(TIMELINE: This story takes place roughly 13 years after the story Beneath the Christmas Star, and roughly 14 years before the events of Bargain at Bravebank. RATED PG for one swear word and implications of violence.)
“Van Jensen Delano, where is your coat?”
Van heard his mother’s voice echo back through the house, but only barely registered her words. He was too intent on his work: carving out a chunk of wood he’d rescued from beside the hearth into his very own wooden pistol. He was whittling out the outline of it, working around the trigger guard now, trying to get just the right amount of curve without nicking any of his own fingers in the process.
His tongue stuck out between his lips as he concentrated, pulling the knife in careful, slow strokes just like Pa had taught him.
“Van?” His mother’s voice was closer now, finally piercing into his awareness.
But he didn’t look up from his work. “Huh?”
“I said, where is your coat? Didn’t I tell you to hang it up by the door when you come in?”
“Uh huh.” There. The trigger guard was done. Now to whittle out the bottom of the frame, then he could move up along the barrel right where this fine chunk of wood was nice and straight—
“Van!”
“What?!” He startled, dropping both the wood and the knife as his mother appeared in the doorway of the room he shared with his sister.
She took one look at him, then pursed her lips and raised an eyebrow. “What in the world are you doing? You’re supposed to be getting ready to go—your father’s outside right now harnessing the horses in the cold all by himself and you’re sitting there whittling? Child, you know better than that! Get dressed, right now. We have to be at the photographer’s on time, understand?”
“Yes Mama.” Van stood reluctantly from the edge of the mattress he’d been perched upon and bent to retrieve his materials.
His mother had turned to leave when she seemed to catch better sight of what he’d been making … before he could shove it under his pillow.
She whipped back around to face him, eyes going wide. “Van Delano, is that what I think it is?”
He quickly tucked his hands and everything they held behind his back, but already felt his face growing hot. “No. I—I mean, what do you think it is? It’s … it’s supposed to be a horse.”
Now her eyes narrowed, and it was all Van could do to keep from fidgeting under her skeptical gaze. She’d got him to crack before with that look. He wasn’t a great liar, though he managed it better with her than with Pa. He swallowed hard and forced himself not to look away. “I … I know it’s not very good,” he finally offered weakly. “That’s why I was … trying to work on it … to get better…”
He wasn’t sure if she really bought his excuse or not, but at least she seemed to decide now wasn’t the time to press further. He supposed it was lucky then that they were in a hurry. She only shook her head and stepped out of the doorway. “Fine. Well put it away. Now isn’t the time. Find your coat and get your mittens and scarf, then come help your sister with her boots.”
Van let out a quiet breath. “Yes Mama.” He turned to shove the half-whittled pistol and the knife both deep beneath his pillow, then left the room to search for his wayward clothing.
He found the coat at last, draped over a chair near the hearth, and his pa stepped through the front door just as he was shrugging into it and pulling it snug to button it up.
Logan Delano stomped snow from his boots, and what was showing of his face between his fur-lined hat and woolen scarf was red from the cold. “Whew,” he whooped. “Sleigh is ready, but make sure you bundle up good. It’s a cold one today.”
Van resisted the grumble as he went hunting next for his scarf and mittens. He already didn’t like taking their open sleigh across the snow as much as Ethelyn did, but he especially didn’t like taking it on the really cold days. The wind even at a trot was brutal. He could swear his eyeballs froze. But neither Mama nor Pa liked complaining, so he swallowed it all back as best he could manage.
“What the blazes you been doin’ all this time, boy?”
Van grabbed his scarf from where it’d been hooked over the back of one of the kitchen chairs and straightened at the question, facing his pa quick. “Uh … looking … looking for my coat.” He wound the scarf around his neck quick too, hoping to cover some of the flush creeping up under his collar again.
Sure enough, his father fixed him with that same disappointed, skeptical look his mother had given him only a few minutes before. To distract himself from it, Van shoved his mittens deep into his coat pockets and then hurried around where his pa still stood just inside the door to pick up his sister’s boots. “And … helping Ethelyn with her boots like Mama asked,” he added. Then, louder, he said, “Ethelyn! C’mon, I got your shoes!”
