A Big Sky Christmas

by William W. Johnstone

  “The deputy left the door open some when he went in. I listened to what was going on inside after I . . .” He looked toward the alley. “Well, after my . . . my digestion settled down. From the way people in there were acting, they seemed to recognize your name.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No. I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  A grin split Jamie’s rugged face. “Nothing to be sorry about. I don’t know your name, either.”

  “Oh. That’s right. It’s Moses. Moses Danzig.”

  Jamie extended his right hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Danzig.” His big paw pretty much swallowed up the other man’s hand.

  Moses Danzig looked nervous, like he was afraid that Jamie would crush his fingers, but Jamie took it easy on him.

  After they’d shook, Moses said, “Obviously, you’re some sort of frontiersman.”

  “Some sort, yeah,” Jamie agreed.

  “Would you happen to be looking for work?”

  Jamie rubbed his chin. “Not really. But what did you have in mind?”

  Moses took a deep breath and went on. “I’m traveling with the wagon train that’s supposed to pull out tomorrow. We’re going to have to find a new wagon master and guide.” He paused, then added dryly, “Somebody broke the leg of the one we had.”

  Jamie looked at the smaller man for a moment, then burst out laughing. Moses Danzig might not be very big and his stomach might be a little delicate at the sight of blood, but he had some sand in his craw, that was for sure.

  “Well, Mr. Danzig, that is a problem, but I can’t help you. In fact, I was thinking as I left the saloon just now that it was a good thing Ralston jumped me the way he did. I didn’t want trouble with him, but at least with him laid up, that wagon train will be stuck here until spring.”

  “But we can’t wait until spring,” Moses insisted. “We have to get started to Montana now.”

  Jamie shook his head. “It’s too late in the year. You can’t get there before winter sets in. Ralston ought to have known that. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Mr. Ralston promised he could get us to our destination by Christmas.”

  Jamie snorted and shook his head. “Even if he managed to do that, it’s still five or six weeks too late. You might be able to travel up until the end of November, but even that’s mighty chancy.”

  “He said winter was going to be late this year. He’d studied the almanac and all the signs and that if we made it by Christmas we would be all right.”

  “And you’d trust your life to some drunk saying that?” Jamie asked. “Because that’s what you’d be doing.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Moses said, his voice growing hollow with despair. “We can’t stay here, you see. There’s no money. Everyone with the wagon train . . . spent everything they had to get this far and buy supplies for the rest of the trip.”

  “You’ve got those supplies,” Jamie pointed out. “Live on them until spring.”

  Moses shook his head. “They won’t last that long, and even if they did, we couldn’t afford to buy more for the rest of the journey.”

  “Sure you could. Some of the folks could get jobs and work over the winter.”

  “Most of the families saved for years to afford to come out here, Mr. MacCallister. They couldn’t make enough in a few months. No, they have to reach those homesteads waiting for them in Montana or give up their dreams.”

  “Then maybe that’s just what they should do,” Jamie said bluntly.

  “Would you?” Moses asked. “I don’t know you, Mr. MacCallister, but you don’t strike me as the sort of man who would give up on much of anything you wanted.”

  That was true enough, Jamie thought. When the Good Lord made him, He’d put in a few extra pinches of stubbornness. Sheer muleheadedness, Kate would have called it. And she had, on more than one occasion.

  “What is it you want me to do?”

  “You’re a frontiersman,” Moses said. “Evidently quite an accomplished one, from the way the people in the saloon were acting when they found out who you are. It seems to me that the answer is simple.”

  “I’m listening,” Jamie said.

  “You can take us to Montana.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Jamie didn’t know whether to laugh or let out a disgusted snort, but he did neither. “I told you, Moses, I’m not looking for work.”

  “I’ll wager that you’ve guided wagon trains before, though, haven’t you?”

  Jamie’s broad shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. As a matter of fact, he had guided several wagon trains to where they were going, but that didn’t mean he wanted to do it again, especially under these circumstances.

