A Colorado Christmas

by William W. Johnstone

  As he waited for her, he recalled the conversation he had had with his father, just before he left.

  “You are making a big mistake by running away,” his father had told him. “You will not be able to escape your own devils.”

  “I can try,” Tom said.

  “Nobody is holding it against you, Tom. You did what you thought was right.”

  “I did what I thought was right? I can’t even justify what I did to myself by saying that I did what I thought was right. My wife and my child are dead, and I killed them.”

  “It isn’t as if you murdered them.”

  “It isn’t? How is it different? Martha and the child are still dead.”

  “So you are going to run away. Is that your answer?”

  “Yes, that is my answer. I need some time to sort things out. Please try to understand that.”

  His father changed tactics, from challenging to being persuasive. “Tom, all I am asking is that you think this through. You have more potential than any student I ever taught, and I’m not saying that just because you are my son. I am saying it because it is true. Do you have any idea of the good that someone like you—a person with your skills, your talent, your education, can do?”

  “I’ve seen the evil I can do when I confuse skill, talent, and education with Godlike attributes.”

  Tom’s father sighed in resignation. “What time does your train leave?”

  “At nine o’clock tonight.”

  Tom’s father walked over to the bar and poured a glass of Scotch. He held it out toward Tom and, catching a beam of light from the electric chandelier, the amber fluid emitted a burst of gold as if the glass had captured the sun itself. “Then at least have this last, parting drink with me.”

  Tom waited until his father had poured his own glass, then the two men drank to each other.

  “Will you write to let me know where you are and how you are doing?”

  “Not for a while,” Tom said. “I just need to be away from everything that could remind me of what happened. And that means even my family.”

  Surprisingly, Tom’s father smiled. “In a way, I not only don’t blame you, I envy you. I almost ran off myself, once. I was going to sail the seven seas. But my father got wind of it, and talked me out of it. I guess I wasn’t as strong as you are.”

  “Nonsense, you are as strong,” Tom said. “You just never had the same devils chasing you that I do.”

  Tom glanced over at the big clock. It showed fifteen minutes of nine. Shouldn’t she be here by now? Had she changed her mind and already checked out? He walked over to the desk.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Whitman, may I help you?” the hotel desk clerk asked.

  “Rebecca Conyers,” Tom said. “Has she checked out yet?”

  The clerk checked his book. “No, sir. She is still in the hotel. Would you like me to summon her?”

  “No, that won’t be necessary,” Tom said. “I’ll just wait here in the lobby for her.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Huh, Tom thought. And here it was my belief that Westerners went to bed and rose with the sun.

  As soon he thought that, though, he realized that she had gone to bed quite late, having arrived on the train in the middle of the night. At least his initial fear that she had left without meeting him was alleviated.

  * * *

  When Rebecca awakened that morning she was already having second thoughts about what she had done. Had she actually told a perfect stranger that she could talk her father into hiring him? And, even if she could, should she? She had arisen much later than she normally did, and now, as she dressed, she found herself hoping that he had grown tired of waiting for her and left, without accepting her offer.

  However, when she went downstairs she saw him sitting in a chair in the lobby. His suitcase was on the floor beside him, but he wasn’t wearing the suit he had been wearing the night before. Instead, he was wearing denims and a blue cotton shirt. If anything, she found him even more attractive, for the denims and cotton shirt took some of the polish off and gave him a more rugged appearance.

  Although Tom had gotten an idea last night that the young woman was pretty, it had been too dark to get a really good look at her. In the full light of morning though, he saw her for what she was: tall and willowy, with long, auburn hair and green eyes shaded by long, dark eyelashes. She was wearing a dress that showed off her gentle curves to perfection.

  “Mr. Whitman,” she said. “How wonderful it is to see you this morning. I see you have decided to take me up on my offer.”

  “Yes, I have. You were serious about it, weren’t you?” Tom asked. “I mean, you weren’t just making small talk?”

  Rebecca paused for a moment before responding. If she wanted to back out of her offer, now was the time to do it.

  “I was very serious,” she heard herself saying, as if purposely speaking before she could change her mind.

