A Big Sky Christmas

by William W. Johnstone

  Jake said, “On these plains, ain’t no higher power than Mr. Colt and Mr. Winchester.”

  “We’ll save the theological debate for later,” Moses said. “Oh, my. They’re certainly savage-looking, aren’t they?”

  The Indians were close enough to confirm by the markings on their faces and the decorations on their buckskins that they were Cheyenne, just as Jamie had suspected. As Moses had pointed out, they looked fierce.

  Jamie remained utterly calm. That required an effort of will, but he kept his face just as stony as those of the warriors who brought their ponies to a halt about twenty feet away. Beyond them, about as far distant as the wagons were, a hundred more warriors waited on horseback.

  Jamie raised a hand in the universal signal of friendship and said in the Cheyenne tongue, “Greetings. We come seeking only a trail to travel peacefully to the north.”

  One of the older warriors in the group, a man Jamie suspected was the war chief for this band, responded. “This is our land. We have hunted it for many, many moons. It gives my people life. We would not have it taken away from us.”

  “Nor do we wish to take it,” Jamie said with the formality such parleys always demanded. “If we hunt the buffalo, it will be for fresh meat only, and we will kill no more than one.”

  “You already have the buffalo with sleek hides,” the Cheyenne said.

  Jamie knew he was talking about the oxen. “We do,” he acknowledged, “but we need them to pull the wagons. They are not for eating.”

  “If you kill a buffalo, you should replace it. Give us one of your animals for this buffalo of ours that you may kill.”

  Hendricks asked nervously, “What are the two of you saying? It sounds very serious.”

  “He wants us to give him an ox,” Jamie drawled in English. “I reckon we can spare one. Unless you’d rather fight over one animal.”

  “No, no. Not at all,” Hendricks said quickly. “If that’s all it takes for them to let us go on safely, then by all means, give them an ox!”

  Jamie conveyed that to the war chief, but before the Cheyenne leader could respond, one of the other warriors suddenly pushed his pony forward and spoke up angrily. “It is not enough! We must have one of their women in trade for their safety as well!”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Jamie instantly knew what the interruption was about. The warrior who had just made the outrageous demand was probably one of the war chief’s rivals. He didn’t want the encounter with the white interlopers to end peacefully. He wanted a fight, wanted the wagon train wiped out so that he could claim credit for the massacre and further his own cause among the tribe.

  The varmint had to know good and well that the immigrants would never turn over one of their women.

  “What did that one say just then?” Hendricks asked. “It didn’t sound good. What’s this about?”

  The chief turned to glare at the warrior who had butted in as Jamie said, “The other fella has upped the stakes. He wants an ox . . . and one of your womenfolks.”

  The men gasped in shock and anger, and Jake exclaimed, “Why, that dirty—” He grated out a curse and reached for the gun on his hip. He had just cleared leather when Jamie leaned over in the saddle and shot his hand out to clamp around Lucas’s wrist to keep him from raising the revolver and firing.

  It was too late. The damage had already been done. The warrior who had started this ruckus cried out and jerked a rifle to his shoulder, ready to fire.

  Jamie heard some rapid words he didn’t understand behind him, but ignored them. He was about to reach for his Colts, knowing that in another second the air would be full of gun smoke and flying lead and arrows.

  “Stop!”

  The voice was old and not exactly powerful, but the piercing timbre of it cut through the air of impending violence and made all the men on both sides freeze in their actions. Another of the Cheyenne pushed his horse forward. He was ancient, his coppery face so lined with wrinkles that he seemed a hundred years old. His braided hair was pure white. But despite his obvious age he sat tall and straight in the saddle, like a much younger man. He leveled a buckskin-clad arm, pointing as he asked, “Who is this mighty shaman?”

  Jamie didn’t have any idea who the Indian was talking about. Realizing that the man was pointing past him, he glanced over his shoulder and saw Moses sitting on horseback, looking terrified. The young man’s lips were moving as he muttered unfamiliar words under his breath.

