A High Sierra Christmas

by William W. Johnstone

  Louis said dryly, “You’re just hoping for some excitement.”

  Smoke said, “Getting across the Sierra Nevadas in a stagecoach in the middle of winter will be enough excitement all by itself. Salty says for me to pick him up at the Rusty Hinge and we’ll go on out to Davis’s place.”

  “Are you going to?” Denny asked.

  “Reckon I’d better see what it’s all about,” Smoke replied with a shrug.

  He had finished his supper anyway, so he laid his napkin aside and stood up.

  “You two take your time,” he told his children. “If I don’t see you later tonight, be ready to leave early tomorrow morning. We can’t afford to lollygag around here in Sacramento any longer than we have to.”

  “We’ll be ready,” Denny promised.

  Smoke had left his hat and the Colt up in the room when he came down to supper, so he made a quick trip up there to retrieve them and his sheepskin jacket before he left the hotel.

  He hadn’t expected to need a saddle mount again tonight, so he had left the horse he’d rented at the livery stable. When he stopped there now, he found that the same horse was in its stall, so he paid the hostler to use the animal again.

  He rode to the Rusty Hinge. The streets in this part of town were hard-packed dirt, not cobblestone or brick, and enough snow remained on the ground to muffle the horse’s hoofbeats as Smoke approached the Rusty Hinge.

  His eyes narrowed as he saw a flash of movement up ahead. Someone had leaned out of the dark mouth of an alley beside the saloon, then pulled back quickly into the shadows.

  Several thoughts flashed through Smoke’s mind in rapid succession. Plenty of times in his life, enemies had tried to ambush him. The warning bells going off in his brain told him this might well be another of those bushwhack attempts.

  He was here tonight only because of that note from Salty he had received. Maybe the note was genuine, but more than likely it wasn’t. Smoke knew he could trust Salty, but it was possible the old-timer had been forced into being the bait in a trap. If that was the case, it meant Salty was probably in danger.

  The rented horse had drawn even with the alley mouth while Smoke was thinking these things. Earlier, when he had shrugged into the sheepskin jacket in the hotel room, he had tucked the Lightning into the waistband at the front of his jeans, where it would be easy to get to. His hand closed around the revolver’s butt.

  The alley was to his left. Smoke heard shoe leather scrape on the ground from that direction and flung himself out of the saddle to the right as he yanked the gun free.

  A shotgun boomed from the alley, along with the crash of a couple of revolvers. Garish orange muzzle flame bloomed in the darkness.

  The rented horse screamed and bolted ahead. Smoke hit the ground and put his left hand down to catch himself and power into a roll. He came up on one knee, facing the alley, with the Lightning thrust out in front of him.

  More Colt flame spurted from the shadows. Smoke felt the wind-rip of a slug passing close to his face. He triggered a return shot. Another muzzle flash. A bullet thudded into the ground just to his left. He fired again.

  Echoes of the gunfire filled the street, but Smoke’s keen ears heard a familiar clank and recognized it as the sound of a double-barreled shotgun being closed after reloading. He aimed toward that sound and blasted two more rounds into the alley.

  The shotgun clattered to the ground before the man wielding it could pull the triggers. Its twin barrels poked from the shadows. A man yelled a curse as he emerged from the alley, scooped the shotgun from the ground, and lunged toward Smoke.

  With only a split second to save himself from a deadly blast, Smoke put a bullet in the man’s head. In the bad light, it was a remarkable shot, but no more impressive than many other shots Smoke Jensen had made.

  The would-be killer’s head jerked back. He dropped the shotgun and spun off his feet.

  Smoke had one bullet remaining in the gun. He waited to see if he needed to use it.

  But the alley was dark and silent now as the gun thunder gradually faded away.

  Then a raspy voice called thickly, “Smoke! Smoke, you all right, boy?”

  That was Salty. The words came from farther back in the alley. Smoke straightened to his feet and took a step in that direction, the Colt still ready in his right fist.

  “Are they all down, Salty?” he asked.

  “Yeah, you plumb ventilated the whole bunch. But be careful! I ain’t sure all the skunks are dead. Lord have mercy, that was some shootin’, Smoke!”

