A Colorado Christmas

by William W. Johnstone

  His last thought was that death was coming for Monte Carson in Big Rock, and no one was there to warn him or help him. . . .

  Outside the big house in Denver, snow had begun to fall.

  CHAPTER 21

  North of Big Rock

  The storm that swept down from the Canadian Rockies was a potent one to start with, and it only gathered force as it slowly followed the great line of peaks that formed the backbone of the continent. It sent brief snow squalls out ahead of it, but in the main body, a bone-chilling wind howled and blew so hard that the thick snow seemed to fall sideways. Visibility was reduced to a matter of feet.

  A man caught in a blizzard like that wouldn’t stand a chance.

  Fortunately for the three men riding south, they were well ahead of the worst of the storm. The snow swirled prettily rather than blew. The ground was turning white around them, but it didn’t present any barrier to their horses.

  Ace, Chance, and Eagle-Eye Callahan had found themselves a nice overhang the night before. Considering it the next best thing to a cave, they had made camp there, building a warm fire and having a good supper before they’d rolled up in their soogans. With the weather the way it was, it had seemed unlikely that anyone would bother them.

  The snow had started to fall during the night, and it hadn’t stopped since.

  As they followed the trail the next morning, Eagle-Eye said, “Gonna come a pretty bad blow, I reckon. That’s what my bones tell me, anyway. After all those winters up in the Montana territory, I expect they know what they’re talkin’ about.”

  “We ought to reach Big Rock by the middle of the day,” Ace said. “We can find somebody to tell us where to find Smoke’s ranch. With any luck, we’ll get there by nightfall.”

  Chance shivered in his saddle. Unlike Ace’s sheepskin jacket, his suit coat didn’t provide much protection from the wind. “Can’t be soon enough to suit me. We’re damn fools for being out traveling at this time of year to start with.”

  “You don’t always have much choice about when you go,” Ace said.

  “The world don’t give you much choice about most things,” commented Eagle-Eye. “It sort of just does what it wants, and you get knocked this way and that, and there ain’t a whole hell of a lot you can do about it.”

  “You don’t believe that a man is master of his own fate?” asked Ace.

  “Well, he can try to be, I suppose, but in the end, the odds are again’ him. If that wasn’t true, folks’ lives would be a heap different.”

  Chance nodded. “Maybe you’re right, Mr. Callahan. With a name like mine, I know how big a part pure luck plays in most people’s lives.”

  “Call me Eagle-Eye,” the old-timer told him. “We’ve shared a campfire, so I consider you boys to be friends o’ mine now.”

  “Sounds good to me, Eagle-Eye,” Chance said.

  The snow gradually fell thicker and faster during the morning.

  Big Rock

  There was an inch or two of snow on the ground as they approached the town at midday. The roofs of some of the buildings and a couple church steeples were still visible despite the flakes filling the air.

  It appeared to be a good-sized settlement with several streets lined by businesses and a number of cross streets with residences on them. An impressive brick building on one side of town served as the railroad depot. Tracks came in from the northeast.

  Although Big Rock had a sleepy, half-deserted look on the cold December day not long before Christmas, Ace imagined it was quite bustling at other times. “I figure the local lawman will be the best person to ask about Smoke’s ranch,” he said as they walked their horses slowly along the main street. “I’m sure he can tell us where to find the Sugarloaf.”

  “Why don’t you fellas do that?” Eagle-Eye suggested. He nodded toward a café they were passing. “I’m gonna go in there and warm up a mite. I’ll order coffee for the three of us and whatever their special is. The food’s on me.”

  “Nice of you,” Chance said.

  “We’re obliged to you,” Ace added.

  Eagle-Eye shook his head. “No, sir, it’s me who’s obliged to you boys for lendin’ me a hand a few days ago when those hombres jumped me. I ain’t forgot that, and I ain’t likely to.” The old-timer reined his mount toward the hitch rail in front of the café, which bore a sign identifying it as the CITY PIG.

  Ace and Chance continued on down the street, looking for the sheriff’s office.

