A High Sierra Christmas Read online

  “I suppose,” Smoke said, but a frown creased his forehead. The wheels of his brain had already started to turn.

  The conductor had said that unless they wanted to return to San Francisco, they were stuck here in Sacramento for the foreseeable future. But that might not be the case. Accepting that meant giving up, as far as Smoke was concerned.

  And Smoke Jensen had never cottoned much to giving up.

  There had to be some other way....

  * * *

  Alma Lewiston stood outside the door of the compartment and took a deep breath as she gathered her courage. A big part of her would rather have been sitting in the club car, talking and flirting with Frank Colbert.

  But Fate had dropped Smoke Jensen practically into her lap. She had barely been able to believe it when the tall, broad-shouldered man in the cowboy hat had stood up and introduced himself to that young mother, giving the name of the very man she was looking for! She couldn’t allow this opportunity to help Gordon slip away from her.

  Anyway, Frank had turned surly and mean once he found out the train wasn’t going on through the mountains after all. Alma didn’t care; she didn’t have any business on the other side of the Sierra Nevadas.

  Judging by Frank’s reaction, though, he had something waiting for him over there, and it was important.

  Not as important as saving her husband, Alma thought. She took a deep breath, then lifted her hand to knock on the compartment door.

  It opened before she could do so. The man she wanted to talk to stood there with a small carpetbag in his left hand.

  He looked like he had been about to step out of the compartment, but he stopped short when he saw her. He cocked an eyebrow as Alma slowly lowered her hand.

  “Can I help you, ma’am?” he asked.

  “You’re Mr. Jensen, isn’t that correct?”

  “It is. I’m Smoke Jensen, if that’s who you’re looking for.”

  “My name is Alma Lewiston. Mrs. Gordon Lewiston.”

  Clearly, the name didn’t seem to mean anything to him. Jensen raised his right hand to his hat brim and ticked a finger against it politely.

  “My pleasure, Mrs. Lewiston. How can I help you?”

  “You know my husband,” Alma said.

  Jensen frowned slightly and shook his head. “Gordon Lewiston, you said? I’m sorry, but I don’t recognize the name.”

  “You met him yesterday in San Francisco.”

  “Not that I recall.” His frown deepened. “Wait a minute. Are you talking about—”

  “You broke his arm,” Alma said.

  Jensen’s air of polite affability vanished. His face hardened as he said, “That was his choice, not mine. Fact of the matter is, I did my best not to hurt him, until he came at me with a knife. I figured it was best to take it away from him as quickly and efficiently as I could.”

  “And now he’s locked up. He’s going to be sent away to prison, and . . . and he’ll die there.”

  “Because he’s addicted to opium,” Jensen said flatly.

  “You know that about him, and yet you’d condemn him to death for nothing more than a botched robbery!”

  A younger man appeared at Jensen’s shoulder and asked, “Is something wrong, Father?”

  “No, just having a talk with this lady here.” Jensen addressed Alma again. “Did you follow me onto this train?”

  “Yes,” she answered bluntly. “I had to talk to you.”

  He shook his head. “There’s nothing I can do. I’ve already given my statement to the police. It’s out of my hands.”

  “No, it’s not,” Alma insisted. “If you sent a telegram to the authorities in San Francisco right now and told them that you want to drop all the charges against Gordon, they would probably let him go.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. He’s been accused of a couple of crimes, and the law can go ahead with the case against him whether I press charges or not.”

  “But the case is based entirely on your statement.” Alma couldn’t keep a note of desperation out of her voice. “If you took that back . . . if you told them you were wrong about what happened . . .”

  “That would be lying,” Jensen said. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Lewiston. I’m not going to do that.”

  “You don’t understand. Gordon’s not really a criminal. He’s not even a bad man. He only did it because of the opium, and he wouldn’t be using the damn stuff if he hadn’t gotten himself shot in Cuba!”

  “He was in the war?” Jensen asked.

