A High Sierra Christmas Read online

  “Do you think the tracks will stay clear?”

  Jones shook his head, not in the negative but just to say that he didn’t know. “It all depends on how long the storm lasts. Clete Patterson said his bones tell him it’s gonna be a bad one.” He headed for the little room off the lobby where his telegraph key was located. “I’m gonna let headquarters know.”

  “Is there anything we should be doing to get ready?” Painton had worked up here at the summit during a number of snowstorms, but no real blizzard had blown through during his tenure. The trains had always been able to run.

  “Anything that could be done has already been done,” Jones told him. “From here on out, we’re at the mercy of whoever decides the weather.” He smiled grimly. “So you might try prayin’.”

  CHAPTER 5

  San Francisco

  China Mike’s First and Last Chance Saloon lived up to its name. Close to the waterfront on San Francisco’s Barbary Coast, it was the first chance for sailors fresh off the boats to get drunk and enjoy the company of fallen women.

  It was also the last chance for many of those women, and for young men as well who downed a drink, passed out, and woke up on a boat bound for Shanghai. That was why the proprietor had gotten his nickname.

  There was nothing fancy about the place. The sawdust on the floor had soaked up gallons of blood, vomit, piss, and spilled beer. The bar was deeply scarred.

  Thick clouds of tobacco smoke hung in the air and stung the eyes and nose. Tinny piano music and raucous laughter competed to see which could assault the ears worse.

  There was no more wretched hive of scum and villainy to be found anywhere on the Barbary Coast.

  Frank Colbert didn’t mind any of that. Squalid and stinking though it might be, the First and Last Chance Saloon beat the hell out of prison.

  Colbert’s hard-planed face might have been carved out of the same wood as the bar. A thatch of dark hair drooped over his forehead. Under a hawk nose, a thick mustache decorated his upper lip. His cheeks were gaunt, and there were harsh lines around his deep-set eyes.

  During the past five years, life behind bars had honed away any softness in the man . . . not that there had ever been much to start with.

  He sat at a table in a rear corner, his back to the wall, playing cards with two brawny sailors, an idiot cowboy on his first visit to the big city, a frock-coated professional gambler, and a woman with red hair and an enormous bosom displayed to full advantage in a low-cut emerald gown.

  “I call,” Selena Charlton said as she laid down her cards. The young cowboy and one of the sailors were the only other players left in the hand. Colbert, the other sailor, and the tinhorn had already dropped out.

  The sailor grimaced and threw in his cards, admitting defeat. They landed faceup, showing that he had tried to fill a straight but failed, then attempted to bluff with it.

  The cowboy was more reluctant to admit defeat, spreading his cards faceup on the table and studying them, his eyes going back and forth between his hand and Selena’s as if hoping that by staring at them he could force the markings to change.

  Finally, he sighed and said, “Dadgum it.”

  “That’s all right,” Selena said as she leaned forward to rake in the pot. “I’ll give you a chance to win it back.”

  She was also giving him an eyeful, and the youngster had trouble tearing his gaze away from the impressive cleavage. But then he began to frown, and he said, “Hold on a minute. I’m confused about somethin’, ma’am. You had a full house just then, right?”

  “That’s right,” Selena said.

  “Three queens and two eights.”

  “Yeah. What are you getting at?”

  The cowboy tipped his hat back, scratched at the hair above his left ear, and said, “It seems to me that there was two queens played before now. There’s one of them, right there.”

  He pointed to the sailor’s busted straight.

  “So?” Selena asked.

  “I threw away another one on the draw,” the cowboy said. “You can look in the stack if you want.”

  Selena stared at him. “You threw away a queen?”

  “I didn’t figure I could use it. That sure enough makes five of ’em. That seems like one too many.”

  Selena looked around. Everyone else at the table knew what was going to happen next. She would summon one of the bouncers, and the young cowboy who had all but accused her of cheating would be dragged out of here and beaten within an inch of his life . . . if he was lucky.

