A Rocky Mountain Christmas

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

On board the Red Cliff Special

Matt awakened a second time when the train stopped. It was about two o’clock in the morning, which meant they had been under way for five hours. Looking through the window, he saw a small wooden building, painted red. A sign hung from the end of the building, but he couldn’t see enough to read it.

“Folks,” the conductor said when he stepped into the car. “This is Buena Vista and we’ll more ’n likely be here for about half an hour. If any of you want to, you can get off the train and have a cup of coffee or maybe a bite to eat.”

The porter went through the car, turning the lamps up brighter, and the other passengers started moving about, collecting coats, mittens, scarves, and caps.

“I don’t want to go outside, Mama,” Becky said. “I want to stay here and sleep.”

“That’s all right, darlin’. You won’t have to go outside if you don’t want to. You and I will stay here in the car, but we’ll have to give the lady her coat back so she won’t freeze when she goes outside.”

“Your daughter can use this as a blanket,” Matt said, handing his sheepskin coat to the girl’s mother.

“Why, thank you, sir.”

“And I thank you as well, Mr. Jensen.” Jenny smiled as she retrieved her own coat.

“I was right,” Matt said with a smile. “I knew that I had seen you before. I just can’t remember where.”

“It was a few years ago, on board a riverboat on the Mississippi. The boat was the Delta Mist.”

“Of course! You were the hostess for the Grand Salon. But, McCoy wasn’t your name then. It was”—Matt hesitated for a moment, then he recalled the name—“Lee, wasn’t it? Jenny Lee.”

“Yes, I’m flattered you remember. I was married soon after that. Now I’m widowed.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Matt said automatically. Then, as they approached the door of the car he added, “I sure hope they have a warm fire going in the depot.”

“I’m sure they will.”

They stepped down from the train, and Matt figured the temperature was at least ten below zero. The wind was blowing so hard it cut through him, right to the marrow of his bones. By the time he crossed the platform and got inside, he felt half frozen to death. Moving immediately to the stove, he stood for a long moment with his arms out, circling the stove, as if embracing the fire. Finally, when the feeling gradually began to return to his extremities, he left the stove and stepped up to the counter to buy a cup of coffee, nodding to the man he’d seen board the train just before the train pulled out of the station. The man was leaning against the counter warming his hands around a cup of steaming coffee. Matt paid for his coffee and stepped aside. As he stood there drinking it, he looked around the room and saw that Deputy Proxmire had come into the depot with his two prisoners. The shackles had been removed from the prisoners’ legs. Evidently, they were no longer a threat to run away, once on the train.

Santelli looked directly at him, the expression on his face registering surprise, as if seeing him for the first time. Evidently he had not noticed Matt back at the Pueblo Depot.

“Well if it isn’t Matt Jensen. What are you doing here, Jensen?” Santelli called over to him. “Have you come to watch me hang? ’Cause if you have, you may have to wait around a while.”

“I just happened to be on the same train with you, Santelli, that’s all. You can damn well hang without me.”

“Ha! Well, I got news for you, Jensen. I ain’t goin’ to hang. So what do you think about that?”

“I don’t think anything about it one way or the other,” Matt replied. “This may come as a surprise to you, Santelli, but you aren’t important enough to even be on my mind.”

“I told you one day that me ’n you would meet again, didn’t I? Do you remember that?”

“I do remember that.” Matt smiled. “And here we are, met again. I’m on my way to have Christmas with friends, and you are on your way to, what is it? Oh yes, to get your neck stretched.”

“Yeah? Well don’t you be counting on me gettin’ hung, Jensen. No, sir, don’t you be countin’ on it, ’cause that ain’t goin’ to happen. And this here meetin’ ain’t the one I was talkin’ about neither. There will be another time for the two of us to, let’s just say, work out our differences.”

“Santelli, why don’t you shut up now?” Proxmire complained. “You’ve blabbered enough.”

Santelli glared but said nothing more.

The man standing beside Matt at the counter had witnessed the exchange between the two men. Turning toward Matt, he stuck his hand out. “How do you do, sir? The name is Purvis, Abner Purvis.”

“Matt Jensen.” He shook Purvis’s offered hand.

“I saw you talking with Santelli. Do you know him?”

“Not exactly, but I did run across him when he was arrested. Tell me, Mr. Purvis, do you know the other prisoner? Who is that with him?”

“I can’t say that I actually know him, but I know who he is. His name is Luke Shardeen and I understand he used to be a sailor and has been all over the world. He’s seen places the rest of us have just read about or heard about. Hawaii, China, India, Australia, but he gave all that up when he inherited some land from his uncle. He calls the ranch Two Crowns and he’s been working it ever since, quite successfully, I’m told.”

