An Outlaw's Christmas Read online

“How’s that ornery cousin of mine faring?” he called, bringing the team to a halt. The back of the sledge was piled high with an assortment of things—crates and boxes, a supply of hay for Sawyer’s horse, a few bulging feed bags and, most notably, the parts of an iron bedstead and a mattress secured with rope.

  “He was up and around earlier,” Piper replied, staring at the bedstead and wondering whether Clay planned to leave it at the schoolhouse for her or use it to transport Sawyer to the ranch, “but he’s resting at the moment.”

  “Up and around?” Clay echoed, pleased. He climbed off the strange conveyance and approached through the knee-deep but already-melting snow. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Sawyer always had more gumption than good sense.”

  “He’s wanting his trunk from the depot,” Piper said, as Clay reached her and she stepped back so they could both go inside, where it was warmer.

  “I figured as much,” Clay told her, taking off his hat and hanging it from a peg near the door. He’d stomped most of the snow off his boots out on the porch. “Picked it up before I came here.”

  Sawyer, who must have heard the commotion, appeared in the doorway to Piper’s room, looking rumpled and grim. He obviously needed more laudanum, and Piper made up her mind to fetch it and supervise the dosage this time, make sure he didn’t guzzle the stuff down again.

  “You ready to make the trip out to our place?” Clay asked his cousin, looking doubtful even as he spoke. “I can haul you out there today if you want to go, and in style, too, like Caesar reclining on Cleopatra’s barge.”

  Piper felt a pang of sadness at the thought of Sawyer’s leaving the schoolhouse, which was just plain silly, because she ought to be relieved instead. She really ought to be relieved.

  Sawyer frowned, puzzlement personified. “Caesar? Cleopatra’s barge? What the devil are you yammering on about?”

  “Either way, I came prepared,” was all the answer Clay gave. He was still grinning, proud of his resourcefulness, and he waxed unusually loquacious, for him. “I brought along a kind of sleigh I rigged up last year, out of some old boards—normally use it to haul feed out to the cattle on the range when the wagons can’t get through—even brought a bed along, in case you were ready to head out to the ranch sooner than expected. There’s hay and some grain for your gelding, too, if you’d rather stay put a while longer. In that case, I’ll set the bedstead up for Piper, so she won’t have to sleep on the floor until you’re out of her hair.”

  Piper blinked.

  “You slept on the floor?” Sawyer asked, practically glowering at her, as though accusing her of some unconscionable perfidy.

  “Where did you think she was sleeping?” Clay inquired good-naturedly. “This is a one-room schoolhouse, Sawyer, not a big-city hospital or a grand hotel.”

  “I cannot have a bed in my schoolroom,” Piper put in hastily, though neither man seemed to be listening.

  “I’ll go back with you,” Sawyer said to Clay, though when he took a step, he winced and swayed on his feet so that his cousin immediately stepped forward and took him by the arms, lest he collapse.

  Sawyer flinched and his face drained of color.

  Chagrined, Clay loosened his grip, though he didn’t dare let go completely. “I don’t believe you’re ready quite yet,” he said reasonably.

  “My .45,” Sawyer said, looking dazed. “She—took it.”

  “Never mind that,” Clay told him. “Right now, we’ve got to get you back to bed.”

  Sawyer allowed himself to be turned around and led in the other direction, most likely because he didn’t have much choice in the matter. “My pistol,” he insisted.

  Piper glanced toward the cloakroom, where she’d hidden the weapon, climbing onto the food box to push it to the back of a wide, high shelf. She wanted that dreadful thing out of sight and out of reach, so none of her students would stumble upon it, once they returned to school, and bring about a tragedy.

  For all that, something in Sawyer’s tone bothered her. Was he afraid the man who had shot him would return, make another attempt on his life and, this time, succeed in killing him?

  Maybe, she concluded, but the fact remained that Sawyer wasn’t in his right mind, given all the blood he’d lost and the pain he’d suffered. By now, the shooter was surely putting as many miles as he could between himself and Blue River, no doubt believing that his quarry was dead.

  She shuddered, hugged herself against an inner chill.

