A High-Country Christmas, page 9
“No, it won’t, little one. Time flies much faster than you realize when you’re young, so enjoy every minute of it. Why, when I was your age, your brother and I were traipsing all over this country, riding and exploring, and getting into arguments. It seems like only yesterday.”
She clamped her lips tight, fearing she had shared too much information with the innocent child.
Emmy gave another little bounce. “I know all about that. Seth told me how you could ride and rope and even shoot almost as good as him.”
“Almost?” How easily Abigale was drawn into a competitive mood, so typical of Seth Holt and his teasing.
“Wanna know a secret?” Emmy looked up from the corner of her eye, legs swinging up and bouncing back against the mattress and bed frame.
“Is it a very important secret, one you should not share?” Abigale had no desire to hear Holt family matters that were none of her business. She had enough concerns of her own.
Emmy waved Abigale’s question away. “No. It’s just about Seth.”
Oh. Well then. Curiosity lifted its head, ravenous and reckless. “In that case,”—she crossed her heart and leaned in closer—“I promise not to tell.”
Emmy giggled and cupped her hand around her mouth as if someone else might overhear. “He’s sweet on you.”
Abigale gulped at the revelation and was powerless to stop the flush rising in her neck and into her jawline. She fussed with her hair, hoping her hands would hide the worst of it. “How do you know? Did he tell you?”
The idea that Seth Holt confided in a sister less than half his age was not one Abigale relished.
“He doesn’t have to tell me.” Emmy jumped off the bed and assumed a very dignified air. “I just know these things.”
Abigale covered her mouth, refusing to let laughter wound the little girl. After a moment’s struggle for composure, she stood. “I see.”
“That’s it exactly,” Emmy said on her way out the door. “All you have to do is look at him. You can see it all over his face.”
Perhaps Abigale hadn’t been looking at Seth with the right eyes.
She went to the window and discovered she’d rested longer than a few minutes. Dusk had settled over the ranch, hemmed in with a gentle snowfall. Seth and his father led animals into the barn, then shuttered windows and closed the big double doors.
Her stomach fluttered and her heartbeat kicked up just watching Seth. He moved about with purpose, a controlled grace in his long strides, and something about it appealed to her. He appealed to her.
Again she touched her lips, remembering how close he’d been—as if he meant to kiss her. Had he? He’d made no similar move since he’d returned with the chickens, but how could he when he’d been busy chasing off mountain lions, rescuing Chester, and moving all her stock and stores to his family’s ranch?
Emmy may not have seen that embrace—thank heavens—but she insisted she knew her brother’s feelings.
Abigale feared for her own emotions, for she wore them on her sleeve like a roadmap, according to Mams and Pop.
How was she going to spend Christmas in the Holt family home without letting them all know about her growing affection for Seth?
~
Pa was right again.
After supper, Seth tromped through nearly a foot of snow, double-checking the livestock. He and Pa had gotten everything settled just in time. Seemed to be a common theme lately.
He’d shown up at Millertons’ not long after Abigale had fallen. Thwarted a lion’s attack on Chester. And gotten Abigale and her animals here before this storm hit. From the looks of it, they might be socked in for days.
Maybe it was all a sign that he had just enough time to ask Abigale to marry him. If what he’d learned in the last two days held true, it was that simple. Ask her.
And he’d scare himself up a bear or two while he was at it, wrestle ’em down, and make her a rug from the hides. He screwed his hat down tighter, raised the collar of his coat, and went hunting the axe.
After stacking a wall of wood on the back porch, he stretched a rope to the barn, another one to the outhouse, and a third to the woodpile. At the back door, he stomped snow from his boots before entering, pulled them off inside, and hooked his hat and coat by the door.
His family sat by the hearth, Abigale with them, Chester at her feet. The old dog was lying on his belly and looking around as if unsure of where he was. Abigale leaned over and stroked his back, whispering against his ear. The dog’s tail thumped in response.
