Hill Country Christmas

He managed not to laugh at her naivetе. “I think you’ll find that word will get around as if it had wings, Miss Keller. Be very careful. You’re going to find that the way people have treated you is about to change. Don’t trust everything that people say to you.”

She studied him for a long moment and looked as if she were about to ask him how he knew so much. But apparently, after the way he had responded to her other personal question, she decided against it, for she just nodded.

“I’ll do as you suggest,” she said, rising. “Perhaps you would accompany me, Mr. Tucker? The least I could do would be to buy you dinner at the hotel afterward, after the distance you’ve come to inform me of this…this astonishing change in my situation,” she said. She’d have to ask the bank president for an advance of cash in order to pay for the meal, of course, but that shouldn’t be a problem.

Chapter Three

He laughed, but this time it was a mirthless sound that stung her pride. “Miss Keller, you’re a rich woman now, but you still need to be careful of what people will say. Being seen with a stranger—especially being seen dining with me—would not be good for your reputation.”

She hadn’t thought of that, but was determined to persuade him. “If I introduce you—if I explain that you were my father’s friend and came here to inform me of his death—I’m sure no one would think ill of it.”

He shook his head. “That wouldn’t make a difference,” he said. “In fact, it might make things worse. No, you’d do better to pretend we never met—other than yesterday, of course, when I asked for directions. That wasn’t exactly a formal introduction.”

“But what will you do? Where will you go from here?” she asked. She’d wanted to hear more from this man about her father—and, if she were honest with herself, she wanted to spend a little more time in the company of Jude Tucker, though she couldn’t have said why. There was just something about him. Perhaps it was only because he had brought the news that had just changed her life.

For a moment, he looked as if he was going to ask her why she cared enough to ask. Then he said, shrugging, “I don’t know. I’m a fair enough carpenter…. I’ll probably stick around town awhile, do some odd jobs to build up a stake so I can go back out West.”

“It’s honest work,” she murmured.

“It’ll take a long time to earn enough that way.”

“If you’re in that much of a hurry, maybe you should rob the bank,” she suggested tartly.

“The same bank you’re about to go to? Not a very wise suggestion, Miss Keller.”

She stiffened at his teasing. “I’m just going to take these eggs back into the kitchen, and then I must be going,” she said, going to pick up the basket she had left by the gate. “Good day, Mr. Tucker. Thank you for your kindness in coming, and for your honesty in bringing me my father’s legacy.”

“Goodbye, Miss Keller,” he said, donning his hat again and pulling it low, so his eyes were in shadow. “Remember, if you see me around town, we haven’t met.”

His unnecessary reminder, and his failure to acknowledge her thanks, irritated her. “That won’t be a problem,” Delia said, her voice curt.

Tucker had been compassionate in the way he’d informed her of her father’s death, but after that he’d done nothing but make her feel like a gullible innocent. Very well! She had tried to show her gratitude and he’d virtually thrown the offer back in her face—even made her feel that, by offering, she had seemed a little forward.

He was gone when she came back out, and she resolved to put Jude Tucker from her mind. With any luck, she wouldn’t encounter him again, and she could concentrate on the message he had brought, rather than the messenger.

Her father was dead. It was strange, Delia mused as she walked down the road, but after the initial stab of grief, she felt…nothing. Perhaps, since he’d been gone without a word for so long, he had been dead to her anyway. Of course, Delia hoped he hadn’t suffered and that, in the time between the accident and Tucker’s return to the mine, her father had thought to pray.

He had believed in Jesus, Delia remembered. She recalled times he’d listened to her prayers and read her stories from the Bible. But that had been before her mother’s passing, which had set the wanderlust loose in his soul so badly that he couldn’t bide at home and be a father to her.

Delia winced, remembering now how often she’d expressed anger toward her father when talking to her grandpa.

“Delia, darlin’,” she could hear him say in his drawling voice, rusty with age, “it’s plumb understandable and human that you feel that way, but you’d do better to pray for him, for his safety and his quick return. Let’s read that story in the Bible about the Prodigal Son. Maybe your papa will be just like that, and we’ll have a feast to celebrate.”

Surely it was a sin to be angry toward the dead. Her father was no longer capable of coming back to her.

But what about my prayers, God? I prayed for Papa’s safety and his return, and You let him die in a mine collapse, hundreds of miles away.

“God always hears us, child,” she could hear her grandpa say, as clearly as if he had been right there by her, “but sometimes his answer is no. And sometimes we won’t ever know—this side of Heaven, at least—why that’s so.”

And now that I’m a rich woman, it’s too late for me to help Grandpa with my money. How wonderful it would have been if she could have used some of it to buy him some comfort in his old age. She’d have insisted he move into her new house with her, or if he hadn’t been willing, she could have at least had the tumbledown old parsonage fixed so that its roof no longer leaked and its walls were freshly painted.

He’d probably have insisted she send the money to missionaries in Africa instead, Delia mused, and found her cheeks wet with tears. She could mourn her grandpa, even if she couldn’t feel deep sorrow for her father.

