Buck pushed the mike away, shaking his head. “C’mon, kid,” he said to Farrie. He took her hand and started for the back of the Living Christmas Tree. He had already seen the blanketed figures of Byron Turnipseed and Devil Anse and a hybrid fleecy-canine figure take a position down front. Thank goodness they seemed to be in semidarkness.

At the foot of the tree’s ladderlike stairs, Farrie pulled back, screaming every time a rocket went off.

Scarlett tried to soothe her. “We never seen fireworks but once,” she yelled. “I don’t think she was big enough to remember.”

“I don’t wanna go up there,” Farrie screamed, “they’ll hit me!”

It wasn’t just the fireworks, Buck knew. He remembered the desolate look in those black eyes when she’d whispered to him she didn’t climb so good.

And didn’t walk toogood, he told himself. And all the other things, including being a Scraggs.

He lifted Farrie in his arms, wincing with the stab of pain in his shoulder. “Farrie?” He knew she heard because she gulped, then shuddered. “You’ve done nothing but yell the past hour about how much you wanted to get here. Now,” Buck said, his mouth at her ear, “I want you to go up there and sing. You can sing better than anybody else and you know it. Let’s see you do it!”

The little pixie face lifted to him, tear-stained and surprised. She said something, but fireworks noise drowned it out.

“Sing!” Buck told her. “I know you can do it, kid. Just stop bawling.”

Farrie’s arms went around his neck suddenly and she clung to him. Finally she nodded. In spite of himself, Buck smiled.

“You take me,” he heard her say. “Only you!”

“You got it,” he assured her.

They went up the first stairs into the tree and hands reached out to them. “Go get ’em, Farrie,” the Bells yelled over the thunder of rockets.

“I’ll take her,” Judy Heamstead said when they reached the Angels. “It’s only a few steps more.”

Buck shook his head. He needed to be down on the courthouse grounds, but, like his dad, he never broke his word. “I told her I’d carry her all the way. Wouldn’t let her down now. That right, kid?”

Eyes shining, Farrie grinned at him.

Two men in the robes of the Presbyterian church choir were waiting on the last level. They reached out and took her from Buck’s arms. “Glad to see you got here,” one of them said as he set Farrie on her feet. “You ready to sing, honey?”

Farrie was telling them she was when Buck turned to go. He was looking forward to hustling Byron Turnipseed, old man Scraggs, and the dog to a safer, less public place. He was on the tree’s bottom level when a roar from hundreds of throats went up, then he heard the unmistakable sound of a plane swooping low.

“Santa Claus,” the crowd was yelling.

Buck jumped the remaining feet to the ground. The plane, with a big Night Sun spotlight playing over the courthouse lawn, was getting ready to release the city council’s freebie Santa.

Buck struggled to get through what seemed like a wall of bodies with faces all turned to the sky. The fireworks were over, but their problems weren’t. The courthouse environs were no shopping mall parking lot; a jump there was hazardous, as any fool should know. Especially after dark.

Deputy Kevin Black Badger materialized at Buck’s elbow, dark circles under his eyes. “Sheriff,” Kevin said belligerently, planting himself so Buck could not pass him, “is that a dog over there by the tree wearing my best imported Australian sheepskin rug that was in my camping equipment?” He stopped, abruptly, to peer into Bucks face. “Good Lord, who beat you up?”

“Later,” Buck told him brusquely.

A cheer had gone up as Santa, carrying a big black bag, jumped out of the low-flying Cessna and did a lengthy free-fall before opening his parachute. Buck swore under his breath. “Go get the ambulance and fire rescue on the radio,” he told Black Badger.

The deputy looked up and calculated the drift of Santa’s chute over them. “Yes, sir!” Black Badger left at a run.

The circling plane’s searchlight, sweeping over the crowd, now picked out what seemed to be a budget version of two shepherds and a strangely extraterrestrial sheep, the latter now snarling viciously at one of the shepherds.

Another roar went up as the light illuminated the trio. People stood up and pointed. One shepherd hitched closer to the crowd as if trying to disappear into it. The sheep promptly dragged him back, teeth clamped in his robes.

A voice in the crowd cried, “Sheep and shepherds? Are we going to have the manger scene after all?”

There was a ragged cheer.

