A Jensen Family Christmas

by William W. Johnstone

  When they reached the top, Doc saw a number of boulders bulking up in the snow. Thackery reined in and told his men, “The rest of you can hold off anybody who comes after us while I find out what we need to know.”

  An older outlaw rubbed his mouth and asked, “What’ll we do then? Fight our way out? Some of us are liable to get killed.”

  “Fifty thousand dollars is worth running a few risks,” snapped Thackery. “A couple of you grab this bastard and hang on to him.”

  Strong hands closed on Doc and lifted him down from the horse’s back. He didn’t try to get away from the outlaws, since he knew it would be futile. He wasn’t strong enough to break their grips.

  “He’s shakin’ like a leaf,” one of them said. “He must be so scared he’s pissin’ his pants.”

  “He’ll be doin’ more than that by the time Thackery’s through with him. And if Thackery can’t get him to talk, I’ll bet Bryson can. I’ve heard that he learned a few things from the Apaches.”

  Meanwhile, Thackery had dismounted and was telling two more of his men to place Ace on the ground. Doc watched in dismay as the young man was stretched out next to one of the boulders. Ace groaned and moved around a little as he started to come to.

  Thackery came over and took hold of Doc’s arm, telling the other men, “Get behind those rocks and be ready to fight if you have to. Del, you have your knife?”

  “Of course I do,” a lean, wolfish owlhoot replied. “And I don’t mind usin’ it.”

  “Get to work on the kid, then. He’s waking up. I want him wide awake and screaming.” Thackery drew his gun and jabbed the barrel into Doc’s ribs again. “You’re gonna watch the whole thing, mister. But the sooner you tell me what I want to know, the sooner the boy won’t be hurting anymore.”

  Doc gasped from horror and the pain in his side and said, “That’s because . . . because you’ll kill both of us!”

  “I promise you, being dead is better than what Del’s going to do to him. So what’s it gonna be, Doc? Tell me where to find that money . . . or listen to him scream?”

  CHAPTER 43

  Big Rock

  Smoke, Luke, and Preacher hadn’t brought saddle mounts to town, but all the Sugarloaf hands had ridden in, so the three of them borrowed horses for the pursuit.

  While they were quickly getting ready to go, Pearlie and Cal approached, and the foreman declared, “We’re comin’ with you, Smoke.”

  “No, only one of you,” Smoke said. “You figure out which, but do it fast. The one who stays behind is responsible for seeing that Sally and Mrs. DuBois and the Trafford kids get back to the ranch safely after the Christmas Eve service.”

  Monte Carson came up in time to hear that and said, “I don’t know if they’re going to have the service, Smoke. With a gunfight and a couple of men kidnapped and another wounded, folks are mighty upset.”

  “Then it’s a good time for them to get together and pray for good things to happen, as well as giving thanks for the birth of the Lord,” Smoke said. “Pass the word about that, Monte.”

  “I’ll tell somebody else to do it. I’m coming with you, too.”

  By this time, Pearlie had laid down the law to Cal, pulling rank as foreman to order the young cowboy to stay here and keep an eye on things in town, then see to it that the ladies and the children got back to the Sugarloaf if Smoke and the others hadn’t returned by then. Cal wasn’t happy about it, but he wasn’t going to argue too much with Pearlie.

  Smoke walked over to where Chance sat on one of the chairs against the wall. The young man’s coat was off, and his shirtsleeve had been cut away to reveal the hole that a bullet had punched through the upper part of his arm. The local medico had cleaned and bandaged the wound, and as Smoke approached, Chance started to get to his feet.

  Smoke waved him back into the chair and said, “I know what you’re thinking, Chance, but you’re hurt. You need to stay here.”

  “I can sit a saddle just fine,” argued Chance, “and it’s not my gun arm that’s wounded.”

  “The doctor says you lost quite a bit of blood, though, and it’s best you take it easy. But don’t worry. We’re going to bring back Ace and Doc.”

  Chance shook his head and said, “I just can’t figure out who might have done this. That fellow Malkin is dead.”

  “He may have had a partner, though.” Smoke didn’t want to take the time to explain about the other prints he had seen in the clearing where Malkin died. “Whoever it is, we’ll take care of them. You’ve got my word on that.”

