A Big Sky Christmas

by William W. Johnstone

  He had been receptive to the idea right away. “There’s a spot for you in the company to which I belong, Gillian dear. All you have to do is say the word and I’ll speak to the director. We’ll soon be leaving on an extended tour, and I’m sure he’d be willing to take you along.”

  “I don’t know, Terence. Leaving home seems like such an extreme step. . . .”

  They were sitting on a bench in one of Savannah’s lovely, gracious parks. The city hadn’t suffered as much damage in the Late Unpleasantness as Atlanta and Richmond, for example, and these days it looked much the way it had before the war.

  With so many people around on the bright, beautiful day, Terence had to be discreet, but he reached over and rested his hand on Gillian’s. “I want you to have a chance to fulfill your dreams, my dear. How about this? Perhaps a small role in one of our productions while we’re performing here in Savannah? That would allow you to see what the theater is really like, firsthand.”

  The idea held great appeal for Gillian. And the thrill that went through her when Terence’s hand pressed warmly against hers made her long for the opportunity to get to know him better.

  All she had to do was convince her father. . . .

  Bringing up the idea led to a war on a much smaller scale, but no less passionate. The two of them had gone around and around about it for more than a week, and finally it was too late. The troupe had left the day before, continuing on to the next stop on their tour—Nashville.

  But Gillian had a plan, and the final confrontation with her father convinced her that she had no choice but to go through with it. She wished that she could tell her mother she was leaving, but she knew if she did, the older woman would just try to talk her out of it.

  Gillian couldn’t blame her for that. She wouldn’t have wanted to be left alone with William Thorpe, either.

  Her father always retired early. He had very lucrative interests in a shipping concern, a bank, and a number of warehouses, and he liked to be at his office before anyone else in the morning. That way he could see when all the employees arrived . . . and the ones who made a habit of being later than William Thorpe thought appropriate would pay for their tardiness.

  Gillian knew that if she waited until her father was asleep, he wouldn’t be aware of what was going on until it was too late to stop her. She had already checked the railroad schedule and knew there was a train for Nashville leaving at ten o’clock.

  She packed a bag, taking as little as she thought she could get by with, then slipped stealthily down the rear stairs and out of the house.

  CHAPTER NINE

  It was frightening to walk to the train station in the darkness. Her heart was in her throat the whole way. But people who never took risks never accomplished anything worthwhile in life, she told herself, and she clung to that thought for strength as she made her way to the depot.

  Once she was there, she ran into an unexpected obstacle. She had plenty of money, but there were no compartments available on the train. She had to purchase a ticket that allowed her to sit up in one of the regular passenger cars.

  It was a frightening ordeal, and it lasted a lot longer than the walk to the station had. Several of the male passengers leered at her as she made her way to her seat, and she knew what they were thinking. An attractive young woman, traveling alone . . . well, there was only one sort of woman she could be, as far as they were concerned. She sat stiffly and avoided their eyes, hoping that her chilly demeanor would be enough to keep any of them from approaching her.

  Atlanta, Chattanooga, the whole trip was just a blur to her. She didn’t dare let herself go to sleep so she was utterly exhausted by the time the train pulled into Nashville in the middle of the next day. But she had made it, and all she had to do was find the hotel where she knew the acting troupe was staying.

  Hansom cabs were lined up outside the station, and she had brought enough money with her to afford one. The driver knew the hotel, and when they got there Gillian was surprised to see that it was rather rundown. She would have thought the troupe would stay somewhere better.

  She went inside and inquired at the desk for the number of Mr. Flanagan’s room. The clerk gave her a smug, knowing smile that irritated her, but he told her the number. Gillian climbed to the third floor and knocked on the door.

  At first she thought Terence must be out, perhaps at the theater, because no one answered. But then a thick voice said, “Whass . . . who . . . hold on.”

  That was Terence, or at least she thought it was. She heard him muttering curses under his breath as he approached the door.

