A Big Sky Christmas (29 page)

The next few minutes were flame-streaked chaos. Hidden gunmen opened fire on Jamie, and he returned the shots with deadly effect. He hoped all the immigrants were keeping their heads down while the fight raged.

The battle ringed the camp. Jamie heard a rapid fusillade of six-gun fire and figured that was Smoke Jensen getting in on the action. He didn't think anybody else could keep a pair of hoglegs singing that fast.

The Winchester's magazine ran dry. As it did, a man leaped up from the ground nearby and ran at Jamie, thrusting out a gun, eager for a sure shot.

Jamie ducked as the blast rang out, then stepped in to meet the charge. He drove the rifle's butt into the man's face and heard the satisfying crunch of bone. The outlaw dropped like a rock.

“Jamie, look out!” someone called.

Jamie twisted and crouched, and another shot blasted close enough he felt the heat from the muzzle. Before he could do anything else, Bodie appeared, the gun in his hand flaming. The outlaw who had nearly ventilated Jamie went down, twisted off his feet by Bodie's shots.

“Glad to see you're all right,” Jamie told the young man.

“Muzzle flash nearly burned my eyebrows off,” Bodie said, “but the bullet missed and that's all that counts.”

“You're right about that. Let's finish cleaning up these rats . . . and then you'll have to tell me what this is all about.”

Just as Jamie expected, the outlaws were no match for the fighting men from the wagon train. Hector Gilworth and Jess Neville had joined in the battle, too, and had given a good account of themselves. Jess might claim to be lazy, but he had tackled two of the gunmen in a fierce shoot-out and brought them both down, taking a bullet through his left arm in the process. Hector had gotten his hands on one of the outlaws and broken the man's neck.

Preacher, Smoke, Audie, and Nighthawk wiped out the rest of the gang in short order. They weren't the sort of men who asked for or gave quarter, especially when faced with human vermin. By the time they finished sweeping in a big circle around the wagon train, the plains were littered with owlhoot corpses.

Then, as Jamie had told Bodie, it was time for explanations.

The main campfire in the center of the circle was built up until it was blazing brightly and casting light over the gathering. The first thing Bodie did was look around for Jake Lucas, Clete Mahaffey, and Dave Pearsoll.

There was no sign of the three men.

They must have realized what was going on and taken advantage of the confusion to slip away, Jamie decided once Bodie had revealed that they were all former members of Eldon Swint's outlaw gang and spilled the story about the stolen loot.

“I'm sorry, Savannah,” Bodie said to the young woman as she stared solemnly at him. A bloodstained bandage was wrapped around his head where Swint had pistol-whipped him. “I hoped you'd never find out about my past. I'm ashamed that I ever got mixed up with a bunch of owlhoots like that.”

For a long moment, Savannah didn't say anything. Then, “You could have told me, Bodie. I thought you trusted me more than that.”

“I do trust you,” he insisted. “I just didn't want you to think bad of me.”

“I've seen what you're really like these past weeks.” Savannah looked around at the rest of the immigrants. “We all have. You risked your life to save Abigail and Alexander. You've been a good friend to everybody on this wagon train. I'm sure you've made some mistakes, done some things you regret and wish you could take back . . . but everyone has. I know I have.” She shook her head. “But it doesn't make me feel any differently toward you.”

Relief washed over Bodie's face. “Thank the Lord! I was afraid you'd hate me when you found out the truth.”

Savannah shook her head, moved closer to Bodie, and laid a hand on his arm. “I could never hate you.”

Jamie stepped between them and the rest of the crowd, putting his back to the two young people so they could have a moment of privacy as he addressed the group. “Hector, we need to get some horses and rope and drag those carcasses well away from the wagons. I reckon the wolves will take care of them after that.”

Moses made a face. “Is it really necessary to deal with them in such a callous manner, Jamie?”

“The ground's too hard to dig a grave big enough for all of them.”

Preacher added, “I wouldn't be inclined to go to that much trouble for such a bunch of polecats, anyway. Nature's got its own way of dealin' with varmints like that, and I don't figure on losin' a second's sleep over how they end up.”

“What about those other three Bodie mentioned?” Smoke asked. “The ones who made off with that money to start with and started all this trouble.”

A grim smile touched Jamie's mouth. “I thought you and me and Preacher might take a little hunting trip.”

“That sounds like a mighty fine idea to me,” the old mountain man said with a savage grin of his own on his grizzled face.

 

 

“I told you we should've gotten far away from that wagon train a long time ago,” Clete Mahaffey groused as the three men rode through the dawn light.

“Yeah, and you've said that how many times since we lit out?” Jake Lucas shot back at him.

