A Jensen Family Christmas

by William W. Johnstone

  “Your fingers are tremblin’ too much to handle this, so let me do it. You just drink.”

  Doc gulped the whiskey the man spilled into his mouth from the flask. The warmth that burst to life inside him might be temporary, but it was welcome. Doc would have guzzled down more, but the man said, “Hang on. Not too much at a time, now.” He lowered the flask, wrapped a second blanket around Doc’s scrawny form, and tucked it in securely.

  Then he took up the reins and said, “I just thought of somethin’. Do you live around here, mister? Can I take you home?”

  Doc managed to form words this time. He said, “No . . . no home.”

  He didn’t want to go back to the sanitarium. As long as Bill Malkin was there, it would be a death sentence to return.

  “Yeah, I kind of had a feelin’ it was like that,” the man said. “I’m sorta the same way. No real home. It’s a good thing for you I was passin’ by here tonight, though, heard the singin’ from the church, and decided to sit a spell and listen to it. I never would’a seen you if I hadn’t.”

  He flapped the reins and got the mules moving. Doc swayed a little on the seat as the wagon lurched into motion. The blankets felt good to him as he sat wrapped up in them, but he was still chilled to the bone.

  “Wh-why didn’t you . . . go inside?” he asked.

  “Haw! Those folks, they wouldn’t want an ol’ sinner like me in their church. Shoot, I’ve done so many black-hearted things in my life, was I to step into the Lord’s house, the heavens’d likely split open in outrage.” Another laugh boomed out of him, and then he asked, “What’s your name, friend?”

  “D-Doc. They call me Doc.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Doc. Don’t you go freezin’ to death on me.” He flicked the reins again and clucked loudly to the mules to keep them moving through the snowy night, then added, “Oh, yeah. Folks call me Mongo.”

  * * *

  Montmorency Weems was the real name of Doc’s benefactor, so Doc could understand why the man went by Mongo. As promised, he made camp and built a large fire that gave off plenty of heat. However, he didn’t let Doc sit too close to it, insisting that it was better to warm up gradually. He also took the boots and socks off Doc’s feet and rubbed them with his huge but gentle hands, coaxing life and feeling back into them. The pins and needles Doc experienced while Mongo was doing that were painful but welcome, because they meant that his feet hadn’t frozen solid and would recover.

  When Doc felt a little better, Mongo gave him another drink from the flask, then cooked a pot of stew. That helped, as well. After a couple of hours, Doc felt almost human again.

  He couldn’t stay awake, though. Mongo helped him crawl into the wagon, where he stretched out on some large bags of grain, wrapped up in blankets again, and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  The next morning, over a breakfast of coffee and leftover stew, Mongo asked a few probing questions, which Doc skillfully avoided answering.

  Doc asked a question of his own, saying, “Where are you headed?”

  “Denver,” Mongo replied. “I’ll deliver these goods there and pick up some more to carry on elsewhere.”

  Doc’s brain was working better this morning. He knew from a letter Ace and Chance had written to him that the boys intended to come to the sanitarium to visit him after they spent Christmas on the ranch belonging to their friend Smoke Jensen. That ranch was located near the town of Big Rock, and Doc was pretty sure the railroad from Denver ran through there. If he could make it to Big Rock, he could find the Sugarloaf and, more important, find Ace and Chance.

  With the two of them to help him, he felt sure he could deal with the menace of Bill Malkin. . . .

  “Can you take me with you, Mongo?” he asked. “I really need to get to Denver. I’m afraid I have no money . . . I mean, you saw the way I’m dressed . . . but I can get hold of some and pay you back later for your trouble—”

  “Hellfire, it’s no trouble, Doc! I was goin’ there, anyway, and there’s plenty of room on that wagon seat. I don’t mind the company, neither. Them jugheads are the finest team I ever had, but they ain’t much on conversalizing. You don’t have to pay me nothin’.”

  “I insist,” Doc said. “I’m going to need some clothes, too, but if I can just find a poker game, I can see to it that our acquaintance doesn’t cause you to lose money.”