  Then abruptly he jerked it open and stood there wearing only the bottom half of a pair of long underwear. His hair was in disarray, his face was puffy and flushed, and his eyes were bleary. Obviously, he had been sleeping, and before that he’d been drinking . . . a lot.

  But he recognized her and exclaimed, “Gillian! My God. I’d given up on you. Finally worked up the gumption to run away from the old goat, eh?”

  Before Gillian could answer, a woman’s voice said, “Terence? Who is it?”

  He half turned, so Gillian could see past him into the hotel room. A woman with tousled blond hair was sitting up in the bed, holding the sheet around what was apparently her nude body.

  “Look who’s here, darling,” Terence said to her. “That young ingénue I was telling you about. Come on in, Gillian, and I’ll introduce you to our leading lady. I’m sure the two of you will enjoy getting to know each other.”

  Gillian was too shocked and stunned to move. It was like her feet were nailed to the floor. What had happened to Terence? All his charm and sophistication had disappeared, leaving only crudeness behind. She couldn’t believe she had left her home and come all this way, only to find that he . . . he . . .

  “Come on, Gillian,” Terence said, sounding a little impatient. “It’ll be all right. We’ll take good care of you.”

  Gillian turned and ran down the dingy hotel corridor, her bag bumping against her leg. Terence stepped into the hall and called out behind her, but she ignored him. The blond woman said something else, and he went back into the room and closed the door.

  If the trip from Savannah had been a blur, the next few minutes were even worse. Gillian wasn’t sure how she made it back downstairs and out of the hotel. She had no idea what she was going to do. She could go home, of course, but if she did she would have to listen to her father browbeat her about her foolishness for the rest of his life. She knew he would never let her forget it.

  But what else could she do? She was hundreds of miles from home, in a city where she didn’t know anyone, and she was scared and desperate. . . .

  She didn’t see the well-dressed older man until she bumped right into him on the sidewalk outside the hotel. She might have fallen if he hadn’t reached out and caught hold of her arm to steady her.

  The elegant-looking woman with the man said worriedly, “Are you all right, dearie? You look like you’ve had quite a fright.”

  “No, I just . . . I was going to join an acting troupe . . .”

  The man wrinkled his nose. “Not Flanagan’s Players, I hope. They’re a sorry lot, if I do say so myself. Den of iniquity and all that. Not the least bit professional, like O’Hanlon’s Traveling Company.”

  Gillian shook her head. “I . . . I’m afraid I’m not familiar with them.”

  “Are you an actress?”

  “Well . . . I want to be.”

  The man was wearing a top hat, which he swept off and held in front of him as he performed a half-bow. “Cyrus O’Hanlon, at your service, miss.”

  The woman with him laughed.

  “This is my wife, Dollie. If you’d care to discuss joining our troupe, we’d be glad to talk to you. We can always use another player. If you’re truly devoted to your craft, that is.”

  “I hope I would be. I think it would be wonderful to be an actress.”

  “Well, you’ve got a lot to learn,” Dollie O’Hanlon said. “But if you
throw in with us, at least you’d be learning around decent folks. Not like that lecher Flanagan.”

  Gillian swallowed hard. Her father was right about one thing. She really did believe in destiny and other romantic notions like that. “I think I might like that.”

  “What’s your name, dear?”

  Gillian had thought about that. When her father found out that she was gone, he might hire detectives to look for her. She didn’t want to be found, didn’t want to return home until it was on her own terms. She had decided that she ought to use a different name to make it harder to find her. But she hadn’t settled on a name.

  She had no time to ponder the question further. She glanced across the street at McCoy’s Hardware Store, thought about her hometown, and put a smile on her face as she told the O’Hanlons, “Savannah McCoy. My name is Savannah McCoy.”

  And so it had been ever since, until even she thought of herself by that name, through performances in countless towns and in Kansas City as the troupe ran through its dress rehearsal before the opening performance, which was the next night.

