A Colorado Christmas Read online

  It was enough to make the mounts shy. Suddenly, the pursuers had their hands full keeping their horses under control. They had to stop shooting at the man in front of them, giving him a chance to pull away from them.

  The five men didn’t discourage easily, though. As they began to bring their mounts under control, one of them yelled, “Up yonder in those trees!”

  Ace wasn’t worried about the odds. Five to two didn’t seem that bad to him, especially when the two were him and his brother. But there was no point in a fight to the death when it wasn’t necessary, especially when the reason behind the whole thing was still a mystery.

  He opened fire again—not shooting to kill but putting his bullets a lot closer to the five riders— sending the slugs zipping around their heads. One bullet even knocked a man’s hat off, prompting a shrill yelp of alarm and a lot of cussing.

  Chance peppered them the same way. After a few seconds of that barrage, the men’s nerves broke. The one whose hat Ace had shot off yelled, “Let’s get the hell out of here!” He wheeled his horse around and raked the animal’s flanks with his spurs.

  The others threw a few last shots up the gorge toward Ace, Chance, and the man they had been chasing, then they pounded back down the trail after their companion. Ace and Chance stopped shooting as the men vanished around the bend.

  “You think they’ll double back?” Chance asked as he lowered his Winchester.

  “If they do, we’ll see them coming.” His eyes wary, Ace was watching the man whose aid they had come to. The brothers still didn’t know who he was or why the other five men had been trying to kill him.

  The lone rider slowed his horse as he approached the trees. He looked back over his shoulder as if to make sure the danger was over, then reined his mount to a halt. “I don’t know who you fellas are,” he called, inadvertently echoing the thought that had just gone through Ace’s brain, “but I sure am obliged to you for your help! Those varmints would’ve ventilated me for sure.”

  He was an older man, as that glimpse of a white mustache had hinted. His hair was snow-white, too, as he revealed when he pulled off the big hat, took a bandanna from his pocket, and used it to mop his face.

  Chilly day or not, being chased by men out to kill you was enough to make a man sweat.

  He was burly and barrel-chested, clearly powerful despite his age. Like Ace, he wore a buckskin shirt, but his trousers were fringed buckskin as well, and instead of boots he had high moccasins on his feet. An old flintlock rifle was slung alongside his saddle, and he had a brace of flintlock pistols thrust behind his broad leather belt. What appeared to be a hunting knife with a long, heavy blade rode in a fringed sheath at his hip.

  The man looked like a throwback to the fur trapping days, thought Ace as he eased out from behind the tree. His Winchester was pointed toward the ground, but he was ready to bring it up and use it in a hurry if he needed to. He didn’t think that was going to be necessary. “Who were those fellas? Why were they after you?”

  The old-timer shook his head. “Danged if I know who they were. I’m pretty sure they were after my poke, though. I could’ve been a mite too careless about showin’ it in the last settlement I passed through where I bought some supplies. Trail trash like that, they think a man’s got money, they’ll come after him and try to rob and kill him.”

  That sounded reasonable enough. Although Ace had no way of being sure if the old man was telling the truth, the words had the ring of sincerity to them.

  Chance emerged from the trees. “It’s a good thing we happened to be here when you came along. They would have run you to ground pretty soon.”

  “Yeah, I know.” The old man patted his mount’s shoulder. “This is a mighty good horse, but he’s come a long way from Montana.”

  “Montana?” Chance repeated. “That’s where we’re coming from.”

  “Really? Whereabouts?”

  “A town called Rimfire,” Ace said. “That doesn’t really matter right now, though. If those men were aiming to rob you, they’re liable to come after you again.”

  “Yeah, they sure might,” the old man said as he nodded slowly. “And next time I won’t have you fellas around to give me a hand and run ’em off . . . unless, of course, we were to ride together for a spell.”

  “We’re going in different directions,” Ace pointed out. “My brother and I are headed south.”

  “Well, so am I. Didn’t you hear me just say that I’ve come down to these parts from Montana? I was about a mile on down the trail when I ran into the ambush those varmints set up. Didn’t have no choice but to turn around and head back this way.”