  As he stepped into the alley past the body of the man he had shot in the head, Smoke used his left hand to take a match from the shirt pocket where he usually carried several of them. He struck it on the wall and held it up so the yellow glare filled the narrow passage.

  Three more bodies littered the dirty ground. None of them moved. Two were lying facedown. The other man was on his back. Smoke recognized him as Thad Stoermer, the one who had taken offense to losing at roulette and accused Eloise of cheating.

  That meant the other three were the remaining Stoermer brothers. Smoke held the Colt ready and used the toe of his boot to roll them onto their backs. The eyes of all three men glittered lifelessly in the light from the match.

  Satisfied that the ambushers were no longer a threat, Smoke went quickly to Salty, who sat with his back propped up against the wall of the building that housed the Rusty Hinge.

  The old-timer’s ankles were tied, and judging by the way his arms were pulled back in what had to be a painful position, his wrists were lashed together behind him.

  A rolled-up bandanna was around Salty’s neck, and a wadded-up piece of cloth lay on the old-timer’s chest. Smoke figured the Stoermer brothers had gagged Salty to prevent him from shouting a warning about the ambush, after taking him prisoner and tying him up.

  The match was about to burn down to Smoke’s fingers, so he dropped it and lit another one before he knelt beside Salty.

  The old man said in a miserable voice, “Lord, I’m sorry, Smoke! You don’t know how sorry I am. The damn sorry buzzards didn’t give me no choice!”

  By now the gunfire had drawn people from the saloon. Several of them clustered at the alley mouth. A man called, “What the hell’s going on here?”

  Another exclaimed, “It’s the Stoermer brothers! They’re all dead!”

  Smoke ignored them and said to Salty, “Are you hurt?”

  “Naw. They pushed me around a mite, but they didn’t do any real damage. They said they was gonna cut my throat, though, once they’d bushwhacked and killed you. No good sons o’ bitches couldn’t stand the thought that we’d whipped ’em. They . . . they grabbed me and said if I didn’t write that note to you, they’d kill Eloise. I couldn’t let that happen, Smoke!”

  “Of course you couldn’t,” Smoke said as he put the gun away and pulled a Barlow knife from his pocket. He opened it with his teeth and used the razor-sharp blade to cut the ropes around Salty’s ankles. Then the old-timer leaned forward and Smoke cut the bonds around his wrists as well.

  The glow from a lantern filled the alley. A uniformed policeman held up the light and came toward Smoke and Salty as Smoke helped the jehu to his feet. A couple more officers examined the bodies of the Stoermer brothers.

  “Ye gads, what a massacre,” the policeman with the lantern said. He put his other hand on the butt of his holstered revolver as he glared at Smoke. “Are you responsible for this, mister?”

  “Hold on there!” Salty said. “This here is Smoke Jensen, and those varmints tried to bushwhack him!”

  “This ain’t the Wild West anymore, old-timer,” the officer said. “We don’t have gunfights in the streets.”

  “And I don’t cotton to doing nothing while somebody tries to kill me,” Smoke said coolly. “Those men assaulted and kidnapped my friend here, threatened to murder a woman, and very nearly shot me. So I think whatever happened to them, they had it coming.”

  “Wait a minute. There are f
our of them and just one of you. Are you sayin’ you gunned down all of them while they were shooting at you?”

  “I told you,” Salty said, “he’s Smoke Jensen.”

  “Well, I never heard of . . . Wait a minute. There used to be some famous gunfighter named Jensen.”

  Salty crossed his arms over his chest, nodded emphatically, and said, “Durned tootin’. This is him.”

  The policeman sighed and said, “All right, Jesse James. Come along, both of you. There’s going to be lots of questions that need answering, so we might as well get started.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Eloise was among the curious crowd that had gathered in front of the Rusty Hinge. When she saw Salty come out of the alley, she threw her arms around him, hugged him, and cried, “Oh my God, Salty, are you all right?”

  “A whole heap better now,” Salty replied, beaming, “but if you was to hug me a mite tighter, it’d probably help some.”

  “What?” She drew back, frowned, then said, “Oh, you!” But she laughed and hugged him again, just like he asked.