  They found it a minute later and headed toward the sturdy stone building. No horses were tied up in front, but that didn’t mean anything. Likely the sheriff kept his mount in one of the local stables when he wasn’t using it.

  The brothers swung down from their saddles and looped their reins around the rail. Ace brushed at a couple snowflakes that clung to his eyelashes as he and Chance stepped up onto the boardwalk in front of the sheriff’s office and jail.

  Chance clutched his coat tighter around him. “I’ll be glad to get out of this weather.”

  “You have to expect it to be cold and snowy around Christmas time,” Ace pointed out. “Most folks like it that way.”

  “Most folks don’t have to ride for miles in it.”

  “We’d be in it on horseback all day if we were cowboying.”

  Chance snorted. “That’s one reason we don’t take riding jobs unless we absolutely have to.”

  Ace let that comment go and opened the door. They stepped into the welcome warmth coming from a pot-bellied stove in the corner of the office.

  A man stood beside that stove pouring coffee from a battered pot into an equally battered tin cup. He replaced the pot on the stove, set the piece of leather he’d been using to handle it on a nearby shelf, and turned to face the newcomers as he blew on the coffee, which had tendrils of steam rising from it. A badge was pinned to the brown leather vest he wore over a white shirt. “Help you boys?”

  “You’re the sheriff?” Ace asked.

  “That’s right. Name’s Monte Carson. What can I do for you?”

  “We’re looking for a ranch that’s supposed to be somewhere around here,” Chance said. “We thought you could probably tell us where to find it.”

  Sheriff Carson took a sip of the coffee and nodded. “I reckon I know all the spreads in these parts. I’ve got to warn you, though, I doubt if any of them will be hiring at this time of year.”

  “We’re not looking for jobs,” Ace said.

  “All right,” Carson said. “Which ranch is it you’re interested in?”

  “The Sugarloaf,” Chance said.

  “Smoke Jensen’s spread,” Ace added.

  Carson stiffened. His affable face took on a harder, more suspicious cast. He stepped over to the desk and set the tin cup down. “You’d better just move along. It’s going to be Christmas in a few days, so I’m going to do you a favor and not lock you up. But I want you out of Big Rock before the afternoon’s over.”

  The Jensen boys stared at him in surprise. Neither found his voice for a couple heartbeats then Ace said, “Sheriff, I don’t know what you think we’re doing here, but obviously you’ve got us all wrong.”

  “I don’t think so,” snapped Carson. “A couple young gunhands who figure to make a reputation for yourselves by killing Smoke Jensen, right? I’ve seen a dozen just like you over the years I’ve known Smoke. Know where most of them are now?” He didn’t wait for them to answer. “In the cemetery. Some of them in unmarked graves because we never had a chance to find out their names before Smoke killed them.”

  Ace shook his head. “Sheriff, you’re making a—”

  “Don’t you idiots see that I’m trying to save your lives?” Carson broke in. “If I tell you where to find the Sugarloaf, you’ll ride out there and Smoke will blow holes in both of you. Now move on like I told you.”

  “Damn it, Sheriff!” Chance burst out. “We’re not gunfighters. We’re looking for Smoke’s ranch because he’s a friend of ours.” He inclined his head toward his brot
her. “Ace here thinks he might even be a long-lost relative, because our last name is Jensen, too.”

  Carson frowned. “Wait a minute. Did you say Ace?”

  “That’s my name, Sheriff,” Ace said. “And this is my brother Chance. We’ve met Smoke a couple times, most recently down in Texas last year.”

  “You’re those Jensen boys he talked about,” Carson said with a nod. His eyes narrowed in suspicion again. “But how do I know you’re really who you say you are?”

  “How would we know those names if we weren’t?” asked Chance.

  “And how would we know that Smoke was involved in a big dust-up down in Texas during all those bad floods last year?” added Ace.

  “Yeah, he told me about that,” Carson admitted. “And he told me about the two of you.” The lawman extended his hand, obviously accepting their identities. “It’s a pleasure to meet any friend of Smoke Jensen’s.”

  “We feel the same way, Sheriff,” Ace said as he shook Carson’s hand. “Have the two of you known each other for long?”

