A High Sierra Christmas

by William W. Johnstone

  Smoke took a deep breath. “Well, then, I reckon I’ll have to go by myself.”

  This time, the sound that came from the giant was definitely a growl, not an attempt to say his name. He added, “No! You stay here!”

  “My son and daughter are out there, as well as some other innocent people.” And a couple not so innocent, Smoke added to himself as he thought about Frank Colbert and Alma Lewiston. “I have to help them.”

  “Too much snow! And it’s night. If you go out in it, you’ll die!”

  Smoke’s heart sunk for a moment at the news that another night had fallen. That meant his children and the others would have to survive in their crude shelter until morning. They might make it, if they were able to find enough firewood, but the odds against them were high.

  He wasn’t sure even Earl could find his way around in the snow-clogged darkness, though. He said, “I’m going to crawl through that tunnel and take a look outside.”

  Earl shook his shaggy head. “No!”

  Smoke squared his shoulders, looked directly at the giant, and said, “You can’t stop me. You won’t stop me . . . if you’re really my friend. And we shook on it, remember?”

  Did Earl retain enough of his humanity for that symbol of their pact to mean anything to him? Smoke didn’t know, and there was only one way to find out. He swung around, crossed quickly to the tunnel, and dropped to hands and knees.

  He halfway expected Earl to grab one of his legs from behind, but that didn’t happen. Smoke glanced over his shoulder and saw the man standing there with his head hanging, obviously at a loss what he should do.

  Smoke didn’t waste any more time. He crawled into the tunnel.

  An icy wind blew in his face. There were small openings in the cave ceiling to carry away the smoke from the fire, and those created a draft. The tunnel curved, and that cut off the glow from the flames and caused darkness to close in quickly around Smoke. He kept moving anyway.

  After a few moments he felt more on his face than the wind. Tiny cold jabs against his skin were snowflakes being whipped into the tunnel. That meant he was getting close to the outside opening.

  It was so dark in the tunnel—and so dark outside—that Smoke didn’t realize he had reached the end until his head stuck out into the full force of the wind. He pulled back and stared into the void with the bleak realization that Earl was right. No one could find their way around in that, not even the exiled giant. Accepting that was a bitter pill for Smoke to follow, but he had no choice.

  The tunnel was too narrow for him to turn around, so he backed up until he emerged once more into the cave.

  Earl was sitting down now, on the other side of the fire with his back against the wall. His head lifted when Smoke crawled in and stood up.

  “You came back.”

  “That’s right. I don’t desert my friends.”

  That seemed to have an effect on Earl. He frowned for a long moment, then said, “In the morning . . . we will find your friends. We will take them to the hotel. But I won’t go there myself. I’ll show you, and when you see where to go, I will leave and come back here.” A pathetic note entered his voice as he added, “Please don’t tell them where to find me. They will hunt me. They will hurt me.”

  Smoke shook his head. “I give you my word that won’t happen, Earl. And thank you for agreeing to help me and my children and my friends.”

  Earl opened his mouth to say something, hesitated, and then said, “They may be frozen by morning.”

  “I know,” Smoke said. “But I’ll never give up hope.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Denny was right: the branches she had found to use as firewood didn’t last long. And as the flames began to die down, the heat they generated went with them.

  “We’ll tear out the bench in the middle of the coach,” she decided. “If we can break it up, that’ll last us for a while. Where’s that ax?”

  She noticed that Jerome Kellerman looked relieved that she hadn’t brought up burning whatever was in his case. But it might still come to that, she thought as she fetched the ax from the boot.

  “I can do that,” Stansfield offered as Denny crawled back into the lean-to with the ax. He held out his hand for it.

  Denny hesitated, then gave the tool to him. Might as well let the reporter try to be useful. She watched from the door as he climbed into the coach and started chopping away at the bench.

  “We need to bust it into fairly small pieces,” she told him. “It’ll last longer that way.”

  “I understand. It’s a good thing your father left you here with us, Miss Jensen. You seem . . . unusually competent.”