  “And you know the country,” Moses went on. “You told Mr. Ralston you’d been up there.”

  “I’ve been to Montana Territory,” Jamie admitted. “Where are the homesteads you people are claiming?”

  “They’re in a place called Eagle Valley. Do you know it?”

  Jamie frowned slightly. “I know it, all right. It’s a beautiful little valley with plenty of decent land for farms and ranches. The last time I was there, though, it was covered with buffalo. The Sioux and the Blackfeet considered it part of their hunting grounds and fought over it now and then.”

  “Mr. Hendricks was assured that the Indians in the area had been pacified.”

  Jamie snorted disgustedly. “Who’s this fella Hendricks?”

  “The captain of the wagon train. His name is Lamar Hendricks.”

  Jamie knew that wagon train captain was an elected position, making Hendricks the leader of the immigrants, but it was a title without much real power. The wagon master was really the one in charge.

  And this bunch didn’t have one, since, as Moses had correctly pointed out, Jamie had broken the son of a gun’s leg.

  “Who told Hendricks the Indians weren’t a threat?”

  “Someone with the government. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, I believe. I don’t really know the details.”

  That answer didn’t surprise Jamie. There must be something in the water in Washington, D.C., that made all those bureaucrats think they knew better about everything than everybody else. Darned fools was what they really were.

  “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the Indians are pacified. From what I hear, there hasn’t been much trouble up there lately, but that’s because the big buffalo herds have moved north into Canada and most of the bands have followed them. They could come back any time, and then it’s liable to start all over again.”

  “Captain Hendricks and his people just want to live peacefully. I’m sure they’ll make every effort to get along with the Indians.”

  Jamie didn’t say anything in response to that. All across the frontier, settlers had risked their lives moving into areas where the Indians didn’t want them. Running such risks was just part of being a pioneer. The choice was up to them.

  He was curious about something else, though. “You mentioned Hendricks and his people. Aren’t you one of ’em?”

  Moses smiled and pushed his spectacles up on his nose. “Not really. I’m just traveling with their wagon train, and they agreed to let me stay with them in Eagle Valley until the spring. But when winter’s done I’ll be moving on to Oregon. I’m supposed to take over a synagogue in Portland.”

  “That’s like a Hebrew church, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right. I’m a rabbi.”

  Jamie grunted. “First one I’ve ever met, I reckon. I figured you were a farmer like most homesteaders are.”

  “I am. It’s just the crop I help to cultivate consists of people’s souls. It’s a calling that I’ve followed all the way from my home in Poland.”

  “From Poland all the way to the American frontier. That’s quite a journey.”

  “And it’s not finished yet,” Moses said quietly. “But I need your help to get where I’m going, Mr. MacCallister. All of us with the wagon train do.”

  “Eagle Valley, eh?” Jamie mused
.

  “Yes. If you could find it in your heart to at least talk to Mr. Hendricks and meet the others . . .”

  “Well, I suppose that wouldn’t hurt anything.” Even as he said it, Jamie wondered if he was making a big mistake. He wasn’t the sort of man to brood over such things, though, so he put that uncertainty out of his mind. All he’d agreed to do was talk to Lamar Hendricks. He could try to convince Hendricks that it would be best to lay over in Kansas City until the spring. By then, they ought to be able to find another wagon master.

  Shoot, if it came right down to it, he could help those pilgrims out with enough money to tide them over. He’d never miss it. As long as he had enough for food and ammunition and a few other supplies, that was all he needed while he was on the drift.

  Moses had a big grin on his face. “That’s wonderful, Mr. MacCallister. Come with me and I’ll introduce you. You’ll stay for supper and get to know everyone. You’ll see what a fine group it is.”

  “I need to fetch my horses first and find a livery stable for them.”

  “Bring them with you,” Moses suggested. “You can put them in with our livestock. I’m sure you’d all be welcome to spend the night.”