  If he wasn’t lucky, he would be beaten within an inch of his life and then tossed in the water to drown.

  Of course, Selena had cheated the cowboy, and Colbert and the others knew that, too. But the sailor had never had a real chance to win the hand, and the others had already folded before that, so they didn’t care.

  A kid like that was just asking for trouble by coming into a place like this. The cowboy wasn’t a total greenhorn, though. He knew he’d been dancing on the knife edge of danger.

  He started to come up out of his chair. The gun on his hip whispered against the leather of its holster as he drew. He was fast, no doubt about that.

  Unfortunately for him, Frank Colbert was faster.

  One of the first things Colbert had done after being released from prison, before he ever went looking for a drink or a woman, was to arm himself. He had a knife shoved down his boot, a gun in one coat pocket, and a long leather sap in the other pocket. The sap was filled with lead shot, and Colbert wielded it expertly.

  He brought it around as the cowboy’s gun cleared leather. The sap smacked across the young man’s wrist and broke several bones. He cried out in pain and dropped the gun, unfired, as he stumbled back a step.

  Colbert surged up and backhanded the cowboy with the sap. This blow shattered the youngster’s jaw, knocked out several of his teeth, and dropped him senseless to the floor. He lay there with blood and spit drooling out of his mouth into the sawdust, forming a pool in which lay the broken teeth.

  “Well, it looks like you haven’t slowed down any, Frank,” Selena said.

  “Damn right.”

  “Why didn’t you shoot him? I know you’re packing iron.”

  “This was easier and safer. No bullets flying around. And more entertaining.”

  Selena motioned curtly for some of China Mike’s men to drag the unconscious cowboy out of the saloon. The brief but brutal flurry of action had caused a momentary hush to fall over the room, but the hubbub rose to its former level by the time the bouncers got the unfortunate youngster outside.

  Colbert neither knew nor cared what would happen to him out there.

  Selena gathered up the cards. “Another hand?” she asked the remaining players.

  “Sure,” Colbert said. “With no extra queens this time.”

  For a second, the redhead’s green eyes glittered with anger. Then she threw back her head and laughed.

  “You’ve still got your sense of humor, Frank.”

  Colbert just grunted. Selena could cheat anybody else she wanted to, as long as she didn’t try to pull any fast ones on him.

  As she shuffled and dealt, he said, “You’re sure there haven’t been any telegrams for me lately?”

  “We’ve been over this,” Selena replied with a touch of irritation in her voice. “If a wire came for you, Frank, I’d know about it. Mike gives me a pretty free hand running this place. I’d have given it to you right away. What sort of important news are you waiting for, anyway?”

  “That’s my business,” Colbert replied.

  “And my business is cards,” the tinhorn said. “So let’s get on with it, shall we?”

  Colbert started to get mad but then decided it wasn’t worth the time and effort. He picked up the hand Selena had dealt him and studied it. A pair of fours was the best he could do.

  His thoughts strayed to the gang he had left behind when he’d been arrested in Truckee. He had been alone that day, by chance, and if the others h
ad been with him they probably could have shot their way free.

  As it was, he’d been tried and convicted for robbery—they hadn’t been able to prove any of the murder charges levied against him—and sent to prison for five years. Five long years.

  Before going away, he had gotten word to Deke Mahoney to keep the gang together, and since then they had traded a few discreetly worded letters. Mahoney knew approximately when Colbert was getting out and was supposed to be in touch so Colbert would know where to rendezvous with them.

  But he had been free for almost a week and hadn’t heard a word so far. It was damn frustrating. Colbert wanted to get back in harness, to lead his men again, to hold a gun in his hand and feel the power that always coursed through him when he took the money—and sometimes the lives—of the pathetic sheep that made up most of humanity. There was nothing else quite like that in the world.