  “That makes sense,” Chance said.

  Ace supposed it did, although he still sensed there was more to the affair than was readily apparent. There was no getting around the fact that the five hellions they had run off were somewhere ahead of them, and if there was going to be more trouble, three men stood a better chance of getting through it than two.

  “All right,” he said, reaching a decision. “I suppose we can ride together for a while and see how it works out. I reckon if we’re going to do that, we ought to know each other’s names. I’m Ace Jensen and this is my brother Chance.”

  “Ace and Chance, eh?” The old-timer grinned. “I like it. I can tell you boys are the genuine article. As for me, my name’s Callahan.” He paused. “They call me Eagle-Eye . . . ’cause I can shoot the wings off a gnat at a hundred yards.”

  CHAPTER 8

  “I say we bushwhack ’em!” Curly Weaver declared.

  “And I say they already came within an inch or two of blowing my brains out,” Mitch Clark snapped back at Weaver. “Sure, I was willing to make a try for the old man’s money, but it didn’t work out. Just bad luck, that’s all. I don’t want to take another chance on getting killed before we meet up with Bleeker. That’ll be a lot bigger payoff.”

  “Yeah,” mused Jed Darby. “All the loot of a whole town, there for the takin’!”

  The three men, along with Blind Jimmy Pugh and Hector Gomez, sat on their horses a couple miles from the spot where they had tried to ambush Eagle-Eye Callahan. After the failed robbery, they had ridden at a fast pace before reining in to let the horses blow.

  Even more than most men—law-abiding men—an owlhoot couldn’t afford to have his horse go down and be set afoot. He never knew when he might encounter a posse and have to make a run for it.

  The five men weren’t really a gang. They’d just been riding together for a while so they didn’t have an official leader. But over time, the others had come to look to Clark to make the important decisions.

  He didn’t appear particularly dangerous. With his hat shot off, revealing his thinning brown hair, he might have been a store clerk or a traveling salesman. Weaver was the handsome one, with curly black hair that gave him his nickname and made the ladies like him, but he was reckless and none too bright. Jed Darby was thin, sallow, and mean. Gomez was a typical bandito who had wandered into the States from south of the border. And Blind Jimmy wasn’t really blind, although his eyes were very weak. He could see well enough through spectacles as thick as the bottom of a whiskey bottle to survive in a fight, though.

  Altogether, they weren’t an impressive bunch, but they were greedy and unpredictable and therefore dangerous.

  A couple days earlier, while they were up in Wyoming at a road ranch where men on the dodge tended to congregate, they had heard the gossip that Jim Bleeker was looking for men to throw in with him on a deal that offered a big payoff.

  Clark and his friends had heard of him, even though Bleeker had been locked up in Texas for several years. He’d been released from prison recently and then dropped out of sight. That same day, a guard and his entire family had been killed in an act of wanton slaughter. Everyone assumed Bleeker was responsible for that atrocity, although there was no proof of it, and nobody knew where he had gone.

  Word of what had happened traveled swiftly along the owlhoot trails, along w
ith rumors about Bleeker having something else in mind. He wanted to settle a score with an old enemy, and that involved treeing a whole town and looting it. Clark and the others didn’t know where exactly that town was, but they wanted to find out.

  Supposedly, a man in Denver could put interested parties in touch with Bleeker. Clark and his friends had been heading there when they’d gotten sidetracked by the old man being a little too careless about revealing how much money he was carrying.

  As far as Clark was concerned, it was time to get back to business. He reached over and plucked the bowler hat from Blind Jimmy’s head.

  “Hey!” the nearsighted young outlaw objected. “That’s my hat.”

  “You can get a new one,” Clark told him. “My head gets cold, and you’ve got a lot more hair than I do.”

  “Well, yeah, that’s true, I reckon.” Blind Jimmy’s head sported a thick mop of yellow curls.