  “That’s right. He wasn’t one of Teddy Roosevelt’s fancy Rough Riders. He was just a soldier who signed up because he wanted to do the right thing.”

  Jensen looked at her for a long moment, then said, “I won’t take back the statement I gave to the police, but I’ll tell you what I will do. I know a very good lawyer in San Francisco. I’ll send him a wire and ask him to look into your husband’s case and represent him if he thinks it would do any good. I’ll pay his fee, too.”

  Alma caught her breath and said, “Do you think that will do any good?”

  “It can’t hurt anything,” Jensen said. “Maybe instead of putting him in prison, they could send him somewhere else. Some kind of hospital, maybe.”

  “Do such things even exist?”

  “I don’t know,” Jensen admitted honestly. “But it’s worth a try, don’t you think?”

  Alma swallowed hard. She wanted to hate this man standing in front of her, but somehow she couldn’t. Her instincts told her that Smoke Jensen was a good man, that he genuinely cared about Gordon’s situation and wanted to help.

  Whether that was actually possible or not remained to be seen.

  “Thank you, Mr. Jensen,” she said.

  “I’ve got to send some wires anyway. If you want to come along with me to the telegraph office, I’ll get in touch with that lawyer I told you about.” He turned and handed the carpetbag to his son. “You and Denny go on to the hotel and get rooms for us, all right? I’ll see you there.”

  A young, very pretty blond woman came up behind Jensen, too. “Are you sure about this, Pa?” she asked. “I mean, that man did try to rob and kill you.”

  “When I first met Monte Carson and Pearlie, they were working for men who wanted me dead,” Jensen said. “They got second chances and turned out to be two of the best friends I ever had. Not saying it’s the same thing here, but this fella Lewiston struck me as a pretty poor excuse for a badman.” He glanced at Alma. “No offense, ma’am.”

  “None taken,” she assured him. “You’re right. Gordon’s a pretty poor excuse for just about everything. But I love him.”

  “Sometimes that’s all a fella needs to justify helping him—the love of a good woman.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Frank Colbert debated whether he ought to get drunk. That seemed to be about the only way he could accomplish anything, since the train wasn’t going on and he couldn’t make it to Reno before Christmas.

  He wished Deke had been a little more forthcoming in that telegram, so at least he would know what job he was missing out on.

  He understood, though, why the man he had left in charge of the gang hadn’t wanted to reveal too many details to the telegrapher. Deke wasn’t the smartest fella in the world, but he was canny and had a good sense of self-preservation. He wouldn’t do anything to attract the attention of the law unless it couldn’t be helped.

  Colbert decided that he needed to let Deke know he wouldn’t be rendezvousing with them after all. If there was loot to be had in Reno, the boys ought to go ahead and go after it themselves, instead of waiting for him.

  That knowledge left him with the sour, bitter taste of defeat under his tongue. Some whiskey might wash it out, or at least dull it a little. He would hunt up a saloon, as soon as he sent that wire to Reno.

  He was on his way across the depot lobby toward the telegraph office when he spotted the woman he’d been talking to in the club car earlier. She appeared to be headed for the same destination, but from a diff
erent angle.

  A tall man in a sheepskin jacket and cowboy hat was with her, his hand lightly touching her arm now and then as they made their way through the noisy crowd in the lobby. With the railroad coming to an unexpected standstill because of the weather, there were a lot of angry, frustrated people in the depot this afternoon.

  Alma, that was the name the woman had given him, Colbert recalled. Alma Lewiston. He didn’t know if that was really her name. Something about her struck him as shady.

  Maybe he sensed a kindred spirit in her. If the train had continued on, there was a good chance he would have tried to get to know her better before they reached Reno. That would have helped to pass the time.

  Besides, after five years in prison, even the time he had spent with Selena back in San Francisco hadn’t completely taken the edge off his needs.

  However, it looked like Alma Lewiston had found herself a different beau, he thought. A big, gallant cowboy. Well, that wasn’t surprising, Colbert mused. Cowboys always had a soft spot for whores, and he had sensed right away that deep down Alma was a whore.

