A Big Sky Christmas

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Historical Fiction; Holiday books; Westerns

Synopsis

Outlaws, snowstorms, rugged terrain—nothing will stop them from making it to Montana Territory in time for Christmas . . . “A masterful storyteller.” —Publishers Weekly

From the masters of frontier fiction comes a holiday tale set in the very heart of America—a Western saga of courageous souls coming together, with a little help from the Jensen family . . .

In the fall of 1873, a wagon train of immigrants sets off from Kansas City, Missouri, bound for the Montana Territory. Leading the group is newly elected wagonmaster Jamie Ian MacCallister, a giant of a man and frontier legend who swears he can get them there by Christmas—come hell or high snow drifts . . .

Plagued by brutally harsh storms and rugged terrain, outlaws and hostile Indians, the journey will be the greatest challenge these pioneers will ever face. But when things look nearly hopeless, help arrives in the form of two unlikely saviors: an old mountain man known as Preacher and legendary frontiersman Smoke Jensen. Two hard-willed men who believe in the settlers' dreams with all their hearts—and who will get them to their destination by Christmas. Even if it takes a miracle . . .

Release date: November 1, 2013

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 417

Sample

Kansas City, Missouri, 1873

People stood aside from Jamie Ian MacCallister. His sheer size alone would have prompted most folks to get out of his way. He was a head taller than most men and had shoulders as wide as an ax handle was long. Despite the fact that he was getting on in years, the comfortable old buckskins he wore bulged with muscles. Strength and power radiated from him.

Anybody who wasn’t intimidated by how big he was might take a look at the weapons he carried and conclude that he was a man to step lightly around. Holstered on his hips were a pair of Colt .44 Army revolvers, the Model 60 conversion. Tucked under his left arm was a Winchester “Yellow Boy” rifle, also in .44 caliber. A hunting knife with a long, heavy blade rode in a fringed sheath behind the right-hand gun. Jamie was, in the parlance of the time, armed for bear, and those weapons would kill a man even quicker and easier than they would a big old silvertip grizzly.

But size and weaponry aside, the real reason most folks naturally left Jamie alone was the intensity of the gaze that came from his deep-set, eagle-like eyes. Those piercing orbs peered out from under shaggy brows and dominated his craggy, unhandsome, but powerful face. They had seen everything, the eyes seemed to say. Seen the elephant and then some. When angered, they could turn dark and threatening as a thunderstorm rolling across the prairie.

The thing of it was, when folks got to know him, Jamie’s eyes could twinkle with humor or shine with compassion. He was every bit as big and rugged and dangerous as he looked, but his greatest strength was the magnificent frontiersman’s heart that beat in his massive chest.

At the moment, he was striding down one of the streets in Kansas City, taking a look around on a beautiful, crisp autumn afternoon. He had visited the town before, but it had been awhile. The place had grown quite a bit from the rude frontier settlement that had started life as a fur trading post known as Chouteau’s Landing. It was an honest-to-God city and even had a railroad bridge that had opened a few years earlier spanning the Missouri River.

Civilization, Jamie thought. He didn’t mind it as much as some of the old-time mountain men did, but despite its advantages it would never be able to hold a candle to the prairies, the mountains, and the deserts of the West where he had grown up and lived his life.

He had left his rangy, sand-colored stallion Sundown and his pack horse tied in front of a general store to take his pasear along the street. He passed a big open area where dozens of covered wagons were parked. The teams were gathered in a large corral nearby.

Men worked on the vehicles, making repairs on things that had broken during the first part of their journey. Women stirred cook pots simmering on campfires. Soon it would be time for supper. Kids ran here and there, playing and enjoying not having to be in school like their peers who were tied down to one place.

A lot of immigrants traveled by train these days, since the completion of the transcontinental railroad a few years earlier, but there was still plenty of country where the trains didn’t go. If somebody wanted to settle in one of those places, they had to travel by wagon, the same way other pioneers had done for decades.

Jamie supposed these pilgrims were on their way somewhere, although he hoped for their sake that their destination wasn’t too far off. It was awfully late in the year to be starting a long trek anywhere. Travelers shouldn’t cross the plains after winter settled in.

A group of riders jogged past him in the street. He glanced over at them, the longstanding habit making him take note of everything that happened around him. A man who had made as many enemies as he had over the years needed to keep a close eye out for trouble. That was one reason he’d stayed alive as long as he had.

The riders looked like they might be trouble for somebody, all right. There were about twenty of them, all roughly dressed and well armed. Even though Jamie had never seen any of them before, he recognized the sort of hard-planed, beard-stubbled faces they bore. Drifters, hardcases, maybe out-and-out owlhoots.

