croak. “I heard that feller yell—”
“Broken leg,” Morgan said. “Don’t fret over it.”
A racking cough tore itself from the man’s chest. When he’d recovered, following a series of wheezing gasps, Brennan reached out to clasp at Morgan’s hand, pulled. Morgan leaned down.
Brennan rasped out a ragged whisper. “I got to stay alive long enough to see my boy again,” he pleaded. “It’s almost Christmas. I can’t have Tad recalling, all his life, that his pa passed….” The words fell away as another spate of coughing ensued.
Morgan crouched alongside the bench seat, since there were no chairs in the caboose. He was not accustomed to smiling under the best of circumstances, so the gesture came a lot harder that day. Brennan had one foot dangling over an open grave, and unless some angel grabbed him by the coattails and held on tight, he was sure to topple in.
“You’ll be all right,” he said. “Don’t think about dying, John. Think about living. Think about fishing with your son—about better times—” Much to his surprise, Morgan choked up. Had to stop talking and work hard at starting again. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d lost control of his emotions—maybe he never had. If you’re going to be any damned use at all, he heard his father say, you’ve got to keep your head, no matter what’s going on around you.
“My wife,” John said, laboring to utter every word, “makes a fine rum cake, every Christmas—starts it way down in the fall—”
“You suppose she baked one this year?” Morgan asked quietly, when he could speak.
John smiled. Managed a nod. As hard as talking was for him, he seemed comforted by the exchange. Probably he was clutching one end of the conversation for dear life, much as Lizzie had held on to Morgan’s looped belt earlier, when she’d slipped in the snow. “She doubled the receipt,” he ground out. “Just ’cause I was going to be home for Christmas.”
Morgan noted the old-fashioned word receipt—his family’s cook, Minerva, had used that term, too, in lieu of the more modern recipe—and then registered Brennan’s use of the past tense. “You’ll be there, John,” he said.
Exhausted, John settled back, seemed to relax a little. His gaze drifted, caught on someone, and Morgan realized Lizzie was standing just behind him. She held a mug of steaming ham and bean soup and one of the peddler’s fancy spoons.
Morgan straightened, glanced back at Carson, who seemed to be sleeping now, though fitfully. Sweat beaded the man’s forehead and upper lip, and Morgan knew the pain was biting deep, despite the laudanum.
“I thought Mr. Brennan might require some sustenance,” she said, her eyes big and troubled. She’d paled, and her luscious hair drooped as if it would throw off its pins at any moment and tumble down around her shoulders, falling to her waist.
Morgan nodded, stepped back out of the way.
Lizzie moved past him, her arm brushing his as she went by, and knelt alongside Brennan. “It would be better with onions,” she said gamely, holding a spoonful of the brew to the patient’s lips. “And salt, too.” When he opened his mouth, she fed him.
“Them beans is sure bony,” Brennan said. “I guess they ain’t had time to cook through.”
Lizzie gave a rueful little chuckle of agreement.
And Morgan watched, struck by some stray and nameless emotion.
It was a simple sight, a woman spooning soup into an invalid’s mouth, but it stirred Morgan just the same. He wondered if Lizzie would fall apart when this was all over, or if she’d carry on. He was betting on the latter.
Of course, they’d have to be rescued first, and the worse the weather got, the more unlikely that seemed.
The thin soup soothed Brennan’s cough. He accepted as much as he could and finally sank into a shallow rest.
Creeping shadows of twilight filled the car; another day was ending.
The peddler had engaged the children in a new game of cards. Carson, like Brennan, slept. Mrs. Halifax and the baby lay on the bench seat, bundled in the quilt, the woman staring trancelike into an uncertain future, the infant gnawing on one grubby little fist.
Madonna and Child, Morgan thought glumly.
He made his way to the far end of the car, sat down on the bench and tipped his head back against the window. Tons of snow pressed cold against it, seeped through flesh and bone to chill his marrow; he might have been sitting in the lap of the mountain itself. He closed his eyes; did not open them when he felt Lizzie take a seat beside him.
“Rest,” he told her. “You must be worn-out.”
“I can’t,” she said. He heard the slightest tremor in her voice. “I thought—I thought they’d be here by now.”
Morgan opened his eyes, met Lizzie’s gaze.
“Do you suppose something’s happened to them? My papa and the others?”
He wanted to comfort her, even though he shared her concern for the delayed rescue party. If they’d set out at all, they probably hadn’t made much progress. He took her hand, squeezed it, at a loss for something to say.
She smiled sadly, staring into some bright distance he couldn’t see. “Tomorrow is Christmas Eve,” she said, very quietly. “My brothers, Gabriel and Doss, always want to sleep in the barn on Christmas Eve, because our grandfather says the animals talk at midnight. Every year they carry blankets out there and make beds in the straw, determined to hear the milk cows and the horses chatting with each other. Every year they fall asleep hours before the clock strikes twelve, and Papa carries them back into the house, one by one, and Lorelei tucks them in. And every year, I think this will be the time they manage to stay awake, the year they stop believing.”
Morgan longed to put an arm around Lizzie’s shoulders and draw her close, but he didn’t. Such gestures were Whitley Carson’s prerogative, not his. “What about you?” he asked. “Did you sleep in the barn on Christmas Eve when you were little? Hoping to hear the animals talk?”
She started slightly, coming out of her reverie, turning to meet his eyes. Shook her head. “I was twelve when I came to live on the Triple M,” she said.
She offered nothing more, and Morgan didn’t pry, even though he wanted to know everything about her, things she didn’t even know about herself.
“You’ve been a help, Lizzie,” he told her. “With John Brennan and with Carson, too.”
“I keep thinking about the conductor and the engineer—their families….”
“Don’t,” Morgan advised.
She studied him. “I heard what you told John Brennan—that he ought to think about fishing with his son, instead of…instead of dying—”
Morgan nodded, realized he was still holding Lizzie’s hand, improper as that was. Drew some satisfaction from the fact that she hadn’t pulled away.
“Do you believe it really makes a difference?” she went on, when she’d gathered her composure. “Thinking
