A Jensen Family Christmas

by William W. Johnstone

  “You didn’t hear it from me,” the clerk insisted.

  “Nope, we didn’t hear a word from you,” Ace agreed. “But I reckon it’s pretty clear that Clint Starkey’s not a good man to cross.”

  “I think anyone in Raton would go along with that,” the clerk said fervently.

  With the room rented, the Jensen brothers went to look for a livery stable where they could leave their horses. They found one in the next block, run by a friendly middle-aged man named Gonzalez.

  When they asked him about Clint Starkey, he reacted much the same way as the hotel clerk: clear disapproval, but also a wariness and reluctance to say too much, for fear of it getting back to Starkey and causing trouble for him.

  With that done, Ace and Chance walked back up the street. Chance’s desire to visit one of the other saloons wasn’t going to be denied much longer.

  Ace said, “From the sound of what everybody tells us, we’d be wise to avoid Starkey as much as possible.”

  “I don’t plan to go looking for him,” Chance said. “It’ll be just fine with me if we don’t run into him again. Besides, we’re probably only going to be here one night. What are the odds that we’ll wind up in the same place as him?”

  Ace shook his head and said, “I don’t know. You’re the gambler. You figure them out.”

  “Maybe I will,” Chance said with a grin. Then he nodded toward a building ahead of them. “The Red Top Saloon, the sign says. Let’s have a look.”

  Ace nodded and turned his steps in that direction. The saloon was a stone building with a red slate roof, which obviously had inspired its name. When they stepped inside, out of the chilly late afternoon air, the place had a welcoming warmth to it. It wasn’t fancy, by any means. Plain tables and chairs; a hardwood bar with no brass footrail; simple shelves on the wall behind the bar, with bottles of whiskey on them; no gilt-framed mirror or painting with an opulent nude. The customers all looked like working men, and the only female in sight was a heavyset middle-aged woman tending bar.

  She grinned at the brothers and said, “Come on in, boys, and close the door behind you! You’re lettin’ in the cold air.”

  Ace closed the door and said to Chance, “This looks like a nice place.”

  “Are you joking?” asked Chance. “There’s probably not more than fifty dollars in the whole room! We’re not going to find a good poker game here.”

  “Then how about just some good company?”

  “Well, I suppose if that’s all you’re looking for . . .”

  They went up to the bar, where Ace smiled at the woman and said, “Can we get a couple of beers?”

  “That’s what we’re here for,” she replied with a smile. “Welcome to the Red Top. My name’s Selma. This is my place.”

  “I’m Ace, and this is my brother Chance.”

  The woman gave him a skeptical look and said, “Now, I know good and well those can’t be your real names.”

  “No, but that’s what we’ve been called our whole lives. We were raised by a gambler, you see.”

  “What was his name?” Selma wanted to know. “I might be acquainted with him. I spent a lot of time in saloons over the years, before I settled down here in Raton.”

  Chance said, “His name is Ennis Monday. Doc, most people call him.”

  “Doc Monday!” Selma’s pleasantly ugly face became almost as pretty as her smile widened and lit up her features even more. “Oh, shoot, yeah. I knew him back in St. Louis when I was dealing blackjack there. Would’ve been eighteen fifty-six, fifty-eight, somewhere in there.” She laughed and slapped a meaty hand down on the bar. “Lord have mercy, we were all a lot younger then! You boys probably weren’t even born yet.”

  “We were born in eighteen sixty-one,” Ace said.

  “And old Doc is your father? I never would’ve guessed he’d settle down.”

  Chance shook his head and said, “He’s not our father, but he was friends with our mother and promised her he’d look after us.”

  “She passed away when we were born,” Ace added.

  A solemn expression came over Selma’s face. She said, “Oh, now, I’m sorry to hear that. So you never knew her?”

  “No, ma’am, we didn’t. Doc took good care of us, though,” Ace said.

  “How is the old rapscallion?” she asked. “Is he still alive and kicking?”

