A Big Sky Christmas

by William W. Johnstone

  Noise and smoke filled the air, along with the odors of beer, whiskey, bay rum, unwashed flesh, and human waste. The sawdust sprinkled liberally on the floor couldn’t soak up all of that typical saloon smell.

  Jamie’s nose wrinkled slightly. Anybody who had ever taken a deep breath of early morning, high country air like he had thousands of times in his life could never be satisfied with this . . . stench. But he could put up with it long enough to down a mug of beer. Then he’d go on about his business.

  He had seen a lot of horses tied up at the hitch rails outside the saloon, so he wasn’t surprised that the place was doing a brisk business. He recognized some of the men lined up along the bar as the ones who had ridden past him in the street a few minutes earlier.

  The one called Eldon, who seemed to be their leader, stood with his back to the bar, his elbows resting on it as his eyes scanned the room. His gaze lighted on Jamie, but stayed there for only a second. Evidently he didn’t consider the big man in buckskins all that interesting.

  That was fine with Jamie. He walked to the bar, found an empty spot where he could belly up to the hardwood, and nodded to the apron-wearing bartender who came along to take his order. The man had a pleasant, round face that seemed even rounder because he parted his thinning brown hair in the middle and slicked it down.

  “What can I do for you, mister?” the bartender asked as Jamie laid the Winchester on the bar. The man looked at the rifle, but didn’t say anything about it.

  “If your beer’s cold I’ll take a mug of it.”

  “Coldest in Kansas City,” the bartender replied with a grin. “At least that’s what they tell me. I can’t say as I’ve sampled all of it to know for sure. That’d make a good hobby for a man, wouldn’t it?”

  “If he didn’t have anything better to do,” Jamie said with a grunt. He had always been plainspoken and didn’t plan to change his ways.

  The bartender raised his eyebrows and then shrugged. “Whatever you say, my friend.” He filled a mug with beer from a tap and slid it in front of Jamie. “That’ll be six bits.”

  “Think mighty highly of the stuff, don’t you?”

  “I don’t set the prices,” the bartender said as he spread his hands and shrugged. “I just work here.”

  Jamie took a couple coins from the buckskin poke he carried and dropped them on the bar. Then he picked up the mug and took a long swallow of the beer. It was cold and had a good flavor to it, to boot. Maybe it was worth six bits, after all.

  “Are you callin’ me a liar?” The loud, angry voice came from one of the tables where men were sitting and drinking, as opposed to the gambling layouts in the rear half of the big room.

  Jamie barely glanced over his shoulder at the disturbance. Men got their dander up in saloons all the time. It went hand in hand with guzzling down cheap liquor. As long as the ruckus didn’t have anything to do with him, he made it a habit to mind his own business.

  Another man at the table said, “I didn’t call you a liar, Ralston. I just said you’d have a hard time gettin’ those wagons to Montana before winter sets in.”

  The man called Ralston smacked a big fist down on the table so hard it made the glasses on it jump. “And I’m sayin’ I’ll do it!” he insisted. “I’ll have those pilgrims in their new homes by Christmas, by Godfrey! An’ if you say I can’t do it, then you’re callin’ me a liar!”

  Judging by the loud, slurred quality of Ralston’s voice, he was drunk. Jamie watched in the bar mirror as Ralston leaned over the table and made his point by jabbing a blunt finger against his fellow drinker’s chest. That man swatted Ralston’s hand away impatiently, and Ralston seized that as an excuse to start the trouble he obviously wanted to. He lunged out of his chair, fist cocked to throw a punch.

  Jamie sighed, set his half-finished beer on the bar, and turned around. “Hold it!” he snapped.

  Ralston stopped with his fist poised. He was a thick-bodied man with a round-crowned, broad-brimmed hat tilted back on a thatch of sandy hair. A soup-strainer mustache of the same shade drooped over his mouth. His face was red, the nose swollen from habitual drunken binges. “Who in tarnation are you?” he demanded as he glared at Jamie.

  Good intentions to avoid trouble notwithstanding, Jamie didn’t like the conversation he had just overheard. He stepped toward the table.