The town of Llano Crossing lay just around a wooded bend from its church and parsonage. Jude Tucker tied his horse among the cottonwoods that lined the curve of the river and followed Delia on foot, keeping his distance among the trees so she wasn’t aware of him. He was pleased to see that true to his instruction, she went straight to the bank without dillydallying to chat with any of the handful of townsfolk who greeted her in passing.

He hadn’t expected Delia Keller to be a beauty. Nothing her father had told him while they worked shoulder to shoulder in the mine, or later, when Will lay dying in the wreckage of that same mine, had prepared Jude for those large green eyes, that slender, slightly long nose, that rosebud of a mouth, all set in a heart-shaped face with a faint sprinkling of freckles. He supposed that when Will had last seen his daughter before heading West, Delia had been at that awkward, coltish stage that many girls go through just before being transformed into beauties.

He doubted that Delia even knew she was pretty. There was something unawakened, unaware in those clear green eyes. Her gaze had been direct when she had invited him to escort her to the bank and to buy him dinner. Perhaps it was because he had just told her of her father’s death, but Jude was used to women who knew how fluttering their eyelashes just so at a man would get them their way.

There was also a total lack of vanity in the ugly high-necked black mourning dress she wore. Maybe the dress was borrowed. He had known women who looked striking in black, but Delia wasn’t one of them. The harsh, flat hue leeched the color from her cheeks—and yet somehow she was still beautiful.

Now that she was wealthy beyond most women’s dreams, though, she could at least improve the quality of her mourning. She could buy dresses in finer fabrics, black mourning jewelry and fetching hats to replace that ugly poke bonnet….

Better clothing, along with her change in status from an impoverished orphan to a wealthy heiress, would draw men like flies. He hoped Delia Keller had some shrewdness to go with her comeliness, or she’d find herself the victim of some smooth-talking fortune-hunter who’d treat her to a whirlwind courtship and then, as her husband, exert sole control over the money her father had wanted to benefit his daughter.

Lord, protect her. Make her as wise as a serpent yet harmless as a dove, as the Good Book says.

Will Keller had suggested that Jude be the one to marry and protect her, right after he had struck it rich. “You should go to Llano Crossing and marry my daughter, Tucker. She’s a sweet girl, my Delia. You’d be good for one another.”

He’d scoffed at Will for saying it. “Will, what does your daughter need with the likes of me? Besides, we’ll probably never meet. You’ll go home one day, now that you’ve made your fortune, and I’ll keep looking for a rich claim of my own.”

“Or a rich widow,” Will had joked, wiping the sweat out of his eyes.

Jude had only shook his head. He was done with widows—especially those who claimed to be widows who really weren’t at all. He’d settle down with a woman someday, he supposed. He wasn’t a good enough man to always resist the clamoring wants of his body forever. But he certainly wasn’t worthy of an innocent girl like Delia, a preacher’s granddaughter. Not after Nora.

“This is extraordinary news, Miss Keller,” Amos Dawson, the bank president, said, laying aside his wire-rimmed spectacles and the certificate Delia had shown him, and crossing his arms over his considerable paunch. “You’re saying you had no idea that your father had amassed such a fortune?”

“Yes,” she murmured, feeling uneasy at his staring. His black beady eyes reminded her of her grandpa’s old rooster—right before the bossy bird tried to peck at her legs. “I—I mean no, I had no idea. We—my grandpa and I—hadn’t heard from him in years, you see. We didn’t even know if he was alive or dead.”

“How did you get hold of this document? Did it come in the mail?”

Delia wanted to say it had, to avoid questions about Jude Tucker, since he had cautioned her not to claim any acquaintance with him. But it would be easy enough for Dawson to check with the gossipy postmaster of the little town, who knew who was receiving mail from where and didn’t mind telling anyone who asked.

“I…That is, the man who had been working for him brought it to me.”

Dawson continued to scrutinize until Delia felt a flush creeping up the scratchy neckline of her dress.

“We’ll have to telegraph the bank in Nevada to verify its authenticity,” he said at last.

Delia felt foolish. The bank couldn’t just assume the certificate was real and start issuing her funds based on it. The document could be a clever fraud.

“I…I assumed as much,” she said, trying to sound like a woman of the world. “Naturally.”

Dawson seemed pleased with her composure. “We’ll do so immediately, I assure you, Miss Keller. I would imagine it will take a few days to obtain an answer—but during that time, I regret that I can’t…that is, the bank cannot act on the basis of this document.”

Delia nodded. “I understand completely,” she said, rising. It wasn’t a problem. She had been poor when she woke up this morning, and she could go on pinching pennies and doing without for a few more days. She only wished she had brought those eggs after all—now she was going to have to walk back to the house and get them or do without sugar in her tea another day.

Dawson rose also. “Assuming this certificate is authentic, Miss Keller, this is very exciting news, isn’t it? Just wait until the word gets out!”