A Western Christmas Homecoming: Christmas Day Wedding Bells ; Snowbound in Big Springs ; Christmas with the Outlaw

by Lynna Banning

  She eyed the two saddles he’d dropped at her feet. “Close,” she said. “You are the experienced one with a gun.”

  As it turned out, Rand regretted sleeping close to her. All day he had been reviewing his plan for catching her sister’s killer, deciding who to interview and what premises to inspect. He was also worrying about how to keep Alice safe in an untamed mining camp.

  He was continually surprised by the woman riding with him. She wasn’t frightened by the things that should frighten her, like trapping a killer. Instead she jumped at rustling in the underbrush, at buzzard calls, at things that were no threat, like a chicken hawk swooping off a tree limb or a rabbit scuttling away under a huckleberry bush.

  But she had no idea how rough the frontier outside a small peaceful town like Smoke River could be. And she had a lot to learn about open country. He knew he could keep her safe in countryside like this, where there was clearly identifiable danger. But what about in a rough mining town?

  He’d noted that Alice could be a bit headstrong, somewhat impulsive in making decisions and stubborn when it came to defending them. He figured Rooney hadn’t had a prayer in hell of dissuading her from accompanying him. But Alice knew nothing outside of her genteel, civilized life as a librarian. He was apprehensive about her getting hurt.

  They spent an uneventful night rolled up in their blankets beside the campfire, and while Alice said she wasn’t frightened, Rand still worried.

  The next morning his worst fear played out. After a breakfast of coffee and biscuits he had mixed up and baked on a hot rock, he packed up the saddlebags and they started into the hills. They followed a barely discernible trail that wound up through dry scrub and stands of sugar pine and alder trees, and they had just come around a bend when they ran smack into a surprise.

  A seedy-looking character in frayed Levi’s and a rumpled shirt was perched on a flat rock with a rifle trained on them.

  Rand drew rein.

  The man’s bloodshot eyes studied his horse for a long minute. “Where ya goin’, mister? And missus,” he added.

  Rand prayed to God Alice would keep her mouth shut. Casually he crossed his hands over the saddle horn and bent toward the man. “Goin’ to Boise City, friend. I own the saloon next to the hotel.”

  Behind him he heard Alice give a little squeak.

  “Ya do, huh? How come I never seen you there?”

  “Guess that’s because I’ve been traveling for the last month.”

  “Oh, yeah? Where to?”

  “Eastern Idaho. Little town called Broken Toe.”

  “Broken Toe, huh? Never heard of it.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Rand said easily. “Hardly more’n a wide spot in the trail.”

  The man eased his bulk off the rock and clumped down close enough to poke his rifle barrel into Sinbad’s neck. “Whatcha doin’ in Broken Toe?”

  “Gettin’ married,” Rand said quickly.

  Alice gave another squeak.

  “Yeah?” The bloodshot eyes lifted to Alice. “She yer wife, is she?”

  “Yep. Name’s Oliver,” Rand volunteered. “George Winston Oliver. My wife’s called Bess.”

  “Well, now, Bess. Whaddya got to say fer herself?”

  “I say that I am eager to see the new house George has purchased in Boise City,” Alice said smoothly.

  The man gave her a lingering look. “Say, you’re a right pretty gal!”

  Rand held his breath.

  Alice cleared her throat. “I was voted the belle of Broken Toe when I was a girl,” she said.

  “Were ya, now?” The man took two unsteady steps forward. “Ya still don’t look more’n a girl, honey.”

  Rand spotted a saddled horse almost hidden among the trees. Unobtrusively he moved his hand toward his holstered Colt.

  “George,” Alice called. She moved her horse forward and reined to a stop on Rand’s right, shielding his gun hand from view. “You said your father is expecting us, and he never likes anyone to be late. And you told me how impatient he is, being the sheriff.”

  “Huh?” Scruffy sent her a sharp look. “What’s in them saddlebags, Miz Oliver?”

  “Pots,” Alice said instantly. “And my mama’s best iron skillet. She gave it to us for a wedding present.”

