Christmas in Winter Valley

by Jodi Thomas

  He set the newly delivered mail beside him and pulled off his boots, but for once, he didn’t reach for a beer.

  The envelope drew him. It had several addresses crossed out and rewritten. What could be so important that a lawman had tracked him down to deliver it?

  Slowly, he opened the big battered envelope and pulled out a thick file folder.

  Moving to a wobbly, scratched table by a dirty window, he turned on the best light he had in the dingy room and shoved aside a half-dozen empty beer bottles. Slowly, as if something might pop out, he opened the folder.

  One piece of notepaper sat atop what looked like a yellowed journal.

  To Tyson Jefferson Franklin, only child of Jefferson Allen Franklin, only grandson of Adam Tyson Franklin.

  Tye smiled. He’d already learned something. He’d been named after his grandfather. His father had told him once that his old man had been an outlaw as well as a certified drunk. Tye’s dad would have known how to recognize a drunk—after all, Tye never remembered his dad sober. Legend was Adam Franklin ran drugs up from the border in the sixties and had killed more than one friend who’d turned on him.

  Some folks said he’d died in jail; others claimed he’d just disappeared somewhere south, near Big Bend.

  Tye didn’t care. Adam hadn’t been any more of a grandfather than Jefferson had been a father. Tye had been raised by his single mom, and he used to think of his old man as a horror vacation dad: once in a while he’d drop by and take Tye for a week, and while the planned trips always sounded grand, they never panned out. He’d forget to make a reservation, and they’d end up sleeping in the car, or whatever they’d traveled hours to see was closed. Once his grandfather had come along for the vacation, and it’d been a double disaster. The two had stopped in for a drink and ended up leaving Tye in the car all night and most of the next morning. Tye’s dad made no apology, but his grandfather brought him a pocketful of peanuts from the bar.

  Picking up the journal, Tye tried to figure out what would be so special that it had to be hand delivered. The notebook was just one of those cheap ones sold in school-supply aisles in discount stores. The pages had yellowed and the corners had worn away. The circle of wire that held it together was bent so badly it was hard to lay the book flat on the table.

  Still fighting the urge to reach for a beer, he flipped through the pages. He needed to be stone-cold sober to figure this out.

  He opened the first page and read.

  This is my last will and testament. I want my grandson to be the only person who goes beyond this page. I curse any other man who does.

  Adam Franklin

  June 1989

  Tye didn’t believe in curses. He didn’t even believe in luck, unless it was bad luck.

  Slowly, he turned the page and saw a pencil drawing. Open prairie with cattle grazing. The next picture was almost the same. Barbed-wire fence in the foreground, rolling hills in the background.

  He kept turning. The sketches began to look familiar. Small-town streets. A tiny post office. A big old two-story house. A town square built in a triangle. A café front with windows showing booths pushed up against them.

  Tye closed the book and went to bed. If this was his inheritance from his grandfather, it was worthless. From the looks of it, his grandfather had little talent.

  As he dozed, the black-and-white world in the notebook began to whirl in his head. Somewhere in his dreams the drawings became a town. A real place, not just sketches. It was like he knew his way well enough to walk the streets, even though there were no streetlights.

  Tye woke at dawn, his head hurting as usual. For once, he didn’t reach for a drink to self-medicate. He simply pulled on his boots and stepped out into the fall air. His hotel was across from the rodeo grounds, so his commute was easy. The last thing he needed to do for the job was check on the stock, then he’d make sure the rodeo was a go and his job was done. Another guy was due to take over when the rodeo moved on this time.

  An hour later he was finished and heading back to pack. Tye had drunk two cups of coffee and made sure the arena was dry enough for the rodeo to open. Usually he stayed around until it was over. Sometimes he even helped with loading the stock for their ride back to Colorado Springs.

