An Arizona Christmas

by William W. Johnstone

  As Smoke and Preacher strolled toward the café and George ran on ahead out of earshot, Preacher grunted. “Now that ain’t suspicious at all. Ballard’s got somethin’ in that trunk he don’t want nobody else knowin’ about nor gettin’ their hands on. I figure it’s got to be either a heap o’ money . . . or a carcass.”

  Smoke glanced over at him. “You mean a dead body? A human body?”

  “Well, think about it. Say he killed somebody back up the line, wherever he got on the train, and he don’t want the carcass to be discovered ’cause that’ll get him hung.” The old mountain man gestured animatedly. “So what he does, you see, is he wraps it up in somethin’ . . . shoot, maybe he even chops it up into pieces first . . . and then he packs it in that trunk and brings it with him. If nobody finds the body, the law can’t get after him for the killin’, now can it?”

  “Wouldn’t it have started to stink by now?”

  “Maybe not, if he salted it down real good ’fore he wrapped it up.”

  “So the newspaper editor is traveling with a trunk full of salted human carcass.”

  “I ain’t sayin’ he is or he ain’t,” Preacher declared. “I’m just sayin’ that’d be one reason why he wouldn’t want nobody a-messin’ with that trunk o’ his.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose anybody could argue with that. I don’t reckon we ought to be discussing it around the ladies, though.”

  “No, most likely not. Don’t reckon it’d bother Sally all that much. She’ll do to ride the river with, that gal, and I’ve seen her handle a gun and fight like a man. Them other two, though, they could be a mite persnickety about such things.”

  They went into the café and found George already sitting at a long table with Sally, Mrs. Bates, and Catherine Bradshaw.

  Mrs. Bates said, “I hope George was helpful and behaved himself, Mr. Jensen.”

  “He was a big help,” Smoke said, smiling as he took off his hat and set it on the table, which had bench seats running along it on both sides and no cloth covering it. Gila Bend was a good-sized settlement, but it wasn’t a fancy one. Life in southern Arizona was too rugged for many frills.

  Smoke and Preacher sat down. A pot of stew had been set on the table, along with some empty bowls. The women had already eaten, and George was tucking into a bowl of stew with the gusto of youth. Smoke filled a couple bowls, handed one to Preacher, and kept one for himself.

  “Where is Mr. Ballard?” Mrs. Bates asked. “Isn’t he joining us?”

  “He’s over at the station, waiting for the coach to come in,” Smoke explained. “He didn’t want us to miss it.”

  Preacher’s knee nudged his, and the old-timer chuckled. Smoke didn’t acknowledge it, but he knew Preacher was thinking about the gruesome conversation they’d had on the way to the café.

  “I wonder if I should take him a bowl of stew,” Mrs. Bates said. “He’s going to get awfully hungry if he doesn’t eat something before we leave. We don’t really know when we’ll have another meal, do we?”

  “Most of the stage stops keep a pot of beans on the stove,” Smoke said, “and there’s usually a mess of cornbread, too. It’s pretty simple fare, and how good the food is depends on who fixed it, but you won’t starve eating at way stations.”

  “Well, that’s good to know. I believe I’ll take Mr. Ballard some stew, anyway.”

  “Make sure you get some o’ that salted meat in it,” Preacher said.

  * * *

  The entire group had moved back to the station to wait. The stagecoach was a little behind schedule, just enough for Emile Collier to make a worried comment about it. Ballard was tense, Catherine was impatient, and Mrs. Bates fretted.

  George sat with Preacher on the porch steps.

  “You ever done any whittlin’?” the old mountain man asked the boy.

  “Sure,” George replied. “Everybody’s whittled.”

  “Well, ’most ever’body, I reckon. You’d be surprised, though. There’s prob’ly younkers back east who ain’t never had a whittlin’ knife in their hand.” Preacher reached into his war bag, which was on the step beside him, and drew out a bowie knife in a fringed sheath. As he slid the razor-sharp blade out of leather, he added, “Like this here.”

  George’s eyes grew wide at the sight of the bowie, which glittered in the sunlight. “Can I hold it?” he exclaimed.