  What if she was wrong? What if, by hiding the gun, she was putting both Sawyer and herself in danger?

  In the next room, Clay murmured something, and then the bedsprings creaked as Sawyer lay down again.

  Piper paced. She’d ask Clay what to do with the gun when he came back.

  He took his time, though, speaking quietly to Sawyer, probably giving him laudanum from Doc’s bottle. By the time he returned to the schoolroom, Piper had reheated the coffee left over from breakfast and poured some into a mug for him.

  “Thanks,” Clay said, accepting the cup and taking a restorative sip before going on. “Has Doc been back? Sawyer’s in bad shape.”

  Piper shook her head no. “He’ll be here,” she said, with confidence. Weather or no weather, Doc Howard was not the kind to stay away when he was needed. “Clay—?”

  He raised one eyebrow. “If you’re worried about me setting up that bedstead in the schoolroom—”

  Again, she shook her head. “Sawyer’s been asking for his gun,” she said. “I put it away, but now I’m wondering if I ought to give it back to him. In case—in case—”

  Clay’s expression was a solemn one. “Where is it?” he asked.

  She led the way into the cloakroom and pointed upward.

  Clay was so tall that he didn’t need anything to stand on to reach the Colt .45 in its hiding place. He extended one hand, felt around a little, and found the pistol. Bringing it down to eye level, he examined it, expertly checking the cylinder to see that there were bullets inside.

  “Better give it back to him,” he said. “I know Sawyer, and he won’t get any real rest as long as this thing is out of his reach.”

  Piper’s heart pounded. “But—” She paused, swallowed, tried again. “He’s not himself. What if he doesn’t recognize you or me or Doc and shoots someone?”

  To Piper’s surprise, Clay chuckled, though it was a raspy sound, not really an expression of amusement. “Sawyer’s himself, all right,” he assured her. “Always is, no matter what. And he won’t shoot anybody who isn’t fixing to shoot him, no matter how delirious he might be.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Piper persisted. She hated guns. These were modern times, for heaven’s sake, and they were not the Old West but the new one.

  “I know my cousin,” Clay replied matter-of-factly. “We grew up together, he and I. He’s been shooting almost as long as he’s been riding horses, and he showed a unique talent for it from the first.”

  Again, Piper shuddered. “You’re saying that he’s a—a gunslinger?”

  “I’m saying he’s good with a gun. There’s a difference.”

  “But what if he’s a criminal? You’ve said it yourself—no one is sure, including you, that Sawyer isn’t an outlaw.”

  Clay held the pistol carefully but competently, keeping the barrel pointed toward the floor as he passed her, leaving the cloakroom. “Even if he is an outlaw,” he replied easily, “he wouldn’t shoot anybody down in cold blood. He’s also a McKettrick, after all.”

  Piper was exasperated. The McKettrick family had their own distinct code of ethics, hammered out by the patriarch, Angus, and handed down to his sons and their sons after them, but it seemed obvious that Sawyer might not subscribe to that honorable philosophy, given his secrecy about his vocation. On the other hand, Clay trusted his cousin enough to hand over his own
badge, and that was no small matter.

  Clay carried the pistol to Sawyer’s bedside and came back, intent on the next task. “I’ll see to my cousin’s horse,” he said, “and unload the supplies.”

  Doc Howard showed up while Clay was outside, and the two of them carried the bedstead and mattress, still roped together, into the schoolhouse.

  The bed wasn’t very wide—it probably belonged to either Edrina or Harriet—but there was no room for it in front, so they took it into the teacher’s quarters. Piper fussed and hovered like a hen chased away from its nest, but Clay only said, “You can’t sleep on the floor,” and proceeded to set the thing up in the little space available—crosswise at the foot of the bed where Sawyer lay, sound asleep.

  It made a T-shape, and Piper figured that T stood for trouble.

  “You’ll be quite safe,” Doc added, in fatherly tones, after helping Clay assemble the second bed. Sawyer’s eyelids fluttered, but he didn’t stir otherwise. The pistol rested, a daunting presence in its own right, on the night table. “Mr. McKettrick here is an invalid, remember.”

