A Lawman's Christmas: A McKettricks of Texas Novel

“I reckon maybe you ought to show me where you live, after all,” he said, at some length. At least that way, he could steer the child homeward, where she belonged, make sure she got there, and rest easy thereafter, where her welfare was concerned.

Edrina pointed past a general store, a telegraph and telephone office, the humble jailhouse where he would soon be officiating and a tiny white church surrounded by a rickety picket fence, much in need of whitewash. “It’s one street over,” she said, already veering off a little, as though she meant to duck between buildings and take off. “Our place, that is. It’s the one with an apple tree in the yard and a chicken house out back.”

Clay drew up his horse with a nearly imperceptible tug of the reins. “Hold it right there,” he said, with quiet authority, when Edrina started to turn away.

She froze. Turned slowly to look at him with huge china-blue eyes. “You’re going to tell Mama I haven’t been at school, aren’t you?” she asked, sounding sadly resigned to whatever fate awaited her.

“I reckon it’s your place to tell her that, not mine.”

Edrina blinked, and a series of emotions flashed across her face—confusion, hope and, finally, despair. “She’ll be sorely vexed when she finds out,” the girl said. “Mama places great store in learning.”

“Most sensible people do,” Clay observed, biting the inside of his lower lip so he wouldn’t laugh out loud. Edrina might have been little more than a baby, but she sat a horse like a Comanche brave—he’d seen that for himself back at the depot—and carried herself with a dignity out of all proportion to her size, situation and hand-me-down clothes. “Maybe from now on, you ought to pay better heed to what your mama says. She has your best interests at heart, you know.”

Edrina gave a great, theatrical sigh, one that seemed to involve her entire small personage. “I suppose Miss Krenshaw will tell Mama I’ve been absent since recess, anyway,” she said. “Even if you don’t.”

Miss Krenshaw, Clay figured, was probably the schoolmarm.

Outlaw’s well-shod hooves made a lonely, clompety-clip kind of sound on the hard dirt of the road. The horse turned a little, to go around a trough with a lacy green scum floating atop the water.

“Word’s sure to get out,” Clay agreed reasonably, thinking of all those faces, at all those windows, “one way or another.”

“Thunderation and spit!” Edrina exclaimed, with the vigor of total sincerity. “I don’t know why folks can’t just tend to their own affairs and leave me to do as I please.”

Clay made a choking sound, disguised it as a cough, as best he could, anyway. “How old are you?” he asked, genuinely interested in the answer.

“Six,” Edrina replied.

He’d have bet she was a short ten, maybe even eleven. “So you’re in the first grade at school?”

“I’m in the second,” Edrina said, trudging along beside his horse. “I already knew how to read when I started in September, and I can cipher, too, so Miss Krenshaw let me skip a grade. Actually, she suggested I enter third grade, but Mama said no, that wouldn’t do at all, because I needed time to be a child. As if I could help being a child.”

She sounded wholly exasperated.

Clay hid yet another grin by tilting his head, in hopes that his hat brim would cast a shadow over his face. “You’ll be all grown up sooner than you think,” he allowed. “I reckon if asked, I’d be inclined to take your mama’s part in the matter.”

“You weren’t asked, though,” Edrina pointed out thoughtfully, and with an utter lack of guile or rancor.

“True enough,” Clay agreed moderately.

They were quiet, passing by the little white church, then the adjoining graveyard, where, Clay speculated, the last marshal, Parnell Nolan, must be buried. Edrina hurried ahead when they reached the corner, and Clay and Outlaw followed at an easy pace.

Clay hadn’t bothered to visit the house that came with the marshal’s job on his previous stopover in Blue River. At the time, he’d just signed the deed for two thousand acres of raw ranch land, and his thoughts had been on the house and barn he meant to build there, the cattle and horses he would buy, the wells he would dig and the fences he would put up. He could have waited, of course, bided on the Triple M until spring, living the life he’d always lived, but he’d been too impatient and too proud to do that.

Besides, it was his nature to be restless, and so, in order to keep himself occupied until spring, he’d accepted the town’s offer of a laughable salary and a star-shaped badge to pin on his coat until they could rustle up some damn fool to take up the occupation for good.