  Smoke started walking along the street, causing the policeman with the lantern to say, “Hey, you! I told you, I’ve got questions to ask you.”

  “Then come along with me and ask ’em,” Smoke said. “I’m responsible for the horse I was riding, and I want to make sure it wasn’t hurt too badly.”

  The exasperated officer followed him, and Smoke was glad for the lantern light. It helped him locate the rented horse, which had stopped about a hundred yards along the road.

  The still-spooked animal tried to shy away, but Smoke was a top hand when it came to horses. He spoke softly in a calm, soothing voice and soon had hold of the horse’s headstall.

  “Bring that light closer,” Smoke told the officer. He pointed to a red streak on the horse’s rump that was visible in the lantern’s glow. “Either a bullet or a piece of buckshot grazed him when those boys threw down on me. You can see it’s a fresh injury. I reckon that proves my story about them shooting at me first.”

  “Maybe,” the policeman admitted grudgingly. “Or maybe they were just shootin’ back at you after you attacked them.”

  “You said yourself there were four of them and one of me. Do you believe I’d deliberately go after four armed men?”

  Of course, that was exactly the sort of thing Smoke would—and had—done many times in the past. But the policeman didn’t know that, so he shrugged and said, “It ain’t very likely, I guess.”

  With Smoke leading the horse, they returned to the saloon. The other officers were standing there keeping the morbidly curious bystanders away from the corpses. One of the uniformed men said, “We’ve already sent for the wagon, Sarge.”

  The man with the lantern grunted and said, “Good.” He jerked his head toward the door and told Smoke, “Let’s go inside out of the cold air.”

  Once in the saloon, Salty and Eloise joined them, and it didn’t take long to lay out the whole story for the police sergeant. When they were finished, the officer told Smoke, “It sounds like you’re not going to be in any trouble for this, since it’s a pretty clear case of self-defense, but you’ll have to stay in town for the coroner’s inquest.”

  “Sorry,” Smoke said. “Salty and I are leaving for Reno first thing in the morning.”

  “You can’t do that,” the sergeant insisted. “Not only is there the matter of the inquest, but I’ve heard that the pass through the mountains is closed. The train can’t get through.”

  Salty grinned and said, “We ain’t takin’ the train. We’re takin’ a stagecoach around the old McCulley Cutoff!”

  The officer stared at him as if Salty had lost his mind. Smoke said, “We’ll write out official statements and swear to them, Sergeant. Any more questions can be referred to my attorney in San Francisco, Claudius Turnbuckle.”

  The officer didn’t like that, but he agreed to pass the information along to his captain.

  “I may get in trouble for not taking you into custody,” he said, “but it’s pretty obvious you didn’t do anything except defend yourself from four would-be murderers. The coroner’s jury will likely see it the same way.”

  Salty said, “If anybody needs to talk to Smoke later, they won’t have no trouble findin’ him. He’s just the owner of one o’ the biggest ranches in Colorado, after all!”

  “Well, the law’s the same for him as it is for anybody else.” The sergeant paused. “But if I’m bein’ honest, I can’t say that I’ll get too worked up about somebody ridding these parts of those damn Stoermer brothers. They’ve been in trouble with the law plenty of times, and even though we were never able to pin any of it on them, it’s likely they were mixed up in plenty of strong-arm stuff. Robberies, a protection racket, and even a few killin’s. So you’ve done the neighborhood a favor, Jensen.”

  “I was just trying not to collect any bullet holes in my hide,” Smoke said.

  * * *

  There was nothing wrong with the stagecoach currently sitting in Fred Davis’s barn. The note that had been delivered to Smoke at the hotel was pure fiction, dictated to Salty by one of the Stoermer brothers while they held him at gunpoint.

  Even that, along with more roughing up than Salty would admit to, hadn’t been enough to get the old-timer to cooperate. He hadn’t given his captors what they wanted until they had threatened to kill Eloise.

  “I knew they’d do it, too,” Salty told Smoke later, after the police sergeant was gone. He looked toward the bar, where the blonde was talking to the bartender. “As for some o’ the other things they said they’d do to her first . . . well, I ain’t ever gonna talk about that, and I sure as shootin’ won’t tell her. But even so, I feel like I done let you down, Smoke.”