  For some reason Colbert couldn’t understand, he felt a little resentment toward the tall man. What did it matter? Alma meant nothing to him.

  But he had set his sights on her, even if only briefly, and Frank Colbert hated to lose. To anybody, at anything.

  The two of them walked up to the telegrapher’s counter ahead of him. Colbert hung back and moved behind a pillar that would conceal him if she happened to look around. He didn’t want to attract Alma’s attention and maybe cause some sort of scene.

  Those cowboys could be mighty touchy.

  * * *

  Alma Lewiston stood to one side while Smoke printed out the telegram to Claudius Turnbuckle, the San Francisco lawyer he had mentioned to her. Turnbuckle was one of the top attorneys in the city. In the whole country, for that matter. If anyone could do any good for Alma’s husband, it would be him.

  Smoke figured she was destined to be disappointed, though. Chances were, Gordon Lewiston was going to wind up in prison no matter what Turnbuckle or anyone else did, and it wasn’t likely that someone such as him would survive in there for very long. If the lack of opium didn’t kill him, some brutal convict would.

  With the telegram sent, Smoke turned to the woman and said, “All right, I’ve gotten in touch with the lawyer. I told him to reply to me at the hotel where I’ll be staying. Why don’t you stay there, too, so I’ll know where to find you when I hear anything?”

  “If it’s fancier than a flophouse, I can’t afford it, mister,” Alma said. “I’m not sure how I’m going to scrape up enough money for a ticket back to San Francisco.”

  Smoke shook his head and told her, “Don’t worry about either of those things. I’ll pay for the hotel and your return ticket.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “When a man starts offering to pay for a woman’s hotel room, it usually means he wants something in return.”

  “I’m sure some men are like that,” Smoke countered, “but I’m not.”

  “As simple as that? You just say it, and it’s true?”

  “That’s the way I’ve always lived my life.”

  She stared at him for a moment, then laughed. “Damned if I don’t believe you, Mr. Jensen.”

  “You can call me Smoke. And I might add, I’m a happily married man. Been one for a lot of years now.”

  “Then your wife is a lucky woman.”

  He smiled. “I’m not sure she’ll think that when she gets the telegram I’m about to send her. The kids and I were supposed to be back home for Christmas, but now it looks like we might not make it.”

  “That’s not your fault. You can’t control the weather.”

  “No, but she’ll still be disappointed, just like I am. Hang on a minute while I take care of sending that wire, and then we can share a buggy to the hotel.”

  Alma shrugged. “You’ll be paying for it, so I’ll wait as long as you need me to.”

  Smoke picked up the pencil he’d been using earlier and got another telegraph blank from the stack.

  DONNER PASS CLOSED BY BLIZZARD STOP WILL TRY TO GET HOME SOME OTHER WAY STOP ALL MY LOVE AND MERRY CHRISTMAS SMOKE

  “Some other way?” Alma said. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have been reading over your shoulder. But what other way is there to get across the mountains?”

  “People used to make it to California before there were trains running all the way. Thousands of them, even before the Gold Rush made thousands more head this way. They came by horseback, wagon, and stagecoach.”

  “Good luck riding all the way on a horse in weather like this. I don’t know much about frontier life—I’m a city girl and always have been—but I can’t imagine driving a wagon across the Sierra Nevadas, either. Anyway, the pass is blocked.”

  “There are other routes that don’t go through Donner Pass. The old McCulley Cutoff is lower in elevation and safer, and it might not be blocked by snow. I’m betting that a stagecoach with a good strong team could make it.”

  “How do you know that? Have you been over every foot of ground west of the Mississippi?”

  “Nope. But between me; an old friend of mine named Preacher; my brothers, Luke and Matt; and my nephews, Ace and Chance, we’ve covered just about all of it at one time or another. I know about the McCulley Cutoff because Preacher was one of the first mountain men to go through the Sierra Nevadas that way, back when California was still part of Mexico, and he told me all about it. I’ve been over that trail myself since then.”

