A Western Christmas Homecoming. Lynna Banning

through the afternoon they turned north, toward the mountains. Now, instead of riding straight into the sun, its rays came from her right, and she quickly learned to keep her hat tilted and the shirtsleeve on that side rolled down to avoid sunburn.

      But by midafternoon, the hot October sun was burning her skin right through the fabric.

      Rand rode with his gray Stetson tipped down so far she wondered how he could see the trail ahead. Occasionally she glanced over at him, but he didn’t notice. Or didn’t seem to notice. He studied the trail ahead, his right hand always resting on the butt of his revolver. Force of habit, she guessed.

      Hour after uneventful hour passed, but he still watched everything, even her. And she couldn’t help studying him when he wasn’t looking. His hair was overlong, just brushing his earlobes. And the hand holding his reins was lean and long-fingered. A surgeon’s hands. Why had he chosen to become a US Marshal rather than a doctor?

      She flicked the chestnut’s reins and drew ahead of him, then waited for him to catch up.

      “In a hurry?” he called.

      “I get restless just plodding along with nothing to do but think.”

      “If you want your horse to last in this heat, you’ll go slow.”

      “Slow is hot,” she said.

      “I figure there’s a stream a couple of miles ahead. We can stop there.”

      “How could you possibly know that?”

      “Trees.” He tipped his head. “Look yonder. Cottonwoods grow where it’s wet. Willows, too.”

      Sure enough, a fuzz of green leafy growth appeared on the horizon. She couldn’t wait for the stream; just thinking about water made her thirsty. She uncapped the canteen hanging on her cantle and shook it. Empty. Rand unhooked his own canteen and passed it to her.

      “Why am I out of water when you’re not?” she wondered aloud.

      “Maybe because you’re greedy?” He phrased it as a question, but she got the message. She shouldn’t guzzle water just because she was thirsty; she should ration it out. She took a single swallow of the warm, metal-flavored water and handed the canteen back to him.

      She was completely out of her element out here. This wilderness was so far removed from her peaceful, quiet library she might as well be on the moon.

      Another hour brought them to a little trickle of a stream, just enough to water the horses and refill the canteens. There was barely enough to splash over her sweaty face and neck.

      “Still got a couple hours of daylight left, Alice. Are you okay with going on?”

      She laughed. “You mean I could hurry up the sunset if I wanted to stop for the night? Librarians are smart, but they’re not that smart.”

      He turned his head to grin at her and she noticed something. One side of his face was darker than the other. He must have been riding north before he arrived in Smoke River and his sunburn had turned his skin tan.

      “Rand, where were you coming from when you reached Smoke River?”

      “How do you know I didn’t come in on the train?”

      “I just know. Librarians are—”

      “Observant,” he finished with a chuckle. “I was coming from Colorado Territory. Denver City.”

      “Colorado! That’s hundreds of miles from Oregon.”

      “Sure is. Why do you think I was so hungry at supper that first night?”

      “Why didn’t you take the train from Denver City instead of riding all that way?”

      He didn’t answer for a long while. “Because I needed the time,” he said finally.

      “Time for what?”

      “Time to work out a plan. And,” he added, “I didn’t want to load Sinbad on a freight car.” He bent to pat his horse’s neck.

      For the next hour Alice thought about his answer. So he needed to think up a plan. And he cared about his horse. Interesting.

      By the time they made camp next to a pretty, shaded river in the foothills, she had run out of questions. She watched him loosen the cinch and rub his bay down with a handful of dry grass, then do the same for her chestnut mare. Finally he dropped both saddles at her feet and strode off to the river. When he returned, his hair was dripping wet.

      “I’ll put some supper together while you take a bath if you want. There’s a little pool behind that scrubby willow, and I didn’t leave any soapsuds floating in the water.”

      Soapsuds! She didn’t have any soap that would make suds. She had forgotten to purchase soap at the mercantile, so she had only a sliver of Sarah’s yellow laundry soap.

      “Think you’re gonna be scared tonight?” he asked.

      “What an odd question. I expect I will be scared every night until...until this is over. Why do you ask?”

      “Just wanted to know how close to lay our bedrolls.”

      She eyed the two saddles he’d dropped at her feet. “Close,” she said. “You are the experienced one with a gun.”

      As it turned out, Rand regretted sleeping close to her. All day he had been reviewing his plan for catching her sister’s killer, deciding who to interview and what premises to inspect. He was also worrying about how to keep Alice safe in an untamed mining camp.

      He was continually surprised by the woman riding with him. She wasn’t frightened by the things that should frighten her, like trapping a killer. Instead she jumped at rustling in the underbrush, at buzzard calls, at things that were no threat, like a chicken hawk swooping off a tree limb or a rabbit scuttling away under a huckleberry bush.

      But she had no idea how rough the frontier outside a small peaceful town like Smoke River could be. And she had a lot to learn about open country. He knew he could keep her safe in countryside like this, where there was clearly identifiable danger. But what about in a rough mining town?

      He’d noted that Alice could be a bit headstrong, somewhat impulsive in making decisions and stubborn when it came to defending them. He figured Rooney hadn’t had a prayer in hell of dissuading her from accompanying him. But Alice knew nothing outside of her genteel, civilized life as a librarian. He was apprehensive about her getting hurt.

      They spent an uneventful night rolled up in their blankets beside the campfire, and while Alice said she wasn’t frightened, Rand still worried.

      The next morning his worst fear played out. After a breakfast of coffee and biscuits he had mixed up and baked on a hot rock, he packed up the saddlebags and they started into the hills. They followed a barely discernible trail that wound up through dry scrub and stands of sugar pine and alder trees, and they had just come around a bend when they ran smack into a surprise.

      A seedy-looking character in frayed Levi’s and a rumpled shirt was perched on a flat rock with a rifle trained on them.

      Rand drew rein.

      The man’s bloodshot eyes studied his horse for a long minute. “Where ya goin’, mister? And missus,” he added.

      Rand prayed to God Alice would keep her mouth shut. Casually he crossed his hands over the saddle horn and bent toward the man. “Goin’ to Boise City, friend. I own the saloon next to the hotel.”

      Behind him he heard Alice give a little squeak.

      “Ya do, huh? How come I never seen you there?”

      “Guess that’s because I’ve been traveling for the last month.”

      “Oh, yeah? Where to?”

      “Eastern Idaho. Little town called Broken Toe.”

      “Broken Toe, huh? Never heard of