A WILD WEST CHRISTMAS
TWO STORIES BY
LIVIA J. WASHBURN
A Wild West Christmas by Livia J. Washburn
Smashwords Edition
Copyright© 2015 Livia J. Washburn
“Blue Norther” originally published 2012 Christmas Campfire Companion
“A Creature was Stirring” originally published 2012 Six-Guns and Slay Bells
Cover Design Livia Reasoner
Sundown Press
www.sundownpress.com
All rights reserved.
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BLUE NORTHER
A Lucas Hallam Christmas
Folks had started to say there was nothing between the Panhandle and the North Pole but a barbed wire fence, and as Lucas Hallam rode north into the wind, he could sure believe it. He hunkered down inside the sheepskin coat and lowered his head so the brim of his hat shielded his face a little better, but it still felt like somebody was carving at his cheeks with a frozen knife.
The day had started out pleasantly, even warm for this time of year. But about noon, Hallam had seen the dark blue line on the horizon and known what was coming. He would have found a place to wait out the storm, but here in the empty vastness of West Texas, there just wasn’t any such place. Turning and running in front of the blue norther wouldn’t do any good, either. The closest town to the south was the one he had left that morning, and the bad weather would overtake him before he could reach it.
So his only chance was to keep heading north and hope he came across an isolated ranch house or tiny crossroads settlement where he could find shelter for the night.
During the afternoon, the north wind swept down across the Texas plains. Hallam felt it first as a vagrant puff of cooler air against his face. “Here it comes, old hoss,” he said to his mount. Sure enough, less than ten minutes later the icy gusts arrived in full force, pounding against him like fists. The horse tried to turn away, but Hallam’s firm grip on the reins kept him moving forward.
The horse was a big, strong, rangy buckskin. It took a horse like that to carry a man as big as Lucas Hallam, who topped six feet by several inches and packed well over two hundred pounds on his powerful frame. A few years earlier, when he was just a kid, he had been tall but skinny.
Then his father had been gunned down, and Hallam had strapped on a Colt and set out to find the men responsible for the killing. The years since then had strengthened him, hardened him, taught him how to survive in a dangerous land filled with even more dangerous men. By the time his quest was finished, he had a reputation as a gunman himself. Most of the things he got blamed for, he hadn’t done, but that didn’t stop people from thinking the worst of him.
Like this very morning, when the marshal of the settlement where he’d spent the night showed up at dawn, poked the twin barrels of a shotgun in Hallam’s face, and ordered him to get out of town. Hallam had come close to shooting the fool before he realized what was going on, but he’d managed to control the impulse. He had never shot a lawman yet, and didn’t intend to. His father had been a Texas Ranger before retiring to start a ranch and raise a family.
The wind grew stronger and colder until it was a constant howl. Later, probably tonight, it would bring snow or sleet with it, and by morning the prairie would be covered with ice. That wouldn’t really matter to him, Hallam thought, as his teeth chattered together. By morning, he and his mount would either be inside somewhere warm and dry...or they’d be dead, frozen stiff.
The sky was still filled with weak, gray light. Hallam spotted something ahead of him and stiffened in the saddle. Not shelter. People. Men on horseback, clustered around what was probably the only tree in these parts, a bare, twisted cottonwood about a hundred yards ahead of him. He hadn’t noticed it until now because he had his head lowered against the wind. Hallam wondered what in blazes the men were doing.
He got his answer a moment later when they shifted their horses, forming a circle around one rider who remained where he was, directly underneath one of the cottonwood’s branches.
Hallam was looking at a hanging about to happen.
Two thoughts occurred to him. Somebody had to want that poor hombre dead awful bad to go to the trouble of hanging him in weather like this. The other thought was that where there were people, there had to be a house…a house where he could get in out of the cold.
Hallam kept riding. With the wind out of the north, the men didn’t hear him coming until he was practically on top of them. Several of them twisted around sharply in their saddles and raised the rifles they held.
