A Rocky Mountain Christmas Read online

  “No, they were just too frightened of the sheriff and the judge to go against them, that’s all. That’s why they said it was involuntary manslaughter instead of murder.”

  “It wasn’t even that. It was self-defense. The two men who accosted me were armed. Sheriff Ferrell and his deputy, Gates, tried to rob me.”

  “Ha!” Santelli had been listening in to their conversation. “People like you are never guilty. Why don’t you own up to it? Take my advice. If you’ve done somethin’, admit it.”

  “Santelli, the last thing I need is advice from you,” Luke remarked.

  “All right, don’t pay me no never mind, I’m just tryin’ to be helpful, is all.”

  “Would you like to move closer to the stove?” Luke asked Jenny.

  “Yes, that would be nice.”

  Luke stood, then reached down with his handcuffed hands to help her up.

  “Where do you think you’re goin’, Shardeen?” Deputy Proxmire asked.

  “To get warm,” Luke replied “You may have noticed, it’s cold outside, and I left my coat on the train.”

  “Just don’t try and run away.”

  “Where would I go without a coat on a night like this?”

  Luke and Jenny found a place to sit near the stove that also afforded them a modicum of privacy.

  “We have something in common,” Jenny said with a smile.

  “You mean because we are both under Proxmire’s watchful eye?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose there is that, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m told that you used to be a sailor.”

  “Aye. That I was. I’ve crossed the Pacific eleven times. Wait, are you telling me you were a sailor?”

  “Of sorts.”

  Luke laughed. “How can you be a sailor of sorts?”

  “The difference is in the water we sailed. You were on the Pacific; I was on the Mississippi River. I worked for my uncle. I was a hostess on board the Delta Mist riverboat.”

  Luke nodded and smiled. “You’re right. River, ocean, it makes no difference. We were both sailors.”

  “How long have you been in Pueblo?” Jenny asked.

  “Three years. And you?”

  “Not quite a year. I started teaching school, but when the school board learned I had been married to a gambler, they decided I was a bad influence on the children.”

  “Why, that’s ridiculous,” Luke said. “I can’t think of anyone who would have a better influence on the children than you.”

  “Thank you,” Jenny said with a small smile. “That is very nice of you to say.”

  “It takes no extra effort to tell the truth,” Luke insisted.

  “You are a very nice man. It makes me wonder why we couldn’t have—” Jenny interrupted her comment in mid-sentence.

  “You mean why we couldn’t have met before this?” Luke concluded.

  “It doesn’t seem fair.” Jenny’s eyes welled with tears. “I finally meet someone nice and where do I meet him?” She managed a weak laugh through the tears. “I meet him when we are both under the care of a deputy sheriff, you, going to jail, and I being run out of town.”

  Luke reached up with his manacled hands and, sticking a finger out, caught a tear as it slid down her cheek.

  “It was almost different,” Luke said.

  “Oh? What do you mean?”

  “I had heard about you. I went to the Colorado Social Club, just to meet you.”

  “Really?” Jenny had a questioning look on her face. “I don’t remember meeting you. I’m sure I would remember.”

  Luke smiled. “You didn’t meet me, because I didn’t stay.”

  “Oh.”

  “I wish I had stayed.”

  “No, I’m . . . I’m glad you didn’t stay. I don’t think I would have wanted to meet you that way.”

  “I understand. I think that is probably why I left. But at least we have met now,” Luke said. “And I’m thankful for that.”

  “Yes,” Jenny agreed. “At least we have met.”

  “All right, folks!” the conductor called. “Let’s get back aboard!”

  Luke stood first, then helped Jenny up. They stood there for a moment, just looking at each other, then, with a smile, Jenny spontaneously gave Luke a kiss on the lips.

  Luke raised his arms, then realized that, because his hands were cuffed together, he couldn’t easily embrace her. “That’s not fair. You took advantage of me when my hands are cuffed, and I can’t put my arms around you.”

  “Under the circumstances, it is probably best,” Jenny said.

