How could a woman who looked so soft be so damn stubborn?
He watched Rachel gather her small brood around the lone grave. She pulled a Bible from her apron pocket and read a passage as unfamiliar to him as Greek. Then bowed her head and led them in prayer.
Not for the first time, Wade wondered what he’d gotten himself into. He shook his head, mentally chastising himself for getting involved. Three days from now the biggest card game west of the Mississippi was being played in Fort Laramie, and he intended on winning that money. He had to win a decent amount in that card game or find himself stranded, unable to continue the search for his brother.
But he couldn't just leave them here. And more importantly, the sight of Miss Cooke bending over that grave had touched a memory he’d rather forget.
"Thank you, Father, for sending us Mr. Ketchum," Rachel said. "Amen."
"Good Lord! Now she thinks I’m a damned saint," Wade mumbled his thoughts out loud.
Immediately, Rachel turned to face Wade, sending him a puzzled look. "What did you say, Mr. Ketchum?"
"I don't have time to cart a bunch of kids around," Wade said, running a hand through his hair as he gazed upon the children. "I have to be in Fort Laramie by Saturday."
Becky twittered with laughter. "Oh, I don't think a strong man like you would leave three small children and two helpless females all alone in the wilderness."
Helpless? Maybe they appeared vulnerable, but any woman who survived an Indian attack and buried a man, was anything but defenseless.
"Mr. Ketchum, I would like to leave here as soon as possible," Rachel asserted suddenly. "Are you going to help us or not?"
Everyone turned to him expectantly. Only the baby seemed uninterested in his response. The blonde-haired little girl looked so much like his sister Sarah, her gaze felt like a knife gouging his heart. They were wasting precious time.
He cursed under his breath."Of course, I’m going to help you. But I’m not going to spend another minute waiting for the damn Pawnee to return. Let’s go."
For More Information, Click Here!
Also By Sylvia McDaniel
Receive a free book when you sign up for my newsletter!
Thanks for Reading!
Misteletoe and Moonbeams
Merry Farmer
Copyright © 2016 by Merry Farmer
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Introduction
Miranda Clarke is a respectable, proper woman. So when she inherits The Holey Bucket Saloon in Mistletoe, Montana from her Uncle Buford, she is livid. She feels she has no other choice than to travel to Mistletoe and keep the place open, since that’s what her uncle wanted, but it is certainly not the life she wants to lead.
Randall Sinclair is a traveling brush salesman with dreams of bigger things. That is, his father has dreams of bigger things for him. And drives him relentlessly to achieve them. Randall himself would be more than happy to live a quiet life in a quiet town with a loving wife. Especially when he finds himself faced with beautiful and inimitable saloonkeeper, Miranda.
Their acquaintance seems doomed to be a brief one, two ships passing in the night…until a blizzard traps them alone in the saloon together. With nothing to do but clean up the saloon and sort through their immediate and intense attraction, the final days approaching Christmas end up being anything but cold, but with so many expectations heaped on top of them, can “Randy” and “Randi” find a way to be together after the storm?
Chapter 1
Mistletoe, Montana – 1890
Randall Sinclair heaved a heavy sigh and climbed out of the crowded stagecoach within seconds of it stopping in Mistletoe, Montana. The other passengers grunted and shifted behind him, as irritated and weary as he was. He should have taken the train, but they’d all stopped running after rumors of snow further down the line.
“Shut the dang door,” one of the stagecoach passengers growled. “It’s cold out there.”
It certainly was that. For miles, days, the only thing the stagecoach passengers had been able to see out the windows was snow and ice. It was a wonder the coach and its team could get through the winter wonderland at all. Randall wasn’t that familiar with Montana, but in the last few weeks while he’d been traveling from town to town, he’d never seen so much snow.
“Here’s your trunk,” the stagecoach driver called down from the top of the coach, unfastening Randall’s huge brush trunk from the rest of the baggage. The driver wore a long, thick, wool coat with a fur-lined hat pulled down over his head and a muffler wound tight around his neck. He grunted as he handed the trunk to Randall. “That thing’s heavy. What have you got in there?”