“Why is he a prisoner?”

“He killed the deputy sheriff from Bent County.”

“He killed a deputy sheriff? That’s pretty serious.”

“I guess it would be if it was the way it sounds. But he claimed that the deputy and Sheriff Ferrell were trying to rob him. Of course, the sheriff said they were only stopping him to ask him a few questions.”

“Evidently, the jury believed the sheriff,” Matt said.

“Not entirely. It seems Shardeen had just sold a bunch of cows and had quite a bit of money with him. Naturally, he’d be worried if a couple armed men suddenly come up on him, wouldn’t you think?”

“I could see that.”

“You also have to wonder what a sheriff and a deputy sheriff from Bent County were doing stopping someone in Pueblo County. Why didn’t they just go to Deputy Proxmire? Or to Sheriff McKenzie?”

“That’s a good question. Evidently, though, it was answered to the satisfaction of the jury.”

“The thing is, the jury pretty much had their hands tied.”

“What do you mean, they had their hands tied?”

“If you ask me, Amon Briggs—he’s the judge—sort of forced them into finding Shardeen guilty. Briggs is as crooked as they come, for all that he is a judge. He likes to do things his own way, and I’m not the only one that thinks this. Most of the folks think he browbeat the jury into finding Shardeen guilty.” Purvis chuckled. “He didn’t entirely get it his own way, though. He wanted Shardeen found guilty of first-degree murder, but the most he got was involuntary manslaughter and four years.”

“Four years isn’t all that bad.”

“Ordinarily, I would agree with you, but I’m afraid in Shardeen’s case it is. He won’t have a ranch left when he gets out. He won’t have anything left at all, so I don’t have any idea what is going to happen to him.”

Matt looked over toward Luke Shardeen and saw him sitting calmly beside the deputy sheriff and talking quietly to the girl.

“What about Miss Lee?”

“Who?”

“I mean Mrs. McCoy.”

“Oh, yes, that’s another example of the judge sticking his nose into everyone’s business. Jenny McCoy worked for Adele Summers at the Colorado Social Club.”

“Colorado Social Club? I take it the women there are . . . just real sociable?” Matt asked with a chuckle.

“Yes, they are. I’m not going to lie to you, Mr. Jensen, the Social Club is a whorehouse, pure and simple. But Jenny McCoy, now, she wasn’t actually a whore. She was a hostess. I never heard of her going to bed with anyone, for all that they tried. But even if she wouldn’t go to bed with anyone, she was very popular. Well, you can see how pretty she is. She’s also very smart, and they she has a way of making people feel like they are someone important, no matter who they are. They also say that you could tell her anything you wanted, and know it wasn’t going to get spread all over town. And if anyone was having troubles, why, she had a way about her of making them feel good. You know, making them think that everything was going to come out all right. But from all I’ve heard, she didn’t whore with anybody.”

Matt was glad to hear that. He remembered her from the Delta Mist, as well as her supportive testimony at his hearing in Memphis.

“I saw the sign back in the Pueblo depot. Someone thought she was a whore.”

“Yes, well I guess she hasn’t made friends with many of the women in town, that’s true. But that isn’t what got her run out of town. The thing that got her run out of town was having her picture taken when she was naked and sitting on the sofa with Governor Crounse.”

“Naked?”

“She claims, and so does the governor, that some men broke in to the sitting room and forced her, at gunpoint, to take off her clothes so they could get a picture of them together like that. The governor thinks some of his political enemies were behind it. Nobody has said so, but I’d be willing to bet Judge Briggs was in on it from the beginning. Briggs is the kind of crooked no-good that can be bought off. Everyone knows that.”

“If everyone knows that, why is Briggs still the judge? Isn’t that an elective position?”

“Elections can be bought, and there’s no doubt in my mind but that Briggs bought the election that got him there in the first place, and now just keeps on buying them. I wouldn’t be surprised if Briggs doesn’t find some way to take over Shardeen’s ranch while he’s gone.”

Matt smiled. “You seem to have your fingers on the pulse of the town. Are you a newspaper reporter? Or are you just well connected?”

Purvis laughed. “Well connected? I wouldn’t say that, exactly. But I do hear things.”

“What do you do in Pueblo?” Matt asked. “Not that it’s any of my business,” he added quickly. “I’m just making conversation, here.”

Purvis paused for a moment before he answered. “I suppose I’m what you might call a jack of all trades. I’ve done a bit of everything since I’ve been here, but I’ve seen the elephant now, and I’m going back to the ranch my family owns just outside Red Cliff.”

One of the other passengers called out to Purvis, and he excused himself, leaving Matt standing alone. Matt continued to observe Luke Shardeen and Jenny McCoy, finding the study more interesting, now that he knew a little something about each of them.