  Those passengers who had come into the depot house hurried through the brutal cold back onto the train. Fortunately, the cars had been kept warm.

  Walking toward the back of the car, Matt shook off the chill. His coat was still drawn over the sleeping daughter of Senator Daniels. He stopped and asked Mrs. Daniels, “How is she?”

  “I’m worried about her.”

  Matt reached down to feel her forehead. “It feels as if she has some fever.”

  “Yes. I wish we had stayed in Pueblo so she could see a doctor.”

  “There are some fine doctors in Red Cliff. At this point we are much closer to Red Cliff than we are to Pueblo.”

  “Yes, I was thinking that as well. Do you want your coat back?”

  “No, I’m doing just fine. Let her keep it. She needs it more than I.”

  “Thank you. That is most kind.”

  During the entire conversation, Senator Daniels had been sitting in the seat facing his wife and daughter, staring out the window at the bleak and empty depot platform. He paid no attention to the conversation between Matt and his wife.

  The train started forward with a jerk so severe Matt reached out and grabbed a seat back to keep his balance, then moved quickly to his seat and sat down. He had told Mrs. Daniels they were closer to Red Cliff than to Pueblo, and in terms of distance, that was true. But Trout Creek Pass was between them and Red Cliff, and though the consensus of the conversation he had overheard was that the pass was open, in the final analysis they had proceeded on toward the pass based upon the stationmaster’s belief that the pass was open and the conductor’s call to proceed.

  Matt wasn’t all that convinced.

  Across the aisle from Matt’s seat and in the very front, Jenny sat quietly, looking down at her hands folded on her lap. She was thinking of Luke Shardeen, and trying to analyze her feelings for him.

  She wasn’t feeling the same way she had felt about Nate McCoy when first she’d met him. At that time, she had thought Nate was the most handsome man she had ever seen. After spending eighteen months with him she realized what she had felt was little more than infatuation. And it was childish infatuation at that, for all that she was an adult at the time.

  She wasn’t feeling childish infatuation for Luke. In fact, she didn’t think it was something she would even call infatuation, though she was certainly interested in him. What would have happened if he had come in to see her the night he visited the Social Club? Would she have felt the same interest? Or would she have put any such feeling aside as she did for all the other customers who had come to visit with her?

  She shook her head a little. The best time to have met him would have been while she was still teaching school, before she got involved with the Social Club and before he got into trouble with the law. If she had met him then, they might have fallen in love and gotten married. She smiled.

  Then suddenly, reality set in, and the smile left her face. What was she doing? She shook her head again. These thoughts were getting her nowhere. The best thing was to get such thoughts out of her mind. She settled back into her seat, let her head rest against the seat back, and drifted off to sleep.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  In the car just ahead, Luke and Santelli were sharing a seat. Deputy Proxmire sat facing them so he could keep an eye on both at the same time. Luke sat closest to the window, looking outside. It had begun to snow again, the snow coming down in b
ig, tumbling flakes, a swirl of white against the darkness.

  “You know what I’m thinkin’?” Santelli said, his words interrupting Luke’s contemplation.

  “I don’t really care what you were thinking,” Luke said.

  “I think you are fallin’ for that whore.”

  Luke didn’t answer.

  “Yes, sir, that’s what I think. You seen yourself a pretty woman and you fall for her. But here’s the funny thing. You’re goin’ away to jail, and more ’n likely the girl is goin’ to wind up in another whorehouse somewhere.” Santelli laughed. “Tell me, how does that make you feel, knowin’ your girl will be layin’ with anyone who has the price?”

  “You talk too much, Santelli,” Luke muttered.

  “Yeah? Well, talk is cheap. And right now, talk is all I’ve got. So I reckon I’ll talk as much as I want.”

  “If you don’t shut up talking about Jenny, I’ll shut you up.”

  “Really? How are you going to do that?”

  “I’ll do it the same way I did it before.”

  “What do you—” Santelli stopped in mid-sentence, lifted his cuffed hands to touch his still-sore, black eye, and realized what had happened back in Pueblo. “Did you do this?”