  Chance nodded and sat back with a weary sigh. He winced as a fresh twinge of pain shot through his injured arm.

  Smoke gestured to the men who were going with him, and stalked out of the town hall. Some of the Sugarloaf hands were holding horses for them right outside. The delay while everyone was getting ready had seemed gratingly long to Smoke, but in actuality, only a few minutes had passed since the shooting died away. The men swung up into saddles and rode around the hall to pick up the trail, which was clearly visible in the snow, leading away from the settlement toward the northwest.

  Inside the hall, Chance heard the swift rataplan of hoofbeats and wished once again that he was going with them. Knowing that Ace and Doc were out there somewhere in the night, in danger, gnawed at his guts. Several of the local young ladies gathered around to fuss over him, but for once, the attention of some pretty girls didn’t mean a blasted thing to Chance.

  After a while, Sally came over, shooed the girls away, and asked, “Is there anything I can get you, Chance? Some punch or cider?”

  “No, I’m not thirsty, but thanks, anyway, Mrs. Jensen.”

  “You know by now that you can call me Sally,” she chided him gently, smiling to take any sting out of the words.

  “Yeah, I know. That business about being a member of the family—”

  “Matt!” exclaimed Sally.

  “Yeah, like Matt being Smoke’s adopted brother—”

  “No, I mean it’s Matt. He’s here!”

  Chance looked up and saw Matt Jensen striding through the crowd toward them. Tall, broad shouldered, fair haired, he was a bit of a drifter like Ace and Chance and had held down many exciting jobs over the years: army scout, shotgun guard, troubleshooter for the railroad, and more.

  Smiling, he embraced Sally and then extended his hand to Chance. They had met before, during another eventful Christmas season.

  “Good to see you again, Chance,” Matt said. “I understand that I got here a little too late and missed all the excitement.”

  “Not too late at all,” Chance said as he got to his feet and clasped Matt’s hand. “I was just resting up a mite, but now I’m ready to go after Smoke and the others, and you can come with me.”

  Sally said, “Chance, that’s not what you’re supposed to be doing at all!”

  “It’s my brother who’s in danger. Matt, would you stay behind if Smoke or Luke was in trouble?”

  “Not hardly,” Matt admitted. “If Smoke told you to stay here, though—”

  Fresh determination welled up inside Chance. He picked up his bloodstained coat and said, “I’m going after them, one way or the other. You can come with me or stay behind, whatever you want.”

  “Stay behind?” Matt repeated. “You don’t know me very well, do you? Jensens don’t stay behind.”

  “Damn right,” said Chance.

  * * *

  Doña Mariana Aguilar was standing with her husband when she saw him stiffen and glare across the room.

  “What is it, Sebastian?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer her. Instead, he turned and beckoned to Travis Hinton, who was leaning against the wall not far away. The gunman straightened and drifted over to Aguilar, who said tensely, “We must make our move tonight.”

  “What’s wrong, Don Sebastian?”

  “Things have changed,” snapped Aguilar. “There is no longer any time for delay.”

  Hinton shrugged and said, “That’s all right w
ith me, boss. I never did like the idea of sitting around and letting a bunch of lawyers handle things, anyway. Especially when we knew how that was going to turn out.”

  “Gather the men and be ready,” Aguilar responded with a curt nod.

  As Hinton moved away to do the don’s bidding, Mariana grasped her husband’s arm and said, “Sebastian, whatever is going on here, I do not like it.”

  He turned to her with a savage scowl on his hawklike face.

  “The time for worrying about what you like or do not like is past,” he told her. “Now you will do as I say. And tonight what we came for . . . will be ours!”

  * * *

  As the man with the knife in his hand knelt beside Ace and reached out toward him, Doc said abruptly, “Wait!”

  “You’re going to talk before Del even gets started?” asked Thackery. He chuckled. “He’s going to be disappointed.”

  “Look, I don’t know where Malkin hid that loot—”

  Thackery said, “Start carving, Del.”

