An Arizona Christmas

by William W. Johnstone

  “Ain’t no way of knowin’ that! There could be a hunnerd of ’em right out there, fifty yards away, and we wouldn’t know it! We can’t see ’em!”

  That was true. It was like the only part of the world that still existed was a small, ragged circle about fifty feet across, surrounded by flying sand. That was as far as Mike’s vision could reach.

  He felt the coach shift and looked around to see Smoke climbing out. In lithe, athletic fashion, Smoke put a foot in the window, pushed himself up, and swung onto the coach’s roof.

  “Any of the horses hit that time?” he asked as he knelt there.

  “I don’t think so,” Scratchy replied. “None of ’em broke stride or seem to be laborin’ any more ’n you expect under the circumstances.”

  “How well do you know this part of the country?”

  “Well, that’s hard to say, seein’ as I don’t really know where we are! We’re a long ways off the reg’lar trail, though. Ain’t much of anything in these parts, as far as I recollect. Plenty o’ sand and rock, some ridges and a few gullies and dry washes. Here and there a mesa or a pile o’ rock big enough to be called a mountain.”

  “If there’s any shelter, that’s where we’ll find it.”

  Scratchy nodded. “Yeah, there might be a cave in the side of a hill, maybe an overhangin’ bluff, somethin’ like that. If it’s just enough to break the wind, I’ll sure be grateful for that!”

  “Sooner or later it’ll be night. We need to find a place to hole up before that.”

  “You ain’t tellin’ me anything I don’t already know, Mr. Jensen! We can’t travel after dark. Too much chance of drivin’ right into a gully and bustin’ this ol’ coach into a million pieces!”

  Scratchy kept the team moving, and Smoke remained atop the stagecoach. Mike was glad to have another pair of eyes to help him watch for more Apaches.

  Once again, the raiders seemed to have faded away. Mike didn’t trust that for a second. They had broken off their attack before, only to come back and try again. They were certainly capable of showing up a third time.

  After what seemed like an endless amount of time, Smoke leaned forward with his head between Mike’s and Scratchy’s and said, “I think I see something up ahead. There’s some sort of... dark line.”

  Mike squinted. “I see it, too, Mr. Jensen. Scratchy, can you tell what it is?”

  “Could be a ridge,” the jehu said. “It’ll be pure luck if there’s a cave in it we can use, though.”

  Smoke muttered something, and Mike asked, “What did you say, Mr. Jensen?”

  “Pure luck . . . or a miracle,” Smoke repeated.

  “I’ll sure take it, either way!” Scratchy leaned forward, slapped the reins against the backs of the horses, and yelled, “Come on, you varmints! Not that much farther, and then you’ll be stoppin’!” He added grimly, “One way or the other!”

  Time really had no meaning inside the storm, but it seemed to drag terribly anyway as the horses plodded on and the coach rocked and creaked. Every joint in its suspension would need oil once the ordeal was over, or the sand might make them seize up.

  That was assuming, of course, the coach and everybody in it didn’t wind up buried under a mountain of sand.

  The dark line Smoke and Mike had spotted thickened and turned into a bluff about forty feet high. The top of it bulged out, but not enough to offer any shelter. The bluff’s face was pitted sandstone.

  Scratchy hauled back on the reins and exclaimed disgustedly, “Son of a—! So much for a miracle!”

  “There might still be someplace we can get out of this storm,” Smoke said. “Anyway, we can’t get over this bluff, so we might as well drive along beside it.”

  “Yeah, but which way?”

  “Mike, why don’t you and I get down and explore a little on foot?” Smoke suggested. “I’ll go one way and you can go the other. With the bluff to guide us, we won’t get lost as long as we don’t get out of sight of it.”

  “Just don’t stray off where you can’t see it,” Scratchy warned. “Then you’d likely never find your way back here.”

  “I don’t much like splitting up like that,” Mike said with a frown.

  “Neither do I,” Smoke agreed, “but we can cover twice as much ground that way. Preacher and Scratchy will still be here to protect the passengers if the Apaches come back.”

