A Texas Hill Country Christmas

by William W. Johnstone

  “Jonas is in here. He’s dead.”

  Plumlee’s eyes widened and he started to take a step forward as he exclaimed, “Dead!”

  Smoke stopped him with an upraised left hand. He didn’t want Plumlee rushing into an ambush if the killer was still in here.

  “We need to search the barn to make sure nobody else is here,” he said.

  “You mean somebody murdered Jonas,” Plumlee said. “It wasn’t an accident.”

  “No,” Smoke said. “It was no accident. You take that side of the barn and I’ll take this side. If you see anything suspicious, blast it.”

  Plumlee nodded. Like Smoke, he knew that all the other travelers were inside the station, as were the members of the Olmsted family. That meant the killer had come from somewhere outside.

  The search took only a few minutes. Satisfied that he and Plumlee were the only human beings alive in the barn, Smoke holstered his gun and said, “He’s back here, but I don’t know if you want to see him, Ike.”

  “I gotta know what happened,” Plumlee said. A bleak expression settled over his rugged face as he joined Smoke in front of the stall and looked up at McClaren’s hanging body as Smoke lit another lucifer.

  Plumlee started breathing hard. In the light from the match, his face turned dark with rage. A little shudder went through him as his hands tightened on the shotgun he held.

  “Whoever did this,” he said, “I’m gonna kill ’em. I’m gonna make ’em die hard and painful.”

  “Let’s cut him down,” Smoke said. “We’ll cover him up and then get back to the station.”

  “You mean to just leave him out here by himself all night?” Plumlee snapped.

  “Nothing can hurt him anymore, Ike,” Smoke said gently. “And since whoever did this isn’t in here anymore, that means they’re out there somewhere.”

  He inclined his head toward the doors as he spoke. For a couple of seconds, Plumlee still looked stubborn and angry, but then he sighed and nodded.

  “You’re right. The rest of those folks may be in danger. We need to warn ’em.” He hesitated. “Unless the varmint who killed Jonas was a robber and is long gone.”

  “That doesn’t seem likely to me,” Smoke said. “A thief might have killed him . . . but he wouldn’t have taken the time and trouble to do . . . what he did.”

  “You’re right. Whoever did this was like a hydrophobia skunk, killin’ for the pure savagery of it.”

  That was the way it looked to Smoke, too.

  And he had a strong hunch that Jonas McClaren’s death wouldn’t be enough to satisfy the killer’s blood lust.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  They cut the rope and lowered McClaren’s body to the ground as carefully as possible. Smoke knew they wouldn’t be able to keep from getting the dead man’s blood all over them, but that couldn’t be helped. They placed him on a blanket they found in the tack room and wrapped it around him, tucking the blanket in securely to protect the corpse from rats.

  That wasn’t much, but it was all they could do for Jonas McClaren right now.

  “Lord, I hate to leave him like this,” Ike Plumlee muttered as they left the barn.

  “I know, but it’ll be better for him to stay out here where it’s cool,” Smoke said. “If we took him inside, it might not be pleasant by morning.”

  “I know that,” Plumlee said with a sigh.

  Both men were alert as they walked quickly toward the station building. Smoke had his Colt in his hand underneath the half-open slicker.

  No one bothered them. The night seemed dark and empty except for the continuing drizzle.

  Smoke knew that wasn’t the case, though. His instincts told him the killer wasn’t far away.

  While Plumlee had been getting the blanket to wrap McClaren’s body, Smoke had taken a look around the barn. The hard-packed dirt floor didn’t take prints well, and besides, a lot of people had been in and out of there today. It was impossible to make any sense out of the few tracks he found.

  Something struck him as odd about a few smudges he noted as he hunkered on his heels next to them, however. They might be footprints, he thought, but they hadn’t been left by someone wearing boots.

  The only explanation that suggested itself to him was that if the marks really were the killer’s tracks, then the man must have been wearing moccasins.

  Most of the time that meant an Indian.

