A Big Sky Christmas Read online

  Bodie had to admit, the plan sounded like it would work. If everything broke their way, they would ride off into the night $80,000 richer, without a shot being fired.

  It would be a good way to end his career as a desperado, he thought.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Later that afternoon, while they were waiting in a small grove of cottonwoods for night to fall, Jake came over to Bodie. “I wish the boss had picked me as one of the four to go into town tonight.”

  “It doesn’t really matter,” Bodie said. “You’ll get your share either way.”

  “Yeah, I know, but you boys get to have a drink first, maybe even pat some calico cat on the rump while you’re waitin’. I get to hang around out here with a bunch of stinkin’, whiskery ol’ owlhoots.”

  “I’ll be sure to drink a shot of whiskey and flirt with a soiled dove for you,” Bodie said with a grin.

  “Yeah, you do that.” Jake grew more serious. “Just keep your eyes open, Bodie. Could be you’ll have a chance to slip a few of those double eagles in your pocket without Eldon noticin’. I’ll expect you to share your good fortune if you do.”

  Bodie frowned. “I’m not sure I’d risk that, even if I did have a chance. Eldon would put a bullet through a man’s head, sure as sin, if he tried to help himself to more than his fair share.”

  “Maybe,” Jake said with a shrug. “And maybe it’d be worth the risk.”

  Bodie didn’t say anything else about that, and neither did Jake. Bodie worried, though, that sooner or later his friend would give in to temptation and try to double-cross Swint. That could lead to bad trouble.

  Bodie felt himself getting tense as night approached. The time seemed to go by fast.

  Too soon, Swint was calling out, “All right, boys, mount up. Time for us to go.”

  The three men he had picked to accompany him swung into their saddles. They circled west of the settlement, crossed the railroad tracks, and came in from that direction.

  The saloon didn’t have a sign on it, just the word SALOON painted in big letters on the upper part of the false front. Swint, Bodie, Hinkley, and Green tied their horses at the hitch rail in front of it and went inside.

  The place wasn’t very busy. Four men were playing poker at a table; three more stood at the bar drinking while a single bartender lazily polished glasses with a grimy rag. Bodie didn’t see a woman in the place, so if he told Jake any stories about flirting with one, he’d have to lie.

  The bartender wasn’t talkative like a lot of drink jugglers were. He brought their beers and left them alone, which was fine with Bodie. He’d hoped the beer would calm his nerves a little, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

  He would be glad when the robbery was over and done with. Despite all the things he had done, maybe he wasn’t cut out to be an outlaw.

  When it was good and dark, Swint downed what was left of the beer he’d been nursing and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “See you later, boys.”

  The other three knew what that meant. Swint was on his way to the depot. The rest of them would follow at short intervals. Green would go first, then Hinkley, and finally Bodie.

  Soon he was the last of the quartet in the saloon, and it occurred to him that he could go outside, get on his horse, and ride away. The other three were all waiting down at the train station. They wouldn’t be able to stop him. He didn’t have to go through with it. He could put this life of banditry behind him right here and now.

  But where would he go and what would he do? Not nearly as far or as much as he could with $3,000, he told himself.

  No, he would do what he’d said he would do, he decided. He wasn’t going to run out on his partners.

  He left the saloon and strolled toward the station in apparent innocence. As he neared it, a hiss came from the thick shadows beside the building. Bodie darted into the gloom and found the other three men waiting there for him.

  “All right,” Swint whispered. “Cantrell, you go in and ask the fella if the train’s on time. That’ll distract him while we come in the platform door.”

  Bodie nodded, realized that Swint couldn’t see him in the darkness, and said, “I understand.”

  He left them there and stepped back into the dim glow of the lantern that hung over the depot’s entrance. Trying not to look as nervous as he felt, he went inside and found himself in a small, dusty waiting room with a ticket window to the left and a storage room to the right. A door on the other side of the waiting room led out onto the platform. The night was warm, and the platform door was open to allow some cross-ventilation.