  An invalid? Piper thought. Sawyer had gotten out of bed without help just that morning, visited the shed where his horse was kept as well as the privy, and returned to the schoolhouse with enough strength to drink coffee and eat breakfast.

  “Safe?” Piper challenged, folding her arms. “By now, my reputation must be in tatters.”

  “Nobody knows Sawyer’s here,” Clay reasoned, unwinding the rope that left a deep dent in the middle of the bed. “I haven’t said a word to anybody but Dara Rose. She sent some things for you, by the way, staples, mostly, and a book she ordered from back East. Says she’ll read it when you’re finished.”

  Piper thought of her cousin with both gratitude and frustration. If only Dara Rose were here, too. As a respectable married woman, she could have defused any gossip by her mere presence.

  Doc wouldn’t look at Piper, though it took her a moment to notice, and when she did, she saw that his neck had reddened above his tight celluloid collar. He’d told Eloise, of course—his wife would have demanded an explanation for his leaving the house when everyone else was staying home, close to the fire.

  “Doc?” Piper prodded suspiciously.

  “I’ve sworn Mrs. Howard to secrecy,” he said, but he still wouldn’t meet her gaze.

  Some things, like a mysterious man occupying the schoolmarm’s bed, able-bodied or not, were simply too deliciously improper to keep silent about, especially for people like Eloise Howard. Bess Turner, by ironic contrast, wouldn’t say a word to anyone—Piper was sure of that.

  She groaned aloud.

  “It’s too late anyhow,” Clay observed lightly, straightening after he’d crouched to tighten a screw in the framework of the bedstead. “If there’s damage to your good name, it’s already been done.”

  Piper flung out her hands. “Well,” she sputtered, “thank you very much for that, Clay McKettrick. But why should you worry? You’re not the one who’ll wind up an old maid and maybe even lose her job!”

  He chuckled and shoved a hand through his dark hair. “I reckon it’s a certainty that I’ll never be an old maid,” he conceded. “But you probably won’t, either. There aren’t so many women way out here that men can afford to be choosy.”

  Doc Howard closed his eyes, shook his head.

  Piper would have shrieked at Clay if it hadn’t been for Sawyer, placidly sleeping nearby. She didn’t want to startle him awake—he might grab for his pistol then and shoot them all.

  “Choosy?” she fired back, in a ferocious whisper.

  Doc Howard put a hand to each of their backs and steered both Clay and Piper out into the schoolroom. “Now, Clay,” the dentist said, in a diplomatic tone meant to pour oil on troubled waters, “any man would be proud to have a lovely woman like Piper here for a wife. Piper, Clay’s going to pull his foot out of his mouth any moment now and apologize for the thoughtless remark he just made.”

  Clay did look sorry. Deflated, too. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” he said. “I do ask your pardon.” When Piper just glared at him, not saying a word in reply, he sighed miserably, turned and headed outside, ostensibly to bring in Sawyer’s trunk and the things Dara Rose had sent in from the ranch.

  Doc smiled and touched her upper arm. “There, now,” he told her. “Matters are rarely as bad as they seem.”

  Piper opened her mouth, closed it again, remembering childhood counsel. If she didn’t have something nice to say, she shouldn’t say anything at all.

  “I’m going back in there to check the wound and change the bandages,” Doc said, leaving Sawyer himself completely out of the equation, it seemed to Piper.

  She busied herself building up the fire. Clay carried in a crate filled with supplies, and she spotted not only the promised book, one she’d been yearning to read, but a bag of coffee beans, tea leaves in a tin canister, several jars of preserves, two loaves of bread, and even part of a ham, with the bone intact, so she could make soup later.

  Piper said nothing.

  Clay, resigned, went out again, lugged a sizable travel trunk over the threshold and on into the little room that now contained two beds instead of one.

  As if she’d consider sleeping in such close proximity to a man, an armed stranger, no less, of dubious moral convictions.

  Spending another night on the floor wasn’t a happy prospect either, though, so she put that out of her mind, along with thoughts of Sawyer McKettrick.

  Doc and Clay conferred again, and soon came out of the bedroom, single file. Doc’s hands were wet from a recent washing—he must have used the basin on Piper’s bureau—and he was rolling down his sleeves, shrugging back into his coat to make his departure.

