfully. “Don’t think you’re going to talk me into letting you share my bed. You’ll just get me up in an hour to let you out.”
Fifteen minutes later, settled into his bedroll with Samson nestled beside him, Joe thought about the presents that weren’t under that tree. He knew Sarah didn’t expect much, but that wasn’t the point. Presents would mean that Père Noël had come. Presents would mean her mother still remembered her, still loved her.
Either he was going to have to be Father Christmas, or Sarah would be disappointed again.
Then there was Mary. She probably didn’t want anything. She certainly didn’t expect anything, but for her, Christmas would be a new beginning. Especially with the baby. He wanted to give her something to celebrate that new beginning, but he couldn’t think what. He certainly didn’t have anything in his saddlebags. Even if he could find her share of the gold, that wouldn’t be it either. What he wanted to give her couldn’t be found under any tree, but he didn’t allow himself to dwell on that.
Christmas in a Cowboy's Arms Page 6