Dave Pearsoll said, “Look, we're all lucky to be alive. If Swint had gone after us first instead of Cantrell, we probably wouldn't be. We've still got the loot, so let's count our blessings. We're on our own now, and from the sound of the shooting back there when we rode out, at least some of Swint's gang have to be dead. Maybe all of 'em if they went up against MacCallister, Preacher, and that Smoke kid.”

Pearsoll had a point, Jake thought. If he was being really honest with himself, he had to admit that he had hung around the wagon train for as long as he had only because of Savannah McCoy.

Even after the unsatisfying incident along the creek where the Bradford kids had been snatched by the Blackfeet, he had harbored feelings for her. Clearly, though, the little tramp was never going to see that she ought to be with him instead of Bodie, so staying with the wagons was a waste of time.

Hell, he was a rich man, he mused. He could find all the willing women he wanted. Women a lot better looking than Savannah McCoy . . .

He wasn't convinced of the truth of that last part, but he could tell himself that, anyway.

Fate had taken a hand and forced their separation from the pilgrims.

Jake said, “You know, I've heard about a place over in Idaho we ought to look for, a settlement called Bury. From the sound of it, gents like us are welcome there.”

“Bury?” Mahaffey repeated. “What sort of name is that for a town?”

“Don't know and don't care, as long as that's not what they do to us there,” Jake said with a grin. He didn't feel too bad any longer.

Sure, it was bothersome that Eldon Swint had trailed them all that way. But luck had been on Jake's side, as it always was, and he was convinced that Swint and the other outlaws had been wiped out in the fighting around the wagon train. From here on out, he and his two pards could just enjoy life.

He died with the grin still on his face as an arrow struck him between the shoulder blades with such force that its flint head drove all the way through his body and ripped out from his chest. Jake's body toppled loosely from the saddle and hit the ground beside the spooked horse as shots, war cries, and, ultimately, screams filled the cold morning air.

Preacher sniffed the air. “I don't know about you fellas, but that smells like snow to me.”

The morning had dawned clear as Jamie, Preacher, and Smoke set out on the trail of the three outlaws, but thick gray clouds soon had moved down from the north, obscuring the sun and making the cold wind seem more frigid.

“Yeah,” Jamie agreed with the old mountain man's prediction. “Not today, I don't reckon, but it wouldn't surprise me to see some snow tonight.”

“How far you reckon we are from Eagle Valley?” Preacher asked as he squinted at the sky.

“Three days, maybe. I've known we were getting close for a while now, but I didn't tell those pilgrims just yet.”

Smoke said, “I'm pretty sure this is December twenty-first.”

The two older men looked at him.

Smoke's broad shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “Just pointing out that three more days will be Christmas Eve. You said you wanted to get there by Christmas, Jamie.” A rare smile touched the young man's face. “You're cutting it a mite close.”

“Yeah, but Bodie and Hector will keep those wagons moving as fast as they can until we get back.”

Preacher suddenly drew back on his reins and frowned. “Danged if I don't smell somethin' else now. And it ain't nothin' good, neither.”

Jamie and Smoke reined in, too. Jamie took a deep breath, and his face was as grim as Preacher's. “Gun smoke.”

They hadn't heard any gunfire. Whatever had happened was over, leaving only faint traces in the air.

All three men drew their rifles and laid them across the saddles in front of them, then rode forward, still following the tracks. The trail led over a gently rolling hill. As they crested it, they brought their mounts to a halt again.

About a hundred yards in front of them, at the bottom of the grassy slope, lay three bloody, huddled shapes that had once been human.

Jamie took a pair of field glasses from one of his saddlebags and used them to study the dead men. They had been scalped and mutilated. The blood that covered their faces was already freezing in the cold air.

“Is that the three we're after?” Smoke asked.

“Just going by what's left of them, that's hard to say,” Jamie replied. “But I recognize the clothes. That's Lucas, Mahaffey, and Pearsoll, all right.”

Preacher said, “From the looks of 'em, they run into a bunch of Blackfeet. Might be the leavin's from those war parties we scrapped with awhile back.”

Jamie grunted. “Let's take a closer look.”

They rode forward, eyes constantly scanning the landscape around them for any sign of an attack. Jamie spotted a double eagle lying on the prairie and pointed it out.

“The Blackfeet scattered that money those fellas had with them,” he said. “They let the earth have it. That's their way of showing it didn't mean anything to them.”

Jamie's instincts told him that the Indians were gone. They'd had their brutal sport with the three luckless outlaws and then moved on.

The question was, where had they gone?

