A Big Sky Christmas

by William W. Johnstone

  “But he wasn’t there when we risked our necks to steal them from Swint,” Mahaffey said. “Anyway, he quit the gang back there in Kansas City. That was his own decision.”

  “So did we,” Jake reminded him. “But I’m not gonna argue about it with you boys. Bodie don’t know we’ve got the loot, and as long as he don’t know he can’t say that we’re cheatin’ him out of anything. So I’ll go along with whatever you say. When the time comes to leave the wagon train, we’ll go our own way and leave Bodie behind.”

  “Yeah, well, when’s that gonna be?” Pearsoll asked.

  That was the question they had been wrangling about when Bodie came up to them a short time earlier and caused Jake to come up with that story about the panther. Mahaffey and Pearsoll thought it was already time to leave the wagons behind and disappear in the middle of the night with the loot they had liberated from Eldon Swint, but Jake wanted to wait and stay with the train a while longer.

  “We’ll reach the Platte River in a few weeks,” Jake said. “By then, we’ll know for sure whether or not Eldon’s gonna come after us. If we haven’t seen hide nor hair of him, we can figure he doesn’t know where we are and go wherever we want from there. San Francisco, Mexico, wherever suits our fancy.”

  Despite the fact that he was younger and less experienced than the other two outlaws, he was in charge and he didn’t want them to forget it, so his voice hardened slightly. “Until then, we’ll stay with the wagons. If Swint and the rest of the gang show up lookin’ for us with guns in their hands and blood in their eyes, we’ll need all the help we can get fightin’ ’em off. Bodie and his new friends will pitch in on our side, I’m sure of that. Those pilgrims will think they’re under attack by owlhoots, and that’ll be the truth. They just won’t know the reason why.”

  “All right, all right,” Mahaffey muttered. “I reckon what you say makes sense, Jake. That big varmint MacCallister worries me, though.”

  “Me, too,” Pearsoll agreed. “Sometimes when he looks at me, it feels like he can see right through me, Jake. Like he knows everythin’ I’m thinkin’ or feelin’. Man’s got eyes like a hawk . . . or an eagle.”

  “Don’t worry about Jamie MacCallister,” Jake said. “He’s just like Bodie.” He grinned. “He don’t suspect a thing.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Moses was checking the hubs on his wagon wheels to see if they needed to be greased again when he heard rapid footsteps coming up behind him.

  He straightened and turned quickly, not really expecting trouble right in camp but knowing that it was best to be careful. He relaxed when he saw the two children who had just run up to his wagon.

  “Hello, Mr. Danzig,” Alexander Bradford said.

  “Hello,” his sister Abigail added.

  “Good evening to you, children,” Moses told the youngsters with a solemn nod. “What brings you to see me? Shouldn’t you be back at your father’s wagon, getting ready to go to sleep? You know how Mr. MacCallister likes to make an early start in the morning!”

  “We were hopin’ you could show us that toy again,” Alexander said.

  “You know, the spinning one,” Abigail said.

  Moses grinned. “Ah, you mean the dreidel. Let me get it.”

  They had seen him idly spinning the dreidel one day back in Kansas City. It helped him to think, and he had explained a little about it to them during that conversation.

  He climbed into the wagon over the lowered tailgate and emerged a moment later to hop back down to the ground. Motioning for Alexander and Abigail to come closer, he poised the four-sided top on the tailgate. “Here we go.”

  Grasping the little shaft that stuck up from the dreidel, he flicked it between his thumb and index finger and gave it a spin. The top whirled so fast that the four Hebrew letters painted on it, one on each side, blurred and became unreadable.

  Not that the children could have read them anyway, Moses thought. He was quite probably the only member of the wagon train who could.

  But they enjoyed watching the top spin. Abigail clapped her hands together and giggled. Alexander grinned and fidgeted, shuffling his feet back and forth. Moses knew the boy was anxious to try spinning the top himself.

  “We use the dreidel to play a game during one of my people’s holidays,” Moses told them.

