A Texas Christmas

by Thomas, Jodi Jodi Thomas

  A blast of gunfire roared through the house like a freight train at full speed.

  Sam jerked, thinking he was dead and the pain hadn’t hit him.

  Gunfire answered from somewhere close and another blast rattled the walls.

  Then silence. Absolute silence. Sam wondered if this was what dying was like. Not painful or messy, just silent. His ears were ringing, but beyond that he heard nothing but his heart pounding.

  He opened one eye. If his heart was making so much racket, he couldn’t be dead.

  Sam looked around the room and saw nothing. The sheriff and the outlaw seemed to have vanished. The door was still open, cold wind blowing in along with bright light.

  Sam tugged at the ropes holding his hands and feet to the table.

  “You still alive?” A voice came from nowhere.

  Sam tried to see through the blood over his one eye that wasn’t swollen, but he saw no one. “I’m alive. Untie me.”

  A shadow moved across the light at the door. The boy in the doorway couldn’t be more than fifteen or sixteen. The buffalo gun he carried was bigger than him. Sam thought he looked like Dolton’s youngest kid, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “I had to kill them,” the boy said as he sat the rifle down and picked up Adler’s knife from the floor. “You should have seen what they did to my pa.”

  “It’s all right,” Sam said in a low voice. “You did what you had to do.”

  As the kid cut the leather straps, Sam tried to sit up. As he did, he saw the bodies of both the sheriff and the outlaw. They’d been standing on either side of the table. The boy had shot them both in the head, and the buffalo gun hadn’t left much of the skulls intact.

  “You look terrible, Sam Thompson.”

  Sam would have smiled if he didn’t hurt so badly. “You know me.”

  “Sure, my pa was always saying how he was going to ride over here and kill you one day. He hated you.”

  “You feel the same?” Sam coughed up blood.

  The kid shook his head. “I used to come over here and visit my sister when you were out. She said you were good to her. She said she wanted to have your baby ’cause you were a good man, and that’d make the baby good.”

  Sam tried to breathe. He wished Danni had told him that once. Half the time he felt like she thought she was trapped in his house.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Eben.”

  “Well, Eben, do you think you can get me to town? I’ve got an old sled that will hold us both.” Sam could see the room darkening and knew he didn’t have much time. “You’ll have to get there fast. I think I’m bleeding inside.”

  “You’re bleeding pretty good on the outside too, Sam.”

  The blackness claimed him before Sam could answer.

  Chapter 13

  Maggie waited at Nina’s for two days without word from Sam. She was afraid to try to go back to the house even though the snow was melting. Sam could be dead and they could be waiting for her.

  With each hour she felt safer knowing they hadn’t found the passage. Nina’s cabin was far enough down into the canyon that the sheriff wasn’t likely to come down, and even if he did, Nina had a plan to meet him at the door.

  The old woman kept telling her that Sam was still alive, but it made less and less sense. If he was alive, why hadn’t he come after her? He could have walked the passage and been here even with the snow and mud.

  On the third day, a tall man who had the same coloring as Sam knocked on Nina’s door.

  To Maggie’s surprise the old woman opened the door and yelled, “What’d you want, Andrew? I don’t have time to visit with no-good Thompsons passing by.”

  The tall man didn’t seem to take offense. “I come by to see if you got the boy. We didn’t find his body.”

  Maggie pushed past Nina. “What boy?”

  The tall man was ten, maybe fifteen years older than Sam, but he had the same dark eyes. He removed his hat. “Sam’s boy. When I saw Sam’s old sled headed into town I knew something was wrong. I know Sam don’t want no one in his business, but all his kin know about the boy. I followed him to the doc’s place in town. The Dolton kid was with him and he told me what happened. A man named Adler pretty near killed Sam, but the Dolton kid stopped it.”

  Maggie stood in the cold, trying to take in everything the stranger was saying. Sam was hurt, but he was alive.

  “Well,” Nina shouted. “What else, Andrew? I swear, getting anything out of you men is harder than milking a squash.”

