Free A McKettrick Christmas by Linda Lael Miller Page A

time, but this experience left him oddly enervated. He couldn’t look at Lizzie as he put the vial of laudanum back in his kit, took out his stethoscope. There was something intensely private about the way she ministered to Carson, as tenderly as a mother with a child.
    Or a wife with a husband.
    Morgan turned away quickly, the stethoscope dangling from his neck, and crossed the railroad car to check Mr. Thaddings’s heart, which thudded away at a blessedly normal rate, then moved on to examine John Brennan again.
    “How are you feeling?” he asked the soldier gruffly. The question was a formality; the feverish glint in Brennan’s eyes and the intermittent shivers that seemed to rattle his protruding skeleton provided answer enough.
    Brennan’s voice was a hoarse 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