Pride of Eagles

by William W. Johnstone

  “You want to stop this now?” Falcon asked.

  “I’m going to knock your block off!” the big man yelled in anger.

  “It doesn’t look like I’m going to get on your good side, does it,” Falcon said.

  The big man swung another roundhouse right, missing with it as well, and this time Falcon caught him with a right hook to the chin. The hook rocked the big man back, but didn’t knock him down.

  Thinking the big man was on his last legs, Falcon moved in to finish him, but was surprised that the big man had some fight left in him. Carney threw a right jab that caught Falcon squarely in the eye. Falcon’s knees buckled, and he staggered back a few steps, but he didn’t go down.

  With a triumphant yell, the big man moved in for the kill, but that was where he made his big mistake. A roundhouse right that he intended to finish Falcon with missed, and that left the big man wide open. Falcon stepped in and threw a hard left jab to the big man’s stomach. The big man let out a loud “ooof,” then doubled over with his hands clasped over his belly.

  That set him up, and Falcon dropped him with a hard right cross.

  The crowd in the saloon cheered loudly as the big man fell, then laughed as Sylvester poured a glass of beer on him. The man coughed and sputtered, then awkwardly climbed to his feet. Unsteadily, he lifted his hands again.

  Falcon made fists of his hands and got set to throw another punch, but the big man lowered his hands and just stared at Falcon.

  “Is it over?” Falcon asked.

  Breathing hard, the man nodded, and held up his hand palm out. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s over.” He bent over and put his hands on his knees, then stood there for a long time, breathing hard.

  “You know what I think?” Sylvester said, looking at the big man. “I think you should leave now.”

  Nodding, the big man started toward the door.

  “Wait,” Falcon said.

  The big man stopped.

  “Don’t bother to come back,” Falcon told him.

  “Humph,” the big man snorted. “With watered whiskey and ugly women, who would want to come back to this place anyway?” Then, pulling together what dignity he had remaining, he pushed his way out through the batwing doors.

  Another round of cheers followed the big man’s exit; then Kathleen stepped up to Falcon.

  “How is Suzie?” Falcon asked.

  “She’s fine,” Kathleen said. She put her finger on Falcon’s eye, which was already swelling from the one good blow the big man had landed. “In fact, she probably won’t have as much of a bruise as you’re going to have. I was so frightened for you,” she said.

  “Nothing to be frightened about,” Falcon said. “The worst that could have happened would have been a beating. And I’ve had a few of those in my life.”

  “Not very many, I bet,” Kathleen said. “I mean, if you could handle Carney the way you did, it seems to me like you could handle just about anyone. He is a very big man.”

  “Carney? Is that his name? You know him?”

  Kathleen shook her head. “Not really,” she said. “But he’s been in here a couple of times, and I’ve heard his name.”

  “Really? He’s been in here?” Sylvester asked.

  “Yes, a few times,” Kathleen answered.

  “Hmm. I don’t remember ever seeing him. But if tonight is any indication, he’s not the kind of man I’d care to remember anyway.”

  “As far as I know, he’s never gotten rough with any of the girls before,” Kathleen said.

  “I wonder what got him so riled up tonight,” Falcon asked.

  “Oh, people like Carney don’t need an excuse to be riled up,” Kathleen said. “He’s just a big bully. I was glad to see him get his comeuppance.”

  Falcon touched his eye, then jerked his hand back at the tenderness of the wound.

  “I don’t mind saying that I could have done without the exercise,” Falcon said.

  Again, Kathleen put her hand on Falcon’s eye. “Ohh,” she said. “That looks like it hurts.”

  “It does hurt.”

  Putting her mouth close to Falcon’s ear, and speaking so softly that only he could hear, Kathleen said, “Falcon, I have a room upstairs with a double bed. Why don’t you come up for a while? I could—” She paused, then said in a very seductive voice, “—tend to your eye.”

  “Thanks, but my eye will be all right.”