  “Like Christmas?” Abigail asked.

  “Well, not exactly. Our holiday is called Hanukkah, which means the Feast of Lights, and even though it comes at about the same time of year as Christmas, it’s different—”

  “Alexander! Abigail!” The angry bellow came from Reverend Bradford, who stalked toward Moses’s wagon with his hands clenched into knobby-knuckled fists.

  The children scurried away from the tailgate, obviously not wanting to incur any more of their father’s wrath than they already had by being there. Moses frowned. He didn’t like to see children acting so frightened. He worried that they had good reason to be scared.

  The dreidel had stopped spinning and fallen over onto its side. Moses picked it up and held it in his hands where Bradford could see it and hopefully realize that he had just been entertaining the youngsters with a harmless toy. “Good evening, Reverend.”

  Bradford came to a stop and glared at him. “What are you doing with my children?”

  “I was just showing them the dreidel,” Moses explained. “I was going to let them play with it.”

  “You were preaching your heathen religion to them!”

  Moses shook his head. “Not at all. I wouldn’t do that. They’re just children.”

  “I heard you telling them about your Hebrew holiday, the one you celebrate instead of Christmas.” Bradford stabbed a blunt finger toward the dreidel. “Look at it! It’s got religious symbols painted on it!”

  “They’re just Hebrew letters—” Moses stopped and drew a deep breath. It was true that the markings on the dreidel had some significance in his faith, and as a rabbi he could have explained all that to Bradford in a calm, rational manner, but he knew the man didn’t want to hear it.

  Instead he said simply, “I’m sorry. If you’d rather the children not play with it, I’ll honor your wishes, of course.”

  “I’d rather that they not have anything to do with the likes of you,” Bradford snapped. “If they come around here again, you send them packing, you hear?”

  Moses made an effort to hang on to his temper. “All right. They’re your children.”

  “And don’t you forget it.”

  Bradford turned and stalked off across the camp. Alexander and Abigail had already disappeared, no doubt scurrying back to their wagon.

  Moses watched the man go and shook his head. It was a shame that Bradford had to be so hostile, but with some people, once they made their minds up there was no changing them.

  “The reverend’s lucky you didn’t take a swing at him.”

  The quiet voice made Moses jerk his head around. The huge shape that loomed up in the firelight was instantly recognizable as that of Jamie Ian MacCallister.

  “Mr. MacCallister,” Moses said. “I didn’t hear you.” He had wondered before how a man as large as Jamie could move so silently. The big frontiersman was as stealthy as Moses supposed an Indian to be.

  “I was keeping an eye on things. If Bradford had jumped you, I would have stepped in. If you’d needed my help, that is.”

  “I think that’s a foregone conclusion. I’m not exactly what you’d call a . . . a brawler.”

  “No, but you’ve got sand.”

  “Sand?” Moses repeated with a frown.

  “Courage,” Jamie said.

  Moses shook his head slowly. “I don’t know about that. I’ve never been renowned for my bravery.”

  Jamie hooked his thumbs in his gun belt. “You came all the way to this country from Poland and then set out across it just because that’s what your faith told you to do, didn’t you?”

  “Well, yes,” Moses admitted. “But that’s my calling, I guess you’d say.”<
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  “You joined up with a wagon train full of folks different from you, knowing that some of ’em wouldn’t like you, but you’re as friendly as you can be toward them and do everything you can to help out.”

  Moses spread his hands. “What can I say, I was raised to get along with people. And to be practical. I have to get to Oregon somehow, and this seemed like the quickest way.”

  Jamie sat on the tailgate. “Most of my spiritual beliefs, if you can call ’em that, come from the Indians. They figure we all had to get here somehow, and that somebody put us here. Some of them call him Man Above, some call him the Great Spirit. They have other names for the creator, too. But no matter what they call him, there’s always somebody bigger than us, somebody who looks out for us and expects us to be the best folks we can.”

  “Nothing in my faith would disagree with that,” Moses said.