  “Got any money?” He took a step closer and Rand thumbed off the safety on his revolver.

  Alice’s laughter rang out. “Money! You can’t be serious. Ever since we left Broken Toe, George has been complaining about how much our wedding cost him. And now...” She reached over and playfully slapped his arm. “We have nothing left to set up housekeeping with except my mama’s iron frying pan and some old pots.”

  “Got any liquor?”

  Alice drew herself up so stiff Rand thought she might pop the buttons off her red plaid shirt. “Sir! I am a good Christian, raised in St. Joseph’s United Methodist Church in Broken Toe. I will have you know I never, ever touch spirits! And,” she added with a sidelong look at Rand, “now that we’re married, George doesn’t touch spirits, either.”

  Rand unclenched his jaw and choked back a snort of laughter. Alice was as inventive as she was pretty.

  The man groaned and began to back away. “Oh, hell, I’m wastin’ my time on you two.” He staggered off into the trees for his horse, and clumsily pulled his bulk into the saddle.

  “Adios!” he called. Rand watched the man wheel his mount, crash through the brush and disappear. He waited until the hoofbeats faded away, then thumbed the safety back on.

  “Is—is he gone?” Alice whispered. He noticed the hand holding her reins was shaking.

  “Yeah. Pretty quick thinking, Miz Oliver. Very creative.”

  She gave a nervous laugh. “Really? I was petrified!”

  He chuckled. “You been reading books on acting in your library?”

  She was silent. He stepped Sinbad forward. “Come on, Miz Oliver. We’ve got hours of riding ahead of us.”

  Chapter Six

  By the time Rand indicated where they would camp for the night and drew rein, Alice had managed to stop shaking.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  He sent her a curious but admiring look. “Whatever were you thinking to spin such an outlandish tale?”

  “You started it,” she pointed out. “You invented George...what was his name? Oliver? And the town of Broken Toe. Where did that come from?”

  “I sure as heck don’t know,” he confessed. He couldn’t seem to stop looking at her. “But you came up with the part about the wife and the expensive wedding and the frying pan.”

  “Maybe you have been reading books on acting,” she quipped. She lifted her bedroll out of the saddlebag and tossed it near the circle of stones Rand was gathering to make a fire pit.

  “We have to decide some things about Silver City,” he said. He pared dry twig shavings with his pocketknife and arranged leaves and small branches over them. “I don’t want to make up our story on the fly.”

  “Very well. I am a saloon girl and you are...?”

  “Your bodyguard. George Winston Oliver. Pick a name for yourself, Alice.”

  “Martha.”

  “Nah, too grandmotherly.”

  “Suzannah, then.”

  “Too Southern. You don’t sound Southern. You sound Northern. Yankee-refined.”

  “What about—?”

  “Lolly,” he supplied. “Lolly...Maguire. If you’re Irish you’ll be forgiven for a bit of blarney if you make a mistake.”

  “Lolly,” she murmured. “Rand, I have never set foot in a saloon. What does a saloon girl do, exactly?”

  He tramped twice around the fire pit, stopping to extract a tin of corn and another of beans from his saddlebag. Using his jackknife, he jimmied the beans open and set the can on a flat rock near the
fire. Then he sat back on his heels and looked up at her to answer the question.

  “A saloon girl dances with the patrons. Gets them to buy her drinks. Flirts. Maybe she sings a bit.”

  “Sings? Sings what? The only songs I know are hymns.”

  He laughed. “Then it looks like I’m gonna have to teach you some bawdy songs.”

  That piqued her interest. “What would be the lyrics to a bawdy song?”

  Alice Montgomery, you should be ashamed of your interest in such things.

  But she wasn’t ashamed. She was curious. In fact, she felt a bit daring, venturing to delve into the mysteries of the seamy side of life like the girls down at Sally’s, the ones Verena Forester sewed fancy dresses for.

  “Are you going to share a bawdy song with me?” she asked.

  Rand busied himself spooning corn and beans into a blackened kettle and set it near the fire. “A bawdy song,” he murmured. “Let me think.” After a long pause, he turned toward her.