  “Sounds like our best bet, Mike,” Scratchy said. “Just be careful.”

  “All right. How far do we go?”

  “No more than half a mile or so,” Smoke said. “Can you make a good guess at that?”

  “Yeah, I grew up out here. I can tell how far I’ve gone . . . although this storm might throw me off some!”

  “Do the best you can.” Smoke climbed down part of the way and then dropped to the ground.

  Scratchy and Mike clambered down from the box.

  Smoke pulled back the broken door and leaned through the opening to explain to the others what he and Mike were going to do. Mrs. Bates was sobbing quietly as George sat beside her, patting her shoulder every now and then. Catherine was pale and drawn and scared, but she seemed to be fighting to hang on to her composure and succeeding for the most part.

  Tom Ballard said, “Is there anything I can do to help, Mr. Jensen?”

  “I reckon under the circumstances, you might as well call me Smoke, Tom. No need for formality once fellas have fought side by side. Best thing you can do is stay here and lend a hand to Preacher and Scratchy if they need it. Probably not a good idea to have more than two of us out wandering around in this mess.”

  Catherine untied the bandanna she had around her mouth and nose and held it out to Smoke. “Here, Mr. Jensen. You’ll need this more than I do.”

  “Thank you, miss,” he told her with a smile.

  Preacher asked, “You sure you know what you’re a-doin’?”

  Smoke laughed. “No, but that’s never stopped me before, has it?”

  Sally leaned closer to him. “You be careful, Smoke. Don’t get lost in this . . . this insanity.”

  “Shoot, I’ve never been lost in my life.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

  “Yeah. Sometimes I wasn’t sure how to get from where I was to where I wanted to go, but I always knew where I was. That means I wasn’t lost.”

  Sally laughed softly, shook her head, and leaned forward to press her lips against his. It was the sandiest kiss they had ever shared, but that didn’t make it any less sweet to Smoke.

  He couldn’t linger. He straightened and saw Mike waiting beside the horses. The animals’ heads drooped with exhaustion. Like the rest of them, the horses were near the end of their rope.

  “You ready?” Smoke asked.

  “Yeah, I—”

  Catherine stuck her head out the door and called, “Be careful, Mike!”

  Mike looked like he was about to take a step toward her. He had to be thinking about a good-bye kiss, too, but he settled for nodding. “I sure will. Don’t you worry, now. We’ll be back soon with good news.”

  “I’ll be counting on it,” Catherine said.

  Smoke and Mike walked toward the bluff. They didn’t have far to go before it towered over them. When they reached it, Smoke asked, “Which way do you want to go?”

  “I reckon one way’s as good as the other, isn’t it?”

  “As far as I can tell,” Smoke replied with a shrug.

  Mike pointed to the right. “I’ll go this way.”

  “Good luck.” Smoke held out his hand, and the two men shook.

  Then they turned away from each other, started along the sandstone wall, and were soon lost to sight in the storm.

  CHAPTER 28

  Smoke didn’t like being parted from Sally, especially in circumstances where both of them were in danger. He wasn’t the sort to brood about such things, though. Action was what would save them.

  He stayed close to the bluff as he walked, bent forward slightly to help him push into the
wind. The sand stung his face, and he was glad Catherine had given him back the bandanna. He wished he still had his hat, but that was long gone. He kept his eyes slitted as much as he could and still see where he was going, but the grit still got in there. His eye sockets felt like they were lined with the stuff.

  After a while, he paused and looked back, but of course he couldn’t see the stagecoach. It was long since out of sight. He rested for a moment and then went on.

  The sand was starting to drift against the bluff, just like snow would have. The thick layer of it made the going harder. Smoke slogged onward. The air around him was almost the same color as the bluff, so he reached out from time to time to brush his fingers against the sandstone, just to make sure he hadn’t wandered away from it.

  He was trailing his fingertips along the bluff when suddenly they weren’t touching anything anymore.

  Smoke stopped and turned toward the rock. He could have encountered just a tiny irregularity. He reached out farther and still didn’t feel anything. The bluff seemed darker to his tortured vision, too . . . because it wasn’t there anymore.