“Did you see that?” She looked up as Seth drew another chair next to her. “Did you see his tail?”
“I did.” He rubbed behind the dog’s ears, careful of telltale buckshot sores. It could have been so much worse.
Abigale’s eyes fluttered like she had a spec in one, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “Thank you for saving him, Seth.” The shine of her gaze said a mountain more, but he’d not go there with his folks in hearing distance.
“How’d you save him, Seth?”
Leave it to Emmy to drag every last detail out into the open.
Ma dug through her mending basket. “Yes, we’d enjoy hearing that story as well, if you don’t mind, Abigale. Forgive us if we’re being nosy.” She offered her friendliest smile for Abigale’s benefit, but Seth recognized the tone that said, “Cough it up, and cough it up right now.”
Abigale’s face went a shade lighter, and he figured she was hesitant about mentioning what she saw in the woods.
“It’s all right.” He lowered his voice. “They already know about your trees. Pa’s paint, remember?”
“Oh, yes. All right.” She pushed at her hair, a clear sign she was nervous.
“I rode up to the waterfall yesterday, and Chester went with me. While we were there, we heard a tree fall and tracked the sound to where someone was limbing it, getting ready to drag it out.”
Pa’s gaze flicked to Seth and back. “Did you see who it was?”
Seth signaled Abigale to go ahead.
“It was Mrs. Blackwell.”
His ma looked thunderstruck. “Charlotte?”
“Yes, ma’am. She had three men with her. Hired hands, I suppose. One might have been her son, but I couldn’t be sure.”
Pa rubbed the side of his jaw. “How do you know it was her?”
Abigale bucked a little, rising to the challenge. Seth couldn’t help but admire her pluck when it wasn’t directed at him.
“I’d know that voice anywhere.”
Ma let out a disgusted huff. “You and me both, Abigale.”
“But what about Chester? What happened to him?” Emmy stuck on an idea like a tick on a hound.
“He followed me.” Abigale leaned over and stroked his side as if he were the most precious thing in her life. “But it was late by the time we headed back. He’s old and tired, and when it started snowing, it must have been too much for him to keep up with me. I didn’t know he’d fallen behind until Seth met us on the trail.”
Her voice broke on the last word, and every head in the room turned in Seth’s direction except hers.
There was no way out but straight ahead. “When I got to Millertons’ with the cow, Abigale was gone, so I went looking for her.” He left out the part about being mad as a hornet. “I fetched Pop’s shotgun off the wall before I rode out.”
“Thank God.” Abigale’s whisper skimmed the air, but Emmy caught it.
“Did you shoot something?” His sister’s eyes were big as saucers.
“I shot at something. Scared it off.”
“A mountain lion.”
Abigale’s comment sucked the air from the room.
Emmy got up from where she’d been playing with her dolls and hugged him. “That makes you a hero, Seth.”
Then she gave Abigale an exaggerated wink. “Told ya so.”
Abigale turned bright pink and buried her face in Chester’s neck.
“Time for bed, little lady. Come on.” Ma ushered Emmy and her dolls upstairs.
Pa added a couple of logs to the fire, then turned his back to the flames, hands stretched out behind him. “Good to have you with us, Abigale. I’m glad you’re safe and sound.”
“It’s good to be here, Mr. Holt.”
“Ben. Just Ben. Like Ida said, we’re family.”
Pride flickered behind his eyes and he gave Seth a quick nod. “Glad you found them in time, son.” Then he took to the stairs.
Seth could have sliced the tension with a crosscut saw. It hadn’t been like this at the Millerton place when it was only him and Abigale. He missed the ease of their company, there in the big log house alone, where he could take her in his arms and ask her to marry him without anybody other than Chester listening in.
Course he hadn’t even come close to doing such a thing, but he’d thought about it enough.
Yeah, he missed those few special days.
He hoped he hadn’t missed his opportunity as well.
CHAPTER 13
Snow fell every day for a week. Abigale had never been completely alone in a heavy winter storm, and she was beyond grateful that she wasn’t now.