  “Sure, I don’t see why—”

  “George!” Mrs. Bates said. “Don’t touch that... that weapon. Mr. Preacher, please put that away.”

  “It’s just a knife, Grandma,” George protested. “I’ve handled knives before.”

  “Not like that. That’s the sort of knife that might be used to . . . to . . .”

  Smoke and Sally were sitting in rocking chairs at the other end of the porch. Smoke knew Mrs. Bates was about to say Preacher’s bowie was the sort of knife that might be used to kill somebody. In Preacher’s case there was no might about it. That blade had drunk deeply of many an enemy’s blood.

  Smoke didn’t figure Mrs. Bates would appreciate her grandson hearing the details, though. “That knife’s too big for whittling, Preacher. You could chop down trees and make a raft with that thing.”

  “Come to think of it, I believe I did just that one time.” Preacher slipped the bowie back in its sheath, replaced it in the war bag, and went on to George. “I got a good whittlin’ knife stuck in there somewhere. I’ll dig it out and show you some tricks later on. Right now, though”—he nodded toward the eastern end of the street—“I reckon the stagecoach is comin’.”

  Smoke saw the clouds of dust rising outside the settlement and knew Preacher was right. It took a team of eight horses and the four wheels of a stagecoach to kick up those thick columns.

  Having heard Preacher, Emile Collier emerged from the building with a look of satisfaction on his face. “Finally! Of course, minor delays are to be expected now and then, so I’m sure this one is nothing to worry about.”

  A minute later, Smoke heard the thunder of hoofbeats, the rattle of wheels, and the creaking of the broad leather thoroughbraces that ran underneath the coach and supported it. He had ridden many stagecoaches before, so it was a familiar melody to his ears.

  As the vehicle approached, it almost appeared to be out of control, careening along the street like it was. But the burly driver worked magic with the reins and shouted to the team, and the coach came to a smooth, perfect stop right in front of the station.

  As the slight breeze carried the dust away, the jehu called, “Sorry we’re a mite late, Emile. Had to do some harness repair whilst we were stopped at Hendricks Station.”

  “That’s all right, Scratchy,” Collier said.

  The driver thumbed his hat back on thinning, salt-and-pepper hair that matched his close-cropped beard and looked at the people gathered on the porch. “Are all these folks passengers?” He nudged the bigger, younger man sitting beside him and added, “Looks like we’re gonna be full up, Mike.”

  “I reckon.” Mike had the butt of a coach gun propped against his right hip with the twin barrels sticking almost straight up.

  Smoke wondered if a shotgun guard rode the coach regularly. It seemed possible, since the route went through mining country and from time to time the stagecoach would be carrying payrolls or silver ore.

  Hostlers hurried from the barn to unhitch the team and replace it with a fresh bunch of horses. The driver and the guard climbed down from the box. Both men wore long dusters. The driver was middle-aged, while the guard was around twenty-five, Smoke thought, a big young man with a thatch of blond hair under his hat and a holstered Colt on his hip.

  The coach door swung open and a couple men climbed out. Judging by the friendly way they spoke to Collier, they were local businessmen. They got their bags from the boot at the back of the stage after Mike pulled aside its canvas cover, then they walked off to wherever they were bound.

  “These folks are going with you all the way to Tucson,” Collier said as he nodded toward Smoke a
nd the others.

  “It’s been a fair spell since we had this many passengers,” Scratchy said.

  “The railroad bridge over Boneyard Wash is down,” Collier explained. “They need to get where they’re going quicker than the railroad can repair the trestle.”

  Scratchy nodded. “That makes sense.” He faced the travelers. “Mike and me will get you there, folks. Put your bags back yonder in the boot and we’ll be ready to roll soon’s we get a fresh team hitched up.”

  Ballard said, “If someone could give me a hand with this trunk . . .”

  “I’ll do it.” Smoke bent down and grasped the handle at one end of the trunk before the shotgun guard, Mike, could step forward and volunteer.

  Ballard took the handle at the other end. The two men had no trouble lifting the trunk, although it was fairly heavy. Smoke couldn’t really tell from the feel of it what was inside, though.

  Deprived of the opportunity to help with the trunk, Mike turned to Catherine Bradshaw. “Let me get your bags, ma’am.”