  Mongo grinned and said, “Cardplayer, are you?”

  “I’ve been known to sit in on a few hands now and then,” Doc said with a smile.

  “All right. Tell you what I’m gonna do. I’ll take you to Denver and stake you to food and clothes and whatever else you need, and then you go to a place called Hood’s Saloon and tell ’em Mongo sent you. You’ll be able to find a game there.” The big freighter squinted at Doc in sudden suspicion. “You play a straight game, don’t you? Folks there are friends o’ mine, and I don’t want to send no tinhorn cheat to take advantage of ’em.”

  “I’ve never cheated a day in my life, Mongo. I give you my word on that.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” Mongo said with a nod.

  “You can come with me and see for yourself.”

  Mongo shook his head and said, “Nope, I trust you. I’ll have to be movin’ on as soon as I get another load of freight to deliver. But I’ll see to it you’re squared away first.”

  “I really want to pay you back,” Doc insisted.

  “I’ll give you an address where you can send the money, if you want to. It’s where my daughter lives, and I’d just as soon the money go to her and her family. My needs are simple enough, I don’t need much in the way o’ dinero.”

  “If you’re sure . . .”

  “Sure as can be,” Mongo said. “Now, when you get to Hood’s, don’t forget to tell ’em that I sent you.”

  Doc nodded and said, “Mongo sent me. I won’t forget.”

  * * *

  And he hadn’t. The trip to Denver had passed without incident. Mongo had stopped in the first small settlement they’d come to, and had bought Doc a shirt, trousers, and a coat, plain, cheap garments but very welcome. Then in Denver he had given Doc enough money to sit in on a game at Hood’s Saloon and try to turn the funds into more. The people at the saloon had welcomed him, as Mongo had promised they would. Not wanting to take advantage of the big man’s friends, Doc had won just enough to buy some better clothes and a train ticket to Big Rock.

  He was at the depot now, waiting for the train to arrive. Soon he would be at the Sugarloaf Ranch, he told himself. Ace and Chance might not have arrived there yet—it was still several days until Christmas—but Doc thought if he told Smoke Jensen who he was and explained the situation, Jensen would allow him to stay there and wait for the brothers.

  Smoke Jensen had quite a reputation, Doc mused. He would be safe there, on the Sugarloaf.

  The westbound train rolled in, and Doc boarded. The stop in Denver wasn’t a long one, so he was on the way again soon. As the locomotive blew steam from its stack and the cars jolted into motion, Doc glanced over at the station platform as it seemed to move past the window. Quite a few people were still milling around there. From the looks of them, mostly families who had come to meet someone getting off the train.

  Doc spotted a man moving quickly through the crowd, though, heading toward the train, which was now gathering speed, as if he were trying to catch it. Doc caught only a glimpse of the man, though, before losing sight of him.

  That glimpse was enough to make Doc catch his breath and stiffen on the bench seat. He couldn’t be certain, by any means, but the man had reminded him of Bill Malkin.

  Could Malkin have trailed him here, all the way from the sanitarium? It seemed unlikely, but Doc couldn’t rule it out. Malkin had been desperate to end the threat to his safety, to preserve his masquerade as Bill Williams.

  Or maybe his nerves were in such bad shape that he was just imagining things, Doc told himself. He didn’t know that the man he’d just seen was Malkin.
>
  But there was an uncertainty that was even more troubling: If that man on the platform really had been the outlaw . . . had he managed to get on the train before it left the station?

  He was going to be very glad to see Ace and Chance again, Doc thought. If he lived that long . . .

  CHAPTER 24

  The Sugarloaf

  Sally was humming a Christmas song to herself as she adjusted a length of red ribbon she had wrapped around the tree Smoke and Cal had brought in a couple of days earlier. They had set it up in the parlor, in a bucket of dirt that Sally watered to keep it fresh. Since then, she had been decorating it with ribbon, carved ornaments, little bells, and anything else she could think of that would be festive.