  Most likely, he would go straight home and tell Eloise that the problem of sleeping arrangements over at the schoolhouse had been solved. Now the teacher would have a bed of her very own.

  Inwardly, Piper sighed. Doc, having only the best of intentions himself, mistakenly believed that everyone else was the same way.

  “I’ll tie Cherokee behind the sleigh and lead him out to the ranch,” Clay told Piper. “That way, you won’t have to worry about feeding and watering him if it snows again.”

  “Thank you,” Piper said crisply. This, it seemed, was Clay’s version of appeasement, at least in part. “When will you be back?” The question was addressed to both Clay and Doc Howard.

  “I’ll get here tomorrow if it’s at all possible,” Doc promised.

  “Soon as I can,” Clay said, in his turn. “Dara Rose tells me the baby’s dropped a little, says it means we’ll have another daughter or a son anytime now, so a lot depends on how she’s feeling.”

  “Maybe Dara Rose would be safer in town,” Piper said, fretful again as she thought of her cousin way out there on that lonely ranch, heavily pregnant. “Closer to Doc.”

  “I’m a dentist,” Doc reminded them both.

  “You’ve delivered babies before,” Piper said. It was true; she herself knew of two different occasions when he had served as midwife.

  “Only because I didn’t have a choice,” Doc answered.

  “I’ve brought a few colts and calves into the world,” Clay put in, affably confident. “It can’t be all that different.”

  Piper had had enough male wisdom for one day. As much as she dreaded their leaving, a part of her couldn’t wait for both Clay and Doc to make themselves scarce. Naturally, that meant she’d be alone with Sawyer again, but he slept most of the time anyway.

  “Tell Dara Rose I’m grateful for the things she sent to town for me,” she said moderately. “Especially the book.”

  Clay smiled. “She wrote you a letter, too. It’s in the box somewhere.”

  The news heartened Piper, and at the same time made her regret that she h
adn’t anticipated this and prepared a letter of her own, to send back with Clay. “I hope to see all of you at the Christmas program, if not before then,” she said.

  Clay looked dubious. “I’ll do my best to bring the girls in for the party, if the weather allows, but I can’t see Dara Rose making the trip.”

  “No,” Piper agreed sadly. “I suppose not. She’s well, though?”

  Clay smiled. “She’s just fine, Piper. Don’t you worry.” His eyes lit up. “Tell you what. If Sawyer’s better by then, I’ll bring both of you out to the ranch Christmas Eve, after the program, and we’ll all celebrate the big day together. I’ll even see that you get back to Blue River before school takes up again after New Year’s.”

  “I’d like that,” Piper said, cheered. The prospect of spending time with her cousin and the children, holding the baby if it had arrived by then, and, yes, taking long, luxurious baths in Dara Rose’s claw-footed tub, complete with hot and cold running water, renewed her.

  A few minutes later, after bringing in more water and firewood, Clay and the doctor left.

  Piper watched them go through the schoolhouse window, Sawyer’s buckskin gelding plodding along behind the team and sled. The sky had gone from blue to gray, she saw with trepidation, but she kept her thoughts in the present moment, since worrying wouldn’t do any good.

  Emptying the crate Dara Rose had filled for her took up a happy half hour—there were notes from Edrina and Harriet, as well as a long, chatty letter from their mother—and Piper, feeling rich, made herself a pot of tea, lit the lantern against the gathering gloom of a winter afternoon, and sat down at her desk to read.

  Dara Rose gave a comical account of ranch life, especially in her current condition, assured Piper that she had nothing to fear from Sawyer McKettrick, and related funny things the children had said. Between the approach of Christmas and being virtually snowed in, Edrina and Harriet had an excess of energy and bickered constantly, settling down only when Clay reminded them that St. Nicholas paid attention to good behavior and dispensed gifts accordingly.

  By the time she’d finished reading the letter through for the first time, Piper was both smiling and crying a little. She’d miss Dara Rose and the children terribly if she went back to Maine, she reminded herself silently. They were all the family she had, after all, here or there.