Hallam held up a hand. “Hold it!” he called over the wind. “I’m not lookin’ for trouble, just a place to get in out of the storm!”
“Who’re you?” one of the men demanded. He was short and stocky, with a white beard and long, tangled white hair under the hat crammed down on his head.
“Call me Lucas,” Hallam replied. “I don’t mean to interrupt.” He nodded toward the man with the hangrope around his neck. “You just go on with what you’re–”
He stopped short as he realized the fella they were about to hang wasn’t a man at all, but rather a boy, no more than fifteen or sixteen years old.
The bearded man must have noticed Hallam’s reaction to the realization. “You got a problem with this?” he asked harshly.
“What did the boy do?”
“I don’t see as how that’s any of your business, mister.”
Hallam glanced around at the other men. They were a hard-bitten bunch, no doubt about it, but they looked like cowpunchers, not outlaws or killers. From the way they watched the white-bearded man, waiting to see what he would do, Hallam figured he was the boss, likely the owner of the brand they rode for.
“You’re right,” Hallam said. “It’s none of my business. I’m just curious, that’s all. Seems to me like a fella that young would have a hard time gettin’ into enough trouble to deserve bein’ strung up.”
The bearded man snorted. “That just shows what you know. He’s a rustler. He stole one of my cows, and he’s gonna hang for it!”
“One cow?”
“One’s rustlin’, same as a hundred.”
Legally, maybe that was true, Hallam thought. He looked at the youngster, who wasn’t wearing a coat or hat and was trembling violently from fear or the cold, or both.
“Anyway, his family’s rustled plenty,” White-beard went on. “This’ll be a lesson to ’em, findin’ the boy like this on Christmas Eve.”
Hallam frowned. “Christmas Eve?”
“Yeah. Don’t you even know what day it is, saddle tramp?”
Truth to tell, Hallam hadn’t known until just now that it was December 24th. He’d been aware that it was late in the year, but he didn’t pay much attention to the calendar these days. To a drifter like him, the date didn’t really mean much.
“You can’t hang a man on Christmas Eve,” he heard himself saying. “You sure can’t hang a boy then.”
White-beard sneered at him. “There’s one of you and half-a-dozen of us. You really think you can stop us?”
Hallam didn’t answer the question directly. Instead he said, “The name that goes with Lucas is Hallam.”
He could tell by the way several of the cowboys stiffened in their saddles that they had
heard of him. One of them spoke up, saying, “He’s a gunfighter, Mr. Bradford.”
“I don’t care!” Bradford said. “He couldn’t kill all six of us if he was John Wesley Hardin his own self!”
“You’re right,” Hallam acknowledged with a tight smile. “But I can kill you, Bradford, and at least two of your men before the rest of them put me down. You ready to die over one cow? Are they?”
Bradford looked around at the others. “His blasted coat’s buttoned up!” he said in exasperation. “He can’t get his gun out in time to kill any of us!”
“No offense, boss,” one of the men said, “but I reckon I’d rather not find out.”
Bradford glared at Hallam for a moment longer, then muttered a disgusted curse and waved a gloved hand at the boy. “All right, cut him down! But I’m warnin’ you, both of you, I see either of you on my range after today, my men and I will be shootin’ on sight!”
Hallam didn’t have to cut the rope. The boy’s hands were free. He was already tugging at the noose, loosening it and then slipping his neck out of it. Hallam rode up next to him and asked, “Is that your horse?”
“Y-yeah,” the boy answered through chattering teeth.
“Then you can head for home on one condition... Take me with you. I need a place to get out of this storm.”
The boy nodded and turned his horse. He heeled it into a trot, heading west. Hallam fell in alongside him on the buckskin. The skin on the back of Hallam’s neck crawled a little as they rode away from Bradford and the rancher’s men. He didn’t think any of them looked like the sort to shoot somebody in the back, but it was hard to be sure about something like that.