  Ace smiled and said, “As far as we know. We’ve been out on our own for a couple of years now. Doc’s been in poor health, so he’s staying in a sanitarium up north of Denver. We’re on our way to see him, in fact, after we spend Christmas at a ranch belonging to some friends of ours.”

  Selma frowned and said, “Maybe you ought to spend Christmas with Doc, if he’s doing poorly. When we get to a certain age, you never know how much longer any of us are going to be around.”

  “That’s sort of true for everybody, isn’t it?” Chance said. “There are no guarantees in life.”

  “Well, sure,” Selma replied with a shrug. “But it gets more true the older you get.” She brightened again. “Say, I didn’t get you boys those beers yet. We got to talking instead. I’ll take care of that now.”

  She drew the beers and set the foaming mugs on the bar in front of Ace and Chance. The brothers picked up the mugs and drank.

  “That’s good,” Ace told Selma.

  “Glad to hear it. First one’s on the house, boys. That’s the rule here at the Red—”

  She stopped short and stared over Ace’s shoulder at something. He’d heard the door open just now, so he figured she was looking at whoever had come into the saloon—and she wasn’t too happy to see them.

  “Not him again,” Selma muttered.

  Somehow, Ace had a hunch who he was going to see when he looked around. Sure enough, Clint Starkey had just entered the Red Top. The gunman heeled the door closed behind them, then started stomping a little snow off his boots. He didn’t seem to be paying any attention to who was in the saloon.

  That was pretty careless for a man who had a reputation as a shootist. Such a man never knew when he might run into someone who wanted to take that reputation away from him—permanently.

  Chance glanced around and saw Starkey, too. He started to turn to face the man, but Ace said under his breath, “Just let it alone, Chance. He might not notice us.”

  Chance frowned and asked, “Do you really believe that?”

  “I don’t know, but we might as well let it play out?”

  Selma leaned forward over the bar and asked in a half whisper, “You boys know that varmint?”

  “We had a little run-in with him earlier,” Ace replied.

  The woman’s eyes got bigger. She said, “Some fellas who were in here were talking about a couple of young strangers who threw down on Starkey. That was you?”

  “Guilty as charged,” said Chance.

  “He was about to beat an Indian boy,” added Ace. “We couldn’t sit still for that.”

  “Maybe you should have,” Selma said. “Starkey’s bad medicine.”

  “That’s what we keep hearing,” Chance said.

  “You hear right.” Selma’s eyes cut back and forth nervously. “Is there fixin’ to be a shoot-out in here?”

  “I hope not,” Ace said. “We’re not looking for one.”

  “We’re not in the habit of running away from trouble, though,” Chance said. “So don’t suggest we sneak out the back door.”

  Selma grunted and said, “Don’t have one. Anyway, I can tell by looking, you boys aren’t the sneaking sort.”

  She was right about that. Ace and Chance stood there, calmly sipping their beers, while Starkey finished cleaning off his boots and then tramped toward the bar, spurs ringing and the high heels of his boots coming down hard on the thick, sawdust-littered planks of the floor.

  The atmosphere in the saloon hadn’t been raucous to start with, but it quieted down even more when Starkey came in. By the time he reached the bar, everyone in the place was silent. A couple of men who
had been standing at the bar, drinking, moved over to give him plenty of room. He acted like such deference was his natural due as he slapped a hand on the hardwood and barked, “Rye. And make it quick.”

  Then he glanced along the bar and stiffened when he saw Ace and Chance.

  “Oh, hell no,” Starkey said. “Not you two pissants again.”

  “Take it easy, Starkey,” Selma said. “Nobody’s gonna start any trouble in here. Not as long as I’ve got a sawed-off shotgun under this bar.”

  Starkey sneered and said, “You think I’m scared of some fat old woman? Even if you really do have a gut shredder under there, you’d never get it out in time to bother me. Now, shut your mouth, you old bat. This is between me and these snot-nosed little bastards.” He turned so he was facing Ace and Chance directly and hooked his thumbs in the crossed gunbelts. “I told you brats that the next time I saw you, you wouldn’t get off so easy. Your luck’s run out. You didn’t take me by surprise this time.” His mouth twisted in a snarl. “Let’s get to it.”