The girl skipped to him, clutching her favorite doll in the crook of one arm, ironed curls bouncing. She loved the snow, loved the sleigh, and loved getting her photograph taken, rare occasion that it was. But Van didn’t care for that much, either. The nice clothes Mama made him wear for it weren’t comfortable, the journey to town took forever, and then he had to hold still for much too long.
He gestured for Ethelyn to sit in one of the upholstered chairs by the dwindling fire. He was already getting a little too warm in here in his coat and all, but he’d be near freezing soon enough, so he tried not to mind so much.
His sister plopped down obediently into the seat, and Van took a knee to attempt to shove boots onto Ethelyn’s stockinged feet. It didn’t help that she kept kicking them in her excitement.
“Coulda had the sleigh ready a lot sooner if I’d had your help, you know,” Pa commented.
“Could have,” Van’s mama commented mildly as she moved across the room with Ethelyn’s coat.
“Could have,” Pa muttered. “And hasn’t your mama told you time and time again to hang your coat by the door when you come in?”
“Yes,” Van answered sullenly.
“You’d best start listening to her then, understand?”
“Yes Pa.”
Ethelyn giggled and Van sent her a silent glare as he finally shoved one boot onto one foot. She was always amused when he got in trouble. She never got in trouble much, herself.
Unfortunately.
“Next time I want you out there helping, no excuses.”
“Yes Pa.”
Logan clapped his mittened hands together. “All right, well let’s get goin’. ‘Fore it gets any colder out there.”
“Go-ing,” Mama corrected. She already had herself bundled up, but finished helping Ethelyn into her coat just as Van managed to get the child’s second boot on and pushed back to his feet.
“Go-ing,” Pa growled from the doorway, but he wasn’t really that upset. It was real, real easy to tell when Logan Delano got truly upset, though it didn’t happen too often.
And for that, Van was grateful. Very, very grateful.
“Go-ing, goin’, however you say it, that’s what we should be doin’! Do-ing,” Pa said.
“I agree.” Mama put on Ethelyn’s hat and scarf carefully, trying her best not to mess up the girl’s perfectly done curls. They’d spent hours on Ethelyn’s hair that morning. For a five-year-old, Ethelyn was remarkably patient if it meant she got to wear her favorite dress and have her hair done up special.
“Van,” Mama prompted, “why don’t you fetch that heavy wool blanket from our room? We’re going to need it. It’s in the chest.”
“All right.” Van hurried to do as he was bid, mostly ‘cause Pa was still staring him down. Still sore about having to hook up the horses in the cold by his lonesome, it seemed.
Well, let him be sore about that, then. Or about Van not hanging up his coat. Both were preferable to his pa finding out what he’d been carving this morning.
He didn’t often enter his parents’ room, and he tried not to be distracted as he made his way to the big cedar chest resting beneath a window that looked out back of the house, toward a cluster of trees that grew along the banks of a creek. Their house had started as only one room, he knew, because Mama and Pa told him and Ethelyn about that all the time.
When they’d first come to Kansas to start raising cattle, they’d built this house themselves. And it’d been only one room, with a dirt floor. But over the years they’d added to it, until now it had two bedrooms, as well. And a nice wooden floor across all of it, too.
Van grunted as he lifted the lid of the chest and took in a deep breath of the crisp cedar smell. He wished they’d add at least one more room. Then he could stop having to share with his little sister. Maybe he could help Pa with that this coming spring through summer. Maybe they could build Ethelyn her own little space, and he’d finally have a place to call his very own…
The thought made him grin. He decided to think about that during their sleigh ride into town, instead of about how cold and miserable and long the journey would be.
He pulled the big blanket from the chest and grunted again as he lifted it, having to use both hands. Heavy, indeed. He dumped it to the floor so he could shut the trunk again when something else inside caught his eye.
He paused with one hand on the lid and squinted. His parents had already extinguished all the lanterns in the house in preparation for their departure, but the thick carpet of snow outside reflected what gray light managed to come through the equally thick cloud cover. The muted daylight streamed in through the bedroom’s multiple windows.
It was enough to glint off something shiny. Most of the shiny was all wrapped up in an oilcloth and tied with leather thongs. But one of the thongs had come untied, and a part of the oilcloth fallen open. Frowning now, Van forgot about both the blanket he was supposed to be retrieving and about his waiting family.