Nothing happened except that Hallam and the boy put more distance between themselves and the would-be lynchers.
“What’s your name?” Hallam asked.
“Ted. Ted Whitley.”
“You steal that cow, Ted?”
The boy shook his head. “I s-swear I didn’t, Mr. Hallam.”
“Where’s your coat?”
“D-didn’t bring one with me. I didn’t realize it was quite this cold.”
“What in blazes were you doin’ out in a blue norther like this?”
“I had to deliver something to...to somebody. A p-present.”
“A Christmas present?”
“Y-yeah.”
“Must’ve been mighty important,” Hallam said. He looked back, didn’t see any signs of pursuit. He reined in and motioned for Ted Whitley to do likewise. It took only a moment to get one of the blankets from his bedroll and hand it to the youngster. “Wrap that around yourself. It’ll be better than nothin’.”
“I’m m-much obliged, Mr. H-Hallam,” Ted said as he bundled up in the blanket as best he could. His shivering and teeth-chattering eased a little as the blanket cut the cold wind.
“How far to your folks’ place?”
“Not far. A mile, maybe.”
Hallam nodded. “Let’s go. You reckon they’ll see their way clear to lettin’ me spend the night?”
“When they hear how you saved me from a hangin’, I sure hope so.”
Hallam did, too. If the Whitleys turned him away, he didn’t know where he would go.
“Reckon Bradford must be the big skookum he-wolf around here, the way he was actin’.”
Ted nodded. “He owns the biggest spread in these parts.”
Hallam made a guess. “He got a daughter?”
“Yeah.” Ted sounded surprised. “How’d you know?”
“Figured it’d take a girl to get a fella out in weather like this just to deliver a Christmas present,” Hallam said with a smile.
Ted’s face turned even redder than the wind had already made it. “Her name’s Julie,” he said.
“You get that present to her?”
“I did.” Ted touched his chest. “She had one for me, too.” Hallam thought the boy was talking about his heart, until he went on, “A book. I got it under my shirt. She knows I like to read, but my pa, well, he don’t much hold with it.”
A moment later, Hallam heard something, but it took him a few seconds to make out what it was over the howling of the wind.
Cattle moving. A lot of them, from the sound of it.
Ted heard it, too. “Oh, no,” he muttered.
Hallam looked over at him. “You know what’s goin’ on here, son?”
Ted sounded miserable as he replied, “My pa and my brothers...” He couldn’t go on.
“They’re rustlin’ cattle from Bradford, aren’t they?”
“Pa promised he’d quit. We can make a go of our place without stealin’. I sure didn’t know they were goin’ after any today. I swear I didn’t, Mr. Hallam. Not on Christmas Eve!”
The small jag of cattle–about fifty head, Hallam estimated–emerged from a draw up ahead. They were being pushed along by four men. Ted’s father and brothers, Hallam thought. One of them spotted the two riders, said something to his companions, and spurred over to confront them.
“Ted, what’re you doin’ out here?” the man demanded. He was thin and lantern-jawed, and had the hunted, haunted look of an hombre who was on the wrong side of the law and knew it. “You was supposed to stay home!”
“I rode over to...to...”
“To see that Bradford girl!” the man finished. “Blast it, boy, you don’t have the sense God gave a gopher!”
Anger flared on Ted’s face. “Pa, it’s none of your business how I feel about Julie–”
“It dang sure is!” Whitley interrupted. “Do you know how much Bradford wants to catch one of us on his range? He’ll string you up if you give him the least little excuse!” The man’s eyes moved over to Hallam. “Who’s this?”
“A fella who knows about necktie parties,” Hallam answered. He inclined his head toward Ted. “I saved your boy from one a little while ago.”
Whitley’s eyes widened in shock. “What’s this jasper talkin’ about, Ted?”
“Bradford was gonna hang me for stealin’ a cow,” Ted said. “I didn’t do it.” He added angrily, “I didn’t know you and the boys were gonna be out here stealin’ a whole herd of them!”
