A Jensen Family Christmas

by William W. Johnstone

  Luke’s hands shot out and closed around Doc’s slender arms. He jerked the gambler toward him and said through clenched teeth, “Ace and Chance?”

  “William and Benjamin Jensen,” said Doc. “Lettie insisted on those names. I was the one who called them Ace and Chance, and the names stuck.” He paused to draw in a breath. “They’re your sons, Luke. There’s no doubt in my mind. I figured it out a while back, after Ace mentioned that you had known a woman named Lettie before the war. It’s uncommon enough that it puzzled him—”

  “Does he know? Does Chance?”

  Doc shook his head. “No. I could have told them . . . but I didn’t think it was my place. I . . . I wasn’t sure if I should tell you, but then I overheard you talking to Smoke, and you mentioned never having any kids . . . and I thought you had a right to know . . . Luke, I’m sorry, but . . . you’re hurting me.”

  Luke realized he was still squeezing Doc’s arms. He let go of them abruptly and took a step back.

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “You just took me by surprise.”

  Doc straightened his coat and said, “I know. Believe me, I thought an awful lot about what I ought to do.”

  “But the boys don’t know?”

  “No. Ace might suspect, but I think he’s mostly forgotten about it. And any time he brought it up, Chance just laughed it off.” Doc smiled. “You see, when they first met Smoke, Ace got it in his head that he might be their father, since they have the same last name. Chance has made a joke of it ever since. But neither of them ever dreamed that Smoke is actually their uncle.”

  Luke scrubbed a hand over his face as he struggled to come to grips with what Doc had just told him. He recalled Lettie Margrabe, of course. She had always been vivid in his memory. He had been in love with her, and he’d hoped to marry her when he got back from the war. They had been together only once, the night before he left to join up, their mutual passion getting the best of them....

  And that union had resulted in twin boys, unknown to Luke until now. In a way, he supposed it had been responsible for Lettie’s death, too, since she had died giving birth to Ace and Chance. He felt a surge of anger at that thought, but it faded quickly. No one could predict what was going to happen in life, least of all two young people facing a desperate future.

  His pulse still hammered in his head. He stepped over to the railing and leaned on it for a moment as he took several deep breaths. Then he turned to face Doc again and asked, “What are you going to do?”

  Doc shook his head and said, “No, my friend, the question is, What are you going to do?”

  “You’re not going to tell them?”

  “I think they have a right to know,” said Doc, “but if anyone is going to tell them, it should be you, don’t you think?”

  “Not now,” Luke snapped. “I’ve got to sort through all of this. A man can’t just go from being childless all his life to having two grown sons in the blink of an eye.”

  “No, I suppose not. But there’s one thing to be thankful for. They turned out to be fine young men, didn’t they?”

  Luke nodded slowly and said, “That’s all your doing, though, Doc, not mine. I didn’t have a damned thing to do with it.”

  Doc smiled.

  “I’m not so sure about that. This particular strand of Jensen blood is very powerful, and it runs through their veins. If nothing else, that gave them something of an advantage starting out. They have keen minds and quick reflexes and strong bodies.” Doc added dryly, “None of which came from me. Of that you can be certain.”

  “Don’t underestimate yourself,” Luke said. “Anyway, I’m not sure it would be a good idea to tell them. They probably wouldn’t want a scruffy old bounty hunter for a father. Hell, Doc, I’ll never be their father in anything but blood. They’ve already got somebody who’s their pa in every other way.”

  “Now you’re the one who shouldn’t underestimate yourself. But take some time and think about it. Just not for too long, all right?”

  “Why not? What’s the hurry?”

  “The way trouble follows you Jensens around, you never know how much time any of you have left! If you have something to say, it’s probably wise to go ahead and say it.”

  Doc had a point there, Luke thought. Maybe those Jensen boys were going to get a brand-new pa for Christmas, whether they wanted one or not!