  But this time, he had something else to think about. Somewhere else to be. He went back to his room and, with clearer eyes, looked through the pages one more time. Drawings of old houses. Ranch land bordered by a gate branded with a huge M. Horses running the fence line next to a dirt road. The sketches were primitive. Worthless. The setting could be anywhere on the plains. They could have existed a year ago or a century ago and they’d look the same.

  One comment was written in the middle fold along the edges.

  Follow the lone star. Find Dusty Roads. My gift to you waits.

  Tye thought of adding one more label to his grandfather: crazy. He’d only seen the old man a few times, and that had been when he was barely in grade school.

  Tye had been in his early teens when his mother told him the old man went to jail. A year later she mentioned that Tye’s dad had died. She’d never added details. When he’d asked, she’d simply said, “What does it matter?” His grandfather was in jail and his dad was dead.

  Why would a grandfather who’d never remembered a birthday or Christmas leave him a gift now?

  As he studied each drawing, he swore he’d seen a few of the scenes before. Maybe in Western magazines or posters on a wall. Or maybe he’d seen the real places the artist had depicted. But only one drawing gave a location, and even that just showed a Texas county-road sign with bullet holes shot through the metal.

  Lone star. The site of the drawings had to be in Texas.

  Another ranch gate was in the corner of a drawing. This one looked old, broken-down. But Tye could clearly see, outlined on the crossbar, what looked like a wild horse rising to fight.

  Maybe it’d be worth looking for, Tye thought. After all, he had nothing to do until spring, when the rodeos started up again.

  After an hour spent memorizing the drawings, he packed his gear into the bed of his pickup and made a sandwich with the two heels of bread and the last of the bologna. Time to drive south toward Texas. The notebook mystery was probably nothing, but Tye had time off and nowhere else to go. He’d start with ranch land where he’d been before. If the drawings looked familiar, maybe he’d get lucky. The brand on a gate might appear next to a dusty road and there, sitting in the middle of it all, would be a huge box. His gift. Fat chance.

  He didn’t bother with a map. He’d just drive until he got tired. Then, anywhere there was land and stock, he’d find work.

  It dawned on him that the artist was traveling through a place as he drew. Sometimes the corner ending one picture would appear in the next frame.

  A wide ranch gate framed one page. Tye had seen a dozen gates that could match the drawing. Maybe he’d drive until he found one.

  There were maps wiggling across a few pages of the book, but there was no starting point, no ending and no scale: markers like a stand of trees or a windmill could have been twenty feet apart or twenty miles.

  Tye finally closed the book, frustrated with himself for allowing a dream to form. You’d think after over twenty years on his own, he’d give up on dreams. There was no happily-ever-after.

  On the back cover of the notebook, scratched in the cardboard, words were written... Never stop looking.

  In a slit in the cover was a small yellowed newspaper clipping announcing one of Tye’s first wins at a little rodeo in West Texas. The second clue, maybe?

  If this had been written by his grandfather, who’d disappeared thirty years ago, and he was trying to tell Tye something, the memories had to be in Texas. Tye decided he’d head south toward Ransom Canyon. His grandfather had never lived there, but his two great-aunts, his grandfather’s younger sisters, had set
tled near there. It seemed as good as anywhere to start. Tye had cowboyed a few off-seasons on some of the ranches nearby. He figured he could find work there.

  It was the end of the season this far north, so he was heading that way, anyway. He had enough money to hole up for a while if he was careful.

  But being careful had never been in his vocabulary.

  The last time he’d seen his grandfather was in a little town somewhere in the Panhandle. His father had been working the oil fields, and Grandpa had taken Tye to eat at a fancy two-story house, then shopping for everything he thought a six-year-old needed.

  Tye flipped to the middle of the book. The two-story house.

  He’d start there. Find a ranch gate with an M. A two-story house that looked familiar. Maybe even find the rodeo ground where he’d won and made it into the paper.

  All he had to do then was find a dusty road and the gift his grandfather had left him.