  “Mister, there are two of us,” Chance said mildly.

  “Yeah, and I got two guns. A bullet for each of you. Now, step out away from that bar so you’ll have plenty of room to fall when I plug you.”

  Ace was the closest to Starkey. He sighed, lifted his beer with his left hand, and took another sip from the mug.

  “You claimed earlier that you lost twenty dollars,” Ace said. “How about if we pay that back to you? Would that make everything square?”

  “Not hardly,” Starkey snapped. “It’s not about the money, and it hasn’t been since the two of you pointed guns at me. Nobody does that and lives to brag about it.”

  “Nobody’s bragging,” Chance pointed out.

  Starkey ignored that and said, “You’re gonna draw, or I’ll just shoot you down where you stand. Just like stepping on a couple of bugs. That’s all the two of you amount to.”

  “Let it go,” Ace said.

  Starkey cocked his head to the side, and an ugly grin split his face. He said, “What’s that, boy? Let it go, you said? Are you beggin’me, you little bastard? Beggin’ me for your life?”

  “No,” Ace said. “It’s just that I kind of like Miss Selma here—she said the first drink was on the house—and I’d hate for her to have to clean blood off the floor.”

  Starkey’s grin turned into a snarling rictus of hate. His hands stabbed toward the guns on his hips. Ace turned smoothly at the bar. Starkey cleared leather a split second ahead of him, but Ace’s Colt spouted lead and flame first. Starkey jerked back a step, jolted by the bullet that drove into his chest. He struggled to lift both guns, but judging by the expression on his face, each revolver suddenly weighed a thousand pounds. They went off, and the twin blast was deafening inside the saloon. The bullets thudded into the floor in front of Starkey.

  Then his legs buckled, and he dropped to his knees. An instant later, his face hit the floor as he pitched forward.

  Chance, with the Smith & Wesson in his hand just in case, circled Ace and approached the fallen gunman at an angle. With his foot, he slid the guns that Starkey had dropped well out of reach, then hooked a boot toe under the man’s shoulder and rolled him onto his back. He studied the planks for a second and then nodded in apparent satisfaction.

  “Not much blood on the floor, after all,” he said. “You did a good job of drilling him through the heart, Ace. Not much blood flows after it stops.”

  “Any blood spilled uselessly is too much,” Ace said as he thumbed a fresh cartridge into his Colt’s cylinder to replace the one he’d fired. “I’m sorry about that, Miss Selma.”

  “Lord!” the woman said as excited chatter burst out from the saloon’s customers. “Where’d you learn to draw and shoot like that, son?”

  “I reckon it just comes natural,” Ace said as he slid the gun back into leather.

  “Wait a minute,” Denny said. Fully dressed now, with her curly blond hair still damp, she sat on the log with Ace, Chance, and her brother Louis. She lowered her voice and imitated Ace. “‘I reckon it just comes natural.’ You can’t say things like that and then claim you had no idea you were really Jensens!”

  “Do you know how many different bunches of Jensens there are in the world?” Ace said.

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it! Sure, your name is Jensen, but you really didn’t know then that you’re part of our bunch of Jensens?”

  “The gunfighting branch of the family,” Louis put in dryly.

  “We didn’t know,” said Chance. “Honestly.”

  “But you said you had your suspicions,” Denny responded.

  “Suspicion is a strong word,” Ace said. “We were just . . . curious, let’s say . . . about Luke being acquainted with a woman who had the same first name as our mother.”

  “And you didn’t think there was anything odd about the way you kept running into him and our father and Uncle Matt? Something like . . . fate, maybe?”

  “Looking back on it now, that makes sense if you believe in such things,” Ace admitted. “And the way things finally turned out, it does seem a little like fate. But you’ve got to remember . . . Christmas is the time of year for miracles . . .”

  CHAPTER 23

  Denver

  Doc Monday had never been given to flights of fancy. He was a practical, hardheaded man. But even he had to admit that it was something of a miracle that he survived on that snowy night, as cold as it was and as poorly dressed as he was.