  The war chief reached over and grabbed the barrel of the angry warrior’s rifle, forcing it down.

  Jamie said harshly to Jake, “Pouch that iron, mister!” They had been given an unexpected respite, and he didn’t intend to waste it. “Everybody else, keep your hands away from your guns!”

  The tension was still thick as the two groups of riders faced each other.

  Jamie went on. “Moses, the old man is talking about you. He says you’re a mighty shaman and wants to know who you are.”

  “A . . . a shaman?” Moses shook his head. “I don’t even know what that is.”

  “A medicine man, like I suspect that old fella is himself. Sort of like the spiritual leader of the tribe.”

  “Oh. I suppose you could say that, although Reverend Bradford certainly wouldn’t agree.”

  “What was that you were saying a minute ago, Moses?”

  “I was praying.” A glimmer of understanding dawned on the young man’s face. “I was praying in Hebrew . . .”

  Before Jamie could stop him, Moses walked his horse forward, putting himself between the two groups. Several of the warriors lifted lances, but a sharp word from the chief made them lower the weapons.

  The ancient Cheyenne moved his pony forward until he and Moses sat alongside each other with their mounts facing in opposite directions. Moses began speaking again in Hebrew.

  Jamie didn’t understand a word of the speech, of course. He didn’t see how the Cheyenne medicine man could understand it, but the old man listened attentively. When Moses was finished, the old man surprised Jamie by lifting a hand and launching into a long speech of his own.

  Jamie was fluent in the Cheyenne tongue, but what the medicine man was speaking was something else. It was similar to the Cheyenne language, enough so that Jamie thought he caught a word every now and then, but at the same time the words carried a sense of antiquity with them, as if the old-timer were speaking a long-forgotten tongue that had mostly vanished from the face of the earth.

  When he was done, he held out his hand. Moses clasped it, and they sat there like that for a long moment. Then the medicine man turned to the warriors and barked words in Cheyenne that Jamie understood.

  “What’s going on now?” Bodie asked in a hushed voice.

  “The old man is telling them to turn and ride away,” Jamie explained. “He says that we’re among the favored of the Great Spirit and that their medicine will become very bad if they harm us.”

  “We don’t have to give them the ox anymore?” Hendricks asked as the Indians began to turn their ponies and ride away, some with obvious reluctance. They weren’t willing to go against the old medicine man’s decree.

  “No, they won’t bother us again, thanks to Moses.”

  Bodie said to the young rabbi, “What in the world did you do, pard?”

  Moses shook his head. “I just called down blessings upon him and his people and told him that we were peaceful and would cause no trouble as we crossed the lands that traditionally belong to them.” He smiled faintly. “I said it in Hebrew, of course, and made it all sound a lot more flowery.”

  “And he understood you?” Jake asked, visibly astonished.

  “I don’t know. He seemed to. Or maybe he just understood the tone of what I was saying.”

  “How about all that palaver he gave back to you?” Jamie asked. “Did it mean anything to you?”

  Moses frowned. “He wasn’t speaking Cheyenne?”

  “Not the Cheyenne I know.”

  “That’s . . . odd.
I didn’t actually understand what he was saying, of course, but every now and then I . . . I sort of felt like I ought to understand. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Like if you went back far enough, the lingo he was talking had something in common with what you were saying to him?”

  “Exactly!” Moses exclaimed. “And that makes perfect sense.”

  Bodie said, “How in the world do you figure that?”

  “Have you ever heard of the Lost Tribes of Israel? In biblical times, the land of Canaan was ruled by twelve tribes. But when Canaan was split into two kingdoms—Israel and Judah—those tribes to the north that formed the Kingdom of Israel vanished from history and are now considered lost. According to legend, they were forced by enemies to leave their homeland and spread out across the world.” Moses smiled. “There are some who say that one of those tribes found its way to the North American continent and eventually became the Indians that we know today.”

  “Wait just a doggone minute,” Jake said. “You’re sayin’ that you . . . and those Cheyenne . . . are related somehow? Like distant cousins?”

