A Stockingful of Joy (23 page)

"I had to run away," the child said confidingly when he still didn't speak. "My aunt, she doesn't really want me here. She only took me because they said she had to."

Morgan winced. It was an accident, the child couldn't have known. And it only hit a raw spot because he'd just been thinking about his haughty Aunt Abigail, not because it still bothered him. He was long past being bothered by such things. Hers had been only the first harsh lesson; he'd since become used to not belonging, and it meant little to him. As did most things. His heart was as impervious as the granite of the Rockies, and he liked it that way.

"Doesn't anybody want you, either?"

Morgan didn't know if it was the poignant words themselves, or the fact that the child uttered them without emotion, evincing nothing more than curiosity, that made him speak at last.

"No," he said. "And I don't want anybody."

The child sighed. A boy, Morgan thought with certainty now; even at this age there was something masculine about the way the child stood, hands jammed into the pockets of his wool pants.

"Me, neither," he said. "But I'm just a kid, so I have to have somebody."

It was spoken in the weary tone of one much older, and Morgan couldn't help wondering what had brought the child—what was he, five? Six? Seven at the outside—to this pass. Nor could he help remembering just what it had felt like, to not belong anywhere, and how hard it had been to cover up the fear.

"Your aunt?" he asked, remembering what the boy had said. "This is… her place?"

The boy nodded, and Morgan's lips quirked, but something in that wide-eyed gaze kept him from smiling at the fact that the runaway child had only made it as far as the barn.

"It is now. They gave it to her," the child said, "but she had to take me along with it."

"They?"

"The sheriff, and some fella in town who does… law things."

"A lawyer?" The child nodded, and Morgan wondered if the "law thing" had been a will left by the original owner.

"But she hates me. She's old, and she cries all the time since she came here. But it's hers now, and she doesn't want me here, so I have to go."

Morgan didn't know why he was carrying on this conversation, but he couldn't seem to help himself. "Go where?"

The boy gave a shrug that was as ancient as his early words had been. "Don't know. Just… away. I hate it when she cries."

At least she does cry, Morgan thought, remembering his own aunt, who, if she'd ever had any tender feelings, they had toughened to saddle leather long before he'd ever been dumped on her doorstep. He'd been a little younger than this boy, just as scared, and as determined not to show it.

"What about your uncle?"

"Don't got one. My Aunt Faith, she never got married."

A spinster, then, like Aunt Abigail. Faith, he thought. Even the name sounded like she was as starched, stiff, and stern as the old lady who had raised him—at least she had until he hadn't been able to stand it anymore and had lit out after his twelfth birthday. After Abigail had told him his gift was to have been his father's watch, but he obviously didn't deserve it, now or ever. He'd known then there was nothing he could do that would ever change her opinion of him. He hadn't known why she hated him, but it was as real a part of his life as the fact that his eyes were the same odd blue-gray as they said his father's had been.

"Where're you goin'?" die boy asked.

"Tonight?" Morgan asked, his voice sharpened by the stirring of memories he'd thought deeply and forever buried. "Nowhere, if I don't have to. It's cold out there." He eyed the boy warily. "Is your aunt likely to come chase me out of her barn?"

"Nah. She'd probably let you stay, being as how it's snowin' and all. It's only me she doesn't like."

"You think she'd want you out in that snow?"

The shrug came again, and Morgan felt something tighten in his chest; the boy was trying so hard to pretend he didn't care, never realizing all his fear and uncertainty was showing clearly in his eyes.

"She'd say she wouldn't, pretend that she cares, but I know she don't mean it."

"How do you know?"

"Because at night she prays for me to go away."

Morgan blinked. This aunt must be truly heartless; even Aunt Abigail hadn't gone that far. She'd been too busy reminding everyone that she'd taken in her sister's only child out of the Christian charity of her heart; he'd often thought she'd actually miss him when he left, simply because with him would go her opportunity to parade her goodness before the world. Of course, she'd probably made as much out of his wretched ungratefulness, leaving the perfectly good home she'd provided for him, because it was her duty.

"Is she… really your aunt?"

