Authors: William W. Johnstone

A Lone Star Christmas (2 page)

BOOK: A Lone Star Christmas

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She just didn't know what that decision should be.

She read the letter one more time, then folded it, put it back in her reticule, and settled in for the three and one-half hour train trip.

Fort Worth, Texas

The train had arrived in the middle of the night, and when Tom Whitman got off, he wondered if he should stay here or get back on the train and keep going. Six and one-half days earlier he had boarded a train in Boston with no particular destination in mind. His only goal at the time was to be somewhere other than Boston.

Now, as he stood alongside the train, he became aware of a disturbance at the other end of the platform. A young woman was being bothered by two men. Looking in her direction, Tom saw that it was the same young woman he had seen board the train back in Marshall.

“Please,” she was saying to the two men. “Leave me alone.”

“Here now, you pretty little thing, you know you don't mean that,” one of the two men said. “Why, you wouldn't be standin' out here all alone in the middle of the night, if you wasn't lookin' for a little fun, would you now? And me 'n Pete here are just the men to show you how to have some fun. Right, Pete?”

“You got that right,” Pete said.

“What do you say, honey? Do you want to have a little fun with us?”

“No! Please, go away!” the young woman said.

“I know what it is, Dutch,” Pete said. “We ain't offered her no money yet.”

“Is that it?” Dutch asked. “You're waitin' for us to offer you some money? How about two dollars? A dollar from me and one from Pete. Of course, that means you are going to have to be nice to both of us.”

“I asked you to go away. If you don't, I will scream.”

Pete took off his bandana and wadded it into a ball. “It's goin' to be hard for you to scream with this bandana in your mouth,” he said.

Tom walked down to the scene of the ruckus. “Excuse me, gentlemen, but I do believe I heard the lady ask you to leave her alone,” he said.

Tom was six feet two inches tall, with broad shoulders and narrow hips. Ordinarily his size alone would be intimidating, but the way he was dressed made him appear almost foppish. He was wearing a brown tweed suit, complete with vest, tie, and collar. He was also wearing a bowler hat, and he was obviously unarmed. He could not have advertised himself as more of a stranger to the West if he had a sign hanging around his neck proclaiming the same.

The two men, itinerant cowboys, were wearing denim trousers and stained shirts. Both were wearing Stetson hats, and both had pistols hanging at their sides. When they saw Tom, they laughed.

“Well now, tell me, Dutch, have you ever seen a prettier boy than this
Eastern
dude?” Pete asked. He slurred the word âEastern'.

“Don't believe I have,” Dutch replied. Then to Tom he said, “Go away, pretty boy, unless you want to get hurt.”

“Let's hurt him anyway,” Pete said, smiling. “Let's hurt him real bad for stickin' his nose in where it don't belong.”

“Please, sir,” the young woman said to Tom. “Go and summon a policeman. I don't want you to get hurt, and I don't think they will do anything if they know a police officer is coming.”

“I think it may be too late for that,” Tom replied. “These gentlemen seem rather insistent. I'm afraid I'm going to have to take care of this myself.”

“Ha!” Pete shouted. “Take care of this!”

Pete swung hard, but Tom reached up and caught his fist in his open hand. That surprised Pete, but it didn't surprise him as much as what happened next. Tom began to squeeze down on Pete's fist, putting vise-like pressure against it, feeling two of Pete's fingers snap under the squeeze.

“Ahhh!” Pete yelled. “Dutch! Get him off me! Get him off me!”

Dutch swung as well, and Tom caught his fist in his left hand. He repeated the procedure of squeezing down on the fist, and within a moment he had both men on their knees, writhing in pain.

“Let go, let go!” Pete screamed in agony.

Tom let go of both of them, and stepped back as the two men regained their feet.

“Please go away now,” Tom said with no more tension in his voice than if he were asking for a cup of coffee.

“You son of a ...” Pete swore as he started to draw his pistol. But because two of his fingers were broken, he was unable to get a grip on his pistol and it fell from his hand. The young woman grabbed it quickly, then pointed it at both of them.

“This gentleman may be an Eastern dude, but I am not,” she said. “I'm a Western girl and I can shoot. I would like nothing better than to put a bullet into both of you, and if the two of you don't start running, right now, I will do just that.”

“No, no, don't shoot! Don't shoot!” Pete cried out. “We're goin'! We're goin'!”

The two men ran, and the young woman laughed. To Tom, her laughter sounded like wind chimes. She turned to him with a broad smile spread across her face.

“I want to thank you, sir,” she said. She thrust her hand toward him, but when he shied away she looked down and saw that she was still holding the pistol. With another laugh, she tossed the gun away, then again stuck out her hand.

“I'm Rebecca Conyers,” she said.

“I'm Tom ... ,” Tom hesitated for a moment before he said, “Whitman.”

“You aren't from here, are you, Mr. Whitman?”

Tom chuckled. “How can you tell?”

Rebecca laughed as well.

“What are you doing in Fort Worth?”

“This is where the train stopped,” Tom replied.

Rebecca laughed again. “That's reason enough, I suppose. Are you looking for work?”

“Well, yes, I guess I am.”

“Meet me in the lobby of the Clark Hotel tomorrow morning,” she said. “Someone will be coming to fetch me from my father's ranch. He is always looking for good men. I'm sure he would hire you if you are interested.”

“Hire me to do what?”

“Why, to cowboy, of course.”

