Pride of Eagles

by William W. Johnstone

  “I said let the lady go and I won’t kill you,” Falcon said.

  The intruder laughed, a wild, humorless laugh. “Mister, are you crazy? Do you see that I’m pointing a gun at her?”

  “Exactly,” Falcon said. “And that’s where you made your mistake.”

  “A mistake? You call this a mistake?”

  “Oh, I do indeed. You see, you are pointing the gun at her, not me.” Falcon pointed his pistol at the man’s head and cocked it. “I, on the other hand, am pointing my gun right at you. I’m going to count to three; then I’m going to kill you.”

  “I warn you, mister, if you start counting, I plan to kill her when you get to two,” the intruder said resolutely.

  “And I will kill you when I get to three,” Falcon said. “One . . . two . . .”

  “Wait! No, stop! All right!” the intruder said, putting his gun down and backing away from the woman. “I’ve let her go, see? Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” He put his hands in the air.

  “So we meet again,” the woman said, smiling a relieved smile at Falcon. “I don’t believe we introduced ourselves at our previous meetings. I am Kathleen Coyle. And this time, I truly am pleased to meet you.”

  “My name is MacCallister. Falcon MacCallister.”

  “You’re . . . you’re Falcon MacCallister?” the intruder asked. He had obviously heard of Falcon.

  “What are you going to do with him, Mr. MacCallister?”

  “It’s up to you,” Falcon said. “I can take him to jail, or I can finish my count to three.” He raised his pistol and cocked it.

  “What? No! My God, Mr. MacCallister, no!” Kathleen shouted. “Don’t kill him!”

  Falcon sighed. “All right, if you say so. But it is tempting.”

  Kathleen smiled coquettishly. “You were so brave to come charging to my rescue. I feel as if I should repay you in some way.”

  “No repayment necessary.”

  “But I really should do something,” Kathleen said. “I know. Suppose you let me take you to dinner tonight.”

  “I’m afraid I have dinner planned,” Falcon said.

  “Oh.” Kathleen looked crestfallen.

  “You could come to dinner with me,” Falcon suggested. “It’s the Stockgrowers’ Association Dinner and Dance. You could be my guest.”

  “A dance?” Kathleen said, brightening. “Why, I would be very honored to be your guest tonight.”

  “I’ll call for you at six-thirty,” he said. He looked toward the intruder, who had been following the dialogue between the two with great interest.

  “What are you looking at?” Falcon asked his prisoner.

  “Why don’t you let me go?” the prisoner replied. “I didn’t do nothin’. I was just in the wrong room, that’s all.”

  “You’ve got that right, mister,” Kathleen said heatedly. “You were in my room.”

  “Miss Coyle,” Falcon started.

  “Please, call me Kathleen.”

  “Kathleen, you know you are going to have to come down to the jail and file a complaint against this man. Otherwise, they’ll have no reason to charge him and they’ll have to let him go.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry about that,” Kathleen said. “I’ll file a complaint, all right.”

  “You got nothin’ to complain about,” the intruder said. “I didn’t do nothin’.”

  “Come on, let’s go,” Falcon said to the intruder, emphasizing his order with a wave of his pistol.

  “Six-thirty tonight?” Kathleen said as Falcon started to leave with the intruder. “You won’t disappoint me now, will you?”

  “I’ll call for you,” Falcon promised.

  * * *

  “What’s your name?” Sheriff Foster asked the man Falcon brought to him. The sheriff began looking through the dodgers on his desk.

  “You ain’t got no paper on me,” the scar-faced prisoner replied.

  “You don’t mind if I look, do you?” The sheriff nodded toward the scar. “With a scar like that, it’ll be easy enough to find out if I have anything on you.”

  “My name is Johnny. Johnny Purvis. Go ahead and look. You won’t find nothin’.”

  After a quick perusal of the wanted posters, Sheriff Foster looked back at his prisoner. “All right, I don’t have anything on you,” he said. “So I’ll just hold you for breakin’ and enterin’ and threatenin’ to kill an innocent woman.”