  “Do we have time? If so, I would like to take you to breakfast,” Tom said.

  Rebecca glanced over at the clock. “Yes, I think so,” she said. “And I would be glad to have breakfast with you. But you must let me pay for my own.”

  “Only if it makes you feel more comfortable,” Tom said.

  * * *

  “Let’s sit by the window,” Rebecca suggested when they stepped into the hotel restaurant. “That way we will be able to see when Mo comes for me.”

  “Mo?”

  “He is one of my father’s cowboys,” Rebecca said. “He is quite young.”

  Rebecca had a poached egg, toast, and coffee for breakfast. Tom had two waffles, four fried eggs, a rather substantial slab of ham, and more biscuits than Rebecca could count.

  “My, you must have been hungry,” Rebecca said after Tom pushed away a clean plate. “When is the last time you ate?”

  “Not since supper last night,” Tom said, as if that explained his prodigious appetite. “Oh, I hope I haven’t embarrassed you.”

  “Not at all,” Rebecca said. “Tell me about yourself, Mr. Whitman. Where are you from? What were you doing before you decided to come West?”

  “Not much to tell. I’m from Boston,” Tom said. “I’m more interested in you telling me about the ranch.”

  “Oh, there’s Mo,” Rebecca said. “I won’t have to tell you about the ranch, we’ll be there in less than an hour.”

  Tom picked up both his suitcase and Rebecca’s, then followed her out to the buckboard.

  “Hello, Mo,” Rebecca greeted.

  Mo was a slender five feet nine, with brown eyes and dark hair which he wore long and straight.

  “Hello, Miss Rebecca,” Mo said with a broad smile. “It’s good to see you back home again. Ever’one at the ranch missed you. Did you have a good visit?”

  “Oh, I did indeed,” Rebecca answered.

  Seeing Tom standing there with the two suitcases, Mo indicated the back of the buckboard. “You can just put them there,” he said. Then to Rebecca. “Uh, Miss Rebecca you got a coin? I come into town with no money at all.”

  “A coin?”

  Mo nodded toward Tom. “Yes ma’am, a nickel or a dime or somethin’ on account of him carrying your luggage and all.”

  “Oh, we don’t need to tip him, Mo. His name is Tom, and he’s with me. He’ll be comin’ out to the ranch with us.”

  “He’s with you? Good Lord, Miss Rebecca, you didn’t go to Marshall and get yourself married up or somethin’, did you?” Mo asked.

  Rebecca laughed out loud. “No, it’s nothing like that,” she said.

  “Sorry I didn’t bring the trap,” Mo said to Tom. “This here buckboard only has one seat. That means you’ll have to ride in the back.”

  “That’s not a problem,” Tom said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I hope so. It’s not all that comfortable back there and we’re half an hour from the ranch.”

  Tom set the luggage down in the back of the buckboard, then put his hand on the side and vaulted over.


  “Damn,” Mo said. “I haven’t ever seen anybody do that. You must be a pretty strong fella.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Rebecca said.

  CHAPTER 2

  Live Oaks Ranch

  Live Oaks Ranch lay just north of Fort Worth. The 120,000 acres of gently rolling grassland and scores of year-round streams and creeks made it ideal for cattle ranching. There were two dozen cowboys who were part-time employees, and another two dozen who were full-time employees. The part-time and full-time employees who weren’t married lived in a couple of long, low, bunkhouses, white with red roofs. In addition, there were at least ten permanent employees who were married, and they lived in small houses, all of them painted green, with red roofs. These were adjacent to the bunkhouses. There was also a cookhouse that was large enough to feed all the single men, a barn, a machine shed, a granary, and a large stable. The most dominating feature of the ranch was what the cowboys called “The Big House.” The Big House was a stucco-sided example of Spanish Colonial Revival, with an arcaded portico on the southeast corner, stained-glass windows, and an elaborate arched entryway.

  Inside the parlor of the Big House, the owner of Live Oaks, Rebecca’s father, Benjamin “Big Ben” Conyers, was standing by the fireplace. Big Ben was aptly named, for he was six feet seven inches tall and weighed 330 pounds. Rebecca had just introduced Tom to him, explaining how he had come to her aid last night when she had been accosted by two cowboys.