“Oh. Do you think it would matter if I told l him that I have never been a cowboy?”

Rebecca smiled. “Telling him you have never been a cowboy would be like telling him that you have blond hair and blue eyes.”

“Oh, yes. I see what you mean,” he said.

“It's easy to learn to be a cowboy. Once he hears what you did for me tonight, you won't have any trouble getting on. That is, if you want to.”

“Yes,” Tom said. “I believe I would want to.”

As Rebecca lay in bed in her room at the Clark Hotel half an hour later, she wondered what had possessed her to offer a job to Tom Whitman. She had no authority to offer him a job; her father did the hiring and the firing, and he was very particular about it.

On the other hand, before she left to go to Marshall last week, she heard him tell Clay Ramsey that he might hire someone to replace Tony Peters, a young cowboy who had left for Nevada to try his hand at finding gold or silver. Rebecca had a sudden thought. What if he has already hired someone to replace Peters?

No, she was sure he had not. Her father tended to be much more methodical than to hire someone that quickly. But that same tendency of his to be methodical might also work against her, for he would not be that anxious to hire someone he knew nothing about.

Well, Rebecca would just have to talk him into it, that's all. And surely when her father heard what Tom Whitman had done for her, he would be more than willing.

Rebecca wondered why she was so intent on getting Mr. Whitman hired. Was it because he had been her knight in shining armor, just when she needed such a hero? Or was it because with his muscular build, his blond hair and blue eyes, that he might be one of the most handsome men she had ever seen? In addition to that, though, there was something else about him, something that she sensed more than she saw. He had a sense of poise and self-assuredness that she found most intriguing.

Because it had been unseasonably warm, and because Tom liked to sleep with fresh air, he had raised the window when he went to bed last night. He had taken a room in the same hotel as Rebecca because she had suggested the hotel to him. He was awakened this morning by a combination of things, the sun streaming in through his open window, and the sounds of commerce coming from the street below.

He could hear the sound of the clash of eras, the whir of an electric streetcar, along with the rattle and clatter of a freight wagon. From somewhere he could hear the buzz and squeal of a power saw, and the ring of steel on steel as a blacksmith worked his trade. Newspaper boys were out on the street, hawking their product.

“Paper, get the paper here! Wyoming to be admitted as state! Get your paper here!”

Tom got out of bed, shaved, then got dressed. Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he frowned. He was wearing a three-piece suit, adequate dress if he wanted to apply for a job with a bank. But he was going to apply for a job as a cowboy, and this would never do.

Stepping over to the window, he looked up and down Houston Street and saw, on the opposite side, the Fort Worth Mercantile Store. Leaving his suitcase in his room, he hurried downstairs and then across the street. A tall, thin man with a neatly trimmed moustache and garters around his sleeves stepped up to him.

“Yes, sir, may I help you?”

“I intend to apply for employment at a neighboring ranch,” Tom said. “And I will need clothes that are suitable for the position.”

“When you say that you are going to apply for employment, do you mean as an accountant, or business manager?” the clerk asked.

“No. As a cowboy.”

The expression on the clerk's face registered his surprise. “I beg your pardon, sir. Did you say as a cowboy?”

“Yes,” Tom said. “Why, is there a problem?”

“No, sir,” the clerk said quickly. “No problem. It is just that, well, sir, you will forgive me, but you don't look like a cowboy.”

“Yeah,” Tom said. “That's why I'm here. I want you to make me look like a cowboy.”

“I can sell you the appropriate attire, sir,” the clerk said. “But, in truth, you still won't look like a cowboy.”

“Try,” Tom said.

“Yes, sir.”

It took Tom no more than fifteen minutes to buy three outfits, to include boots and a hat. Paying for his purchases, he returned to the hotel, packed his suit and the two extra jeans and shirts into his suitcase, then went downstairs, checked out, and took a seat in the lobby to wait for the young woman he had met last night.

As he waited for her, he recalled the conversation he had had with his father, just before he left.

“You are making a big mistake by running away,” his father had told him. “You will not be able to escape your own devils.”

“I can try,” Tom said.

“Nobody is holding it against you, Tom. You did what you thought was right.”

“I did what I thought was right? I can't even justify what I did to myself by saying that I did what I thought was right. My wife and my child are dead, and I killed them.”

“It isn't as if you murdered them.”

“It isn't? How is it different? Martha and the child are still dead.”

“So you are going to run away. Is that your answer?”

“Yes, that is my answer. I need some time to sort things out. Please try to understand that.”

His father changed tactics, from challenging to being persuasive. “Tom, all I am asking is that you think this through. You have more potential than any student I ever taught, and I'm not saying that just because you are my son. I am saying it because it is true. Do you have any idea of the good that someone like youâa person with your skills, your talent, your education, can do?”

“I've seen the evil I can do when I confuse skill, talent, and education with Godlike attributes.”

Tom's father sighed in resignation. “What time does your train leave?”

“At nine o'clock tonight.”

Tom's father walked over to the bar and poured a glass of Scotch. He held it out toward Tom and, catching a beam of light from the electric chandelier, the amber fluid emitted a burst of gold as if the glass had captured the sun itself. “Then at least have this last, parting drink with me.”

Tom waited until his father had poured his own glass, then the two men drank to each other.

“Will you write to let me know where you are and how you are doing?”

“Not for a while,” Tom said. “I just need to be away from everything that could remind me of what happened. And that means even my family.”

BOOK: A Lone Star Christmas

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