  “Do I have to draw you a picture, Mr. MacCallister?” Kathleen said. “I don’t intend that we use the double bed just for me to look after your eye.”

  Falcon shook his head. “Now, how would it look for you to run out on your own party like that?”

  Kathleen looked taken aback that the offer to share her bed was rejected. Then she nodded.

  “Yes, I suppose you are right,” she said. “But remember, the offer is always open.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Falcon said. He ameliorated his rejection with a smile. “I’d be a fool not to.”

  His smile and response soothed her hurt feelings, and she leaned over to kiss him on the cheek.

  “Hey, Kathleen, how about a song?” someone shouted.

  “Yeah, let’s hear a song!”

  Kathleen turned and walked back toward the piano. “Don’t you boys get enough?” she asked, addressing everyone in the room. “I have already sung for two hours tonight.”

  “Just one more,” someone pleaded.

  “Yeah, just one more,” another called.

  Sylvester called over to her. “Come on, Kathleen. This is your party, after all. You’d better give them what they’re asking for,” he said.

  “All right, boys,” Kathleen agreed. “But if I wake up without a voice tomorrow, it’ll be your fault.”

  Kathleen stepped over to the piano, then began looking through some music sheets. Finally, she selected one and handed it to the pianist.

  “Play this one, Jimmy,” she said. “ ‘My Darling Nellie Gray.’ ”

  Jimmy played the first few bars of the introduction to the song, and then Kathleen began to sing.

  There’s a low green valley on the old Kentucky shore,

  There I’ve whiled many happy hours away,

  A-sitting and a-singing by the little cottage door

  Where lived my darling Nelly Gray.

  Oh! my poor Nelly Gray, they have taken you away,

  And I’ll never see my darling anymore.

  I’m sitting by the river and I’m weeping all the day,

  For you’ve gone from the old Kentucky shore.

  Falcon slipped out of the saloon while Kathleen was still singing, then walked through the town until he reached the Martin house. He started to go around to the back entrance that led to his private room, but the front door opened and Frances stepped out onto the front porch.

  “Mr. MacCallister, I’m still up,” she said. “You can come in this way if you’d like.”

  “Thanks,” Falcon said, stepping up onto the porch.

  Frances moved back to let him in, then frowned as she saw his eye.

  “Oh, my,” she said, putting her fingers up to touch the red and black swelling. “What happened to your eye?”

  Frances’s fingers felt cool to the heated swelling around his eye.

  “I sort of ran into somebody’s fist,” Falcon replied with a chuckle.

  “I hope the other fella looks worse,” Kathleen said.

  “I don’t know how he could,” Falcon said. “I haven’t seen myself in a mirror yet, but I have a feeling this looks pretty bad.”

  “Come on into the parlor and sit down,” Frances invited. “Let me see if I can do something about your eye.”

  “Ah, don’t worry about it,” Falcon said dismissively. “It’ll be all right.”

  “Nonsense. I’ve seen wounds like this before. It will swell shut if you don’t let me take care of it.”

  Falcon sat down in the parlor as Frances disappeared. She returned a moment later with a piece of raw, red steak.r />
  “What are you doing?” Falcon asked, surprised to see the steak in her hand.

  “There is nothing better than a piece of steak to keep the swelling down,” Frances said.

  “Yes, I’ve heard that. But Frances, I can’t let you waste a good steak like that just to put over my eye. Not with the cost of meat.”

  Frances chuckled. “It’s not actually a waste,” she said. “This was supposed to be your steak, but you didn’t eat dinner here tonight.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Falcon said quietly. He sighed. “But I should have,” Falcon said. “It would have saved a lot of trouble.”

  “You mean like the shooting in the theater and down by the depot?”

  “You’ve heard about that already?”

  “Cody told me,” Frances said. “He said he saw the whole thing. Or at least, he saw the part that happened at the depot.”

  “Yes, Cody was there,” Falcon said. “I’m sorry that it happened at the depot. Especially as the train was coming in. I’m very lucky that it wasn’t much worse than it was.”

