Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (36 page)

The guests spurned their
chairs and jumped for their weapons. It was considered an improper act to shoot
the bride and groom at a wedding. In about six seconds there were twenty or so
bullets due to be whizzing in the direction of Mr. McRoy.

“I’ll shoot better next
time,” yelled Johnny; “and there’ll be a next time.” He backed rapidly out the
door.

Carson, the sheepman,
spurred on to attempt further exploits by the success of his plate-throwing,
was first to reach the door. McRoy’s bullet from the darkness laid him low.

The cattlemen then swept
out upon him, calling for vengeance, for, while the slaughter of a sheepman has
not always lacked condonement, it was a decided misdemeanour in this instance.
Carson was innocent; he was no accomplice at the matrimonial proceedings; nor
had any one heard him quote the line “Christmas comes but once a year” to the
guests.

But the sortie failed in
its vengeance. McRoy was on his horse and away, shouting back curses and
threats as he galloped into the concealing chaparral.

That night was the
birthnight of the Frio Kid. He became the “bad man” of that portion of the
State. The rejection of his suit by Miss McMullen turned him to a dangerous
man. When officers went after him for the shooting of Carson, he killed two of
them, and entered upon the life of an outlaw. He became a marvellous shot with
either hand. He would turn up in towns and settlements, raise a quarrel at the
slightest opportunity, pick off his man and laugh at the officers of the law.
He was so cool, so deadly, so rapid, so inhumanly blood-thirsty that none but
faint attempts were ever made to capture him. When he was at last shot and
killed by a little one-armed Mexican who was nearly dead himself from fright,
the Frio Kid had the deaths of eighteen men on his head. About half of these
were killed in fair duels depending upon the quickness of the draw. The other
half were men whom he assassinated from absolute wantonness and cruelty.

Many tales are told along
the border of his impudent courage and daring. But he was not one of the breed
of desperadoes who have seasons of generosity and even of softness. They say he
never had mercy on the object of his anger. Yet at this and every Christmastide
it is well to give each one credit, if it can be done, for whatever speck of
good he may have possessed. If the Frio Kid ever did a kindly act or felt a
throb of generosity in his heart it was once at such a time and season, and
this is the way it happened.

One who has been crossed
in love should never breathe the odour from the blossoms of the ratama tree. It
stirs the memory to a dangerous degree.

One December in the Frio
country there was a ratama tree in full bloom, for the winter had been as warm
as springtime. That way rode the Frio Kid and his satellite and co-murderer,
Mexican Frank. The kid reined in his mustang, and sat in his saddle, thoughtful
and grim, with dangerously narrowing eyes. The rich, sweet scent touched him
somewhere beneath his ice and iron.

“I don’t know what I’ve
been thinking about, Mex,” he remarked in his usual mild drawl, “to have forgot
all about a Christmas present I got to give. I’m going to ride over to-morrow
night and shoot Madison Lane in his own house. He got my girl—Rosita would have
had me if he hadn’t cut into the game. I wonder why I happened to overlook it
up to now?”

“Ah, shucks, Kid,” said
Mexican, “don’t talk foolishness. You know you can’t get within a mile of Mad
Lane’s house to-morrow night. I see old man Allen day before yesterday, and he
says Mad is going to have Christmas doings at his house. You remember how you
shot up the festivities when Mad was married, and about the threats you made?
Don’t you suppose Mad Lane’ll kind of keep his eye open for a certain Mr. Kid?
You plumb make me tired, Kid, with such remarks.”

“I’m going,” repeated the
Frio Kid, without heat, “to go to Madison Lane’s Christmas doings, and kill
him. I ought to have done it a long time ago. Why, Mex, just two weeks ago I
dreamed me and Rosita was married instead of her and him; and we was living in
a house, and I could see her smiling at me, and—oh! h—I, Mex, he got her; and I’ll
get him—yes, sir, on Christmas Eve he got her, and then’s when I’ll get him.”

“There’s other ways of
committing suicide,” advised Mexican. “Why don’t you go and surrender to the
sheriff?”

“I’ll get him,” said the
Kid.

Christmas Eve fell as
balmy as April. Perhaps there was a hint of faraway frostiness in the air, but
it tingled like seltzer, perfumed faintly with late prairie blossoms and the
mesquite grass.

When night came the five
or six rooms of the ranch-house were brightly lit. In one room was a Christmas
tree, for the Lanes had a boy of three, and a dozen or more guests were
expected from the nearer ranches.

At nightfall Madison Lane
called aside Jim Belcher and three other cowboys employed on his ranch.

