Wild West Christmas: A Family for the RancherDance with a CowboyChristmas in Smoke River

by Jenna Kernan

  “Those boys need a home and they need a mama. Someone used to hard living and doing without. Alice, you aren’t made for that kind of life. You don’t know how hard it can be.”

  Had he just told her that he planned to marry another woman?

  “You said you loved me.”

  “And I always will. But it doesn’t change what I have to do.”

  “Let me help you, please.”

  “We’ve been over that. Alice, you don’t know what it’s like to have nothing. I hope you never have to find out.”

  “I’d have you. I’d have the boys.”

  He turned away, drawing up his blue jeans and fastening his belt. He’d already decided, already made up his mind before any of this ever happened. And still he took all she had to give. But not her money. Not her help. Those he would never accept.

  “So you’ll send me away? Send the boys to Chicago?”

  “Maybe, if times get lean.”

  He was pulling further and further back, she could feel it, and he hadn’t moved a muscle. She launched herself at him, clinging to his back as she encircled him with her arms. “Then let me take them with me to Omaha.”

  He peeled her away and thrust her crumpled blouse and camisole at her. “Is that what my sister wanted? Did she ask you to raise them or bring them to me?”

  She ignored her clothing and clasped his forearm with both hands. Her voice cracked. “Dillen?”

  “Let me go, Alice.” She didn’t, so he looked away. “Cover yourself.”

  Shame made her cheeks glow with heat. Her fingers slipped from his arm and she accepted the garments, clasping them to herself like a frightened child clutches a favorite blanket.

  He shrugged into his shirt and left it flapping open. Then he stood and retrieved his coat and hat from a peg beside Mr. Harvey’s door.

  “I thought you wanted me,” she whispered.

  “I’ve always wanted you. But it’s not enough, Alice.”

  Dillen stood and headed for the door, pausing only to place his hat on his head and draw on his coat. Then he left her.

  Alice crawled to the couch, still clutching her blouse and underthings as she watched Dillen run away again. The humiliation scalded her skin and burned her throat.

  The pain of his rejection strangled her words, making them a weak whisper. “Wait.”

  But he didn’t even look back as he bolted out the door. A moment later she heard the latch click.

  “Wait,” she whispered, the pain closing her throat.

  She had her answer. Whatever feelings he had, they were not deep enough. It was time for her to accept the truth. He did not want her to stay.

  Chapter Twelve

  Dillen went back to the bunkhouse to find Bill snoring away. He buttoned his shirt, lingering to remember the feel of Alice pressed against him. He washed his face in water so cold the top layer was slush and he added another log to the stove. He hadn’t meant to bang the stove door closed, but he did, and Bill snorted himself awake and launched into his familiar phlegmy cough.

  “Back so soon?” he said.

  “Guess so,” said Dillen.

  “Never took you for a fool.” He rolled to his side. “Until now.”

  Dillen ignored the gibe. It took only a moment to strip out of his jeans and into his long underwear to sleep. But sleep eluded him. Finally he kicked off his blanket, stepped into his clothing, coat and boots. Then he headed out into the cold. He padded through new snow toward the barn, seeking the quiet comfort of the horses. The animals’ gentle breathing and warm, earthy smell always calmed him and helped him think. He shoved his hands in his pockets, finding a used rubber in one and the damned telegram still in the other. He drew out the wire and read it again.

  This time his reaction was not sorrow, but anger. He didn’t want to lose Cody and Colin, and he didn’t think some old woman could do a better job raising Sylvie’s boys than he could. Alice had reminded him that just because his father had been a first-class shit didn’t mean he couldn’t do different. And damned if he wouldn’t. He could do a sight better. Damned if he’d send them off. He’d raise them as his sister had wanted.

  He scratched under Dasher’s chin and then tugged playfully at his soft, furry lower lip. “She said she loved me.”

  His horse said nothing.

  “Can you believe that? Me.”