  “From what Cody tells me, you didn’t have any choice.”

  “That’s true, but . . .” Falcon paused in mid-sentence.

  “But what?”

  “I never seem to have any choice when something like this happens,” Falcon said. “But I must be responsible, because it happens so often. The average person doesn’t suddenly find himself in a deadly shoot-out.”

  Inexplicably, and much to Falcon’s surprise, Frances laughed out loud.

  “What’s so funny?” Falcon asked, curious at her strange reaction.

  “Falcon MacCallister, what in the world ever gave you the idea that you are an ‘average’ person? I’ve never met anyone who was less average than you,” Frances said.

  Falcon laughed as well. “I guess you’ve got me there,” he said. “But then, you can hardly call yourself an average person either, any woman who can shoot as well as you do.”

  “Well, then, I suppose we are just two extraordinary people, aren’t we?” Frances said. “Let me see how your steak is doing.”

  Frances leaned over Falcon to remove the piece of steak from his eye. He was exceptionally aware of the nearness of her lithe form, curved in all the right places, her shining hair, her large, wide-set eyes, and her high cheekbones. He could also smell a hint of lilac.

  “Where is Gordon?” Falcon asked.

  “He is spending the night with his cousin,” Frances said, closing the distance between them.

  Falcon felt her lips on his, and though he had resisted Kathleen’s earlier advance, he did nothing to discourage Frances.

  * * *

  “Damn, Carney, you look half beat to death,” Johnny Purvis said to his brother. “What happened?”

  “It don’t matter what happened,” Carney said. “I went into town like you said. And you’re right, there is a lot of money in that town. I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t more money in the bank there right now than in just about ever’ other town in the West put together.”

  Johnny smiled and nodded. “I told you that. I’ve had someone on the inside from the first day.”

  “Yeah,” Carney said. “I have to hand it to you, Johnny. You’ve had this all planned out from the beginning. You always was smarter’n me.”

  “It’s not very hard to be smarter than you,” Johnny said.

  “Oh, now, Johnny, you got no call to say somethin’ like that. Us bein’ brothers an’ all.”

  “We’re half brothers,” Johnny said. “We’ve got the same ma, that’s all. Thank God we don’t have the same pa.”

  “Well, that still don’t give you no call to be callin’ me dumb all the time.”

  “I thought I told you to just go into town and see if all the cattlemen had arrived yet.”

  “That’s what I done.”

  “And I thought I told you to not call any attention to yourself.”

  “I didn’t plan on callin’ attention to myself,” Carney answered.

  “Carney, what in the hell did you expect when you got into a fight?” Johnny asked. “Hell, as big as you are, you call attention to yourself just by being there. But to start a fight, and lose the fight.”

  “How do you know I lost?” Carnie asked.

  “Come on, this is me you’re talkin’ to, remember. If you come slinkin’ in here lookin’ like you look now, that means you lost the fight. Now, who did you lose the fight to?”

  “Falcon MacCallister,” Carnie said.

  “Falcon MacCallister?” Johnny replied. “Are you crazy? What would make you pick a fight with Falcon MacCallister? Especially now, when we’re trying to get this job set up?”

  “Didn’t you say he was the one that got you took to jail up in Miles City?” Carnie asked.

  “So what if I did? That’s none of your concern,” Johnny replied.

  “Yeah, well, he had just kilt somebody,” Carnie said. “And ever’one was congratulatin’ him, and makin’ over him like he was some kind of a hero or somethin’. And I got to thinkin’ about the run-in you had with him up in Miles City, so I figured I’d teach him a lesson.”

  “Yeah, it looks like you taught him a lesson, all right,” Johnny said sarcastically.

  * * *

  The smell of brewing coffee awakened Falcon the next morning. He lay in bed for a moment, thinking about the night before. It had been good, better than good. Frances was not only a beautiful woman; it turned out that she was a surprisingly passionate woman as well.