  The entrance to a cave was before him.

  Smoke’s heart slugged heavily in his chest as he realized it might be the life-saving shelter they’d been looking for. He stepped inside it to explore and find out.

  The cave mouth was twelve feet wide and maybe ten feet high. Not big enough for the stagecoach, but that didn’t matter as long as the people and the horses could crowd inside. The gloom was even thicker than it was out in the terrible sandstorm.

  He fished a lucifer out of his pocket and snapped it to life with his thumbnail. The wind blew out the match almost immediately, but in the brief flare of light Smoke saw that the cave widened out inside the entrance and extended at least several yards inside the bluff, deeper than the match light had reached.

  Keeping his right hand on the butt of his Colt, he used his left to strike another lucifer. He cupped it inside his palm to protect it from the wind, and the match burned for several seconds, showing him the cave had no other occupants. He’d been concerned there might have been a rattlesnake den or maybe a cougar or some other wild animal harboring inside. The cave appeared to be empty and about twenty feet deep—enough room for everybody. And even though the air was still sandy, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it was outside. A person could breathe in there without choking.

  Satisfied that the cave would provide sanctuary, Smoke left it and headed back toward the stagecoach. If Mike hadn’t returned by the time he got there, he thought, he would send Scratchy, Preacher, Sally, and the others to the cave while he waited for the young shotgun guard.

  He hoped Mike hadn’t run into any trouble.

  * * *

  Mike carried his Winchester in his right hand and reached out fairly often with his left to touch the face of the bluff. He could see it, of course, only a few feet away, but his eyes ached so much from the sand that he didn’t fully trust his vision. The rasp of the sandstone against his fingertips was reassuring, even though he felt a little like a blind man fumbling his way along.

  He thought about Catherine. In a way, he would have rather stayed back with the stagecoach so he could comfort her and reassure her that everything was going to be all right. But such reassurances would be hollow. He didn’t know how things were going to turn out. The odds were that they would all die in the hellish storm, either from being suffocated or from the Apaches coming back and killing them. He would do Catherine more good in the long run by finding some place where they could hole up and get some shelter from the storm . . . as well as a place they could defend if the Apaches attacked them again.

  He supposed she wished her cavalry officer fiancé were there. He would take care of her. Some shotgun guard who risked his life for wages he could barely scrape by on couldn’t really compete with an officer and a gentleman. Anyway, even though she had been polite and even sort of friendly to him, Mike told himself not to mistake that for anything else. She was just a nice young woman who’d treated him kindly, that’s all.

  She sure was pretty, though. He couldn’t get her face out of his mind. Her image seemed to float in front of him, clear despite the blowing sand, and it drew him on.

  Abruptly and with no warning, the image was replaced by a visage twisted with hate that lunged at him.

  The Apache attacked in silence, no shrill war cries. He swung some sort of war club at Mike’s head. Mike brought the rifle up in time to block the blow, but the impact shivered all the way up his arms and knocked him back a step. While he was already off balance, the Apache thrust a moccasined foot between his ankles and jerked.

  Mike fell backwards as his legs were swept out from under him.

  The Apache couldn’t restrain his excitement at the prospect of killing a white man. He let out a little yip as he sprang after Mike and raised the club. It flashed downward.

  Mike threw himself to the side in a desperate roll, hanging on tightly to the rifle. The club swept past his ear and hit the ground. He lashed out with a kick that landed on the raider’s left knee. The Apache staggered back a step and fell.

  Mike swung the rifle around, but his finger didn’t tighten on the trigger. He hadn’t seen or heard any other Apaches, but that didn’t mean they weren’t out there close by, unseen in the flying sand. The sound of a shot would bring them running.

  He thrust the Winchester’s barrel forward like a spear, aiming for the Apache’s throat, hoping to crush the man’s windpipe.

  The Apache jerked aside. The rifle barrel jabbed him in the left shoulder. The blow had to be painful, judging by his grunt, but it hardly incapacitated him. He twisted and slashed at the rifle with his club, striking it on the breech with such force that the weapon was jolted out of Mike’s hands.

