A Wyld Night for St. Nick

By Laura Strickland

When a train jumps the rails near Wylder during a blizzard one December night, mountain man Nick Robinson rushes to the rescue. It's only a few days before Christmas, and the young boy he saves from the wreck is convinced his rescuer is St. Nick. Since the frightened child is crying for his ma, Nick figures the best thing he can do is go back and rescue her, too.
Ella Fielding is instantly captivated by the man who carries both her and her boy to safety. St. Nick or not, she'd like nothing better than to claim such a strong, gentle man for her own. But Ella carries a secret she dares share with no one, not even when Nick asks her to trust him with her heart.

• Language: Unknown
• Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
• Release date: Dec 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781509238323

Laura Strickland

Born and raised in Western New York, Laura Strickland has been an avid reader and writer since childhood. Embracing her mother's heritage, she pursued a lifelong interest in Celtic lore, legend and music, all reflected in her writing. She has made pilgrimages to both Newfoundland and Scotland in the company of her daughter, but is usually happiest at home not far from Lake Ontario, with her husband and her "fur" child, a rescue dog. She practices gratitude every day.

Book preview

Out of the murky gloom above her, a face appeared. Certainly not Martin’s face. From what she could see, this man had a broad forehead and wore an odd hat trimmed with fur.

Her eyes narrowed involuntarily.

He seized hold and lifted her up—up as if she weighed nothing.

Definitely not Martin, a weedy man except when the drink lent him strength.

Are you Missus Ella Fielding?

Uh—yes. What’s happened? She gulped, memory returning. Marty, my son—

He’s safe, ma’am. Now I want to get you out of here. Somebody just said one of the cars has caught fire. If this one catches—

He’s safe?

Come on.

He carried her much as she might ferry Marty, in his arms. They half scrambled, half climbed to the front of the car, where snow blew in. Outside was darkness. Wind.

Here, tuck your head down.

What had been a rescue suddenly became far more…intimate. With one big hand, he smashed her face into his neck, and she could smell him. He smelled like buckskin and woodsmoke, and something else far more elusive and, well, intriguing. Holding her caught fast against him, he leaped down out of the train car and ran.

Praise for Laura Strickland and…

A WALK ON THE WYLDER SIDE:

"On a scale of 1-5, A Walk on the Wylder Side deserves a 6."

~Kat Henry Doran, Kat’s Reviews

~*~

It’s a page turner and will have you on the edge of your seat.

~author Jane Lewis

A Wyld Night

for St. Nick

by

Laura Strickland

The Wylder West

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

A Wyld Night for St. Nick

COPYRIGHT © 2021 by Laura Strickland

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information: [e-mail]

Cover Art by Tina Lynn Stout

The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

PO Box 708

Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

Publishing History

First Edition, 2021

Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-3832-3

The Wylder West

Published in the United States of America

Prologue

December 14, 1880

Derek Toliver didn’t feel the cap fly from his head. The upper part of his body, hanging from the window of the huge engine car, had frozen. If he lived past this snowstorm, he might lose his ears and maybe even his nose. Hell, he might’ve already lost them, for all he could tell.

His attempt to see what lay ahead by looking out into the storm was futile anyway. Darkness fell, snow swirled, and the rumble of wheels rolling over icy track made discernment impossible. He should be nearing Wylder, but how close they were was anybody’s guess.

He’d lost track of both time and place several miles back. Now he prayed to get the train to the frontier town in one piece. If they made it, he planned to stop for the night. Laramie could wait until morning.

Better to arrive late than become one of the Union Pacific’s casualty statistics. This close to retirement, his determination to leave without incident never wavered. So, he prayed. And when he realized keeping his head out in the cold didn’t do any good, he began to pull it back inside.

And that, the moment he changed positions, turned out to be the one that claimed his life—and his engineer’s clear track record.

His body flew forward and his face slammed into the metal struts surrounding the side window. Bone and flesh became one sticky mess in a painful instant. He screamed but choked on the sound—and the teeth sucked into his throat with his final inhale.

Glass shattered around Jake, the fireman, as he catapulted through the front glass screen and disappeared into the snowy vortex. Coal from the tender shot through the air into the engine’s cab.

Satan, prying open the bowels of hell and inviting them in, couldn’t have made more horrific sounds. Steel and iron split apart, turning the air into one unending screech.

For miles they’d battled the wall of white, hoping to bring the tons of freight, train cars, and human cargo traveling under their care safely to their destinations. Now it became clear that wouldn’t happen.