  The song she was humming caught in her throat a bit as she thought about what had happened when Smoke and Cal went out to cut down that tree. Smoke had told her about the encounter with Don Juan Sebastian Aguilar’s men, of course, including the shoot-out with the gunman called Pedro. She and Smoke didn’t keep secrets from each other. No more trouble had occurred since then, but the possibility of it still loomed.

  Why did some sort of conflict always seem to erupt right around Christmastime? This ought to be the happiest, most peaceful season of the year, and yet that never seemed to be the way it worked out for the Jensen family.

  Sally had no answer to the question, so she just sighed and shook her head. She would continue trying to make this a good holiday. There was nothing else she could do.

  The front door of the house opened, and boots clomped in the foyer, accompanied by the jingling of spurs. Sally turned and saw Pearlie standing in the entrance between the foyer and the parlor, holding his high-crowned black hat in front of him.

  “You wanted to see me about somethin’, Miss Sally?” the Sugarloaf’s foreman asked. Sally had gone out to the bunkhouse earlier, looking for him.

  “Yes, I need a few more things for the baking I plan to do,” she said. “I was hoping you and Cal could take the buckboard into town to get them for me.”

  “Why, sure. No need to take Cal, though. I reckon I can handle a trip to the store by myself.”

  Sally smiled and said, “I know you can, but take him with you, anyway. You know how much he enjoys a trip to town.”

  “Huh. He enjoys not havin’ to work for a while.” Pearlie shrugged and went on, “But sure, I reckon he can go along, too.”

  Sally nodded, glad that Pearlie had agreed with her suggestion. It wasn’t all for Cal’s benefit, but she didn’t tell Pearlie that. With the situation involving Aguilar’s claim on the ranch still unresolved, and those gunmen who worked for him possibly lurking in the vicinity, Sally thought it best that Pearlie not take the buckboard to Big Rock by himself. She didn’t actually expect him to run into trouble . . . but if he did, it would be better if there were two of them to deal with it.

  Sally gave him the list she had written out earlier, and Pearlie tucked it away in his shirt pocket, where he also carried his bag of makin’s. He nodded politely and left the house to hunt up Cal and hitch a couple of horses to the buckboard.

  Sally went back to rearranging the Christmas tree decorations. She had been doing that off and on and intended to keep it up until she had everything perfect.

  Because she was concentrating on that, she didn’t know anyone else had arrived at the ranch until a knock sounded on the front door. Frowning in puzzlement, she turned away from the tree. She wasn’t expecting visitors.

  As she went to the door, she glanced at the loaded Winchester leaning against the wall in a corner. That wasn’t the only loaded weapon tucked away in various places around the house, and Sally knew how to use them all. Smoke had made sure of that, and he had instilled a habitual sense of caution in her, as well.

  She looked out the narrow window beside the door and saw a buggy parked in front of the house, with a riderless saddle horse standing next to it. A man and a woman sat in the buggy. The man was a stolid, wide-faced Mexican, probably a servant.

  The woman was Doña Mariana Aguilar.

  Sally didn’t think she would need the rifle, since Mariana had come calling and probably wasn’t looking for trouble. She opened the door and found the lean, straw-haired gunman from Texas, Travis Hinton, standing on the porch, with his hat in his hand.

  “Miz Jensen,” he drawled as he gave her a polite nod. “Hope you don’t mind some company. Doña Mariana wanted to pay you a visit, and the don sent me along to keep an eye on her.”

  “Of course,” Sally said. “I’m happy to see her. Please, ask her to come in.”

  “Yes’m.” Hinton nodded and turned to walk back to the buggy. He spoke to Mariana, then took the gloved hand she offered to him and helped her climb down from the vehicle. Smiling, she came toward the house. Hinton trailed behind her.

  Sally hadn’t actually invited the gunman in, but she was too polite to tell him he wasn’t welcome in her house. Besides, he’d said that Señor Aguilar had told him to watch out for Mariana, and Hinton might have taken that order literally.

  It was too late to do anything about it now. The man was on the porch again, with Mariana this time.

  “Sally, it is so good to see you again,” she said. She removed her gloves. “I enjoyed our visit in Big Rock the other day.”

  Sally had enjoyed it, too—at first. Before the friction between their husbands had become obvious.

