Christmas in the Lone Star State Read online

  Purdy was staring at her. Here was a woman who had lost everything, including two sons—and she had survived. “You must have been so lonely.”

  “I was lonely sometimes, yes. But I was never alone. No, never.” Mary leaned forward, reaching out to put a hand on top of Purdy’s, where it rested on the arm of the rocking chair. “You can’t be, as long as the ones you love are in your heart and your thoughts, dear. Do you know why you won’t let go of this place?”

  “How do you know I won’t?”

  Mary just smiled. “For one thing, it is your duty to hold on to it. You did, after all, take an oath at your wedding. In sickness or in health. For richer or poorer. In other words, no matter what, you will keep this fire burning. And this is your son’s home. He is still here. Surely you feel him. I can. If you left this place he would be lost. So you see, you are doing the right thing. The only thing you can do as a loving wife and mother.”

  Purdy fiercely fought back the tears. She was sick of crying. “My husband is in prison … for thirteen more years.”

  “Thirteen years.” Mary squeezed her hand. “That’s not too long. I’ve lived much longer than that without my husband.”

  “Yes. Yes, you have, haven’t you,” murmured Purdy, realizing, for the first time, that thirteen years wasn’t forever.

  Mary sat back and looked around the house. “Your dog came back to you. So will your husband. And your boy never left. Christmas is only a few days away. I’m sure your son loves Christmastime.”

  “Oh yes. Every winter Jake would go out and cut a pine sapling and we would decorate it. That was Josh’s favorite thing to do. We would dip small pinecones in white or red wax and hang them on the tree. Jake would cut some tin into little stars and we’d paint them yellow and hang them too. And I would make a paper horn of plenty and fill it up with candy from the store in town for him.” She paused, lost in a memories of better and brighter days, her eyes unfocused, tilting her head a little with a pensive smile touching the corners of her mouth. She thought she could hear boyish laughter, very faintly. Then the veil of melancholy fell back into place.

  “Maybe you should put up a Christmas tree,” suggested Mary softly. “He would like that, wouldn’t he?”

  “Yes. Yes, I suppose he would.” Purdy looked at her visitor, eyes quite clear and focused now. “I believe I will.”

  “That’s the spirit!” Mary was delighted. “I would love to stay and help, if you would let me.”

  Purdy didn’t hesitate. Only a day or two ago she would have resented the intrusion, and especially resented the smiles and cheery tone; would have taken exception to anyone being in good spirits in a world where she had lost everything. But she found Mary’s presence comforting. Reassuring. This woman had been through what she had been through. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that Mary’s concern for her well-being was genuine. And it would be nice to have her around for Christmas.

  “Of course. I would very much like for you to stay.”

  “Thank you, dear. You’re so sweet.” Mary squeezed her hand again. “Now if you will humor an old woman, I would be so relieved if you would lie down and get some rest. You look very tired. I’ll watch over your faithful companion.” She turned her smile on Buck, whose tail thumped on the floorboards again. “How long has it been since you’ve slept in your bed?”

  Purdy looked over her shoulder at the bed in question. “I’m not sure. It’s been a while.” That melancholy veil returned as she remembered what George Norris had done to her on that bed just two days ago. She was afraid the smell of him was on the sheet, the quilt. But she couldn’t bring herself to say so. “But I don’t think…”

  “Now, now.” Mary rose and headed for the bed, pulling off the rumpled quilt and linens. Opening the big trunk at the foot of the bed, she found clean sheets and a Cherokee Indian blanket and made the bed. “There we go! Now come, dear, and lie down. You look exhausted.” She bent down and grabbed the quilt and soiled linens and headed for the door. “I’ll air these out and then sit by the fire and get acquainted with your dog. What’s his name?”

  “Buck.”

  The big yellow dog lifted his head and looked at her, tail thumping yet again.

  “The Indians call those ghost eyes,” said Mary, studying Buck’s eyes as she sat down on the stool again. “They would say that Buck here can see both Heaven and Earth—Earth with the brown eye and Heaven with the blue.”