  “I wasn’t really goin’ to kill her. I was just tryin’ to get away. Besides, I wasn’t doin’ nothin’. I was just in the wrong room, that’s all.”

  “I might believe you, Mr. Purvis, if you had a room at the hotel,” Foster said. “But with all the wealthy cattlemen in town, there is no way a saddle bum like you would have a room.”

  “What about the woman?” Johnny asked. “She sure ain’t no cattleman.”

  “Perhaps not, but she does have a room at the hotel, and you don’t,” Sheriff Foster said. He took a key down from the hook on the wall, then nodded toward the cells in the back of the room. “But, of course, you don’t need to be worrying about a hotel room now. I’ve got a nice cell, just for you.”

  * * *

  Music for the dance that evening was supplied by a six-piece orchestra. The ballroom was filled with women in butterfly-bright dresses who bobbed and weaved to the music as broaches and necklaces sparkled in the golden light of dozens of candelabras. The men were well turned out as well, in tuxedos and suits or, in the case of the officers from the fort, in blue-and-gold braid with dress sabers.

  Falcon enjoyed his time with Kathleen, who told him that she was a performer. “I came here seeking employment at Turner’s Theater,” she said. She looked down at the table in embarrassment. “I thought I would be asked to sing, or perhaps do a few readings. I didn’t know that the girls at Turner’s Theater wore so few clothes while they were working or that, indeed, I would be expected to do private performances.”

  “Yes, the girls there do dress provocatively,” Falcon said.

  “Heavens, if I had thought you would see me in my room when I was so scandalously dressed, I would be much too embarrassed to . . .” Suddenly Kathleen paused in mid-sentence, then put her hand over her mouth to cover a laugh. “How ironic of me to think such a thing, when your first sight of me was au naturel,” she added.

  “I should have knocked before opening the door,” Falcon apologized.

  “It isn’t your fault. And what’s done is done.”

  “Have you been a performer long?”

  “Not too long,” Kathleen said. “I know it is foolish of me, but it has always been my ambition to perform on the stage in New York.”

  “Not foolish at all. Have you ever been to New York?”

  “No. But I know it must be wonderful.”

  “I don’t know that I would call it wonderful, but it is interesting,” Falcon said. “My brother and sister perform on the stage in New York.”

  “Your brother and sister?”

  “Andrew and Rosanna MacCallister,” Falcon said.

  “Andrew and Rosanna MacCallister? Yes, yes, I have heard of them,” Kathleen said. “You must be very proud to have such famous siblings.”

  “Yes,” Falcon said. “I am proud of them.”

  * * *

  Falcon thought of his siblings. He could remember how, even before the war, they would entertain not just the family, but all the people of MacCallister Valley.

  Everyone said then that they were good enough to be professionals, but no one really believed the twins would actually follow through with their ambitions. After all, MacCallister Valley was a long way from New York.

  But follow through they did, and once Falcon went to New York to see them for the first time in many years.

  Falcon MacCallister was not a man who was easily impressed, but it was hard not to be awed by New York. The streets were crowded with a steady-moving stream of conveyances of all kinds, from wagons to carriages to horse-drawn omnibuses. In addition, trains moved back an
d forth through the city, sometimes on elevated rails, sometimes on the ground.

  “What do you think of our city, little brother?” Rosanna had asked.

  “I’ll be honest with you,” Falcon replied. “I don’t like it.”

  “You don’t like it?” Andrew said. “How can anyone not like New York? Why, this is the most exciting city in the whole world.”

  “It’s too crowded,” Falcon said.

  “Of course it is crowded. It is a big city,” Andrew said.

  “Well, there you go. MacCallister is too crowded for me,” Falcon said.

  Rosanna and Andrew laughed.

  “Andrew, were you and I ever such country bumpkins?” Rosanna asked.

  “Surely not,” Andrew said.

  Falcon didn’t say it out loud, but just as they wondered how he could be such a bumpkin, he wondered how they could be such dandies. If he hadn’t known for a fact that they were his blood kin, no one would have been able to convince him of it.

  * * *

  “Goodness, you are miles away right now,” Kathleen said.