  Luke smiled, then turned to look back outside.

  Parker, Kelly, Compton, and Morris were sitting across from each other in the front two facing seats, three rows ahead of the deputy and his prisoners.

  “When do we make our move?” Kelly asked.

  “Just before we reach the top of the pass,” Parker said. “The train will be going slow enough that it will be easy to get it stopped.”

  “Who’s going to go up on top?” Compton asked. “’Cause I’m tellin’ you right now, you ain’t goin’ to get me on top of a movin’ train. Most especially in weather like this when it’s snowin’ and the tops of the cars is likely to be slippery and all.”

  “Don’t worry about it, I’ll go. I’ve stole a lot of rides on freight trains, and I’ve run on top of a lot of cars in good weather and bad. It won’t bother me none a’ tall to run along the top of these cars.” Parker went over the plan once again. “I’ll get the engineer’s attention, and as soon as I get the train stopped, you three take care of the deputy. Once we have Santelli, we’ll cut the engine free, then go on down the other side of the mountain, and leave the rest of the train sitting up here on the track.”

  “I know you said you’ve stole rides on a lot of trains before,” Morris said. “But are you sure you can drive this thing?”

  “Drive it? Who said anything about drivin’ the train? I don’t have to drive it. All I have to do is stick a gun in the engineer’s gut and he’ll do all the drivin’. Yes, sir, he’ll be more than glad to take us anywhere we want to go.” Parker smiled. “At least, he’ll take us anywhere we want to go as long as there is track to run on.”

  “I know Ward says Santelli has the money, but seein’ as we’re the ones that’s actually takin’ a risk here, I’m going to ask you again. What do you think? Do you really think he has the money to pay us?” Kelly asked.

  “I wouldn’t be doin’ all this if I didn’t think there was some payoff in it,” Parker said. “I sure ain’t doin’ it ’cause me ’n Santelli is tight.”

  One hour after they left Buena Vista depot, Matt could feel by the angle of the car that they were starting up the long grade taking them to the top of the pass. The train also began to slow, going from a rapid twenty miles per hour down to no faster than a brisk walk.

  The Denver, South Park and Pacific Railroad first laid tracks through Trout Creek Pass in 1879, and Matt had traversed the pass many times since then. He knew it well. The pass climbed to 9,300 feet at its highest elevation, and he knew they were coming very close to the top of the pass because he felt the train slow down even more.

  Looking out through the window and into the darkness, he could see whirling white flakes and knew the snow had intensified since leaving Buena Vista. He shook his head, thinking the engineer and conductor were probably having second thoughts. If the track was closed ahead, they would have to back all the way down to Buena Vista, and backing at night, in a heavy snowstorm, down a steep grade, couldn’t be a very good thing.

  And still the snow came down.

  In the engine of the train, Beans Evans was scooping up coal from the tender, then throwing it into the open door of the firebox. Inside the box, the flames leaped and curled around the added fuel, and even above the noise of the engine, Beans could hear the fire roaring. He closed the door and stood up. “That ought to keep us goin’ till we reach the other side of the pass. Then we can damn near coast into Big Rock.”

  “Why don’t you take a breather, Beans?” Don said. “You’ve got enough fire to keep the pressure up for quite a while.

  “Yes, sir, I think I will.” Beans pulled a big red bandanna from the chest pocket of his overalls and wiped the sweat from his face. “You wouldn’t think a body could get hot enough to sweat on a cold night like this.”

  “Why not?” Don answered. “We’ve got a fire going, and you’ve been working hard.”

  Beans chuckled. “I have to confess that I like standin’ by the firebox a heap more in the wintertime than I do in the summertime.”

  “I agree,” Don said. “Trouble is, I’ve got to keep my face in this window lookin’ ahead all the time, and that lets the cold wind on me.”

  “It’s funny, ain’t it? I mean, what with both of us no more ’n five feet apart and here you are near ’bout freezin’ to death, and I’m burnin’ up, I’m so hot.”