  Sensing a possible ruckus in the offing, a lot of the saloon’s patrons had quieted down to see what was going to happen. The girls who worked there, dressed in short, spangled dresses, moved well clear of the table where Ralston stood glowering at the big stranger.

  Jamie didn’t answer Ralston’s question about who he was. Instead, he asked one of his own. “Did I hear you say that you’re taking that wagon train to Montana?”

  “That’s right. What business is it of yours?”

  “You’re the wagon master?” Jamie’s tone of voice clearly registered his disbelief and disapproval.

  “Damn right I am! Jeb Ralston, finest wagon master on the frontier!”

  Jamie’s skeptical grunt made it plain how he felt about that claim.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw one of the saloon’s front doors swing open. A slender man stepped inside quickly and closed it behind him. He wore a black suit and hat and a collarless white shirt, and a pair of spectacles perched on his nose. He looked utterly harmless, and Jamie barely took note of him since nearly all of his attention was focused on Jeb Ralston.

  “Look, I’m not trying to pick a fight,” Jamie told Ralston. “But it’s too late in the year to be starting out to Montana from here. You won’t make it before winter, and you don’t want to be up there on those plains when the northers start sweeping down from Canada.”

  Ralston sneered at him. “How do you know so much about it?”

  “Because I’ve been there myself,” Jamie said harshly. “I nearly died in a few of those blizzards.”

  “This doesn’t concern you, old man. You’d better shut up and go back to your beer.”

  Jamie wasn’t in the habit of backing down when he knew he was right. “If you start to Montana now, you’ll be risking the lives of every one of those pilgrims.”

  “They paid me to do the job, and by Godfrey, I’m gonna do it!”

  “Then they made a bad mistake by hiring a drunken fool like you.”

  He knew Ralston wouldn’t stand for that insult. He didn’t care. It was true, and Jamie Ian MacCallister was a man who spoke the truth.

  Ralston’s face flushed darker. His eyes widened with outrage. He drew in a deep breath, bellowed in anger, and charged Jamie like a maddened bull.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Jamie expected the attack. Ralston was big—although not as big as Jamie—and probably plenty strong. More than likely he had plenty of experience brawling in saloons.

  But Jamie had fought for his life in desperate battles hundreds of times. He stepped aside, grabbed Ralston, and used the man’s own momentum to heave him up and over the bar.

  Ralston let out a startled yell as he sailed through the air. The crash as he landed against the back bar cut off that yell and replaced it with the sound of bottles shattering. Ralston bounced off and landed in the floor behind the bar.

  The slick-haired bartender stood a few feet away, his eyes bugging out as he stared at Jamie. The man babbled, “You . . . you just picked him up . . . and threw him!”

  “Yeah,” Jamie said. “Sorry about all the damage. I’ll pay for it.”

  He could well afford to. During his wanderings over the past five decades, he had cached small fortunes in gold and silver in numerous places across the West. In addition, he had an entire cave full of Spanish treasure that had been hidden there a couple of centuries earlier. All of that didn’t include the money he had made from his ranch and the other successful businesses in which he had invested, many of them operated by family members. The MacCallisters were a dynasty, and a mighty wealthy one, at that.

  Jamie was aware that the room was completely sile
nt as he took out his poke and counted five double eagles onto the bar. That was more than enough to cover the cost of the spilled liquor. He glanced at his still half-full mug of beer and decided he was in no mood to finish it.

  “When that fella wakes up”—he nodded toward the area behind the bar where Ralston had fallen—“somebody ought to try to talk some sense into him about starting for Montana this late in the year. If he won’t listen to reason, somebody needs to warn those pilgrims he plans to lead them right into trouble.”

  “Nobody talks sense to Jeb Ralston, mister,” the bartender said. “He has his own ideas, and he’s not shy about using his fists to defend them.”

  “Well, it backfired on him this time, didn’t it?” Jamie turned away from the bar to leave the saloon.

  He had taken only a couple of steps when somebody yelled, “Look out!”