The boy's blond brows furrowed. "My ma is her sister. That means she's my aunt, doesn't it?"

He nodded. "Where is your mother?"

For the first time the boy looked away. He stared at the pile of hay Morgan had been lying on. He stared at the barrel of the lowered rifle. He stared at his own small feet. Morgan wished he hadn't asked. And then wondered why he cared at all; he knew nothing about kids, or talking to them, so he never did. He didn't even like being around them; they brought back too many memories. He avoided them whenever possible, so why was he sitting here talking to this one?

"I… don't know," the boy said, misery in his tone. "She went away. That's why they gave our house to my aunt. But Mama's coming back, I know she is."

Morgan frowned. "What about your father?"

"He died a couple of years ago, when I was little. I don't remember him much."

Morgan would have chuckled at the three-foot-tall boy's reference to when he was little, but again something in those wide brown eyes stopped him. He knew how it felt; both of his parents had died when he was even younger, and his life had never been the same.
It'll only get worse, kid
, he thought, but didn't see the point in saying it; the boy would find out soon enough.

With a little shock, Morgan realized that within three minutes he'd learned more about this child than he knew about anybody he'd met in the past twenty years. And the kid was making him think about his past more than he had in all that time. And that made him plumb edgy.

"Look, kid—"

"My name is Zach."

"Okay, Zach, I'm tired, it's cold, and I want to go to sleep. So why don't you go on back to bed?"

The blond bangs moved slightly as the boy gave a shake of his head. "She's cryin' again tonight. I gotta go. I'll come back when Mama comes home."

Morgan looked at the boy's lightweight wool coat, and at his patched trousers, and knew the kid would be frozen inside an hour out in that snow at night. He tried to tell himself he didn't care, but for some reason his mind wasn't buying the notion. And this Zach looked like he had a stubborn stripe, and having one a mile wide himself, he knew what result prodding it would get.

"You do what you have to," he said, shrugging. "But if it was me, I'd spend the night here in this warm barn, and worry about lighting out in the morning."

Zach considered this thoughtfully. "You would?"

"No sense a man freezing his… toes off if he doesn't have to," Morgan said with another shrug.

"I s'pose not," Zach agreed with a solemnity that seemed again beyond his years.

Morgan straightened his blanket and stretched out once more on the bed of hay. He situated his rifle within easy reach, gave Zach a sharp nod, as if what the boy did was of no consequence to him, then closed his eyes.

He closed his eyes, but he was fully aware of the boy's slight movements as he considered things, apparently dragging a toe over the ground as he thought. Then came the rustling of hay as he settled down a few feet away. Still telling himself what the boy did was no concern of his, Morgan nevertheless remained awake until he heard the boy's breathing even out into the regular rhythm of sleep. Only then did he let himself drift into the light, never too deep sleep he allowed himself on the road.

Which meant, he thought as the peaceful tendrils began to numb his mind, most of his life.

Faith Brown lay in the small bedroom, staring at the open beamed roof of the cabin through eyes that were again reddened from tears. Although the snow that had begun a little past midnight had abated, the layer on the roof was thick, and left the little house very quiet. And isolated.

She'd never felt so lost, so utterly alone, so overwhelmed. She missed Hope terribly, she hadn't even gotten to say good-bye, Zachary hated her, she couldn't keep this place—small as it was—going on her own like Hope had. She was going to fail, fail herself and her little nephew, and have to retreat ignominiously in defeat.

Sleep seemed farther away than ever, and at last, as dawn began to brighten the winter night sky, she got up. She shivered as she pulled on her cotton wrapper—it had been plenty for the warm rooms above the dressmaker's shop in St. Louis, but it was decidedly lacking here in the Wyoming Territory in December. But it would do long enough to stir up the fire on the hearth, and she could stay there until she was warm enough to face dressing. In fact, she thought, she would take her dress with her, warm it by the fire, then it wouldn't be quite so awful.