  CHAPTER 40

  The next day was Christmas Eve. Sally was up even earlier than usual to finish all the last-minute preparations, getting everything ready except for the wild turkey Smoke had brought in. He and Preacher had gone hunting the day before, and the turkey was plucked and hanging in the smokehouse. Sally would roast it the next morning so it would be ready for Christmas dinner.

  When Adelaide got up, Sally put her to work in the parlor, stringing a few more strands of red berries to go on the Christmas tree. She fed breakfast to the men and then shooed all of them out of the house, prompting a grinning comment from Smoke.

  “I reckon Sally doesn’t want us underfoot today, boys. That’s all right. There’s a nice warm bunkhouse out there, where we’ll be welcome.”

  Doc took a deck of cards from a coat pocket and asked, “Do any of your men like to play poker, Smoke?”

  That drew laughter from his companions, except for Luke, who smiled briefly but otherwise kept a solemn expression on his face, as if he were in deep thought about something.

  “Just don’t clean them out, Doc,” Smoke said. “That wouldn’t be a very nice thing to do on the day before Christmas.”

  The snow had stopped falling, although the clouds remained. About eight inches of the white stuff had piled up overnight. The air was cold enough to keep the snow from melting, but it lacked the bitter edge it sometimes had here in the high country.

  Late in the morning, Monte Carson rode in. Smoke was glad to see the sheriff but was somewhat puzzled by his visit.

  “What brings you out here on a day like this, Monte?” Smoke asked as he ushered the lawman into the parlor. Sally had relented enough to allow them to enter her domain. Adelaide sat quietly on one side of the room, still stringing berries for decorations.

  “A couple of telegrams came for you, and I volunteered to deliver ’em,” Monte replied as he opened his coat. “Brought out a pile of mail from the post office for you, too.” He smiled. “I reckon mainly, though, those were just excuses to ride out here and wish you folks a Merry Christmas.”

  He took a handful of envelopes from inside his coat and gave them to Smoke, who dropped the regular mail on a small table and opened the Western Union envelope containing two telegraph flimsies. He read the messages and nodded.

  “Good news? Bad news? Not that it’s any of my business either way, I reckon,” Monte said.

  “From my lawyers,” said Smoke. “A hearing’s been scheduled in Denver for the first week of January. The court is going to take up Aguilar’s claim that he really owns the Sugarloaf and most of the rest of the valley.”

  “There’s no chance he’s actually going to win, is there?”

  Smoke shook his head and said, “Not much of one. If there was, he wouldn’t have resorted to those bushwhack attempts. I don’t know if I’m going to wait that long to settle this, though.”

  Monte frowned and said, “Hold on a minute, Smoke. You’re not talking about taking the law into your own hands, are you? Because I can’t allow that any more than I can when Aguilar tries it.”

  “We’re not going to ride in shooting, if that’s what you mean. But I think there’s a good chance Hinton and those other gun-wolves will start the ball when they see that their string has played out.”

  Monte shook his head. “I wish it hadn’t come to this,” he said.

  “So do I. But you know I’m not going to let anybody steal my home from me.”

  “Yeah. And I can’t say as I really blame you.”

  Sally came into the room and greeted the lawman with a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

  “I thought I hear
d your voice, Monte,” she said. “I hope you’re not here on official business.”

  “Well, not really. Just dropping off the mail and some telegrams for Smoke.”

  “Being a deliveryman isn’t part of the sheriff’s job now, is it?”

  Monte chuckled and said, “No, but you notice I timed my visit to when dinner might be ready soon.”

  Sally laughed, too, and told him, “You’re invited to stay, of course. In fact . . . why don’t you have dinner with us today and then come back and help us celebrate Christmas tomorrow?”

  “You already have a lot of company—”

  “So one more won’t matter,” Sally said. “Please say you’ll join us.”

  “I don’t see how I can say no,” Monte told her. “Thanks, Sally. I appreciate this more than you know.”

  She hugged him again. Smoke had a pretty good idea why she had insisted on the invitation. Monte’s wife had passed away a while back, and Sally didn’t want him to be alone on Christmas. She would have taken in every stray and orphan in the world if it was possible, Smoke knew.