  “Here’s one. ‘A pretty girl from Abilene, tall with hair of red, she waltzed a gent and talked so sweet, he forgot his wife, took her to—’”

  He broke off. “Well, you can guess the rest.”

  Alice’s cheeks felt hot. Songs with words like those certainly did not appear in library books!

  She stared at him. “Where on earth did you learn a song like that?”

  “In a saloon,” he said drily. He busied himself stirring the corn and bean mixture in the pot, then dumped a handful of coffee beans in the small wooden mill and rattled the handle around and around. Alice thought his cheeks looked a bit pink, but it was getting dark so she couldn’t be sure.

  She did wonder about him, though.

  “Have you spent a lot of time in saloons?” she asked.

  “Nope.” He set the coffeepot over the fire and spooned some of the corn and bean mixture onto a tin plate and handed it to her.

  “You mean you just made up that song?”

  “Sure. Kinda like you coming up with that wild tale about your mama’s frying pan and the Boise City sheriff.”

  “And tomorrow I will have to pretend to be Lolly Maguire, a saloon girl.”

  “Yeah,” Rand said. He shot her a glance. “Think you can manage it?”

  Oh, my, Alice thought. What would someone called Lolly Maguire say to a man? Especially one in a saloon?

  “I will try,” she said. “I might turn out to be such a convincing Lolly Maguire you may be quite smitten!”

  Instantly she dropped the spoon onto her tin plate with a clank.

  Where had that thought come from?

  Rand gave her a long look and without a word poured a mug of coffee and set it on the ground near her elbow.

  “Smitten, huh? Alice,” he said with a chuckle, “it’s the miners you’re supposed to charm, not me.”

  Chapter Seven

  When they reached Silver City they reined up on the hill overlooking the canvas structures and flimsy-looking buildings of the town spread below them. “It’s a mining camp, like I told you,” Rand said. “Looks kinda impermanent.”

  “It looks like a sea of gray canvas.” Alice pointed to a large green-gray canvas structure with a white-painted wooden cross over the entrance. “Even the church is a tent!”

  Rand turned to her. “Are you ready for this?”

  “Yes, I am ready.” Her heart thumped under her plaid shirt as she followed Rand’s bay, guiding her mare down to Silver City. The narrow road into what passed for a town was oozy with thick mud that squished under their horses’ hooves.

  They picked their way down the tent-clogged street until they reached the two-story red-painted Excelsior Hotel, which, thank God, was made of wood. But red? Such a bold color for a hotel!

  Next door to the hotel was another wooden building, the Golden Nugget saloon. That seemed strange in a town named for its silver mine. There must be other wooden buildings, but all she could see were tents and more tents. Big ones. Little ones. Some more ragged than others.

  Oh, poor Dottie. Could her sister really have been happy here in this temporary-looking place?

  The desk clerk at the hotel, a bent gray-haired man with thick spectacles and a wrinkled shirt that had once been white, flipped open the register and stood poised with his pen.

  “Name?” he said in a weary voice.

  “George Oliver.”

  “This your wife, Mr. Oliver?”

  Rand turned to her. “This is Miss Lolly Maguire.”

  “Separate rooms, then,” the clerk muttered.

  Rand laid his hand across the register. “One room. Miss Maguire is a well-known entertainer, and I work as her bodyguard. Where she goes, I go.”

  The clerk’s salt-and-pepper eyebrows waggled. “Even to her hotel room?”

  “Our hotel room,” Rand said evenly. “Like I said, Miss Maguire doesn’t go anywhere without her bodyguard. Where she goes—”

  “I go,” the clerk finished. “Oh, well.” He sighed. “It’s not the first time two crazy people came through town.”

  “We’re not going ‘through’ town. Miss Maguire is staying. As am I.”

  The graying eyebrows lowered into a frown. “That’ll be two dollars a night, Mister Oliver. In advance.”