  As he drove, Tye remembered a ranch owned by a family called Holloway. The Maverick Ranch. An M over the gate maybe. Too many drunk nights had washed away facts, but he’d start there.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  December 14

  Just after midnight

  Maverick Ranch

  ELLIOT HOLLOWAY STEPPED away from his U-shaped desk and stretched. Even with company for a couple of days, he’d managed to get in three hours of work every night. They’d slept off their flights the first night and shopped online until they were exhausted the second night. Tonight, boredom was setting in.

  He left his office and headed to check on his guests. Grinning, he decided he’d been the perfect host to his three, slightly tipsy, almost cousins. He’d settled their luggage in their rooms upstairs and shown them the kitchen, which was stocked with snacks. Then he’d pointed toward a supper of sandwiches and little cakes the cook had set out in front of the huge fireplace in the great room every night. What else could he do?

  As he’d walked away the first night, he’d said, “I’ll give you three time to relax. Have fun.”

  They hadn’t seemed that interested in much until he’d mentioned this morning that their UPS boxes were stacked in the foyer. From the squeals, you’d think it was Christmas morning, not two weeks away from the holiday.

  He’d left them to talk and open packages from stores he’d never heard of. According to his sister-in-law, the three went to schools in different states and always got together for a few days to catch up before they went home to their folks. This year, the Maverick Ranch seemed to be their private bed-and-breakfast of choice.

  Why they picked the Maverick Ranch was anyone’s guess. The short one with blond hair claimed she hated the outdoors.

  When he’d heard them laughing, he’d closed the big oak door to his office, not wanting them to think he was eavesdropping.

  Three hours later, without warning, he opened the doors to the great room and stepped into chaos. The main room, big enough to hold a dance, looked more like a lingerie boutique. If Cooper had still been around, he’d be having a fit. It appeared the three young ladies had turned the long coffee table into a runway. Bras were hanging from the antlers of the deer Cooper had shot one winter. Nightgowns were draped all over the two long leather couches, and tiny house shoes that weren’t designed for comfort or warmth were scattered everywhere.

  So much for his belief that they’d mailed books and games.

  The wide end tables had perfumes and all kinds of beauty products. One bottle had tipped over, and was dripping a green liquid onto the tile.

  None of this bothered Elliot. He was the sensible brother, he told himself. The old house had survived many parties. These ladies were his brother’s wife’s cousins. Griffin was crazy about Sunlan. If she said she wanted to go to Mars, he’d start packing, and if she wanted her cousins here, Elliot wouldn’t argue.

  Cooper would be yelling about now, but he’d vanished, the coward.

  That left him, the middle brother, the brains of the whole Maverick operation from ranching to oil to farming. Elliot knew what he had to do. He had to take charge. He locked his fists behind him and walked toward his guests as he kicked empty UPS boxes out of the way.

  The mess could be cleaned up, but what was he going to do with the three drunk cousins who’d invaded? They hurried to the kitchen to get more food and champagne. “We’ll be right back,” one said, while another announced that Elliot would have to join them in the fun.

  Elliot picked up the phone and dialed the bunkhouse as he walked toward the front door.

  Creed, the ranch foreman, answered. “Yeah, boss.” Creed never wasted words or time.

  “You got a few men mature enough over there to help me get three drunk cousins up the stairs?”

  “Can’t Dani help?” Creed’s answer was low and polite, but Elliot swore he could hear the cowboy groaning. “That sounds more like a housekeeper’s job than mine.”

  “She’s out with her two sons tonight celebrating.”

  “Celebrating what?” Creed asked.

  “Dani’s boys finally got jobs. At twenty, it’s about time.” Elliot glanced back at the three drunk fairies in satin and lace dancing into the great room. Their nightgowns, which didn’t even fully cover their bottoms, flowed around them like cotton candy.

  The pretty little blonde, who looked like the youngest of the three, was hiccuping in rhythm to the music. The tall redhead, obviously the leader of the pack, was singing off-key, and the third cousin, who had black-and-white-striped hair, had started doing yoga. At least, he thought it was yoga.

  He thought she’d said her name was Apple.