Buck had spotted a familiar figure. “Mose,” he shouted to his deputy. The noise was too great; Mose hadn’t heard him. Beyond Mose a line of men and women approached from the courthouse parking lot carrying signs that read: RESTORE THE REAL MEANING OF CHRISTMAS, NO SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE, and ABANDON PAGANISM NOW!

But no Holy Family, Buck saw, straining his eyes to read the placards. Maybe Junior had given them a fighting chance after all.

He got halfway across the lawn before he tripped over a stroller and almost fell on familiar saffron-robed figures. The Hare Krishnas, too, were seemingly headed in the direction of Junior’s committee. As Buck staggered to his feet the nearest one chanted bare ram at him quite hostilely, and pushed him away.

Buck pried the stroller loose from his leg as the viewers around him yelled for him to get down, they couldn’t see Santa Claus. But above them Santa was having his own troubles as he drifted inexorably toward the courthouse trees.

“Go on, go on!” In front of the Living Christmas Tree, Mr. Ravenwood, arms lifted, was shouting to his chorus, “Don’t look at the plane, look at me! Let’s have the last number!”

While most of the crowd watched, enthralled, Santa Claus floated into one of the oldest oak trees on the courthouse property, struck, and hung there, swinging gently. His black Christmas bag dropped to the ground. As one, the crowd groaned.

At that moment the Living Christmas Tree struck up their rendition of “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.” The sign-carrying group of the Committee for the Real Meaning of Christmas had reached the shepherd and sheep tableau at the foot of the Christmas tree. Before they could plant their signs, there were the distinct sounds of snarls and growls, followed by loud screams. Those who were not watching the dangling Santa in the oak tree were treated to the spectacle of Junior’s militant committee members throwing their signs away and scattering, apparently pursued by a vicious, slavering sheep.

Television reporters promptly raced past Buck to cover the Real Meaning of Christmas Committee being assaulted at the foot of the Living Christmas Tree. In the distance the howl of sirens forecast the arrival of the Nancyville fire rescue unit.

“Scarlett!” Buck shouted. He couldn’t find her anywhere. He hoped to hell she wasn’t caught in the melee down by Devil Anse and the CID man.

He finally reached Moses Holt at the jam-packed courthouse steps. In a few seconds, with Mose’s walkie-talkie in hand, Buck had rounded up his deputies and assigned them to crowd, television crew, and Santa-hanging-in-the-tree control. He saw Kevin Black Badger had already separated Junior’s committee from the perils of a maddened sheep and a shepherd apparently trying to tear off his robes hampered by a pair of handcuffs. The fire rescue was moving to put a ladder under the gently swinging figure of Santa Claus.

Scarlett, he thought. Where the devil was she?

Suddenly it began to snow.

No one noticed it at first, there was too much happening all at once. But thick, white, starry shapes began falling rapidly out of a dark sky, swirling gently over Nancyville’s valley.

As the snowfall became noticeable the crowd quieted somewhat. Translucent clouds of snow, hushed and peaceful, drifted down on the courthouse lawn, the singers assembled in the wooden Living Christmas Tree, on the deputies moving the Hare Krishnas to a quieter place.

Scarlett, standing under the wooden struts of the Living Christmas Tree, looked up and saw Farrie move forward, answering Mr. Ravenwood’s hoarse call.

At the same time, Buck was at the back of the crowd. “Brrraarckkk, Sheriff?” the radio in his hand said. “Are you there?” But Buck stood unmoving, not answering, as the flashlight “candles” on the tree came on. The structure rapidly blossomed with lights, gently veiled in the snow, illuminating “Bells” and the “Angels.” Who had their eyes on Cyrus Ravenwood, waiting for their cues.

A murmuring silence settled over the crowd except for a few small babies wailing and the subdued noises from the fire rescue team hauling a precautionary stretcher up into the oak tree.

Gradually the snowy night, the silence of the mountains around them settled on the crowd as the words of the last Christmas song began. Farrie Scraggs’s big, unchildlike voice drifted out from the top of the tree.

“I heard the bells on Christmas Day,

Their old familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet, the words repeat -”

Fifty-odd voices on the tree joined in: “Of peace on earth, Goodwill tomen!”

During the chorus Buck managed to catch Kevin Black Badger’s eye and signal that he wanted him. His deputy started through the crowd. Farrie took the solo again:

“And in despair, I bowed my head

There is no peace on earth, I said,

For hate is strong, and mocks the song -”

Now some in the crowd were singing. “Of peace on earth, Goodwill to men!”