She gathered up the simple gray wool dress along with her undergarments and the single petticoat she'd quickly been reduced to since coming to the wilds of the Wyoming Territory. Anything more was beyond a nuisance, she'd learned it was dangerous the day her favorite blue dress had caught fire. If it hadn't been for Zachary's curiosity about why her dress was smoking, she could have been badly hurt.

And that, she thought sadly, was probably the most the boy had spoken to her since she'd arrived here a month ago.

Carrying her clothing out to the main room of the small but sturdily built three-room house, she bent over the hearth and poked at the embers until they glowed, then added a log. Then, defiantly, she added another. The supply of wood was low, but she was determined that today she would master the knack that had eluded her so far; that of handling the big ax that had given her only blisters and very little firewood, and had twice nearly added her foot to the small kindling pile.

She would learn, she thought determinedly as the edges of the logs flickered, then caught. She would learn how to split wood, to care for the small ranch, and she would learn to make Zachary, if not love her, at least not hate her. She would not go back to St. Louis and surrender to a lifetime of drudgery, not when she had a chance at something she could love, a chance for a place to belong.

She warmed her dress before the fire, then hastened back to her room to put it on; it would hardly be proper for Zachary to pop out of the small, curtained-off alcove beside the fireplace, where he slept, to find her in her chemise and underdrawers.

Someday, she thought in exasperation as fingers rapidly growing cold again wrestled with the interminable shoe buttons, someone would make a sturdy shoe you could just slip on, like a man's boots, and women would rejoice.

Quickly she pulled her hair back, and twisted it into a severe coil at the back of her head. No longer did she wrestle with the fashionable cascade of ringlets from the back of her head. It had done her little good even in St. Louis, where no one noticed she was alive once they'd gotten a look at Hope's vivacious blond beauty; here the elaborate style was just another nuisance she'd discarded like the extra petticoat.

When she went back into the main room and saw the curtains around Zachary's alcove still closed, she walked over and pulled the coarsely woven cloth aside just enough to peek at the small, narrow bed Zachary slept in. It was empty. A frown puckered her forehead. While the boy was usually up and outside early, it wasn't usually this early, before the sun had even fully risen.

She sighed. It was if he couldn't bear to be in the house with her. She tried to understand, the boy's entire world had changed, and she'd not seen him since he'd been a baby, so it was only natural he be somewhat untrusting. But, still, it stung. She could charm the wildest creature, even injured ones trusted her, but she couldn't get one small boy to even look her in the eye.

It was only then that she noticed the hooks that held his clothes were empty, and that the carved wooden top that was his most precious possession because it had been made by his father was gone as well. And this was no weather for spinning a top.

She grabbed her heavy cloak from a peg beside the door, tugged it on, and stepped out onto the porch. She stopped, her breath caught in her throat, as much from the vista before her as from the cold. As far as she could see, the land was coated in crystalline white, the first rays of sunlight bouncing off the new fallen snow until it hurt the eyes. In all directions the pristine blanket lay unbroken, undisturbed.

Undisturbed.

Her brows lowered. If the snow was undisturbed, if there was no sign of life except for the faint, barely discernible tracks of some small creature skittering along the surface, then where on earth was Zachary?

It struck her with the fierceness of a blow, the absence of child-size footprints in the snow that had begun at midnight, long after she had thought the boy sound asleep, and the absence of his clothes and most precious toy.

"Zachary!" she cried out. Or tried to; her voice was so hoarse with fear she doubted it carried past the edge of the small front porch.

Frightened now, she plunged into the snow and headed for the barn. The snow came up halfway to her knees, making the going difficult, but she slogged on, her gaze fastened on the barn, praying that when she got there she would find the boy safe. Surely he wouldn't run away, not now, not when she'd told him a storm was coming.

She didn't even try to open the big, heavy barn door but rather slipped through the smaller, person-size door just to the side of it, mentally breathing a thank-you to the two-years-dead Allen Phillips for having thought of it.

Her mare and the pony nickered a soft welcome; she'd moved them inside last night when she'd been certain she could smell snow coming. Hope had always believed her foretelling, even when their parents had laughed, but even they finally had to admit she was right more often than not in predicting St. Louis's occasional snows in the winter.