“There it is,” Edrina said, with a note of sadness in her voice that caught and pulled at Clay’s heart like a fishhook snagging on something underwater.

Clay barely had time to take in the ramshackle place—the council referred to it as a “cottage,” though he would have called it a shack—before one of the prettiest women he’d ever laid eyes on shot out through the front door like a bullet and stormed down the path toward them.

Chickens scattered, clucking and squawking, as she passed.

Her hair was the color of pale cider, pinned up in back and fluffing out around her flushed face, as was the fashion among his sisters and female cousins back home in the Arizona Territory. Her eyes might have been blue, but they might have been green, too, and right now, they were shooting fire hot enough to brand the toughest hide.

Reaching the rusty-hinged gate in the falling-down fence, she stopped suddenly, fixed those changeable eyes on him and glared.

Clay felt a jolt inside, as though Zeus had flung a lightning bolt his way and he’d caught it with both hands instead of sidestepping it, like a wiser man would have done.

The woman’s gaze sliced to the little girl.

“Edrina Louise Nolan,” she said, through a fine set of straight white teeth, “what am I going to do with you?” Her skin was good, too, Clay observed, with that part of his brain that usually stood back and assessed things. Smooth, with a peachy glow underneath.

“Let me go to third grade?” Edrina ventured bravely.

Clay gave an appreciative chuckle, quickly quelled by a glare from the lady. He didn’t wither easily, though he knew that was the result she’d intended, and he did take some pleasure in thwarting her.

At that, the woman gave a huffy little sigh and turned her attention back to her daughter. She threw out one arm—like Edrina, she wore calico—and pointed toward the gaping door of the shack. “That will be quite enough of your nonsense, young lady,” she said, with a reassuring combination of affection and anger, thrusting open the creaky gate. “Get yourself into the house now and prepare to contemplate the error of your ways!”

Before obeying her mother’s command, Edrina paused just long enough to look up at Clay, who was still in the saddle, as though hoping he’d intercede.

That was a thing he had no right to do, of course, but he felt a pang on the little girl’s behalf just the same. And against his own better judgment he dismounted, took off his hat, holding it in one hand and shoving the other through his hair, fingers splayed.

“You go on and do what your mama tells you,” he said to Edrina, though his words had the tone of a suggestion, rather than a command.

Edrina’s very fetching mother looked him over again, this time with something that might have been chagrin. Then she bristled again, like a little bird ruffling up faded feathers. “You’re him, aren’t you?” she accused. “The new marshal?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Clay said, confounded by the strange mixture of terror and jubilation rising up within him. “I am the new marshal. And you are…?”

“Dara Rose Nolan. You may address me as Mrs. Nolan, if you have any further reason to address me, which I do not anticipate.”

With that, she turned on one shabby-heeled shoe and pointed herself toward the “cottage,” with its sagging roof, leaking rain barrel and sparkling-clean windows.

Edrina and another little girl—the aforementioned Harriet, no doubt—darted out of the doorway as their mother approached, vanishing into the interior of the house.

Clay watched appreciatively as the widow Nolan retreated hurriedly up the walk, with nary a backward glance.

Chickens, pecking peacefully at the ground, squawked and flapped their wings as they fled.

The door slammed behind her.

Clay smiled, resettled his hat and got back on his horse.

Before, he’d dreaded the long and probably idle months ahead, expecting the season to be a lonesome one, and boring, to boot, since he knew nothing much ever happened in Blue River, when it came to crime. That was the main reason the town fathers hadn’t been in any big rush to replace Parnell Nolan.

Now, reining Outlaw away toward the edge of town, and the open country beyond, meaning to ride up onto a ridge he knew of, where the view extended for miles in every direction, Clay figured the coming winter might not be so dull, after all.

INSIDE THE HOUSE, Dara Rose drew a deep breath and sighed it out hard.

Heaven knew, she hadn’t been looking forward to the new marshal’s arrival, given the problems that were sure to result, but she hadn’t planned on losing her composure and behaving rudely, either. Poor as she was, Dara Rose still had high standards, and she believed in setting a good example for her children, prided herself on her good manners and even temperament.