  If the agent was behind the ticket window, Bodie would have to lure him into the waiting room some way. Luck was with him, though, and the man emerged from the storeroom, dusting his hands off from moving something around in there. He was a middle-aged, balding man wearing a green eyeshade. With a friendly smile, he asked Bodie, “Something I can do for you, young fella?”

  “Is the eastbound train on time?”

  The agent scratched at his jaw. “Yeah, I reckon. Haven’t heard anything saying otherwise. You need to buy a ticket? I can flag it down for you if you do. Ought to be here in another fifteen, twenty minutes.”

  While the man was talking, Swint and the other two cat-footed into the depot from the platform behind him. Bodie had to use all his willpower not to look directly at them and give the game away.

  Of course, it wouldn’t really matter if he did. They outnumbered the agent four to one, and he didn’t even appear to be armed.

  Swint put the barrel of his revolver against the back of the man’s neck and eared back the hammer. The metallic ratcheting echoed sinisterly in the small room. “Oh, you’ll flag down the train, all right, friend. Now don’t you move.”

  The agent stiffened and his eyes widened in fear.

  Bodie felt sorry for the man. He drew his gun and told him, “You just do what we tell you and you’ll be all right.”

  The agent’s mouth opened and closed, but he didn’t say anything.

  Swint prodded him with the gun again. “You understand, friend?”

  “S-Sure,” the agent stammered. “Just don’t kill me.”

  “I won’t shoot you,” Swint promised. “Not as long as you cooperate.”

  “What is it you fellas want? That train’s not carrying anything except freight and a few passengers. There’s nothing special in the express car.”

  Swint laughed. “That shows how much you know, amigo. The railroad don’t tell you little fellas about the deals it makes with the government. They probably figure it’s safer that way, keepin’ you in the dark. Might have been, too, if somebody hadn’t sold ’em out.”

  “Mister, I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talkin’ about.”

  “That don’t matter. Just come with me and raise that flag so the engineer’ll know to stop. You be sure to give him the right signal, too. No mistakes or you’ll be mighty sorry.” As Swint started to take the agent out onto the platform, he glanced back at Bodie and added, “Go get the horses.”

  Bodie nodded, pouched his iron, and hurried out of the depot.

  He was back in less than five minutes, leading all four horses. He tied them outside the station and went back in. Hinkley and Green were standing watch just inside the door, in case any of the townspeople should show up, but Bodie saw right away that wasn’t the case. The depot was just as empty as he’d left it.

  Swint waited on the far side of the waiting room by the platform door. Bodie frowned as he realized he didn’t see the agent. Then he glanced toward the storeroom door, which was still partially open, and stiffened as he saw a pair of legs on the floor.

  “What in blazes?” Bodie muttered. He pushed the door open farther and drew in a startled breath as light from the waiting room spilled over the man’s motionless body. A dark pool of blood was spreading slowly around his head. Bodie could see the gaping wound where the man’s throat had been cut.

  He turned his shocked gaze
toward Swint. “You told him you weren’t going to kill him.”

  “I said I wouldn’t shoot him,” Swint replied with a leering grin. “I didn’t. That trusty knife of mine did the trick and made sure he wouldn’t try to warn anybody.”

  A ball of sickness rolled around Bodie’s guts. He had seen violent death before, more times than he liked to think about, but this was cold-blooded murder and he didn’t like it. “They hang men for things like this.”

  “Only when they catch ’em,” Swint said. “And nobody’s gonna catch us, Bodie.”

  In the distance, a train whistle sounded, a long, wailing cry that seemed to Bodie like the howl of a lost soul. . . .

  The noise faded from his memory and blended in with the racket from a piano in a corner of the Bella Royale that a sleeve-gartered entertainer had started pounding. Bodie was back in Kansas City again, sitting at the table with Swint, Jake Lucas, and several other members of the gang.