  Jamie whirled around, and saw that Ralston had regained his senses and climbed to the top of the bar. He leaped from it in a diving tackle aimed at Jamie.

  Unable to get out of the way in time, Ralston’s weight slammed into Jamie’s left shoulder, the collision’s impact making Jamie stagger. He stayed on his feet, though, planted his left hand in the middle of Ralston’s chest, and shoved him back a step. With enough room, Jamie swung a right-hand punch that landed on Ralston’s jaw like a pile driver.

  The blow jerked Ralston’s head to the side but didn’t put him down. Drunk he might be, but it surely wasn’t the first fight he’d had when he was full of booze. He hooked a right fist of his own into Jamie’s midsection. The punch landed with considerable power. Ralston could hit.

  Jamie sent a short, sharp left into the wagon master’s face. Ralston came back with a left of his own that tagged Jamie on the chin. For several long moments as the saloon filled with cheers and shouts of encouragement on both sides, the two men stood toe to toe and slugged it out.

  They were pretty evenly matched, but Jamie was a little taller and heavier and had a slightly longer reach. Those things gave him an advantage.

  The wagon master fought with the intensity of a crazed animal, though, and for one of the few times in his life, Jamie found himself being forced to give ground a little.

  His back came up against the bar. Bracing himself against it, he hunched his shoulders to protect his head and snapped two quick lefts into Ralston’s face. Ralston’s nose was redder and more swollen, but it was from being hit, not drinking. Jamie whipped a right into Ralston’s solar plexus.

  The wagon master leaned forward, his face going gray from the shock of the blow. He lowered his head and plowed forward. The top of his head rammed Jamie’s chin, forcing his head back.

  Jamie grabbed hold of Ralston and pulled him in closer, grappling with him. He got his arms around Ralston’s waist and swung him into the air again. The muscles of Jamie’s arms, back, and shoulders swelled so much from the effort it looked almost like they were about to burst through the buckskin shirt he wore.

  Once Ralston was off his feet, he couldn’t get his balance to fight anymore. Jamie turned him upside-down and then lifted the wagon master into the air above his head. It was an amazing feat of strength, the stuff of which legends were made. As he supported that massive burden, Jamie took a couple of stiff-legged steps and then smashed Ralston down onto one of the empty tables. Wood splintered and cracked as the table collapsed under the impact.

  Ralston lay there senseless among the wreckage of the table.

  He wouldn’t be getting up any time soon, Jamie thought.

  A frown creased his forehead as he saw just how true that was. Ralston’s right leg was twisted at an odd, unnatural angle. Something white stuck out through a bloody rip in his trousers.

  Jamie drew in a deep breath as he realized it was the jagged end of a bone. He had broken the wagon master’s leg.

  He wasn’t the only one to notice that. A man in the crowd yelled, “Holy cow! Look at Ralston’s leg!”

  “Somebody better fetch a doctor!” another man added excitedly.

  Jamie scowled. He had set plenty of broken bones in his time and had no doubt that he could do a passable job on Ralston’s leg, but he reminded himself that he was in the middle of a good-sized city where there were probably a number of doctors practicing medicine. It would be better to leave the job to one of them.

  He noticed the fellow who had come into the Bella Royale just as the fight was starting. The man edged forward to stare at Ralston’s unconscious form. His eyes were big with horror behind the spectacles he wore.

  One of the saloon’s patrons nudged the man with an elbow and asked, “What’s the matter, mister? Ain’t you never seen somebody with a busted leg before?”

  “Yes, but . . . but . . .” the man stammered. “That . . . that’s a piece of bone sticking out!”

  He suddenly clamped a hand over his mouth, whirled around, and sprinted for the door as several of the customers guffawed at him.

  The door was still open from the man’s hasty departure when another man stepped in, this one a burly, middle-aged individual with a badge pinned to his coat lapel. He had a revolver on his hip and a shotgun tucked under his arm. He strode toward the bar and said in a loud voice, “All right, all right, everybody just settle down. What happened here?” He stopped and frowned at Ralston. “Good Lord, that man’s leg is broken!”

  One thing you could say about folks in Kansas City, Jamie thought. They seemed to have a firm grasp of the obvious.