He felt an instinctive dislike for the men, fueled by the damage similar hombres had done to his family, but as long as they steered clear of him, he wouldn’t bother them.

One of the men said, “My mouth’s so dry I’m spittin’ cotton, Eldon. How many saloons are we gonna ride past before we get to one that suits your fancy?”

The man riding slightly in the lead of the group turned in the saddle to frown at the one who had spoken. He was a tall, rawboned man with a lantern-jawed face and tufts of straw-colored hair sticking out from under a black, flat-crowned hat with a concho-studded band.

“Just keep your shirt on, Jake,” he snapped. “We’ll stop when I’m good and ready, and if that don’t suit your fancy, you know what you can do about it.”

The man called Jake grinned and held up a hand, palm out. “Whoa. Didn’t mean any offense. You know I’m fine with you callin’ the shots.”

“You better be. It’s worked out pretty good so far.”

“That it has,” Jake agreed, but Eldon had already turned back around and was ignoring him.

The group rode on down the street.

Jamie continued on his way, too, forgetting about the hardcases. In the next block, he paused to tip his head back and study the big fancy sign that stretched along the front of the building where he had paused. In gilt letters, it read CHANNING’S VARIETY THEATER. The building was fancy, too, with two stories and a lot of elaborate scrollwork and trim on its front. It had double doors with a lot of glass in them and a window where people could buy tickets to go inside.

Posters had been tacked up next to the ticket window announcing that a troupe of actors and entertainers headed by that noted thespian Cyrus O’Hanlon would be performing at the theater. Troubadours and terpsichoreans would put on a show, according to the poster, and after a moment Jamie figured out that was a highfalutin’ way of saying singers and dancers. The troupe would also perform excerpts from famous plays through the ages, ranging from Sophocles and Aristophanes to the immortal bard of Avon, William Shakespeare himself.

There were pictures of the various players, including several women. Jamie knew that most people considered actresses to be little better than whores, an attitude that had always irritated him because one of his daughters was an actress and she was as fine a young woman as anybody would ever want to meet.

He might take in the show while he was in Kansas City, he told himself. If he stayed around long enough. Never could tell when he might take the notion to just up and go.

That was what he’d been doing for a while.

Drifting.

Ever since he had finished the grim chore of avenging his wife Kate’s murder.

Over the course of several years he had tracked down and killed forty-four members of the gang of outlaws responsible for Kate’s death. It had been a long, hard, bloody road he had followed, and the taking of it had drained something from him.

When his quest had come to an end, he could have returned to MacCallister’s Valley in Colorado and settled down to live out his life on the ranch there, surrounded by his and Kate’s children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. It would have been a quiet, comfortable life.

But that wasn’t Jamie Ian MacCallister’s way.

He had stayed home for a while, long enough to visit with all the young ones, then he’d slapped a saddle on Sundown, the horse he’d gotten from his son Falcon. Some folks considered Sundown a killer horse, but he and Jamie had come to an understanding and the stallion had served the big man well.

From Colorado, he had set out on a journey of memory, determined to revisit many of the places where he had been in his long life, places that were important to him. He’d started out by riding all the way down into East Texas, to the place where he and Kate had been married, where their first child, a daughter named Karen who hadn’t survived infancy, was buried. Knowing that he might never get back there, he had found the grave site, carved a new marker for it, and said his final farewell to his little girl.

Then he’d turned Sundown’s nose west, an appropriate direction considering the horse’s name.

On across the Southwest he’d gone, adventuring a mite along the way. Then a great loop to the north and back down the Great Plains. Jamie had considered going all the way to St. Louis, then decided that Kansas City was far enough east for him. He could resupply there and he and Sundown could rest for a few days, then they would head back to Colorado.

Assuming something more interesting didn’t come along first.

Dusk was settling down over Kansas City and lights were being lit in most of the buildings. None were brighter than those in the Bella Royale Saloon. The place was so big it took up an entire block, with its entrance situated on one of the corners. Gaily colored lamps hung along the boardwalks on both streets that flanked the double doors.

As Jamie paused to watch, a fellow in a swamper’s apron went along lighting those lamps with a long match. Even though the doors were closed, Jamie could hear music and laughter coming from inside the place. Obviously, folks had a good time in the Bella Royale.

He had planned to return to the store where he had left his horses, put in an order with the proprietor for a load of supplies, and then ask the man for recommendations of good places to eat and sleep, as well as a livery stable where his animals would be cared for properly.

As he looked at the gaudy saloon, though, he realized that he had a thirst. It wouldn’t hurt anything to wash some of the trail dust out of his throat before he got around to those other things, he decided.