  Clark lifted his reins and heeled his horse into motion. “Let’s go. We can reach Denver in another couple days. We don’t want to get there and find out we’re too late to get in on whatever Bleeker’s planning.”

  “I worry a little about this Señor Bleeker,” Gomez said as the others fell in with Clark. “It is said that sometimes he acts like a mad man.”

  “I don’t care if he’s as crazy as a cow full of loco weed,” Clark said. “As long as this job he’s going to pull pays enough, that’s all that matters to me.”

  Mutters of agreement came from the others.

  Crazy was one thing. Money was another.

  Wyoming

  The building with the sod roof was low and sprawling, with a shed and a pole corral out back. Four horses were in the corral at the moment. The man who rode up to the fence under an angry, overcast sky studied the horses but didn’t recognize any of them. He had a good eye for horseflesh and a good memory for the animals, as well.

  He rode around to the front of the place. Two more horses were tied to a hitch rack there. He didn’t recognize either of those mounts, so the men he was looking for weren’t there . . . unless they had changed horses. That was always a possibility.

  He swung down from his saddle, a tall, well-built man in dark clothes. His craggy face was set in grim lines, relieved slightly by a wide mouth that was quick to grin and laugh. A narrow, neatly trimmed mustache adorned his upper lip.

  As he tied his horse at the rack with the other two, he looked around. The windowless building sat by itself on a trail that ran roughly north and south. A range of low mountains lay to the west. Northward, flat-topped buttes were scattered across the landscape. Windswept plains stretched to the east and south, although a dark line on the southern horizon marked the location of more mountains.

  It was lonely, desolate country, which made the isolated saloon and trading post a perfect stopping spot for men who didn’t want to be noticed. They could replenish their supplies, guzzle down some rotgut, and maybe spend a few minutes with one of the three Indian squaws who worked for Jeremiah Beebe, the proprietor. Beebe claimed to be a Mormon and called them his wives, but nobody knew or cared if that had any basis in fact.

  The newcomer certainly didn’t care, although he’d heard the stories about Beebe and the squaws. One was a Crow, another a Blackfoot, the third a Shoshone, and they all hated each other. Each would have gladly killed the other two if given the chance, so Beebe had to keep an eye on them and make sure nothing of the sort happened.

  Seemed like an awful lot of trouble.

  The man went inside, a swirl of cold wind following him.

  Three men were sitting at a table, playing cards. One of them glanced up and snapped, “Hey, shut that damn door!”

  The newcomer swung the door closed on its leather hinges, and the gloom inside became even thicker. Candles were set here and there on the rough-hewn tables, and an oil lamp burned over the crude bar, but the weak, flickering glow they provided didn’t do much to penetrate the shadows.

  Despite that, the newcomer’s gaze moved quickly around the low-ceilinged room as he took stock of its occupants. Besides the three card players, two men stood in front of the bar, apparently nursing drinks in dirty glasses. The man in a dingy apron behind the bar was shaped like a watermelon. He had a walrus mustache and wore a flat-topped hat with an eagle feather stuck behind the band. An Indian woman stood at the far end of the bar, apparently doing nothing, while a second woman sat in a corner near the pot-belled stove, mending some clothes.

  That left one woman unaccounted for, so the newcomer was fairly confident they were together.

  A moment later, he heard animalistic grunts coming from a room behind a threadbare curtain and was certain of it. How disappointing someone could take such a beautiful act and make it sound like a couple hogs wallowing in mud, he thought.

  The important thing was that he didn’t immediately recognize any of the men in the place, although there was a good chance they all had prices on their heads. A couple of them looked familiar, and he had a hunch that if he tried hard enough, he could dredge up their names from his memories of the WANTED posters he had studied, but he didn’t care enough to go to that much effort. As long as they didn’t bother him, he wouldn’t bother them.

  When his eyes had adjusted to the dim interior and he was sure he had taken note of everyone, he walked over to the bar. He nodded to the two grizzled drinkers, who just looked at him with blank expressions.

  To Jeremiah Beebe behind the bar, he said, “I don’t suppose you have any wine, do you?”