  But until then, he would make do with sipping whiskey and playing cards and taking Selena upstairs now and then. These days, she might not be on the line anymore, but she was still a whore at heart and Frank Colbert knew how to treat whores. She liked it, too, or at least she knew she’d damn well better pretend to.

  “You in, Frank?”

  The question broke into Colbert’s reverie. He looked at his cards again and threw three of them into the discard.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m in.”

  * * *

  It was easy to tell that Christmas was fast approaching. As Smoke and his children walked toward the restaurant where they planned to have dinner, they passed numerous decorations commemorating the season. Wreaths of holly with red berries hung on the buildings, and strings of silver bells stretched between lampposts.

  It was all very festive and made Smoke wonder if Pearlie and Cal had fetched in a Christmas tree for Sally, back on the Sugarloaf. He suspected they had, because Sally loved to decorate and celebrate the holiday.

  The Crimson Arch was one of the finest eating establishments in San Francisco, and the prices on the fancy, gilt-printed menu reflected that.

  “They must set a lot of store by the cows these steaks came from, judging by the prices they’re asking for them,” Smoke commented after he, Denny, and Louis had been greeted by an elegantly dressed maitre d’ who ushered them to a table covered with a fine linen cloth and set with sparkling china, silver, and crystal. A string quartet played softly in a corner. “You could buy a dozen meals in Big Rock for what one costs here.”

  Louis laughed and said, “Father, we should take you to Paris and let you dine there.”

  Denny frowned dubiously and shook her head. “Smoke Jensen tangling with a French waiter? I don’t think that would be a very good combination.”

  “I get along all right with most folks,” Smoke said.

  “You’ve never met a French waiter.”

  Smoke inclined his head in acknowledgment of that point and went back to studying the menu.

  Best not to worry about the prices, he told himself. He could afford to pay them. Anyway, the next morning he and the two youngsters would be on the train, heading back to Colorado, so he wouldn’t have to be annoyed by these fancy, expensive surroundings for much longer.

  He suddenly found himself annoyed by something else as he glanced over the top of the menu and spotted a familiar face several tables away. The man sitting there was partially concealed behind a potted palm, but Smoke got a good enough look at him to recognize him.

  Smoke set the menu down and stood up. “Excuse me,” he said to Denny and Louis. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Something wrong?” Denny asked.

  “No, I just see somebody I know and want to have a word with him.”

  Smoke made his way to the other table, weaving around several tables in between. By the time he reached his destination, the man sitting there had lifted his menu to cover his face and pretended to be studying it.

  “You’re a mite late for that, Mr. Stansfield,” Smoke said as he came to a stop beside the table. “I already saw you.”

  Peter Stansfield lowered the menu and tried to act surprised to see Smoke. “Ah, Mr. Jensen, this is a surprise.”

  “I’ll just bet it is,” Smoke drawled. “You followed me and my children here, didn’t you?”

  Now the journalist attempted to look offended. “After you explained to me that you preferred not to be interviewed? Why would I do such a thing?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you thought somebody else would try to rob me and you could get a story that way.”

  “It just so happens that the Crimson Arch is one of my favorite places to eat. I take my meals here fairly often.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought an ink-stained wretch could afford to frequent a restaurant this expensive.”

  Stansfield scowled but didn’t say anything.

  “Listen, Mr. Stansfield,” Smoke went on, “it’s a free country, so you can eat wherever you want to. You can even skulk around and follow me and my kids. But you’ll be wasting your time, and if you make too much of a pest of yourself, I won’t take it kindly.”

  “You can’t threaten the press,” Stansfield said.

  “I don’t make a habit of threatening folks. I just tell ’em what I’m going to do if certain things happen . . . and then I do it.” Smoke’s impressively broad shoulders rose and fell. “Seems simple enough to me, and fair enough, too.”

  “I assure you, you have the wrong impression about me, Mr. Jensen. I have no intention of troubling you.”