Once Jamie had made up his mind, he didn’t wait around. He strode across the street, opened one of the doors, and stepped into the Bella Royale.

Noise and smoke filled the air, along with the odors of beer, whiskey, bay rum, unwashed flesh, and human waste. The sawdust sprinkled liberally on the floor couldn’t soak up all of that typical saloon smell.

Jamie’s nose wrinkled slightly. Anybody who had ever taken a deep breath of early morning, high country air like he had thousands of times in his life could never be satisfied with this . . . stench. But he could put up with it long enough to down a mug of beer. Then he’d go on about his business.

He had seen a lot of horses tied up at the hitch rails outside the saloon, so he wasn’t surprised that the place was doing a brisk business. He recognized some of the men lined up along the bar as the ones who had ridden past him in the street a few minutes earlier.

The one called Eldon, who seemed to be their leader, stood with his back to the bar, his elbows resting on it as his eyes scanned the room. His gaze lighted on Jamie, but stayed there for only a second. Evidently he didn’t consider the big man in buckskins all that interesting.

That was fine with Jamie. He walked to the bar, found an empty spot where he could belly up to the hardwood, and nodded to the apron-wearing bartender who came along to take his order. The man had a pleasant, round face that seemed even rounder because he parted his thinning brown hair in the middle and slicked it down.

“What can I do for you, mister?” the bartender asked as Jamie laid the Winchester on the bar. The man looked at the rifle, but didn’t say anything about it.

“If your beer’s cold I’ll take a mug of it.”

“Coldest in Kansas City,” the bartender replied with a grin. “At least that’s what they tell me. I can’t say as I’ve sampled all of it to know for sure. That’d make a good hobby for a man, wouldn’t it?”

“If he didn’t have anything better to do,” Jamie said with a grunt. He had always been plainspoken and didn’t plan to change his ways.

The bartender raised his eyebrows and then shrugged. “Whatever you say, my friend.” He filled a mug with beer from a tap and slid it in front of Jamie. “That’ll be six bits.”

“Think mighty highly of the stuff, don’t you?”

“I don’t set the prices,” the bartender said as he spread his hands and shrugged. “I just work here.”

Jamie took a couple coins from the buckskin poke he carried and dropped them on the bar. Then he picked up the mug and took a long swallow of the beer. It was cold and had a good flavor to it, to boot. Maybe it was worth six bits, after all.

“Are you callin’ me a liar?” The loud, angry voice came from one of the tables where men were sitting and drinking, as opposed to the gambling layouts in the rear half of the big room.

Jamie barely glanced over his shoulder at the disturbance. Men got their dander up in saloons all the time. It went hand in hand with guzzling down cheap liquor. As long as the ruckus didn’t have anything to do with him, he made it a habit to mind his own business.

Another man at the table said, “I didn’t call you a liar, Ralston. I just said you’d have a hard time gettin’ those wagons to Montana before winter sets in.”

The man called Ralston smacked a big fist down on the table so hard it made the glasses on it jump. “And I’m sayin’ I’ll do it!” he insisted. “I’ll have those pilgrims in their new homes by Christmas, by Godfrey! An’ if you say I can’t do it, then you’re callin’ me a liar!”

Judging by the loud, slurred quality of Ralston’s voice, he was drunk. Jamie watched in the bar mirror as Ralston leaned over the table and made his point by jabbing a blunt finger against his fellow drinker’s chest. That man swatted Ralston’s hand away impatiently, and Ralston seized that as an excuse to start the trouble he obviously wanted to. He lunged out of his chair, fist cocked to throw a punch.

Jamie sighed, set his half-finished beer on the bar, and turned around. “Hold it!” he snapped.

Ralston stopped with his fist poised. He was a thick-bodied man with a round-crowned, broad-brimmed hat tilted back on a thatch of sandy hair. A soup-strainer mustache of the same shade drooped over his mouth. His face was red, the nose swollen from habitual drunken binges. “Who in tarnation are you?” he demanded as he glared at Jamie.

Good intentions to avoid trouble notwithstanding, Jamie didn’t like the conversation he had just overheard. He stepped toward the table.

Sensing a possible ruckus in the offing, a lot of the saloon’s patrons had quieted down to see what was going to happen. The girls who worked there, dressed in short, spangled dresses, moved well clear of the table where Ralston stood glowering at the big stranger.

Jamie didn’t answer Ralston’s question about who he was. Instead, he asked one of his own. “Did I hear you say that you’re taking that wagon train to Montana?”

“That’s right. What business is it of yours?”

“You’re the wagon master?” Jamie’s tone of voice clearly registered his disbelief and disapproval.

