Titles by ANDREW J. FENADY
The Christmas Trespassers
Black Noon
Range Wolf
Destiny Made Them Brothers
THE CHRISTMAS TRESPASSERS
and 3 Bonus Stories told by
THE WISE OLD MAN OF THE WEST:
The Stranger Who Limped
Blazing Guns of the Bible
The Bravest Soldier
ANDREW J. FENADY
PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
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All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
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Kensington Publishing Corp.
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Copyright © 1999, 2018 Andrew J. Fenady
The Christmas Trespassers was originally published as The Runaways by Berkley Books in 1999.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
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ISBN: 978-0-7860-4291-3
First electronic edition: October 2018
ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4292-0
ISBN-10: 0-7860-4292-3
For
The Two CLINTS—
WALKER and
EASTWOOD
The Two DUKES—
WAYNE and
FENADY
The Two DANS—
BLOCKER and
“DANDY” DON MEREDITH
and, of course,
The One and Lovely
MARY FRANCES
Table of Contents
Also by
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Prelude
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
THE WISE OLD MAN OF THE WEST
THE WISE OLD MAN OF THE WEST and THE STRANGER WHO LIMPED
THE WISE OLD MAN OF THE WEST and BLAZING GUNS OF THE BIBLE
THE WISE OLD MAN OF THE WEST and THE BRAVEST SOLDIER
Teaser chapter
Teaser chapter
Teaser chapter
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Prelude
December. Month of the longest nights. But since he’d returned to the Shenandoah Valley and then left the valley and the graves behind, all the nights had been long and bleak and infinitely lonely.
Inside the cabin, the log in the fireplace had long since turned to ash. Once again Shad Parker had gone up against the bottle and once again the whiskey had failed to erase the memories or ease the pain.
He had memorized the letter—all of her letters—but somehow felt nearer to her when he held it in his hand. The last letter she ever wrote.
My dearest darling:
I pray this letter finds you safe. The children and I are well and think of you every moment.
It is still impossible for me to understand and countenance the madness that has torn you—and the other men of our valley—away from us.
You who never raised a hand in anger—so gentle and compassionate—whose heart and mind recoiled at the very thought of slavery—turned into a machine of war.
And why? Because we are Virginians. Because other men—farmers like yourself who love the soil of their Ohio or Massachusetts—would devastate our valley.
If only our Blue Mountains were walls to shut them out and let us live in peace.
But the war draws closer to us. You can sense it in the air. Even the doves have left the valley.
And now, as the time we celebrate our Savior’s birth is near, I feel another life stirring within me, too. I know you want a daughter—and may it be God’s will to grant her to us.
I pray that next Christmas we will be at peace, together, our family . . .
But long before the next Christmas, General Philip Sheridan’s army had put the Shenandoah to the torch.
Shad Parker’s sons—Sean, age six, Shannon, age four, his wife, Molly, and their unborn son or daughter were all dead. His farm and everything he ever loved destroyed.
He vowed that he would never again be touched by another living thing. Never again would he lose anything he loved, because he would never allow himself to love anything or anybody.
Shad Parker moved west. The cabin on the hardscrabble little farm near the outskirts of Gilead, Texas, was in grim contrast to the gracious structure in the lush, green valley in Virginia, but it suited Shad Parker—what remained of him.
He gently placed the letter in the tin box with Molly’s other letters, took up and drained the tumbler of whiskey, then set it on the table next to the gun. For a long time he stared at the Colt, and then as he had countless times before, he took it in his palm, with a hand that knew well the shape and feel of a gun, a hard hand with deep creases and strength from working the soil, but a hand that once held his wife close and gently. Once again his thumb tripped back the hammer, once again the gun moved closer to his face. Once again he thought about the one certain way to erase the memories, not just to ease the pain, but end it.
This time he meant to do it. But he had meant to do it many times before.
From outside once again came the clarion call of the rooster telling the world it was time to start another day. Shad Parker eased the hammer into place and put the Colt back on the table.
Shad Parker had lived through another night without sleep—and now faced another day without purpose.
Chapter 1
It was a no-good time to be in Texas.
Just over six years ago, on February 1, 1861, Texas had seceded from the Union—the former Union—and joined the glorious Confederacy. But the machinery of war grinds exceedingly ingloriously and is lubricated by blood and money.
The War for the Confederacy drained Texas of both. By April 9, 1865, when General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses Simpson Grant at Appomattox, Texas was bankrupt, and in the two years that followed things had gone from bankrupt to worse.
