Read Online A Creed Country Christmas by Linda Lael Miller - Free Book Online Page B

seemed to think she ought to change anytime now. “I dropped her off at the depot myself, and there was no sign of you.”
    There was no humor in Wes’s chuckle this time. “She sent Fred Willand’s boy, Charlie, around to the newspaper office with a note. ’Course, I’d have lit a cigar with it if it hadn’t been for Gracie.”
    Lincoln frowned. Just as their mother wasn’t fixing to change, Wes wasn’t, either. Both of them were waiting for the other to see the error of their ways and repent like a convert at a tent meeting, and that would happen on the proverbial cold day in hell. “You think it’s wrong, letting Gracie believe in this Saint Nicholas fella?”
    Wes lowered the stirrup, gave the saddle a yank to make sure it was secure, then swung up. “She’s a child,” he said. Lincoln couldn’t make out his features in the shadows. “Children need to believe in things while they can. I’ll leave the mule here for a day or two, if it’s all the same to you.”
    Lincoln nodded, stepped forward, hoping in vain for a better look at his brother’s face, and took hold of the reins to stop Wes from riding out. “Do you believe in anything, Wes?” he asked, struck by how much the answer mattered to him.
    Wes sighed. “I believe in Kate. I believe in five-cardstud and whiskey and the sacred qualities of a good cigar. I believe in Gracie and—damn it, I must be sobering up—I believe in your good judgment, little brother. Use it. Don’t let that schoolmarm get away.”
    “I’ve only known her since yesterday,” Lincoln reasoned. He was always the one inclined to reason. Wes just did whatever seemed like a good idea at the time.
    “Maybe that’s long enough,” Wes answered.
    Lincoln let go of the reins.
    Wes executed a jaunty salute, there in the shadows, and rode toward the door of the barn, ducking his head as he passed under it.
    “Rub that horse down when you get back to town,” Lincoln called after his brother. “Don’t just leave him standing at the hitching post in front of the saloon.”
    Wes didn’t answer; maybe he hadn’t heard.
    More likely, he’d heard fine. He just hadn’t felt called upon to bother with a reply.
     
    T HE TURKEY CARCASSES HAD BEEN trussed with twine and tied to a high branch in a tree so they’d stay cold and the wolves and coyotes wouldn’t get them. Looking out the window as she stood at the sink, Juliana watched the paleforms sway in the thickening snow and the purple gathering of twilight.
    She was certain she would never be hungry again.
    Behind her, seated at the table, Tom Dancingstar puffed on a corncob pipe, making the air redolent with cherry-scented tobacco, while Joseph droned laboriously through the assigned three pages of a Charles Dickens novel. The other children had gathered in the front room near the fireplace; the last time Juliana had looked in on them, Theresa and Gracie were playing checkers, while Daisy examined one of Gracie’s dolls and Billy-Moses stacked wooden alphabet blocks, knocked them over and stacked them again.
    The afternoon had dragged on, and Juliana wondered when Lincoln would come back into the house, when they’d get a chance to talk alone again, whether or not she ought to attempt to start supper.
    It wasn’t that she didn’t want to cook. She hadn’t been allowed near the kitchen as a young girl—Cook hadn’t wanted a child underfoot—and every school she’d taught at until Stillwater Springs had provided meals in a common dining room.
    Now, resurrected by Joseph’s account, the image of lastChristmas’s burned turkey rose in her mind. They’d managed to save some of it and eaten around the charred parts. After that, probably tired of oatmeal and boiled beans, the construction of which Juliana had been able to discern by pouring over an old cookery book, Theresa and Mary Rose had taken to preparing most of the meals.
    A snapping sound made Juliana jump, turn quickly.
    Joseph had closed the Dickens novel