He’d never seen anything that shiny before. It looked like silver. Did Mama and Pa have silver stashed here?! Was his family … was his family rich?! If they had a stash of silver, why couldn’t they have bought one of those nice, enclosed sleighs for their winter journeys?
He reached inside to peel back more of the oilcloth, but the rest of it was tied tight around the silver. And then Van realized with a jolt what shape the bundle was, and he yanked his hand back quick. And sank slowly to his knees in front of the chest, a frown creasing his brow.
It was a … pistol?
“Van?” His mother’s voice drifted from the other room and he startled. “Did you find the blanket? Child, I swear, if we’re late for our Christmas portraits because of your dilly-dallying…”
But Van hardly heard her, his gaze still locked on that wrapped pistol. It was so shiny. Silver … it must have been silver. Why on earth would Mama and Pa have a silver-plated pistol in their trunk? They’d discouraged him from shooting pistols since the day Pa had first taught him how to shoot a rifle … since he’d asked, years ago, why Pa didn’t wear a pistol like most other men in town.
“Pistols are meant for murder,” Pa had said. “You pack a pistol, you tell yourself you’re all right with takin’ another man’s life. Ain’t like a rifle. A rifle you can use for huntin’ or defense just as well. But a pistol … a pistol is for just one thing. And we ain’t no murderers, are we?”
“No,” Van had answered at the time, breathless and wide-eyed and probably only about four-years-old. But that day was still one of his clearest memories. Even now, every time he saw a man with a sixshooter slung around his hips, or snuck a dime novel about gunslingers to practice his reading, he thought about that day and what Pa had said.
And yet here was a pistol, plain as the nose on his face. And not just any old pistol. A gleaming, silver-plated pistol. There were even the lines of elegant scrollwork along the part of the barrel now showing.
Van swallowed hard. His mouth felt dry as cotton.
This weren’t just any ordinary pistol. This was a … a gunslinger’s pistol.
In his family’s house.
“Van!” Pa barked from the other room, and Van jumped like he’d been hit by one of those hotshots they used on the cattle sometimes. “The blazes is takin’ you so long to get a blanket?!”
Pa’s heavy bootsteps thumped across the floorboards in his direction, and Van slammed the lid of the chest shut quick, turning to scoop up the pile of blanket just as his father loomed in the bedroom’s doorway.
“C-coming,” he muttered, struggling to his feet with arms full of scratchy wool. “Coming! S-sorry…” He darted under Pa’s hard glare and scurried into the main room where his mother and sister waited, Mama looking equally as unhappy as Pa, but Ethelyn still seeming to find great joy in him being scolded.
He kept glaring at her as he made his way toward the front door, still battling with the weight and mass of the big blanket.
His pa stepped in front of him and opened the front door for him at least, and the blast of icy wind took Van’s breath away. He gritted his teeth and braced himself against it, then trudged on out toward the sleigh. The rest of his family followed after, Pa grumbling the whole way about how Van had been worse than even Ethelyn lately about having his head in the clouds, and he should know better ‘cause he was older, and he’d better start paying more attention to the real world or something bad might befall him.
Van said nothing. He’d heard it all before, and anyway, he certainly weren’t gonna tell his pa what had really taken him so long this time…
He shoved the blanket into the sleigh and climbed up after it, and then Ethelyn and Mama clambered in as well and the three of them got situated on the cushioned bench in the back and bundled up in that big blanket while Pa took the driver’s seat.
Logan clucked to their matched pair of chestnuts and slapped the reins, and the sleigh jolted forward before smoothing out at a brisk trot, and the Delano family headed toward Abilene for their Christmas portraits at last. Van wrapped his scarf around the lower half of his face and squinted already watering eyes against the wind.
He turned once to look behind them, back at their snow-laden house swiftly disappearing into the rest of the snow-covered landscape, and his stomach twisted at the thought of that silver pistol buried at the bottom of his parents’ chest.
When he turned back to the front, his heart beat strangely in his throat. He glanced to his right toward his mother, but she only granted him a sweet smile, one arm wrapped around Ethelyn’s shoulders.
