An Arizona Christmas Read online

  Look of These Exciting Series from

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

  with J. A. Johnstone

  The Mountain Man

  Preacher: The First Mountain Man

  Matt Jensen, the Last Mountain Man

  Luke Jensen, Bounty Hunter

  Those Jensen Boys!

  The Family Jensen

  MacCallister

  Flintlock

  The Brothers O’Brien

  The Kerrigans: A Texas Dynasty

  Sixkiller, U.S. Marshal

  Hell’s Half Acre

  Texas John Slaughter

  Will Tanner, U.S. Deputy Marshal

  Eagles

  The Frontiersman

  AVAILABLE FROM PINNACLE BOOKS

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

  with J. A. Johnstone

  AN ARIZONA CHRISTMAS

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  Teaser chapter

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2017 J. A. Johnstone

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  Following the death of William W. Johnstone, the Johnstone family is working with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Mr. Johnstone’s outlines and many unfinished manuscripts to create additional novels in all of his series like The Last Gunfighter, Mountain Man, and Eagles, among others. This novel was inspired by Mr. Johnstone’s superb storytelling.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  PINNACLE BOOKS, the Pinnacle logo, and the WWJ steer head logo, are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-0-7860-4058-2

  First Kensington hardcover printing: July 2017

  First Pinnacle mass market printing: November 2017

  First electronic edition: November 2017

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4079-7

  ISBN-10: 0-7860-4079-3

  Belgium, December 1944

  Gun-thunder filled the forest. Artillery shells screamed overhead, machine guns chattered, and rifles cracked, all punctuated by the occasional boom of a pistol. It was a terrible symphony of death and destruction, accompanied by the near-constant flashing of muzzle flame that made the forest almost as bright as day.

  When the shooting stopped, as it always did sooner or later, an eerie, echoing silence settled down over the war-torn landscape, along with the thick gloom of the cold night.

  Corporal Wallace leaned back from the M1919A4. 30 caliber machine gun and breathed heavily as he tried to calm his galloping pulse. Beside him, Private Bexley, the assistant gunner, cursed softly, over and over.

  He finally eased up on the profanity “The Krauts nearly settled our hash that time, didn’t they?”

  Before Wallace could answer, a deep, calm, steady voice came from behind the two machine gunners. “Wasn’t even close. We’ve got the bastards right where we want ’em.”

  Wallace glanced over his shoulder. “That’s right, Sarge. When there’s so many of them and so few of us, and they’re all around us, you don’t even have to worry about aimin’. Just point a gun and shoot, and you’re bound to hit a German.”

  Sarge moved up beside the .30 cal, hunkered on his heels, and chuckled. “Now you’re thinkin’, Wallace.”

  Thorp, a private from Indiana, called from behind the tree where he had taken cover. “If we’ve got ’em on the run, Sarge, how come we ain’t out there chasin’ after ’em?”

  “Well, we’re tryin’ not to take advantage of them. Wouldn’t hardly be fair. No, we’ll stay here and let ’em come visitin’ again when they’re good and ready.”

  “They’re gonna kill us all,” another voice said.

  Sarge’s head swung around sharply toward the private who had spoken. “Can that talk, Mitchell! Our orders are to hold this position, and that’s what we’re gonna do. That means stayin’ alive. Nobody in my squad is gonna disobey orders, so get this through your head right now. The Krauts are not gonna kill you, and they’re not gettin’ through here!” Sarge blew out his breath in a dismissive sound. “Simple as that.”

  Silence hung over the woods for a moment, then the squad’s sixth and final man, Hogan, said, “Sarge is right. We don’t have to worry about the Krauts. Now, starvin’ or freezin’ to death, that’s a whole other matter entirely, right, Sarge?”

  The noncom had to laugh at Hogan’s dry tone. “I can’t argue with you there, Private.”

  The half-dozen men were quiet. It was unlikely the Germans would attack again in the night, but it was a good idea to keep an ear open since it was hard for men to move through the woods in the dark without making some noise. The thin layer of snow on the ground could muffle their steps.

  After a while, Wallace said quietly, “It sure is cold.” From Florida, he wasn’t accustomed to frigid weather.

  “That’s the way it gets in December in this part of the world,” Sarge said. “For what it’s worth, I don’t much cotton to it either, Wallace. Back in the part of Arizona where I grew up, we usually don’t get weather like this, even in December. Hardly ever even got down to freezin’.”

  “Must not have seemed much like Christmas,” Thorp said. “Hell, back home in Indiana, nearly a foot of snow was always on the ground when Christmastime rolled around.”

  “Yeah, at least here we’ve got snow on the ground for Christmas,” Hogan said. “And lots of little Santa Clauses waitin’ out there in the woods to deliver presents to us.”

