The Christmas Brides: A McKettrick Christmas

“I’ll need that poker,” the peddler went on, addressing Morgan now, since he was closest to the stove. “The lid of this box is nailed down, you know.”

Morgan brought the poker.

Woodrow leaned forward on his perch.

The peddler wedged one end of it under the top of the crate and prized it up with a squeak of nails giving way. A layer of fresh wood shavings covered the contents, hiding them from view.

Lizzie, preoccupied with Whitley’s announcement that he was going to follow the tracks to the nearest town, looked on distractedly.

Mr. Christian knelt next to the crate, rubbed his hands together, like a magician preparing to conjure a live rabbit or a white-winged dove from a hat, and reached inside.

He brought out a shining wooden box with gleaming brass hinges. Set it reverently on the floor. When he raised the lid, a tune began to play. “O little town of Bethlehem…”

Lizzie’s throat tightened. The works of the music box were visible, through a layer of glass, and Jack and Ellen stared in fascination.

“Land,” Ellen said. “I ain’t—” she blushed, looked up at Lizzie “—I haven’t never seen nothin’ like this.”

Lizzie offered no comment on the child’s grammar.

“It belonged to my late wife, God rest her soul,” Mr. Christian said and, for a moment, there were ghosts in his eyes. Leaving the music box to play, he plunged his hands into the crate again. Brought out a delicate china plate, chipped from long and reverent use, trimmed in gold and probably hand-painted. “There are eight of these,” he said. “Spoons and forks and butter knives, too. We shall dine in splendor.”

“What’s ‘dine’?” Jack asked.

Ellen elbowed him. “It means eating,” she said.

“We ain’t got nothin’ to eat,” Jack pointed out. By then, the crackers and cheese Lizzie had found in the cupboard were long gone, as were the canned foods pirated from the freight car.

“Oh, but we do,” replied Mr. Christian. “We most certainly do.”

The children’s eyes all but popped.

“We have goose-liver pâté.” He produced several small cans to prove it.

Woodrow squawked and spread his wings.

Jack wrinkled his nose. “Goose liver?”

Ellen nudged him again, harder this time. “Whatever patty is,” she told him, “it’s vittles for sure.”

“Pah-tay,” the peddler corrected, though not unkindly. “It is fine fare indeed.” More cans came out of the box. A small ham. Crackers. Tea in a wooden container. And wonderful, rainbow-colored sugar in a pretty jar.

Lizzie’s eyes stung a little, just watching as the feast was unveiled. Clearly, like the things stashed in her travel trunk, these treasures had been intended for some one in Indian Rock, awaiting Mr. Christian’s arrival. A daughter? A son? Grandchildren?

“Of course, having recently enjoyed a fine repast,” Mr. Christian said, addressing Ellen and Jack directly, but raising his voice just enough to carry to all corners of the caboose, “we’d do well to save all this for a while, wouldn’t we?”

“I don’t like liver,” Jack announced, this time managing to dodge the inevitable elbow from Ellen. “But I wouldn’t mind havin’ some of that pretty sugar.”

Morgan chuckled, but Lizzie saw him glance anxiously in the direction of the windows.

“Later,” Mr. Christian promised. “Let us savor the anticipation for a while.”

Both children’s brows furrowed in puzzlement. The peddler might have been speaking in a foreign language, using words like repast and savor and anticipation. Raised hardscrabble, though, they clearly understood the concept of later. Delay was a way of life with them, young as they were.

Lizzie moved closer to Morgan, spoke quietly, while the music box continued to play. “Whitley,” she said, “is an exasperating fool. But we can’t let him wander out there. He’ll die.”

Morgan sighed. “I was just thinking I’d better go and bring him back before he gets lost.”

“I’m going, too. It’s my fault he’s here at all.”

“You’re needed here,” Morgan replied reasonably, with a slight nod of his head toward John Brennan. “I can’t be in two places at once, Lizzie.”

“I wouldn’t know what to do if Mr. Brennan had a medical crisis,” Lizzie said. “But I do know how to follow railroad tracks.”

Morgan rested his hands on Lizzie’s shoulders, just lightly, but a confounding sensation rushed through her, almost an ache, stirring things up inside her. “You’re too brave for your own good,” he said. “Stay here. Get as much water down Brennan as you can. Make sure he stays warm, even if the fever makes him want to throw off his blankets.”

“But what if he—?”

“What if he dies, Lizzie? I won’t lie to you. He might. But then, so might all the rest of us, if we don’t keep our heads.”

“You’re exhausted,” Lizzie protested.

“If there’s one thing a doctor learns, it’s that exhaustion is a luxury. I can’t afford to collapse, Lizzie, and believe me, I won’t.”

Wanting to cling to him, wanting to make him stay, even if she had to make a histrionic scene to do it, Lizzie forced herself to step back. To let go, not just physically, but emotionally, too. “All right,” she said. “But if you’re not back within an hour or two, I will come looking for you.”

Morgan sighed again, but a tiny smile played at the corner of his mouth, and something at once soft and molten moved in his eyes. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. And then, after making only minimal preparations against the cold, he left the caboose.

Lizzie went immediately to the windows, watched him pass alongside the train. Keep him safe, she prayed silently. Please, keep him safe. And Whitley, too.

John Brennan began to cough. Lizzie fetched one of the cups, dashed outside to fill it with snow, set it on the stove. The chill bit deep into her flesh, gnawed at her bones.

Ellen and Jack whirled like figure skaters to the continuing serenade of the music box, Mr. Christian having demonstrated that it could play many different tunes, by virtue of small brass disks inserted into a tiny slot. Woodrow seemed to dance, inside his cage. Mr. and Mrs. Thaddings took in the scene, smiling fondly.

“I’m burnin’ up,” Mr. Brennan told Lizzie, when she came to adjust his blankets. “I need to get outside. Roll myself in that snow—”

Lizzie shook her head. She had no medical training, nothing to offer but the soothing presence of a woman. “That’s your fever talking, Mr. Brennan,” she said. “Dr. Shane said to keep you warm.”

“It’s like I’m on fire,” he said.

How, Lizzie wondered, did people stand being nurses and doctors? It was a sore trial to the spirit to look helplessly upon human suffering, able to do so little to relieve it. “There, now,” she told him, near to weeping. “Rest. I’ll fetch a cool cloth for your forehead.”

“That would be a pure mercy,” he rasped.

Lizzie took her favorite silk scarf from her valise, steeled herself to go outside yet again.

Mr. Thaddings stopped her. Took the scarf from her hands and made the journey himself, shivering when he returned.

The snow-dampened scarf proved a comfort to Mr. Brennan, though the heat of his flesh quickly defeated the purpose. Lizzie, on her knees beside the seat where he lay, turned her head and saw that Zebulon Thaddings had brought in a bucketful of snow. Gratefully, she repeated the process.