“Damn right I am! Jeb Ralston, finest wagon master on the frontier!”

Jamie’s skeptical grunt made it plain how he felt about that claim.

From the corner of his eye, he saw one of the saloon’s front doors swing open. A slender man stepped inside quickly and closed it behind him. He wore a black suit and hat and a collarless white shirt, and a pair of spectacles perched on his nose. He looked utterly harmless, and Jamie barely took note of him since nearly all of his attention was focused on Jeb Ralston.

“Look, I’m not trying to pick a fight,” Jamie told Ralston. “But it’s too late in the year to be starting out to Montana from here. You won’t make it before winter, and you don’t want to be up there on those plains when the northers start sweeping down from Canada.”

Ralston sneered at him. “How do you know so much about it?”

“Because I’ve been there myself,” Jamie said harshly. “I nearly died in a few of those blizzards.”

“This doesn’t concern you, old man. You’d better shut up and go back to your beer.”

Jamie wasn’t in the habit of backing down when he knew he was right. “If you start to Montana now, you’ll be risking the lives of every one of those pilgrims.”

“They paid me to do the job, and by Godfrey, I’m gonna do it!”

“Then they made a bad mistake by hiring a drunken fool like you.”

He knew Ralston wouldn’t stand for that insult. He didn’t care. It was true, and Jamie Ian MacCallister was a man who spoke the truth.

Ralston’s face flushed darker. His eyes widened with outrage. He drew in a deep breath, bellowed in anger, and charged Jamie like a maddened bull.

Jamie expected the attack. Ralston was big—although not as big as Jamie—and probably plenty strong. More than likely he had plenty of experience brawling in saloons.

But Jamie had fought for his life in desperate battles hundreds of times. He stepped aside, grabbed Ralston, and used the man’s own momentum to heave him up and over the bar.

Ralston let out a startled yell as he sailed through the air. The crash as he landed against the back bar cut off that yell and replaced it with the sound of bottles shattering. Ralston bounced off and landed in the floor behind the bar.

The slick-haired bartender stood a few feet away, his eyes bugging out as he stared at Jamie. The man babbled, “You . . . you just picked him up . . . and threw him!”

“Yeah,” Jamie said. “Sorry about all the damage. I’ll pay for it.”

He could well afford to. During his wanderings over the past five decades, he had cached small fortunes in gold and silver in numerous places across the West. In addition, he had an entire cave full of Spanish treasure that had been hidden there a couple of centuries earlier. All of that didn’t include the money he had made from his ranch and the other successful businesses in which he had invested, many of them operated by family members. The MacCallisters were a dynasty, and a mighty wealthy one, at that.

Jamie was aware that the room was completely silent as he took out his poke and counted five double eagles onto the bar. That was more than enough to cover the cost of the spilled liquor. He glanced at his still half-full mug of beer and decided he was in no mood to finish it.

“When that fella wakes up”—he nodded toward the area behind the bar where Ralston had fallen—“somebody ought to try to talk some sense into him about starting for Montana this late in the year. If he won’t listen to reason, somebody needs to warn those pilgrims he plans to lead them right into trouble.”

“Nobody talks sense to Jeb Ralston, mister,” the bartender said. “He has his own ideas, and he’s not shy about using his fists to defend them.”

“Well, it backfired on him this time, didn’t it?” Jamie turned away from the bar to leave the saloon.

He had taken only a couple of steps when somebody yelled, “Look out!”

Jamie whirled around, and saw that Ralston had regained his senses and climbed to the top of the bar. He leaped from it in a diving tackle aimed at Jamie.

Unable to get out of the way in time, Ralston’s weight slammed into Jamie’s left shoulder, the collision’s impact making Jamie stagger. He stayed on his feet, though, planted his left hand in the middle of Ralston’s chest, and shoved him back a step. With enough room, Jamie swung a right-hand punch that landed on Ralston’s jaw like a pile driver.

The blow jerked Ralston’s head to the side but didn’t put him down. Drunk he might be, but it surely wasn’t the first fight he’d had when he was full of booze. He hooked a right fist of his own into Jamie’s midsection. The punch landed with considerable power. Ralston could hit.

Jamie sent a short, sharp left into the wagon master’s face. Ralston came back with a left of his own that tagged Jamie on the chin. For several long moments as the saloon filled with cheers and shouts of encouragement on both sides, the two men stood toe to toe and slugged it out.

They were pretty evenly matched, but Jamie was a little taller and heavier and had a slightly longer reach. Those things gave him an advantage.

The wagon master fought with the intensity of a crazed animal, though, and for one of the few times in his life, Jamie found himself being forced to give ground a little.

