An Outlaw's Christmas. Linda Miller Lael

didn’t see the shooter or his horse, but the calm, watching part of him sized up the situation, sensed there had been a rider. If anybody had seen anything, or heard the muffled gunshot, they weren’t fixing to rush to his rescue, and he didn’t have the strength to draw his .45, even if he could have seen beyond Cherokee’s laid-back ears.

      Fortunately, the horse knew that—in cases like this anyway—discretion was the better part of valor. Cherokee bolted for safer territory, leapfrogging through the powdery snow, and Sawyer, hurting bad and only half-conscious, simply lay over the pommel, with the saddle horn jabbing into his middle like a fist, and held on to reins and mane for all he was worth.

      Maybe the gunman lost sight of them in the storm, or maybe he just slipped back through the edges of Sawyer’s awareness, into the pulsing darkness that surrounded him, but the second shot, the one that would have finished him off for sure, never came.

      His mind slowed, and then slowed some more. He was aware of the thud-thud-thud of his heart, the raspy scratch of his breath, clawing its way into his lungs and then out again, and the familiar smell of wet horsehide, but his vision dimmed to a gray haze.

      Cherokee kept moving. Sawyer’s consciousness seemed to retreat into the far corners of his mind, but growing up on the Triple M Ranch, in Arizona, he’d practically been raised on the back of a horse, and the muscles in his arms and legs must have drawn on some capacity for recollection beyond the grasp of the waking mind, because he managed to stay in the saddle.

      It was only when the horse came to a sudden stop in a spill of buttery light on glistening snow that Sawyer pitched sideways with a sickening lurch, jarred his wounded shoulder when he struck the snow-padded ground, and passed out from the pain.

      * * *

      PIPER ST. JAMES, seated at the desk in her empty schoolroom and glumly surveying the scrawny, undecorated pine tree leaning against the far wall, wished heartily, and not for the first time, that she’d never left Maine to strike out for a life of adventure in the still-wild West.

      Her cousin Dara Rose, in love with her handsome rancher husband, had painted a fine picture of Blue River in her letters, telling Piper what a wonderful place it was, full of good people and wide open to newcomers.

      Piper sighed. Of course Dara Rose would see things that way—she was so happy in her new marriage and, being a generous soul, she wanted Piper to be happy, too. Life had been hard for her cousin and her two little girls, but Clay McKettrick had changed all that.

      Piper’s pupils—all thirteen of them—were safe at home, where they belonged, and that was a considerable comfort to her. She’d spent the entire day alone, though, shut up in the schoolhouse, feeding the potbellied stove from an ever-dwindling store of firewood, keeping herself occupied as best she could. Tomorrow was likely to bring more of the same, since the storm showed no signs of letting up—it might even get worse.

      Piper shuddered at the thought. She had plenty of food, thanks to the good people of Blue River, but her supply of well water was running out fast, like the wood. Soon, she’d have no choice but to pull on a pair of oversize boots, bundle up in both her everyday shawls and her heavy woolen cloak, raise the hood to protect her ears from the stinging chill, and slog her way across the schoolyard, once to the woodshed, and once to the well. To make matters worse, she was getting low on kerosene for the one lamp she’d allowed herself to light.

      She told herself that Clay, Dara Rose’s husband, would come by to check on her soon, but there was no telling when or if he’d be able to get there, given the distance and the state of the roads. For now, Piper had to do for herself.

      The wind howled around the clapboard walls of that small, unpainted schoolhouse, sorrowful as a whole band of banshees searching for a way in, making her want to burrow under the quilts on her bed, which took up most of the tiny room in back set aside for teacher’s quarters, and hide there until the weather turned.

      She might freeze if she did that, of course, and that was if she didn’t die of thirst beforehand.

      So she put on the ungainly boots, left behind by Miss Krenshaw, the last teacher, wrapped herself in wool, drew a deep breath and opened the schoolhouse door to step out onto the little porch.

      The cold buffeted her, hard as a slap, trapping the breath in her lungs and nearly knocking her backward, over the threshold.

      Resolute, she drew the shawls and the cloak more tightly around her and tried again. The sooner she went out, the sooner she could come back in, she reasoned.

      She stopped on the schoolhouse porch, peering through the goose-feather flakes coming down solid as a wall in front of her. Was that a horse, there in the thin light her one lamp cast through the front window?

      Piper caught her breath, her heart thudding with sudden hope. There was a horse, and a horse meant a rider, and a rider meant company, if not practical help. Perhaps Clay had braved the tempest to pay her a visit—

      She trudged down the steps and across the yard, every step an effort, and got a clearer look at the horse. A sturdy buckskin, the animal was real, all right. The creature was saddled, reins dangling, and she saw its eyes roll upward, glaring white.

      But there was no rider on its back.

      Although Piper had little experience with horses, she felt an instant affinity for the poor thing, evidently lost in the storm. It must have wandered off from somewhere nearby.

      She moved toward it slowly, carefully, partly because of the bitter wind and partly because of her own rising trepidation. She didn’t recognize the horse, which meant that Clay hadn’t come to look in on her, nor had any of the other men—fathers, brothers or uncles of her students—who might have been concerned about the schoolmarm’s welfare.

      The buckskin whinnied wildly as she approached, backing up awkwardly, nearly falling onto its great, heaving haunches, lathered despite the chill.

      “There, now,” Piper said, reaching for the critter’s bridle strap. There was a shed behind the schoolhouse—some of the students rode in from the country when class was in session and tethered their mounts there for the day, so there was some hay, and the plank walls offered a modicum of shelter—but just then, that shack seemed as far away as darkest Africa.

      Before she could take hold of the horse’s bridle, Piper tripped over something solid, half buried in the snow, fell to her hands and knees, and felt the sticky warmth of blood seeping through her mittens.

      She saw him then, the rider, sprawled on his back, hat lying a few feet away, staining the snow to crimson.

      Sitting on her haunches, Piper stared down at the unfortunate wayfarer for a few long moments, snowflakes slicing at her face like razors, confounded and afraid.

      Bile surged into the back of her throat, scalding there, and she willed herself not to turn aside and retch. Something had to be done—and quickly.

      “Mister?” she called, gripping the lapels of his long gunslinger’s coat and bending close to his face. “Mister, are you alive?”

      He groaned, and she saw one of his eyelids twitch.

      The horse, close enough to step on one or both of them, whinnied again, a desperate sound.

      “You’ll be all right,” Piper told both the horse and the man, on her knees in the snow, her mittens and cloak damp with blood, but she wasn’t at all sure that was the truth.

      The man was around six feet tall—there was no way she could lift him, and it was clear that he couldn’t stand, let alone walk.

      Piper deliberated briefly, then stumbled and struggled back into the schoolhouse, through to her room, and wrenched the patchwork quilt—she’d done the piecework herself and the task had been arduous—off the bed.

      Warmer now, from the exertions of the past few minutes, Piper rushed outside again and somehow managed to get the quilt underneath the bleeding stranger. He opened his eyes once—even in the dim light she could see that they were a startling shade of greenish azure—and a little smile