  “I told the Dolton boy we’d bury his pa and whoever was in Sam’s house. Less said about it the better.” He stood swaying slightly like a tall pine, then he added, “It’s the Thompson way, I guess.”

  Maggie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “We have to let the law handle this. Three men have been killed, and at least one of them tried to kill Sam.”

  Andrew looked at her like she wasn’t too bright. “Town don’t have any sheriff right now. The men who killed old man Dolton are both dead. There is no one to try and no one to tell.”

  “Where’d you bury the bodies?” Nina asked as if the matter of telling was settled.

  “Over in the growth of trees between Dolton’s land and Sam’s. The ground was so frozen we couldn’t dig deep, but we covered them good with rocks. By the time the oldest boy sobers up in a week or two, the brother will have thought of a good story. Their pa was fond of taking off for parts unknown. As far as Adler, I doubt anyone will look for him, and the folks in town will just think the sheriff started his retirement early.”

  “I want to go to Sam,” Maggie asked. “Will you take me into town?”

  “I’ll take you home, but not to Sam. He wouldn’t want people seeing you come to him. He knows there would be talk. If he makes it through this, he’ll come to you. If he doesn’t, he wouldn’t want you to see him die.”

  Nina agreed. “No one needs to ever know you were here. That’s how Sam would want it.”

  Maggie hadn’t slept in two days. She was exhausted and frightened and worried. “What about Web?”

  “I’ll keep him here for a few days. You go rest. Sam will come to you as soon as he can.”

  Maggie could not bring herself to ask what would happen if Sam died. She couldn’t think about it without falling completely apart. As if watching her own life happen mindlessly, she wrapped in a black shawl of Nina’s and climbed up behind Andrew Thompson. He didn’t say a word to her on the ride to town or when he helped her off the horse at her back door.

  She climbed the stairs to her rooms and collapsed into bed. Sixteen hours later, she woke to the sun shining in. Like a wind-up toy, she moved about her rooms, taking a bath, dressing in the same dull clothes she always had dressed in, tying her hair back in a neat bun at the back of her neck.

  Her time with Sam seemed more a dream than reality. The dullness covered her as she cleaned the glass from the store floor and decided to leave the storefront boarded up for a few days. The sheriff must have kept his word and told everyone she was visiting friends because no one came by to check on her and no one expected the store to reopen until the new year.

  Every ounce of her body wanted to walk to the end of town and visit the doctor. If Sam was there, she told herself all she needed to do was see him and know he was alive. She didn’t even need to talk to him. But deep down she knew she wouldn’t be able to leave him if he was hurting or even dying, and she also knew he wouldn’t want anyone to know.

  Sam Thompson was a private man. Somehow if she told anyone her story of all that had happened since the robbery attempt, she’d be betraying him.

  Three days passed, then four, then a week. Maggie no longer measured time. She’d set her logical mind in motion. She’d wait for Sam to come even if he only came to say good-bye. If he died, she’d somehow find Nina’s cabin and take Webster. She’d sell the store and go back East where no one would know she wasn’t the boy’s natural mother. She’d live as a widow, for Nina was rig
ht—that was exactly how she would feel.

  On the third day of January, Maggie reopened the store. Christmas and the storm were over, though snow remained packed on most of the roads. Every woman in town seemed to need to shop. A few asked about her broken door, but none asked about how her Christmas had been.

  Midmorning Maggie was busy adding up purchases with both of her part-time employees restocking as fast as they could. Several women were shopping while an equal number just seemed to be visiting when suddenly a child’s cry rattled the store.

  Every mother reached for her children as a toddler shoved past ladies’ skirts and ran toward Maggie.

  She jumped from her stool and ran around the counter just in time to catch Webster.

  “Ma Ma,” he cried. “Ma Ma.”

  Maggie hugged him to her. “It’s all right, Webster. I’m here.” The sun had just come into her world.