  Jamie nodded. “That’s what I’m saying. Bradford’s got it in his head that he’s got all the answers. Me?” The big man chuckled. “I don’t reckon I even know all the questions yet. Probably won’t while I’m still on this earth. But what I do know is that you’ll do to ride the river with, Moses Danzig.”

  “Ride the river? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  Jamie lifted a hand to say good night, and as he turned away he told Moses, “By the time we get where we’re going, you’ll have figured it out.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The months she had spent with the theatrical troupe had gotten Savannah in the habit of going to bed late and sleeping late in the morning. She’d had to get over that in a hurry, and after a couple days of being extremely groggy most of the day after being rousted out of her bedroll early, she was starting to get used to the schedule set by Mr. MacCallister.

  In fact, she awoke this morning even before he came around to make sure everyone was up and about, getting ready for the day’s journey. The pattering of rain on the wagon’s canvas cover may have had something to do with that. It was a soothing sound, but at the same time it was different enough to make Savannah want to get up and see how the weather was.

  Mr. and Mrs. Bingham slept in an actual bunk built into the side of the wagon, while Savannah rolled up in blankets next to the tailgate. She lifted her head and pushed the canvas flap aside to peer out, only to discover that she couldn’t see anything. The thick cloud cover made the pre-dawn hours even darker than usual.

  Savannah wasn’t sure what time it was, but she suspected it was late enough that Mr. MacCallister would be coming around soon. She pushed the blankets aside, sat up, and dug around in the bag she had brought with her until she found her rain slicker. The idea of going out in the rain to attend to her personal needs didn’t appeal to her, but she didn’t have any choice.

  She pulled the slicker on and climbed out of the wagon, dropping easily to the ground. It wasn’t very muddy yet, which told her the rain hadn’t been falling for long. It was just a drizzle at the moment, not much more than a fine mist.

  Savannah thought she might try to go ahead and rig a cover of some sort so that she could get a fire started using chunks of wood from the supply that the Binghams carried in a rope sling underneath the wagon’s body.

  That would wait until she had taken care of her other chores. She took a couple of steps away from the wagon . . .

  The arm that came out of the darkness wrapped around her with brutal, startling force, jerking her off her feet. She opened her mouth to scream, but before any sound could come out, a big, powerful hand clamped across her mouth and silenced any cry.

  During the night a steady rain began to fall. Jamie wasn’t surprised. So far the weather had been cool and clear, almost perfect for traveling. He had known that such a run of good luck couldn’t last.

  One thing he and the other scouts would have to keep an eye out for was mud. Heavy wagons had a tendency to bog down on muddy ground. Jamie hoped that they could put some miles behind them as long as the rain wasn’t falling too hard. With a slow drizzle, it would take a while before the ground softened enough to cause a problem.

  “Let’s go, let’s go!” He called as he strode through the camp, his powerful voice carrying from one side of the circle to the other. “We need to get a move on!”

  He heard a thud from the direction of one of the wagons, then his keen ears picked up what sounded like a scuffle. As he swung in that direction his eyes narrowed. The thick overcast made it difficult to see, and so did the water dripping off the brim of his hat.

  He was able to make out several figures near the back of one of the wagons, however, and the way they lurched back and forth told him that a struggle was going on.

  He broke into a run toward the wagon. He didn’t shout or announce in any other fashion that he was on his way, but loped across the ground in near-silence, a runaway locomotive of a man clad in buckskins.

  As he came closer, he could tell that one of the struggling figures wore a dress, and he had a pretty good idea who the woman was. She had to be Savannah McCoy. A tall, male shape had his arms around her, and two more men hovered nearby, ready to grab her if she managed to get away.

  Jamie targeted one of those other two men first, clubbing his fists together and swinging them with all the power of his brawny arms and shoulders and his own momentum. They smashed into the back of the unsuspecting man’s neck with the force of a sledgehammer, causing him to drop like a stone.