  Mitchell said, “We’ll never live to see Christmas.”

  “Damn it,” Sarge rasped. “What’d I tell you about talk like that, Mitchell? Stow it!”

  Mitchell was stretched out behind a deadfall where he had kicked some snow out of the way. Propped up on his elbows, he could shoot over the log. He twisted around and said, “There are too many of them, Sarge, and they’ve got us surrounded! You can joke about it all you want, but that’s the truth! We’re almos
t out of rations and ammo, and as long as this overcast holds, they can’t drop in any more to us. It’s only a matter of time until the Germans overrun us and slaughter us all.”

  Sarge let him spew the words. Dogfaces had to bitch. That was just the way it was. He was hearing more than the usual griping, though. Mitchell’s near-hysterics could ruin morale. When the private fell silent, Sarge said in scathing tones, “You got it all out of your system now, Mitchell?”

  “I don’t see why the brass doesn’t just surrender,” Mitchell said bleakly.

  “Because they don’t have any backup in ’em,” Sarge said, “and neither do I. I learned a long time ago, listening to my grandpa talk, that you don’t give up, no matter how bad the odds may seem. As long as you’re drawing breath, you keep fightin’, because you never know what’s gonna happen. Things can take a turn you never expect.”

  “Your damn grandpa never had to fight off thousands of Nazis!”

  Sarge straightened and took a quick step toward Mitchell, but he stopped himself before he completely lost control of his temper. The tension in his voice revealed how he was trying to rein in his anger. “Maybe not, but he was in a few mighty tight spots in his time, and he got out of every one of ’em because he never gave up. Sure, he had some help from his friends, but none of us are alone here, either. If we stick together and keep fightin’ and never give up, we’ll come through this just like Gramps did back in Arizona one Christmas when all hell broke loose.”

  “Sounds like a good story, Sarge,” Wallace said. “Why don’t you tell it?”

  “Yeah,” Hogan chimed in. “Maybe it’ll keep us from thinkin’ about how cold and hungry we are.”

  Sarge thought for a moment and then nodded. “It just might. It all happened a long time ago. Almost sixty years ago, when Arizona was still a pretty wild and woolly place.”

  “Were there cowboys and Indians?” Bexley asked. “Back in Brooklyn, I went to the movies every Saturday, and I always loved them cowboy pictures.”

  “Yeah, there were cowboys and Indians and a bunch of other folks,” Sarge said, moving over to sit on another log. An artillery shell had landed a few yards away, back in the opening days of the German offensive, and knocked quite a few trees over. “The whole thing actually got started before Christmas, and it wasn’t in Arizona, either. That was in Colorado, in a settlement called Big Rock . . .”

  CHAPTER 1

  Smoke Jensen dropped to one knee and fired twice. Flame licked from the muzzle of the Colt in his hand.

  On the other side of the main street in Big Rock, Colorado, the man Smoke had just shot staggered back toward the plate-glass window of a store. He pressed his hand to his chest. The palm was big enough to cover both bullet holes. Blood welled from the wounds and dripped between his splayed fingers.

  He went over backwards in a crash of shattering glass.

  That didn’t mean the danger was over. A slug whipped through the air only inches from Smoke’s left ear. He dived forward, off the boardwalk, and landed behind a water trough. Bullets thudded against the other side of the trough. A few plunked into the water.

  Smoke had seen four other outlaws besides the man he had shot. From the sound of the guns going off, all of them were trying to fill him full of lead.

  Hoofbeats pounded in the street. A man yelled, “I got the horses! Come on!”

  They believed they had him pinned down, Smoke thought. They figured if they kept throwing lead at him, he couldn’t do a thing to stop them from getting away.

  They were about to find out how wrong they were.

  No doubt spooked by all the gunfire, the horses stomped around in the street, making it more difficult for the outlaws to mount up.

  Smoke thumbed more cartridges from his shell belt into the .45’s empty chambers. Then he rolled out into the open again, tipped the Colt’s barrel up, and fired.

  The outlaws had managed to swing up into their saddles. Smoke’s slug ripped into the chest of the man leading the gang’s attempt at a getaway. He jerked back in the saddle and hauled so hard on the reins that his horse reared up wildly.

  The man right behind him tried to avoid the rearing horse but was too close. The two mounts collided and went down, spilling their riders.

  Smoke pushed himself up and triggered again. His bullet shattered the shoulder of the third man in line and caused him to pitch out of the saddle with his left foot caught in the stirrup. As the horse continued galloping down the street, the wounded outlaw was dragged through the dirt past Smoke.