Randall answered with a wry laugh, setting his trunk on the packed snow of the street. “The weight of the world.”
It was hard to tell through the layers of wool protecting the driver from the cold, but Randall thought he got a strange look for his comment. A second later, the driver shook his head and climbed back into his seat.
“Aren’t you going to stop for a while and take in the sights of Mistletoe?” he asked, confused. They’d at least stopped long enough for the passengers to get out and stretch their legs at every small town before this.
The driver made a low, warning sound, then said, “Nope. Not with the talk of measles in town, and not with those clouds on the horizon looking the way they do.”
Randall raised a hand to shield his eyes from the glare of light on the snow and looked toward the western horizon. He squinted. What he’d thought were mountains now looked more like cold, worrisome clouds. There was a definite bite in the air, and the wind nipped at his exposed cheeks and ears.
The driver snapped the reins over the backs of his horses. With a, “Yee-ah!” the stagecoach lurched and rolled on. Randall figured he’d better move on too, if he knew what was good for himself.
He thrust his gloved hands under his arms and glanced down at his trunk. The words “Mendel’s Marvelous Brushes” were stenciled on the side. They’d been crisp and dark when he’d started out from Chicago two months ago, but they were battered and worn now. A little like him. But no matter how monotonous the traveling had become, no matter how many plaintive telegrams he sent back to his enterprising, demanding father, he couldn’t stop.
Stomping his feet to coax blood back into them and to disperse the ever-present, gnawing frustration in his gut, Randall grabbed his trunk by the handle and hefted it high enough to walk. Not that he knew where he was going. The tiny town of Mistletoe seemed overly quiet, even for all the snow. Several businesses lined the road where the stagecoach had dropped him off, and several houses beyond that. Something that might have been a hotel rested down the way. There was even a church at one end of town. A few wrapped-up people scurried from one building to another, but none of them seemed in a social mood.
“Perfect,” he muttered under his breath. “Just what every traveling salesman wants to see.”
He slogged his way to one side of the street, spirits as low as they’d been in ages. A part of him wanted to just sit down in the snow and give up. This wasn’t the life he’d imagined having, it was the life his father imagined. No, it wasn’t even that. His father imagined him being a successful and powerful business magnate, like him. Randall imagined a simple life with a simple wife and a small business. He didn’t need to be grand, just happy.
At the moment, the only way to happiness was by keeping his father happy, so Randall squared his shoulders, put on a smile of false cheer, and headed for the closest business, a barber’s shop. His frustrated sense of duty was eased by a hair at the sight of a pretty Christmas swag of pine, tied with red ribbon and hanging on the shop’s door.
“Excuse me,” he announced as he walked into the business. A weary
-looking man who must have been the barber sat in the barber’s chair, reading a yellowed newspaper. “My name is Randall Sinclair, and I come to you today from the Mendel’s Marvelous Brushes company.”
“Huh?” The barber frowned.
It didn’t bode well, but if there was one thing Randall’s indomitable dad had always told him, it was that only the weak took no for an answer.
“Mendel’s Marvelous Brushes manufactures every sort of brush a savvy businessman like you could want,” he went on, setting his trunk down and preparing to open it to display his wares. “Why, not only do I have shaving brushes and dust-brushes, I have a whole variety of—”
“No!” The barber leapt up out of his chair, shoving the newspaper aside. “No, no, no! I don’t want none of your fancy, overpriced brushes. I buy everything I need from the mercantile, just like any other person in this town. So you just stop right there and git!”
Randall sighed, re-buckling the straps of his trunk. “Oh. Um, all right, sir. Thank you for your time.” So much for not taking no for an answer. But if he was honest with himself, he hated confrontation, and he hated pushing brushes on people who didn’t want or need them. He lifted his trunk and headed back out into the frosty, Montana afternoon. The clouds had drawn closer.