  “Don’t give that another thought,” Smoke said. “I would have done the same thing if I’d been in your place, if someone was threatening Sally.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But more’n likely, you would’ve found some way to turn the tables on those bastards and kill ’em all before it ever got that far.”

  That was exactly what Smoke would have tried to do, but there was no way of knowing how that would have worked out, so he didn’t see any point in dwelling on it.

  He said his good nights to Salty and Eloise, once she had returned to the table, then told Salty they would meet at Fred Davis’s place at eight o’clock the next morning.

  Smoke rode back toward the hotel, stopping a few blocks away at the livery stable to return the horse.

  “There was a little bit of trouble,” he told the hostler as he pointed out the minor wound on the horse’s rump. “You’ll want to daub something on that, but it ought to heal up just fine.”

  “I dunno, mister,” the hostler said as he scratched his head. “That’s extra trouble, and the owner’s liable to be upset, you bringin’ back a mount injured this way. . . .”

  Smoke handed the man a five-dollar gold piece.

  “You reckon that’ll soothe the owner’s feelings and cover your extra trouble?”

  The coin disappeared instantly into a pocket of the man’s overalls. Smoke knew the owner would never see any of the money. The hostler said, “Oh, yeah, I reckon that’ll make everything just fine.”

  It would be nice if every problem in life could be taken care of so easily, Smoke mused as he walked the remaining short distance to the hotel.

  When he walked into the lobby, he was surprised to see Louis sitting in one of the chairs with a folded newspaper in his lap. Louis stood up and moved to meet him.

  “What was wrong with the stagecoach?” Louis asked.

  “Nothing,” Smoke replied with a shake of his head. He hadn’t told Louis and Denny about the earlier brawl with the Stoermer brothers, and neither of them had seemed to notice his bruised knuckles. Explaining what had happened tonight would take too long right now, he decided. He could tell them about it later. “Just a misunderstanding. What are you doing still up? I figured you would have turned in by now.”

  �
��I thought you might like to see the late afternoon edition,” Louis said as he held out the newspaper.

  Smoke took the paper and scanned the headlines, his eyes stopping at one that read: LEGENDARY PISTOLEER TO UNDERTAKE EPIC STAGECOACH JOURNEY—NOTORIOUS GUNFIGHTER RISKING LIFE AND LIMB TO CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS WITH FAMILY—HISTORIC CROSSING OF THE SIERRA NEVADAS IN WINTER. Each succeeding section was in slightly smaller type. Below them in dense print was the story.

  Smoke Jensen, the hero of a thousand fights and fast-draw artist par excellence, who at various stages of his checkered career as a Westerner and frontiersman has been both outlaw and lawman and is now one of the leading cattle barons of Colorado, has come to Sacramento to embark upon an unheard of journey across the majestic mountains that form the veritable spine of the great Golden State. Mr. Jensen, accompanied by his grown children, Mr. Louis Arthur Jensen and Miss Denise Nicole Jensen, will attempt to travel from this fair city to the bustling settlement of Reno, Nevada, by the outdated conveyance known as a stagecoach.

  Such stagecoaches, now rendered all but obsolete by the glittering steel network of the railroads, once traversed trails far and wide across the West, but no one uses them in these more modern times. Mr. Jensen’s perilous attempt is motivated by the desire for he and his children to reunite with his wife in time for Christmas, with the rendezvous to take place in Reno, which is approximately halfway between here and Mr. Jensen’s sprawling ranch, known as the Sugarloaf, located near the town of Big Rock, Colorado.

  The wisdom of such an undertaking is open to great debate, given the current uncertain state of the weather and the arduous conditions under which the stagecoach will be forced to travel. Two nights previous to this, a great blizzard precipitated an avalanche in Donner Pass that inflicted great damage to the railroad tracks and blocked the pass. It will be several weeks before trains will be able to travel through the pass, at the very earliest.

  Mr. Jensen claims to know of another route and has accordingly arranged for the use of a stagecoach belonging to Mr. Frederick C. Davis, formerly a successful operator of several stage lines. Mr. Jensen has also engaged the services of an experienced driver for said stagecoach.