  His feet were so numb, he couldn’t feel them at all by the time he reached the little settlement not far from the sanitarium, and the rest of him wasn’t in much better shape. Now that he was here, he needed some help, and he needed it quickly.

  The problem was, he didn’t know anyone who lived here, and he wasn’t sure where to turn. Most of the staff members at the sanitarium probably lived in town, but although Doc was friendly with them, that friendship didn’t extend beyond the grounds of the sanitarium. He didn’t know how to find any of them.

  Then he heard singing, and something about the sound drew him toward it.

  As he stumbled through the darkness, hugging himself ineffectually against the cold, he saw a large yellow glow ahead. In the swirling snow, it was just an irregular blob of light, but as he came closer, he began to be able to distinguish more. The light came from several windows, he realized. Tall, narrow windows, not really like what you’d normally find in a house.

  A few moments later, he realized why the windows were shaped like that. This was not a regular house he was approaching.

  It was a church. A house of worship.

  The singing came from inside it. Faint and muffled by the building’s walls, the way it was, he never should have been able to hear it, but somehow, he had. The people inside were singing hymns. Christmas hymns, he thought as he recognized the melody, even though he couldn’t make out the words.

  He couldn’t recall the last time he had set foot in a church—but he was going in this one, make no mistake about that. And the congregation would help him. They were good people, good Christian people. They would have charity and compassion, even for a degenerate old gambler....

  He was still at least fifty feet from the church’s front door when his frozen legs gave out. He fell, crying softly, no longer able to support himself. He landed on his hands and knees in snow that was now a couple of inches deep, but he was so numb, he no longer felt the cold.

  He tried to push himself upright, but his muscles simply wouldn’t obey his commands. As much trouble as he already sometimes had getting his body to do what he wanted it to, the terrible cold that had him in its grip just made everything worse. A desperate sob came from his mouth as he struggled, knowing that his life depended on what he did next.

  If he collapsed and just lay there in the snow, as a part of him wanted to do, when the churchgoers finally came out, they would find his frozen, lifeless body.

  Giving up meant death.

  Unfortunately, Doc
Monday no longer had the strength to do anything else.

  With a groan of despair, he slumped to the ground. He felt the snow on his face, in his mouth and nose and eyes. Stop fighting it, he told himself. It’s over.

  That thought still echoed in his mind when two strong hands took hold of him and lifted him. The hands were big enough that they went all the way around his slender arms.

  “Here now, mister,” a high-pitched voice said. “You can’t be a-layin’ in the snow like that. You’ll catch your death.” The powerful grip turned Doc around. “Well, Lord have mercy! You sure ain’t dressed for weather like this, friend. The way you’re shakin’, you must be plumb froze!”

  Doc’s teeth chattered. He said, “I . . . I . . . ,” but that was all he could force out.

  “No need to talk right now. You just hang on. My wagon’s right over here. I got what you need.”

  In the faint light from the church windows, Doc could see that his unexpected rescuer was a man in a thick, bulky coat and a battered old hat. He was several inches shorter than Doc but appeared to be almost as wide as he was tall. He possessed a great deal of strength, too, which he demonstrated by picking Doc up, cradling him in his arms, and carrying him toward a wagon parked nearby as if he were weightless.

  Doc hadn’t seen the vehicle until now. It was a freight wagon, piled high with cargo. A team of six mules was hitched to it. The man carried Doc to the seat and lifted him onto it.

  “Stay right there,” he said in his squeaky voice.

  There wasn’t anything else Doc could do. He was too weak to go anywhere.

  The man went to the back of the wagon, got something from it, and hurried back to the front just in time to catch Doc as the gambler began swaying on the seat. The man climbed up beside him and wrapped a thick blanket around him. He had a pair of socks and some boots, as well, and he worked Doc’s numb feet into them.

  “We’ll stop in a spell, once we get outta town, and I’ll build a good fire. That’ll thaw you out, you wait and see. In the meantime . . .” The man lifted an unstoppered flask to Doc’s mouth.