Hill Country Christmas. Laurie Kingery

you yesterday, not ridden on past.” His voice was deep, like the bottom of a slowly flowing Texas river.

      Delia blinked. “Who…who are you?”

      The man dismounted before he spoke and dropped the reins to the ground. The buckskin seemed used to this action and merely dropped his head to crop at the grass that grew lushly in the shade by the fence.

      As the man turned back to her, she got a true measure of his height. Somehow he was even taller than he had seemed on horseback. He would have easily overtopped her grandpa, who had become stooped in his old age, and was probably taller than her father, whom she hadn’t seen since the top of her head reached only to his elbow. The stranger would probably have had to duck to enter her house—not that she was even thinking of inviting him in!

      He seemed to sense her qualms, for he held his ground and removed his broad-brimmed hat, revealing a headful of raven-dark hair. “Miss Keller, my name’s Tucker—Jude Tucker—and the reason I’m here is that your father wanted me to come by and see you.”

      She could hardly believe her ears, and her eagerness had her rushing forward as fast as she had been backing up. “My father? You know my father? Is he coming? When will he be here? Why didn’t he come with you? Oh, I knew he’d be back someday!”

      A cloud seemed to pass over Tucker’s face, and he put out a hand, not to touch her but to stop the flow of her words.

      “He…he’s not coming, Miss Keller. I’m sorry, I should have made that clear right off. I-I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you he’s dead.”

      Delia felt the earth shift beneath her feet as if she had been whirled around a dozen times and let loose. She would have fallen if the stranger hadn’t put out a hand just then to steady her.

      “Easy there,” Jude Tucker murmured, his touch gentle. “You’re white as bleached bones, Miss Keller. Why don’t we step up onto your porch and sit down on those chairs? I’ve given you a shock, ma’am, but I reckon you’ll be wanting to hear the rest once you’ve had a few moments to think.”

      She didn’t remember giving permission, but with his hand on her elbow, he guided her up the three steps and settled her into the rocker that had been her grandpa’s favorite place to while away an evening. He watched as she untied her black bonnet and set it on the small table between them.

      “Is there a pump around back? Could I fetch you a cup of water?” Tucker asked.

      His voice seemed to come from a long way off, and Delia had to force herself to make sense of his words before she could answer him. “A pump? Water? No…That is, yes, there’s a pump, but no, I don’t want any….”

      Then, as the result of years of modeling herself after her grandpa, who’d never done the least thing without thinking of other people first, she added, “Oh, but feel free to help yourself, if you’re thirsty. There’s a cup hanging by a string from the pump.”

      He looked surprised. “It’s mighty nice of you to be askin’ at such a time, ma’am. Perhaps I’ll do that, after I’ve told you about why your father sent me to see you.”

      “What…what happened to my father?” she said, swallowing past a lump in her throat, her eyes burning as she struggled to focus on the stranger.

      Jude Tucker looked down at the hat he held between his long, tanned fingers. “He died mining silver out in Nevada, Miss Keller,” he said.

      When she said nothing, merely waited, he looked up at her, then went on.

      “You probably know they struck silver out there in ’59, long before he got there, but your father discovered a new mother lode nearby. I’d been helping him mine it. He’d been lucky—luckier than anyone’s been since the Comstock Lode. He’d been saying he was going to head back to Texas, but before he could there was a mine collapse. I’d gone to town for supplies with the wagon, and he’d gotten pinned under a couple of big beams for several hours. He…”

      Tucker paused, then seemed to think better of what he was going to say. His eyes shifted toward the road, but Delia could tell he wasn’t really seeing anything. He was remembering.

      “It was clear he was in a bad way when I got there. I pulled the beams off him. I was all for trying to get him to the doctor, but he wouldn’t go. He told me he knew he was dying. There probably wasn’t anything the sawbones could’ve done anyway, and the ride would have killed him. He told me just to let him lie there so he could use the moments he had left to tell me where to find you, Miss Keller. He was gone just a few minutes after that.”

      Delia felt a hot knife of regret stab her. If only her father hadn’t been so restless—if only he hadn’t felt that need to go seek his fortune. He’d be alive today, and she wouldn’t have had to grow up without a father. Mrs. Calhoun had been unknowingly right when she’d quoted that verse from the Bible. The love of money had certainly been the root of evil for Will Keller.

      “And now you have,” she said, remembering her manners. “It was good of you to come so far, Mr. Tucker, to tell me about my father’s death. I…I don’t have any way to repay you for your trouble.”

      Something shifted in the depths of those steely eyes. “You’re welcome, but I…didn’t come all this way just to inform you of his death. I came to bring you something. You’re his only living heir, after all.”

      “Heir?” Once again, it was as if he was speaking a foreign language.

      His lips curved upward slightly. “Well, I suppose heiress would be the proper word, ma’am. In my saddlebags I have a certificate from the bank in Carson City that you can have transferred to your bank here in town.”

      “Certificate? What do you mean?”

      “Your father had already mined quite a lode of silver before anyone—anyone besides me, that is—got wind that he’d struck such a big vein. He converted it to cash and put that in the bank. He died a rich man, Miss Keller. And now all his wealth is yours.”

      He’d been afraid that the news might cause her to faint for real this time. Jude watched, ready to catch her, as the heavy dark lashes flew up and surprise siphoned the blood once more from her cheeks, but Delia Keller remained upright.

      A soft gasp escaped her lips. “Rich? My father? And he left it all to me?”

      Her incredulity at being the sole beneficiary surprised him in turn. “You were his only child, Miss Keller. Who else should he leave it to?”

      “I…I don’t know,” she stammered in bewilderment. “As long as he’d been gone from here, I thought it possible that he might…well, have married again. Maybe even started a new family somewhere.”

      Jude wished his friend were alive again, if only for a moment, so he could upbraid him for deserting his responsibility to his only child and making this beautiful woman doubt her importance to her father. Compared to that, even the thousands of dollars Will Keller had left her were fool’s gold.

      “Or he could have left it to you, his partner.” She’d been looking down at her lap, but now he found those green eyes trained right on him.

      Jude found himself unable to meet her frank regard. “I…I wasn’t his partner,” he explained. “I just worked for him. He found the silver all by himself. He gave me plenty for traveling expenses, Miss Keller. That was enough.”

      “You could have kept the certificate and claimed you couldn’t find me. No one would have been the wiser.”

      Those eyes seemed to bore right through him, straight to his soul.

      “No, I couldn’t have,” he said, wondering what Delia Keller looked like clothed in some color other than black. Green perhaps, to match her eyes. Now, that would be a picture. “Besides, what would I do with so much money? I go where the wind takes me.”

      “You’re a drifter?”

      It was phrased