  “That doesn’t do you any good, though, unless you have a stagecoach.”

  “Well,” Smoke said with a smile, “it just so happens I know where I might be able to put my hands on one.”

  * * *

  Colbert stayed where he was until Alma and the cowboy she called Mr. Jensen had moved away from the telegraph office window and left the depot. He had been close enough to overhear them talking, although the hubbub in the lobby had kept him from catching every word of the conversation. Despite that he had heard enough to realize something important.

  Jensen thought he knew a way to get across the Sierra Nevadas and reach Reno before Christmas. Something about a stagecoach. Colbert wouldn’t have thought that any stagecoaches were still running these days, but maybe he was wrong about that.

  Traveling all the way to Reno in some cold, drafty, rough-riding coach wasn’t the most appealing prospect, especially compared to riding in a comfortable railroad car, but if it would get him there in time to ramrod that mysterious job and claim his share of the loot, Colbert was willing to give it a try.

  He had also heard Alma and Jensen talking about the hotel where they were going to stay. Jensen claimed he wasn’t trying to get anything out of Alma, but Colbert didn’t believe that for a second. Why would any man help a woman like that without expecting some favors in return?

  But since he knew where they were staying, he could keep an eye on the place. That way, whenever Jensen made his move to get across the mountains, Colbert could make sure to cut himself in on the deal. And if Jensen didn’t like it, well, that was just too damn bad.

  Colbert’s spirits definitely were higher now as he wrote out the message to send to Deke Mahoney in Reno. One way or another, he promised Mahoney, he would be there for that big job.

  * * *

  Despite the cold outside, it was warm in the hotel, which boasted of steam heat and a radiator in every room. Even so, it wasn’t warm enough to explain the beads of sweat covering Jerome Kellerman’s face as the stout, white-haired man walked along the corridor toward his room.

  He carried both his carpetbag and the smaller case, but he stopped and set the carpetbag down before he reached the room. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and used it to mop some of the dampness from his ruddy features.

  “Are you all right, mister?”

  The high-voiced question made Kellerman jump a little. He looked around and saw a boy standing in the open doorway o
f one of the rooms.

  “Were you talking to me?” Kellerman asked.

  “Yeah. I mean, your face is awful red, the way mine gets when I’ve been playing too hard and it’s hot outside. Sometimes that makes me feel like I’m gonna be sick. Are you gonna be sick, mister?”

  Kellerman muttered a curse under his breath and stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket. “I’m fine,” he snapped. “Leave me alone, child.”

  “I didn’t mean anything—” the boy began.

  A woman moved up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Are you annoying people again, Bradley?” She gave Kellerman a weak smile. “I apologize, sir. My son is very talkative, and, well, you know that old saying, ‘He never met a stranger’? That describes Bradley perfectly.”

  “It’s quite all right, madam,” Kellerman said. He couldn’t manage a smile, not as upset as he was right now, but at least he was able to keep his voice civil, even polite. “The lad just inquired as to my health.”

  “Well . . . not that it’s any of my business,” the woman said, “but you do look a bit overheated.”

  “They keep it too warm in this confounded hotel. I wouldn’t even be here if not for that da—for that blasted railroad.”

  “And that confounded blizzard,” the boy said. He looked up at the woman, who evidently was his mother. “I like that word. Confounded.”

  “I’m sorry again,” she said hurriedly.

  Kellerman held up a hand in a gesture meant to tell her not to worry about it, then grasped his carpetbag’s handle and picked it up again. He started once more toward the door of his room.

  “I hope you get to feeling better, mister,” the boy called behind him.

  Kellerman ignored that, unlocked the door, and went into the hotel room. He closed the door and made sure it was locked. The curtains were open, but the sky was so overcast outside that the room was as gloomy as twilight.

  The pilot light of a gas lamp in a bronze wall sconce gleamed a dull blue. Kellerman set the carpetbag on the bed and turned up the lamp until it lit, then closed the curtains.