  He put a hand on Monte’s shoulder and said, “Until dinner’s ready, why don’t you come on out to the bunkhouse with me? There’s a big poker game going on, and we can spectate.”

  They went out, and Sally returned to the kitchen. Adelaide stayed where she was, working on the string of berries, for a couple of minutes.

  Then she put the berries aside, stood up, and moved over to the little table where Smoke had dropped the mail. In apparent idle curiosity, she picked up the stack of envelopes and began looking through them. She grew tense at the sight of one of them, set the others down, and stared at the envelope in her hand for a long moment.

  Then she folded it so it would be smaller, stuck it inside her dress, and returned to the chair where she had been sitting. She picked up the string of berries again, and after a minute or so she began humming a Christmas carol under her breath.

  * * *

  All the churches in Big Rock got together for the annual Christmas Eve service, putting aside denominational and doctrinal differences for this holy evening. The service was held in a different church each year. This year, the citizens of the town and the surrounding valley would be gathering in the Ranney Street Baptist Church. Before that, there would be a Christmas social held in the town hall.

  Everyone at the Sugarloaf began getting ready in the middle of the afternoon, in both the ranch house and the bunkhouse. The cowboys would be decked out in their Sunday best, even though it wasn’t actually Sunday. Sally would be breathtakingly lovely, Smoke knew, because she always was.

  Preacher would clean up, too, although that sometimes went against his nature. Smoke recalled that the first time he had ever laid eyes on the mountain man, Preacher had reminded him of Santa Claus . . . although an exceedingly grimy Saint Nick.

  Sally had some nice children’s clothes on hand from the various times she had provided temporary homes for orphans in the past. She did some fast sewing to adapt them to fit Bodie, Hannah, and Teddy.

  Ace and Chance, as well as Luke, had only their usual clothes, but they shaved and donned fresh garb and looked respectable, especially Chance, who was always something of a dandy. He loaned a clean suit to Doc, as well, even though the coat and trousers were too big on the gambler.

  All in all, they made a pretty respectable-looking bunch, thought Smoke as they mounted up and climbed into buggies and started into Big Rock late on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, leaving only a few of the hands on the ranch to keep an eye on the place. The men had drawn lots to see to whom that chore would fall.

  When they reached the settlement, the main street was already crowded with horses, wagons, buggies, and carriages. People thronged on the boardwalks. They had come from miles around to worship together.

  The group from the Sugarloaf was going first to Louis Longmont’s, where the usual drinking and gambling activities had been curtailed for the day. Louis had served a good dinner to those in town who needed it and couldn’t afford it. He did this every year, one way that he tried to pay back the community for welcoming him.

  As they passed the hotel, with Smoke at the reins of the buggy carrying him and Sally, he glanced over and saw Don Juan Sebastian Aguilar and Doña Mariana emerging from the building. They looked resplendent in their best clothes. Mariana saw them and waved and smiled as she called, “Hola, Sally! Feliz Navidad!”

  “You have to stop, Smoke,” Sally told him quietly.

  “Yeah, I reckon so,” he said, but his jaw was tight as he made the reply. He pulled back on the reins and brought the buggy horse to a stop.

  Mariana hurried over to the buggy and reached up to clasp Sally’s gloved hands with her own.

  “It is good to see you again,” she said. “Are you attending the Christmas Eve service later?”

  “Of course,” Sally said. “We always do when we’re in town at this time of year.”

  “And Sebastian and I will, as well, since we, too, are now citizens of this valley.”

  Smoke wanted to say something, but he caught the warning glance that Sally threw his way and kept his mouth shut. He even managed to force a semblance of a smile onto his face.

  Aguilar remained on the boardwalk, regarding Smoke with an impassive expression as he clenched a cigarillo between his teeth. As his eyes met Smoke’s, he nodded curtly, a gesture that Smoke returned.

  “We will see you later,” Mariana told Sally. “Merry Christmas.”

  “And Feliz Navidad to you and your husband,” Sally replied.