Once Jamie got a closer look at the bodies, he was convinced that they were Lucas, Mahaffey, and Pearsoll. The gruesome sight didn't particularly bother him; he had seen plenty of violent death in his time.

What worried him were the tracks of the unshod ponies they found around the mutilated corpses. He gestured toward the hoofprints. “Looks like there were forty or fifty Blackfeet. That's more than we left alive in that battle.”

“The ones who got away met up with some of their pards,” Preacher suggested.

“And then what?” Smoke asked.

Jamie rode in a big circle and found tracks moving away from the place where the three outlaws had been killed. He pointed them out to his two companions. “It looks to me like they angled off on a course that'll cross the path of the wagon train.”

“Chances are that was what they was after all along,” Preacher said. “They're mad about gettin' whipped before, and they're goin' after the whole wagon train this time. They just happened to run across these three varmints along the way and took advantage of the chance to kill 'em.”

“Come on,” Jamie said as he wheeled Sundown. “We'd better get back there as fast as we can.”

A grim hunch filled him as he rode, a hunch that said they might already be too late.

 

 

Bodie rode out in front of the wagons with Audie and Nighthawk. He enjoyed talking to the little mountain man, who seemed to know something about almost everything. No matter what the subject was, Audie could converse on it. Bodie didn't always fully understand what the former professor was saying, but it was interesting, anyway.

“And that's why I believe it's imminently possible that life may exist on other planets in our solar system,” Audie said. “If we can ever develop telescopes powerful enough to study them more closely, we may see the evidence of great civilizations with our own eyes. Don't you agree, Nighthawk?”

“Ummm,” said the Crow warrior.

“Yes, but you like to argue just on general principles, my friend. You'll see, one of these days. The evidence will prove me correct, as it always does.”

“So, let me get this straight,” Bodie said. “You're saying there are people like us on other planets?”

“Well . . . not necessarily like us. Different conditions might produce different sorts of life. But they could still be self-aware and highly intelligent. More intelligent than we are, perhaps.”

“Wouldn't that be something?” Bodie mused. “I'm not sure I'd want to meet a man from another planet.”

“I would,” Audie said. “I would consider it a great privilege and honor, not to mention the most scientifically intriguing encounter of our age or any other.”

“Ummm,” Nighthawk said.

Audie turned to frown at his friend. “What do you mean, we have bigger prob—Oh, Lord. Bodie, look at that.”

The three men reined in. Bodie's breath seemed to freeze in his throat as he saw the dozens of mounted figures on a rise to their left. Even at that distance, his keen eyes could make out the feathers in their hair.

“Blackfeet,” Audie said. “We need to get back to the wagons—
now!”

The three men wheeled their horses and kicked them into a gallop. As they raced back toward the wagons, Nighthawk pointed to a group of Indians closing in from the other direction.

“Make some racket!” Bodie yelled. “We've got to warn the train!”

They pulled their guns and started firing into the air. Bodie was confident that Hector Gilworth would hear the shots and order the immigrants to stop and pull the wagons into a defensive circle.

He glanced over his shoulder at the pursuit and saw puffs of smoke as the Indians opened fire on them. At that range, shooting from the back of their ponies, the likelihood of any of those bullets finding their targets was extremely small, but Bodie couldn't rule out pure bad luck, though. His muscles were tense as he halfway anticipated the shock of a slug hitting him.

The wagons came into sight. He felt a surge of relief when he saw that they were already forming into a circle, just as he'd hoped. The Blackfoot war party was a large one, but the men of the wagon train had some experience at fighting Indians. They would give the Blackfeet a hot reception.

In fact, shots had already begun to crackle from between the parked wagons by the time Bodie, Audie, and Nighthawk reached the train. They leaped their horses through one of the gaps as gunfire and shrill war whoops filled the air and lead tore through the canvas covers on some of the wagons. Hector Gilworth ran along the line of wagons, bellowing, “Everybody keep your head down!”

Bodie threw himself out of the saddle, dragging his Winchester from its sheath, and looked around frantically for Savannah. He spotted the wagon she had been driving and ran toward it, but before he could get there he heard Jess Neville shout, “Bodie! Over here! Those red devils are chargin'!”

Bodie swung around and saw a large group of Blackfeet thundering toward a gap in the circle. If they broke through and got inside, it would be bloody chaos. Bodie sprang to join Jess and several other men in defending the opening. He brought the rifle to his shoulder and began firing as fast as he could work the lever. Clouds of powder smoke rolled around him, stinging his eyes and nose, and the constant roar of shots deafened him.

The savages wouldn't get through, he vowed to himself. They would never reach Savannah or any of the other women and children. He would stop them.

Or die trying.