A savage grin creased Whitley’s lean face. “What better day to do it than Christmas Eve, especially when the weather’s like this? We’ll just call it a Christmas present from Bradford to us.”
Hallam didn’t like the man. He had seen hombres like Whitley before, men who existed around the edges of more successful men, bleeding off whatever they could. It wasn’t Ted’s fault that his pa was like that, though, and in weather like this, Hallam couldn’t be too choosy about where he holed up, either.
Whitley looked at Hallam again and went on, “Give us a hand chousin’ them steers into a box canyon we know of, mister, and you’ll be welcome to spend the night at our place. It ain’t much, but there’s a fire in the stove waitin’ for us when we get back, and the walls don’t let too much air in.”
If Hallam helped them, then he’d be guilty of rustling, too. That was a line he didn’t want to cross, but on the other hand, he didn’t want to freeze to death, either.
He was saved from having to make a decision by the sudden call of a high-pitched voice. Along with Whitley and Ted, he turned in his saddle to see a rider galloping toward them.
“That’s Julie!” Ted exclaimed. “What’s she doin’ out here?”
The girl, who looked to be about the same age as Ted, waved a hand over her head and called over the wind, “Ted! Ted, are you all right? My pa was coming after you–”
She didn’t get to finish because at that moment, riders came boiling up out of the draw from which Whitley and his sons had driven the cattle. Guns began to pop as they charged toward the herd.
Hallam’s keen brain quickly put together what had happened. Julie Bradford, seeing her father and some of his hands leaving the ranch, had been afraid they were going after Ted, so she had come to look for him and warn him. While she was doing that, Bradford had almost lynched Ted, and would have,
if Hallam hadn’t come along. But after the failed hanging, on their way back to the Bradford spread, the rancher and his men had come across the trail of the rustled cattle and followed it here. The sight of the white-bearded Bradford leading the charge confirmed the theory in Hallam’s mind.
Cattle were unpredictable under the best of circumstances. Already unhappy because of the weather and now spooked by the sudden flurry of gunfire, the herd wheeled around and bolted. Ted’s three older brothers, already busy ducking the bullets flying around their heads, had no chance to stop them.
The herd thundered straight toward Hallam, Whitley, Ted, and Julie.
Hallam and Whitley had been around enough to know what to do. They had time to ride at a right angle to the cattle and get out of the path of the stampede. Ted likely would have followed their lead.
But Julie let out a cry of alarm, wheeled her horse around, and started riding directly away from the herd, which kept her in danger. She might be able to stay in front of the stampede until the cattle slowed down on their own, but if her horse fell or gave out...
Well, she wouldn’t have much of a chance.
Ted didn’t hesitate. He threw aside the blanket Hallam had given him and raced after her, calling her name. Hallam didn’t know if Julie could hear the youngster, though, over the terrible wind and the thunder of hooves.
“We have to turn the herd!” he shouted at Whitley. The man jerked his head in a nod of understanding. They spurred their horses and rode hard, veering to the right so the stampeding cattle went past them.
Whitley’s other three sons were well behind the herd now. Bradford and his men broke off their attack and came after Hallam and Whitley instead. Bradford must not have noticed that his daughter was in danger of being trampled, Hallam thought, or else he wouldn’t have been so worried about shooting some rustlers. He put the reins in his teeth, pulled his Winchester from the sheath strapped to his saddle, and levered a round into the chamber as he brought the rifle to his shoulder.
The buckskin responded to the pressure of Hallam’s knees and kept up a steady run. Hallam fired several shots over the backs of the stampeding cattle. The bullets chewed into the ground just ahead of the horses being ridden by Bradford and his men. Several of them shied away from the deadly impacts. The riders lost control of their mounts. Men and horses went down, including Bradford. Hallam hoped none of them were hurt too badly, but he and Whitley had their hands full without having to duck slugs.
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