  Travis Hinton had ambled out of the hotel behind the Aguilars. The Texas gunman stood on the boardwalk, with one shoulder leaned against an awning post. He smiled lazily at Smoke. The tension between the two men was thick. Smoke knew that sooner or later, Hinton would have to test his speed against him. To such a man, being the fastest draw wasn’t just everything. It was the only thing.

  Farther back in the procession, Luke drove the wagon he had brought from Utah. Beside him on the seat, with their faces scrubbed and shining, were the three youngsters. They were chattering happily, even the normally solemn Bodie. Luke had made a quick trip into Big Rock that morning to buy a present for each of them. Toy soldiers for the boys and a doll for Hannah, all purchased at Goldstein’s Mercantile. He didn’t know if they had ever gotten Christmas presents in the past, but they were going to this year.

  Luke’s mind was full of something else, though: the shocking news that Doc Monday had broken to him the previous night. He glanced ahead of him at Ace and Chance, who were riding on a buckboard with Doc. His sons, thought Luke. The words just sounded wrong to him . . . but yet, when he looked at them now, he saw traces of Lettie in their faces. He even spotted the resemblance to the face he saw in the mirror every morning. If Doc hadn’t told him the truth, he might not have ever noticed those things, but now they were inescapable.

  And he still didn’t know what he was going to do about any of it. The simplest thing, he knew, would be to just celebrate Christmas, keep his mouth shut, and ride away when the festivities were over. Ace and Chance had lived their own lives up until now. He didn’t have any right to intrude on that, did he?

  But if it was a question of rights . . . they had a right to know their real father. And he had a right to acknowledge his sons....

  “What’s wrong, Mr. Jensen?”

  The question from Bodie broke into Luke’s reverie. He gave a little shake of his head and said, “What do you mean? Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Well, you were frowning like you were worried about something.”

  “Not really,” Luke assured him. “I reckon some fellas just get in the habit of worrying all the time, and that’s not a good way to be. You don’t want to do that.”

  Hannah piped up. “Ever since we got here, I haven’t been worried about a thing.”

  “That’s good, darlin’,” Luke told her. “You just keep on feeling that way.”

  And he would keep on try
ing to figure out what he should do about Ace and Chance, but he had a hunch there weren’t going to be any good answers coming to him.

  CHAPTER 41

  Although the Christmas Eve service was a serious occasion, there was still plenty of the joyousness of the season to be found in Big Rock today. Everyone looked forward to the Christmas social held in the town hall before the service that evening, with music and singing, punch and apple cider, cookies and cakes, and good fellowship for all. The crowd for that began gathering late in the afternoon.

  Preacher’s arm was linked with Adelaide’s as he escorted her into the town hall. He said, “It’s been a while since I been to one of these whoop-de-dos, but as I recall, they’re pretty nice.”

  “I’m sure it will be, Arthur. I mean, Preacher.”

  “I’ve told you, I don’t care what you call me.”

  “I was thinking,” she said, “that this might be a good opportunity to make an announcement, since everyone you care about is here. If you had anything to announce, that is.”

  Preacher’s forehead furrowed. He said, “I sorta been thinkin’ about the same thing. Ain’t quite ever’body here . . . Smoke said ol’ Matt, him and Luke’s brother, ain’t gonna be able to make it this year . . . but this is a big bunch of Jensens in one place, all right.”

  Adelaide squeezed his arm.

  “Whatever you think is best, Arthur. I know you’ll do the right thing.”

  In another part of the hall, Ace, Chance, and Doc were paying a visit to the punch bowl. Doc’s hand shook a little as he lifted a cup of the sweet concoction to his mouth, but he managed not to spill any of it as he drank.

  “I’m sorry you had to go through so much trouble to get here, Doc,” Ace told him, “but I have to say, I’m glad it gave us an opportunity to spend Christmas together again.”

  Chance said, “We should have come up to the sanitarium first, instead of here to Big Rock.”

  “Well, as it turned out, I wouldn’t have been there,” Doc replied with a shake of his head. “Anyway, this is where you boys really belong, with all these other Jensens.”