  “Several years. As long as Big Rock’s been here, in fact. If it weren’t for Smoke, I wouldn’t be the sheriff, either.” Carson grunted. “More than likely, I’d be lying in one of those unmarked graves I was talking about. I owe the man a lot, which is why I wasn’t going to sic a couple crazy young gun-throwers on him. That would just be an annoyance for him.”

  “You don’t have to worry about us, Sheriff,” Ace said. “We’re not looking to cause a bit of trouble for him.”

  “What brings you to Big Rock, then?” Carson picked up the cup again and took another sip of coffee. “Can’t blame me for being curious. Finding out why strangers are in town is sort of my job.”

  “Well, we’re not really looking for Smoke’s ranch for our own sake.” Ace didn’t see anything wrong with telling Sheriff Carson the truth. “We ran into an old-timer the other day who’s been riding with us ever since. He’s looking for a mountain man called Preacher, and we’re hoping Smoke can tell us where to find him. I remember Smoke talking about Preacher. It sounded like the two of them are pretty close.”

  “Close as father and son, almost,” Carson agreed, “although there’s no blood relation between them. And you’re in luck, coming to Big Rock right now.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Unless he’s ridden out in the past day or two, Preacher should be out at the Sugarloaf right now.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Abuxom, middle-aged waitress was just setting three steaming bowls of stew on the table in front of Eagle-Eye Callahan when Ace and Chance walked into the City Pig. A full cup of coffee sat beside each place at the table.

  The burly, white-haired old man grinned at the brothers as they walked across the room toward him. “And here I was thinkin’ I might just have to eat all three bowls o’ this Irish stew myself. It smells good enough I might coulda done it.”

  Ace pulled out a ladder-back chair at one of the places and hung his hat on it. Chance did likewise, grinning at the waitress.

  She giggled. “You stop looking at me like that, young fella. I’m old enough to be your mama.”

  “Not hardly,” Chance protested. “My aunt, maybe. My mother’s much, much younger sister.”

  “Go on with you!” She put her hands on her ample hips and looked around at the three of them. “Do you gentlemen need anything else right now?”

  “Well—” Chance began.

  She held up a hand to stop him. “I meant anything else to eat?”

  Eagle-Eye pointed at the chalkboard on the wall. “That says you got pie. What kind?”

  “Peach cobbler.”

  “Well,” he said heartily as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, “we’re all gonna need some of that once we polish off this fine stew. And more coffee.”

  “I’ll take good care of you,” the waitress promised, then wagged a scolding finger at Chance as he started to say something else.

  Once the woman was gone, Ace said to his brother, “Do you have to flirt with everything in a skirt?”

  “Nope. I saw a picture once of a fella from Scotland, and he was wearing a skirt. If one of those Scottish hombres was to walk in here right now, I wouldn’t flirt with him. Not one bit.” Chance laughed quietly. “Besides, she enjoyed it, didn’t she?”

  “Seemed to,” Ace admitted with a shrug.

  Eagle-Eye stopped shoveling stew into his mouth and pointed his spoon at the brothers. “Dig in, before it gets cold.”

  Ace and Chance started eating, and the food tasted as good as it smelled. They tore hunks off the fresh loaf of bread on the table and used them to sop up some of the gravy from the stew. Washed down with strong, hot coffee, it made an excellent meal.

  After they had eaten for a few minutes, Ace said, “Stew, pie, and coffee has to cost some, Eagle-Eye. You don’t have to pay for me and Chance.”

  “Hush that up. I told you boys this was my treat, and I’m stickin’ to it. Besides, I got plenty o’ dinero. Like I told you when we met, I sold my tradin’ post when I left Montana, and I got a nice price for it. No, I ain’t worried about money.”

  “Must be nice,” Chance said.

  “Well, you can’t expect to spend your life just roamin’ around, ridin’ from place to place, only workin’ when you feel like it or when you’re outta money, and figure you’re gonna get rich. No, sir, to do that, you’ve got to settle down, find somethin’ you like to do that’s worth the doin’, and work hard at it.”

  “But what if we like roaming around?” Chance wanted to know.

