A Lone Star Christmas

Tom got out of bed, shaved, then got dressed. Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he frowned. He was wearing a three-piece suit, adequate dress if he wanted to apply for a job with a bank. But he was going to apply for a job as a cowboy, and this would never do.

Stepping over to the window, he looked up and down Houston Street and saw, on the opposite side, the Fort Worth Mercantile Store. Leaving his suitcase in his room, he hurried downstairs and then across the street. A tall, thin man with a neatly trimmed moustache and garters around his sleeves stepped up to him.

“Yes, sir, may I help you?”

“I intend to apply for employment at a neighboring ranch,” Tom said. “And I will need clothes that are suitable for the position.”

“When you say that you are going to apply for employment, do you mean as an accountant, or business manager?” the clerk asked.

“No. As a cowboy.”

The expression on the clerk’s face registered his surprise. “I beg your pardon, sir. Did you say as a cowboy?”

“Yes,” Tom said. “Why, is there a problem?”

“No, sir,” the clerk said quickly. “No problem. It is just that, well, sir, you will forgive me, but you don’t look like a cowboy.”

“Yeah,” Tom said. “That’s why I’m here. I want you to make me look like a cowboy.”

“I can sell you the appropriate attire, sir,” the clerk said. “But, in truth, you still won’t look like a cowboy.”

“Try,” Tom said.

“Yes, sir.”

It took Tom no more than fifteen minutes to buy three outfits, to include boots and a hat. Paying for his purchases, he returned to the hotel, packed his suit and the two extra jeans and shirts into his suitcase, then went downstairs, checked out, and took a seat in the lobby to wait for the young woman he had met last night.

As he waited for her, he recalled the conversation he had had with his father, just before he left.

“You are making a big mistake by running away,” his father had told him. “You will not be able to escape your own devils.”

“I can try,” Tom said.

“Nobody is holding it against you, Tom. You did what you thought was right.”

“I did what I thought was right? I can’t even justify what I did to myself by saying that I did what I thought was right. My wife and my child are dead, and I killed them.”

“It isn’t as if you murdered them.”

“It isn’t? How is it different? Martha and the child are still dead.”

“So you are going to run away. Is that your answer?”

“Yes, that is my answer. I need some time to sort things out. Please try to understand that.”

His father changed tactics, from challenging to being persuasive. “Tom, all I am asking is that you think this through. You have more potential than any student I ever taught, and I’m not saying that just because you are my son. I am saying it because it is true. Do you have any idea of the good that someone like you—a person with your skills, your talent, your education, can do?”

“I’ve seen the evil I can do when I confuse skill, talent, and education with Godlike attributes.”

Tom’s father sighed in resignation. “What time does your train leave?”

“At nine o’clock tonight.”

Tom’s father walked over to the bar and poured a glass of Scotch. He held it out toward Tom and, catching a beam of light from the electric chandelier, the amber fluid emitted a burst of gold as if the glass had captured the sun itself. “Then at least have this last, parting drink with me.”

Tom waited until his father had poured his own glass, then the two men drank to each other.

“Will you write to let me know where you are and how you are doing?”

“Not for a while,” Tom said. “I just need to be away from everything that could remind me of what happened. And that means even my family.”

Surprisingly, Tom’s father smiled. “In a way, I not only don’t blame you, I envy you. I almost ran off myself, once. I was going to sail the seven seas. But my father got wind of it, and talked me out of it. I guess I wasn’t as strong as you are.”

“Nonsense, you are as strong,” Tom said. “You just never had the same devils chasing you that I do.”

Tom glanced over at the big clock. It showed fifteen minutes of nine. Shouldn’t she be here by now? Had she changed her mind and already checked out? He walked over to the desk.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Whitman, may I help you?” the hotel desk clerk asked.

“Rebecca Conyers,” Tom said. “Has she checked out yet?”

The clerk checked his book. “No, sir. She is still in the hotel. Would you like me to summon her?”

“No, that won’t be necessary,” Tom said. “I’ll just wait here in the lobby for her.”

“Very good, sir.”

Huh, Tom thought. And here it was my belief that Westerners went to bed and rose with the sun.

As soon he thought that, though, he realized that she had gone to bed quite late, having arrived on the train in the middle of the night. At least his initial fear that she had left without meeting him was alleviated.

When Rebecca awakened that morning she was already having second thoughts about what she had done. Had she actually told a perfect stranger that she could talk her father into hiring him? And, even if she could, should she? She had arisen much later than she normally did, and now, as she dressed, she found herself hoping that he had grown tired of waiting for her and left, without accepting her offer.

However, when she went downstairs she saw him sitting in a chair in the lobby. His suitcase was on the floor beside him, but he wasn’t wearing the suit he had been wearing the night before. Instead, he was wearing denims and a blue cotton shirt. If anything, she found him even more attractive, for the denims and cotton shirt took some of the polish off and gave him a more rugged appearance.

Although Tom had gotten an idea last night that the young woman was pretty, it had been too dark to get a really good look at her. In the full light of morning though, he saw her for what she was: tall and willowy, with long, auburn hair and green eyes shaded by long, dark eyelashes. She was wearing a dress that showed off her gentle curves to perfection.

“Mr. Whitman,” she said. “How wonderful it is to see you this morning. I see you have decided to take me up on my offer.”

“Yes, I have. You were serious about it, weren’t you?” Tom asked. “I mean, you weren’t just making small talk?”

Rebecca paused for a moment before responding. If she wanted to back out of her offer, now was the time to do it.

“I was very serious,” she heard herself saying, as if purposely speaking before she could change her mind.

“Do we have time? If so, I would like to take you to breakfast,” Tom said.

Rebecca glanced over at the clock. “Yes, I think so,” she said. “And I would be glad to have breakfast with you. But you must let me pay for my own.”

“Only if it makes you feel more comfortable,” Tom said.

“Let’s sit by the window,” Rebecca suggested when they stepped into the hotel restaurant. “That way we will be able to see when Mo comes for me.”

“Mo?”

“He is one of my father’s cowboys,” Rebecca said. “He is quite young.”

Rebecca had a poached egg, toast, and coffee for breakfast. Tom had two waffles, four fried eggs, a rather