His back came up against the bar. Bracing himself against it, he hunched his shoulders to protect his head and snapped two quick lefts into Ralston’s face. Ralston’s nose was redder and more swollen, but it was from being hit, not drinking. Jamie whipped a right into Ralston’s solar plexus.

The wagon master leaned forward, his face going gray from the shock of the blow. He lowered his head and plowed forward. The top of his head rammed Jamie’s chin, forcing his head back.

Jamie grabbed hold of Ralston and pulled him in closer, grappling with him. He got his arms around Ralston’s waist and swung him into the air again. The muscles of Jamie’s arms, back, and shoulders swelled so much from the effort it looked almost like they were about to burst through the buckskin shirt he wore.

Once Ralston was off his feet, he couldn’t get his balance to fight anymore. Jamie turned him upside-down and then lifted the wagon master into the air above his head. It was an amazing feat of strength, the stuff of which legends were made. As he supported that massive burden, Jamie took a couple of stiff-legged steps and then smashed Ralston down onto one of the empty tables. Wood splintered and cracked as the table collapsed under the impact.

Ralston lay there senseless among the wreckage of the table.

He wouldn’t be getting up any time soon, Jamie thought.

A frown creased his forehead as he saw just how true that was. Ralston’s right leg was twisted at an odd, unnatural angle. Something white stuck out through a bloody rip in his trousers.

Jamie drew in a deep breath as he realized it was the jagged end of a bone. He had broken the wagon master’s leg.

He wasn’t the only one to notice that. A man in the crowd yelled, “Holy cow! Look at Ralston’s leg!”

“Somebody better fetch a doctor!” another man added excitedly.

Jamie scowled. He had set plenty of broken bones in his time and had no doubt that he could do a passable job on Ralston’s leg, but he reminded himself that he was in the middle of a good-sized city where there were probably a number of doctors practicing medicine. It would be better to leave the job to one of them.

He noticed the fellow who had come into the Bella Royale just as the fight was starting. The man edged forward to stare at Ralston’s unconscious form. His eyes were big with horror behind the spectacles he wore.

One of the saloon’s patrons nudged the man with an elbow and asked, “What’s the matter, mister? Ain’t you never seen somebody with a busted leg before?”

“Yes, but . . . but . . .” the man stammered. “That . . . that’s a piece of bone sticking out!”

He suddenly clamped a hand over his mouth, whirled around, and sprinted for the door as several of the customers guffawed at him.

The door was still open from the man’s hasty departure when another man stepped in, this one a burly, middle-aged individual with a badge pinned to his coat lapel. He had a revolver on his hip and a shotgun tucked under his arm. He strode toward the bar and said in a loud voice, “All right, all right, everybody just settle down. What happened here?” He stopped and frowned at Ralston. “Good Lord, that man’s leg is broken!”

One thing you could say about folks in Kansas City, Jamie thought. They seemed to have a firm grasp of the obvious.

The constable or deputy or whatever he was glared around the room and demanded, “Somebody tell me what happened here. Who busted this man’s leg?”

Jamie saved everybody the trouble of pointing him out by saying, “That was me.”

The lawman looked him up and down, still frowning darkly. “And who might you be?”

“Name’s Jamie Ian MacCallister.”

Despite the lawman having told them to be quiet, that announcement brought a stir from the crowd. Probably not everyone in the Bella Royale recognized the name, but a lot of them did. Jamie was one of the most famous men on the frontier, and his recent campaign of vengeance against the Miles Nelson gang had added to his already staggering reputation.

“MacCallister, eh?” the lawman said after a moment. “What did Ralston do, look crossways at you?”

The bartender spoke up. “That’s not fair, Deputy. Ralston started the fight. He was drunk and obnoxious, as usual, and he attacked Mr. MacCallister. Mr. MacCallister was just defending himself.”

“I suppose Ralston should be glad you didn’t defend yourself with those Colts,” the deputy muttered. “How many men is it you’ve killed now?”

“I don’t keep count,” Jamie replied curtly. “But I never killed a single one that didn’t need killing.”

The deputy looked like he wanted to say something in response to that, but he didn’t. He looked around at the crowd. “Has anybody gone for a doctor?”

The saloon’s customers looked back at him mutely.

“Well, what in blazes is wrong with you?” the deputy roared. “Somebody go and do that!”

Several men hurried out of the saloon.

The lawman went on. “Anybody here want to argue with the claim that MacCallister acted in self-defense? No?” He blew out an exasperated breath and turned back to Jamie. “I reckon there’s no point in arresting you. Under the circumstances, a judge would just dismiss any charges against you.”

“And justifiably so. . .