Hill Country Christmas. Laurie Kingery

don’t think I can stay for it,” she said quickly, keeping her gaze on the toes of her high-button boots, but away from the grave. “I just…I just want to go back to the parsonage and lie down.” While I still can lie down there—and try to imagine what I’m going to do.

      “Nonsense, child, you need to put some food in your stomach, and take heart from the others who loved Reverend McKinney,” urged his wife, a comfortable-looking gray-haired woman who had returned to her husband’s side. “You’ll feel better after you’ve eaten a bite, I’m sure.”

      Delia did not want to argue with her, and fortunately the visiting preacher made it unnecessary.

      “Mrs. Calhoun, can’t you see the girl is pale as a wilted primrose? I’m sure she knows what’s best for her. There’s bound to be plenty of food left, and we can bring her a plateful to tempt her appetite after she’s had a nap. Miss Delia, we’ll see you later,” Reverend Calhoun said with finality. A look passed between husband and wife.

      “All right, Mr. Calhoun, I’ll walk with her,” Mrs. Calhoun said, to Delia’s dismay. “You go say the blessing so everyone can start eating. I’ll be back in just a few minutes.”

      Placing an arm around Delia’s waist, as if she feared the girl might swoon without it, Mrs. Calhoun started forward.

      The parsonage sat some fifty yards down the road from the church. If she wasn’t allowed to walk home by herself, Delia figured that at least, once there, she would insist she could find her way to her bedroom without any help. She would be alone in minutes.

      They had nearly reached the gate that let out onto the dusty road when they spotted the horse and rider trotting toward them from the west, trailed by a swirl of dust.

      “If he’s coming for the funeral, he’s a little late,” Mrs. Calhoun said with a sniff.

      “Oh, I don’t imagine he is,” Delia said. She thought everyone who had ever attended the Llano Crossing Church had been present for the funeral service. The church had been filled to bursting, with folks overflowing out onto the steps. “Probably just another cowboy coming into town to enjoy Saturday night.”

      Mrs. Calhoun pursed her mouth. “And tomorrow all he’ll have is an aching head to show for his month’s wages.”

      As the rider drew nearer, however, Delia began to doubt he’d come from any of the many nearby ranches. In back of the saddle were bulging saddlebags, a blanket roll and a rifle. The silver buckskin he rode was wet to his hocks, as if he’d just crossed the Llano at one of its deeper points upstream, rather than waiting to cross at the town that bore the name of the bridge that spanned the river.

      He reined the horse to a walk a few yards away; then, as he reached them, he halted the horse with a soft whoa. He laid a finger on the broad brim of his hat in an automatic gesture.

      “Ladies, is Llano Crossing up ahead?”

      His voice was gravelly and rough, as if it had been unused for a long while. His eyes, which were studying her with a frankness she had never been subjected to, were the glacial gray-blue color of a wolf’s. She felt herself shiver as if the sudden chill breeze of a norther had blown upon her spine.

      Out of the corner of her eye, Delia saw Mrs. Calhoun give a rigid nod. “Just around the bend in the road.”

      “And would a traveler find a hotel there where he could pass the night?” he asked, without taking those wolfish eyes off Delia.

      She saw Mrs. Calhoun stiffen even more before she replied, “He would, if he were a law-abiding, respectable sort.”

      Delia saw the threat of a smile cross the stranger’s face like slow heat lightning. He looked as if he would ask something more of Delia, then apparently thought better of it. “Much obliged, ma’am,” he said, touching his hat brim yet again, his gaze drifting over to Mrs. Calhoun just long enough to be polite.

      The corner of his mouth twitched as if it wanted to turn upward; then, as if noticing the somber hue of Delia’s black dress, it resumed its previous thin line as he nodded and touched the buckskin with his boot heel. “Ladies,” he murmured, and once he and the horse were a few yards from them, he nudged the horse into an easy lope.

      Mrs. Calhoun sniffed again. “Well! He might have shown some respect.”

      Delia glanced at her, surprised at the indignation in the woman’s voice. “He touched his hat.”

      “I mean to our mourning, my dear! Why, he was staring at you like a wolf set loose in a sheep pen!”

      Since a wolf was the very creature she had been reminded of also, Delia blinked in surprise. Mrs. Calhoun was probably expecting too much of the man, though, if she thought that the stranger would give a long, involved condolence speech merely because the two of them were dressed in black.

      “A saddle tramp, I shouldn’t wonder,” Mrs. Calhoun muttered disapprovingly. “There are so many of them drifting through ever since the war. Like tumbleweeds.”

      Delia was sure Mrs. Calhoun was right, but she didn’t want to encourage the woman to linger, so she remained silent as they reached the low, crumbling rock wall that separated the parsonage yard from the road.

      “Thank you for your kindness, Mrs. Calhoun. I’ll be fine,” Delia said as she stepped onto the flower-bordered pathway that led up to the white frame house. “I’ll see you later.”

      The preacher’s wife took the hint after giving Delia one last look of concern.

      “All right, if you’re certain you don’t want someone to sit with you,” Mrs. Calhoun said uncertainly, but then she started walking briskly back in the direction they had come, as if afraid the other mourners would devour everything on the tables before she got back to them. She paused only long enough to call back over her shoulder, “Pastor Calhoun and I will be quiet as mice when we return, in case you’re still napping. Get some rest, dear.”

      Delia was sure she wouldn’t so much as close her eyes, but at least she had freed herself from the suffocating, if well-meant, sympathy.

      She was awakened sometime during the night by Reverend Calhoun’s sonorous snoring coming from her grandpa’s former room down the hall. Padding quietly to the kitchen at the back of the one-story frame house, she found that her visitors had been as good as their word and had left her a delicious supper of fried chicken, biscuits and pralines from the funeral dinner. She ate, and then waited for dawn, praying some answers about her future would arrive with the sun.

      

      “I don’t feel right about leaving so soon,” Mrs. Calhoun fretted two days later, after they had break-fasted on eggs Delia had collected from her grandpa’s—she still thought of them as her grandpa’s—hens. “Why, this girl is a bereaved orphan! It isn’t decent to leave her like this, Mr. Calhoun!”

      “I’m not actually an orphan, Mrs. Calhoun,” Delia informed her. “My father is traveling in the west. I’m sure he’ll be home one of these days soon.” She’d said these words so many times before. “If he’d known about Grandpa’s illness, he’d have been home already, I’m sure,” she added, hoping it sounded like she believed what she was saying.

      Mrs. Calhoun, who’d been in the act of levering her bulk up from the chair, turned to her. “Now dear, I know that must be a comforting thought, but your neighbor, Mrs. Purvis, told me you and your grandpa had heard nothing from your father since he left! I’ll pray he returns home, but don’t you think he would have done so already if he was going to?” Her voice was so pityingly compassionate that Delia wanted to grind her teeth.

      “Papa will be home someday,” she said. “I know he will. After Mama died, he got itchy feet, as Grandpa called it.”

      “He could’ve gone to fight alongside our boys in gray,” Mrs. Calhoun said, disapproval plain on her face.

      Delia didn’t bother to tell her that if her father had been inclined to be a