  “Yeah,” Don agreed. “Tell me, Beans, what did you get the missus for Christmas?”

  “I bought her a cookstove.”

  “A cookstove?” Don laughed. “A cookstove? That’s what you bought her for Christmas?”

  “Yeah. She keeps tellin’ me she don’t have the right kind of stove to bake a cake, so I bought her one.”

  “Come on, Beans, what were you thinking? Women don’t like things like that as Christmas presents. I mean, yeah, buy her a stove if you want, but women like pretty things.”

  “Oh, it’s pretty all right. You should see it, Don. That stove is just real pretty.”

  Don laughed. “I don’t think that’s the kind of pretty women think of, when they think pretty.”

  “What about your kids?” Beans asked. “Are they excited about Christmas?”

  “Oh, yes. They’re wanting to see what Santa Claus will bring them.” Don chuckled. “I know one thing he better not bring them. Not if I want to stay on the good side of Doreen.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Donnie wants a drum. Ha! Can you see him running around the house, banging on a drum? Well, it wouldn’t bother me none. I mean when you stand here all day listenin’ to all the noise this makes. But it would more ’n like drive Doreen crazy. Now Little Suzie, all she wants is a doll. Girls are a lot easier than boys. They don’t seem to get into as much trouble. When you and your missus start havin’ children, try ’n make ’em all girls.”

  “Ha!” Beans said. “Like you can choose.”

  “I know a witch that’ll put a spell on your wife to make her have girls or boys. It only cost ten dollars.”

  “And it works?”

  “Sure it works. Anyhow, you can’t lose no money ’cause if she puts the hex on and it don’t work, then she don’t charge you nothin’.”

  “Ha. Sounds to me like she’s got a real game goin’ there.”

  “What do you mean? What kind of game?”

  “If her hex works, she gets paid. If it doesn’t work, she doesn’t get paid. Is that what you said?”

  “Yeah. So you can’t go wrong, that way.”

  “Well, think about it, Don. All she’s doin’ is bettin’ that you’re goin’ to have a boy or a girl. Only she ain’t exactly bettin’, ’cause she don’t put up no money. She’s just collectin’ if she wins.”

  Don stroked his jaw for a second as he considered wh
at Beans said. “I’ll be damned.” He smiled as he suddenly realized the truth of it. “You’re right.”

  In the next to the last car of the train, Parker and the other three men were finalizing their plans.

  “Remember”—Parker gave instructions once more—“make your move as soon as I get the train stopped.”

  “Yeah,” Kelly said. “More ’n likely, Proxmire and ever’one else on the train will be tryin’ to figure out why we’re stopped.”

  “You can get the train stopped, can’t you?” Morris asked.

  “Yeah, don’t you worry about that. I’ll get the train stopped all right.”

  “All right,” Compton said. “We’re all ready, so let’s do it.”

  With a final nod, Parker got up and left the car, passing through the front door and onto the vestibule. Crossing the vestibule, he went into the next car and then the next, proceeding through the cars until he walked through the dining car and started out the front door.

  One of the dining car porters came up to him. “You can’t go no farther, Mister. There ain’t nothin’ up there but the baggage and express car, and there ain’t no passengers that’s allowed in it.”

  Without a word in reply, Parker pulled his pistol and brought it down hard on the train crewman’s head. The porter collapsed to the floor. Nobody else in the dining car saw it, and Parker went on without any more interference.

  From the front vestibule of the dining car, he climbed up onto the top of the express car, ran across it, then jumped down onto the tender and moved toward the engine. He saw the engineer with his hand on the throttle and the fireman standing alongside, leaning on his shovel. Neither of them saw him because they were engaged in conversation.

  “Hey! Engineer! Stop this train!” Parker shouted, but there was too much noise for him to be heard.

  “Hey! Engineer!” Parker shouted again.

  When neither the engineer nor the fireman heard him, Parker fired two shots into the air, which caught the attention of both the engineer and the fireman, and they looked around in surprise.