Not that she wouldn’t have done just as well at home by herself. She split wood and built fires and fed stock and did everything else that one did to survive. But that wasn’t what mattered, what warmed her heart.
Seth and his family did that.
Her first morning with the Holts, she had helped Ida knead bread dough and chop vegetables for a stew. Ben Holt evidently ate as much as his son if the amount of food Ida prepared was any indication. Two iron kettles simmered at the back of the stove, and by dinner time, four loaves of fresh bread perfumed the air.
Emmy had churned sweet and salted butter, and Abigale helped her press it into molds. Ida’s joy in serving her family far outshone anything Abigale had once considered pleasant at Wolfe Hall, and only drew her deeper into the high-country life she’d loved as a child.
The next week played out with the same routines. Similar to the way Mams’s fine stitches framed her needlework, everyone’s appointed chores framed the family. Abigale felt a part of it too, for she was not excluded from the daily labor as each person’s help was needed and appreciated.
November blew into December, raising deeper drifts against the barn and anticipation in the house. The day Seth and his father dragged a cut pine through the door, Emmy nearly came apart with delight.
“A Christmas tree! A Christmas tree!” She clapped and hopped around her papa and brother like a little bird.
Seth winked at his sister and tweaked her nose, then gave Abigale a banked-coal look that sent her pulse racing not too awfully far ahead of her imagination.
Escaping upstairs to her room, she left the family to their traditions while she considered her predicament: no gifts to share at Christmas.
Already she’d learned from Emmy that Ben Holt read the Christ-child story every Christmas Eve after supper and the family exchanged presents.
As much as she adored her grandmother’s needlework, Abigale didn’t adore the effort it required. Handwork was a skill completely wasted on her, though Mams had never put it so cruelly. Abigale simply did not care to poke a needle and thread in and out of hooped cloth until a pretty picture resulted. She’d much rather ride, work in the garden, or read. But how did those things translate into Christmas gifts?
Her baked goods were always well received, but they seemed such a common thing at this time of year. Ida Holt’s table was never anything less than heavily laden. What could Abigale possibly give this generous family they didn’t already have?
Pushing the window curtain aside, she found the ranch and surrounding grasslands a Currier and Ives lithograph. Such a snowy landscape was not a problem for ranchers who seldom drove into town, as had been her own custom for years. But she knew exactly what she wanted to give Seth, and now she couldn’t get to it.
Her cheeks warmed merely thinking about the scarf in the glass-topped display case. How it would accentuate the meadow hue of his hazel eyes. Was such a gift too intimate, reserved only for wives and husbands, parents and children? Even so, she longed to see it on him and chided herself for letting anger blind her that day to the not-so-distant future.
If only she could ride to Briggs’ mercantile and see if the neckerchief was still there.
Her sigh puffed against the windowpane. If only was an unprofitable consideration that did absolutely no good for anyone at all.
Retrieving Mams’s receipt book from the bottom of a satchel, Abigale took it to the rocker and began searching for inspiration. Her grandmother’s distinctive flourishes filled the pages, receipts for pies and cakes as well as potions and salves. As Abigale thumbed through the collection, a folded paper slid to the floor, one she’d forgotten about.
Another young woman from Wolfe Hall had shared her mother’s receipt for peppermint pulls last year, warning that excessively humid air spoiled the endeavor. Humidity was typically no problem during a high-country winter, and this could be Abigale’s answer. Only four ingredients were required, besides water, and with the sugar she’d brought, if Ida had peppermint extract, Abigale believed she could make the candy and divide it among the Holts. But she’d need to make a test batch or two in order to get it just right—and pray they didn’t get a wet snow at the same time.
Folding the receipt, she stood and tucked it into her skirt pocket, encouraged by her plan—enthused, even, to find the sadness of Pop’s absence tempered a bit with the prospect of giving.