  She had been lucky. That hotel in Nashville had catered to the theatrical trade, and the O’Hanlon Traveling Company was staying there, too. Cyrus and Dollie had gone out to eat and had been returning to the hotel when she literally ran into them.

  She’d gone with them to the troupe’s performance that night and been welcomed by all the members of the company. Cyrus liked to say that they were like a family and he was the paterfamilias, and it was true. Romantic notion or not, Savannah felt like she had found a home with them.

  She couldn’t imagine anything changing that, at least not any time soon.

  It would take a new twist of fate, a new rendezvous with destiny, to do that.

  She figured she was through with such things.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Jamie went back to the hardware store where he had left Sundown and the pack horse tied to the hitch rack. Nobody had bothered the animals, which came as no surprise to him. When anybody but Jamie approached the big sand-colored stallion, Sundown got proddy. Any time he bared his teeth and started moving around skittishly, folks tended to make a wide circle around him.

  “That’s an impressive-looking horse,” Moses Danzig said as he looked at Sundown with admiration.

  “He’s mean as all get out,” Jamie said bluntly. “But he’ll run all day if he has to. Run until his heart busts if that’s what it takes. He’s got as much grit as any horse I’ve ever seen.” He handed the pack horse’s reins to Moses. “Here, you can lead this one. He won’t give you any trouble.”

  They headed for the open area where the immigrants were camped. As they approached, Jamie heard loud, boisterous music. It sounded like several fiddlers were scraping their bows across the strings of their instruments with great enthusiasm, if not a great deal of talent, and the lively tune made Jamie’s blood perk up. He had always enjoyed dancing, although he hadn’t done any in quite some time.

  Not since before Kate died, actually.

  He put that thought out of his mind and watched the couples spinning and whirling around near the big campfire in the center of the area between the circled wagons. People who weren’t dancing had gathered around to watch, too. They clapped in time to the music and called out encouragement to the dancers.

  Not everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves, though. Jamie noticed one man standing off to the side with a glare of disapproval on his stern face. He was tall and heavily built, with a barrel chest and prematurely white hair that grew in a tangle on his head. He wore a sober black suit, and his big hands rested on the shoulders of two children who stood with him—a boy and a girl about ten years old. Jamie looked closer at the resemblance between the youngsters and realized they were twins.

  Jamie turned to Moses and nodded toward the glowering man. “Who’s that? Not your wagon captain, I hope.”

  “No, certainly not. That’s Reverend Bradford. He’s on his way to Montana, too, with his children. I’m afraid he doesn’t approve of the dancing and has made that clear to Captain Hendricks. He says it’s sinful for men and women to cavort around together like heathens. But the captain thinks it’s good for the group’s spirits to have these little celebrations of life from time to time.”

  “Is that what they’re celebrating? Just life in general, nothing in particular?”

  “Well, in this case,” Moses explained, “there’s another reason. There was a wedding earlier today. R.G. Hamilton married Alice Dennison. R.G. is one of the single men traveling west—or at least he was—and Alice is the daughter of one of the immigrant families. They’re a fine couple and an excellent match, and everyone is happy about it.”

  “Except that fella Bradford,” Jamie said with another nod toward the preacher.

  “Oh, he doesn’t mind the marriage. Actually, he performed the wedding ceremony. He just doesn’t like dancing . . . among other things.”

  From the sound of that comment, Jamie thought that Moses didn’t get along very well with Reverend Bradford. He didn’t pursue that question, however, since it was none of his business.

  As the three fiddlers—two whiskery old-timers and a skinny, gangling man who was much younger—came to the end of the merry tune they had been playing, people laughed and applauded. One couple seemed to be at the center of the dancers, and Jamie ventured a guess that they were the ones who’d gotten hitched earlier.