  Purdy smiled warmly, rose from the rocking chair, and went to bed. She fell asleep as soon as she lay her head down. When she woke it was still daylight, and she felt rested but groggy and lay there a moment, staring at the ceiling, not thinking about anything, just marveling at how she felt. So relaxed. Then a sound from the main room made her turn her head. Mary was at the fireplace, moving the crane out in order to get to the kettle of steaming hot water that was hanging from it. Buck was standing up, sniffing at a pine sapling about five feet tall, which stood upright in a bucket filled with stones that kept it that way. When Purdy rolled over, the dog looked at her, then walked over. Astonished, she sat up and noticed that a dressing had been applied around his loins.

  “Buck is feeling much better, dear,” Mary said as she transported the kettle to the kitchen counter. “He’s such a strong creature!”

  Purdy breathed a sigh of vast relief. Buck did look much better, full of his usual vigor. He didn’t appear in any sort of pain. She got out of bed and bent down and hugged him. It was then that she noticed her feet were clean. She rose to give the tree a closer inspection. Her nostrils flared as she caught the pine’s strong, pleasant aroma, which permeated the house. She ran her fingers lightly over the bristly branches. Mary brought her a hot cup of coffee. As she took the cup, Purdy thanked her, and added, “You washed my feet.”

  “I took the liberty, yes. I hope you don’t mind. They were filthy, dear, and you didn’t want to soil those clean linens, now, did you? I hung the sheets and your quilt out on the porch, gave them a beating with the broom. Too cold to wash them right now. They would just freeze right up, stiff as boards.”

  Purdy became aware of the wind, gusts of wind that made the shutters rattle. She moved to the window and saw wisps of snow blowing across the field between the house and the river, looking like frosty ground fog. It was then that she noticed the body of George Norris was gone. She stared, the cup poised halfway to her lips.

  Mary was hanging the kettle of water back on the crane. “I thought it right and proper to take our neighbor back to his home. I fetched his mule and since I couldn’t lift him I tied him by the ankles to the mule and the mule dragged him.”

  Noting that the great splotches of blood marking the site of the battle between Norris and Buck had been covered by the wind-driven snow, Purdy took a deep breath and murmured, “I should go into town and tell Tom Rath what happened.”

  Mary came to her side and touched her arm. “You feel guilty. You took a life. Well, you and Buck did by the looks of it. And even if it was a bad man’s life, it’s normal for you to feel bad about it. Buck doesn’t feel bad about it, though. He just did what had to be done. Of course, you did too.”

  “I know you’re trying to make me feel better. But you don’t know the whole story.”

  “What makes you think I don’t?” Mary smiled gently. “Listen, dear. You did what you thought you had to do, and maybe you made a mistake or two. Making a mistake isn’t wrong. Nobody’s perfect. It’s how close we can get to perfect that counts for anything, and one way we do that is learn from our mistakes.”

  Purdy stared at her. It sounded very much like Mary knew everything that had transpired between her and Norris. Perhaps she had heard all the rumors and assumed them to be true. But somehow Purdy didn’t think Mary was the type to put stock in gossip. “George Norris won’t learn from his mistake.”

  “What he did was wrong. And he knew it. Now, enough about him. He got what was coming to him. Let’s talk about how we’re going to decorate this beautiful tree!�
��

  Purdy nodded, but instead of joining Mary at the table she went back to the trunk at the foot of the bed and removed from it a plain wooden box. Taking this back to the table she unlatched and opened the box to take out a piece of plank rag pulp paper, along with a small ink bottle and a metal-nib pen. “I have to write a letter to Jake first. There is something I forgot to tell him.”