  Both men scrambled up at the same second. Mike could have grabbed the Colt still in its holster, but he still wanted to avoid a shot if he could.

  The Apache came at him, swiping back and forth with the club. The man was limping, Mike noticed. He figured his kick to the knee had done some damage, but it wasn’t enough to slow down the Apache very much. Mike had to retreat from the flailing club.

  He realized an instant later that was exactly what the Apache wanted him to do. By backing up, he had given the man room enough for his next move. The Apache snatched a knife from the sash tied around his waist and flung it at Mike’s chest.

  Mike dived to the side, but not quickly enough to completely avoid the flying blade. Its keen edge ripped across the outside of his upper left arm and felt like fire as it sliced through the duster and the shirtsleeve and bit into his flesh. Mike ignored the pain as best he could and ducked as the Apache renewed his attack with the club. It went over Mike’s head, missing by only a couple inches.

  Taller and heavier, Mike dived forward, tackling the raider around the waist and bulling him off his feet. The man had such wiry strength trying to subdue him was like wrestling a wildcat. They rolled back and forth on the ground, struggling for control of the club as Mike wrapped his hands around the weapon.

  The Apache tried to knee him in the groin. Mike writhed away from the blow and took it on his thigh. The Apache lunged against him and bit him on the shoulder. The duster was enough to protect him from the man’s teeth. Throwing the Apache toward the ground, Mike let go of the club, slammed his hand against the side of the Apache’s head, and forced his face into the sand drifting up along the bluff.

  He bucked hard and threw Mike off. Mike caught himself and lunged back to the attack almost instantly. Having lost the club, the Apache reached for it with his left hand. Mike dived over the Indian’s back, grabbed his wrist, and rolled, twisting the man’s arm until he heard a sudden pop and the Apache yelled in pain. Mike knew he had just pulled a bone out of its socket somewhere in the man’s arm.

  The Apache wasn’t going to let that stop him. His left arm hung uselessly at his side, but he used his right fist to slam a punch against Mike’s jaw. The blow jolted Mike’s
head back and made his vision blur for a second, even more than the flying sand had already obscured his sight.

  The Apache rammed into Mike with both knees and that right fist. Mike rolled onto his back and tried to grab hold of the man so he could fling him off. The Apache was bare from the waist up, though, and even in this sandstorm he was too slick with sweat for Mike’s hands to get any purchase. The sweat and sand had combined to coat his skin with a layer of slippery mud.

  A knee dug into Mike’s midsection and made him gasp for air as he tried to double over. He struck out desperately, blindly, but most of his punches missed and the Apache shrugged off the ones that didn’t. Mike’s head was spinning, and he knew he was on the verge of losing consciousness. He had to risk a shot or the Apache was going to overpower him.

  If that happened, it would be a death sentence. Mike had no doubt of that.

  He fumbled for his gun. His holster was empty.

  The Colt had slipped out sometime during the fight.

  As that horrifying realization made Mike’s insides turn cold and hollow, the fingers of the Apache’s good hand clamped around his throat like bands of iron and began to squeeze the life out of him.

  CHAPTER 29

  When Smoke first came in sight of the coach, it was just a dark hulk up ahead, visible and then gone again as the swirling clouds of sand shifted. Figuring he was within earshot, he lifted his voice and hailed the others, not wanting Preacher and Scratchy to get itchy trigger fingers as he walked up. “Hello, the coach! Preacher, it’s me! Hello!”

  Smoke’s jaw tightened when there was no response. Was it possible that the Apaches had found the stagecoach and slaughtered everyone on it without him knowing? That seemed unlikely. He couldn’t bring himself to believe that anybody could sneak up on Preacher and kill him without Preacher at least getting a shot off.

  Then he heard the familiar voice calling, “Howdy out there, Smoke! Come on in! Ever’thing is fine!”

  A wave of relief went through Smoke. He hurried on toward the vehicle where Preacher and Scratchy were waiting outside. Preacher had taken his Winchester from the boot and held it in his hands.