by Jenna Kernan
He stopped. Turned. Was she still talking about gold?
“Josh didn’t give me that book. You did.”
His heart thudded in his chest. “Finally figured that out.”
“Garrett, I couldn’t recognize your love. It was buried deep. Hidden.”
“You sure about it now?”
She nodded. “When I look back, you’ve always been there watching out for me, strong...protective...caring—ever since that day when you helped me from the creek. I don’t want you to stop.”
“Couldn’t stop if I wanted to,” he admitted.
“Good.” Tears pooled in her blue eyes.
Did this mean...? After all this time he was afraid to hope.
“Because I love you, Mr. Sheridan.”
He drank in the sound of her words, committing the moment to memory. Somewhere along the way, she’d forgiven him! The huge weight he’d carried ever since Josh died dropped from him. It was a miracle, pure and simple. A Christmas miracle. He swallowed. “Then you’ll stay awhile—after dinner?”
“Yes.”
He had to know. Had to be sure. “Longer?”
“If you’ll have me.” She looked back at the ranch house. “And Lily.”
He could almost see his future stretching out ahead of him, and Kathleen was part of it. He took a deep breath. “Forever?”
“I like the sound of that.” Her eyes shone with happiness and love. “Forever.”
“Nothin’ short of that will do.” He pulled her into his arms and kissed her soundly on the lips, sealing their future together.
* * * * *
CHRISTMAS
IN SMOKE RIVER
LYNNA BANNING
Dear Reader,
Christmas in the Old West was like all of life in the Old West, especially on ranches and farms and in small towns—“homegrown.” Nobody had much money, so Christmas was a time when mothers and daughters baked cookies, fathers and grandfathers built doll cradles and hobby horses, and grandmothers knit sweaters and scarves for gifts.
A tree would be dragged in from the woods and decorated with paper chains and popcorn balls and strings of cranberries. People gathered to sing songs and play games, to eat and laugh together. Schoolchildren in town went caroling up and down the streets and pored over store window displays of dolls and toy trains; in the country, older kids went on sleigh rides and collected in kitchens to make divinity and fudge.
My grandfather was raised on a ranch in Oregon. He told me that one Christmas when he was a boy, he felt truly blessed when he received a single fragrant ripe orange in his Christmas stocking.
I wish all of you the rich blessings of the holiday season that people enjoyed in the Old West.
Lynna Banning
In memory of my grandfather, Claude Earl Banning, and with grateful thanks to Suzanne Barrett and Ignacio Avalos.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Epilogue
Chapter One
Lilah
The house came as a shock. It was much larger than I had expected, much too big for just myself and Miss Mollie, the kitten I had brought with me on the train from Philadelphia. And no garden! Instead there was an expanse of dry, dusty ground punctuated with a single overgrown maple tree in the far corner and surrounded by a scruffy picket fence that in some earlier life must have been white but now looked mottled and in some places was peeling down to the bare wood.
Aunt Carrie, you lied. Well, of course she had. That had been my aunt’s forte, had it not? Which was why it was I, and not she, who was now taking possession of this big old rundown place in this little scrap of a town three thousand miles from Philadelphia and civilization.
Oh, mercy, this is what I wanted?
I unlocked the front door and inspected the interior, upstairs and down. Horrors! It looked as if no one had set foot in the place for at least twenty years. Cobwebs drooped from the ceiling beams, dust balls six inches in diameter lolled in the corners. The wallpaper was peeling and the dingy paint was cracked. My heart curled up under my starched white shirtwaist and quivered in despair.
Thoroughly discouraged, I settled Mollie in her basket, walked into town and engaged a room at the Smoke River Hotel. As soon as I registered, I stepped next door to the restaurant and ordered a large, comforting pot of tea. At least I had a house to live in, and a quiet place to pursue my calling, far from Mama and her disapproving sniffs. Lilah, you simply must learn to fit into society.
I gazed wistfully out the front window of the restaurant. I was now way out West in Oregon, far from anything civilized. Across the street were a barbershop, a mercantile, a dressmaker and a bakery. And that was it, except for the sheriff’s office.
I scratched behind Mollie’s ear and slipped a morsel of my buttered toast into the basket at my feet, then wished I hadn’t. The waitress might hear the kitten’s purring.
The house—my house—needed everything: a thorough cleaning top to bottom, fresh paint and new wallpaper in the three upstairs bedrooms, one of which I would use as my office when my typewriter and desk and filing cabinet arrived from home. The room was light and airy, with large many-paned windows and a high ceiling.
I sipped my tea and quivered at the prospect before me. Except for a huge nickel-trimmed stove in the kitchen and my two travel trunks, there was not a scrap of furniture in the entire house. No bed, no bookcases, no china cabinet, no...anything.
