The Christmas We Had Nothing

A Harper's Justice Short Story

By R.J. Sloane

Before Shane Harper became an Arizona Ranger, he was a boy with nothing but a rabbit, a rifle, and five siblings to protect. This is the Christmas that shaped him—and the Harper legacy.

The rabbit hung limp from my belt. One rabbit. Six kids. Christmas Eve.

I was thirteen years old, and I'd been the man of the house for three months. Mama had gone on to glory months before that.

The December cold bit through my threadbare coat as I trudged back toward the ranch house. My hands ached from hours of hunting in the grassy valley, fingers stiff around Pa's old rifle. The sun was sinking fast, painting the Arizona sky in shades of orange and gold that would've been beautiful if I had time to notice such things.

I didn't.

My breath came out in white puffs as I walked, each exhale reminding me I was still alive. Still moving. Still responsible for five other lives that depended on me not failing.

Pa had been gone since September. Maybe arrested. Maybe just run off. Either way, he'd left us with a failing ranch, empty cupboards, and debts we couldn't pay. The neighbors had helped at first—brought over food, checked on us—but charity only went so far. Eventually, folks expected you to stand on your own two feet.

Even if you were just a kid.

The house came into view, smoke rising thin from the chimney. At least they'd kept the fire going. That was something. Lilian would've made sure of it. At twelve, she tried her best to mother the younger ones, but she was still just a kid herself. We were both pretending we knew what we were doing.

We didn't.

I pushed open the door, and the smell hit me first. Bread. Somehow, Lilian and Justine had made bread with the last scraps of flour we had. The warmth of the house wrapped around me like a blanket, and for just a moment, I let myself feel the exhaustion in my bones.

"Shane!" Hayley's voice cut through my thoughts. She was five years old with our mama's blond hair and eyes that saw too much. She ran up and wrapped her arms around my waist. "Did you get something?"

I held up the rabbit. "Christmas dinner."

Her face lit up brighter than a struck match in a dark barn. "That's wonderful!"

It wasn't wonderful. It was one small rabbit that would barely feed us all. But I wasn't going to tell her that.

Flynn appeared from the back room, his reddish-brown hair sticking up at odd angles. At four, he already had that restless energy that made him both helpful and exhausting. "Can I help clean it?"

"You're too little for that, buddy."

"Where's Ike?"

"In the bedroom with Justine."

I found our youngest brother in the small bedroom he shared with Flynn—barely two years old, too young to understand why Christmas felt different this year. Justine sat with him, her blond hair falling over her shoulder as she played with him, trying to keep him occupied and warm. At ten, she had Mama's gentle way about her, always trying to smooth things over and make everyone feel better.

I stood and found Lilian in the kitchen, her strawberry-blond hair tied back as she worked. She looked up when I came in, and I saw the question in her eyes before she asked it.

"That's all you got?"

"That's all there was."

She pressed her lips together and nodded. She'd learned not to complain. None of us had that luxury anymore. "I'll make it work. Justine and I made bread, and we've got some beans left. We can stretch it."

"The decorations look nice," I said, gesturing to the pine branches and fabric strips the kids had hung around the room. It wasn't much, but they'd tried.

"Hayley and Flynn worked hard on them." Lilian's voice softened. "They wanted it to feel like Christmas."

I looked around at the sparse room. The patched furniture. The thin curtains. The cracks in the walls we'd stuffed with rags to keep the cold out. This wasn't what Christmas was supposed to look like.

But it was what we had.

"Let me get this rabbit cleaned," I said. "We'll make it work."

Dinner was quiet. We sat around the small table—all six of us squeezed together—and said grace over our meager meal. Lilian had done her best, stretching that rabbit and those beans into something that at least filled our bellies a little. The bread helped, even if it was more air than substance.

Ike barely touched his food. Too young to understand, maybe, but old enough to feel the absence. Hayley ate with determination, like she was trying to convince herself it was a feast. Flynn wolfed his down without seeming to taste it. Justine smiled and made encouraging comments, but I could see the worry in her brown eyes.