  The constable or deputy or whatever he was glared around the room and demanded, “Somebody tell me what happened here. Who busted this man’s leg?”

  Jamie saved everybody the trouble of pointing him out by saying, “That was me.”

  The lawman looked him up and down, still frowning darkly. “And who might you be?”

  “Name’s Jamie Ian MacCallister.”

  Despite the lawman having told them to be quiet, that announcement brought a stir from the crowd. Probably not everyone in the Bella Royale recognized the name, but a lot of them did. Jamie was one of the most famous men on the frontier, and his recent campaign of vengeance against the Miles Nelson gang had added to his already staggering reputation.

  “MacCallister, eh?” the lawman said after a moment. “What did Ralston do, look crossways at you?”

  The bartender spoke up. “That’s not fair, Deputy. Ralston started the fight. He was drunk and obnoxious, as usual, and he attacked Mr. MacCallister. Mr. MacCallister was just defending himself.”

  “I suppose Ralston should be glad you didn’t defend yourself with those Colts,” the deputy muttered. “How many men is it you’ve killed now?”

  “I don’t keep count,” Jamie replied curtly. “But I never killed a single one that didn’t need killing.”

  The deputy looked like he wanted to say something in response to that, but he didn’t. He looked around at the crowd. “Has anybody gone for a doctor?”

  The saloon’s customers looked back at him mutely.

  “Well, what in blazes is wrong with you?” the deputy roared. “Somebody go and do that!”

  Several men hurried out of the saloon.

  The lawman went on. “Anybody here want to argue with the claim that MacCallister acted in self-defense? No?” He blew out an exasperated breath and turned back to Jamie. “I reckon there’s no point in arresting you. Under the circumstances, a judge would just dismiss any charges against you.”

  “And justifiably so,” the bartender put in. “Nobody’s gonna shed any tears over what happened to Ralston. This wasn’t the first fight he’s caused in here over the past few years, since he showed up and started guiding those wagon trains west. He just picked the wrong fella to try to buffalo this time.”

  The lawman looked at Jamie through narrowed eyes. “Just try to stay out of trouble the rest of the time you’re in town, MacCallister. I know your reputation. Anywhere you go, all hell seems to break loose.”

  “That’s hell’s choice, not mine,” Jamie said.

&nb
sp; The deputy stomped out.

  As the customers returned to their drinking and gambling and flirting with the saloon girls, the bartender said, “Let me set you up with a real drink, Mr. MacCallister. On the house, of course.”

  “I’m obliged, but what I’d really like is a good meal. Where’s the best place to eat in this town?”

  “Herbert’s Steak House, three blocks up and one to the right, is mighty good,” the bartender said. “Tell ’em Clancy sent you. That’s me.”

  “I’ll do that,” Jamie promised. He took one more look at Ralston, who was still sprawled on the floor, shook his head, picked up his rifle, and walked out.

  The room buzzed behind him as people talked about having seen the famous Jamie Ian MacCallister in action.

  He had never thought of himself as being any sort of famous personage, even though he was. He just went about his business and did what had to be done.

  As he stepped out onto the boardwalk in front of the saloon, movement to his left caught his attention. He stopped and turned that way, his right hand going to the Colt on his hip. His fingers closed around the gun’s grips, but he didn’t draw it.

  The bespectacled man who had run out of the saloon a few minutes earlier stood there. His face was pale and drawn, and he looked scared. He took an involuntary step back and held out his hands, palms toward Jamie. “Please, Mr. MacCallister! Don’t shoot me!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Jamie frowned at the stranger for a second, then took his hand away from his gun and said sharply, “Take it easy, mister. I’m not in the habit of going around shooting people unless they shoot at me first.”

  “That . . . that’s good to know. I mean you no harm, Mr. MacCallister.”

  Jamie grunted. The fellow was about half his size and didn’t look like any sort of gunslinger or knife artist. The chances of him being able to do any harm were about zero.

  Jamie wasn’t rude enough to point that out, however. “How you do know my name? You ran out of there before I said what it was.”