A Big Sky Christmas

by William W. Johnstone

  Swint had figured out who was responsible for the loss of the loot, as well as where they had fled, and he had gotten on their trail like a bloodhound.

  “You followed us all the way from Kansas City?”

  “Damn right we did,” Swint said. “Took us awhile to realize where that money must’ve gone, and we’ve run into nothin’ but trouble chasin’ you boys down. Fever hit the whole bunch of us and laid us low for a while. Killed a couple of the fellas. But the rest of us got over it, and now we’ve caught up to you at last, you no-good thief.”

  “Listen to me, Eldon,” Bodie said, trying to make his voice as convincing as he possibly could. “I swear I didn’t have anything to do with taking that money. I gave up my share, just like I told you back in Kansas City. That’s the truth. All I wanted was to come with this wagon train.”

  “And be with your little whore of an actress.” Swint laughed as Bodie stiffened. “Yeah, I know all about her. If you don’t want somethin’ mighty bad to happen to her as well as you, you’ll tell me where the loot is.”

  “I don’t know. I swear I don’t.”

  Swint took the gun away from Bodie’s temple, but before the young man could react, Swint raked the barrel across the side of his head in a vicious swipe. Bodie gasped as he felt blood well from the gash that the gun sight had opened up.

  “I’ll kill you, you damn fool,” Swint grated. “You know that, don’t you?”

  It had been a mistake for him to ever think that Eldon Swint might not be as tough and brutal as he appeared to be, Bodie realized. The man was a ruthless hardcase, through and through, and would do anything to get what he wanted.

  “If I knew, I’d tell you, Eldon. I really would. But I can’t tell you something I don’t know.”

  “Where’s Lucas and the other two?”

  Bodie hesitated. If he sold out Jake, Mahaffey, and Pearsoll, it would be the same thing as signing their death warrant. Swint intended to kill them.

  But Swint intended to kill him, too. Bodie had no doubt about that. And he had threatened Savannah.

  “You brought the whole gang with you?”

  “That’s right, except for the two the fever took. They’re situated all around the camp, ready to open fire at my signal. We’ll lay waste to this wagon train if we have to, Cantrell. You better believe it.”

  Bodie believed it, all right, and with a sinking feeling inside him, he realized the situation was worse than he had thought. Swint wouldn’t want to leave any witnesses alive, and he wouldn’t pass up whatever loot he could find in the wagons. A cold certainty came over Bodie, colder even than the frigid winter temperatures in Montana Territory.

  Swint planned to wipe out everyone on the wagon train—Savannah, the kids, Moses, everybody—take everything of value from it, and probably burn the wagons behind him as a memorial to his evil.

  To give himself time, Bodie took a deep breath and sighed. He suddenly realized Swint’s mistake was not knowing who was accompanying the wagon train. He decided to go along with what Swint thought had happened. “Blast it, all right. I should’ve known all along that I couldn’t fool you, Eldon. But just for the record, it was Jake’s idea, not mine.”

  That was the truth, anyway.

  “That don’t surprise me none,” Swint said. “I always thought Lucas was a sneaky little snake. Show me where the loot’s hid and I’ll let you live. Lucas and them other two got to die, though.”

  “Fine.” The bitterness in Bodie’s voice was genuine even if the sentiment he expressed was not. “He never should’ve been greedy and gotten us into this mess.”

  “Damn right. Now move, and don’t forget that I’ll blow your brains out if you try anything funny. I don’t really need you. It’ll be easier if you show me where the money is, but I’ll find it one way or another.”

  “There’s a false bottom in one of the wagons,” Bodie said, his brain working furiously as he formulated his plan. It would take a considerable amount of luck to make it work, but he didn’t really have any other choice. “It’s over here.”

  With the gun still at his head, he stumbled toward the wagon where Moses was asleep.

  Moses . . . and Jamie Ian MacCallister.

  Jamie didn’t sleep as well as he once had. It was just part of growing older. The cold didn’t help matters, either. He felt it more as it seeped into his bones and made them ache and his muscles grow stiff. He was half-awake as footsteps approached the wagon.