  “I thank you very much for that, Mr. Whitman,” Big Ben said, shaking Tom’s hand. “There are many who would have just turned away.”

  “I’m glad I happened to be there at that time,” Tom replied.

  “Mr. Whitman is looking for a job, Papa,” Rebecca said. “I know that Tony Peters left a couple of weeks ago, and when Mo picked me up this morning, he told me that you hadn’t replaced him.”

  “I don’t know, honey. Tony was an experienced cowboy,” Big Ben said.

  “Nobody is experienced when they first start,” Rebecca said, and Big Ben laughed.

  “I can’t deny that,” he said. “Where are you from, Mr. Whitman?”

  “I’m from Boston, sir.”

  “Boston, is it? Can you ride a horse?”

  For several years Tom had belonged to a fox-hunting club. And unlike the quarter horses, bred for speed in short stretches that were commonly seen out West, fox-hunting thoroughbreds were often crossed with heavier breeds for endurance and solidity. They were taller and more muscular, and were trained to run long distances, since most hunts lasted for an entire day. They were also bred to jump a variety of fences and ditches. Tom was, in fact, a champion when it came to “riding to the hounds.”

  But he also knew that the sport had mixed reactions, from those who felt sorry for the fox, to those who thought it was a foolish indulgence, to those who did not understand the skill and stamina such an endeavor required.

  “Yes, sir, I can ride a horse,” he said.

  “You don’t mind if I give you a little test just to see how well you can ride, do you?” Big Ben asked.

  “Papa, that’s not fair,” Rebecca said. “You know that our horses aren’t like the ones he is used to riding. At least give him a few days to get used to it.”

  “I don’t have a few days, Rebecca. I have two hundred square miles of ranch to run, and a herd of cattle to manage. I need someone who can go to work immediately. Now, maybe you’re right, everyone has to get experience somewhere, so I’m willing to give him time to learn his way around the ranch. But if he can’t even ride a horse, I mean a Western horse, then it’s going to take more time than I can spare.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Whitman,” Rebecca said. “If you don’t want to take Papa’s test, you don’t have to. We’ll all understand.”

  “I’d like to take the test,” Tom said.

  “Good for you,” Big Ben said. “Come on outside, let me see what you can do.”

  A tall, gangly young man with ash blond hair and a spray of freckles came up to them then.

  “Hello, Sis. I heard you were back.”

  “Did you stay out of trouble while I was gone?” Rebecca asked. Then she introduced the boy. “Mr. Whitman, this is my brother, Dalton.”

  “Are you going to work for Pa?” Dalton asked.

  “I hope to.”

  “Then I won’t be calling you Mr. Whitman. What’s your first name?”

  “Dalton!” Rebecca said.

  “I don’t mean nothin’ by it,” Dalton said. “I’m just friends with all the cowboys, that’s all.”

  “My name is Tom. And I would be happy to be your friend.”

  “Yes, well, don’t the two of you get to be best friends too fast,” Big Ben said. “First I have to know if you can ride well enough to be a cowboy. Clay!” Big Ben called.

  A man stepped out of the machine shed. “Yes, sir, Mr. Conyers?”

  “Get over here, Clay, I’ve someone I want you to meet.” Then to Tom, Big Ben added, “Clay is the ranch foreman. And I’ll leave the final word as to whether or not I hire you up to him.”

  “Good enough,” Tom said.

  Clay was Clay Ramsey, who Big Ben introduced as the ranch foreman. Clay was thirty-three years old, with brown hair, a well-trimmed moustache, and blue eyes. About five feet ten, he was wiry and, according to one of the cowboys who worked for him, as tough as a piece of rawhide.

  “Saddle Thunder for him,” Big Ben said, after he explained what he wanted to do.

  “Papa, no!” Rebecca protested vehemently.

  “Honey, I’m not just being a horse’s rear end. If he can ride Thunder, he can ride any horse on the ranch. There wouldn’t be any question about my hiring him.”

