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

none of your business,” she said firmly. “Nor mine, either. And don’t you dare pry into Mr. McKettrick’s private affairs by asking, either one of you.”

      Both girls sighed at this.

      “Go get your shoes and stockings on,” Dara Rose ordered, setting the cast-iron skillet on the stove, plopping in the last smidgeon of bacon grease to keep the eggs from sticking.

      “I need to go to the outhouse,” Harriet said.

      “Put your shoes on first,” Dara Rose countered. “It’s a nice day out, but the ground is cold.”

      The children obeyed readily, which threw her a little. She was raising her daughters to have minds of their own, but that meant they were often obstinate and sometimes even defiant.

      Parnell had accused her of spoiling them, though he’d indulged the girls plenty himself, buying them hair ribbons and peppermint sticks and letting them ride his horse. Edrina, rough and tumble as any boy but at the same time all girl, was virtually fearless as well as outspoken, and trying as the child sometimes was, Dara Rose wouldn’t have changed anything about her. Except, of course, for her tendency to play hooky from school.

      Harriet, just a year younger than her sister, was more tentative, less likely to take risks than Edrina was. Too small to really understand death, Harriet very probably expected her papa to come home one day, riding Gawain, his saddlebags bulging with presents.

      Dara Rose’s eyes smarted again and, inwardly, she brought herself up short.

      She and the girls had been given a reprieve, that was all. They could go on living in the marshal’s house for a while, but other arrangements would have to be made eventually, just the same.

      Which was why, when she and the girls had eaten, and the dishes had been washed and the fires banked, Dara Rose followed through with her original plan.

      She and Harriet walked Edrina to the one-room schoolhouse at the edge of town, and then took the eggs to the mercantile, to be traded for staples.

      It was warm inside the general store, and Harriet became so captivated by the lovely doll on display in the tinsel-draped front window that Dara Rose feared the child would refuse to leave the place at all.

      “Look, Mama,” she breathed, without taking her eyes from the beautiful toy when Dara Rose approached and took her hand. “Isn’t she pretty? She’s almost as tall as I am.”

      “She’s pretty,” Dara Rose conceded, trying to keep the sadness out of her voice. “But not nearly as pretty as you are.”

      Harriet looked up at her, enchanted. “Edrina says there’s no such person as St. Nicholas,” she said. “She says it was you and Papa who filled our stockings last Christmas Eve.”

      Dara Rose’s throat ached. She had to swallow before she replied, “Edrina is right, sweetheart,” she said hoarsely. Other people could afford to pretend that magical things happened, at least while their children were young, but she did not have that luxury.

      “I guess the doll probably costs a lot,” Harriet said, her voice small and wistful.

      Dara Rose checked the price tag dangling from the doll’s delicate wrist, though she already knew it would be far out of her reach.

      Two dollars and fifty cents.

      What was the world coming to?

      “She comes with a trunk full of clothes,” the storekeeper put in helpfully. Philo Bickham meant well, to be sure, but he wasn’t the most thoughtful man on earth. “That’s real human hair on her head, too, and she came all the way from Germany.”

      Harriet’s eyes widened with something that might have been alarm. “But didn’t the hair belong to someone?” she asked, no doubt picturing a bald child wandering sadly through the Black Forest.

      “People sometimes sell their hair,” Dara Rose explained, giving Mr. Bickham a less than friendly glance as she drew her daughter toward the door. “And then it grows back.”

      Harriet immediately brightened. “Could we sell my hair? For two dollars and fifty cents?”

      “No,” Dara Rose said, and instantly regretted speaking so abruptly. She dropped to her haunches, tucked stray golden curls into Harriet’s tattered bonnet. “Your hair is much too beautiful to sell, sweetheart.”

      “But I could grow more,” Harriet reasoned. “You said so yourself, Mama.”

      Dara Rose smiled, mainly to keep from crying, and stood very straight, juggling the egg basket, now containing a small tin of lard, roughly three-quarters of a cup of sugar scooped into a paper sack and a box of table salt, from one wrist to the other.

      “We’ll be on our way now, Harriet,” she said. “We have things to do.”

      Chapter 3

      As he rode slowly along every street in Blue River that morning, touching his hat brim to all he encountered so the town folks would know they had a marshal again, one who meant to live up to the accompanying responsibilities, Clay found himself thinking about Parnell Nolan. Blessed with a beautiful wife and two fine daughters, and well-liked from what little Clay had learned about him, Nolan had still managed to be in a whorehouse when he drew his last breath.

      Yes, plenty of men indulged themselves in brothels—bachelors and husbands, sons and fathers alike—but they usually exercised some degree of discretion, in Clay’s experience.

      Always inclined to give somebody the benefit of the doubt, at least until they’d proven themselves unworthy of the courtesy, Clay figured Parnell might have done his sinning in secret, with the notion that he was there fore protecting his wife and children from scandal. But Blue River was a small place, like Clay’s hometown of Indian Rock, and stories that were too good not to tell had a way of getting around. Fast.

      Of course, Nolan surely hadn’t planned on dying that particular night, in the midst of awkward circumstances.

      Reaching the end of the last street in town, near the schoolhouse, Clay stopped to watch, leaning on the pommel of his saddle and letting Outlaw nibble at the patchy grass, as children spilled out the door of the little red building, shouting to one another, eager to make the most of recess.

      He spotted Edrina right away—her bonnet hung down her back by its laces, revealing that unmistakable head of spun-gold hair, and her cheeks glowed with exuberance and good health and the nippy coolness of the weather.

      As Clay watched, she found a stick, etched the squares for a game of hopscotch in the bare dirt and jumped right in. Within moments, the other little girls were clamoring to join her, while the boys played kick-the-can at an artfully disdainful distance, making as much racket as they could muster up.

      The schoolmarm—a plain woman, spare and tall, and probably younger than she looked—surveyed the melee from the steps of the building, but she was quick to notice the horse and rider looking on from the road.

      Clay tugged at his hat brim and nodded a silent greeting. His ma, Chloe, had been a schoolteacher when she was younger, and he had an ingrained respect for the profession. It was invariably a hard row to hoe.

      The teacher nodded back, descended the schoolhouse steps with care, lest she trip over the hem of her brown woolen dress. Instead of a coat or a cloak, she wore a dark blue shawl to keep warm.

      Clay waited as she approached, then dismounted to meet her at the gate, though he kept to his own side and she kept to hers, as was proper.

      The lady introduced herself. “Miss Alvira Krenshaw,” she said, putting out a bony hand. She hadn’t missed the star pinned to his coat, of course; her eyes had gone right to it. “You must be our new town marshal.”

      Clay shook her hand and acknowledged her supposition with another nod and, “Clay McKettrick.”

      “How do you do?” she said, not expecting an answer.

      Clay