An Outlaw's Christmas. Linda Miller Lael

hand.

      Piper spent the next half hour or so cleaning that wound, treating it with iodine, binding it closed with the strips of cloth. Stitches were needed, she knew, but threading a needle and sewing flesh together, the way she might stitch up a patchwork quilt, was entirely beyond her. If she made the attempt, she’d get sick, faint dead away, or both, thereby making bad matters considerably worse.

      Mercifully, the stranger did not wake during the long, careful process of applying the bandages. When she’d finished, Piper covered him again, brought a pillow and eased it under his head, and, rising to her feet, looked down at the front of her dress.

      Like the cloak and the mittens, it was badly stained.

      Piper rinsed the basin, filled it with clean water, and retreated into the little room at the back of the schoolhouse. She stripped to her petticoat and camisole, shivering all the while, and gave herself a quick sponge bath. After that, she donned a calico dress—a little scant for the season, but she’d need her gray woolen one for some time yet and wanted to keep it clean. Once properly clad again, she took her dark hair down from its pins and combs, brushed it vigorously, and secured it into a loose chignon at her nape.

      Needing to keep herself occupied, Piper burned her knitted mittens in the stove—there was no use trying to get them clean—and then assessed the damage to her cloak. It was dire.

      Resigned, and keeping one eye on the unmoving victim, Piper took up her scissors again and cut away the stained parts of her only cloak, consigned the pieces to the stove, and folded what remained to be used for other purposes.

      Waste not, want not. She and Dara Rose, growing up together in a household of genteel poverty, had learned that lesson early and well.

      She ate supper at her desk—a bowl of the beans she’d been simmering on the stove all afternoon—and wondered what to do next.

      She was exhausted, and every muscle ached from the strain of dragging a full-grown man halfway across the schoolyard and inside, tending to the horse as well as its master, fetching the wood and the water. She didn’t dare close her eyes to sleep, though—the stranger might be incapacitated, but he was still a stranger, and he was accustomed to carrying a gun. Suppose he came to and did—well—something?

      From a safe distance, Piper assessed him again, cataloging his features in her mind. Caramel-colored hair, a lean, muscular frame, expensive clothes and boots. And then there was the horse, obviously a sturdy creature, well-bred. This man was probably a person of means, she concluded, but that certainly didn’t mean he wasn’t a rascal and a rounder, too.

      He might actually be dangerous, a drifter or an unscrupulous opportunist.

      Again, she considered braving the weather once more, making her way to the nearest house to ask for help, since Doc’s place was too distant, but she knew she’d never make it even that far. She had no cloak, and in that blizzard, she didn’t dare trust her sense of direction. She might head the wrong way, wander off into the countryside somewhere and perish from exposure.

      She shuddered again, rose from her chair, and carried her empty bowl and soup spoon back to the washstand in her quarters, where she left them to be dealt with later.

      Still giving the stranger a fairly wide berth, she perched on one of the students’ benches and watched him, thinking hard. She supposed she could peel that overcoat off him, put it on, and tramp to the neighbors’ house, nearly a quarter of a mile away, but the effort might do him further injury and, besides, the mere thought of wearing that bloody garment made her ill.

      Even if she’d been able to bear that, the problem of the weather remained.

      She was stuck.

      She retrieved her knitting—a scarf she’d intended to give to Dara Rose as a Christmas gift—and sat working stitches and waiting for the man to move, or speak.

      Or die.

      “Water,” he said, after a long time. “I need—water.”

      New energy rushed through Piper’s small body; she filled a ladle from one of the buckets she’d hauled in earlier, carried it carefully to his side, and knelt to slip one hand under his head and raise him up high enough to drink.

      He took a few sips and his eyes searched her face as she lowered him back to the floor.

      “Where—? Who—?” he muttered, the words as rough as sandpaper.

      “You’re in the Blue River schoolhouse,” she answered. “I’m Miss St. James, the teacher. Who are you?”

      “Is…my horse—?”

      Piper managed a thin smile. She didn’t know whether to be glad because he’d regained consciousness or worried by the problems that might present. “Your horse is fine. In out of the storm, fed and watered.”

      A corner of his mouth quirked upward, ever so slightly, and his eyes seemed clearer than when he’d opened them before, as though he were more present somehow, and centered squarely within the confines of his own skin and bones. “That’s…good,” he said, with effort.

      “Who are you?” Piper asked. She still hadn’t searched his pockets, since just binding up his wound had taken all the courage and fortitude she could muster.

      He didn’t answer, but gestured for more water, lifting his head without her help this time, and when he’d swallowed most of the ladle’s contents, he lapsed into another faint. His skin was ghastly pale, and his lips had a bluish tinge.

      He belonged in a bed, not on the floor, but moving him any farther was out of the question, given their difference in size. All she could do was cover him, keep the fire going—and pray for a miraculous recovery.

      The night passed slowly, with the man groaning hoarsely in his sleep now and then, and muttering a woman’s name—Josie—often. At times, he seemed almost desperate for a response.

      Oddly stricken by these murmured cries, Piper left her chair several times to kneel beside him, holding his hand.

      “I’m here,” she’d say, hoping he’d think she was this Josie person.

      Whoever she was.

      He’d smile in his sleep then, and rest peacefully for a while, and Piper would go back to her chair and her knitting. At some point, she unraveled the scarf and cast on new stitches; she’d make mittens instead, she decided, to replace the ones she’d had to burn. With so much of the winter still to come, she’d need them, and heaven only knew what she’d do for a cloak; since her salary was barely enough to keep body and soul together. Such a purchase was close to impossible.

      She wasn’t normally the fretful sort—like Dara Rose, she was hardworking and practical and used to squeezing pennies—but, then, this was hardly a normal situation.

      Was this man an outlaw? Perhaps even a murderer?

      He was well dressed and he owned a horse of obvious quality, even to her untrained eyes, but, then, maybe he was highly skilled at thievery, and his belongings were ill-gotten gains.

      Piper nodded off in her chair, awakened with a start, saw that it was morning and the snow had relented a little, still heavy but no longer an impenetrable curtain of white.

      The stranger was either asleep or unconscious, and the thin sunlight struck his toast-colored hair with glints of gold.

      He was handsome, Piper decided. All the more reason to keep her distance.

      She set aside her knitting and proceeded to build up the fire and then put a pot of coffee on to brew, hoping the stuff would restore her waning strength, and finally wrapped herself in her two remaining shawls, drew a deep breath, and left the schoolhouse to trudge around back, to the shed.

      The trees were starkly beautiful, every branch defined, as if etched in glimmering frost.

      To her relief, the buckskin was fine, though the water bucket she’d filled with snow was empty.

      Piper