A Lawman's Christmas: A McKettricks of Texas Novel by Linda Lael Miller

a training guide along with her first shipment.
    As soon as she’d gotten Edrina off to school, she intended to write a long letter to Piper, explaining that her letter had been accidentally misplaced all this time, and she’d only received it the day before, and that was why her answer was so late in coming. Of course she’d thank her cousin profusely for the generous gift of ten dollars, and bring Piper up-to-date where she and the girls were concerned.
    Her mind bumbled back and forth between the planned letter and her impending career in merchandising like a bee trapped inside a jar while she prepared oatmeal for breakfast, toasted bread in the oven and officiated over a debate between Edrina and Harriet, concerning whose turn it was sleep in the middle of the bed that night.
    Neither one wanted to, and Dara Rose finally said she’d take the middle, for heaven’s sake, and what had she done to deserve two such argumentative daughters?
    After breakfast, Dara Rose and Harriet bundled up to walk Edrina to school. Normally, Edrina managed the distance on her own, but today, Dara Rose wanted a word with Miss Krenshaw.
    â€œI’m already being punished,” Edrina fussed, as the three of them hurried along a road hoary with frost and hardened snow. “I told you I have to stay after and wash the blackboard. So why do you need to talk to Miss Krenshaw, when you know all that?”
    Dara Rose hid a smile. She was holding Harriet’s hand, and trying to pace herself to the child’s much shorter strides. “I merely want to inquire about the Christmas pageant,” she replied. There was always some sort of program at the schoolhouse, whether it was carol singing, a Nativity play or an evening of recitals, and everyone attended.
    â€œOh,” said Edrina, still sounding not only mystified, but apparently a little nervous, too.
    Dara Rose wondered if there was something her daughter should have told her, but hadn’t.
    â€œDo you think it will snow again, Mama?” Harriet asked, tilting her head way back to look up at the glowering sky. “Christmas is less than two weeks away, and St. Nicholas will need a lot of snow, since he travels in a sleigh.”
    â€œGoose,” Edrina said, nudging her sister with one elbow. “There isn’t any St. Nicholas, remember?”
    â€œEdrina,” Dara Rose interceded gently.
    â€œI’m pretending, that’s all,” Harriet said, with a toss of her head. “You can’t stop me, either.”
    â€œPretending is stupid, ” Edrina said. “It’s for babies.”
    Dara Rose stopped, and both her children had to stop, too, since she was holding Harriet’s hand at the time and it was easy to catch Edrina by the shoulder and halt her progress.
    â€œEnough,” Dara Rose said firmly.
    They began to walk again.
    Â 
    T HE SKY WAS HEAVY and gray that morning when Clay left Chester to digest the leftovers from his hotel dining room breakfast within the warm radius of the jailhouse stove and headed over to the livery stable to fetch Outlaw.
    It was cold and getting colder, so Clay raised the collar of his duster as he led the saddled gelding out into the road. There had been snow during the night, leavinga hard crust on the ground, and there would be more, judging by the weighted clouds brooding overhead, but the ride was a short one and he’d be back in Blue River before any serious weather had a chance to set in.
    Raised in the high country, where a soft, slow, feathery snowfall could turn into a raging blizzard within a span of ten minutes, he had a sense of what signs he ought to look out for, as well as those he could safely ignore.
    Today, all the indications—the direction of wind, the foul promise of the darkening sky, the way the cold bit through the heavy canvas of his duster—inclined a man toward caution.
    He let Outlaw have his head once they were out of town, let the horse run