  The other man yelled in alarm and whirled toward Jamie. The goal of sneaking into the wagon camp during the predawn hours when everybody was asleep, grabbing Savannah, and getting out again without being detected was ruined, so there was no longer any need for stealth. A shot roared as flame gouted from the muzzle of a gun, almost singeing Jamie’s face.

  Before the intruder could fire again, the fingers of Jamie’s left hand closed around the wrist of the man’s gun hand. He thrust that arm skyward and gave the wrist such a powerful wrench that bones snapped like kindling.

  The man started to scream in pain, but Jamie put an abrupt stop to that with a pile-driver punch that broke more bones in the man’s face and knocked him out cold. When Jamie let go of him, the man flopped to the ground.

  The hombre who had hold of Savannah swept her up bodily, threw her over his shoulder like she was a sack of grain, and took off running through the cold mist.

  Jamie couldn’t risk a shot with Savannah in the man’s grasp, so all he could do was give chase. The man he was pursuing was tall, and his long legs covered the ground quickly. Jamie lost sight of him in the gloom, then spotted him again.

  He spotted something else, too: tall, bulky shapes that could only be picketed horses. He grimaced. Sundown and the other saddle mounts were back at the camp. If the kidnapper managed to get on one of those horses with Savannah, he could gallop away into the darkness before Jamie could return to the camp and grab a mount of his own.

  Jamie wasn’t built for running, and he wasn’t as young as he used to be, but he poured on as much speed as he could and saw that he was closing the gap. Savannah was still struggling, and that threw her captor off his stride.

  When Jamie judged that he was close enough, he left his feet in a diving tackle that caught the man around the knees. Savannah yelped as the man fell and she went sailing through the air. Jamie hoped she would be all right when she landed, but he didn’t have time to check on her. He had his hands full with the man he had just brought down.

  The kidnapper rolled over and launched a kick that caught Jamie on the left shoulder. It was powerful enough to make the big frontiersman’s arm go numb.

  Jamie grimaced but didn’t make a sound. When the man tried to kick him again, Jamie caught hold of the man’s foot with his right hand and heaved, rolling the man over onto his belly. Jamie scrambled after him, intending to pin the man down with a knee in the small of his back.

  His opponent twisted aside and shot a fist upward in a blow that landed on Jamie’s jaw, a powerful punch that threw Jamie to one side.

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p; It had been a good long while since he had faced anybody who was almost his equal in size and strength. In a way, he almost looked forward to continuing the battle, he thought as he slapped a hand against the muddy ground and pushed himself up.

  The two men came to their feet at practically the same instant, about ten feet apart. Jamie glanced around to see if he could locate Savannah, but it was still too dark. He saw a fuzzy, wavering glow coming through the rain from the direction of the wagon train, though. The shot that had been fired had roused the immigrants and somebody had lit a lantern. He hoped Savannah was already on her way back to them, seeking help.

  Then he no longer had time to worry about anything because the other man charged him, malletlike fists swinging dangerously at the end of long, powerful arms.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  They were like two bulls coming together. Jamie blocked the man’s first punch, but the second got through and crashed against his sternum, rocking him back a step. Jamie planted a foot on the ground and counterpunched, twisting at the hips as he threw a right that landed cleanly on the man’s jaw.

  For a long moment, they stood there toe-to-toe, slugging away at each other. Jamie was hammering away at his opponent, doing plenty of damage. His massive, heavily muscled form was able to absorb a great deal of punishment, but he knew he couldn’t keep it up forever.

  The man suddenly changed tactics, feinting and then lunging forward to catch Jamie in a bear hug.

  The collision knocked both men off their feet again. They rolled over and over on the wet ground, grappling and wrestling and trying to get the upper hand. The would-be kidnapper managed to slide his arm around Jamie’s neck from behind, and suddenly it clamped down across the big frontiersman’s throat like an iron bar, cutting off his air.

  Jamie drove an elbow back into the man’s belly, causing him to grunt in pain and expel a big gust of foul-smelling breath. That loosened the grip on Jamie’s neck just enough for him to twist halfway around and wedge his elbow under the man’s chin. He levered the man’s head back and broke free completely.