In the seconds before his world went black, Derek thought he heard cars tumbling off the tracks.

His heart stuttered, then stopped, and his world went silent.

Behind him, the chaos continued.

Chapter One

Wylder, Wyoming Territory, December 14, 1880

What in tarnation was that? cried Earl Hanson.

As he stood facing Earl across the bed of the wagon, in the thick-falling snow outside the Wylder livery stable, Nicholas Robinson raised his head and squinted against the driving wind. Seldom had he seen such a storm. The wagon bed lay drifted in white, and he couldn’t imagine how they would ever get back home to their cabins up in the hills west of town.

I don’t know, he shouted back. Nothing good, for above the howl of the wind, his ears had caught a long, hideous, metallic screech such as he’d never heard before.

Neighbors as well as good friends, the two men had come to Wylder on a run for Christmas supplies. Nick didn’t mind going without extras at the holiday, him being a bachelor. But his brother, Manford—also his neighbor—had a young family. Hard-earned fancies and toys were due on the train, and Nick didn’t like disappointing his niece and nephew.

The snow had started up late in the afternoon, when he and Earl were already better than half way to town, and developed into what Nick could only call a first-class blizzard. They’d arrived with a spent team, to find the train overdue. Evening had come on with the storm, and now Earl wanted to get his animals unhitched and out of the weather.

You hear that? Earl, in his fifties, might well be as spent as the horses. The cranky former sheriff no doubt already worried not only about his team but about getting back to that wife of his. Was that a crash?

Nick stared harder into the dark that wasn’t truly dark but filled with swirling white flakes of snow and ice pellets, flying before a fierce wind.

A crash? The train.

Earl? Earl, do you think—

Somebody in the near distance hollered. Another person gave a frantic call, the words torn away by the wind. The fear in it got through to Nick, though, just like a bullet to his heart.

He ran.

He didn’t come to town often, but he was an expert tracker and carried a kind of map in his mind of everywhere he’d been. The livery lay just north of the railroad tracks and down a short distance from the station. As he pelted off through the onrushing wind, it came to him that what he’d heard had come from still farther east.

The train tracks—clogged with snow—stretched ahead of him. He could see other people running in the same direction as he was going, dark figures like those glimpsed in some horrific dream.

Behind him, he thought he heard Earl call, Nick? and start up after him.

What is it? What’s happened? he called to one of the figures running just ahead of him.

The man whipped an answer in reply, of which Nick caught only one word. Train!

Despite the cold, a prickle of heat crept down Nick’s spine. The train should have arrived long since. But there was still no train in sight. If it had tried to push its way through in treacherous weather like this—

He pelted on. A big man, well over six feet and proportioned like a bull, he might not have been constructed to run, but he had endurance. His hide boots felt steady and sure plowing through the drifts underfoot, yet the cold bit at him right through his buckskins.

Suddenly he collided violently with someone, the hard figure of a man almost as tall as he. The fellow’s hands caught at Nick and kept both of them from falling down.

His lungs straining for breath, Nick asked, What’s happened?

Train, the man puffed. Did you hear?

Yeah.

That wasn’t all Nick could hear now. Screams came from up ahead, carried in spurts by the wind. Somebody wailing. Calling a name? Another squeal, a terrible underlying sound like that of tortured metal.

Damn it, Nick’s companion gasped. I think she’s come off the tracks.

He ran on, and Nick followed.

He’d run this far in the past, of course, while checking his trap lines. He’d even been caught out in storms before, though maybe none so fierce as this. Now his lungs worked like bellows, and his legs like pistons beneath him even as he strained to see through the riotous, swirling whiteness. And then, he did see.

Jesus! he breathed, shuddering to a halt in two feet of snow.

The train had, indeed, come off the tracks just east of town. It lay like a dead rattlesnake on a trail, in a long, tortuous twist. Nick, eyes narrowed against the pain of ice pellets, tried to comprehend the scene.

The engine had jumped the tracks and come to rest at an angle, black against the white drifts, and still puffing steam. The coal car, just behind it, lay on one side, and coal had been flung everywhere, like black blood in the snow. Several passenger and cargo cars followed, tossed here and there like children’s toys.

Blood. In the snow.

Nick blinked and spurred himself back into movement. All those things lying in the snow had to be packages and other cargo, yes? They couldn’t possibly be—people?

He could hear better now, the continued scream of metal as two of the