Cattle by the thousand swarmed all over the plains, valleys, and slopes of Texas. But there wasn’t any market for beef because there was a lack of money in Texas . . . and everywhere else in the South.
But Deek Kee
shaw knew of one place in Texas that had money. A bank in Gilead, whose owner, Amos Bush, had been conservative in his financial dealings as well as his patriotism.
While the other banks in Texas had backed the Confederacy with every resource at their command, Amos Bush had played the game close to his ample vest.
Deek Keeshaw, who had never made a deposit in Amos Bush’s bank, or any other bank, had planned to make a withdrawal, a substantial withdrawal, with dynamite. But at the moment, Deek Keeshaw was inside a formidably enclosed wagon on his way to the Oklahoma Territorial Prison.
Deek’s two younger brothers, Tom and Bart, were strategically poised, waiting to unburden the formidably enclosed wagon of part of its living cargo, the part called Keeshaw. The deed would take some doing and some dying, but not on the part of the Keeshaws.
They were good at making sure that it was the other people who died. The best way to make sure was to back-shoot, or ambush.
The Keeshaws learned that lesson from Quantrill in Kansas when they rode alongside Frank and Dingus, the Daltons, and all the other young rebels who never charged a fortified position in military formation or maneuvered in open combat. They struck mostly in the dark and at the defenseless. What was left of Lawrence when they rode out testified to the merciless efficiency of William Clarke Quantrill’s tactics and gave new emphasis to the epithet “guerrillas.”
But for this ambush Tom and Bart needed daylight. They had to make sure of their targets. And they made sure of every other advantage. Concealment. Elevation. Surprise. Those advantages added up to death. For other people. Not the Keeshaws. And Tom would also get a chance to use just a little of the new dynamite they had lately acquired. Tom had been taught by Deek that it was dynamite, and not faith, that moved mountains—and banks.
Tom believed everything that Deek said. So did Bart. And Deek had said that their fortune was not west, but south. Mexico. All they needed was a stake. That stake was in the safe of the Bank of Gilead. Dynamite would also move that safe. But first they needed Deek to show them the way.
Tom studied the narrow road that snaked through the rocky terrain below. The December day was clear and windless. He aimed the rifle barrel down a long road toward an imaginary moving target. He squeezed the trigger but not hard enough to fire the rifle.
“Bam!” he whispered.
Tom Keeshaw smiled and looked north toward another vantage point across the leaden landscape.
Bart Keeshaw, skulking behind a boulder, held a rifle that would deliver the deadly crossfire when the moving target would no longer be imaginary. The wagon with the driver and guard would be advancing directly into the sun, another calculated advantage set forth by William Clarke Quantrill.
Of the brothers Keeshaw, Bart was the youngest, thinnest, tallest, and the best-looking, except for the vacancy no longer occupied by two front teeth. All three Keeshaws were porcine in appearance, but Bart’s boniness and height made him look the least piggish.
Bart smiled back at his brother, letting a current of cold December air seep through the gap in his mouth. He took a cheap watch out of his frayed vest pocket and looked at the timepiece. He held it up to his ear. Silence. A look of disgust passed across his face. He tapped the edge of the watch against a rock a couple of times and listened again. Silence. He banged the watch a couple more times and listened once again. Still tickless. But Bart heard another sound, from a distance.
He buried the watch back into his pocket and made ready with his rifle, at the same time nodding toward Tom, who was already aiming his long gun.
A two-up wagon appeared from around the shoulder of rock on the hard, narrow road that lay below, between the two brothers. Hoofbeats and rattling traces echoed and bounced across the basin and the sound of squeaky music cut through the rhythm of the rolling wheels.
The driver held the reins in both hands, but the shotgun guard wasn’t holding a shotgun. The 10-gauge was straddled between his legs while he did his best to make music with the mouth organ without damaging his teeth. The potholed roadway didn’t help.
The wagon was completely enclosed except for a small opening striped with iron bars on the locked door in the rear of the seal-tight carriage. Lettering along both sides of the wagon spelled out:
There were Christmas wreaths nailed across both signs.
The tune the shotgun guard was playing bore some resemblance to “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,” but not much.
“Jake,” the driver said, “for Chrissake will you give it a rest?! You been playing that damn tune for twenty miles.”
“You want me to play somethin’ else?”
“I want you to keep your mouth shut and your eyes open. You make me nervous.”
“Curley, you got no Christmas spirit.”