  Rand slapped a fistful of silver dollars onto the counter, and the clerk pounced on them. “Let’s see, now...” He counted them with his forefinger and slid them off into his palm. “That’ll get you five nights at the Excelsior.”

  “Six,” Rand challenged. “You miscounted.”

  There was a long minute during which no one spoke. Finally the clerk heaved another sigh. “All right, six nights.” He snatched a key from the row of hooks on the wall behind him and laid it in Rand’s outstretched palm. “Second floor, third door on your left. Number seven.”

  The small room overlooked the street below and beyond that was a view of the hills surrounding the town. Two narrow beds were shoved together against one wall, and a tall oak armoire and a white-painted chest of drawers sat against the other. Rand started to stow the saddlebags in the armoire, but Alice stopped him.

  “Wait. I want my saloon girl dress.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now. I need to hang it up. And I will need a bath before...before I make my debut.”

  Rand went back downstairs to order her bath, and while he was gone Alice watched the goings-on in the street below. Horses. Wagons. Filthy-looking miners covered with white dust slogged through the mud. Only one or two women. And no children. The town felt raw. Unfinished.

  But it was certainly busy. Seething would be a more accurate term. Everyone looked like they were in a hurry, even on this scorching October day, and they all walked with their heads down, as if thinking intently about something.

  Rand returned ten minutes later, along with a Mexican man lugging a metal bathtub and two giggling girls who dumped in bucket after bucket of steaming water. When they were finished, they left folded towels and a bar of sweet-smelling soap beside the tub.

  Alice eyed the tub of steaming water and then noticed that Rand was eyeing it, too. “Isn’t there something you need to do, Rand? Visit the barbershop or the sheriff or something?”

  “Nope. I’m staying right here. Like I said, I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  “Well, I hardly think—”

  “Alice, don’t think. My orders are to protect you and find your sister’s killer, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. The killer could be anybody, so I’m sticking close.”

  “But, Rand, I want to take a bath!”

  “Good idea. I’ll turn my back.”

  She gave him a long look, then studied the steaming tub that beckoned. This was highly improper, sharing a room with Rand, and now... She gulped. Now she would be taking a bath with him standing right there? This w
as the most scandalous thing she’d ever done in her life!

  But instinctively she knew he wouldn’t be talked out of staying, so she shrugged, shook out the petticoat and the corset and lacy camisole she’d brought in her saddlebag and hung them up to air with her red dress. Then, with a surreptitious glance at Rand she began to unbutton her denim riding skirt.

  “Rand?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I am waiting for you to turn around.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” He pivoted toward the window and stood with his back to her.

  Rand didn’t watch her, exactly. But he could sure hear her. Every little splash and sigh set his imagination on fire, and finally he cracked. He half turned away from the window, and out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of the bathtub. And her.

  Big mistake. Big damn mistake.

  By the time she finished smoothing that cake of soap all over her skin he was rock-hard. Miss Lolly-Alice was changing his mind about everything—librarians, Pinkerton assignments, even celibacy. When she reached for a towel to dry herself off, he knew he had to escape.

  “Alice,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I’m going to talk to the sheriff after all. Don’t let anyone in, even someone who wants to take away the bathtub.”

  “The bathwater is still warm, Rand. Wouldn’t you like to use it? It will be cold when you get back.”

  “A cold bath will suit me just fine.” If he was honest with himself, a cold bath was exactly what he needed.

  He sidled past the tub, locked the door behind him and headed out onto the street to find Sheriff Lipscomb.

  * * *

  Silver City had exactly seven wooden structures. In addition to the Excelsior Hotel and the Golden Nugget saloon, there was the Silver City National Bank, the Coleman’s Assay Office, the run-down livery stable, the tiny sheriff’s office, which looked like a made-over chicken coop, and a large, well-maintained stamp mill, where mined rocks were smashed into bits to extract the silver. Everything else, two mercantiles, a dressmaker, a barber shop, a bathhouse and four eating establishments, one of which served nothing but pie, conducted business in tents. Even the physician-coroner and the funeral parlor did business in tents. One stiff wind would flatten the entire town.