The following day shone bright and clear, inspiring Ida to catch up on washing she had delayed. Abigale helped pin items on the drying lines and noticed Ben Holt saddling his horse at the barn.
She reached for the clothespins Emmy offered. “Where’s your pa going?”
“He’s riding in to Divide for something he ordered. I hope it’s sugar sticks and new cloth for my doll clothes.”
Abigale dropped the wooden pins in the muddy snow beneath her and stooped to help Emmy pick them up. “Sorry about that. If you go rinse these off inside, I’ll take the bag and finish pinning.”
Emmy bunched the dirty pins in her apron and headed for the house.
Abigale quickly finished with a tablecloth and worked her way around to Ida who was pinning clothes on the second of two strung lines.
“Nice day for a ride into town, isn’t it?” Nonchalance was not Abigale’s strong suit any more than pretending and lying. In fact, she was beginning to think she’d didn’t have one, other than straight-forward opinion, so she simply blurted out what she wanted to say. “What takes your husband into town today?”
Ida appeared unoffended by Abigale’s nosey question and kept right on pinning bloomers and petticoats. “He ordered a wagon part at the mercantile and wanted to take this warm spell to see if it arrived.”
Oh dear. If Abigale hem-hawed around he’d be gone. “Do you think he’d mind picking up something for me as well?”
That stopped Ida’s busy hands, and she gave Abigale her full attention. “Well, it depends on what it is. If he can carry it in a saddlebag, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. Go ask him, and I’ll finish with these clothes.”
Oh, for pity’s sake. Abigale would rather walk to town than ask Seth’s pa to check on the scarf for her, but this might be her last chance before Christmas. She handed the bag of pins to Ida. “Do you happen to have peppermint extract?”
Ida’s expression brightened into a mischievous smile. “Sounds like you’re in a candy-making mood. I don’t have peppermint, and I’d be surprised if Mr. Briggs had any either. But you can ask Ben to check for you.”
“Please—don’t let him leave until I get back with the money.”
“There’s no need—”
Abigale didn’t hear the rest, because she’d hiked her skirts and dashed up the back-porch steps and through the door, where she pulled her work boots off. Thank goodness she hadn’t worn her lace-ups this morning.
In her room, she snatched her reticule, then raced back downstairs and into her boots. Ben sat astride his horse at the clothesline, and at her approach, gathered what looked like laughter and tucked it behind his knowing eyes.
Oh, the discomfort she went through for Seth Holt. This might be the most embarrassing thing she’d ever done on purpose.
“I hear you need peppermint extract,” Ben said with thinly veiled humor.
Abigale emptied what money she had into her hand and placed it in his.
He frowned. “This is more than enough. Here.” He offered most of it back to her.
She clasped her reticule in both hands and stepped back. “Well, there is one more thing—if you don’t mind checking on something for me. I have no idea how much it is, but I’m hoping what I’ve given you is enough. If it isn’t, then never mind. The peppermint will do.”
Ben glanced at his wife, who patted his knee and looked up at him with nothing less than love.
He covered her hand and directed his question to Abigale. “What is it?”
A blush warmed her neck, but she didn’t have all day. She gambled on the lifetime acquaintance of this loving family to keep them from thinking her improper. “When I was there last month, I saw a green silk neckerchief in Mr. Briggs’s display case. Of course it might be gone by now, but if you don’t mind, would you check and see? And if it’s there, would you buy it for me, along with the peppermint? Providing I’ve given you enough money, of course.”
He dropped Abigale’s money in his coat pocket and tugged his hat down in a way that reminded her of Seth. “Anything else?”
“If there’s money left over, I’d appreciate a length of ribbon too. Any color. And please, don’t tell anyone about it.”
His piercing gaze, so like his son’s, sank her voice all the way to her toes. “The scarf, that is. I’d like it to be a surprise.”
One side of his mouth quirked.
Ida covered a smile.
“I’ll be back before supper.” He leaned from the saddle and kissed his wife full on the mouth. Right in front of Abigale.
~