“It ain’t Christmas yet. Just save it till we deliver them two.” Curley nodded back toward the wagon. “Then I’ll drink my Christmas spirit. You hear me?”
“I hear you. Godalmighty, you’d think we was still in the army, the way you . . .”
“Jake, just shut up!”
“Okay,” Jake started to pocket his harmonica, “but I just remembered somethin’.”
“What?”
A barrage of shots rang out from two directions, ripping into both men. The driver fell dead between the team of horses. The harmonica dropped from the guard and he slumped lifeless in his seat. The smell of blood and death was already in the horses’ nostrils as they stopped in their tracks.
Then one of the horses whinnied at the sound of hoofbeats.
“What the hell’s goin’ on?!” came a voice from inside the wagon.
Tom and Bart rode in from either side. Tom was leading an extra horse, saddled. A buckskin. The brothers reined up close to the wagon.
“Deek?!” Tom called. “You in there?”
“Where the hell you think I’d be?” came a second voice from the wagon. “Get ’em both?”
“Yeahbo.” Bart grinned.
“Guard’s got the keys.” Deek’s face came up against the iron bars.
Bart, still grinning, rode forward, pulled up the slumped and bloody guard, and lifted out a ring of half a dozen keys. As he did, Bart noticed a heavy gold chain across the dead man’s vest. He reached over and tugged at the cold, gleaming chain. Attached to the end of it was a gold watch. Bart ripped the watch and chain from the vest. He pressed the stem and the lid flipped open.
“Hurry it up!” Deek commanded.
Bart tossed the ring of keys to Tom, who was off his animal. Tom caught the keys and hurried toward the locked door. Bart held the gold watch to his ear and listened to the staccato ticking of the timepiece.
“Ain’t that purty,” he muttered, snapped the lid shut, and attached the chain to his own vest while he threw away his played-out turnip.
Tom unlocked the door and two men handcuffed to each other jumped out. It was easy to tell which one was a Keeshaw.
Deek held up one of his cuffed hands, which forced the other man to do the same.
“Get ’em off.”
“You bet, brother,” Tom said as he tried to insert the right key into the eyelet of the handcuffs. The second try turned the trick.
“Johnny,” Deek said to the other prisoner, a sunny-faced youth two months shy of twenty, “meet my brothers, Tom and Bart.”
“Hallelujah!” Johnny exclaimed. “Pleased to meet you fellas. Special under these circumstances. I thought we was goin’ to spend Christmas in jail.”
Deek and Johnny were both free of the shackles. Tom tossed the cuffs onto the ground.
“Nope,” said Deek. “Gonna spend it in Texas.” He swiftly took a gun from Tom and slammed the barrel across Johnny’s forehead. As Johnny dropped, his head hit the iron rim of the wagon wheel. But he didn’t feel it. He was already unconscious.
“Bring my pipe and tobacco?” Deek inquired.
Tom pulled a pipe and pouch from his coat pocket and handed them across to Deek.
“Matches?” Deek asked. “Guard wouldn’t let us smoke. Afraid we might try to burn down the wagon.”
“That’ud be a shame.” Tom smiled as he pulled a handful of matches from another pocket and dropped them in Deek’s palm.
“Unhitch the animals.” Deek nodded toward the wagon team. As he started stuffing the discolored pipe with the dry hard flakes of tobacco, Tom and Bart proceeded to execute Deek’s orders, as they always did.
Deek walked casually to Tom’s sorrel, paused long enough to fire up his pipe to his satisfaction. It took three matches to satisfy him. He opened a saddlebag and looked inside at the collection of dynamite sticks. He took one of the sticks with him and walked back toward the buckskin. Deek and Tom mounted. Bart rode up alongside, slipped his freshly acquired watch out of his pocket, and proudly displayed his new possession to his kin.
“Ain’t it purty?” He pressed the stem and the lid flipped open. “Real gold. Nothin’ purtier than a gold watch.”
“I can think of somethin’.” Tom grinned. His two front teeth looked like they should be on a rabbit.
Deek took the pipe from his mouth and lit the wick of the dynamite from the bowl. He stuck the stem back through his thin lips into his mouth, then tossed the lit stick through the open rear door into the wagon.
Bart snapped the lid of his gold watch shut and the Keeshaw brothers went to their spurs.
Six seconds later the blast, even at the distance they had covered, sent splintered debris spraying down on the happy little band of riders.
William Clarke Quantrill would have approved of the operation—and its execution.