  Moses spread his hands. “Well, it’s just a theory . . . but you have to admit, that old medicine man responded when he heard me praying in Hebrew. The fact that we’re all still alive and no blood was spilled . . . I’d say those prayers were answered, wouldn’t you?”

  Jamie nodded. “I’m not exactly sure how you managed it, Moses, and I don’t care.”

  All the Indians had vanished. The plains were empty around them again.

  “Let’s get those wagons lined out and rolling again,” Jamie continued. “We’ve dodged a bullet, and we’ve still got some daylight left. Let’s put some more miles behind us!”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Even though the encounter with the Indians hadn’t resulted in any fighting, the immigrants were more nervous as the wagon train continued on its way. It took a week for them to stop looking over their shoulders and expecting to see painted, war bonneted savages intent on scalping them.

  Of course, the more prudent among them continued being watchful as the wagons rolled northward, but that was a good thing. The more alert they were, the better, Jamie thought.

  They reached the Platte River and crossed the broad, shallow, muddy stream without incident. From there, the route diverged from the Oregon Trail, which headed west toward South Pass. The wagon train would keep going north for several more weeks.

  They spotted their first buffalo herd a few days later. Jamie had expected to run across the shaggy beasts much earlier. The great herds always moved south for the winter, but other than that one cold blast, the weather had been unseasonably warm.

  “Good Lord,” Bodie exclaimed as he and Jamie reined in atop a ridge and looked at the vast sea of brown in front of them. The herd stretched as far as the eye could see.

  Jamie grinned and rested his crossed hands on the saddle horn, shifting his weight forward to ease weary muscles. “You haven’t seen buffalo before?”

  “Well, yeah, of course I’ve seen them,” the young man replied. “But never that many in one place. There must be a million of them!”

  “I wouldn’t doubt it. Maybe more than that. I’ve seen herds go by all day, all night, and all the next day before they finally got out of the way.”

  “We’re going to have to stop and wait for this one to go past, aren’t we?”

  Jamie took a pair of field glasses from one of his saddlebags and studied the herd. “They’re moving southeast. They’ll miss us and ought to be out of our way by tomorrow.”

  With a worried tone in his voice, Bodie asked, “What if they were to turn and stampede toward the wagon train?”

  “It wouldn’t be good,” Jamie replied. “A buffalo stampede is just as much a force of nature as floods, fire, and cyclones. Every bit as destructive, too. You can’t stop it, so you just have to get out of its way if you can.”

  The big frontiersman turned in his saddle to look behind them. “The wagons are about a mile back. Go tell the cap’n to stop right where he is and don’t come any closer. Teams stay hitched to the wagons until those critters are clear of us, in case we have to light a shuck and make a run for it. I’ll stay here and keep an eye on the buffalo for now. We’ll have scouts watching them all the time, just in case something makes them turn toward the wagons. We’ll need as much warning as possible if that happens.”

  Bodie nodded, wheeled his horse, and galloped away.

  Jamie turned his attention back to the buffalo. He had hunted the creatures many times, sometimes with his Indian friends using lances and bows and arrows, sometimes with groups of white hunters armed with Sharps rifles.

  Even though the sight of a herd like this made it seem as if the buffalo were endless, Jamie knew that wasn’t the case. Many of them had been killed already for meat to feed the crews building the transcontinental railroad several years earlier.

  They continued to be slaughtered for their hides. Back in southern Kansas, Jamie had seen stacks of those hides piled so high that they looked like shaggy brown hills. It was wasteful and shameful, the unknowable number of carcasses skinned and left to rot, their bones littering the plains. The Indians, at least, used every bit of the buffalo, instead of just taking one part and throwing away the rest.

  It was such slaughter, he mused, that would spell defeat for the natives in the end. Without the animals they had depended upon to feed and clothe and shelter them for centuries, they would have no choice but to turn to their white conquerors and change their entire way of life.

  Jamie believed in manifest destiny, but at the same time he could share a moment of sympathy for those swept aside in the inexorable tide of progress.