  “No! I don’t know,” Doc insisted, “but I can tell you how to find out. Malkin told me that he wrote down the location and sent it in a letter to someone . . . a woman . . . and he had the letters she wrote back to him, there at the sanitarium. You can go back there and get those letters, and they’ll tell you where to find her. Then she can tell you where the money is.”

  Doc had made up that tale on the spur of the moment, taking bits and pieces of what he knew about Malkin and putting them together with pure conjecture. It all added up to a lie, but if it was a convincing enough lie, it might send Thackery back to the sanitarium.

  Of course, if the outlaws believed what Doc had just said, they had no reason to keep him and Ace alive, but all Doc was trying to do right now was muddle Thackery’s mind and keep the man with the knife from torturing Ace. Maybe, as Thackery had said, a quick death was better....

  “You’re lying,” Thackery said. “You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?”

  “It’s the truth. My God, at this point, what good is a lie going to do me?”

  The man with the knife said, “He sounds pretty convincin’, Lane. But why don’t you let me cut on this boy a little, anyway, just to be sure?”

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea—” Thackery began, but before he could finish, one of the outlaws hidden behind the boulders called, “Riders comin’, Thackery! Looks like a bunch from town on our trail!”

  Thackery turned his head and said, “We’re ready for ’em. They won’t know we’re up here, so let them get closer and then blow them out of their saddles!”

  The odds were good that an ambush would work, thought Doc. And it was possible that Chance was among the pursuers! If that was the case, when the outlaws opened fire and bullets scythed down on the approaching riders, Chance might be killed. Doc couldn’t allow that, any more than he could stand by and watch Ace be tortured.

  He was out of time now. Out of options. Lying and delaying were no good. The only thing he could do was warn the others somehow, and to accomplish that, he would have to rely on his body. His damned weak, treacherous body . . .

  When Thackery had turned slightly to order his men to ready the ambush, the barrel of his gun had left Doc’s side. Doc saw it in the faint light that reflected from the snow surrounding them. He drew in a deep breath and willed his hands to stop shaking. That had never worked before . . . but he had never been faced with such a desperate dilemma, either.

  A couple of seconds ticked past. Doc’s hands stilled.

  And then he moved, lunging at the gun, grasping the barrel with his left hand, and forcing it up while his right closed around the cylinder and he searched frantically for the trigger guard. Thackery yelled in surprise and tried to wrench the gun away from him, but Doc clung to it with all his strength. He found Thackery’s finger on the trigger and shoved his finger in with it, then pressed back....

  The gun boomed, the report rolling down the snow-covered hill to the pursuers who were closing in.

  * * *

  A few feet away, Ace wasn’t quite as groggy as he was pretending to be. His head still throbbed from being knocked out, but he thought he could move if he needed to. The question was how quickly he could react. He had been waiting for an opening to turn the tables on their captors.

  Doc’s unexpected action gave him that opening. The outlaw called Del took his eyes off Ace when the gun went off. Ace’s hands shot up to grab Del’s wrist. He twisted and shoved as he jacknifed up from the ground. Del gasped as the blade he still held drove deep into his belly, with all of Ace’s strength behind it.

  Ace rammed his shoulder into Del’s chest and knocked him over backward. Del’s hands fell away from the knife’s handle, allowing Ace to rip it free, opening a larger wound in the process. Ace made it to his knees and started to his feet, but as he came up, he saw Thackery backhand Doc and knock him loose from the gun. Doc staggered back a couple of steps.

  Ace was about to rush Thackery, even though gun against knife made for bad odds. Before he could move, though, Thackery jerked the Colt toward him and fired.

  At that same instant, Doc recovered and threw himself forward again. Ace heard the slug thud into Doc’s frail form. He yelled, “No!” as Doc collapsed. Doc fell against Thackery’s legs, throwing him off-balance for a second.

  That was long enough for Ace to flash across the intervening distance and ram the blade into Thackery’s chest. The impact drove Thackery back a step. Ace grabbed the wrist of Thackery’s gun hand and shoved the weapon aside, then yanked the knife out and stabbed the outlaw again. In and out the blade drove a third time, then a fourth, piercing Thackery’s heart more than once. His mouth opened, but nothing came out but a strangled gasp. The gun slipped from nerveless fingers and fell to the ground. Thackery went down, and Ace let him go. Blind rage filled Ace, but the small part of his brain that was still working told him that Thackery was dead.

