by Kit Morgan
Text copyright ©2017 by the Author.
This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Debra Holland. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original Montana Sky remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Debra Holland, or their affiliates or licensors.
For more information on Kindle Worlds: http://www.amazon.com/kindleworlds
Christmas with the Joneses
The Joneses of Morgan’s Crossing, Book 5
(A Montana Sky World Novella)
by
Kit Morgan
Dear Reader,
Welcome to the Montana Sky Series Kindle World, where authors write books set in my 1880s and 1890s “world” of Sweetwater Springs and Morgan’s Crossing, Montana. Aside from providing the backdrop of setting and stock townsfolk, I haven’t contributed to the stories. The authors bring their own unique vision and imagination to the KW books, sometimes tying them into their own series.
Christmas with the Joneses is written by Kit Morgan. I first met Kit at a writer’s conference in San Antonio in 2014. Conferences are a great place for authors to meet, network and get to know one another. It’s one thing to interact on social media, quite another to do it in person – not to mention a lot more fun. Right after meeting Kit, we got our picture taken together with some handsome cowboys, two other authors and a chicken – a toy chicken, Kit’s idea. And that’s Kit for you. She writes with a lot of humor and her books are known for being fun and whimsical. She’s also a very prolific writer, something her readers enjoy and I’m in awe of. Like me, Kit likes to dabble in the fantasy romance genre.
Have fun reading Kit’s fifth contribution to my world.
Debra Holland
Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
About the Author
One
The Jones Ranch, outside Morgan’s Crossing, Montana, December 1891
The best laid plans often go awry.
And yet how many times does something go bad, only to turn around and become good? One’s misfortune can become another’s blessing, turning their misfortune into someone else’s blessing, and so on.
For instance, eight-year-old Wylie White and his six-year-old sister Katie were suffering a horrible calamity. Their brand-new baby brother Hezekiah (Hezzy to Wylie and Katie) fell suddenly ill, which in turn made their family miss their train to Clear Creek, Oregon. They were supposed to spend Christmas in Clear Creek with their stepfather’s friends on their big horse ranch outside of town.
Caleb White, who’d married Wylie and Katie’s mother a year before, worked for the Jones family, and as far as Wylie and Katie knew, all the Joneses were in the horse business. Aside from that big ranch in Oregon Caleb used to work for, they had one outside Morgan’s Crossing, Montana, their current home. Now the Jonses were establishing a new ranch near San Francisco. And that one was to be theirs.
Their new stepfather would oversee it, which made him an important man. Not that he wasn’t important already – he oversaw the ranch in Morgan’s Crossing, after all. But to oversee a ranch on his own, with no Joneses around, that was something. Meanwhile, Jonas Cummings would be the new foreman in Morgan’s Crossing, and he’d just gotten married to Luella Jones. Wylie and Katie liked her a lot – she made good cookies and told fun jokes.
But Hezzy wouldn’t stop screaming. Knowing something was amiss with their little one, their mother Viola and their stepfather hurried the babe to the doctor in Sweetwater Springs. They were already there to attend Jonas and Luella’s wedding and catch the train for their journey west. The wedding went off without a hitch, but Hezzy was another matter. They never made it to the train.
This meant not only missing out on a fun adventure to a brand-new place, but also meeting their stepfather’s friends and old employers. The older Joneses they’d met the Christmas before when they paid a surprise visit to the ranch in Morgan’s Crossing. Now that was a time – especially since that was when their mother married Caleb White. Unfortunately, Wylie and Katie had trouble remembering everyone’s names – there were so many Joneses!
It was hard enough just to keep track of the ones on the ranch outside Morgan’s Crossing – there were two big houses and one cabin on the place, and that meant a lot of folks. Wylie, Katie and their parents lived in the cabin, along with Hezzy. And thanks to Hezzy’s inability to break wind, they were going to be heading back to that little cabin instead of taking an exciting trip to Oregon. Babies were such a pain!
Said baby cried practically nonstop all the way home from Sweetwater Springs – and it was a long journey from Sweetwater Springs to Morgan’s Crossing, two days. No one got any sleep. Their mother was frantic by the time they reached the cabin. And worst of all, Wylie lost his favorite ball.
But once they arrived back, Hezzy blissfully began to pass wind … and a lot of other things, but Wylie and Katie were shooed out of the cabin when that happened. Not that they wouldn’t have gone voluntarily – it was amazing how much stink a little boy could make. So all in all, it had been a bad few days for the kids.
That was what they were left to think about as they sat on the cabin’s front steps, waiting for Hezzy to finish his … business. “Now what are we going to do, Wylie?” Katie asked as she fumbled with her doll. She tucked the toy into her winter coat as a breeze kicked up, lifting wisps of hair from her face. She pouted at her brother. “Well?”
Wylie stuck his hands in his pockets and watched dead leaves blow past. It wasn’t cold enough to snow today, but maybe it would tomorrow. Mama said they’d been lucky to have a very mild winter so far. One more thing not going their way – he wanted it to snow.
“Wylie!”
