Hill Country Christmas

Delia felt the earth shift beneath her feet as if she had been whirled around a dozen times and let loose. She would have fallen if the stranger hadn’t put out a hand just then to steady her.

“Easy there,” Jude Tucker murmured, his touch gentle. “You’re white as bleached bones, Miss Keller. Why don’t we step up onto your porch and sit down on those chairs? I’ve given you a shock, ma’am, but I reckon you’ll be wanting to hear the rest once you’ve had a few moments to think.”

She didn’t remember giving permission, but with his hand on her elbow, he guided her up the three steps and settled her into the rocker that had been her grandpa’s favorite place to while away an evening. He watched as she untied her black bonnet and set it on the small table between them.

“Is there a pump around back? Could I fetch you a cup of water?” Tucker asked.

His voice seemed to come from a long way off, and Delia had to force herself to make sense of his words before she could answer him. “A pump? Water? No…That is, yes, there’s a pump, but no, I don’t want any….”

Then, as the result of years of modeling herself after her grandpa, who’d never done the least thing without thinking of other people first, she added, “Oh, but feel free to help yourself, if you’re thirsty. There’s a cup hanging by a string from the pump.”

He looked surprised. “It’s mighty nice of you to be askin’ at such a time, ma’am. Perhaps I’ll do that, after I’ve told you about why your father sent me to see you.”

“What…what happened to my father?” she said, swallowing past a lump in her throat, her eyes burning as she struggled to focus on the stranger.

Jude Tucker looked down at the hat he held between his long, tanned fingers. “He died mining silver out in Nevada, Miss Keller,” he said.

When she said nothing, merely waited, he looked up at her, then went on.

“You probably know they struck silver out there in ’59, long before he got there, but your father discovered a new mother lode nearby. I’d been helping him mine it. He’d been lucky—luckier than anyone’s been since the Comstock Lode. He’d been saying he was going to head back to Texas, but before he could there was a mine collapse. I’d gone to town for supplies with the wagon, and he’d gotten pinned under a couple of big beams for several hours. He…”

Tucker paused, then seemed to think better of what he was going to say. His eyes shifted toward the road, but Delia could tell he wasn’t really seeing anything. He was remembering.

“It was clear he was in a bad way when I got there. I pulled the beams off him. I was all for trying to get him to the doctor, but he wouldn’t go. He told me he knew he was dying. There probably wasn’t anything the sawbones could’ve done anyway, and the ride would have killed him. He told me just to let him lie there so he could use the moments he had left to tell me where to find you, Miss Keller. He was gone just a few minutes after that.”

Delia felt a hot knife of regret stab her. If only her father hadn’t been so restless—if only he hadn’t felt that need to go seek his fortune. He’d be alive today, and she wouldn’t have had to grow up without a father. Mrs. Calhoun had been unknowingly right when she’d quoted that verse from the Bible. The love of money had certainly been the root of evil for Will Keller.

“And now you have,” she said, remembering her manners. “It was good of you to come so far, Mr. Tucker, to tell me about my father’s death. I…I don’t have any way to repay you for your trouble.”

Something shifted in the depths of those steely eyes. “You’re welcome, but I…didn’t come all this way just to inform you of his death. I came to bring you something. You’re his only living heir, after all.”

“Heir?” Once again, it was as if he was speaking a foreign language.

His lips curved upward slightly. “Well, I suppose heiress would be the proper word, ma’am. In my saddlebags I have a certificate from the bank in Carson City that you can have transferred to your bank here in town.”

“Certificate? What do you mean?”

“Your father had already mined quite a lode of silver before anyone—anyone besides me, that is—got wind that he’d struck such a big vein. He converted it to cash and put that in the bank. He died a rich man, Miss Keller. And now all his wealth is yours.”

He’d been afraid that the news might cause her to faint for real this time. Jude watched, ready to catch her, as the heavy dark lashes flew up and surprise siphoned the blood once more from her cheeks, but Delia Keller remained upright.