  The rest of the robbery had gone off without a hitch, a couple weeks earlier. The train had rolled in and stopped just like it was supposed to, and the rest of the gang had swarmed over it, taking control of the engineer and the fireman in the locomotive cab, the conductor in the caboose, and the travelers in the two passenger cars.

  Swint, Bodie, Green, and Hinkley got the drop on the messenger in the express car. The man had thought about putting up a fight, but with four guns staring him in the face, he had thought better of it.

  And so they had ridden away just as Bodie had hoped, without firing a shot.

  Even so, they had left a dead man behind them, a dead man whose face still haunted Bodie’s dreams from time to time.

  What made it even worse was that he hadn’t been able to leave the gang like he’d planned. Swint was dragging his feet on divvying up the loot. He had said they would do it once they got to Kansas City.

  Bodie hoped that was true. He wanted to get away from these men. He hoped he could persuade Jake to take his share and come with him. If they partnered up, they could start a fine ranch somewhere with the money they’d have.

  “I sure wouldn’t want to tangle with MacCallister,” Jake was saying. “No telling how many badmen he’s sent over the divide in his time.”

  “Stories like that always get blown up bigger than they really are,” Swint insisted. “I ain’t afraid of that old man, or anybody else for that matter. He’ll get his comeuppance one o’ these days, and if he ever crosses me, I’ll give it to him myself. I’ll blow his lights out, I will.”

  Part of Bodie would have liked to witness such an encounter. He thought Swint was completely wrong about Jamie Ian MacCallister, and it might be satisfying to watch the results.

  Swint changed the subject. “Did you boys notice that theater when we were comin’ into town? Posters out front said there was gonna be a show. I hope we haven’t missed it.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Hark! What light through yonder window—Dadblast it! Who put that board there? I almost tripped and broke my bloody neck! We open tomorrow night, my friends. We can’t have things like this happening!”

  Savannah McCoy put a hand over her mouth to stifle the laughter she felt trying to bubble up her throat. The sight of Cyrus O’Hanlon’s portly figure in tights and doublet was pretty ridiculous to start with, and the way he had stumbled as he crossed the stage and nearly fallen on his face made him seem even more like a comedian. He would have made a good one, Savannah thought, if he hadn’t considered himself the greatest dramatic actor of his generation.

  Of course, great dramatic actors didn’t head up troupes that played in second-rate variety theaters and opera houses across the Midwest, occasionally venturing as far out on the frontier as Kansas City, which seemed like the Wild West of penny dreadful fame to Savannah.

  She pushed back the rich brown ringlets of hair that kept trying to fall in front of her face when she leaned through Juliet’s “window,” which was part of the set the troupe had erected on the stage of Mr. Channing’s theater. She pulled up the neckline of her dress. Cyrus had designed the costumes, of course. He had a hand in everything the troupe did. He’d had the neckline cut low enough to display what Savannah considered a scandalous amount of cleavage, especially when she leaned forward to say her lines.

  “Give the rubes in the front row what they want to see,” he always said.

  Savannah didn’t like it. Most people already considered actresses to be little better than harlots. They didn’t see that it was a true calling, like any other artistic endeavor. She didn’t think it was a good idea to reinforce their prejudice by dressing like a saloon girl.

  So she pulled the dress up as much as she could, but in the end, Cyrus was the boss. That was why, at the age of fifty-five, he was playing the stripling youth, Romeo. Savannah, though six or seven years older than Juliet was supposed to be in the play, was at least a lot closer to the right age.

  Cyrus took off the hat with a tired-looking feather plume that he wore, ran his fingers through his mostly gray hair as he recovered his composure, and pulled the hat back on. “We’ll begin again,” he said in a loud, ringing voice. He was so accustomed to projecting to the back of the house that he talked that way all the time.

  He launched once again into Romeo’s balcony speech, and Savannah tried to concentrate on what he was saying so that she couldn’t miss her cues. It was difficult to keep her mind from wandering. She had been doing this scene for months, ever since the platform behind the “window” had collapsed during a performance in Chicago, dumping Cyrus’s wife Dollie, the previous Juliet, on her amply padded rear end.