  The enormous buffalo herd moved on without menacing the wagon train, and as Jamie had predicted, by the middle of the next day the route was clear again. But they had lost a day to the delay, and with December almost upon them, every day was becoming more and more crucial.

  A couple days later, they saw something unexpected: cattle. Not wild cattle, but what appeared to be well-grazed stock with wide, spreading horns.

  “Dadgum it!” Jake exclaimed when he saw them. “Those are Texas longhorns. I’ve seen ’em down in Kansas at the railheads. What are they doing up here?” He and Bodie and Jamie were scouting ahead of the wagon train.

  Jamie said, “Some of the ranchers from Texas are moving their herds up here and starting spreads. I’ve heard tell there are even some in Wyoming and Montana. I’m a little surprised we haven’t run across any before now.”

  “I guess it makes sense,” Bodie said. “There’s plenty of grassland up here. That’s about all there is, in fact.”

  “Since the farmers haven’t gotten this far west yet, it’s all open range. I expect that’ll change one of these days, but for now this is some of the best ranching country in the world . . . if you don’t count the Indians and the blizzards, of course. But you’ve got problems like that wherever you go, I reckon.”

  “Those are some fine-looking beef cows,” Jake mused as he studied the grazing animals.

  “Don’t get any ideas in your head,” Jamie said sharply. “If we slaughter any of those critters for meat, we’ll buy them from their owners first. There won’t be any rustling.”

  “Never said there would be,” Jake replied.

  Jamie had a hunch that was what had been in the young man’s mind, though. His instincts had told him all along that Jake Lucas wasn’t the same sort of upstanding young hombre as Bodie Cantrell, even though the two of them were friends.

  Where there were cows, there were cowboys, and later that afternoon Jamie spotted riders coming toward them. He reined in and motioned for his companions to follow suit. A few minutes later the horsemen rode up, their chaps and big hats telling him that they were from Texas as he had suspected.

  “Howdy,” one of the men called. “Mind if we ask what you fellas are doin’ riding on Slash M range?”

  “That’s where we are?” J
amie asked.

  “Have been for the past five miles,” the puncher replied. “This is Mr. Owen Murdock’s spread. I’m Jim Haseltine, his foreman.”

  “Jamie Ian MacCallister.” Jamie nodded. He leaned his head toward the other two and added, “Bodie Cantrell and Jake Lucas. We’re scouting for a wagon train that’s coming up about a mile behind us.”

  One of the other cowboys, a lean man with a dark, hawklike face, leaned to the side and spat. “Wagon train,” he repeated scornfully. “That means a bunch of damn sodbusters. You better not be intendin’ to stay on Slash M range, mister. You’ll get a hot lead welcome if you do.”

  Anger darkened Jake’s face.

  Jamie knew the young man was a hothead, so he snapped, “Take it easy. I’m handling the talking here.”

  He turned back to the cowboys. “I’m not going to argue the idea of open range with you. As a matter of fact, the people with those wagons are bound for Montana Territory, so they shouldn’t be any concern to you boys at all. We’ll just pass through and go on our way.”

  Jim Haseltine had a speculative look on his face. “Seems like I’ve heard of you, Mr. MacCallister. You wouldn’t be the one who tangled with the Miles Nelson gang, would you?”

  “That was me,” Jamie said heavily, recalling the bloody months he had spent avenging his wife’s murder.

  “Doss, don’t go makin’ threats against this man,” Haseltine said to the hawk-faced cowboy. “He chews up and spits out two-bit pistoleers like you.”

  Doss exclaimed, “By God, Haseltine, you can’t talk to me like that!”

  “I just did,” Haseltine said coldly. “You can draw down on me if you want. I know you’re faster than me. But I don’t reckon you’ll last long if you do.”

  “You’ve just been lookin’ for an excuse to run me off.”

  “I don’t need an excuse other than bein’ sick and tired of you. Go back to the ranch and draw your pay. You’re done on the Slash M.”

  For a moment Jamie thought Doss was going to slap leather, but the man jerked his horse around and galloped off.