“Now, boys,” said Lane, “keep
your eyes open. Walk around the house and watch the road well. All of you know
the ‘Frio Kid,’ as they call him now, and if you see him, open fire on him
without asking any questions. I’m not afraid of his coming around, but Rosita
is. She’s been afraid he’d come in on us every Christmas since we were married.”

The guests had arrived in
buckboards and on horseback, and were making themselves comfortable inside.

The evening went along
pleasantly. The guests enjoyed and praised Rosita’s excellent supper, and afterward
the men scattered in groups about the rooms or on the broad “gallery,” smoking
and chatting.

The Christmas tree, or
course, delighted the youngsters, and above all were they pleased when Santa
Claus himself in magnificent white beard and furs appeared and began to
distribute the toys.

“It’s my papa,” announced
Billy Sampson, aged six. “I’ve seen him wear ’em before.”

Berkly, a sheepman, an
old friend of Lane, stopped Rosita as she was passing by him on the gallery,
where he was sitting smoking.

“Well, Mrs. Lane,” said
he, “I suppose by this Christmas you’ve gotten over being afraid of that fellow
McRoy, haven’t you? Madison and I have talked about it, you know.”

“Very nearly,” said
Rosita, smiling, “but I am still nervous sometimes. I shall never forget that
awful time when he came so near to killing us.”

“He’s the most
cold-hearted villain in the world,” said Berkly. “The citizens all along the
border ought to turn out and hunt him down like a wolf.”

“He has committed awful
crimes,” said Rosita, “but—I—don’t— know. I think there is a spot of good
somewhere in everybody. He was not always bad—that I know.”

Rosita turned into the
hallway between the rooms. Santa Claus, in muffling whiskers and furs, was just
coming through.

“I heard what you said
through the window, Mrs. Lane,” he said. “I was just going down in my pocket
for a Christmas present for your husband. But I’ve left one for you, instead.
It’s in the room to your right.”

“Oh, thank you, kind
Santa Claus,” said Rosita, brightly.

Rosita went into the
room, while Santa Claus stepped into the cooler air of the yard.

She found no one in the
room but Madison.

“Where is my present that
Santa said he left for me in here?” she asked.

“Haven’t seen anything in
the way of a present,” said her husband, laughing, “unless he could have meant
me.”

The next day Gabriel
Radd, the foreman of the X O Ranch, dropped into the post-office at Loma Alta.

“Well, the Frio Kid’s got
his dose of lead at last,” he remarked to the postmaster.

“That so? How’d it
happen?”

“One of old Sanchez’s
Mexican sheep herders did it!—think of it! the Frio Kid killed by a sheep
herder! The Greaser saw him riding along past his camp about twelve o’clock
last night, and was so skeered that he up with a Winchester and let him have
it. Funniest part of it was that the Kid was dressed all up with white
Angora-skin whiskers and a regular Santy Claus rig-out from head to foot. Think
of the Frio Kid playing Santy!”

The
Feast of St. Stephen is celebrated on the 26th of December in many countries
throughout Europe. St. Stephen became the first Christian martyr when he met a
grizzly death at the hands of a barbaric crowd.

On his
day, it became the custom to open the alms boxes and distribute the contents to
the poor.

In England,
where it is a legal holiday, the 26th is known as Boxing Day. It later became
common practice for the apprentices of tradesmen to take boxes around to their
master's customers to secure tips for their services of the previous year.
Hence the name Boxing Day.

This in
turn led to the more widespread modern practice of the Christmas bonus. So
ingrained is this custom that it is incorporated into many contracts.

The
diner pictured was one of a hardy band of gentlemen who attempted to abolish
the custom of the Christmas bonus in Britain. His career as a reformer,
however, was rather short-lived.

New Zealand is
traditionally regarded as a pastoral pair of islands tucked quietly away on the
underside of the globe. When thought of at all, it conjures up visions of sheep
and brightly colored birds, and more sheep and more brightly colored birds.

Once in a while a star
blazes in the southern sky to remind us of this fragment of the British
Commonwealth. Such celestial lights have been tennis star Evonne Goolagong
Cawley, soprano Kiri Te Kanawa of the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden and
royal weddings, and Ngaio Marsh, New Zealand’s great lady of letters.

She first appeared in the
literary firmament with her first book,
A Man Lay Dead,
in 1934. She continued to shine
there uneclipsed for nearly five decades.

Although familiar with
the English countryside and able to turn an English country house mystery with
the best, she alone of the authors collected here grew up knowing Christmases
that were not white but summery. Her achievement in capturing that cozy murder
around a crackling fire is all the more remarkable.

In ‘Death on the Air,’
her series character Roderick Alleyn tackles a locked room case involving a
wireless enthusiast. The term wireless may date the story, but the vigor and
freshness of her writing keep it alive and ageless.