  “You’re bound and determined to rope me into this, aren’t you?”

  “It just seems like such a fitting solution. I mean, since you’re the one responsible for Mr. Ralston’s injury—”

  “He brought that on himself,” Jamie said.

  “I know, I know. I’m just saying that everything works out for a reason. Like tonight, when Captain Hendricks asked me to look for Mr. Ralston and I had a feeling I’d find him in that saloon—”

  “I was wondering what you were doing there.”

  “I was looking for the man who’s going to lead us to the promised land.” Moses chuckled. “And I think I found him, just not the one I intended.”

  As they started walking along the street, Jamie scowled. “If I remember right from reading the Good Book, it was an hombre named Moses who led the Israelites to the promised land. Maybe your name is the Lord’s way of saying that you should have the job.”

  “Me?” Moses said with a squeak in his voice. “The biblical Moses took the Israelites to Canaan, all right, but he never set foot in it himself. All he could do was look across the River Jordan at it and see that it was good.” A worried note came into his voice. “Do you think that’s a bad omen for me, Mr. MacCallister? That I’ll make it to Montana but never set foot in Eagle Valley?”

  Jamie didn’t know how to answer that. His ideas of faith and spirituality came more from the Indians than from any of the so-called organized religions.

  He slapped a big hand against Moses’s back hard enough to make the smaller man stumble a little. “Don’t worry about that. For now, let’s try to figure out the best way to get there.”

  “Does that mean—”

  Jamie shrugged. “It means I’ll talk to those folks and think about it.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Inside the Bella Royale Saloon, people were still talking about the brutal fight between Jeb Ralston and Jamie Ian MacCallister. It wasn’t every day folks got to see a brawl involving a legendary frontiersman like MacCallister who was known from one end of the West to the other. It was something many of them would tell their grandchildren about.

  Eldon Swint didn’t seem too impressed. He sat at one of the tables with several of his men, a bottle and glass in front of him. He filled his glass again, then leaned back in a chair and stretched out his long legs. “People talk about that fella MacCallister like he was Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie and Kit Carson all rolled into one. He didn’t look so dang special to me. Just another old man who ain’t had the sense to die yet.” Swint downed the drink and licked his lips.

  “You must be joshin’, boss,” Three-Finger Jake Lucas said. He was a handsome young man with a quick, cocky grin and a full head of brown hair under his tipped back hat. The last two fingers of his left hand were gone, pinched off cleanly when he got them trapped between his rope and saddle horn as he took a dally to stop a runaway steer during a drive up the trail from Texas. It was a mistake many cowboys had made, which was why many of them were missing a finger or two.

  Jake had taken the accident hard. It had embittered him, and when the herd he was with reached Abilene and the Texas crew started home, Jake hadn’t gone with them. He had stayed in Abilene, spent all his wages on a monumental drunk, and vowed never to return home in his mutilated state.

  In the four years since then, he had fallen in with bad company, as they say. His best friend Bodie Cantrell knew that . . . because he was a member of that so-called bad company himself.

  Bodie was sitting at the table with Swint, Jake, and three other men, all of them drinking heavily. Bodie had a pretty fuzzy glow going from the liquor. He didn’t like to get drunk as much as some of his companions did, but from time to time he gave in to the urge, anyway. The whiskey usually helped him forget what had happened in Kansas a couple weeks earlier.

  It wasn’t helping so much that night.

  “It’s just a little flag stop out in the middle of nowhere,” Eldon Swint said. “There’s only one man on duty at night. He’s the telegrapher, ticket agent, and baggage clerk, all in one. When we throw down on him, he’ll put that flag up, you can bet a hat on that.”

  “Yeah, but will the train stop?” one of the men asked.

  “It’s not an express. It’ll stop,” Swint said confidently. “That’s what it’s supposed to do.”