  The fourth man fired wildly, several shots exploding from the gun in his hand. Smoke didn’t know where the bullets landed, but he hoped no innocent bystanders were hurt. To lessen the chances of that happening, he took a second to line up his shot and coolly put a bullet in the outlaw’s head.

  That left one man in the gang who wasn’t wounded or dead, the one who had been thrown when the two horses rammed into each other. He scrambled to his feet as soon as he got his wits back about him, but as Smoke’s gun swung toward him, his hands shot in the air, as high above his head as he could reach.

  “Don’t shoot!” he begged. “For God’s sake, mister, don’t kill me!”

  Smoke came smoothly to his feet. He was only medium height, but his powerfully muscled body, including exceptionally broad shoulders, made him seem bigger. His ruggedly handsome face was topped by ash blond hair, uncovered because his brown Stetson had flown off when he threw himself behind the water trough.

  The gun in his hand was rock steady as he covered the remaining outlaw. From the corner of his eye, he saw his old friend Sheriff Monte Carson running along the street toward him. Monte had a shotgun in his capable hands.

  “One in the store over there,” Smoke said, nodding toward the building with the broken front window. “The others are all here close by, except for the one whose horse dragged him off down the street.”

  “I’ll check on them while you cover that hombre,” Monte said. “Not much doubt that they’re all dead, though.”

  “How do you figure that?” Smoke asked.

  “You shot ’em, didn’t you?” A grim smile appeared on the lawman’s weathered face.

  Smoke knew the question was rhetorical so he didn’t answer. He told the man he had captured, “Take that gun out of your holster and toss it away. Slow and careful-like. You wouldn’t want to make me nervous.”

  The idea of the famous gunfighter Smoke Jensen ever being nervous about anything was pretty farfetched, but not impossible. He had loved ones, and like anybody else, sometimes he feared for their safety.

  Not his own, though. He had confidence in his own abilities. Anyway, he had already lived such an adventurous life, he figured he was on borrowed time, so a fatalistic streak ran through him. If there was a bullet out there somewhere with his name on it, it would find him one of these days. Until then, he wasn’t going to waste time worrying about it.

  The surviving outlaw followed Smoke’s orders, using his left hand to reach across his body and take out the iron he had pouched when he mounted up to flee. With just a couple fingers, he slid the gun from leather, tossed it aside, and thrust his hands high in the air again. Then he swallowed hard. “No need to shoot me, Mr. Jensen. I done what you told me.”

  “How do you know who I am?” Smoke asked with a slight frown. Although he had spent quite a few years with a reputation, first as a notorious outlaw—totally unjustified charges, by the way—and then as one of the fastest men with a Colt ever to buckle on a gunbelt, he was still naturally modest enough to be surprised sometimes when folks knew who he was.

  “Who the hell else could you be?” the captured outlaw asked. “You shot four fellas in less time than it takes to tell the tale. I warned Gallagher we shouldn’t try it right here in town. I told him. I said, Monte Carson’s a pretty tough law dog to start with, and Smoke Jensen lives near Big Rock and we’d be liable to run into him . . . into you, that is, Mr. Jensen . . . and I said that’s just too big a risk to
run, and sure enough—”

  “What’s this varmint babbling about?” Monte asked as he walked back up to Smoke with the scattergun tucked under his arm.

  “Claims he didn’t want to pull this job and warned the boss they shouldn’t do it,” Smoke explained with a trace of amusement in his voice.

  “Well, he must not have argued too hard. He’s here, ain’t he?”

  “In the flesh,” Smoke agreed.

  The frightened outlaw looked at both men. “You reckon I could put my arms down? They’re getting’ sort of tired.”

  Monte shifted the Greener and covered him. “All right, but if you try anything funny, this buckshot’ll splatter you all over the street.”

  “No tricks, Sheriff. You got my word on that.” The man licked his lips. “I just want to take what I got comin’ and get outta this without bein’ hung or shot.”

  “Behave yourself and you won’t get shot. As for being strung up, well, that’s up to a judge and jury, not me.” Monte glanced over at Smoke. “The other four are dead, by the way, just like I figured. The one you shot in the shoulder might’ve lived if he hadn’t gotten dragged down the street with his head bouncing until it busted open.”

  Smoke was reloading the Colt. He left an empty chamber for the hammer to rest on then slid the gun back into its holster. “Bad luck tends to dog a fella’s trail when he starts riding the owlhoot.”

  “What were these varmints after, anyway?”

  “Don’t know,” Smoke replied with a shake of his head. “I saw them come running out of the freight company office while I was on my way down to the train station.” He nodded toward several canvas bags the outlaws had slung on their saddles as they tried to make their getaway. “I’d check those bags.”

  Monte squinted over the shotgun’s barrels at the prisoner.