  Something was off about them. The gait was wrong, causing Jamie’s instincts to warn him. Instantly, he was fully awake and alert. His hands reached out in the darkness and unerringly closed around the butts of the .44s he had placed where he could get to them easily.

  He rose up, a massive, bearlike shape in the shadows inside the wagon, and moved silently to the rear of the vehicle. Using the barrel of one gun, he moved the canvas flap aside slightly. Two men were coming toward the wagon, one of them stumbling slightly like he was drunk. The other man held his arm as if the first man had imbibed too much.

  As clouds moved away from the moon, Jamie saw the second man holding a gun and knew the first man wasn’t drunk. Something was very wrong.

  The first man said, “I’ll show you how to get into that false bottom in the wagon. The loot’s hidden there. You’ve got to give me your word, though, Eldon, that you and the rest of the gang won’t hurt anybody.”

  “Nobody but Lucas, Mahaffey, and Pearsoll,” the second man said.

  Jamie knew he was lying. He could hear it in the man’s voice.

  “Those double-crossers got to die.”

  “Fine, but you’ve got to get word to the men hidden outside the camp not to open fire,” the first man said.

  Jamie recognized the voice. It belonged to Bodie Cantrell. He was doing a good job of letting him know what was going on.

  “That’s enough jabberin’,” the other man snapped. “Anybody in that wagon?”

  “No, it’s mine. I took it over after the fella who had it died of a fever, too. The same sickness hit us. After that happened, I fixed up the false bottom and hid those sacks of double eagles in it.”

  “All right, open it up. I want to see that loot of mine . . . and then get down to business.”

  Killing business, Jamie thought. He could hear the bloodlust in the man’s voice.

  They were right outside the wagon. It was time to make his move.

  Jamie swept the canvas aside and bellowed, “Hit the dirt, Bodie!” He came out of the wagon like a whirlwind, both guns extended in front of him.

  Bodie rammed an elbow back into his captor’s body and twisted away just as Swint pulled the trigger. Flame spouted from the gun muzzle. Bodie cried out as if he were hit.

  Jamie didn’t have time to check on him. He was too busy killing the viper in their midst.

  Both .44s roared as he thumbed off shot after shot. Tongues of flame a foot long licked out from the gun barrels. Eldon was tough and stayed on his feet for a moment as Jamie’s bullets pounded into him. He even got another shot off, the slug whining harmlessly over Jamie’s head.

  Then the lead storm took its toll. Eldon went over backwards, shot to pieces.

  Jamie rammed the revolvers behind his belt, reached back into the wagon, and plucked his Winchester from the floor. He levered a round into the chamber as he shouted, “Preacher! Smoke! Outlaws around the camp!”

  He leaped over a wagon tongue and plunged into the night, ready to do battle. He didn’t know how many outlaws were hiding around the camp, but with him, Preacher, and Smoke going after them, to say nothing of Audie and Nighthawk . . .

  Well, however many there were, the varmints were outnumbered.

  They just didn’t know it yet.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  The next few minutes were flame-streaked chaos. Hidden gunmen opened fire on Jamie, and he returned the shots with deadly effect. He hoped all the immigrants were keeping their heads down while the fight raged.

  The battle r
inged the camp. Jamie heard a rapid fusillade of six-gun fire and figured that was Smoke Jensen getting in on the action. He didn’t think anybody else could keep a pair of hoglegs singing that fast.

  The Winchester’s magazine ran dry. As it did, a man leaped up from the ground nearby and ran at Jamie, thrusting out a gun, eager for a sure shot.

  Jamie ducked as the blast rang out, then stepped in to meet the charge. He drove the rifle’s butt into the man’s face and heard the satisfying crunch of bone. The outlaw dropped like a rock.

  “Jamie, look out!” someone called.

  Jamie twisted and crouched, and another shot blasted close enough he felt the heat from the muzzle. Before he could do anything else, Bodie appeared, the gun in his hand flaming. The outlaw who had nearly ventilated Jamie went down, twisted off his feet by Bodie’s shots.

  “Glad to see you’re all right,” Jamie told the young man.