  “Thank you,” she said rather stiffly and without looking at him.

  Mike didn’t seem offended by her coolness. He took her bags to the back of the coach and fitted them in with Ballard’s trunk, which would ride on the bottom since it was the largest and heaviest piece of baggage.

  Everything else was placed in the boot, after which Mike drew the canvas cover back over it and tied it down. He and Scratchy went into the station to grab a quick cup of coffee before they pushed on.

  Smoke turned to Collier. “Who’s the guard?” He liked to know who he was going to be traveling with.

  “Mike Olmsted,” the station manager said. “Comes from a ranching family that has a spread over west of here. Mike never really took to cowboying, though. He was a deputy marshal up at Wickenburg for a while, then started riding shotgun for the Saxon Line a couple years ago. Good solid young man. He can handle any trouble you might encounter.”

  Preacher grunted, and Smoke knew what the old mountain man was thinking. With the two of them along, Mike Olmsted would have plenty of help if they ran into any problems along the way.

  Smoke, Sally, and Preacher took the backward-facing seat in the front, with Sally in the middle between the two men. Tom Ballard was next to the left-hand window on the other seat, directly opposite Smoke. Mrs. Bates was next to him, with Catherine on the right. George perched on the bench between the two seats.

  “I could ride on top,” he suggested. “See better from up there.”

  “I don’t think so,” his grandmother said. “You’d get pitched right off and break your neck.”

  “Aw, Grandma—”

  “Don’t ‘Aw, Grandma’ me. I’m just looking out for your well-being.”

  George sulked up again. Smoke might have tried to kid him out of the bad mood, but by that time Scratchy and Mike had finished their coffee. They emerged from the station and climbed onto the box.

  Scratchy took up the reins. “Last call for anybody who don’t want to get their innards shook up!” When none of the people inside the coach responded, he chuckled, popped his whip above the heads of the team, slapped the reins against their backs, and sent the stagecoach rolling out of Gila Bend, bound for Ajo.

  CHAPTER 16

  Bored of the card game they’d been playing, Smiler Coe, Nelse Andersen, Phil Deere, and Sam Brant sat around a table in the back room of a Tucson saloon passing around a bottle of whiskey, smoking, and talking quietly about their success the night before.

  Brant had done most of the work, rigging the dynamite at the top so when it went off, the blasts would weaken some of the thick beams holding up the trestle. To make it look like the damage had been caused by a powerful flash flood that swept through the dry wash once or twice a year, Coe had instructed Brant to keep the blasts small, using as little dynamite as he could get away with.

  Once the beams were weakened, Coe’s men had tied ropes around them and used the horses to pull them loose. As the beams toppled, the weight of the trestle was too much for the remaining supports. The whole thing had come crashing down, and the wreckage was extensive enough that Coe believed no one would ever be able to tell some of it was man-made. It looked like a natural collapse due to damage done by the flood.

  Satisfied, Coe and the other gunmen had returned to Tucson.

  In the saloon, they were waiting until it was time to launch the next step in the plan.

  Coe glanced at the rolled-up piece of paper on the table not far from his elbow. Amy Perkins had given it to him earlier. It was a map of the circular route the Saxon Stage Line followed, with all the way stations between the settlements marked.

  The door to the back room opened and several of Avery Tuttle’s men stepped into the saloon. Avery Tuttle owned the saloon—although it wasn’t his name on the deed, but that of the man who ran the place—so it wasn’t unusual.

  The man in the forefront of the group was a dark-faced hombre known as Caddo. Nobody was sure if he had any Indian blood to justify the nickname, and he was proddy enough that no one much cared to ask him. He nodded to Coe. “All right, Smiler, we’re here. What’s the next job you’ve got for us?”

  Coe threw back the inch or so of whiskey left in his glass, then licked his lips. “Ah.” He set the glass aside, reached for the map, and unrolled it “All right, boys, gather around here.” He drew his left-hand gun and set it on one side of the map to keep it from rolling up again, then weighted down the opposite corners with his empty shot glass and another one.

