His Frontier Christmas Family

She had barely reached the ground floor when the scents assailed her—warm bread and the tang of onion.

“What are you cooking, preacher?” Frisco called, hurrying closer to where Levi stood by the stove, Sutter right behind.

Callie deposited the quilt and shirt in the bedroom before going to the table. Mica had been pushed up to the edge of it in the funny little chair and was waving around a wooden spoon. Every few swipes she brought it to her mouth to gnaw on. Time to feed that baby. But with what? If Levi didn’t know how to hold her, he likely didn’t know what kind of food she needed, either.

“My mother called it rag-oo,” he was telling her brothers now, lifting the lid on a copper pan to give whatever was inside a stir. Callie’s mouth started watering.

She made herself slide in next to Levi instead. He’d wrapped a cloth around his waist; already it was splattered with red and brown dots. She wasn’t sure why seeing him mussed pleased her. “I need to feed Mica,” she explained. “You got anything I can mash?”

“There’s a cupboard built into that wall,” he answered, pulling back the metal spoon. “Help yourself.”

She went to check. Sure enough, two little handles opened to a cupboard so stocked, Callie could only stare. Jar upon jar crammed on the shelves—red tomatoes, purple plums, golden applesauce, blackberry preserves, pearly onions swimming around blood-red beets, dusky green asparagus and brighter green beans. Oh, what she could do with all this!

She grabbed a jar of applesauce and carried it back to the table.

Frisco was already sitting on the bench. “When do we eat?” he asked Levi.

Levi covered his hand with a corner of the cloth at his waist and eased open the oven. “I’d say a quarter hour, by the look of the biscuits.”

“Biscuits?” Sutter hurried to the table and slid in beside Frisco. Mica called her welcome to them both.

Callie’s feet carried her to Levi’s side, her gaze latched on the browning morsels in the oven. “You know how to bake biscuits?”

He nodded, and she almost cried out in loss as he closed the oven door and shut out the sight of the food she hadn’t eaten since Anna had died. “Ma insisted we all learn to fend for ourselves,” he explained. “Cooking, cleaning, sewing.”

“See there, Callie?” Frisco called. “You won’t have to do anything anymore. The preacher’s gonna take care of us all.”