A McKettrick Christmas

Lizzie gave a ranch-girl whoop, then slapped a hand over her mouth. Raised in the high country from the time she was twelve, she knew that when the snow was so deep, any sudden sound could bring most of the mountainside thundering down on top of them. She listened, too scared to breathe, for an ominous rumble overhead, but none came.

She assessed the long, benchlike seats lining the sides of the car. Room for everyone to lie down and sleep.

Yes, the caboose would do nicely.

She forced herself to go outside again—even the sight of that stove, cold as it was, had warmed her a little. The freight car proved as impenetrable from the rear door as from the first one Lizzie had tried, but she was much heartened, just the same. Morgan, Whitley and the peddler would be able to get inside.

She was making her way back along the side of the train, every step carefully considered, both hands grasping the side, when it happened.

Her feet slipped, her stomach gave a dull lurch, and she felt herself falling.

She slid a few feet, managed to catch hold of a tree root, the tree itself long gone. Fear sent the air whooshing from her lungs, as if she’d been struck in the solar plexus, and she knew her grip would not last long. She had almost no feeling in her hands, and her feet dangled in midair. She did not dare turn her head and look down.

“Help me!” she called out, in a voice that sounded laughably cheerful, given the circumstances.

Morgan’s head appeared above her, a genie sprung from a lamp. “Hold on,” he told her grimly, “and do not move.”

She watched, blinking salty moisture from her eyes, as he unbuckled his belt, pulled it free of his trousers and fashioned a loop at one end. He lay down on his belly and tossed the looped end of the belt within reach.

“Listen to me, Lizzie,” he said very quietly. “Take a few breaths before you reach for the belt. You can’t afford to miss.”

Lizzie didn’t even nod, so tenuous was her hold on the root. She took the advised breaths, even closed her eyes for a moment, imagined herself standing on firm ground. Safe with Morgan.

If she could just get to Morgan….

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. Still clinging to the root, which was already giving way, with one hand, she grasped the leather loop with the other. Morgan’s strength seemed to surge along the length of it.

“I’ve got you, Lizzie,” Morgan said. “Take hold with the other hand.”

After another deep breath, she let go of the root.

Morgan pulled her up slowly, and very carefully. When she crested the bank, he hauled her into his arms and held her hard, both of them kneeling only inches from the lip of the cliff.

“Easy, now,” he murmured, his breath warming her right ear. “No sudden moves.”

Lizzie nodded slightly, her face buried in his shoulder, clinging to the fabric of his coat with both hands.

Morgan rose carefully to his feet, bringing Lizzie with him.

“The caboose,” she said, trembling all over. “There’s a stove in the caboose—and a c-coffeepot.”

He took her there. Seated her none too gently on one of the long seats. “What the hell were you thinking?” he demanded, moving to the stove, stuffing in kindling and old newspaper from the half-filled wood box, striking a match to start a blaze.

“I was looking for food…blankets—”

Morgan gave her a scathing look. Took the coffeepot off the stove and went out the rear door of the caboose. When he came back, Lizzie saw that he’d filled the pot with snow. He set it on the stove with an eloquent clunk. “You could have been killed!” he rasped, pale with fury.

“How did you know to…to come looking for me?”

“John Brennan woke me up. Said he’d seen you leave the car. At first, he thought he was dreaming, because nobody would do anything that stupid.”

“You left the car,” Lizzie reminded him. “What’s the difference?”

“The difference, Lizzie McKettrick, is that you are a woman and I am a man. And don’t you dare get up on a soapbox. If I hadn’t come along when I did, you’d be at the bottom of that ravine by now. And it was the grace of—whoever—that we didn’t both go over!”

He found a tin of coffee among the provisions, spooned some into the pot, right on top of the snow.

Lizzie realized that he’d put himself in no little danger to pull her to safety. “Thank you,” she said, with a peculiar mixture of graciousness and chagrin.

“I’m not ready to say ‘you’re welcome,’” he snapped. “Leaving that car, especially alone, was a damnably foolish thing to do.”

“If you expect an apology, Dr. Shane, you will be sorely disappointed. Someone had to do something.”

The fire crackled merrily in the stove, and a little heat began to radiate into the frosty caboose. Morgan reached up to adjust the damper, still seething.

“Don’t talk,” he advised, sounding surly.

Lizzie straightened her spine. “Of course I’m going to talk,” she told him pertly. “I have things to say. We need to bring everyone from the passenger car. It’s safer here—and warmer.”

“We aren’t going to do anything. You are going to stay put, and I will go back for the others.” He leveled a long look at her. “So help me God, Lizzie, if you set foot outside this caboose—”

She smiled, getting progressively warmer, catching the first delicious scent of brewing coffee. She’d probably imagined that part, she decided.

“Why, Dr. Shane,” she mocked sweetly, batting her eyelashes, “I wouldn’t think of disobeying a strong, capable man like you.”

Suddenly he laughed. Some of the tension between them, until that moment tight as a rope with an obstreperous calf running full out at the other end, slackened.

It gave Lizzie an odd feeling, not unlike dangling over the side of a cliff with only a root to hold on to and the jaws of a ravine yawning below.

She blushed. Then her practical side reemerged. “I tried the door on the freight car,” she said. “But I couldn’t get in. If we’re lucky, there might be food inside.”

“Oh, we’re lucky, all right,” Morgan responded, his amusement fading as reality overtook him again. The sun was coming up, and Lizzie knew as well as he did that even its thin, wintry warmth might thaw some of the snow looming over their heads, set it to sliding again. “We’re lucky we’re alive.” He studied her for a long moment. Then he snapped, “Wait here.”

Frankly not brave enough to risk another plunge over the cliff-side, McKettrick or not, Lizzie waited. Waited when he left. Waited for the coffee to brew.

He brought the baby first.

Lizzie held little Nellie Anne and bit her lip, waiting.

Next came Jack, riding wide-eyed on Morgan’s shoulders, his little hands clasped tightly under the doctor’s chin.

After that, Mrs. Halifax. Her arm still in its sling, she fairly collapsed, once safely inside the caboose. Lizzie immediately got up to fill a coffee mug and hand it to the other woman. Mrs. Halifax trembled visibly as she drank, her two older children clutching at her skirts.

Whitley appeared, having made his own way, scowling. Still clutching his blanket, he looked even more like an overgrown child than before. When Mrs. Halifax gave him a turn with the cup, he added a generous dollop from his flask and glared at Lizzie while he drank. She’d seen him empty the vessel earlier; perhaps he had a spare bottle in his valise.

She did her best to ignore him, but it was hard, since he seemed determined to make his stormy presence felt.