  They were in their twenties, but their brains must have stopped growing at sixteen. A triple dose of trouble.

  Creed’s next questions came through loud and clear in Elliot’s ear. “What idiot would give those two nitwits Dani gave birth to jobs? Together they’re about four hundred pounds of bumbling.”

  Now it was Elliot’s time to groan. “Me. I offered them both jobs. It’s better to have them working here than driving over every day to check on their mother. We’ll let them eat breakfast here in the headquarters’ kitchen, so they can see her, then I want them on the east pasture rounding up strays. I figure they’ll make it two or three days before giving up the hard work and going back home.”

  “All right, boss. The only thing those two boys can do is cowboy and they don’t even do that well. I swear I caught a couple of heifers giggling at them.”

  Elliot fought down a laugh. Creed’s sense of humor always got him. “Forget the brothers for now. I need a few good men to be perfect gentlemen to three drunk ladies.”

  Creed let out a huff, sounding like a deer blowing out the smell of humans. “On my way, boss. Oh, and a man showed up at sunset today, looking for work—I’ll bring him, too. Rodeo guy by the name of Franklin. He’s old enough to be their father. Maybe they won’t give him much trouble. He said he worked for us once before, years ago. He claims he’s good with horses. Don’t know about women. I told him he could join us for supper at the bunkhouse and sleep over tonight before talking to you about a job tomorrow morning. I figured you had your hands full tonight.”

  “You’re right.” Elliot glanced over his shoulder. The girls had started dancing in a circle as they passed around a bottle. “Grab the stranger and get here fast.”

  By the time he opened the door, he could hear help riding in.

  Elliot nodded at his foreman and the cowboy at his side as they swung from their horses. The newcomer named Franklin was thin, but solidly built, as only a man who’d lived in the saddle could be. When the tall cowboy nodded once, Elliot saw steel in the stranger’s eyes and guessed he could handle any job—even this one.

  “I’m Franklin, Mr. Holloway. Folks call me Tye.” The man’s hat looked expensive but well-worn.

  “Call me Elliot. There are enough Holloways around t
o use the mister. This chore isn’t going to be an easy one and it’s above and beyond normal around here, but I’d appreciate your help. Consider it a job interview. Or maybe just a favor you don’t owe me, but if you help, I’ll owe you one.”

  The new hand followed Creed inside, his wolf-gray eyes missing little, Elliot guessed.

  “Ladies!” Elliot moved to the double doors of the great room and yelled over the country music. “If you don’t mind, we’d like to escort you all upstairs to your rooms. It’s getting late and your music is keeping the cows awake.”

  All three women turned on him, looking like Victoria’s Secret models, pouting and preparing to rebel.

  Elliot glanced at Creed, but the foreman just stared. He was shy around women—even the middle-aged housekeeper, Dani. Creed, at twenty-six, was not much older than the cousins. These three ladies were way out of his league.

  Turning to the new man, Elliot raised an eyebrow, silently asking for suggestions, any suggestions. Sunlan would never forgive him if he was rude to her kin, and he wasn’t sure the room would survive an all-night party.

  The cowboy nodded slightly and stepped forward. “Evening, ladies. I’m Tye Franklin and I swear I’ve never seen such beauties. Royalty must run in your family, because three princesses are standing before me.”

  They giggled at his obvious line of crap, so he continued, “Would you do us the honor of allowing us to two-step you up to your rooms?”

  The redhead moved so that she was nose to nose with Tye. “All the way up, cowboy?”

  “All the way.” He smiled, and Elliot had no doubt this new man had charmed many a dance-hall beauty in his day. A slow grin crossed his sun-worn face.

  She laughed, a bit nervously.

  Without another word the stranger put his arm around the redhead’s waist and danced her around the room.

  She giggled. “A cowboy who can dance. A rare sight indeed.”

  Elliot offered his hand to the blonde with hair falling down her back to the hem of her nightgown. “You’re Bethany, right?”