  When Smoke had first come west, in the days immediately following the Civil War, battles between the whites and the Indians had been breaking out all across the frontier. He had traded shots with painted and buck-skinned warriors on many occasions. In fact, it had been after a battle with a Pawnee war party that the old mountain man called Preacher had dubbed young Kirby Jensen “Smoke,” because of the deadly speed with a gun he had demonstrated during that clash.

  But in recent years, conflicts with the Indians had tapered off. The massacre of Custer and the Seventh Cavalry at Little Big Horn had seemed like a huge victory for the Plains Indians, but in reality it had been the highwater mark of their resistance to what they considered an invasion. Ever since, they had suffered defeat after defeat, and many of them had fled north into Canada or surrendered and gone to the reservations.

  Likewise here in Texas, the fierce Comanche had been bested by the cavalry under Colonel Ranald Mackenzie at the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon. The Comanche hadn’t lost that many warriors, but their horse herds had been destroyed. Without their mounts, their fighting ability was diminished to the point that they couldn’t continue their war against the whites. Like their cousins to the north, most of them had either retreated or accepted life on the reservations.

  Smoke had heard all about that, but he knew not all the warriors were ready to give up. Some of them, now regarded as renegades, were still out there, clinging to their hatred of the white-eyes and determined to fight to their last breath.

  Smoke had to wonder if one of those renegades had visited the barn at Cougar Creek Station tonight.

  Most of the blood was on the slickers the two men wore, but they had gotten quite a bit of it on their hands, too, and as they came into the station, Sally spotted the crimson stains, stood up sharply, and said, “Smoke, what’s wrong? What happened out there?”

  “Is that blood?” one of the Olmsted boys asked in a shocked tone.

  “It’s not ours,” Smoke said.

  Quickly, everyone in the room gathered around Smoke and Plumlee. Smoke looked at them and said solemnly, “We found Jonas McClaren’s body in the barn. Someone killed him.”

  Mrs. Olmsted gasped and put her hand to her mouth. As employees of the stagecoach line, all the Olmsteds knew the drivers on this route well, including McClaren.

  Mildred Purcell turned pale. Her husband said, “You mean the man was murdered?”

  “That’s right,” Smoke said.

  Olmsted said, “But . . . but who could’ve done something like that? Jonas McClaren didn’t have an enemy in the world, not that I know of, anyway. And everybody in these parts tonight was inside the station!”

  “Not everybody,” Smoke said. “Somebody had to be out there in the barn with him.”

  Out of respect for the ladies’ sensibilities, he wasn’t going to go into the grisly details of McClaren’s death. It was enough for them to know that someone had killed the driver.

  He pondered whether he should say anything about the tracks he had found. Some folks would panic at the mere mention of the word “Indian.” Decades of raiding and killing by the Comanches had left people on the Texas frontier with an instinctive fear of their war parties.

  “We need to see if we can find whoever done this,” Olmsted blustered.

  “We can’t track anyone with it raining like this,” Smoke pointed out. “Not to mention the fact that with a killer on the loose, if we start blundering around out there in the dark, we’re practically inviting him to strike again.”

  “Are you sayin’ we should just do nothin’?”

&
nbsp; “I’m saying we need to have some common sense,” Smoke said as he reined in the annoyance he felt at the station manager’s attitude. Olmsted probably knew better than to act rashly; he was just too upset about McClaren’s murder to be thinking straight right now.

  Smoke went on, “Come morning, we’ll take a look around and see if we can find anything. In the meantime, we’ll stay in here where folks will be safe. We can bar the door and take turns standing guard. I don’t think the killer will try to get in here, but if he does, we’ll be ready.”

  “I reckon what you say makes sense, Mr. Jensen,” Olmsted admitted grudgingly.

  The preparations went quickly. The door was barred, and shutters were fastened over all the windows. Olmsted broke out several rifles and ammunition for them and made sure he and his sons were armed.

  Sally came over to Smoke, laid a hand on his arm, and smiled as she said, “You hate being the voice of reason, don’t you? You’d rather be out there tracking down that killer and avenging poor Mr. McClaren’s death.”