  With a long forefinger, he started pointing out the way stations along the stagecoach’s route. “I want one of you boys at each of these stations. Your job is to wait for that stagecoach to show up and make sure Tom Ballard is on it. When you see he is, you hurry it back here and let me know. No way of telling exactly how far along that coach is, so we’re gonna have to cover as many stations as we can.”

  “What’s so important about Ballard?” Caddo asked. “He just puts out a stinkin’ newspaper.”

  Coe hadn’t told any of the others about the money Ballard was bringing back to Tucson with him. Not even his most trusted lieutenants, Andersen, Deere, and Brant. That secrecy was the best way of ensuring that most of the loot wound up with him. Tuttle didn’t really need the money; he just wanted to keep it out of the hands of those who opposed his iron-fisted rule. Coe didn’t mind spreading around a little of it, but the lion’s share was going to wind up in his pocket.

  Well, his and Amy’s, he supposed. Unless he decided to take the loot and head for Mexico. The border wasn’t far away, and while the señoritas down there might not be as pretty as Amy, they were every bit as willing and eager to please a man with plenty of dinero.

  “Don’t worry about why Ballard’s important,” Coe answered Caddo’s question. His sharp tone indicated that he wasn’t going to put up with any argument. “All you need to know is how to get back here in a hurry once you’ve spotted him.”

  “Fine,” Caddo said, scowling at the reprimand. It wasn’t enough to make him push Smiler Coe. None of that bunch was going to do that. As tough and fast as they were, Coe was tougher and faster. “You care which one of us heads for which station?”

  “Take your pick,” Coe said with a casual wave of his hand.

  The gun-wolves gathered around the table and quickly split up the assignments.

  That settled, Coe told them, “Pick up some supplies and head out right away.”

  Caddo frowned again. “It’s late enough in the afternoon that’ll mean ridin’ at night. Can’t it wait until morning?”

  “No, it can’t,” Coe snapped. “If that stage was to slip by us somehow and Ballard makes it back to Tucson, there’ll be hell to pay.”

  “All right, all right,” Caddo groused. “If it’s that important.” He jerked his head toward the door. “Come on, boys.”

  When the others had all filed out and the door was closed again, the pale-faced Nelse Andersen said to Coe, “You’re gonna have to
kill that Injun-looking son of a bitch someday, Smiler.”

  “Yeah, I know.” The customary vicious smile creased Coe’s lean face. “And I’m looking forward to it.”

  * * *

  It didn’t take long for Preacher to start complaining about the stagecoach. “I swear, I don’t know how come I let you talk me into this, Smoke,” the old mountain man said as he swayed a little back and forth. “This here seat is so hard, and the coach bounces so much, I reckon by the time we get to Tucson, what few teeth I got left will all be shook right outta my mouth!”

  “You still have all your teeth, don’t you?” Smoke said.

  “Well, that don’t mean I can afford to lose any of ’em for no good reason. If I didn’t want to get there and see ol’ Lije Connolly, and if it wasn’t Christmas and Matt and Luke might be there, you’d never catch me ridin’ in one o’ these bone-jarrin’ contraptions!”

  From the seat facing them, Mrs. Bates asked, “Do you have a friend living in Tucson, Mr. Preacher?”

  The old mountain man winced. “Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am, but it’d be plumb fine if you’d just call me Preacher.”

  “But that seems disrespectful.”

  “No such thing. I been called just plain ol’ Preacher for so many years I’ve pert near forgot what my handle used to be ’fore that.”

  “You don’t look like any preacher I ever saw,” George said.

  “George, don’t be rude,” his grandmother admonished him.

  “The youngun’s right. Nobody’d ever take me for a real sky pilot. And I never claimed to be.”

  “Then how come they call you Preacher?” George asked.

  “Well, you see, a long time ago, a little more ’n seventy years ago, in fact, I went west to see me some mountains and do a mite o’ fur trappin’. That weren’t long after me and ol’ Andy Jackson got in a scrape with a heap o’ them British redcoats down yonder in New Orleans.”

  Ballard said, “You were at the Battle of New Orleans?”

  “Yep, I sure was. Quite a tussle, too. But we whipped them bloody British and sent ’em runnin’ off through the briars and the brambles just as fast as they could go.