  The horse’s eyelids drooped and closed. Dillen wrapped a horse blanket around his shoulders and settled on the hay in Dasher’s stall to think. Instead he dozed.

  He woke shivering, wrapped in a horse blanket, wondering if Alice was really willing to take the step down to be his wife. Did she understand all she would lose in choosing him? Would she still have him if he wouldn’t accept her money? What if her parents disowned her for marrying him? What if he couldn’t make her happy? He didn’t think he could live without her. But he knew full well she could live without him. And that truth had stopped him every time he’d considered going back to her.

  This time, though, there were the boys to consider. It gave him an excuse to try, even fearing she would tire of the hardships, or worse, become dissatisfied with him. He pushed back his hat and thought long and hard. He knew what he wanted, but chances were good he’d never keep her.

  He stood, stiff and heartsore. Dasher rested his front foot, his eyes closed in sleep. He didn’t open them when Dillen let himself out of the stall, lowering the latch behind him. Dillen thought of what Alice had told him about her father. How her mother had married him before he was a great doctor. How he’d accepted help to begin his practice and buy their first home. Her father was a respected professional man and he’d used his wife’s money to start that practice. Dillen stilled as he realized that her father was the bigger man. He’d made his own way but still had the self-confidence to take what his wife offered. Was Dillen willing to do the same? Or would he let his pride cost him Alice Truett again?

  “No, damn it. I sure won’t. I won’t let her go again.” Dillen stood and headed out of the barn, aiming for the house. He paused midway to the building. It was still the middle of the night. The only lamp burning was in the boys’ front room. Alice’s room was dark.

  Before he went to Alice, he had business. He needed to wire Great-aunt Ethel and tell her that he was keeping his boys and he needed to cut down a Christmas tree. Then he would get down on his knees beside that tree and beg Alice to marry him.

  “Wake up, Dasher. We need to ride.”

  Dillen hit Blue River Junction after sunup. The telegram got sent and then Dillen headed back to the ranch in deep, heavy snow. Without a track and sled, it was slow going. He finally left the main road for the pine forest where the snow was less deep.

  He needed to find that Christmas tree for Alice and the boys.

  * * *

  After her humiliation, Alice returned to her room and packed her belongings through a blur of tears. If she could have done so, she would have left that very minute.

  Instead she had tried and failed to sleep, stumbling from her bed as the sky turned gray. She had determined to leave with as much dignity as possible, knowing that she had left all she had on the floor beside the hearth. Her last, best, most desperate attempt to hold a man who would not be held. She had found a man who was independent, self-sufficient and knew how to work. But he preferred to do without, or at least without her.

  She placed the wrapped gifts she had picked for the boys on the mantel and then went to find Dillen. There was no use in waiting another day. But Dillen was not in the bunkhouse. Mr. Roberts was as surprised as she was to see his empty bed.

  “Do you think he would leave without telling you?” asked Alice.

  “Naw,” said Roberts. “He left his saddlebags and gear in the bunkhouse. He’ll be back.”

  But the morning wor
e away and he did not come back. Alice asked Mr. Roberts to take her to town. She fed him and the boys and then bundled Cody and Colin beside her in the sleigh with her trunks and satchels. They drove through a heavy wet snow that stuck to the rooftops, making the town look like a village in a snow globe. It would be a white Christmas here, though likely not in Omaha.

  Alice’s first stop was the home of Roberts’s niece, where she arranged for Mrs. Pellet to look after the boys until Dillen came for them. She put on her traveling clothing. The corsets squeezed her. The cashmere dress and sable-trimmed coat felt strange, as if they belonged to someone else.

  She stared at herself in the oval mirror in Mrs. Pellet’s best guest room. Outwardly she looked exactly like the woman who had arrived in Blue River Junction with two orphans in tow. But she was not the same.

  She had felt alive here, and now the old numbness seeped through her. Soon her heart would cool, like a cup of tea left too long at the table. Passion would bleed away and there would be nothing left but this lovely, expensive shell.

