A Lawman's Christmas: A McKettricks of Texas Novel. Linda Miller Lael

      A Lawman’s Christmas:

      A McKettricks of Texas Novel

      A Lawman’s Christmas:

      A McKettricks of Texas Novel

      Linda Lael Miller

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Dear Reader,

      I just love revisiting the McKettricks, especially at Christmastime! In A Lawman’s Christmas, who should appear in Blue River, Texas, as the new marshal but Clay McKettrick, Jeb and Chloe’s son from Secondhand Bride. His arrival puts Dara Rose Nolan in a tailspin…what if the young widow with two daughters—and no way to earn a living—is forced out of her home by the new lawman? But ’tis the season for miracles, if only Dara can allow herself to wish for the gift she needs most—Christmas in Clay’s arms.

      I also wanted to write today to tell you about a special group of people with whom I’ve become involved in the past couple of years. It is The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), specifically their Pets for Life program.

      The Pets for Life program is one of the best ways to help your local shelter—that is, to help keep animals out of shelters in the first place. Something as basic as keeping a collar and tag on your pet all the time, so if he gets out and gets lost, he can be returned home. Being a responsible pet owner. Spaying or neutering your pet. And not giving up when things don’t go perfectly. If your dog digs in the yard, or your cat scratches the furniture, know that these are problems that can be addressed. You can find all the information about these—and many other—common problems at www.petsforlife.org. This campaign is focused on keeping pets and their people together for a lifetime.

      As many of you know, my own household includes two dogs, two cats and six horses, so this is a cause that is near and dear to my heart. I hope you’ll get involved along with me.

      With love,

      In memory of Kathy Bannon. We sure do miss you, Teach.

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Epilogue

      Chapter 1

      Early December, 1914

      If the spark-throwing screech of iron-on-iron hadn’t wrenched Clay McKettrick out of his uneasy sleep, the train’s lurching stop—which nearly pitched him onto the facing seat—would surely have done the trick.

      Grumbling, Clay sat up straight and glowered out the window, shoving splayed fingers through his dark hair.

      Blue River, Texas. His new home. And more, for as the new marshal, he’d be responsible for protecting the town and its residents.

      Not that he could see much of it just then, with all that steam from the smokestack billowing between the train and the depot.

      The view didn’t particularly matter to him, anyhow, since he’d paid a brief visit to the town a few months back and seen what there was to see—which hadn’t been much, even in the sun-spangled, blue-sky days of summer. Now that winter was coming on—Clay’s granddad, Angus, claimed it snowed dust and chiggers in that part of Texas—the rutted roads and weathered facades of the ramshackle buildings would no doubt be of bleak appearance.

      With an inward sigh, Clay stood to retrieve his black, round-brimmed hat and worn duster from the wooden rack overhead. In the process, he allowed himself to ponder, yet again, all he’d left behind to come to this place at the hind end of beyond and carve out a life of his own making.

      He’d left plenty.

      A woman, to start with. And then there was his family, the sprawling McKettrick clan, including his ma and pa, Chloe and Jeb, his two older sisters and the thriving Triple M Ranch, with its plentitude of space and water and good grass.

      A fragment of a Bible verse strayed across his brain. The cattle on a thousand hills…

      There were considerably fewer than a thousand hills on the Triple M, big as it was, but the cattle were legion.

      To his granddad’s way of thinking, those hills and the land they anchored might have been on loan from the Almighty, but everything else—cows, cousins, mineral deposits and timber included—belonged to Angus McKettrick, his four sons and his daughter, Katie.

      Clay shrugged into the long coat and put on his hat. His holster and pistol were stowed in his trunk in the baggage compartment, and his paint gelding, Outlaw, rode all alone in the car reserved for livestock.

      The only other passenger on board, an angular woman with severe features and no noticeable inclination toward small talk, remained seated, with the biggest Bible Clay had ever seen resting open on her lap. She seemed poised to leap right into the pages at the first hint of sin and disappear into all those apocalyptic threats and grand promises. According to the conductor, a fitful little fellow bearing the pitted scars of a long-ago case of smallpox, the lady had come all the way from Cincinnati with the express purpose of saving the heathen.

      Clay—bone-tired, homesick for the ranch and for his kinfolks, and wryly amused, all of a piece—nodded a respectful farewell to the woman as he passed her seat, resisting the temptation to stop and inquire about the apparent shortage of heathens in Cincinnati.

      Most likely, he decided, reaching the door, she’d already converted the bunch of them, and now she was out to wrestle the devil for the whole state of Texas. He wouldn’t have given two cents for old Scratch’s chances.

      A chill wind, laced with tiny flakes of snow, buffeted Clay as he stepped down onto the small platform, where all three members of the town council, each one stuffed into his Sunday best and half-strangled by a celluloid collar, waited to greet the new marshal.

      Mayor Wilson Ponder spoke for the group. “Welcome to Blue River, Mr. McKettrick,” the fat man boomed, a blustery old cuss with white muttonchop whiskers and piano-key teeth that seemed to operate independently of his gums.

      Clay, still in his late twenties and among the youngest of the McKettrick cousins, wasn’t accustomed to being addressed as “mister”—around home, he answered to “hey, you”—and he sort of liked the novelty of it. “Call me Clay,” he said.

      There were handshakes all around.

      The conductor lugged Clay’s trunk out of the baggage car and plunked it down on the platform, then busily consulted his pocket watch.

      “Better unload that horse of yours,” he told Clay, in the officious tone so often adopted by short men who didn’t weigh a hundred pounds sopping wet, “if you don’t want him going right on to Fort Worth. This train pulls out in five minutes.”

      Clay nodded, figuring Outlaw would be ready by now for fresh air and a chance to stretch his legs, since he’d been cooped up in a rolling box ever since Flagstaff.

      Taking his leave from the welcoming committee with a touch to the brim of his hat and a promise to meet them later at the marshal’s office, he crossed the small platform, descended the rough-hewn steps and walked through cinders and lingering wisps of steam to the open door of the livestock car.