  “I can ride a horse, Mr. Conyers,” Tom said. “But I confess that I have never tried to ride a bucking horse. If that is what is required, then I thank you for your time, and I’ll be going on.”

  “He’s not a bucking horse,” Clay said. “But he is a very strong horse who loves to run and jump. If you ride him, you can’t be timid about it; you have to let him know, right away, that you are in control.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Ramsey. In that case, I will ride him.”

  “Ha!” Dusty McNally, one of the other cowboys said. “I like it that you said you will ride him, rather than you will try to ride him. That’s the right attitude to have.”

  Thunder was a big, muscular, black horse who stood eighteen hands at the withers. Although he allowed himself to be saddled, he kept moving his head and lifting first one hoof and then another. He looked like a ball of potential energy.

  “Here you are, Mr. Whitman,” Clay said, handing the reins to Tom.

  “Thank you,” Tom said, mounting. He pointed toward an open area on the other side of a fence. “Would it be all right to ride in that field there?”

  “Sure, there’s nothing there but rangeland,” Clay said. “The gate is down there,” he pointed.

  “Thank you, I won’t need a gate,” Tom said. He slapped his legs against the side of the horse and it started forward at a gallop. As he approached the fence, he lifted himself slightly from the saddle and leaned forward.

  “Come on, Thunder,” he said encouragingly. “Let’s go see if we can find us a fox.”

  Thunder galloped toward the fence, then sailed over it as gracefully as a leaping deer. Coming down on the other side Tom saw a ditch about twenty yards beyond the fence, and Thunder took that as well. Horse and rider went through their paces, jumping, making sudden turns, running at a full gallop, then stopping on a dime. After a few minutes he brought Thunder back, returning the same way he left, over the ditch, then over the fence. He slowed him down to a trot once he was back inside the compound, and the horse was at a walk by the time he rode up to dismount in front of a shocked Big Ben, Clay, and Dusty. Rebecca was smiling broadly.

  Tom patted Thunder on his neck, then dismounted and handed the reins back to Clay. “He is a very fine horse,” Tom said. “Whoever rides him is quite lucky
.”

  “He’s yours to ride any time you want him,” Big Ben said. “That is, provided you are willing to come work for me.”

  “I would be very proud to work for you, Mr. Conyers.”

  “Come with me, Tom, is it?” Clay invited. “I’ll get you set up in the bunkhouse and introduce you to the others.”

  “Tom?” Rebecca called out to him.

  Tom looked back toward her.

  “I’m glad you are here.”

  “Thank you, Miss Conyers. I’m glad to be here.”

  * * *

  Tom ate his first supper in the cookhouse that evening. Mo introduced him to all the others.

  “Where is Mr. Ramsey?” Tom asked. “Does he eat somewhere else?”

  “Mr. Ramsey?” Mo asked. Then he smiled. “Oh, you mean Clay. Clay is the foreman of the ranch, but there don’t any of us call him Mr. Ramsey. We just call him Clay ’cause that’s what he wants us to call him.”

  “Clay is married,” one of the other cowboys said. “He lives in that first cabin you see over there, the only one with a front porch.”

  “He married a Mexican girl,” another said.

  “Don’t talk about her like that,” Mo said. “Maria is as American as you are. Emanuel Bustamante fought with Sam Houston at San Jacinto.”

  “I didn’t mean nothin’ by it,” the cowboy said. “I think Senor Bustamante is as fine a man as I’ve ever met, and Mrs. Ramsey is a very good woman. I was just sayin’ that she is Mexican is all.”

  “I assume that none of you are married,” Tom said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be eating here in the dining hall.”

  “Ha! The dining hall. That’s sure a fancy name for the cookhouse.”

  “I don’t mean any disrespect for Clay,” Mo said. “But it don’t make a whole lot of sense for a cowboy to be married. First of all, there don’t none of us make enough money to support a family. And second, when we make the long cattle drives, we’re gone for near three months at a time.”

  “And Dodge City is too fun of a town to be in if you are married, if you get my meanin’,” one of the other cowboys said, and the others shared a ribald laugh.