  Falcon smiled across the table at her. “Sorry,” he said. “I was just thinking of my brother and sister.”

  “I would love to meet them sometime,” Kathleen said. “How wonderful it would be to meet them in New York and tell them that I know their brother.”

  “I’m sure they would make you feel very welcome.”

  “Falcon,” a man’s voice said. “It is good to see you, mein freund.” He paused when he saw Kathleen. “Oh, I’m sorry. You are with a woman and I do not wish to intrude.”

  The man who approached was a rather short, stout man with white hair, a broad face, large, expressive blue eyes, and a bushy beard that matched the hair in color and was squared off at the bottom.

  “You are never an intrusion,” Falcon said, standing and extending his hand. “I would like you to meet my friend, Kathleen. Kathleen, this is Conrad Kohrs.”

  Kathleen gasped and put her hand to her mouth. “The Conrad Kohrs? The great cattle baron?” she asked.

  Kohrs laughed. “In my home country, one can only be a baron if one has inherited a title,” he said. “A poor peasant boy like me could not be a baron. Here in America, I raise a few cows, and it is baron I have become. America is a wonderful country.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Kohrs, but one hundred thousand head are not a few cows,” Kathleen said.

  “Oh? And have you been counting my cows, fraulein?” Kohrs teased.

  “What? No,” Kathleen said quickly. “Please forgive me for being so forward. It’s just that I have read so much about you.”

  Kohrs laughed easily. “There is nothing to forgive. I was making joke with you. But one should not always believe everything one reads,” Kohrs said. “You ask your friend about that. There have been so many ... what are they called . . . dime novels . . . written about him that I’m sure every young boy in America knows about him. Or thinks they know about him.”

  Falcon laughed and nodded. “This is true,” he said.

  “Something in here I wish to show you later,” Kohrs said, patting a satchel.

  “All right,” Falcon answered. “Oh, by the way, I bring greetings to you from an old friend. Captain Sean MacTavish sends his regards.”

  “Sean MacTavish you met? He is a good man,” Kohrs said. “A very good man. Together we sailed when I was much younger.”

  “Yes, he told me some of the stories,” Falcon said. “Including one about the girls of France.”

  To Falcon’s surprise, he could almost see the blush in Kohrs’s face.

  “Please, do not speak of such embarrassment in front of the young fraulein.”

  “Don’t worry, Conrad,” Falcon said. “The story will never be repeated.”

  “Sean is a good man,” Kohrs said. “But he talks too much, I think.”

  “Won’t you join us?” Falcon offered.

  “Danke,” Kohrs replied, sitting in the proffered chair. “I won’t stay long. I know that with your lady friend you will want to dance,” Kohrs said. “But there is something I wish to tell you.”

  “You are welcome to visit for as long as you like.”

  “Today for the meeting, you were there?” Kohrs asked.

  “I was there for some of it,” Falcon answered. He smiled. “Though I confess I left for most of the afternoon.”

  “Did you hear, in the talking today, when the man from the meatpacking place says that he cannot pay so much for the cows because they do not weigh enough?”

  Falcon nodded. “Yes, I was there when he said that. And as much as I hate to admit it, he has a point. You and I both know, Conrad, that sometimes, when the picking is sparse, the longhorns tend to get a little stringy,” he said.

  “Yes,” Kohrs said. “But I have a plan to stop that.”

  Falcon chuckled. “How are you going to stop a cow from getting stringy if he has to scratch up ten acres just to get fed?”

  “First, I have something I want you to see,” Kohrs said.

  “In the satchel?” Falcon asked.

  “No, that is later. What I want you to see now, you cannot put in a satchel.” He held his hand up and called one of the waiters over.

  “Paul, the special beef, bring to this table now,” he said. “And in two plates, one for the lady.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Kohrs.”

  “I have a steak I want you to eat,” Kohrs said, explaining his order to Falcon.

  “Thank you, Mr. Kohrs, but I’ve eaten,” Falcon said, patting his stomach. “We both have.”