  Alice studied her pristine kid-gloved hands, her fingers interlocked before the row of faceted glass buttons on her flat, corseted stomach.

  She would be well provided for, surrounded by and covered with things, the very things that had kept Dillen from her. How she hated them. Alice withdrew the pearl hatpin from the crown of her lush velvet and felted wool chapeau and threw it violently at the mirror. It ricocheted like a bullet off a rock canyon. Next, she unfastened her cameo brooch that was set with a small diamond and held it tight in her fist. Then she flung the finely carved shell toward the wall where it struck hard before falling to the floor.

  She had removed her watch, complete with ruby fob and chain, and was swinging it over her head to create more velocity when Mrs. Pellet entered and stopped her.

  Alice clutched at the woman who had everything she lacked—a home, a husband and children—and she wept.

  Louise rocked her slowly as if Alice were a child. At last, Alice had cried herself dry. Mrs. Pellet retrieved the cameo and hatpin. Alice replaced the pins, one to her hat and one to her collar. Then she withdrew a dog-eared tome. She set her copy of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management gently on the bedside table, resting two fingers on the cover for just a moment.

  At last she stood and wiped away the twin rivers of her tears, the moisture quickly absorbed by her black leather gloves.

  Mr. Roberts called from the entranceway. A few minutes later he transported her luggage to the station and checked on the schedule.

  Alice ate lunch with the boys but barely touched her food. Mrs. Pellet tried to cheer her, but to no avail. Alice had failed and now faced the grim reality of a loveless, suitable marriage to one of the many dandies, or the lonely life of a wealthy spinster. In the short term, she would spend Christmas Eve in her grandparents’ palatial home and Christmas morning in church, missing again the joy-filled morning her brothers shared with their families. Their happiness now served only to emphasize her misery.

  “Did you tell him you love him?” asked Mrs. Pellet.

  “I did, and I offered myself.”

  This shocked Mrs. Pellet.

  Alice lowered her head. That he’d turned her down was obvious.

  “Oh, my,” said Mrs. Pellet, and then, “You’re too good for him,” which made Alice cry.

  She cried again when Colin presented her with her Christmas gift. Mr. Roberts had helped the boys carve cedar shavings and then used white yarn and a blanket stitch to sew them into a red bandanna fashioned in the shape of a heart.

  “It’s a satchel,” said Cody.

  “To make your socks smell nice,” added Colin.

  She hugged and kissed them both and let her heart break when they told her they didn’t want her to go. How she wished she could scoop them up and take them home with her. These two could fill the empty places in her heart, and with them she would have a life to be grateful for. But Sylvia had asked her to bring them to her brother. She had done so, and it was time to go.

  The boys waved goodbye from the window of Mrs. Pellet’s home as Mr. Roberts drove her to the station. There she stopped to send a wire with her new arrival information to her father. Roberts spoke to the operator, who revealed that Dillen had sent a reply to Chicago this very morning; the operator didn’t know what he’d said, but he did know that Roach had arrived before business hours and awakened his assistant by pounding on the door.

  Alice’s mood sank still further. The boys would be going East to their great-great-aunt. She knew that Dillen would have made a wonderful father, but the decision was not hers. All she could do was tell Mr. Roberts that she was more than willing to take the boys temporarily or to adopt them if Dillen found he could not care for them.

  The train whistle sounded low and mournful. Alice checked her hatpins and pressed two fingers to the ornate shell cameo at her throat. Then she lifted her traveling case and stepped from the depot to the platform. There was no one to kiss her goodbye. She managed to hold back the sobs, but not the tears. She glanced over her shoulder for Dillen and then propelled herself into the car, taking her seat beside the window. She was still searching for one last look at him as the whistle blew and the train inched from the station.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Dillen reached the ranch dragging a ten-foot pine behind Dasher. But he found the house empty. Further searching led him to discover the sleigh, Bill Roberts, Alice and the boys all gone. The accumulation had covered their tracks, but now that he was looking, he realized they were heading for town. He sliced the rope holding the tree, turned about and met Bill right at the edge of town coming back empty.