  But even though Sally would stand and fight side by side with Smoke against any attempt to take their home away from them, she wasn’t going to be inhospitable to a young woman who apparently had no control over what her husband did. She opened the door wider and said, “Please, come in, Mariana. Welcome to my home.”

  Mariana paused before coming in and turned to Hinton. She said, “Señor Hinton, please tell Enrique to take the buggy over to the barn, and then the two of you can wait there.” Sally heard the imperious tone in her voice. Mariana looked back at her and added, “I assume that is all right? My man can water the horses and put them inside, out of the cold?”

  “Certainly,” Sally said.

  “Hold on a minute,” said Hinton. “The don told me to look out for you. I reckon I ought to come in the house with you.”

  “Whatever for?” Mariana asked with apparent sincerity. “I am simply going to sit and visit with Señora Jensen. Nothing will happen to me.”

  “But the don said—”

  “And I am saying for you to wait in the barn with Enrique. Unless you want me to tell the don that you were quite defiant and rude to me.”

  Hinton’s angular jaw was tight as he said, “No, ma’am. But I’ll be close by if you need me.”

  “I assure you, I won’t,” Mariana said.

  Hinton gave her a curt nod, then turned and stalked off the porch. He went back to the buggy and spoke to the driver. The man turned the vehicle and headed for the barn. Hinton followed, leading his horse, but he cast an angry glance over his shoulder as he did so.

  As Sally ushered Mariana into the house, the younger woman said, “My husband hires these men, and sometimes they forget their place. My apologies, Sally.”

  “None necessary,” Sally said. “Up here in the States, we’re pretty evenhanded about such things.”

  “Yes, but we come from two different worlds, in many ways.”

  “More than you know. I was raised in New England.”

  “Oh!” A smile lit up Mariana’s face. “You must tell me all about it.”

  “Why don’t we go in the parlor,” Sally suggested, “and I’ll bring us some tea.”

  “Gracias,” Mariana said.

  Once the two women were settled in the parlor, drinking tea, they talked about their lives until now. Their childhoods were similar, Sally having lived a pampered existence in New England, and Mariana in Mexico City. But their paths had diverged after that, with Sally going to Idaho to accept a teaching position in a wild frontier town, while Mariana continued living in the lap of luxury.

  Without that flight of
daring on Sally’s part, she never would have met Smoke, so she had never regretted the decision to leave her comfortable life behind.

  Still smiling, Mariana asked, “Where is your oh-so-handsome husband today, Sally?”

  “He rode into Big Rock early this morning,” Sally said. She would have asked him to bring back the supplies she needed for her Christmas baking, but at the time, she hadn’t realized that she was running low on a few things. “He had a little business to take care of.”

  She knew what that business was. He had gotten replies to the wires he’d sent to the lawyers in Denver and San Francisco, and after studying what they had to say, he had written out more messages and was going to the Western Union office to send them today. All the lawyers had been cautiously encouraging about Smoke’s chance of prevailing in court over Señor Aguilar’s claim, if it ever came to that, but Smoke didn’t want it to get that far. He wanted the lawyers to head things off, if possible.

  “I am sure he is a very astute businessman,” said Mariana, “seeing what a success he has made of this ranch.” She added, “With your help, of course, Sally.”

  “It’s been a partnership right from the first,” Sally agreed. “I suppose Smoke and I knew we were meant to be together, just as soon as we laid eyes on each other.”

  “That must be a wonderful feeling,” the younger woman murmured.

  Sally suddenly felt a little bad about what she’d just said. Mariana’s marriage to Aguilar had been an arranged one, she recalled. She would have apologized, even though that would be awkward, too, but Mariana went on, “What sort of business did Señor Jensen have in Big Rock today?”

  Sally opened her mouth, closed it again, and shook her head.

  “Why, I’m afraid I don’t know,” she said. “Smoke doesn’t talk to me about such things.”

  “Oh?” Mariana cocked her head a little to the side. “But I thought you just said that you and he are partners.”

  “We are,” Sally said. “He runs the ranch, and I run the home.”