  “This is not for dinner to eat,” Kohrs said. “This is for you to taste. You and the lady,” he said, looking across the table toward Kathleen. “I want to be certain that you verstehen, you . . . understand,” he said, searching for the English word. “Please, for me, I wish you to do this.”

  “All right,” Falcon said, not quite sure where Kohrs was going with this.

  A moment later the waiter returned carrying a tray, protected by a silver cover. Lifting the cover revealed two plates. On each of the two plates was a small but very thickly cut steak. Each of the steaks bore the striping of having been grilled. And even though Falcon had already eaten, the aroma of the steaks was irresistible.

  But it was Kathleen who put the moment in words.

  “Oh, my!” she said. “Has there ever been a more divine aroma.”

  “The aroma, it is nothing,” Kohrs said. “It is the taste you must experience.”

  Falcon carved off a piece of the steak and put it in his mouth. The steak was juicy, and delicious. But what was most noticeable was how tender it was. Falcon had never eaten a piece of meat this tender.

  “Oh, how heavenly!” Kathleen said, smacking her lips in delight. “You must tell me what the cook did to make this steak taste so delicious.”

  “Nothing special did the cook do,” Kohrs replied. “We cook this steak as we cook any steak,” Kohrs said.

  Falcon shook his head. “No, it isn’t like any steak. It’s like no steak I’ve ever tasted before.”

  Kohrs held up his finger and wagged it back and forth. “That it is like any other steak I did not say. I said it was cooked like any other steak. But this steak is from Hereford cow,” Kohr said. “Hereford cows are much bigger than longhorn cows, and much better is the meat.”

  “I won’t argue with you there.”

  “In Laramie, Wyoming, in one month, there will be many Hereford cows for sale, both bulls and cows. There will be many who are going to go there to buy some seed bulls and brood heifers so we can begin raising Herefords instead of longhorns,” Kohr said. “We will change forever the cattle business.”

  “You say many of us. Who will that be?”

  “I will be in Laramie when the sale begins. Also John Iliff, C.C. Slaughter, George Littlefield, Shanghai Pierce, Alexander Swan, Pierre Wibaux, Granville Stuart, and Dudley Snyder.”

  Falcon let out a low whistle. “The men you just named are responsible for almost
half the cattle produced in this country. I can see why you expect to change the cattle business forever.”

  “I think you should be there too.”

  “I will admit that it does sound interesting,” Falcon said.

  “If we are to forever change the cattle business, you must be there,” Kohrs said. “You are an important man. When others hear that you are raising Herefords, they will want to raise them as well.”

  Falcon shook his head. “Important? Come on, Conrad, you know better than that. When people hear the word ‘cattleman,’ I’m not the first one they think of. Besides, with that list of names you just gave me, it would seem to me that you have this pretty well tied up.”

  “But your name is well known,” Kohrs insisted. “And if they don’t think cattle when they think your name, that is the more better. They will think that even one who does not have so many cows can raise Herefords.”

  “I have a question.”

  “What is the question?”

  “Why are you trying to recruit so many people? Wouldn’t it be better for you if you had the Herefords all to yourself?”

  Kohrs shook his head. “No,” he said. “If only I raise Herefords, then the meatpackers will pay me no more than they are paying for longhorn cattle. And if I refuse to sell, they will not mind because they will have other cattlemen from whom they can get their beef.” Kohrs held up his finger. “But if all of us have Hereford cattle to sell, they will have to pay us what the cattle are worth. And because the cows are bigger, even the meatpackers will make more of a profit.”

  “I see your point.”

  “It is not just the men I have named who are coming. From all over the West, cattlemen will come to buy cows. On that day, I believe, the little town of Laramie will have more money than any city in the West.”

  Falcon drummed his fingers on the table as he listened to Kohrs make his case.

  “Mr. Kohrs, I can see why you are so successful,” he said. “All right, you have talked me into it. I will go to Laramie to buy Herefords.”

  “Gut, gut, then there a beer I will buy for you,” Kohrs said, smiling broadly over his success in recruiting Falcon. He reached down into his satchel and pulled out an envelope. “And now this is what I want you to see. Tonight, before to sleep you go, I want you to read.”