  Smoke shrugged. His wife knew him better than anyone else on this earth.

  “Figured it was more important to make sure you and all the rest of these folks are safe,” he said quietly. “Besides, I meant what I said about nobody being able to track in this weather. I don’t reckon even Preacher could manage it.”

  “So we wait for morning.”

  “Don’t see what else we can do,” Smoke said.

  Sally nodded and said, “I have a feeling it’s going to be a long night, and nobody’s going to get much sleep.”

  Sally’s prediction proved to be true. The air of tension that gripped nearly everyone in the station prevented most of its occupants from doing more than dozing fitfully. Smoke, who probably had faced more dangerous situations in his life than all the rest of them put together, was cool-nerved, but he took a shift on guard duty and the rest of the time slept only lightly, in case of trouble.

  Morning couldn’t have come too soon to suit any of the people in the stagecoach station.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t bring much relief. The rain was falling hard again. When Smoke opened one of the shutters and looked out, he saw that there was so much standing water around, it looked like a lake between the station and the barn. Any tracks McClaren’s killer had left behind were long since washed away.

  Ike Plumlee would probably insist on searching anyway, Smoke thought. He couldn’t blame the man for wanting to settle the score for his friend and partner.

  The mood at breakfast was subdued, but even under the circumstances, the meal Mrs. Olmsted and her daughter Betty prepared was very good. The hot food and coffee seemed to raise people’s spirits a bit.

  After everyone had eaten, Olmsted said, “Somebody’s gonna have to go out there to the barn and take care of the animals.”

  “No one goes anywhere alone,” Smoke said. His experience and personality made it logical that he would take charge as long as the station was under siege—if indeed it was. They had no way of knowing if the killer was still within miles of there.

  Olmsted nodded and said, “That’s what I was thinkin’. The boys and I will go tend to the chores. We’ll all be armed, and two of us will stand guard while the other two take care of what needs to be done.”

  Smoke said, “All right. While you’re doing that, Ike and I will take a look around.”

  Everyone put on slickers and picked up rifles. Smoke’s Winchester was in the boot on the stagecoach, but Olmsted had one to spare. Plumlee carried his shotgun and was armed with a revolver, too.

  They went out into the rain, everyone staying together at first as they headed toward the barn. Smoke and Plumlee veered off from the Olmsteds to circle around the big building and the corral. Their boots splashed in the puddles, which were a couple of inches deep most places. The sky overhead was a leaden gray without a trace of the sun. Gloom was thick in the air.

  Plumlee said, “How in the world are we gonna bury poor Jonas in this muck? Even if it stops rainin’, we go to dig a hole in the ground and it’ll just fill up with water. Probably be that way for weeks. But he’s got to be laid to rest. Anything else just ain’t fittin’!”

  “I know,” Smoke said. “Olmsted’s got some boards in the barn. We’ll hammer together a coffin, put McClaren in it, and take him on to Mason as soon as the creek goes down enough to get across. The undertaker there will be able to deal with the problem.”

  “That could take days!”

  Smoke grimaced at the unpleasant thought, but he didn’t see any other solution.

  He and Plumlee walked completely around the barn and then behind the station without seeing anything out of the ordinary. They paused and stood there looking out over the gray, misty, rain-shrouded hills, and Plumlee let out a frustrated curse.

  “Whoever butchered Jonas like that is gonna get away with it,” he said. “There ain’t no way we can find—”

  That was when a woman screamed, followed by the boom of a gunshot in the stone building behind them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Instantly, Smoke whirled and sprinted toward the front of the building. He knew the back door had been barred earlier, and he didn’t want to waste time trying to open it when he probably couldn’t get in that way.

  Water flew up around his boots. He heard the splashes as Ike Plumlee lumbered along behind him. As Smoke rounded the corner of the station, he saw that the men in the barn must have heard the shot, too. Olmsted and his sons were running toward the station, but Smoke leaped onto the porch and reached the front door well ahead of them.

