Christmas Visitors

Clomp, clomp, clomping boots on boards got louder, then stopped. They scraped and clomped in time with each other, and then out, and then back in again suggesting multiple stompers. Inside, the groggy sleeper expected the next sound to be three dull thuds on the dense door to his low sod building. He expected some nonsense that could wait until morning. He had already been rousted once this frigid night by a visitor seeking stalls, hay, and a warmish loft in the simple stables behind the soddy. 

His eyes jerked open when the expected knocks didn’t come. Instead of knocks, he heard stealthy scratching at the door latch. The door quietly crept open to reveal a number of dark shapes silhouetted in the faint snow glow of the uncommonly cold and blizzardy night.

“Hold it right there,” he said, easing up from his cot and sliding over into the safety of the deeper darkness near his cast iron stove.

“Oh! Um, we didn’t think you were in, Sheriff—”

“Well, pretty clear I am. State your business.”

“Saw some big ‘uns going into the livery, Sheriff,” came from a shadow toward the left.

 A different voice more to the right cut in, “Couldn’t tell what, slimmer’n cattle, tall like mules, moved like elk or deer, but who has those—”

“How is what goes into the livery your concern in the middle of the night?”

“The drought, Sheriff, so nothing grew to speak of,” smoother voice from the front, “Nothing to can. Nothing to squirrel away for winter—“

“Followed by the fires—” cut in a new voice from the near left.

“Injun raids,” came a quieter voice from the rear of the group in the doorway.

One of the men nearest the door edged further in, “Man’s gotta eat, Sheriff.”

“Far enough, I said.” 

The man stopped, but made no move to retreat.

The man they called Sheriff felt the gnawing desperation in the close air. It was too dark for his eyes, so his mind tracked around the inside of the room. He was at an huge disadvantage. He was outnumbered and needed an edge. He needed it fast.

“Best let us on back there, Sheriff. We know all about that big scatter gun you got behind the pile of feed sacks you call a desk, so just you stay over on the stove side of things. Some of the fellas’ trigger fingers have got mighty itchy on account of being so hungry. Surely you understand.”

“You boys don’t need to be going and messing with that man and his animals. Hell, you don’t even know what he has—”

“Sheriff, we don’t care what the hell he has! He can be traveling with four-legged I-don’t-know-what’s! For once, we’re all eating tonight!”

He hadn’t wanted this Sheriff job. The stable job either, for that matter. This nowhere town on the way west had just grown too damn fast. First his homestead sod house had become the office of the law when no other settlers would step up. How many times he wished he had waited a little longer to see if someone else had volunteered.

As time went by, some town buildings had sprung up around around this make do “sheriff’s office.” Then his own personal livestock shelter burgeoned into the ramshackle livery behind his soddy. It had grown so fast, usable space was paramount and aesthetics and function suffered. The stables were only accessible through, his soddy—

“Hang on … that’s strange,” he thought, “something doesn’t look right…”

During the Sheriff’s distraction, the men at the door began shuffling feet forward, slowly reaching for handguns and easing their rifles up to bear, “We know you’ve still got your six-shooter off at Sven Krupps’ getting repaired from when you busted it,” the lead man growled, “so we’re done talking. Get out of the way, or we’ll shoot you out.”

The men began moving into the room in earnest, as the Sheriff reached for what hadn’t looked right to him. Seemed like a lumpy, heavy weight in the oversized sock he had hung by his stove as a lark, it being Christmas and all. It was too dark for the men entering the room to see his hand enter the sock. It was too dark for them to see his eyes light in surprise. It was too dark for them to see what he drew out. But it wasn’t dark at all once he started firing into the shapes outlined in the doorway.

The Sheriff awoke much later than usual the next morning. Much more tired and sore, too, he noticed as he rekindled the fire and gathered the makings for his coffee. His hand slowly played over his stubbly face and crusty eyes.

The light struggling through the snow and frost on his tiny windows drew his gaze to dark stains on his floor. He snapped to attention. That was a nightmare. No way it could have been real. He quickly crossed to the door and opened it in his long drawers, oblivious to the freezing squall. He saw six snow-covered mounds lined up at the end of the board walk. 

Thoughts jumped around his head like grease in a hot skillet … the man in the stable, the night visitors … he heard jingling bells, getting louder. Then around the corner from the stables came dark shapes. They were nearly impossible to make out in the driving snow. But they looked for the world like deer—what were they pulling? It looked like a wheel-less wagon. A sleigh? Was he going crazy?

The round man from last night was sitting up in the sleigh now. He turned piercing blue eyes toward him. He sent a curling wisp up from his stubby cob pipe and nodded, “We’ll be off now, Sheriff. Thank you for your hospitality.”

“Yessir,” the dazed Sheriff said as the man turned onto the road out of town and slowly faded into the white.

When all that was left of him and his conveyance was a shadow in the blur, the whistling gale silenced for just a moment, and the Sheriff heard a faint, “Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas!”