Did she know about that pistol? She had to have … but she disliked sixshooters even more than Pa ever had … perhaps it had been her father’s?
But Mr. Pierce hadn’t been a gunslinger, he’d been a rancher. A cattleman just like Pa was now. And he’d been murdered, Van had been told. Murdered by no good outlaws trying to steal his livestock.
Probably why Mama hates pistols.
Van’s gaze wandered to his father’s back and stuck there, his heart doing a little jump, a thrill of both terror and awe racing through him as he realized for the first time in his life that he’d never been told what his pa had been doing before coming to Kansas to be a rancher.
And suddenly, a lot of pieces fell into place.
He knew Pa had been gravely injured, and that Mama’s family had saved him, taken him in and nursed him back to health. And that’s when he’d fallen in love with Mama. A few years later, they were married, and shortly after that, they came to Kansas. Built the house, bought some cattle, and had been here ever since.
But before that…
Before that…
Van sank down further into his seat, the hair on his arms prickling, heart pounding under all his layers of winter clothes.
Before that … Pa was a gunslinger.
He had to have been.
That’s how he’d gotten hurt. How he’d been able to avenge the death of Mr. Pierce and hold his own against multiple outlaws. Why Mama and Pa always insisted they use Mama’s last name in town, and when talking to strangers. Pierce. They were the Pierce family. Mama and Pa had said it was because Pierce was a known and well-respected name in the area, and thus would raise less overall suspicion and distrust than a name wholly unfamiliar.
But now Van wondered if there might be an entirely different reason for why they only spoke the Delano name within the walls of their own home.
That was Pa’s gun in that chest. The gun that had avenged Mama’s family.
How many people had that pistol killed?
“And we ain’t no murderers, are we?”
“No,” Van whispered aloud, his voice lost beneath the rush of wind and sound of the sleigh sliding across the snow. He squeezed his eyes shut, hands curling within his mittens. No. What Pa had done that day was justice, not murder.
But what about on other days? a little voice asked in the back of his mind.
He kept thinking of all the things those gunslingers had done in those books he’d read. All their adventures … adventures he’d daydreamed about having himself lately. Had his own pa done those kinds of things, too? And if he had … why was his gun all wrapped up and hidden away now? Why had he told Van pistols were only for murder, been so against Van himself learning to shoot one, when he had one his own damn self?
Van winced, cracked an eye open to look sideways at his mother, but of course she hadn’t heard him swear. He’d only said it to himself.
So he shut that eye again against the biting cold and tried to ignore the unease his unexpected discovery of the silver pistol had stirred up in his belly.
Someday … someday he would ask his pa to explain it all.
Someday when he was older. And bigger.
And someday … someday when his parents were busy with their chores, maybe he’d sneak another peek at it. Maybe he’d unwrap it, just for a minute, to get a good look at it.
After all, he’d never seen anything so shiny…
AUTHOR’S NOTE: And here’s the second free Christmas short story I promised you! It’s out a little later than I would have liked, but considering all the family visiting I’ve been doing lately, frankly, I’m quite shocked I even managed to finish it this month! I originally wanted to release four Christmas shorts this year… alas, I’ll have to be happy with two. But two still ain’t too shabby, if you ask me! The other two I’ll just have to save for next year! 😉
Again, this story was inspired by my readers on Discord, who said they wanted to see something about the Delano siblings when they were younger. And this tale immediately sprang to mind. And again, it turned a bit more serious than maybe you’d want for a “fluffy” Christmas tale, but I think this is an important glimpse into Van’s childhood… which you’ll likely agree with if you’ve been reading the Legacy of Lucky Logan series so far.
Especially if you’ve read BONES IN BLACKBIRD, this short is going to give you some more insight into things. But if you haven’t started the full series yet, don’t worry, this didn’t spoil anything for you. On the contrary, now you’ll have some good foresight going into the main story! But you’ll want to start with Book 1, of course, which you can find HERE.
Whether you go on to the main series or just popped by for a quick read because you were curious, I hope you enjoyed this little short! And stick around, because there’s more coming in 2022!!! (LOTS more!!!) Subscribe to the blog or join my newsletter to be sure you don’t miss all the upcoming developments! And I’ll see you on the other side!
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