  Frances had not spent the entire night in his bed, and when he awoke this morning he wondered for a moment if it had actually happened. Had she really come to his bed, or had it just been a dream? No, it was no dream. She had shared his bed with him. He could still smell the hint of lilac on the pillow and in the sheets.

  It had not been in Falcon’s plans to have an affair with Frances, especially since she had a son to raise. Falcon did not have a history of butting into other people’s families.

  But Falcon was not the one who initiated it. It had been Frances. And when the beautiful, passionate woman launched her campaign to get Falcon in bed, he found it impossible to resist her charms.

  Falcon swung his legs over and sat up on the edge of the bed. The first item of clothing he put on was his hat; then he reached for the rest of his clothes. Five minutes later he walked into the kitchen, where he saw Frances, standing over the wood-burning stove, fixing breakfast.

  “I hope you like hotcakes,” she said as she poured some of the beaten pancake batter into a big black iron skillet.

  “I love hotcakes,” Falcon answered.

  “Good.”

  “Frances?”

  “Yes?” Finished pouring the first cake, Frances rubbed the back of her hand on her face, leaving a small smear of flour on her forehead.

  “About last night,” Falcon began.

  “Stop,” Frances said, holding up her hand.

  Falcon grew quiet.

  “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea,” Frances said. Holding the spatula in her right hand, she lifted her hand to rub her face, and she left another mark of flour on her forehead.

  “The wrong idea?” Falcon replied.

  “Yes, the wrong idea. I like you, Falcon. I like you a lot. But I have a responsibility to my son. What happened last night ... what we did last night, has to stay right here. We can’t carry it any further. I . . . I just can’t get married again. I hope you understand.”

  Falcon nodded. “I understand,” he said.

  “Good. What we had between us last night was beautiful, like a flower that blooms and lives but one day. That is the way it is going to have to be with us, Falcon. We should never do this again. We can’t ever do it again.”

  Falcon felt a sense of relief. He did not want to be involved with any woman. He was not in a position to be involved with any woman. He had made too many enemies and when his enemies came after him, they weren’t all that discriminating. The experience
with his wife, Mary, proved that. She was killed by men who wanted to kill him.

  Even last night, the stagehand was killed simply because he had the misfortune of standing near where Falcon was sitting.

  “You do understand, don’t you?” Frances asked.

  Falcon nodded. “I understand,” he said.

  Frances let out a big sigh of relief; then she smiled.

  “I’m glad,” she said. “Now, have a seat. The hotcakes will be ready soon.”

  From The Sentinel:

  CITY CELEBRATION MARRED

  BY BRUTAL SLAYING!

  Evening of Beautiful Music Ruined By A Madman.

  GUNSHOTS FILLED THE STREET.

  Slayer Is Himself Slain!

  By JAMES HAYFORD, Publisher.

  On Friday last, the citizens of our fair town were entertained by a young woman whose singing voice can only be compared to that of the angels, heralding some glad tidings from above. All left the theater imbued with the spirit of joy over having been witness to such beautiful singing as performed by Miss Kathleen Coyle.

  But alas, our fair city was not long to relish this state of joy and contentment. Indeed, a scent of sulfur permeated the very air when a brigand by the name of Gilly Cardis, recently escaped from prison in Yuma, Arizona Territory, saw fit to bring evil upon us.

  Brutally killing Paul Mobley, an innocent young man employed as a stagehand for the theater, Cardis then fled from the theater, being pursued by Deputy Seth Joyner and Mr. Falcon MacCallister, a visiting cattleman in town for the Hereford Auction, yet to be held.

  Fleeing to the railroad station, Cardis used the coward’s cover of darkness, surprised young Deputy Sheriff Seth Joyner by shooting him at point-blank range. His exchange of shots with Falcon MacCallister proved to be a fatal mistake on his part, however, for Mr. MacCallister dispatched him with but one shot from his pistol.

  For the readers of this newspaper who are not familiar with Falcon MacCallister, he is a man known throughout the West for the quickness of his gun, the unerring accuracy of his eye, and his sense of justice, seeking always to right wrong and defend the defenseless.