  “Wine,” Beebe repeated. “Mister, I got beer—which I brew my own self—and whiskey—which I also brew my own self—and that’s what you got to choose from.”

  “Which one has fewer rattlesnake heads in it?”

  Beebe drew himself up and glared. “I don’t put rattlesnake heads in my liquor. What do you take me for, a Mexican?”

  “Mexicans put worms in their liquor, not snakes.”

  “Well, either way, I sell only the highest quality stuff here. Now, you want a drink or not?”

  “I suppose I’ll try the beer,” the stranger said mildly.

  “Hmmph.” Beebe dipped a tin mug in an open barrel and set it in front of the man. “Four bits.”

  The man picked up the mug and angled it so that he could look into it by the light of the oil lamp. He saw things wiggling in it, then said, “The price is a bit steep, but I suppose since the beer comes with bonus ingredients, that justifies the cost.” He set the mug back on the plank bar and pushed it away slightly.

  “I dipped it, you pay for it,” Beebe said, tapping the end of a sausage-like finger on the bar.

  “Of course.” The stranger reached into a coat pocket with his left hand, took out a half-dollar, and slid it across the planks.

  Beebe made the coin disappear. “If you just come in here to make sport of my place, I’ll thank you to leave.”

  “Actually, I’m looking for someone. Mitch Clark. You know him?”

  “I don’t know nobody,” Beebe answered with a scowl.

  “How about Curly Weaver? He rides with Clark. Jimmy Pugh? Hector Gomez? Jed Darby?” The stranger paused. “If you’ve seen them, I can make it worth your while.”

  Beebe frowned. “I don’t like strangers who come in here askin’ a bunch of—”

  “I know you. You’re Luke Smith,” interrupted one of the men at the bar, pointing a finger at the man.

  “Actually,” said the stranger, “I go by Luke Jensen now.”

  “You’re a damn bounty hunter!”

  All around the room, hands flashed toward guns.

  CHAPTER 9

  Luke wasn’t surprised by the reaction of the men in the road ranch, even though he wasn’t after any of them in particular. He had taken up the profession of bounty hunting not long after the end of the Civil War, when he had healed enough from the injuries inflicted on him by men who were supposed to be on the same side he was.

  A lot of years had passed since then. A lot of men had fallen
to his guns, and even more had wound up behind bars or dancing at the end of a hangman’s rope because of him. Word got around among the men on the other side of the law. They had heard of Luke Smith, as he had called himself then, and many of them now knew he was really Luke Jensen, older brother to the famous gunfighter Smoke Jensen.

  And most of them hated him. He represented a force for law and order who wasn’t afraid to use the same sort of violent tactics the outlaws did.

  Because of his natural wariness, Luke had no trouble letting his instincts take over as soon as he realized he was in the middle of a hornet’s nest. He swept his coat back and his hands moved with blinding speed to the butts of the twin Remington revolvers he carried in cross-draw rigs. He half-turned as he drew the guns, putting his left side toward the bar. The gun in his left hand roared and spouted flame as he fired at the man closest to him in that direction, who happened to be the one who had first recognized him.

  The slug punched into the man’s chest and knocked him back a step into his companion, interfering with the second man’s draw. Luke was aiming from the corner of his eye as he continued to turn. The left-hand gun blasted again, and the bullet went through the second man’s mouth as he started to yell a curse. The hot lead smashed through the lower part of his brain and exploded out the back of his skull, leaving him dead as could be even though he was still on his feet.

  Before either of those men had a chance to fall, Luke had opened fire with the right-hand Remington on the poker players, all three of whom had flung their cards away as they bolted up out of their chairs and clawed at their guns. The first man hadn’t cleared leather when he died, Luke’s bullet ripping through his throat and knocking him backwards as blood fountained from the grisly wound.

  The second card player got his gun out, but it was still pointed at the table when a slug from the Remington drove deep into his gut and folded him double. He pitched forward onto the table, leaking blood onto the scattered pasteboards and the money in the pot.