  The other outlaws were still alive, though, and gun thunder filled the night, the darkness split by orange muzzle flashes. Ace had left the knife buried in Thackery’s chest on the last thrust, but the gun the outlaw had dropped was a dark shape in the snow. Ace dived for it, scooped it up. He wanted to see about Doc, but a couple of the gang had turned from their concealment among the rocks and started throwing lead in his direction. Ace tilted the gun up and triggered it, spraying bullets among the rocks. Some ricocheted with high-pitched whines, but others found their targets and drove outlaws back against the boulders.

  Then hoofbeats pounded, and men on horseback were among the boulders, firing down at the remaining members of the gang, wiping them out or at least knocking them out of the fight.

  “Ace! Doc! Where are you?”

  That was Luke Jensen’s voice, Ace realized. He cried, “Here!” and dropped the empty gun. He turned and scrambled over to Doc’s sprawled form. Ace got his arms around the slender figure and lifted him, pushed with his feet until his back was against one of the boulders and Doc was lying across his lap, his head supported by the crook of Ace’s right arm.

  “Doc!” Ace said urgently. “Doc, how bad are you hurt?”

  For a moment, Ace thought he was too late, that Doc was dead. Judging by the size of the dark bloodstain on his shirtfront, that might be the case. But then Doc coughed a little, and his eyelids flickered open.

  “A-Ace . . . ? You’re . . . all right?”

  Ace could barely make out the husky whisper that came from Doc’s lips. Blood trickled from a corner of the gambler’s mouth. Ace leaned over him, cradling him as gently as possible, and said, “Yeah, I . . . I’m fine, Doc. Fine as can be. Not hurt at all.”

  “Ch-Chance?”

  Ace was about to say that he didn’t know, but before he could, one of the men who had charged up the hill to do battle with the outlaws dropped to his knees beside Doc and said, “I’m right here. I’m all right, too, Doc. Don’t you worry. Looks like I caught up just in time.”

  Ace lifted his eyes to his
brother. He wasn’t surprised to see Chance among the men who had ridden to the rescue.

  He was a little surprised, though, when Luke Jensen knelt beside them, as well, and reached out to grasp one of Doc’s hands. Luke and Doc had just met the day before.

  “How bad are you hit, Doc?” the bounty hunter asked.

  Doc coughed again and said, “Bad enough . . . I think. This is . . . the last hand I’ll play.”

  “Damn it, Doc,” moaned Chance. “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s . . . true. You boys . . . both know that.”

  “We’ll get you back to town—” Ace began.

  Weakly, Doc shook his head. “Don’t waste . . . your time. Just . . . prop me up . . . a little. I need to . . . talk to Luke.”

  Confusion mixed with the grief that filled Ace’s heart. He didn’t know what Luke had to do with any of this, but clearly, it meant a lot to Doc, so carefully, he raised the slender figure in his arms.

  “You know . . . what you need to do . . . Luke.” Doc was fighting hard to get the words out now. “I was going to . . . give you the time . . . to make up your own mind . . . but now there’s . . . no more time. And they deserve . . . deserve to know . . . the truth.”

  Luke’s voice was more twisted with emotion than Ace had ever heard it as he said, “I know, Doc. I know you’re right. I just don’t know if I deserve to be . . . I mean, I never even—”

  “You didn’t know.” Somewhere inside him, Doc found a little more strength. Ace saw him squeeze’s Luke’s hand. “Now you do. Now you know, and it’s a good thing. I’ve . . . done my best. Now it . . . it’s up to you . . .”

  A long sigh came from Doc, and again, Ace thought he was gone. But the gambler had one more thing to say, and he wasn’t cashing in his chips until he said it.

  “I love you . . . boys . . .”

  * * *

  It was a toss-up for Luke which had been the bigger surprise when the two riders caught up with the posse: the fact that Matt had shown up unexpectedly or that Chance had disregarded Smoke’s orders and had followed them, anyway. Come to think of it, Chance being stubborn really wasn’t that much of a shock.