  Mary’s knowing smile gave Purdy the sense that her visitor knew exactly what she had to write and why.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Sayles and Eddings reached the sheepherder’s place early in the morning. The sheepherder’s wife had wrapped the corpses of Alise and of her husband in blankets and pulled them up close to the house, as she feared that the carcass of the dead sheep across the stream would attract coyotes and such. She told the Ranger what had transpired with an economy of words that Sayles found admirable, as was her ability to remain composed despite her grief. The sheepdog had returned and lay forlornly beside its dead master all the while.

  What she had to say about the two men who had come and gone the day before gave him some insight into his prey. Their accents led her to believe they were British. Maybe Irish. She wasn’t sure. The slender one was reckless, unpredictable, and without remorse. He had been the one the dead woman was riding double with, and the one who had wanted to take her with them, a replacement for the one her husband had inadvertently killed. The big one was a crack shot. He had to be that or damned lucky to make the shot the woman described, the one that had dropped her man in his tracks. And the news that one of their horses had run off gave Sayles hope that they were down to one mount, even though it was clear they had ridden off on the trail of the runaway.

  The woman asked them to help her bury the dead. It would take her a long time, she explained, if she could even do it, digging two graves with shovel and hatchet in the frozen earth.

  “We could,” allowed Sayles. “But those men are less than half a day ahead of us. If I push hard, I might catch up to them before sundown, ’specially seeing as how they could be riding double. If we stay and help you, could be I’d still catch ’em, but the odds are longer. Reckon I’ll let you decide what you want more.”

  Jake Eddings didn’t fail to notice that the Ranger was talking like he didn’t even exist. He sorely wanted to speak out, to tell Sayles that if he was entrusted with a gun he would be willing to help. But he already knew what the answer would be. The man didn’t bend. He was a little surprised that Sayles hadn’t just answered the woman’s request with a flat-out no.

  The woman didn’t take long making the decision. Her eyes, pools of sorrow, suddenly glittered with a cold, hard anger. “I’ll manage,” she said firmly. “You go get the bastards who done this.”

  Sayles nodded, admiring her all the more. “I’ll come back this way and let you know.” He turned his attention to Eddings. “We’re going to push the horses. They both got a lot of bottom.”

  Eddings grimaced. It sounded to him like a warning, like Sayles wondered if he could stay in the saddle, even with his hands free. “I may just be a farmer but I do know how to ride,” he replied, sullenly.

  The woman spoke up as Sayles started to turn the coyote dun. “You know who this dead woman was?”

  “No idea. But her man is dead, too, killed by the same two men. We tracked them here from her place.”

  “It’s a shame to leave a grave unmarked. But I guess nobody will be looking for her.”

  “A lot of unmarked graves in these parts,” remarked Sayles. He touched the brim of his battered old campaign hat, reined the horse around, and gave it a tap with his spurs. The coyote dun broke into a canter and the bay startled Eddings by galloping right along after the dun without him having to do a thing.

  It wasn’t long before Sayles knew for a fact that the men he was after were riding the same horse. The runaway had gone over a nearby hill and down into thick woods. The men had followed and then turned to ride along the rim. He wondered if they knew they were heading north now, instead of west, the direction they had kept to since he’d started tracking them. There was little doubt in his mind that these two were the same ones who had killed the lawmen on that Brazos riverboat, or that their intention was to lose themselves in the vast stretch of mesquite plains to the west, a country well known only to Comanches, mustangers, hidehunters, and Texas Rangers.

  A few hours later the wind began to blow from the north, escalating Eddings’s misery. They had broken camp before dawn and set out without even a cup of coffee to warm their insides. The suit of plain brown wool Temple Hanley had bought for him to wear to his son’s funeral didn’t do much to cut that wind. He clenched his teeth so tight for so long just to keep them from chattering that his jaw ached. His envy of the Ranger, who seemed just as impervious to the bone-aching cold as he apparently was to all other discomforts, turned into outright resentment. He was like a wolf, relentless in pursuit of his prey.

  Now and then Sayles would stop to survey the ground or countryside or both, and once Eddings checked the bay alongside him and in an exasperated tone asked, “You ever get tired?”