He looked around, searching for any business that might need brushes. Farther down the street was a building that looked like a bathhouse, though it didn’t seem to be doing much business at the moment. He cleared his throat, stood taller, and headed down that way.
“Good day to you, sir,” he announced himself as soon as he walked into the bathhouse to find a stocky man at work scrubbing out a large tub. Perfect. “My name is Randall Sinclair, and I come to you today from the Mendel’s Marvelous Brushes company. We provide a wide range of brushes designed to—”
“No offense, sir, but can’t you see I’m busy?” the man said, turning to Randall with drooping shoulders and tired eyes.
“Well, yes.” Randall hesitated. He could hear his father’s voice in his head, pushing him on…relentlessly. “I think I can help. Mendel’s Marvelous Brushes carries every sort of scrub brush and bath brush that a business like yours could need. If you’d allow me to demonstrate…” He bent to open his trunk.
“If it’s all the same,” the bathhouse owner stopped him with a sigh, “I’d rather not. It’s been a heck of a month here in Mistletoe, and I can’t spare a second to listen to salesmen.”
“It’s…it’s not a long presentation.” At least it wasn’t if Randall did the short version.
The bathhouse owner shook his head. “No can do. I’m up to my elbows in work, what with the measles and all.”
“Measles?” The driver had said something about that.
“Sorry.”
Whether the bathhouse owner meant to be dismissive or not, Randall took the hint. Working hard not to be discouraged, he took up his trunk once more and headed out into the bitterness. The sun was gone entirely. Once more, he searched the town’s main street for any signs of life, any sign of someone who needed a brush. His gaze settled on a newspaper office across the street and down a ways. Figuring he couldn’t do any worse than he had already, he headed over, slipping on snow and ice as he went.
“Good afternoon, sir. My name is Randall Sinclair, and I come to you today from the Mendel’s Marvelous Brushes company,” he said, voice dripping with weariness as he stepped into the small office.
The man at work over the printing press glanced up. “Brushes?”
“Yes.” Smiling had never been so hard. “Mendel’s Marvelous Brushes has every kind of brush you would need to keep your office neat, tidy and in order.” He stopped at the end of his sentence, at a loss for what else to say.
The newspaper man blinked at him. A sympathetic grin pulled at the corners of his mouth. “My friend, you know there’s a measles epidemic raging through town right now, don’t you?”
“I heard something about that, yes.”
“And the weather has been awful.”
Randall glanced over his shoulder out the window. He needed to stay positive, he needed to make the sale. … Or was that his father talking. “It should make for a beautiful Christmas.”
The newspaper man chuckled lightly. “Yes, it should. But it makes for a mighty pitiful market for a traveling salesman in the meantime.” He stepped away from his press and approached Randall. “I’m sorry that I don’t need any brushes. I’m even more sorry that you probably won’t find a single taker in town right now. At least not until the epidemic is over.”
Randall sighed and returned the man’s kindness with as much of his own as he could muster. “Thanks anyhow.” He nodded, then picked up his trunk one more time and headed back out into the cold.
Well, that was it. He was stranded in a frosty town with a measles epidemic, no clue when the next stage would come by, fairly certain the trains wouldn’t stop at all. Not if the ever-increasing clouds were any indication. No one was in the mood to buy brushes. By his father’s standards, he was a complete failure. By his own standards, he was due for a change. He rubbed his gloved hands over his face, warming up his red nose. He needed something else to warm him up, and fast. The only thing he could see that would help with that was the saloon across the way.
“Well, at least I’ll be able to forget my troubles for a while,” he said aloud. And now he was talking to himself.
He picked up his trunk and headed on to the saloon. Something in his life had to change, and soon.
Exasperation. That was the word Miranda Clarke had been searching for this last hour. She was exasperated up to her eyeballs.