A soft gasp escaped her lips. “Rich? My father? And he left it all to me?”

Her incredulity at being the sole beneficiary surprised him in turn. “You were his only child, Miss Keller. Who else should he leave it to?”

“I…I don’t know,” she stammered in bewilderment. “As long as he’d been gone from here, I thought it possible that he might…well, have married again. Maybe even started a new family somewhere.”

Jude wished his friend were alive again, if only for a moment, so he could upbraid him for deserting his responsibility to his only child and making this beautiful woman doubt her importance to her father. Compared to that, even the thousands of dollars Will Keller had left her were fool’s gold.

“Or he could have left it to you, his partner.” She’d been looking down at her lap, but now he found those green eyes trained right on him.

Jude found himself unable to meet her frank regard. “I…I wasn’t his partner,” he explained. “I just worked for him. He found the silver all by himself. He gave me plenty for traveling expenses, Miss Keller. That was enough.”

“You could have kept the certificate and claimed you couldn’t find me. No one would have been the wiser.”

Those eyes seemed to bore right through him, straight to his soul.

“No, I couldn’t have,” he said, wondering what Delia Keller looked like clothed in some color other than black. Green perhaps, to match her eyes. Now, that would be a picture. “Besides, what would I do with so much money? I go where the wind takes me.”

“You’re a drifter?”

It was phrased as a question, but it wasn’t one. Jude knew she had sized him up when he’d asked for directions yesterday—or if she hadn’t, the sour-faced woman next to her had done it for her.

“You don’t want to settle down somewhere, Mr. Tucker? Put down roots, make a home?”

He had to quell her inquiries before he ended up saying more than he meant to. Jude gave her a direct look, a look that was a little too bold, a look that said she didn’t know him nearly well enough to be asking such a personal thing.

“The question is, what are you going to do with it, Miss Keller? That’s what you need to be thinking of.”

He saw the flush sweep up her neck and into her cheeks and knew she’d gotten the message he intended.

“Oh! I…I suppose you’re right….” A parade of emotions played across her face as he watched, from astonishment to thoughtfulness to amusement.

“Well, this does change things, doesn’t it? I was on the way to town to sell my eggs so I’d have enough to buy sugar, and I thought while I was there I’d see about getting a job. I thought I’d better start saving some money for when the new preacher arrived and I had to find a new place to live.”

He laughed. “You won’t have to do that now, Miss Keller.”

She smiled, a smile of dawning confidence. “No, I won’t, will I? I…I can buy a house if I want to, can’t I?”

He nodded, amused. She really had no idea, just yet, of just how wealthy she was. “Miss Keller, with the wealth represented by that certificate, there, you can have a house built to your exact specifications. It could be the biggest house in Llano Crossing, if you wanted. Or you could move anywhere you like.”

“I—I see,” she breathed. “Well! That does give me something to think about, doesn’t it?”

A gleam flashed across those clear green eyes. Delia Keller looked as if she’d thought of something very satisfying. Jude wondered for a moment what it was.

“What do you suggest I do first, Mr. Tucker?” she asked.

“You said you were going to town. You should still go, and right away. Get that certificate into the bank safe before you tell anyone—and I mean anyone—about it.”

She looked startled at his sudden grimness.

“Mr. Tucker, this is a small town, full of good people, not swindlers and cardsharps. It’s not as if someone would snatch it out of my hand,” she protested.

“You asked my opinion, Miss Keller,” he reminded her. “All I’m saying is, go to the bank first, before you speak to anyone about what I’ve told you. After that, you can sit up on the roof of the town hall and call out the news from there, if you’ve a mind to.”

Jude could see his blunt words had splashed cold water on her bubbling excitement, which was as he’d intended. A little caution would serve her well.

“Very well. I’m sure it’s good advice,” she said. “Would you suggest that I not mention it to anyone afterward, either? Other than the bank president, I mean—he’ll have to know because I’ll have to tell him how I came by this certificate. But people will guess something has happened when I start looking for property….” Her voice trailed off and she looked at him uncertainly.