  “Ha! Competent for a woman, you mean?”

  “That’s not what I said. But you have to admit . . . you’re not the sort of typical female that one usually meets.”

  “Nothing’s typical about Jensens, mister. You’d do well to remember that.”

  Stansfield chopped through the bench, then started working on breaking off a smaller piece. In the light from the fire outside, Denny saw that his face was covered with sweat, despite the cold. Being a fellow who made his living with words, he probably wasn’t used to such hard physical labor.

  She pulled herself up into the coach, took hold of the ax handle, and said, “Here, let me work on it for a while.”

  “I’m all right,” Stansfield insisted. He was pretty breathless, though.

  “Just sit down and rest for a few minutes.”

  He did so, and Denny turned her efforts to the bench. She hacked off a piece of wood and leaned out of the door to hand it to Salty.

  “That’ll burn for a little while.”

  “It sure will,” the old-timer agreed. “Hate to damage ol’ Fred’s stagecoach—the thing means a lot to him—but I reckon he wouldn’t want us to freeze to death.”

  Denny went back to work, using the ax to cut partially through the bench in places. Then she and Stansfield were able to pry those pieces loose. The boards were fairly thick and would burn slowly.

  Denny began to think they might make it through the night after all.

  All day, the storm had made it seem like twilight outside. As actual night began to fall, the darkness thickened and closed in, the wind howled even harder, and the feeble spark of light and warmth from the fire inside the shelter seemed like a tiny flicker of life in an endless abyss of nothingness.

  Denny kept feeding pieces of broken wood from the bench into the fire. She looked around, saw that everyone had dozed off except for Salty. Louis and Melanie lay with Brad between them, keeping the boy warm. Colbert and Alma were cuddled together, too. Stansfield and Kellerman were asleep, wrapped up in thick robes that hadn’t been used for the shelter, but they shivered a little in their slumber.

  “Smoke’d be proud of you, if he could see how you’re keepin’ these folks alive, Denny,” Salty said quietly.

  “You’ve done your share to help, too,” she told him.

  “Yeah, but you’re the one who’s willin’ ’em not to give up. I reckon if not for that, some of ’em would’ve laid down and died before now, instead of layin’ down and goin’ to sleep.”

  “Speaking of that, we don’t need to let any of them sleep for very long. It’s too easy to freeze to death without even knowing it while you’re asleep.”

  Salty nodded. “Good idea. I’ll wake ’em in a bit.” He paused. “You can get some rest if you want.”

  “I’m all right,” Denny replied with a shake of her head. “I’d rather keep an eye on the fire.”

  Her eyelids were getting heavy, though, and the drowsiness continued to steal over her. Realizing that, she looked around for something to keep her awake. Her gaze lit on the leather case Kellerman kept with him at all times. One end of it was sticking out from under the robe wrapped around the middle-aged banker.

  Denny found herself wondering if he had hold of it right now. Could she reach over there and slide it out from under the robe without disturbing him? Maybe, she decided,
but she had no right to do such a thing, and she knew it. Under normal circumstances, the thought wouldn’t have crossed her mind. Right now, the main reason for it was that she wondered if what was inside would burn and help keep them warm.

  While Denny was musing about that, she fell asleep without knowing it.

  * * *

  The sun was a rich, warm yellow as it flooded over the patio at the villa in Italy Louis’s grandparents had rented for the summer. He sat in a comfortable chair and drank in the heat and the fragrance from thousands of flowers blooming in the gardens spread out on the hillside below. He felt wonderful, and at this moment, it seemed like nothing could ever go wrong with the world.

  Then he woke up to cold, dark desperation and tried not to groan as he realized he’d been dreaming. He wanted to escape back to that Italian villa . . . but he wanted to take Melanie and Brad with him.

  Louis lifted his head and looked around. The fire was still burning, but it had died down quite a bit and the flames might be in danger of going out. Brad’s head was pillowed on his left arm, which had gone numb under the weight.