  “Then you got to get used to havin’ a hungry belly ever’ now and then.”

  “Yeah,” Ace said dryly, “I think we’re already starting to learn that.”

  Chance swallowed the bite of stew he had spooned into his mouth. “Next thing you know, Eagle-Eye, you’re going to be telling us that we’ve got to have the love of a good woman to succeed, that we should be looking for wives as well as good jobs.”

  A frown caused the old-timer’s shaggy eyebrows to draw down. He rumbled, “No, I ain’t gonna tell you that. Wish I could, but I just plumb can’t.”

  Ace wondered what that meant. He could tell some sort of story went with the old man’s statement but sensed that Eagle-Eye wouldn’t want to tell it, and anyway, it was none of his business.

  Chance said, “You were the one who was telling us a little while ago that the world is cold-hearted and a man can’t escape his fate, and now you’re telling us to settle down and work hard and make something of ourselves. Which is it?”

  “Well, you can at least try to accomplish somethin’ with your life. Odds are, it won’t work out, but at least you’ll know in your heart that you put some effort into it. And speakin’ of puttin’ some effort into it . . . Did you boys find the sheriff’s office or didn’t you?”

  They were finally getting down to the reason they had come to Big Rock in the first place, thought Ace. “Not only did we find the office, but we talked to the sheriff. And he told us that he thinks Preacher is spending the holidays at the Sugarloaf with Smoke Jensen and his wife Sally.”

  Eagle-Eye slapped a palm against the table excitedly, and the noise was loud enough to make some of the other customers in the café jump a little in their chairs and look around.

  “I knew it!” he declared. “I could feel it in my bones. I knew I was gettin’ close to that old son of—that old rapscallion.”

  Ace noticed that Eagle-Eye had come close to referring to Preacher in a bad way, not like somebody might use that term jokingly when talking about an old friend. He also noticed what might have been anger had flared in the old-timer’s eyes when he said it.

  Ace frowned, wondering if Eagle-Eye was carrying some sort of grudge against Preacher. Was that the real reason he was looking for the legendary mountain man?

  Ace supposed it was possible. Even the best of friends sometimes had hard feelings between them. It was also a possibility that Eagle-Eye wanted to lay to r
est some old dispute.

  Whatever the situation, Ace wasn’t really worried about it. He still thought they should ride on out to the Sugarloaf that afternoon. Sheriff Carson had told him and Chance how to find the ranch, and Ace was confident they could reach it before nightfall.

  No matter what Eagle-Eye’s real objective was, Ace and Chance would be with him, and Smoke would be on hand, too.

  In a situation like that, how much trouble could one old man get into?

  Sugarloaf Ranch

  Sally had made good on her promise to fry up a mess of bear sign. It was for the planning meeting she had with the ladies in town. She had to protect them from not only Pearlie and Cal but also Preacher. She had her hands full with those three scroungers, much to Smoke’s amusement.

  Much as the whole house was filled with the delicious smells of baking, he’d felt a little sorry for her, so he’d gotten the old mountain man and the two ranch hands out of the house. The four of them had ridden out to some of the winter pastures to check on the stock that had been moved down for the season.

  “Told you there was gonna be a blizzard,” Preacher said as they rode back toward the ranch house. It really wasn’t that late in the day yet, but it looked like it was coming on toward night anyway because of the thick overcast and the heavily falling snow. It was wet snow, too, packing down densely as several inches built up on the ground. The horses’ hooves kicked it up in a white spray as they moved along the trail.

  “It’s snowing pretty good,” Smoke said, “but I wouldn’t call this a blizzard.”

  “Just wait,” Preacher said as he nodded sagely.

  Pearlie said, “I recollect one time up in the Dakota Territory when a storm came through overnight and the next mornin’ I couldn’t get out of the line shack where I was spendin’ the winter. Snow had drifted up so high the dang door wouldn’t budge.”

  “How’d you get out?” Cal asked.

  “Oh, I didn’t,” Pearlie said with a deadpan expression. “I done starved to death, and my bones may still be a-layin’ in that cabin right now for all I know.”