  “Muzzle flash nearly burned my eyebrows off,” Bodie said, “but the bullet missed and that’s all that counts.”

  “You’re right about that. Let’s finish cleaning up these rats . . . and then you’ll have to tell me what this is all about.”

  Just as Jamie expected, the outlaws were no match for the fighting men from the wagon train. Hector Gilworth and Jess Neville had joined in the battle, too, and had given a good account of themselves. Jess might claim to be lazy, but he had tackled two of the gunmen in a fierce shoot-out and brought them both down, taking a bullet through his left arm in the process. Hector had gotten his hands on one of the outlaws and broken the man’s neck.

  Preacher, Smoke, Audie, and Nighthawk wiped out the rest of the gang in short order. They weren’t the sort of men who asked for or gave quarter, especially when faced with human vermin. By the time they finished sweeping in a big circle around the wagon train, the plains were littered with owlhoot corpses.

  Then, as Jamie had told Bodie, it was time for explanations.

  The main campfire in the center of the circle was built up until it was blazing brightly and casting light over the gathering. The first thing Bodie did was look around for Jake Lucas, Clete Mahaffey, and Dave Pearsoll.

  There was no sign of the three men.

  They must have realized what was going on and taken advantage of the confusion to slip away, Jamie decided once Bodie had revealed that they were all former members of Eldon Swint’s outlaw gang and spilled the story about the stolen loot.

  “I’m sorry, Savannah,” Bodie said to the young woman as she stared solemnly at him. A bloodstained bandage was wrapped around his head where Swint had pistol-whipped him. “I hoped you’d never find out about my past. I’m ashamed that I ever got mixed up with a bunch of owlhoots like that.”

  For a long moment, Savannah didn’t say anything. Then, “You could have told me, Bodie. I thought you trusted me more than that.”

  “I do trust you,” he insisted. “I just didn’t want you to think bad of me.”

  “I’ve seen what you’re really like these past weeks.” Savannah looked around at the rest of the immigrants. “We all have. You risked your life to save Abigail and Alexander. You’ve been a good friend to everybody on this wagon train. I’m sure you’ve made some mistakes, done some things you regret and wish you could take back . . . but everyone has. I know I have.” She shook her head. “But it doesn’t make me feel any differently toward you.”

  Relief washed over Bodie’s face. “Thank the Lord! I was afraid you’d hate me when you found out the truth.”

  Savannah shook her head, moved closer to Bodie, and laid a hand on his arm. “I could never hate you.”

  Jamie stepped between them and the rest of the crowd, putting his back to the two young people so they could have a moment of privacy as he addressed the group. “Hector, we need to get some horses and rope and drag those carcasses well away from the wagons. I reckon the wolves will take care of them after that.”

  Moses made a face. “Is it really necessary to deal with them in such a callous manner, Jamie?”

  “The ground’s too hard to dig a grave big enough for all of them.”

  Preacher added, “I wouldn’t be inclined to go to that much trouble for such a bunch of polecats, anyway. Nature’s got its own way of dealin’ with varmints like that, and I don’t figure on losin’ a second’s sleep over how they end up.”

  “What about those other three Bodie mentioned?” Smoke asked. “The ones who made off with that money to start with and started all this trouble.”

  A grim smile touched Jamie’s mouth. “I thought you and me and Preacher might take a little hunting trip.”

  “That sounds like a mighty fine idea to me,” the old mountain man said with a savage grin of his own on his grizzled face.

  “I told you we should’ve gotten far away from that wagon train a long time ago,” Clete Mahaffey groused as the three men rode through the dawn light.

  “Yeah, and you’ve said that how many times since we lit out?” Jake Lucas shot back at him.

  Dave Pearsoll said, “Look, we’re all lucky to be alive. If Swint had gone after us first instead of Cantrell, we probably wouldn’t be. We’ve still got the loot, so let’s count our blessings. We’re on our own now, and from the sound of the shooting back there when we rode out, at least some of Swint’s gang have to be dead. Maybe all of ’em if they went up against MacCallister, Preacher, and that Smoke kid.”