  “Where’s Alice and the boys? Shopping again?”

  Roberts gave him a hard look. “If you made indecent proposals to that woman, I swear I’ll climb down off this sled and bust open your nose.”

  A chill went through Dillen as he realized something was very wrong.

  “Bill, where is she? Where are the boys?”

  “The boys are at my niece’s and Alice is on a train for Denver with a connection to Omaha. What the Sam Hill did you do to that woman to send her packing?”

  Dillen heard the train whistle. “She’s on board?”

  Roberts nodded.

  Dillen lifted his reins.

  “Where you going? It’s too late. Train’s gone!”

  Dillen pressed his heels into Dasher’s sides and his horse erupted into a gallop.

  He had to stop Alice. But first he had to stop a train.

  * * *

  Dasher was a fast horse and the tracks were clear of most of the snow. Dillen rode like blue blazes and caught the train before it had traveled too far outside Blue River Junction. Now he had to get on board and convince the engineer to hit the brake. Riding at a gallop, he passed the caboose and the three passenger cars. When he reached the engine, he used his trick-riding skills and stood on the saddle until he had both hands on the rails that flanked the ladder to the engine. Then he stepped aboard and watched Dasher veer off at a trot. Good horse, he thought, swinging up into the engine and drawing his pistol.

  “Stop this train,” he shouted.

  The engineer and the fireman, still holding his shovel of coal, both turned in unison. The engineer raised his hands as his eyes widened. The fireman gripped the handle of his shovel, judged Dillen out of range and set it aside.

  “Stop it, now!” he ordered.

  The engineer swallowed. “I gotta signal the brakeman. He’s in the caboose.”

  “Do it, then,” growled Dillen.

  The man reached for the whistle and let out a series of blasts. A moment later Dillen heard the brakes squeal. The engineer reached for the engine brake. The steel tracks and steel wheels shrieked as the train slowed.

  “I hope to hell you know what
you’re doing, boyo,” said the grizzled engineer.

  Dillen was already off the engine and running along the tracks.

  * * *

  Alice marched behind the conductor along the raised rail bed. The snow had begun in earnest now, and it stood in bright contrast to the long black sable fur on her cuffs and collar. Had the conductor not mentioned a wild-eyed cowboy named Roach, she would have most assuredly remained in the passenger car. Instead she strode into battle, afraid that she would not have the luxury of an exit that did not involve further tears. She thought again of last night’s debacle and her cheeks heated in shame. Dillen did not want her, but apparently he wanted something, for stopping a train was no small matter and bore certain unpleasant consequences.

  According to the conductor, Mr. Roach had used a pistol and a fast horse to convince the engineer to delay their travel. She approached the steaming engine and saw him hanging from the car, staring back at her through the fast-falling snow.

  “Alice?”

  “Mr. Roach, what is the meaning of this?”

  Now that he had her here, he seemed quite speechless. She glanced about at the movement to her left and discovered that Dasher had found his master and was attempting to scale the steep embankment to reach him. Both the engineer and the fireman stared at her. She hated being the center of attention and considered retreat. But something in Dillen’s eyes pinned her to the spot.

  “I came for you,” he said.

  “You’re going to jail,” said the conductor to Dillen.

  Dillen bared his teeth. “Hush up, you.”

  The situation teetered from precarious to perilous. Alice knew Dillen was an excellent shot. She also knew he had never aimed a pistol at a man before. What on earth had driven him to such folly? Her heart fluttered with hope that it was her leaving.

  The fireman chimed in. “He said you was his wife and you abandoned your kids and all.”

  “He what?” Alice gave the man a scathing look and he dropped his gaze. She then turned her attention to Dillen, who held the engineer and fireman at gunpoint. “Your pardon, sir,” said Alice to the engineer. “Do you know my grandfather, Mr. John W. Pinter?”