  Carefully, so as not to disturb him, Louis shifted Brad just enough to slide his arm free. Then he sat up and flexed it to get some feeling back into it.

  A couple of feet away, Denny slept as she leaned against the stagecoach’s rear wheel on this side. Salty had dozed off, too, and the others all appeared to be sound asleep. Louis knew the fire needed to be fed.

  Out of habit, he paid attention to the way his chest felt before he did anything. His parents and Denny probably had no idea he always did that, but he had learned to check his condition before proceeding. It only took a second.

  No tightness or pain in his chest. He leaned forward and reached across Denny to pick up one of the pieces of broken board from the destroyed coach seat. He worked one end of it into the fire and watched as the flames danced around the wood. After a few moments, curls of smoke appeared, and then a tiny orange-red flame danced along the board’s surface.

  Louis watched until the board was burning well and the heat it was generating took a little of the edge off the chill in the lean-to. Then he pulled back the canvas to look out.

  There was nothing to see but darkness. Cold air whipped in, and snowflakes whirled in its wake. Quickly, Louis closed the gap.

  He stretched out again and looked past Brad at Melanie. Even under the strain of this harrowing ordeal, she was beautiful. He watched her sleeping and thought about how much he had come to care for her, even though he had known her only a few days. Melanie didn’t have the obvious stubborn determination of his sister, Denny, the female he had been around more than any other, but he sensed that she had a core of strength, especially where her son was concerned.

  Louis’s gaze moved over to Frank Colbert. Anger welled up inside him. Colbert’s actions were directly responsible for the deadly danger that threatened all of them, including Melanie and Brad, and Louis couldn’t shake the image of Colbert holding a gun to the head of the frightened little boy. He wanted to smash a fist into the outlaw’s face.

  Of course, he was no match physically for Colbert. The man could break him in two. Not for the first time in his life, Louis wished he were as big and powerful and courageous as his father. If he were, he could give Colbert the good beating that the man deserved.

  Such wishes were those of a child, Louis told himself. He was a grown man. Not much of one, maybe, but a grown man, regardless.

  Time crawled on. Whenever Louis saw the fire burning down, he added another piece of board to it. The pile began to concern him as it dwindled.

  He frowned as he looked at Jerome Kellerman’s case. The man was a banker, on his way to Reno for business, so the case was almost certainly full of ledgers or something like that. Pages ripped out one at a time would make a nice fire, Louis thought, and their lives were more important than any numbers that might be entered on those pages.

  Without thinking about what he was doing, he reached over and took hold of the case where it was sticking out from under the robe Kellerman had wrapped around himself.

  Kellerman came awake instantly, as if the mere act of Louis touching the case had sprung a trap of some kind. “Thief!” he bellowed. “Get away! Thief!”

  The shouts jolted everyone else out of sleep. Stansfield let out a startled, incoherent yell. Kellerman reared up, tightened his grip on the case, and jerked it away from Louis, who had never really gotten a good hold on it. The lack of resistance caused Kellerman to fall over backward.

  The case popped open. Bundles of cash fell out and scattered across Kellerman’s lap, falling close to the flames. He gasped in horror and scrambled after them, his pudgy hands shooting out with frenzied speed to retrieve the money before it could catch fire. He gathered the bundles to him like they were precious children.

  Something else fell out of the case. Louis’s eyes followed it as it landed on the ground. He wasn’t experienced enough with guns to recognize what make it was, but he knew a revolver when he saw one. A hand reached out and closed around the checkered, hard rubber grips.

  The gun came up with Frank Colbert holding it.

  * * *

  Denny was groggy from sleep. She might not have intended to doze off, but she had descended into deep slumber despite that.

  Now people were yelling and Kellerman was lunging around like some sort of white-haired lunatic and a gun skittered across the ground until somebody grabbed it up. . . .

  Colbert!

  That was crazy. His hands were supposed to be tied. But somehow he was loose, and he had the gun in his hand. That was enough to make Denny leap at him and grab his wrist with both hands. Time enough for questions later.

