A Big Sky Christmas (32 page)

When the guns had fallen silent, the wounds had been bound up, and the dead dragged away, a man and a woman stood together and pledged their love for each other, in front of God and their friends, and for two young children, that union and the family it created proved to be the greatest Christmas gift they ever received.

 

Alexander Cantrell sighed.

Beside him, his sister Abigail said, “Are you all right, Alex? Are you having a touch of that angina again?”

Alexander shook his head. Mere moments had passed, although to him it was as if he had traveled back in time seventy-four years. He looked down at the graves of his parents. “I was just remembering again.”

“The wagon train?”

“Yep. And everything that happened on the way up here.”

Abigail shivered. “Some of those times were awful, like when the Indians got us. And that terrible fire . . . I never saw anything like it.”

“I thought about those things,” Alexander said, “but mostly I thought about Ma and Pa . . . and the Reverend . . . and Moses . . .”

“And Jamie,” Abigail whispered.

“And Jamie,” Alexander agreed.

Although it still seemed hard to believe, less than three years after that fateful Christmas Day, Jamie Ian MacCallister was dead, struck down in 1876 by bushwhackers who had mistaken him for his son, the famous gunfighter Falcon MacCallister. When they had heard that awful news in Eagle Valley, Bodie had wanted to strap on his guns and leave the Diamond C ranch to track down Jamie's murderers. Hector Gilworth, Lamar Hendricks, and a number of the other settlers in the valley had been ready to saddle up and go with him.

Before that could happen, they got word that Falcon had wreaked his bloody judgment on the killers. Jamie's death was avenged, and he slumbered peacefully, eternally, under the earth of his home range, next to his beloved wife Kate.

From time to time, they had gotten news of Smoke Jensen, too, and knew how the young man had settled the score for the death of
his
father. For many years, Smoke continued to be the deadliest gunfighter the West had ever known . . . but he was also a devoted family man, marrying twice, raising a whole passel of children and grandchildren, and establishing one of the finest ranches in Colorado.

As for Preacher . . . well, for a time he had been thought to be dead, but as it turned out, the old mountain man was too tough to kill. His friends in Eagle Valley never did know for sure what happened to him. For all Alexander knew, Preacher was still out there somewhere, roaming the wild places and getting into one scrape after another. That idea was pretty farfetched, of course. Downright impossible, in fact. But when Alexander thought about Preacher . . . well, it was hard to rule out anything completely.

Moses Danzig had visited the Diamond C now and then and enjoyed the time spent with his old friends Bodie and Savannah. Cyrus O'Hanlon, who had recovered from the beating he'd received from Kane's men, his wife Dollie, and the rest of the troupe had come to Montana, too, and performed in the Opera House in Billings. Savannah had joined them for one night and thoroughly enjoyed being an actress again, but that was enough. She had an even better life on the ranch, she told her old friends, being married to Bodie and raising a fine pair of twins, although she and Bodie were never blessed with children of their own.

Alexander's parents never spoke of Gideon Kane, but years later, giving in to curiosity, Alexander had looked into the situation and found out what had happened to the man from Kansas City. He remembered Jamie saying something ominous about paying a visit to Kane, but that hadn't come about. Some woman whose affections Kane had spurned had killed him in February 1874, sticking a knife in his chest. As far as Alexander was concerned, it was a more merciful end than the lowdown snake deserved.

The farms and ranches in Eagle Valley were some of the best in the territory, and then later, in the state, and the Diamond C was the best of them all. Years passed, and Alexander and Abigail grew to adulthood, married fine partners, and raised families of their own. Some of those children and grandchildren had brought them out to the old burying ground on the ranch.

It was the tenth anniversary of Bodie Cantrell's death. His beloved wife Savannah had gone to be with the Lord a couple years before that. Alexander missed them every day. He would for the rest of his life, however much of it was still allotted to him.

He took off his hat as Abigail leaned over and placed one bouquet of flowers on her father's grave and another on her mother's. Bodie and Savannah had adopted them, but as Jamie had once said, the piece of paper didn't matter nearly as much as the love, and they always had that.

Oh, they had that.

“Dad . . . ? We'd probably better be starting back to town.”

Alexander nodded, tightened his arm around his sister's shoulders for a moment, and then put his hat on. He turned and told his son, “You're right, Jamie. Let's go. Come along, Abigail.”

“You think we can make it home without the Indians getting us?”

“I reckon,” Alexander said.

They walked away, cradled in the memories of days gone by, of days when true heroes walked the earth under the big Montana sky.

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Copyright © 2013 J. A. Johnstone

 

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PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Following the death of William W. Johnstone, the Johnstone family is working with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Mr. Johnstone's outlines and many unfinished manuscripts to create additional novels in all of his series like The Last Gunfighter, Mountain Man, and Eagles, among others. This novel was inspired by Mr. Johnstone's superb storytelling.

 

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

 

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ISBN: 978-0-7860-3267-9

 

 

First electronic edition: November 2013

 

ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-3268-6
ISBN-10: 0-7860-3268-5