  He grabbed the latch with his left hand and threw the door open. Instead of charging into the station, he twisted aside and pressed his back against the wall next to the door, with the Colt held up ready for use.

  No bullets came through the opening. In fact, it was quiet inside the building now . . . quiet enough, at least, that Smoke couldn’t hear anything over the steady sound of the rain.

  Then a guttural voice called, “Come in, white man.”

  The mocking invitation was followed by what sounded like a gasp of pain from a woman. Knowing that Sally was in there and might be suffering at the hands of the man who had butchered Jonas McClaren made anger blaze up inside Smoke.

  He fought down the urge to charge into the station. He might run right into a bullet if he did that, and his death would endanger Sally even more because there wouldn’t be anything else he could do to help her.

  Instead he said, “Send the women out, and I’ll come in and talk to you, whoever you are.”

  At the same time, he motioned for Plumlee and the Olmsteds to stay back out of the line of fire from the doorway.

  The mocking voice came again, saying, “The women stay where they are, white man. Do as I say, or they will never leave.”

  The fact that the intruder kept calling Smoke “white man” confirmed his earlier hunch that an Indian might have murdered Jonas McClaren. The man spoke English well, but that didn’t mean anything. All the reservations had schools, and these days plenty of Indians spoke “the white man’s tongue,” especially the younger ones.

  Fear for Sally’s safety was strong inside Smoke. He wanted to call out to her, but he didn’t want to risk what the intruder might do if she replied.

  He wondered as well how the man had gotten into the station, but there was no point in pondering that now. They could figure it out later, after the threat was dealt with.

  “All right,” he said. “I’m coming in.” He had to see what the situation was like in there in order to know what his next move needed to be.

  “Leave your gun outside,” the man ordered.

  “So you can shoot me as soon as I step in the door?”

  “I will not shoot you.” The man paused. “I like to kill white-eyes with a blade.”

  Having seen what was done to McClaren, Smoke could believe that.

  He didn’t have any choice in the matter. He turned and extended his right arm into the
doorway so that whoever was inside could see the gun in his hand. He bent down and placed the Colt on the porch, still in plain view. He set the borrowed Winchester beside it.

  “Those are all the guns I have,” he said.

  “How do I know you speak the truth?”

  “The same way I know you won’t shoot me as soon as you lay eyes on me.”

  That brought an actual grim chuckle from the intruder.

  “Very well. Come in. But if you try any tricks, the woman I hold will die a very painful death.”

  Smoke drew a deep breath and then stepped into the doorway, unsure what he was going to see. Relief flooded through him as he spotted Sally standing near the fireplace, unharmed. Mrs. Olmsted and her daughter were on the other side of the room.

  A buckskin-clad Indian stood beside the table in the center of the room with his left arm around Mildred Purcell’s neck as his right hand pressed the keen edge of a Bowie knife to her throat. Her husband was off to the side, white as a ghost and obviously too terrified to move.

  Arley Hicks lay on the puncheon floor, blood staining his midsection. He was either unconscious or dead; Smoke couldn’t tell which. Arley’s revolver lay near his outstretched hand. Smoke figured Arley had taken a shot at the Indian when the man burst in, but it appeared that he’d missed. The intruder didn’t seem to be wounded.

  Smoke had never seen the man before. He was pretty sure he would have remembered if he had. The intruder had an odd mark on his cheek, a dark, half-moon-shaped disfiguration of some sort.

  Mildred Purcell looked like she might faint at any moment. Smoke didn’t want that to happen. If she started to collapse, the Indian might go ahead and cut her throat. Smoke put a reassuring smile on his face and said, “It’s going to be all right, Mrs. Purcell.”

  “Do not lie to the white woman,” the Indian said. “She will die. All of you will die. The only question is how slowly and painfully.”

  “Mister, you’ve got a mighty high opinion of yourself. There are five more armed men outside. You’re not going anywhere. The only chance you have of getting out of here alive is if you let the woman go, put that knife down, and surrender.”