  “I’m always tired. You get so you don’t know how to be anything else. We’re getting close. That horse is having a time carrying two men when it gets to deeper snow.”

  Eddings peered through the scattered trees ahead of them, then glanced at Sayles. He knew the Ranger had that Schofield pistol in his coat pocket. The Winchester was in its saddle boot. And the shotgun he had taken from one of the men he had gunned down on the road from Huntsville was lashed to the saddle under his left leg. “Give me a gun, Ranger. You don’t need three.”

  “I don’t need to get shot in the back either.”

  “I’m not a backshooter,” snapped Eddings. “I just don’t fancy riding up on men who have killed at least four people that we know of without a way to defend myself.”

  Sayles impaled him with his piercing steel-gray eyes. “So you’re telling me you would pass up the chance to shoot me in the back and run free on account you hanker fer another thirteen years behind bars.”

  Eddings shook his head. “Well, let’s get going then. I want to catch them as bad as you do. I’d rather get shot dead than freeze to death.”

  * * *

  When he and Jake emerged from a thick stand of timber into a large clearing and saw the two men they had been tracking just about to ride into the trees on the far side, Sayles wasn’t surprised. From what he could tell those two hadn’t stopped to rest their mount all day long, and just by its tracks in the snow the Ranger could tell the horse was tuckered out. As he pulled the long gun from its scabbard he told Eddings to get back into the trees a way and wait for him. “You decide to hightail it I’ll track you down even if it takes till next Christmas.”

  “What if…”

  Sayles kicked the coyote dun into a canter, the butt of the Winchester resting on his thigh. He figured the distance between him and the two men was about 150 yards, and that he had about five seconds before they reached the timber. He could close the distance by thirty yards in that time, and while he was pretty sure he could hit the extra rider right now, even with the wind kicking up strong across the clearing and blowing right at him, closer would make it more of a sure bet. He wasn’t too worried about the coyote dun getting hit. He had asked the sheepherder’s widow about the guns the killers used, and he thought there was a good chance all they had were pistols. The old Walker Colt of thirty years ago had been advertised as being accurate at two hundred yards, when held with both hands on a solid rest, but not many men could make that shot with the Walker, and fewer still with pistols of more recent vintage. Based on what he knew about the killing of the sheepherder, at least one of those men was a sharpshooter, but if all he had was a pistol Sayles decided it would be more luck than skill if he hit anything farther out than a hundred yards. Then, too, two men on one tired horse were more likely to shoot him off the dun than to shoot the dun out from under him.

  He glanced
skyward. The day had seemed relatively brighter than previous ones. The overcast was thinning. The clouds were moving fast, something he hadn’t seen in a while. Even so, darkness would come quickly when it came, and he figured there was no more than fifteen or twenty minutes of light left, at least light good enough to shoot by. He didn’t fancy wandering through woods at night looking for a pair of desperadoes, and he couldn’t track at night without moonlight. This coupled with the fact that in a handful of seconds his targets would be obscured gave him cause to hurry.

  Pulling the Winchester from its scabbard, he checked the horse sharply and jumped out of the saddle, the reins gripped tightly in his left hand. This swung the horse around and he used the saddle to rest his long gun on while he drew a bead. All this happened in a heartbeat, and the Ranger’s heart was beating slow and steady. He had done this many times before. His mind was occupied with range and windage and velocity and distance; he didn’t have the time—or the inclination—to think about the fact that he was about to take a man’s life. The coyote dun had plenty of experience in this too, and stood steady. Sayles squeezed the trigger, his target the middle of Lute Litchfield’s back. Half the men he’d shot had been running away from him. If he called out for these two to surrender they wouldn’t. They would either plunge into the woods or start shooting at him.

  The Winchester barked and the dun didn’t even flinch. The wind whipped the gunsmoke away and Sayles had a clear view of the results of the long shot. The impact of the bullet made Lute’s body carom violently off Mal. The forward movement of the horse sent him somersaulting off the back.