  Even though she hadn’t been injured in the fall, following that accident Dollie had declared that she was too old to be clambering around on scenery and told Cyrus to find himself a new Juliet. The role had fallen to Savannah, who had been with the troupe for about a year.

  After Cyrus had made that announcement, Dollie had taken Savannah aside and told her, “Cyrus sometimes gets carried away and thinks his love scenes with his leading ladies ought to continue offstage. In fact, that’s how the two of us wound up married.”

  “Oh, I’m sure that won’t ever happen,” Savannah had said. “Mr. O’Hanlon is much too professional.”

  “It had better not,” Dollie had warned her. “If it does, you’re liable to find yourself stranded in some backwater with more livestock than people. Don’t think your acting talents would help you then.”

  Since that day, Savannah had learned that there was some truth to what Dollie had told her. Cyrus had made some advances—subtle ones, to be sure—but unmistakable in their intention. Savannah had gotten quite skilled in fending them off without seeming to do so.

  She realized that Cyrus had paused and knew it was her line. For a split second, she couldn’t think of where they were in the scene, but then it came back to her. Her acting instincts were good and hardly ever let her down. She leaned out the window and delivered her line, and below her on the stage Cyrus started emoting once more.

  Savannah’s mind strayed again, back to the stately white mansion in the Georgia city that had given her name to her. At least, the name she was currently using . . .

  “No daughter of mine is going to be an actress!” William Thorpe thundered as he stalked back and forth in his study.

  Her father was good at thundering, Gillian Thorpe thought as she steeled herself against his rage. He preferred to shout rather than discuss anything in a calm, rational manner. He seemed to think that whoever was the loudest in any argument was going to prevail. And to be fair, that was usually what happened when William Thorpe was involved. Goodness knew his wife Helen, Gillian’s mother, had long since given up ever trying to convince her husband of anything. He would just shout her down.

  Arguing with a man who was always right, at least in his own head, was just a waste of time and energy.

  “Of course, Father,” Gillian said. “I understand.”

  He stopped short and frowned at her in surprise. �
�You understand? Does that mean you’re going to give up this mad idea of parading yourself on a stage like a painted woman in a house of ill repute?”

  For a second Gillian wanted to ask her father how he knew so much about painted women and what went on in houses of ill repute, but she decided not to, probably wisely.

  “No, Father, I understand why you feel the way you do, but I haven’t changed my mind. I still believe that it’s my destiny to become an actress.”

  “Destiny!” he snorted. “Romantic claptrap! I realize you’re just a female, Gillian, and as such it’s your nature to bury yourself in folderol and foolishness, but good Lord, girl, I thought better of you than this! I thought I’d raised you better!”

  Again Gillian had to restrain an impulse, the urge to pick up one of the paperweights on his desk and throw it at him. Just a female, indeed!

  “You’re not the only one who raised me, Father,” she pointed out.

  “I know,” he said with a scathing sneer. “And I’m not really surprised that your mother filled your head with so many foolish notions.”

  “She taught me to do what I believe to be right.”

  “You have no business believing anything except what I tell you to believe.”

  That summed it up, all right, Gillian thought. She had a brain in her head, a good brain, but her father didn’t want her to use it. As long as she lived under his roof, he wouldn’t allow her to use it. So the solution was simple.

  Terence had been right. If she wanted to do anything worthwhile with her life, she had to get out of there. She had to run away.

  With him.

  Terence Flanagan was an actor, a breathtakingly handsome man. Gillian had met him backstage after a performance of a play she and her mother had attended. She had been impressed with him right away and very pleased that he took an interest in her. From that moment on, a friendship had developed between them . . . a friendship that Gillian sensed Terence wanted to turn into something more. She hadn’t yet made up her mind about that, but the two of them had gotten close enough that she had confided her ambitions to him.