On the way back to my room at the hotel I stopped in at the mercantile. Aunt Carrie had left me pots of money in her will, so cost was no deterrent. As soon as I found a Montgomery Ward catalog, I would simply order what I needed.
At Ness’s mercantile, the proprietor—surely not the owner, as she could not be more than fourteen years old—located a catalog and, with a stealthy glance at the curtain behind her, the girl let me take the catalog up to my hotel room. That evening I mulled for hours over beds and end tables and settees, and the next morning when I presented my filled-out order form, the girl’s brown eyes popped.
“Ma’am, you sure you want me to order all this?” she gasped.
“I am. And have you any flower seeds? What once might have been a garden at my new home is now bare dirt.”
She nodded so enthusiastically her braids bounced. “Oh, I love gardens! And you’ll need a shovel, and a hoe, and...”
I must have groaned, because she, her name is Edith Ness
, laughed and asked me where I came from. When I told her, her eyes rounded. “You must have had servants,” she said in a hushed tone. “And a gardener.”
Servants, yes. But a gardener? It was Mama who had mulched and planted and pruned in our large expanse of land by the river, and there were always scads of blooms and bouquets in every room.
I told Edith that I planned to be my own gardener and that I wanted flowers, and lots of them, in the worst way. As soon as possible.
My furniture would be shipped by rail from Omaha within three weeks. While I waited, I worked on the house, scrubbing floors until my knees ached, combing spiders’ webs off the walls, pulling the garish, faded wallpaper down and burning every last scrap in the stove.
I also made good use of the shovel, and while I had never had any instruction in spading up the earth, I managed to dig a wide bed all along my front fence and planted the seeds I had purchased. I watered them with used wash water and fussed over them for weeks while wagonloads of the furniture began to arrive from the station.
Finally, three weeks later, I was thrilled to see beautiful, brave green sprouts poking up from the earth.
Now each afternoon I sit in my new porch swing, which came unassembled and cost me three broken fingernails before I figured out how it all fit together, and envision how lovely my garden will look in another month when the nasturtiums and black-eyed Susans and baby’s breath will be in bloom. Lately I even wrestle my typewriter out to the front porch, where I prop it up on an upended apple crate and clack away at my writing.
I cannot wait for my flowers to bloom!
Chapter Two
Gale
Dammit all to hell, running cattle through town to get to the railhead is the craziest idea since Whitey Poletti used his hair clippers to shear his daughter’s pet lamb. I keep telling Charlie, my boss, that it’s nuts to drive cows down main street, but can I tell the owner of the biggest ranch in Lane County what to do?
“You’re just the foreman of the Rocking K, not the boss,” he yells. “I’m making the decisions, not you.”
Right. Old man’s getting gray hairs in his brain. Anyway, yesterday me and Skip and Jase and two vaqueros rounded up a hundred head of prime beef and got as far as the outskirts of Smoke River when I realized it wasn’t gonna work. The cows kept straying away from the herd, and just as we started through town, Skip and Ernesto lost control over them.
It was too late to backtrack. Nothing to do but drive ’em on through and pray. Jase rode on ahead to clear everybody out of the way, and we thundered on down the road, riding like crazed Indians. I brought up the rear. For a few minutes I couldn’t see a damn thing for the dust, but when it lifted I wished it hadn’t. I sure hated to watch what was happening.
The cows were spread out over the road, and Skip and Ernesto couldn’t hold ’em. Goddamn, it was hard to watch.
The left flank barreled down that road like the Lord won’t have it, and just at the edge of town where the road narrows there was no place to go, so they milled around and trampled some lady’s front fence all to hell.
I caught a glimpse of her as I rode past, but I was so busy trying to control those darn cows I didn’t pay her much mind. She was standin’ on her front porch and her mouth was open as if she was screamin’ at us, and I guess she was. Anyway, by the time we got the herd penned up for the night it was way past suppertime, so I stopped in at the saloon for a shot of red-eye and a bit of cool-off time.
After dark I rode out of town on my way back to the Rocking K, but I knew I’d have to stop where we’d taken the fence down and make amends. I hate this part of bein’ the foreman, but I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t.
Sure enough, the pickets were plumb ruined, split and shattered every which way. And some little nubby green shoots that had poked up were flattened. I tied my gelding to the only fence post left standing, swatted the dust off my Stetson and tramped up to the front door and knocked.
Nothing happened, so I knocked again, louder.
Still nothing. Hell’s bells, maybe she’d gone for the sheriff.
Nah. I’d have run into the sheriff at the saloon.
I raised my fist and was just about to bash a good one on the door when it jerked open and the lady peered out at me. Right away I started to explain about the fence, but when I got a good look at her, my tongue went numb and I just stared. I’d never seen a female anything like her.