And Lilian... Lilian just looked tired.

After dinner, we sat by the fire. Justine had a Bible open on her lap—our mother's Bible, worn at the edges from years of reading. She read the Christmas story aloud, her voice steady and clear.

"And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn."

I stared at the flames and thought about Mary and Joseph, alone in a stable with nothing but each other and a newborn baby. No room. No help. Just faith that somehow, it would be enough.

I wasn't sure I had that kind of faith.

"Can we sing?" Hayley asked when Justine finished reading.

So we sang. Our voices were thin and off-key, but we sang every carol we could remember. Silent Night, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and Joy to the World. Hayley's small voice got louder with each song, and even Flynn stopped fidgeting long enough to join in. Ike clapped his hands, not understanding the words but caught up in the moment.

For a few minutes, we almost forgot we were six kids alone in the Arizona Territory with nothing but hope and each other.

Almost.

After the younger ones finally fell asleep—Ike curled up with Flynn, Hayley tucked in with Justine—I sat by the dying fire. Lilian joined me, wrapping a thin blanket around her shoulders.

"You did good today, Shane."

I shook my head. "One rabbit isn't good."

"It's more than nothing." She was quiet for a moment. "You're keeping us alive. That's more than Pa ever did."

I didn't answer. What was there to say? She was right. Pa had never cared if we ate or froze or died. He'd cared about his criminal empire, his reputation, his own survival. We'd always been an afterthought.

"Do you think we'll make it?" Lilian's voice was small in the darkness.

I looked at my sister just twelve years old, trying to be strong, trying to hold together a family that was falling apart. I thought about lying to her. Telling her everything would be fine. That someone would come help us.

But I'd never lied to Lilian, and I wasn't about to start.

"I don't know," I said. "But I'm going to make sure we do. Whatever it takes."

She leaned her head against my shoulder. "I know you will."

After she went to bed, I sat alone by the fire. The house was quiet except for the soft breathing of my siblings and the occasional pop from the dying embers. I was exhausted. Bone-tired in a way that had nothing to do with hunting all day and everything to do with carrying weight I was never meant to hold.

I was thirteen years old. I should've been learning to rope cattle and ride horses and maybe even thinking about girls. Instead, I was trying to figure out how to keep five kids alive through winter with no money, no help, and no hope that things would get better.

I stared at the dying fire and made myself a promise.

We would survive this. All of us. I would hunt every day if I had to. Work every job I could find. Steal if it came to that. Whatever it took to keep them fed and warm and alive.

Lilian was twelve. Justine was ten. Hayley was five. Flynn was four. Ike wasn't even two yet.

They were my family. The only thing in this world that mattered.

And I would not let them down.

I didn't pray. I'd stopped believing God listened to people like us a long time ago. But I made that vow to myself—to them—and I meant it with everything in me.

The fire died down to coals, and I finally let myself close my eyes.

Tomorrow I'd wake up and do it all over again. Hunt. Provide. Protect. Survive.

But tonight, on Christmas Eve, we'd had each other.

And somehow, it had been enough.

A Note from R.J. Sloane

Twenty years later, Shane Harper would become an Arizona Ranger, hunting outlaws across the territory with a reputation for never backing down. His siblings would follow their own paths to justice—Pinkerton agents, U.S. Marshals, attorneys—all of them choosing to make the Harper name mean something different.

But they never forgot that Christmas. The one where they had nothing but each other. The one that taught them what really matters when everything else is stripped away.

That's the bond that runs through every book in the Harper's Justice series. Six siblings who survived the impossible and chose to fight for justice in a land that desperately needed it.

Read their stories:

Blood Justice (Prequel) - Available now
The Rustler Hunter (Book 1) - Available now
The Maverick Marshal (Book 2) - Coming soon
The Traitor's Badge (Book 3) - Shane's story
Ike’s story – In development

If this story moved you, the Harper siblings have more to tell. Blood Justice is where it all begins.

Meet Shane Harper in Blood Justice