  Denny shoved Colbert’s arm up. The revolver roared and the bullet tore a hole in the lean-to’s canvas cover. Colbert brought his left fist around and slammed a punch against Denny’s jaw. The blow drove her against Alma Lewiston, whose hands appeared to be still tied behind her back. Alma tried to writhe around and get Denny beneath her so the younger woman would be pinned there.

  Louis grabbed Alma and wrestled with her. Denny managed to hang on to Colbert’s wrist. She tried to lift a knee into his groin, but he shoved her leg away and then caught her by the throat. He rammed her head against the coach wheel.

  That stunned Denny. Her fingers slipped away from Colbert’s wrist. He started to bring the gun to bear on her, but another shot blasted and splinters flew from the coach’s body a few inches away from the outlaw. Colbert shoved Denny down, threw himself over her, and rolled out of the shelter, his foot catching on one of the robes and dragging it with him. The canvas landed in the flames and caught fire.

  Colbert kicked free, lunged to his feet, and bolted away from the stagecoach. Denny was surprised to see by the gray light that dawn had come again, but it didn’t really matter. The snow was still coming down so hard that Colbert was out of sight in a few steps.

  Denny grabbed the burning shelter and threw it in the snow. The flames sizzled out. She didn’t know if enough of it remained to salvage, but they would have to try. They needed the protection it had given them.

  The fact that Colbert was out there—and armed—didn’t escape her. He was a definite threat. But just as she couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see them to shoot at them, and she didn’t believe he would waste the bullets in the gun by blazing away blindly.

  “Damn it, girl, are you hurt?” Salty asked. He was the one who had taken that hurried shot at Colbert. Smoke still curled from the muzzle of the gun in his hand. He pouched the iron and came over to her.

  “I’m fine,” Denny said, although her jaw ached where Colbert had punched her. She’d have a good bruise there, she thought, but at least nothing was broken.

  She turned to Alma Lewiston, who lay there glaring up at her, and said, “You untied him, didn’t you? You just pretended to be asleep all night, but really you turned enough to get your hands on his ropes and worked on the knots the whole time!”

/>   “That’s right, I did, you bitch,” Alma said through clenched teeth. “And I wish he’d shot you! He will when he comes back to get me.”

  Denny laughed. “Comes back to get you? Have you lost your mind? Colbert’s not coming back. He’s going to wander around out there in the blizzard until he freezes to death. He’s probably completely lost already. And even if he isn’t, he’s not coming back for you. He’s gotten what he wanted from you. You turned him loose, and that’s all he cares about.”

  “You’re wrong,” Alma said. “You’ll see.”

  “All I see is that we’re in one hell of a mess.” Denny turned from Alma to Jerome Kellerman, who was still gathering up bundles of bills and stuffing them back in the case. “You! You had a gun in there all the time. You could have shot Colbert when he took us all prisoner.”

  “Why would I do that?” Kellerman demanded with a scowl. “I’m no fast gun cowboy like your father. He would have killed me, and I just want to survive this trip, confound it!”

  “And we all saw why you’re so anxious to survive,” Louis said dryly. “All those funds that were being kicked around the fire wouldn’t happen to belong to the bank you used to work for, would they, Kellerman?”

  “It’s none of your business who they belong to.”

  “I ain’t sure about that,” Salty said. “Looks like we been travelin’ with two crooks—we just didn’t know it.”

  Denny said, “None of that is important right now. What matters is that those bills will burn, and they may be all that keeps us alive until my father gets back with some help.”

  Kellerman drew back with both arms crossed over the now-closed case, holding it tightly against him.

  From her position leaning against one of the wheels, Alma said, “Jensen’s never coming back, you little fool. You’re so sure Frank’s going to freeze to death. Well, your father has been a block of ice ever since last night!”

  Brad surprised them all by saying, “You be quiet, lady! Mr. Jensen can do anything he sets out to do. No ol’ blizzard is enough to kill Smoke Jensen!”