“Quiet,” he said, annoyed. “I’m thinking.”
She hugged her doll. “Think harder.”
He was about to speak when he noticed a pig had escaped its pen. “Oh no, it’s Esmeralda! Pa’ll bust a gut if she gets away. So will Uncle Anson and Jess!”
“How can they be our uncles when we’re not related to ‘em?” Katie asked, ignoring his distress.
He bounded down the steps. “Don’t ask silly questions – help me catch her!”
Katie obediently followed. At least chasing a pig wasn’t as boring as sitting on the steps doing nothing. Maybe between the two of them they could catch her quickly. Esmeralda wasn’t a big pig – she’d only been born in spring. “Where’d she go?”
“This way!” Wylie pointed at the track to the main road.
Katie turned to look and sure enough, Esmeralda was happily trotting away from the ranch. “Where does she think she’s going, to town?”
“She’s a pig!” Wylie exclaimed. “She doesn’t care where she goes!” He grabbed Katie’s hand and started to run after the animal.
“Ow!” Katie said as she stumbled alongside him. “Don’t pull so hard!”
“If I don’t, you go too slow.” He kept dragging her along.
“Stop pulling!” she cried, digging in her heels.
Wylie let go and spun to face her. “Katie, if you’re not gonna help, go back to the house.”<
br />
“No.”
“Yes!”
“No!” She stomped one foot for emphasis.
Wylie gave her his usual big brother’s you’re making this way too difficult stare.
It didn’t work. “Where’s Esmeralda?” Katie asked, pulling her doll out of her coat.
Wylie rolled his eyes and looked around. Where was the pig? “Oh no …”
“She disappeared,” Katie said in wonder.
“She did not disappear – she’s around here somewhere. Now let’s find her before it gets dark!” And off they went.
Several miles outside Morgan’s Crossing …
Colson Hunter hunched over his saddle horn. He wanted to straighten up, but his body had other ideas – including passing out. Irritated, he managed to push himself up, and a wave of dizziness hit, sending his gut spinning.
He’d come to Morgan’s Crossing yesterday, broke, hungry and in desperate need of a bath. Maybe that’s why Clyde Rossmore, the foreman for Michael Morgan’s mine, turned him away so abruptly. But miners weren’t the cleanest lot – what difference did his smell make? It wasn’t anything a tub of hot water and a bar of soap couldn’t fix. Well, a tub of cold water, as he didn’t have the money for a hot one anymore …
“Hunter, you idiot,” he muttered while trying to keep his seat.
“Idiot” wasn’t the half of it. After Rossmore turned him away, he’d gone straight to the only saloon in town and gotten into a friendly game of cards, which had turned unfriendly quickly. He’d never cheated at cards in his life, but the sidewinders he was playing with had another opinion. They dragged him outside, and one of them shot him in the leg! He refused to be pulled into a gunfight – he’d had too many of those over the years, all of them ending badly for the other guy.
James Colson Hunter had figured that if he came far enough west, no one would recognize him. He’d always kept his hair cropped short before, so he grew it long, and added a full beard for good measure. He went by his middle name, Colson. And he didn’t pull a gun unless he was hunting for food. As far as he was concerned, James could be as dead as Abe Lincoln – and unlike the Great Emancipator, he deserved it.
He slumped again. Maybe he should have stayed, seen the local doctor if the town had one. But he’d left to avoid a fight and save those idiots’ sorry hides. And now he might bleed out on the road, with no one to mourn him …
He shrugged and rode on.
A couple of miles farther on …
Meredith Ann Bright – Merry for short – hauled the last of her laundry into the house and hung whatever was still damp near the fire. Which was most of it. Used to this, she had a rope strung from one end of the one-room cabin to the other. Good thing she was the only one she had to do laundry for, or she’d run out of rope.
That done, she went to the stove, picked up the coffeepot and sighed. “Empty.” A shiver ran through her and she licked dry lips. She could have sworn she had some left. Then again, there was a tinge of burnt coffee in the air. “Oh for heaven’s sake,” she lamented, hoping she hadn’t ruined her one and only coffeepot. She took the pot to the washtub in the counter. Though the cabin was small, it was very functional – George had made sure it was when he built it.
George … Merry frowned. She would not cry! She’d done enough of that over the last year. But she was in dire straits, no doubt about it, and sometimes a good cry was all there was. Literally.
There was no food left in the house other than a little milk. What little she’d managed to harvest from her garden was gone – there had been a lot more, but critters kept getting into it over the last couple of months. And a fox got into the chicken coop and killed the last of her hens, so no eggs. She didn’t have anything to last her through the week, let alone the winter. She’d have to forage tomorrow and ration whatever she could find.
That left just the cow. She could ill afford anything happening to Mrs. Robbins at this point. How long could she live off a diet of nothing but milk? Provided the cow didn’t get eaten by a pack of wolves in the meantime.
“Oh, George,” she whispered, brushing a lock of her dark blonde hair out of her face. “Why did you have to die? Why?”