  Moses confirmed it, then pointed out the wagon train captain. “There’s Captain Hendricks.” As the musicians took a break and the immigrants began to mill around and talk he nodded in Hendricks’s direction. “Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

  Lamar Hendricks was a tall, fair-haired man with a rawboned, middle-aged face under a broad-brimmed brown hat. He wore a brown leather vest over a homespun shirt. As the two men approached him, he said, “There you are, Moses. I was starting to wonder what had happened to you. Where’s Mr. Ralston?”

  “That’s an, um, interesting story, Captain,” Moses replied. “By the way, this is Jamie Ian MacCallister. He’s quite a famous frontiersman.”

  Hendricks grunted. “Is that so?” Obviously, he hadn’t heard of Jamie. He held out a hand. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. MacCallister.”

  “You, too, Captain,” Jamie replied with a nod as they shook hands.

  Hendricks turned back to Moses. “Were you not able to find Mr. Ralston?”

  “Oh, I found him, all right. But there’s been . . . an accident. Mr. Ralston is injured.”

  A look of alarm instantly appeared on Hendricks’s face. “An accident? What sort of accident?”

  Moses looked pretty uncomfortable at the prospect of answering that question, so Jamie saved him the trouble. “I broke the varmint’s leg.”

  Hendricks’s eyes widened in surprise. “Why in the world would you do something like that?”

  “Because he was trying to do the same or worse to me.”

  Moses said, “Mr. Ralston attacked Mr. MacCallister, Captain. I found him in that saloon he frequented, just as I feared I might. He had been drinking heavily. When Mr. MacCallister disagreed with him about something, Mr. Ralston started a fight. I saw the whole thing. Mr. MacCallister was only defending himself. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Well, maybe not,” Hendricks said with a frown, “but don’t expect me to be happy about what you did, MacCallister. We were counting on Jeb Ralston to get us to our new homes in Montana.”

  “Then you were counting on a drunken bully,” Jamie said, not mincing words.

  Hendricks controlled his anger with a visible effort. “You’ll have to excuse me. I need to start figuring out what we’re going to do now. We have to find another wagon master as quickly as possible.”

  “You see, that’s just it, Captain,” Moses told him. “I’ve asked Mr. MacCallister if he would consider guiding us to Montana Territory.”

  Hendricks looked surprised again, and still angry. “You had no right to do that, Moses.
I’m the captain of this wagon train. We need an experienced guide—”

  “Ask around town,” Moses suggested. “Mr. MacCallister is a famous frontiersman, much more well known and respected than Mr. Ralston. And probably much more capable of leading the wagon train to Montana, I suspect.”

  “No offense, MacCallister,” Hendricks said grudgingly. “I’m not aware of your reputation.”

  “I never asked for a reputation,” Jamie said. “Just to be left alone to live my life. But I don’t control what folks say about me. I can tell you one thing—setting out for Montana this late in the year is a mighty foolish thing to do, and I’d bet this old hat of mine on that.”

  “We have no choice.” Hendricks’s voice was as stiff as his back seemed to be. “We can’t afford to wait for spring. Besides . . . I promised everyone that we’d be in our new homes in Eagle Valley by Christmas.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t make promises you can’t deliver.”

  The air of tension between the two men was thick. Moses stepped in. “In your opinion, Mr. MacCallister, what would it take for us to reach our destination in time?”

  “Well, you’d have to leave pretty quick,” Jamie said. “First thing tomorrow morning, if you can.”

  Hendricks shook his head. “That’s impossible. It’ll take at least another day to finish making repairs on our wagons.”

  “Day after tomorrow, then,” Jamie said. “And you may wish later on you had that extra day back.”

  “What else?” Moses asked.

  Jamie’s eyes narrowed in thought. “You’d have to push hard, and I’m talking about livestock and human folks as well. The days on the trail would be mighty long ones, from as soon as it’s light enough to see in the morning until it’s too dark to go on. Under normal circumstances, you could afford to stop and lay over for a few days every now and then, mainly to give the stock some time to rest. If you leave now, you can’t risk doing that. You’ll have to push on every day without any breaks. By the time you get there, your teams will be worn down to a nub . . . and so will most of your people.”