She had red hair, dark like good wine or that rambly rose that spangles over the bunkhouse door, and it was knotted up into a thick bun at the back of her neck. Little tendrils had escaped and curled around her face.
She stared back at me with dark blue eyes so big they looked like pansies. In the lamplight spilling from inside the house they seemed almost purple.
She didn’t smile. I stood there for a full minute wondering why I couldn’t talk and why she didn’t smile or say anything, and then she opened her lips and spoke.
“Yes?”
“Ma’am, I—” I swallowed hard. “I came about your fence.”
“Oh, I see.” Her voice got real icy.
I swallowed again. “My boys kinda lost control over the cows this afternoon, and I sure am sorry about your fence.”
“And my garden,” she said. Her voice was awful quiet.
“Oh, yeah, I guess we tore up the ground a mite.”
The way she kept looking at me with those eyes of hers kinda unnerved me, and I couldn’t think what to say next.
God, I’d never seen a woman as beautiful as she was. I looked her over real quick like and that just made it worse. She had on a ruffly red-striped shirtwaist with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, tucked real neat into a plain gray skirt. Looked like denim or twill, and it flared over her hips just right.
“My fence?” she reminded. Still icy.
I tried like hell to get my eyes past where her breasts pushed out those red stripes. “Uh, yeah, your fence. I’ll send one of my hands out to repair it tomorrow, soon as we get the cattle loaded.”
“And what about my garden?”
“Well, I s’pose he could fix that up, too. Sure am sorry.”
“A garden cannot be ‘fixed up.’ It is destroyed beyond repair and must be replanted.”
“Okay.”
“I grew it from seed, you understand. That takes time. Eight weeks, to be exact.”
She didn’t sound so frosty now. She sounded as though she’d like to brain me with a two-by-four. She looked at me as if I was gonna fix it, but hell, I didn’t want to take that on. Now I didn’t know what to say.
“Eight weeks, huh?”
She nodded. “I was anxious to see the flowers bloom because...well, I was anxious.”
“Sure sorry to have ruined it, ma’am. My name’s Gale McBurney.”
“Mr. McBurney.”
“I’m the foreman at the Rocking K, and like I said, I’m real sorry.”
“You will, of course, have everything repaired?”
“Yeah, well, hope I didn’t interrupt your supper.”
“Actually, I was hanging wallpaper in the upstairs bedroom.”
Now, that caught my interest. This old place had been empty for years. Probably needed a bunch of work. How come her husband wasn’t hanging the wallpaper? Or maybe she lived here alone?
“What is the Rocking K?” she asked all of a sudden.
“It’s a ranch, ma’am. About six miles out of town.”
“Oh. I arrived on the train from the East. To me, it all looks like one big ranch.”
I caught myself watching her mouth as she talked. “The Rocking K is the biggest ranch in the county, Mrs....?”
“My name is Lilah Cornwell.”
I nodded. “Missus Cornwell.”
“It’s Miss Cornwell.”
>
Miss. As in not married. For some reason that made me real happy. Not that there was a shortage of single women in the county, and not that I hadn’t had some dealings with one or two over the years, but...Well, it just made me feel good. She was sure something to look at.
I settled my hat on my head, then snatched it off again. “Like I said, Miss Cornwell, I’ll have one of my hands fix your fence.”
“And replant my garden,” she reminded me.
All the way back to the ranch I thought about her voice, kinda low and throaty, like a nesting dove. Miss Lilah Cornwell, huh?
Chapter Three
Lilah
The man stood there on my front porch in an open-collared blue chambray shirt stuffed into tight, dusty Levi’s, looking like a character in one of those dime novels. He was very tan, with eyes the color of green leaves. As he talked, an unruly shock of black hair kept flopping onto his forehead. I wondered if he was part Indian. Probably not, with a name like McBurney. Black Irish, perhaps.
But he was promising to fix my fence. And my garden. Studying his obvious chagrin over the destruction his cows had wrought on my property, I felt my fury ebb. So he would send one of ‘his’ hands tomorrow. That must be what a ranch foreman did all day, boss people around.
I decided that I disliked him.
Still, something about the man was arresting—perhaps the odd hunger in his eyes. I found it disturbing. For that alone I should dislike him even more.
But I did not.
The next morning, after my breakfast of tea and marmalade toast, I commenced hanging the yellow-flowered wallpaper in the second bedroom, which would serve as my office. I filled a bowl with the lumpy paste and lugged it and the roll of wallpaper upstairs. For hours I smeared the sticky stuff on the wrong side, slapped it on the wall, smoothed it out and trimmed the edges. I worked steadily until I was lightheaded with fatigue and famished to boot.