  Pearsoll had a point, Jake thought. If he was being really honest with himself, he had to admit that he had hung around the wagon train for as long as he had only because of Savannah McCoy.

  Even after the unsatisfying incident along the creek where the Bradford kids had been snatched by the Blackfeet, he had harbored feelings for her. Clearly, though, the little tramp was never going to see that she ought to be with him instead of Bodie, so staying with the wagons was a waste of time.

  Hell, he was a rich man, he mused. He could find all the willing women he wanted. Women a lot better looking than Savannah McCoy . . .

  He wasn’t convinced of the truth of that last part, but he could tell himself that, anyway.

  Fate had taken a hand and forced their separation from the pilgrims.

  Jake said, “You know, I’ve heard about a place over in Idaho we ought to look for, a settlement called Bury. From the sound of it, gents like us are welcome there.”

  “Bury?” Mahaffey repeated. “What sort of name is that for a town?”

  “Don’t know and don’t care, as long as that’s not what they do to us there,” Jake said with a grin. He didn’t feel too bad any longer.

  Sure, it was bothersome that Eldon Swint had trailed them all that way. But luck had been on Jake’s side, as it always was, and he was convinced that Swint and the other outlaws had been wiped out in the fighting around the wagon train. From here on out, he and his two pards could just enjoy life.

  He died with the grin still on his face as an arrow struck him between the shoulder blades with such force that its flint head drove all the way through his body and ripped out from his chest. Jake’s body toppled loosely from the saddle and hit the ground beside the spooked horse as shots, war cries, and, ultimately, screams filled the cold morning air.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Preacher sniffed the air. “I don’t know about you fellas, but that smells like snow to me.”

  The morning had dawned clear as Jamie, Preacher, and Smoke set out on the trail of the three outlaws, but thick gray clouds soon had moved down from the north, obscuring the sun and making the cold wind seem more frigid.

  “Yeah,” Jamie agreed with the old mountain man’s prediction. “Not today, I don’t reckon, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see some snow tonight.”

  “How far you reckon we are from Eagle Valley?” Preacher asked as he squinted at the sky.

  “Three days, maybe. I’ve known we were getting close for a while now, but I didn’t tell those pilgrims just yet.”

  Smoke said, “I’m pretty sure this is December twenty
-first.”

  The two older men looked at him.

  Smoke’s broad shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “Just pointing out that three more days will be Christmas Eve. You said you wanted to get there by Christmas, Jamie.” A rare smile touched the young man’s face. “You’re cutting it a mite close.”

  “Yeah, but Bodie and Hector will keep those wagons moving as fast as they can until we get back.”

  Preacher suddenly drew back on his reins and frowned. “Danged if I don’t smell somethin’ else now. And it ain’t nothin’ good, neither.”

  Jamie and Smoke reined in, too. Jamie took a deep breath, and his face was as grim as Preacher’s. “Gun smoke.”

  They hadn’t heard any gunfire. Whatever had happened was over, leaving only faint traces in the air.

  All three men drew their rifles and laid them across the saddles in front of them, then rode forward, still following the tracks. The trail led over a gently rolling hill. As they crested it, they brought their mounts to a halt again.

  About a hundred yards in front of them, at the bottom of the grassy slope, lay three bloody, huddled shapes that had once been human.

  Jamie took a pair of field glasses from one of his saddlebags and used them to study the dead men. They had been scalped and mutilated. The blood that covered their faces was already freezing in the cold air.

  “Is that the three we’re after?” Smoke asked.

  “Just going by what’s left of them, that’s hard to say,” Jamie replied. “But I recognize the clothes. That’s Lucas, Mahaffey, and Pearsoll, all right.”

  Preacher said, “From the looks of ’em, they run into a bunch of Blackfeet. Might be the leavin’s from those war parties we scrapped with awhile back.”

  Jamie grunted. “Let’s take a closer look.”

  They rode forward, eyes constantly scanning the landscape around them for any sign of an attack. Jamie spotted a double eagle lying on the prairie and pointed it out.

  “The Blackfeet scattered that money those fellas had with them,” he said. “They let the earth have it. That’s their way of showing it didn’t mean anything to them.”