Yet his death over a year ago had been both a blessing and a curse. George was … not the nicest man. And thank heaven they hadn’t any children - she couldn’t have stood the thought of watching a little one starve alongside her this winter. Things were better this way. Still, she was starving. She’d die of it, barring some miracle, and she wasn’t going to hold her breath for that, not the way things had been going.
With nothing else she could do, Merry sank onto her bed, put her face in her hands and softly wept.
Two
“She went this way!” Wylie cried, running toward a stand of pine.
Katie was desperate to catch up. “Wylie! Stop!”
He did, waiting for her to come alongside and catch her breath. “She’s over there, see?” he whispered and pointed.
Katie craned her neck to see into the thick stand of trees, and sure enough, a pig’s tail and rump could be seen wiggling behind a huge evergreen. Esmeralda must have found something to eat. She looked at Wylie with an excited smile.
He smiled back, checked to make sure the pig was still there … and froze. “Stay here.”
“What is it?” Katie whispered.
“Do as I say, Katie.” He started off. Was he seeing what he thought he saw? And if so, what would he do about it? Esmeralda must’ve heard him coming, but was too interested in whatever treat she’d found to pay him much mind.
“Here, pig-pig-pig-pig-pig …”
Esmeralda stopped, backed up a few steps and looked at him as she crunched something. But that’s not what made Wylie gasp.
“Wylie?” Katie’s voice carried to him, but he was too scared to move.
A twig snapped, a sure indicator his sister was headed his way. “Don’t.” He raised a hand to stop her in her tracks. Better to find out what he was dealing with first before letting his little sister get a gander. Gathering his courage, he took a deep breath and peeked around the trunk of the tree … and yes, there was a strange man there, his scuffed black boots poking out from behind the huge pine, his eyes closed as if sleeping. He lay half on his side, his chest and one side of his face pressed against the cold ground.
Wylie peered closer. The man wore a long red coat, a kind he’d never seen before, along with a worn gray shirt and a pair of black denims. One leg of the trousers was wet – was the man hurt? “Mister?” he asked softly.
“Wylie,” Katie whimpered behind him.
Wylie’s shoulders slumped as he turned to her. “Katie, you knothead, I told you to stay back there!”
But Katie’s eyes, round as saucers, were on the stranger. “Who’s he?”
“I dunno.”
She leaned toward the man. “Is he … dead?”
“I dunno that either.”
Katie took a deep breath and screamed. Then she looked at Esmeralda rooting at the man’s side, happily munching away with a dribble of red around her mouth, and screamed again. “She’s eating him!”
Wylie noticed Esmeralda’s mouth, felt his breath catch … then released it when he recognized the smell of peppermint. “She’s not eating him, Katie! She’s eating his candy – smell!”
Katie stopped screeching long enough to take a good breath. “Oh. Sorry.”
Wylie waved her off. “Just don’t move.” She didn’t for once, and he slowly made his way around Esmeralda. Sure enough, several peppermint sticks wrapped in white paper stuck out of a pocket of the man’s coat. The pig had already made short work of any other candy he might’ve had. “Mister? Our pig’s eating your candy …” But the man still didn’t stir. “I think he’s hurt bad,” he told Katie. “See his leg?”
Katie stared at him as best she could without moving her feet. “Is that blood?”
“Think so.” Wylie straightened and looked around. “Where are we?”
&nb
sp; Katie shrugged. “Are we gonna take him home with us?”
“Too far.” He turned a full circle, then smiled. “Oh, I know where we are now – we’re near Widow Bright’s place. It should be just beyond these trees.” He pointed to his right. “We’ve been here before, remember?”
“Yeah – looking for Esmeralda,” Katie groused.
Wylie sighed and shook his head at the pig. “You sure like Widow Bright, don’tcha?” He turned to Katie. “Go run and fetch her. We need her help.” He pointed to his right again.
“What can she do?”
“She’s a grown-up – she can fix him,” Wylie said as if explaining the obvious. “By the time we run home and fetch help, he might bleed to death.”
Katie took one more look at the stranger’s bloody leg, gasped and took off like a shot, Esmeralda happily trotting after her.
* * *
Merry put on her apron and figured she could pretend she was making some elaborate feast, even though all she could do was milk Mrs. Robbins and wash and boil the chokecherries she’d found earlier. Maybe she should see if the folks at the Jones Ranch might need some butter. It would take time, but it would help a little if she could sell it. They had mothers looking after a passel of children of late, mostly babies, so butter they didn’t have to churn themselves might be a welcome thing indeed.
She was wondering if she could take any to Morgan’s Crossing to sell when a tiny rap sounded on her door. She turned, alarmed. “Who could that be?” She made her way cautiously to the front window, peeked out, then opened the door to find little Katie White standing there. “Good ev–”
Katie tromped into the house. “Widow Bright! My brother …” She gasped for air.
Merry dropped to one knee to face her. “Calm down, Katie, get your breath.”
Katie nodded and took a few good gulps of air. “Wylie found a man … in the woods … he’s hurt … not Wylie … the man is hurt …”
