A Western Christmas Homecoming. Lynna Banning

don’t talk much,” he said, settling himself beside her.

      “Neither do you,” she retorted.

      “I guess that’s because I usually travel alone. I do talk to my horse sometimes, though.”

      “And since I’m a librarian, I talk to my books.”

      He laughed at that, and then answered the question she hadn’t asked yet. “Three days. It’ll take three days of riding to reach Silver City.”

      “You mean I cannot bathe for three whole days? By then I will smell to high heaven!”

      He bit back a smile. “Nah, you won’t. First of all, you’ve got a bottle of fancy-smelling stuff in your saddlebag. And second...” He paused to toss the dregs of his coffee into the fire. “There are lots of streams and rivers between here and Silver City where you can take a bath. As long as you don’t mind cold water,” he added with a grin.

      “How do you know that, Marshal? About the rivers and streams, I mean?”

      “Maps,” he said with a chuckle. “Books are full of ’em. I should think you’d know that, being a librarian.”

      She studied him in the firelight. It was too dark to see his face, but his voice was full of laughter. Thank the Lord! There would be nothing worse than traveling for three days with a man who was dull in the head.

      Suddenly she remembered why she was riding into the wilderness with the marshal and she sucked in her breath. Tears stung under her eyelids at the thought of her sister. Deliberately she turned her attention to something else.

      Her traveling companion, Marshal Logan, for instance. He was a puzzle of a man in many ways. Well-mannered. Considerate. Knowledgeable. And obviously a dedicated lawman. And, she had discovered, he was a passable cook.

      And yet she sensed a streak of something hard and unyielding in him; he was like a bar of iron wrapped in something soft, like velvet. She liked the way he listened to her, as if what she said mattered. But she was constantly aware of that core of inner toughness.

      Something tu-whooed in a nearby pine tree and she jerked. “What was that?”

      “Owl.”

      She pointed at something rustling in the shrubbery behind them. “And that?”

      “Don’t know. Probably something that’s more scared of us than we are of it.”

      “That,” she said with a shudder, “is cold comfort. Do you think it’s something big, like a...mountain lion?”

      “Nope. Probably the rabbit that owl is after. Alice, you’ve been cool and collected for the last ten hours. How come you’re so skittery all of a sudden?”

      “Maybe because I just realized how alone we are way out here in the middle of nowhere. No lights. No sheriff. No...help.”

      “Alone is good. A smart traveler is always wary of company on the trail. Besides, I’m a marshal, remember?”

      His voice sounded overpatient. Surely she wasn’t being a trial. For the last twenty-four hours she had worked hard to appear calm and rational and brave. She couldn’t lose control now. She just couldn’t.

      “Alice? Is something wrong?”

      “No. Well, yes. I am—I am a bit frightened.” A little laugh escaped her. “Actually, I am a lot frightened!”

      “That’s a relief,” he said. “I was beginning to think you were more stone statue than flesh-and-blood girl.”

      “Oh.” His voice was not accusing; it was understanding, which was a relief. “I assure you, Marshal, I am quite human.”

      Rand turned toward her. “For God’s sake, Alice, could you call me Rand instead of ‘Marshal’?”

      She flinched, and Rand was instantly sorry he’d snapped at her.

      “Of course,” she said quietly.

      He strode off to the stream, and when he returned she was rolled up in her blankets like a sausage, her body curled close to the dying fire. He stood looking down at her for a long time, thinking how the firelight made everything look soft until it faded into blackness. And then he noticed the blanket was shaking.

      She was crying. He couldn’t hear her, but he knew. He dragged his own bedroll from behind the saddle, shucked his boots and stuffed his Colt under the saddle at his head. Then he crawled next to her, wrapped himself in his bedroll and pulled the shuddering bundle into his arms.

      “Alice, I’m sorry. Guess I’m tired, but I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

      The blanket covered her face, but he could hear her still crying. Of all the things that he hated in life, hearing a woman cry was the worst.

      “Alice.”

      “I—I’m not crying because of anything you s-said, Mar—Rand. I’m crying b-because I’m exhausted and saddle-sore and s-scared.”

      Relief surged through him. “Alice, if you weren’t scared, you’d be crazy.”

      She gave a choked laugh. “Well, then, it would appear I am most certainly not crazy.”

      “I’ve been scared plenty of times, Alice. Once on an army patrol we ran into a bunch of outlaws holed up in a canyon. It was my first campaign, and I was plenty scared. We managed to capture all but two of them, and I was scared the whole time.”

      “What happened to the two you didn’t capture?”

      He hesitated. “I shot them.”

      “Were you frightened then?”

      “The fear was there all the time. I just tried to move through it and keep going.”

      She nodded and he heard a ragged sigh. “Thank you, Rand.”

      He lay for a long time with his arms around her blanket-wrapped form. Finally her breathing evened out and he figured she’d fallen asleep. Just as he started to ease his arm out from under her, the blanket fell away and she opened her eyes and tried to smile.

      “I have had a really terrible time since you told me about my sister. Most of the time I feel like screaming.”

      “You want to give it up? Go back to Smoke River?”

      There was a long silence. “No,” she said at last. “I want to keep on. I want to find whoever killed my sister.”

      They rode east, toward Idaho Territory, and the landscape turned brown and dry and hot. Tiny stinging insects swarmed around Alice’s face, and no matter how much she swatted and flailed at them, they got caught in her hair. The streams grew narrower, and the shallow rivers they rode across flowed green and lazy. She desperately wanted a bath.

      To occupy her mind, she studied Rand Logan. He was interesting in a lawman sort of way, with his rifle nestled in a saddle scabbard and a worn leather gun belt strapped low on his hip. His leather boots had spurs, which chinged when he walked, but she never saw him touch his horse with the rowels. Maybe the spurs were just for show.

      Except that Marshal Logan didn’t seem to care about appearances. This morning he’d shaved hastily and sloppily, and the dark mustache over his upper lip looked a little raggedy. She liked his eyes, green as jade and always watchful. He certainly didn’t talk much, but when he did speak she paid attention. She had to pay attention, she acknowledged. This was the most frightening thing she had ever done.

      As a librarian she’d led a very circumspect life. No bumps or surprises, just nice, quiet books in a nice, quiet building in a nice, quiet town. Books were her life, her reason for living. The printed word made sense of the world around her, of things she couldn’t control, like wars and floods and hunger and suffering.

      And