  “Good.” Smoke nodded to the reporter. “Enjoy your evening, Mr. Stansfield.”

  He went back to the table and sat down. Denny said, “What was that all about? Who was that man?”

  “Nobody you need to worry about,” Smoke said. He reached for the menu again. “Now, let’s figure out what we’re going to eat that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.”

  CHAPTER 6

  The jail cell stunk from all its previous occupants. The hard, bare mattress on the narrow bunk had vermin living in it. The small chamber was dank and uncomfortably chilly this morning. During the night, the fog that nearly always came in and blanketed San Francisco had crept through the single barred window and hung in the air, making the place even more unpleasant.

  The cold and the damp caused Gordon Lewiston’s broken arm to ache even worse than it would have otherwise. He had spent a miserable night, able to sleep for only a few minutes at a time before the pain woke him.

  More than ever, he needed the blessed relief that the smoke of the lotus would have provided for him.

  The day before, a doctor at the hospital where the police had taken him had set the broken bone, splinted the arm, and wrapped it tightly in bandages.

  “This man should remain here in the hospital under a physician’s care,” the medico had told the police, but the officers didn’t pay any attention.

  “He’s charged with attempted armed robbery and assault,” one of them had told the doctor. “He’s going to the lockup, busted wing or no busted wing.”

  Lewiston supposed he should have been grateful they’d gotten him as much medical attention as they had. But it didn’t really matter.

  If he remained behind bars for very long, he would die from lack of opium. He couldn’t live without the stuff. Never had been able to, ever since he’d come back from Cuba and the war against the damn Spaniards.

  At least they had put him in a cell by himself, not one of the larger holding cells. The men they threw in there would have seen that he was injured and couldn’t defend himself, and there was no telling what might have happened to him overnight. It wouldn’t have been good, though.

  Footsteps echoed in the corridor outside the row of cells. Lewiston remained sitting on the bunk with the thin, gray, scratchy blanket wrapped around him. He hadn’t been able to find a position lying down where his arm didn’t hurt like blazes, so any sleep he had snatched during the night was done sitting up. He didn’t raise his head to watch the jailer approaching.
/>   But then the footsteps stopped and the man said, “Lewiston, you’ve got a visitor.”

  A visitor . . . ? Who in the world—

  Lewiston raised his eyes, saw the woman standing there, and groaned.

  “Alma,” he said. “How did you find me?”

  She said, “Once I’d poked through every opium den and joss house in Chinatown and you weren’t in any of them, I knew you had to be either in jail or lying dead in an alley somewhere. So I came here next.”

  “Hoping that you’d find me here?” Lewiston asked with a faint smile. “Or that you wouldn’t?”

  “Don’t be like that,” Alma snapped. “If I’d wanted you dead, I would have killed you myself a long time before now.”

  “Lady,” the jailer said, “that probably ain’t the wisest thing to be sayin’ in front of somebody who works for the law.”

  “Oh, go away and give me a minute with my husband,” Alma told the man as she glared at him.

  Nobody could stand up to Alma when she looked like that, as Lewiston knew all too well from experience. The jailer muttered, “All right, all right,” and retreated to the far end of the corridor. Alma turned back to the bars and gripped them.

  Lewiston’s spirits couldn’t help but rise for a moment as he gazed at her. Life had been hard on Alma. Being married to him had been hard, and he could admit that.

  She was twenty-eight years old but appeared to be six or seven years older than that. She was still a fine-looking woman, though. Her blond hair had a shine to it, even in these dingy surroundings. Maybe especially in a place like this. Her eyes had lines around them, but they were still like blue pools to her husband. There were lines around her mouth, too, but Lewiston wanted to kiss her, anyway.

  “Alma, you shouldn’t have come.” Emotion choked his voice as he stood and moved slowly over to the bars. “You should get far away from me and forget you were ever married to me. You deserve better, and it won’t be long until you’re free to find it.”

  “What are you talking about, Gordon?”