Dreaming Of A Western Christmas: His Christmas Belle / The Cowboy of Christmas Past / Snowbound with the Cowboy

“Supper,” he intoned. “Stay here.” He slid the gun back into the case and stepped his horse forward.

She pressed her lips together. Stay here. Go there. Do this. Do that. The man was impossible. No wonder he wasn’t married.

She watched him dismount and bend to pick up something off the ground. When he returned, a limp furry creature hung from one hand. A spot of crimson spread across its neck, and blood dripped from the wound onto the ground.

He shot her a glance and saw her shock, but he only shrugged. “Let’s move out.”

Chapter Five (#ulink_b523dd0f-7d62-51f9-b22b-c8b052ce050b)

Watching Suzannah out of the corner of his eye, Brand knew she was so exhausted she could barely stay in the saddle. The stream should be just over the next hill, but he wondered if she could hold on that long.

“You all right?” he ventured.

Her chin came up. “I am quite all right, thank you.”

But she was having trouble keeping her eyes open. Maybe the glare. Or maybe she was holding on with the last of her strength.

He didn’t like her much, but he had to admire her guts. Except she wouldn’t say “guts.” She’d have some fancy-ass term like courage. Or maybe perseverance. Yeah, she’d like that one. More syllables.

By the time they made camp and he’d fed the horses and wiped them down, she had settled herself beside the stream with her bare feet in the water. Her head drooped onto her bent knees. One thing he’d say about the lady from the Southern plantation, she didn’t complain. In fact, she’d hardly said a word since he shot the rabbit.

He dressed it quickly, skewered the cut-up parts on green willow sticks and propped them over the fire. Then he set the coffeepot on a flat rock close to the flames and unrolled their bedrolls.

He eyed the rippling 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.