Wild West Christmas: A Family for the Rancher / Dance with a Cowboy / Christmas in Smoke River. Kathryn Albright
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of a woman of means and character. A woman so far above him that he feared he’d just imagined that spark that flew between them like a hot ember jumping from one blazing roof to the next.
But his skin still tingled from her touch and his body shouted for him to advance. Instead he tucked his hat down tight and retreated as fast as his long legs could carry him.
Come back soon, she’d said. Lord, help me, because she could do so much better than my sorry hide.
As he reached the train station, he knew he couldn’t stay away from her. She was too sweet and he was too hungry. This would end badly for them both. Why the devil had she come here?
Alice did not see Dillen the following day, nor the day after that.
While she waited for him to conclude his business, she wired her family of her safe arrival, penned her elder brother, Arthur, a letter and did some Christmas shopping for his daughters Harriet, age seven, and Lizzy, age nine. She had already finished her shopping for her younger brother, Edward’s, children, though her nieces would hardly notice the gifts since Amelia was only two and Lidia just seven months come December. Alice had always spent Christmas Eve at her grandfather’s home, a very elegant affair, the house open for all the right sort of people. Alice never enjoyed this part of the holidays. But afterward they would return to her parents’ more modest home and she would exchange gifts with both her brothers and their growing families. Christmas morning was spent attending church with her parents—though she wished she could be at her brother’s home in the morning when the girls woke and found what Santa had brought them, but understood that this was a private family time. Knowing so only made her long for a family of her own, for children with whom she could share the joy and innocence of those mornings.
She knew that Colin and Cody believed in Santa with their whole hearts. She managed to distract them with the help of the clerk so she had time to make several purchases for their stockings. The boys left the shop unknowingly carrying their own gifts, which made her smile. They were such good boys. Sylvia would be so proud. She sighed wistfully as Colin and Cody skipped along beside her on the snow-covered road. She needed to get these two to their uncle soon, for she feared that if she waited much longer she might not be able to give them up.
Alice returned to the hotel to inquire at the front desk if there were a message from Mr. Roach. Finding none, she went directly to the telegraph office to inquire there.
“No, ma’am” came the reply from the operator. “Did see him come through town yesterday, though. Had those two ponies. Fine looking pair. Oh, and no word yet from Chicago,” he said, smiling and nodding at Colin and Cody who peered up at him as he rested an elbow on the counter. “Going to visit your auntie, are you?” he asked.
Alice felt the tingle of cold as if ice crystals formed beneath her skin. She drew one boy to each side and swallowed back her dread.
Alice lowered her chin. “Pardon?”
“Mr. Roach wrote their great-aunt.” His grin dissolved. Perhaps he now recognized from her seething expression or the boys’ wide-eyed stares that they had not been privy to this information.
Ben Asher’s aunt had died some years back of a stroke. Alice did recall that Ben had two uncles, also deceased. Another possibility struck.
“He said Chicago?”
The telegraph operator drew back from the counter, hesitating now.
Alice patted Colin’s back as he clung to her skirts. “Would the name of this relative be McCrery, Ella McCrery?”
“I—I’m not...”
She gave him a scowl, fearing she might need to shout and she hated to shout. She took a step toward the counter, hampered by the clinging children.
He swallowed and then nodded. “Believe that’s right, though he said Edna.”
Alice drew a breath, praying for calm as her stomach roiled. “To what question did Mr. Roach seek reply?”
The operator’s bushy brows rose high on his shiny forehead, but he answered the question. “Whether she could take the boys.”
“I see.”
She returned to the hotel with her charges, who both had to jog to keep pace.
“Miss Alice?” asked Cody. “What’s happening?”
“We have to go see your Uncle Dillen.”
“But the man said he doesn’t want us.”
She didn’t know what to say, for she feared Cody’s concerns were valid. She looked at these two perfect little boys and wondered how anyone in the world could not want them. Why, she’d give anything to raise them up as her own. She had always loved them, but now that Sylvia was gone, that love had taken root deep inside her.
Alice straightened her spine. She had been put off once too often to make excuses for Dillen. Clearly he was avoiding her and doing all in his power to pack the children off. Alice saw only two choices. She could return to Omaha with the children or she could try one last time to convince Dillen Roach to honor his sister’s final request.
“Hush, now, let me think.”
Alice forced the anger down. The boys both looked frightened half to death, as if she might just hand them to a stranger. She stilled as she realized that was what she had been preparing to do, for clearly she did not know Dillen any longer. The man she once knew would not shirk his responsibility or ignore his duty to his family.
At the front desk, Alice spoke to the manager.
“How could I arrange transport to the Harvey ranch?”
He gave Alice the directions to the livery and the name of the gentleman to see. “If you’ve never driven a wagon or sleigh, then hire a driver, as well. And don’t set out without a rifle, food and blankets or furs. If you break a runner, you could be stuck for some time.”
This bit of advice made Alice’s knees wobble, but she reminded herself of her mission. Plus a sleigh ride in the wilderness might be an excellent way to test her mettle.
One hour later, lunched and dressed in their warmest clothing, she and Colin sat in the second seat of a sleigh. Cody preferred to sit with the driver, Mr. Donald Miller, an aged livery hand with a round face, a high forehead and tufted gray hair peeking out from beneath a green knit cap. He held a pipe perpetually clamped between his teeth and his beard was cut in the manner of Puritans, so he reminded Alice of a New England whaling captain. Though the broken blood vessels on his nose and cheeks seemed to indicate that, unlike the Puritan he resembled, Mr. Miller indulged in spirits.
The wind whistled and the runners hissed as the horse trotted in a well-worn groove of packed snow. Despite the hot bricks and blankets, Alice’s toes were icy and her cheeks numb. She was saved from inquiring regarding the remaining distance by Cody, who asked the driver that exact question at regular intervals.
According to the last report they were already on the ranch, though it looked no different than the pine forest they had traversed for the past several miles since leaving the town of Blue River Junction. Colin spotted a wooden fence with even split wood planks nailed to upright posts. Alice craned her neck and was rewarded with a glimpse of the sloping peaked roof of a barn. They crested a rise and she realized that what she had assumed was the side of the barn was, in fact, the front. The barn was easily four times as large as she had first imagined. Alice’s gaze swept the unbroken expanse of snow that covered the open ground. Pastures, she realized, and beyond them, she spotted a long outbuilding squatting parallel to the barn, and on the top of the next rise the rustic yet expansive log ranch house.
This was not what Alice had expected, but still bore proof that Dillen had managed to achieve his ambitions alone. She closed her eyes at the evidence of his success.
He was not a veterinarian, as