  The mercantile was silent as a tall man walked slowly toward her. His arm was in a sling and she noticed his hat hid a bandage, but no man in the world had ever looked better. Even with a thick start to a beard, she saw only perfection.

  Maggie smiled at him and for a moment there was no one else in the room. The hunger and love in his eyes told her all she needed to know.

  Webster had stopped crying and was playing with the bun at the back of her neck. Though Sam only looked at her, Maggie became aware that everyone in the room was looking at him.

  “Ladies,” she said in a bold voice. “I don’t believe you’ve met my husband.”

  Before anyone could think of a question, Sam circled her waist and pulled her around the counter to her small office.

  He leaned over carefully as if he were still very sore and whispered in her ear. “You’ll need your coat. I’m taking my wife home.”

  Maggie didn’t hesitate; she turned to the coatrack and began pulling on her coat. The journal lay open on her desk to the page where she’d written One wish—a loving man for one day.

  “One day’s not enough. I’ll take a lifetime.”

  “A lifetime of what?” Sam asked.

  “Of loving you.” She smiled at him. “And of doing all kinds of things we’ll never speak of.”

  “I don’t want to play a game, Maggie. If you come with me it’s for real. Forever.” He kissed her again with Webster wiggling between them. “And I’m not taking the time to shave before I kiss you again.”

  “I’d like to go home now. It’s about time we had that Christmas we planned.” For the first time in her life, she feared her heart might explode. “The girls can handle the store until I get back.”

  Sam took her hand and led her out the back door where an old sled waited. “On the snow, we can make it home in this, but as soon as I’m able, I plan to teach you to ride.”

  “How hurt are you?”

  “Doc says I need several days of bed rest, so I thought I’d better come get my wife.” He winked at her.

  Maggie could hear all the ladies gossiping inside, but she no longer cared. After all, she was a Thompson now, and Thompsons keep to themselves.

  NAUGHTY OR NICE

  DEWANNA PACE

  To Karen Kay Williams:

  You are the epitome of what I think is best in a woman.

  You’re smart, you’re loving,

  and you don’t take crap off anybody.

  Love you, Sis.

  Chapter 1

  The Texas Panhandle

  Wednesday, December 21, 1887

  James Elliott III glanced up and squinted, finally noticing the angry grayish white clouds scowling on the northern horizon. Afternoon light had taken on an oddly brighter hue than what the morning offered, paling the prairie’s beauty. Snow clouds.

  Better watch out, he told himself as he rose from a bentknee position where he’d been digging in the prairie, or you’ll wish you knew a little more about keeping warm in Texas and a little less about its so-called legends.

  If he’d been paying attention, the drop in soil temperature the past few hours should have warned him that some kind of storm was brewing. But he hadn’t been. The excitement of knowing his search for the rosettes might finally be over had kept him absorbed and digging, ignoring caution.

  This was the place he’d been seeking from one end of Texas to the other since spring. He knew it. Felt it to the marrow of his bones. Victory was so close he could almost imagine the tiny red bulbs that, come spring, might bloom into the mythical buffalo clover of Texas legend—pink bluebonnets.

  All spring he’d found blue bluebonnets, even the somewhat rarer albino ones near the Alamo. A few of those had pink tips, but none were totally pink. A curandera, a half-Indian, half-Mexican medicine woman who had great knowledge of plants and herbs, had told him to seek the end of the buffalo trail and he would find what he sought, but to make sure it was what he truly wanted. He’d thought her mutterings odd at the time but found she had given sage advice. The last Indian uprisings had been quelled in the Texas Panhandle and the buffalo had met their end here on the Staked Plains of the Llano Estacado. Testing of the soil promised that this stretch of Texas might actually offer up the pink prize.

  James dusted the dirt from his hands, then stretched his fingers and long, lanky legs to ward off the cold settling into them. He loved the feel of working with his hands and had elected not to wear gloves to work the soil. He’d wanted no hindrance to come between him and the first touch of his sought-after treasure.

