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

a lot of fuss and raising them to competent adulthood.

      Wanting a wife to carry over the threshold of his new house, come spring, and impregnate as soon as possible, Clay might have set right to courting Miss Alvira, pro vided she was receptive to such attentions, if not for one problem. He’d gone and met Dara Rose Nolan.

      Stepping off the train the day before, he’d been sure of almost everything that concerned him. What he wanted, what sort of man he was, all of it. Now, after just two brief encounters with his predecessor’s widow, he wasn’t sure of much of anything.

      Considerable figuring out would be called for before he undertook to win himself a bride, and that was for certain.

      Over Alvira’s shoulder, he saw a boy run over to where the girls were playing hopscotch, grab at Edrina’s dangling bonnet and yank on it hard enough to knock her down.

      The bonnet laces held, though, and the boy ran, laughing, his friends shouting a mingling of mockery and encouragement, while a disgruntled, flaming-faced Edrina got back to her feet, dusting off her coat as she glared at the transgressor.

      “Looks like trouble,” Clay observed dryly, causing Miss Alvira to flare out her long, narrow nostrils and then spin around to see for herself.

      Edrina, still flushed with fury, marched right into the middle of that cluster of small but earnest rascals, stood face-to-face with the primary mischief-maker and landed a solid punch to his middle. Knocked the wind right out of him.

      Miss Alvira was on the run by then, blowing shrill toots through the whistle every schoolmarm seemed to come equipped with, but the damage, such as it was, was done.

      The thwarted bonnet thief was on his knees now, clutching his belly and gasping for breath, and though his dignity had certainly suffered, he didn’t look seriously hurt.

      Clay suppressed a smile and lingered there by the gate, watching.

      Edrina looked a mite calmer by then, but she was still pink in the face and her fists remained clenched. She stood her ground, spotted Clay when she turned her head toward Miss Alvira and that earsplitting whistle of hers.

      “What is going on here?” Alvira demanded, her voice carrying, almost as shrill as the whistle. She reached down, caught the gasping boy from behind, where his suspenders crossed, and wrenched him unceremoniously to his feet.

      Clay felt a flash of sympathy for the little fellow. Like as not, he’d taken a shine to Edrina and, boys being what boys have always been, hoped to gain her notice by snatching her bonnet and running off with it—the equivalent of tugging at a girl’s pigtail or surprising her with a close-up look at a bullfrog or a squirmy garter snake, and glory be and hallelujah if she squealed.

      Miss Alvira, still gripping the boy’s suspenders, turned to frown at Edrina.

      “Edrina Nolan,” she said, “young ladies do not strike others with their fists.”

      Edrina, who had been looking in Clay’s direction until that moment, faced her accuser, folded her arms and staunchly replied, “He had it coming.”

      “Go inside this instant,” Alvira ordered both children, indicating the open door of the schoolhouse with a pointing of her index finger. “Thomas, you will stand in the corner behind my desk, by the bookcase. Edrina, you will occupy the one next to the cloakroom.”

      “For how long?” Edrina wanted to know.

      Clay had to admire the child’s spirit.

      “Until I tell you that you may take your seats,” Miss Alvira answered firmly, shooing the rest of her brood toward the hallowed halls of learning with a waving motion of her free arm. “Inside,” she called. “All of you. Recess is over.”

      The command elicited groans of protest, but the children obeyed.

      Thomas, clearly humiliated because he’d been publicly bested by a girl, slunk, head down, toward the schoolhouse, and Edrina followed in her own time, literally dragging her feet by scuffing the toe of first one shoe and then the other in the dirt as she walked. Finally, she looked back over one shoulder, caught Clay’s eye and gave an eloquent little shrug of resignation.

      He hoped the distance and the shadow cast by the brim of his hat would hide his smile.

      That kid should have been born a McKettrick.

      DARA ROSE MADE THE ROUNDS that morning just as she’d planned, swallowing her pride and knocking on each door to ask for work, with little Harriet trudging along, uncomplaining, at her side.

      There were only half a dozen real houses in Blue River; the rest were mostly hovels and shanties, shacks like the one she lived in. The folks there were no better off than she was and, in many cases, things were worse for them. Thin smoke wafted from crooked chimneys and scrawny chickens pecked at the small expanses of bare dirt that passed for yards.

      Mrs. O’Reilly, whose husband had run off with a dance hall girl six months ago and left her with three children to look after, all of them under five years old, was outside. The woman was probably in her early twenties, but she looked a generation older; there were already streaks of gray at her temples and she’d lost one of her eye teeth.

      She had a bonfire going, with a big tin washtub teetering atop the works, full of other people’s laundry. Steam boiled up into the crisp air as she stirred the soapy soup, and Peg O’Reilly managed a semblance of a smile when she caught sight of Dara Rose and Harriet.

      Two of the O’Reilly children, both boys, ran whooping around their mother like Sioux braves on the warpath, both of them barefoot and coatless. Their older sister, Addie, must have been inside, where it was, Dara Rose devoutly hoped, comparatively warm.

      “Mornin’, Miz Nolan,” Peg called, though she didn’t smile. She was probably self-conscious about that missing tooth, Dara Rose figured, with a stab of well-hidden pity.