“No, Mr. Hoover, I will not pour you another one,” she sighed, nudging the old, rail-thin man off of the bar stool he’d sunk into two hours ago. “You’ve had quite enough already.”
“But you pour that sarsaparilla so pretty-like,” Mr. Hoover croaked and grinned, getting his balance, then shuffling across the saloon’s large, empty room toward the door.
He swayed, and Miranda caught him, murmuring, “That wasn’t sarsaparilla.” She glanced around at the thinning patrons of the saloon, anxious to get on with things. None of them were pleased with her for closing up early, just as she wasn’t particularly pleased with any of them for being there in the first place. At least the disreputable women had stopped patronizing the place since she’d taken over and put her foot down.
At least, all but one. Her gaze settled on the tall, lithe figure of Starla, with her red, satin petticoats and painted face. “Starla, could you help?”
“Sure, honey.” Starla sashayed away from the end of the bar and scooped Mr. Hoover under his arms. “Come on, Frank. Time to head home.”
“You should all head home,” Miranda told the three other men lounging around the saloon, finishing their drinks. She smoothed her hands over her conservative skirt, tucked the fly-away strands of her soft, brown hair back into the severe bun she wore, and pressed her hand to her high-necked bodice. “Please,” she added.
The men hummed and grumbled. The two playing cards at one of the liquor-stained tables stood, leaving their cards and several empty bottles where they were.
“What kind of saloon closes before the afternoon is over?” one commented to the other.
“A piss-poor one, that’s for sure,” the other replied. Miranda tried not to wince at their harsh language.
The two men shrugged into their wool coats and marched grumpily toward the door. Miranda wanted to shake her fist at them or give them sharp kicks in their rears as they left, but in the first place, a lady would never do such a thing, and in the second, they were right.
She sighed, shoulders sagging, and turned to walk back to the bar. Old Teddy Potts, the last man standing, slipped hazily off his bar stool, leaving a shining quarter on the counter.
“Cheer up, sweetie,” he slurred. “Old Buford mighta been a bit barmy to leave his old place to you, but it’s Christmas.”
Miranda blinked. She planted her hands
on her hips. “And?”
Teddy chuckled, stumbling toward Miranda and giving her arm a good pat. “Christmas is a time of magic, of wishing on moonbeams, of miracles. Didn’t your old Uncle Buford ever tell you that?” He hiccupped.
“No, he did not.” As soon as the words were out, she softened her expression and turned to escort Teddy to the door. The man was harmless, dependent on drink, and had been one of her batty uncle’s best friends. “Uncle Buford would have done better to leave this saloon to you in his will, Mr. Potts.”
“Me?” Teddy jerked straighter, swaying as he did. He snorted. “Psht! I couldn’t run a saloon if it had a hundred legs all its own.” He laughed at his own joke.
Miranda wasn’t sure she understood it. She took Teddy’s coat down from a hook and helped him into it. As she was winding the muffler around his neck, Starla strode back into the room.
“Well, Frank’s taken care of. It sure is nippy out there, though. The clouds are moving in fast. Looks like we’re in for another storm.” She finished with a shudder and marched across the wide room to the huge fireplace. She held her hands out to the crackling blaze. “Of all things, Everleigh Walsh just told me she saw a stagecoach stop in the middle of Main Street earlier.”
Miranda finished helping Teddy into his warm things. “A stagecoach? I haven’t seen one of those in years.”
“We used to ride ’em all the time before the trains came,” Teddy said, his voice muffled. “Nothing like a stagecoach ride.”
“Nothing like your own, warm living room and fireplace either,” she added, pushing Teddy toward the door. “Tell Mrs. Teddy I give her my best,” she added before helping Teddy through the door.
As soon as it banged shut behind him, Miranda turned to the now-empty saloon and let out a weary breath. “What were you thinking, Uncle Buford?” she murmured. She started back toward the bar, dry-washing her hands.
Wild Western Women Mistletoe, Montana: Sweet Western Historical Holiday Box Set Page 20