  Maybe finding your gloves and spectacles should be the first order of business, he told himself. James immediately patted the top of his head, remembering how many times he’d gone looking for his spectacles only to find them straddling the unmanageable dark tangle of curls he’d inherited from some family member he’d wished he’d known.

  Not there.

  He checked the lapel of his chambray shirt. No, he hadn’t hooked one edge of the wire frames into the lapel where it gathered at the neck as he sometimes did. Where had he put them? In the saddlebags with your gloves, he remembered suddenly, not wanting to leave them somewhere out in the prairie in case he got distracted. Up close, he simply saw better without them and, since he’d planned to work in the soil all morning, logic had said it would be better to put them where he knew he could find them.

  As he swung around, James’s breath suddenly rushed from his lungs and lodged midway in his throat. Where in God’s creation was his horse?

  He’d left him hobbled near the cottonwood tree so the roan could forage some of the fresh mint growing near it, but there wasn’t a tree in sight now. How far had he walked from his campsite that morning? The hours of the day ticked by in James’s memory and he realized that in his growing sense of excitement, he’d covered more of the rolling prairie on foot than he meant to. Absentminded, that’s what you are, he berated himself. Mister I’ll-Do-What-Nobody-Else-Can-Do. Now look at you. You’ve proven yourself nothing but a lost greenhorn.

  The reality of how deeply in danger he’d placed himself rooted James where he stood. He was out in the middle of nowhere. Wearing no coat. No gloves. All of those things and his spectacles were back at the tree with his horse. And . . . and it was a big and . . . he had no idea how far away he was from that tree or shelter.

  A snowflake kissed the tip of his nose. Another cooled his cheek, dissolving as the heat of his hand brushed it away. Suddenly, a gust of wind swirled around him in a dervish of snowflakes, chilling him to the bone at the strangely beautiful sight of dancing white death.

  “Better find the roan and save the beast from your stupidity,” he warned, his words now rushing visibly from his mouth as frosty wisps of air, “so you can do the same for yourself.”

  Snow eddies rushed ahead of the whiskey wagon making its way down the rutted path that led from Old Mobeetie near the Oklahoma border toward the town of Kasota Springs. Already, snow piled in drifts against any barrier that opposed the growing force of the wind. Not that there were many in the long stretch of treeless prairie. The team of four ox
en pulling the heavy load had slowed their steps considerably a couple of hours ago warning Anna Ross, their driver, that what she feared as possibility had become fact.

  A blizzard had set in. The snow clouds from the north had rushed faster than she’d expected to belch white fury upon the Texas Panhandle. The poor ranchers had barely survived last winter’s storms, the worst in Texas history. Now the fear of more to come sent a chill of foreboding through Anna, making her wish she could take her hands off the reins long enough to put another blanket over her lap and tug the yellow slicker she wore a little more securely up behind her neck.

  Jack had refused to stay beneath the blanket she’d thrown around them, insisting to cast his one-eyed attention at the poor beasts making their way home in a lumbering race alongside them.

  All morning she and her dog had watched cattle drifting down the two hundred miles of fence that the XIT ranch had built a year earlier to guide their stock home in case they wandered too far from food. For hours, the drift fence ran parallel to the wagon’s path. If she hadn’t already suspected the brewing storm would be a mighty one, the movement of the cattle trying to reach safety was evidence enough to warn of the approaching danger.

  “We should’ve taken the train,” she told the tiny goldenhaired dog sitting next to her on the driver’s seat, then called out encouragement to the oxen to keep pushing on. But if she had taken the train, she would have had to deal with all the fuss and bother with the people who were bringing in the new bell for the church steeple. And then there would be all those children on board headed for the orphanage. She just didn’t have it in her to see those sad little faces. It was hard anytime to see such need, but at Christmas, it broke her heart.

  No, taking the wagon to Mobeetie to fetch her saloon’s supply of whiskey for the winter had been the right thing to do. She’d make it right. Come hell or a high-winded blizzard.