A Creed Country Christmas by Linda Lael Miller

soundly.
     
    T HE SNOW HAD STOPPED BY DAWN , but it reached Lincoln’s knees as he made his way toward the barn. Even the draft horses would have a hard time getting through the stuff, but the cattle had to be fed, and that meant hitching up the sled and loading it with hay.
    Lincoln thought of Wes, hoped his brother had made it safely home to the Diamond Buckle Saloon. There would be no finding out for a while, since the roads would be impassable.
    He thought about Juliana, and how pleased she’d been when he’d shown her the bathtub. His mother had insisted on installing the thing, saying she was tired of heating water on the stove and bathing in the kitchen, ever fearful that some man would wander in and catch her in “the altogether.”
    At the time, he’d thought it was plain foolish, a waste of good money, but then Beth—destined to die in just a few short months—had pointed out that she’d had a bathtub of her very own back in Boston, and she missed it.
    Lincoln had ridden to town the same day and placed an order at Willand’s Mercantile. Weeks later, when the modern marvel arrived by train, shipped all the way from Denver in a crate big enough to house a grand piano, half the town had come out to the ranch to see it unloaded and set up in the smallest bedroom.
    Husbands pulled Lincoln aside to complain; they were being hectored, they said. Now the wife wanted one of those infernal contraptions all her own.
    He’d sympathized, and proffered that a bathtub with a boiler was a small price to pay for a peaceful household. Hell, it was worth the look of delighted disbelief he’d seen on Juliana’s face when she saw it.
    Guilt struck him again like the punch of a fist as he entered the barn, lit a lantern to see by so the work would go more quickly. He’d bought that bathtub for Beth , not Juliana.
    The cow began to snuffle and snort, wanting to be milked.
    Lincoln soothed her with a scratch between the ears and gave her hay instead. Once he’d fed all the horses and Wes’s mule, he undertook the arduous task of hauling water from the well to fill the troughs.
    By the time he’d finished that, milked and started back toward the house, bucket in hand, it was snowing again.
    For a moment, Lincoln felt weary to the core of his spirit. Ranching was always hard work, always a risk, but in weather like this, with cattle on the range, it could be downright brutal.
    Finding Juliana in the kitchen, and the coffee brewed, he felt better.
    Tom was nowhere around, though, and that was unusual enough to worry Lincoln. He was about to ask if Juliana had seen him when Tom came out of his room just off the kitchen, tucking his flour-sack shirt into his pants.
    “Too much reading,” he said. “That Oliver feller has me worried.”
    Lincoln chuckled, poured himself some coffee. “What’s for breakfast?” he asked. “Gruel?”
    Tom looked puzzled, but Juliana smiled. “How about oatmeal?” she suggested brightly.
    “No gruel?” Lincoln teased.
    She laughed. “You haven’t tasted my oatmeal.”
    The gruel, he soon discovered, would have been an improvement.
    Joseph, turning up rumpled at the table, made a face when he saw it. “Is there any of that bear hash left?” he asked, his tone plaintive.
    Only Tom accepted a second bowl of oatmeal.
    When the three men left the house, they met Ben Gainer in the yard, and he looked worried. His freckles stood out against his pale face and his brownish-red hair stuck out in spikes under his hat. “Rose-of-Sharon is feelin’ poorly this morning,” he said.
    “You’d better stay with her, then,” Tom said quietly.
    “I told her she ought to let you come and see if the baby’s on its way, but she said—” Ben fell silent, blushed miserably. Turned his eyes to the snowy terrain and looked even grimmer than before.
    All of them knew what Rose-of-Sharon Gainer had said. She didn’t want an Indian tending her, no matter how “poorly” she might feel.
    “It’s all