Dreaming Of A Western Christmas. Carol Arens

stream. After forty miles of chaparral and up-and-down trails, he was so hot and sweaty it didn’t take but two seconds to decide on a bath.

      “Gonna walk downstream a ways,” he said as he passed behind her hunched-over frame. She didn’t move, but a muffled sound came from between her knees.

      “Coffee’ll be ready pretty quick. Supper, too. You hungry?”

      Another sound, maybe a ladylike groan. He took it for a yes.

      An hour later she was still sitting with her feet in the creek, but she’d straightened up some. He stopped beside her.

      “Blisters?”

      “I didn’t look. All I know is my feet feel as if I have been dancing a reel on hot coals.”

      “Dry ’em off. I’ll take a look.”

      “Oh, no, I—”

      “Don’t argue.” He squatted beside her. “Give me your foot.”

      Suzannah lifted one foot out of the water and instantly he took possession of it, running his warm hands over her instep, her toes. He bent his head and rubbed his thumb along her raw heel.

      “Yep, got a blister. Big as a four-bit piece. I’ll get some liniment.” He picked up her other foot and studied that, as well. “Mighty delicate feet. I’d wager you haven’t done much walking. Got two messed-up heels.”

      He rummaged in his saddlebag and returned with a bottle of brown liquid. The label said Horse Liniment. He crouched next to her, but she shrank away.

      “I do not think horse liniment is a proper medicine for a human foot, Mr. Wyler.”

      “Maybe not, but it’s what I’ve got. And it’s needed.” He shook the bottle and grasped her foot. “By the way, my name’s Brand. Might as well use it since we’re, uh, traveling together.” He uncorked the liniment and smoothed some over one raw heel, then the other.

      “Leave your boots off for a few hours.”

      A soothing warmth settled over her abraded skin, and she sighed with pleasure.

      “Better?”

      “Yes. Thank you.”

      He rose abruptly and tramped over to the fire pit. “Come and get it.”

      She hobbled the few yards to the fire, smelled the coffee and roasting meat, and tensed her stomach muscles to stop the rumbling. She’d had two desiccated biscuits at noon; now she was so hungry she could eat anything, even a... She swallowed hard. A dead rabbit. She sat near the fire and he handed her an unidentifiable hunk of roasted meat on a stick.

      “Careful, it’s hot.”

      “Oh, I do hope so. I do not think I could face a raw piece of rabbit.”

      “You could if you were hungry enough.”

      “All my life I have had plenty to eat—until the war, that is. Then we had to scrounge and improvise.”

      “Yeah? What did you improvise?”

      She looked off toward the pinkish-orange sky where the sun was sinking behind a mountaintop. “Coffee. We made coffee from roasted acorns. We ate all the chickens, even the rooster, and when there were no more eggs, Sam, our overseer, found birds nests with eggs in them. Quail, I think they were. After that, we ate the quail, too.”

      “You ever wonder whether fighting the war made sense?”

      “Yes,” she said quietly. “I wondered that every single day for four years.”

      He sent her an intent look, his speared rabbit piece halfway to his mouth. Unguarded, his eyes changed from hard gray steel to something softer, dry moss, perhaps. She wondered suddenly what he saw in her face.

      “You miss your life in the South?”

      “Yes, I do. I guess you might say I am...a little homesick.”

      “You ever wonder why you’re chasin’ all over hell and gone after a Northerner?”

      She could not answer that, at least not truthfully. If John had agreed to move to South Carolina, she would not be here.

      He poured two mugs of coffee and set one beside her. “Don’t answer that. Whatever the reason, you’re here now, and I’m stuck with you.”

      “And I,” she said sharply, “am stuck with you. I do not like you very much, Mr. Wyler. And I am quite sure you do not like me.”

      They finished their meal in silence so heavy it felt as if the air weighed more than a loaded wagon. After supper she rolled herself up in the wool blanket, rested her head on her saddle, and closed her eyes to shut out the sight of Brand Wyler.

      The wind sighed through the trees. She listened for a coyote’s call so it wouldn’t startle her as it had that first night, but all she heard was the fire popping out an occasional spark. How many days must she endure this man’s company? Four hundred miles, the colonel had said. At forty miles per day, that meant ten days on the trail with Mister Gruff and Bossy.

      Goodness, it had been two. In eight more days she would be completely undone.

      * * *

      In the morning Brand had to shake her awake. When she poked her head out of the blanket she’d burrowed in he noticed her braid had come undone; her hair curled around her face and straggled down to her shoulders. It was the color of gold and looked as soft as dandelion fluff. Made his hands itch to lace his fingers through it.

      She opened her eyes, found him staring at her and popped up like a jack-in-the-box. He jerked his gaze back to the coffeepot. Her voice stopped him cold.

      “We will travel another forty miles today, I assume.”

      “Forty miles? You think we can ride forty miles every day?”

      She blinked those unsettling green eyes. “Yes, of course. Why ever not?” She crawled out of her bedroll and stood up. “I calculated it all out last night. Four hundred miles divided by forty is ten. It will take ten days to get to Fort Klamath.”

      “Like hell it will.”

      Undaunted, she poured herself some coffee and stood blowing on it. A good ten minutes dragged by while he considered how to tell her the facts of life on an iffy trail through the mountains. The more he thought about it, the madder he got. This pampered greenhorn thought they could just sashay over to Fort Klamath as though it was an afternoon buggy ride? She sure as hell had a bunch of learning to do.

      “Well?” she said. “You have not answered my question, Mr. Wyler. Why can’t we reach the fort in ten days?”

      “You don’t have any idea what you’re up against, do you? Hell’s bells, lady, you don’t have the sense God gave a goose. You have—”

      Without thinking, Suzannah dashed her coffee into his face. “A quick temper,” she said with satisfaction. The coffee dripped off his chin and soaked his shirt.

      Without blinking he began to undo the buttons, then shrugged it off over his head, wadded it up and tossed it at her. “Wash it out,” he ordered. He tipped his head toward the creek.

      She stared at his bare chest. He was as lean and brown as a hazelnut, with rippling muscles and not an ounce of fat anywhere.

      His eyes bored into hers and her anger bubbled up anew.

      “I would press it as well,” she said in a voice laden with poison, “but I did not pack a sadiron.”

      “Stop talking and start washing,” he ordered. “Go on.” He gestured at the creek. “Get to it.”

      Twenty minutes later she smacked the sodden bundle against his chest and propped her hands at her waist. Without even blinking he unfolded the laundered shirt, shook it out and pulled it on sopping wet.

      “It’ll