  “Why would they ship all that money from the mint on a train that’s not an express?” Bodie asked. “That doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “Because they’re tryin’ to be tricky. They don’t think anybody’ll suspect the shipment’s on a local like that. They got a whole series of ’em set up to get the money from Denver to St. Louis.”

  The outlaws sat their horses on a slight rise looking north toward a small settlement on the rolling Kansas plains. The railroad tracks ran straight as a string east and west, disappearing in the distance in both directions.

  A small depot sat next to the tracks on the north side, and behind it was the settlement’s short, single street with half a dozen businesses on each side. At the far end of the street stood a whitewashed church that doubled as a schoolhouse during the week. Maybe two dozen residences were scattered around haphazardly.

  Bodie didn’t know the name of the place. It was so small it didn’t really deserve one, although he was sure it had some sort of official designation on railroad maps since there was a station there.

  One of the men said to Swint, “You’re sure you can trust the fella who told you about all this, boss?”

  “I’m sure,” Swint said with an ugly grin. “He thought he was sellin’ out the government for a share of the loot, so he didn’t have any reason to lie. He sure was surprised when he found out that his share was a bullet!”

  Swint’s haw-haw of laughter made Bodie’s guts clench. He was well aware that he wasn’t riding with a bunch of choir boys, but Eldon Swint making a joke out of cold-blooded murder rubbed him the wrong way.

  Bodie had done plenty of things he wasn’t proud of in his life. He had been on his own since he was nine years old, when both his parents had died of a fever while the family was on its way west. The only way he had survived the fifteen years since was by doing whatever it took, even if that meant breaking a few laws. He had stolen money and food plenty of times, and after he got older he had stuck a gun in men’s faces and made them hand over their valuables.

  But he had never killed anybody while committing his crimes, or any other time, either. Maybe he’d just been lucky that things had worked out that way, but he liked to think it was more than that. He hoped he still had a shred of decency left in him.

  Nobody would ever say that about Eldon Swint. The man had a reputation for being cunning and ruthless, and it was well deserved. The gang he led had been growing for several years, its latest recruits being Bodie
Cantrell and Jake Lucas.

  The two young men had quickly become good friends. Jake had opened up a little to him during long nights standing guard while the gang was on the run from the law. It was how Bodie knew about the bitterness hidden behind Jake’s easygoing grin.

  They were on the verge of pulling their biggest job yet. According to the information Swint had gotten, almost $80,000 in new gold coins would be on the train coming through Kansas tonight, on their way to several banks in St. Louis. Even divided among the almost two dozen men in the gang, that was more than three grand apiece. Bodie could hardly conceive of having that much money.

  Once he had his share of the loot, he could quit the gang, head farther west, maybe even start a little spread somewhere. After a decade and a half of drifting around, struggling to survive, getting in and out of trouble, the idea of settling down and trying to forge a real life for himself held a powerful appeal.

  “The east bound’s due to come through a little after eight o’clock tonight,” Swint went on. “If we all ride in there before that, it’s bound to raise some suspicions. So here’s what we’ll do. Four of us will ride in. Me, of course”—he looked around the gang—“and Charley.”

  Charley Green was one of Swint’s top lieutenants. He had been in the gang for a couple years.

  Swint pointed to another man. “You, too, Hinkley, and . . . Cantrell. You’ll be the fourth man.”

  Bodie nodded. He wasn’t sure what Swint had in mind for the four of them to do, and he would have just as soon not been picked by the boss outlaw, but he would go along with whatever he needed to do. He wanted that stake.

  “We’ll ride in as soon as it gets dark,” Swint continued. “Maybe have a drink in the saloon and size the place up. Then we’ll drift over to the depot one by one and get the drop on the fella working there. Once he’s raised the flag to get the eastbound to stop, we’ll signal the rest of you. You’ll be waitin’ up here. As soon as the train pulls in, all of you charge down to the station and make sure nobody interferes with us while we’re gettin’ that loot out of the express car.”