Song of Eagles

by William W. Johnstone

  Olinger’s grin faded and he got a sick look on his face. “What . . . what’d you say?”

  Falcon pursed his lips, shook his head, then said, “Never mind. You wouldn’t be able to pay off if you lost, would you?”

  After Olinger slammed the courthouse door, Falcon walked to his horse, took a folded newspaper out of his saddlebags and stuck it under his arm. Whistling, he strolled over to the outhouse next to the courthouse, opened the door with the quarter moon cut out of it, and entered.

  A few minutes later, he walked from the outhouse to Diablo, climbed into the saddle, and walked the horse toward Fort Sumner.

  Not long after that, the Kid decided to make his move toward freedom. He pulled the note from his pocket and read it, grinned, then read it again before tearing it up and swallowing the pieces.

  Later, the Kid, wearing leg irons and wrist manacles, sat in a chair near an open upstairs window of the Lincoln County Courthouse.

  Olinger got up, stretching, giving the Kid a baleful stare before he spoke to Bell.

  “I’m goin’ across the street to get some lunch. I’ll bring back somethin’ for you an’ this babyfaced boy.”

  “Suits me,” Bell replied. “I am gettin’ kinda hungry right about now.”

  “Keep a sharp eye on Bonney,” Olinger said, resting his big, twelve gauge shotgun in a corner. “If he moves, kill the son of a bitch.”

  “But he’s all chained up, Bob,” Bell replied, inclining his head toward the Kid. “How the hell is he gonna go anyplace like this?”

  “Just watch him real close. If it was up to me, I’d kill him now an’ claim he was tryin’ to escape. Garrett would believe us. We could say he slipped out of them bracelets somehow an’ made a play for a gun.”

  “That’d be outright murder, Bob. Hell, the judge’s already set the date. They’re gonna hang him for sure, over killin’ Sheriff Brady.”

  “I didn’t kill Brady,” the Kid said quietly, smiling a one-sided smile. “Somebody else must have gotten lucky. I never even aimed at Brady.”

  Olinger glowered at him. “Tell it to the judge, little Billy boy. Keep sayin’ it over an over again ’til they hang you by the goddamn neck.”

  The Kid continued to smile. “They’ll never hang me, Bob. You can count on that.”

  “We’ll see,” Olinger replied, making for the stairway down to the street. He hesitated at the top of the stairs, remembering what the gambler had said, and gave the Kid another cold look. “You could be right, Billy boy. I may just shoot you dead before you get to trial. Me an’ James will swear you was tryin’ to escape.”

  With that, Olinger went down the stairs and crossed the road to a small eatery inside the Wortley Hotel.

  The Kid’s mind worked furiously on a plan to escape while Olinger was across the street. Bell was far less likely to take deadly action.

  “I need to go to the privy out back,” he told Bell. “Can’t wait no longer.”

  Bell came over and unlocked the chain binding the Kid to the floor, although he left the leg irons and wrist manacles in place as he pointed to the stairs.

  “Go ahead, Kid,” Bell said, his right hand on his pistol butt. “I’ll be right behind you, so don’t try nothin’ stupid.”

  The Kid was planning to jump Bell after they went back up the stairway, then get the drop on Olinger as soon as he got back from lunch and handcuff him to Bell, after disarming them both. The Kid had small hands and large wrists, and he knew he could slip the cuffs off by folding his double-jointed thumbs flat against his palms.

  He made his way slowly downstairs, then to the outhouse, all the while thinking about his escape. He didn’t want to shoot Jim Bell if he could avoid it . . . Bell had shown him some kindness during his stay on the second floor, and he seemed like a nice enough fellow.

  After using the privy, the Kid plodded slowly back up the steps, hampered by his leg irons. With his back to Bell, he slipped off one handcuff and pulled the pistol he had found wrapped in newspaper, where Falcon had hidden it.

  At the top of the stairwell, the Kid whirled around and swung the pistol down across the top of Bell’s head as hard as he could.

  Bell fell facedown on the floor, groaning.

  The Kid held the gun out, pointing it at Bell’s face. “Get up off the floor,” he said, “and get these ankle chains off me.”

  Bell scurried forward on hands and knees, ignoring the pistol, and grabbed the Kid’s legs at the knees, throwing him onto his back.

  Bell scrambled to his feet and started running down the stairs.

  “Stop, Jim, or I’ll have to shoot you!” the Kid cried.

  Bell continued leaping down the steps. The Kid fired once with Bell’s Colt, shattering stucco next to Bell’s head. The guard kept running, the Kid fired again, and the deputy tumbled down the stairs with a mortal wound.

  Outside, Godfrey Gauss, formerly a cook for the Tunstall cowboys, caught James Bell as he staggered away from the building with blood pouring from his chest. He collapsed in Gauss’s arms and died instantly.

  The Kid shuffled his shackled legs across the floor to Pat Garrett’s office door, where he scooped up Bob Olinger’s shotgun before making his way to the northeast corner window.

  Gauss ran from the spot where he laid Bell toward the Wortley Hotel, yelling for Olinger at the top of his lungs while pointing to the second floor of the Lincoln County Courthouse, where the shot had been fired.

  “Bob!” Gauss cried. “Come quick!”

  Olinger appeared in the front doorway of the hotel dining room. “What the hell was that noise?” he bellowed.

  “It’s the Kid!” Gauss called back from the far side of the road. “The Kid has killed Jim Bell!”

  Olinger ran toward the courthouse until he saw a shape in the upstairs window. “Son of a bitch!” Olinger said, coming to a sudden halt. “Looks like the bastard has killed me, too!”

  The Kid stuck Olinger’s shotgun out the window and aimed down. Godfrey Gauss took shelter under the porch roof of the courthouse.

  “Look up, Bob!” the Kid shouted. “Look up, old boy, and see what you get!”

  Olinger froze. “How the hell did you break loose from them chains?”

  His answer came in the form of twin loads of heavy buckshot which Olinger had loaded himself. Olinger crumpled, his head and upper body shredded by shotgun pellets.

  The Kid wasted no time. “Gauss! Bring me that pickaxe up here so I can get these chains off my feet.”

  Gauss, still wary, swung a heavy pickaxe up to the second floor balcony.

  But the Kid was not finished with Gauss. “Run saddle me a horse from Billy Burt’s corral. Don’t be too damn long about gettin’ it done.”

  Gauss took off in a lumbering run toward the corral, looking over his shoulder.

  The Kid took the pickaxe and began smashing links between his leg irons until one line finally broke in half. Looping the ends over his belt, he walked to the north end of the hall and appeared on the balcony, where a knot of men stood watching what was going on.

  The Kid stared down at Olinger’s bloody body. He lifted the shotgun and smashed it on the handrail across the front of the balcony, then he tossed it to the ground near Olinger.

  “Here’s your gun, goddamn you!” he shouted. “You won’t follow me with it any longer!”

  Several spectators gave the Kid a cheer. Some carried guns, but no one attempted to aim one at him.

  Gauss was having trouble saddling a spirited horse from Burt’s corral, but at length he led the bay over to the front of the courthouse and tied it to a hitchrail.

  The Kid armed himself with a rifle and a pistol from Pat Garrett’s office before he hurried down the stairs. Emerging from a back door at the foot of the stairway, he paused when he came to James Bell’s body.

  “I am sorry I had to kill you,” the Kid said loudly, so many of the townspeople heard him. “I couldn’t help it.”

  He then made his way around to the street, wh
ere he stopped at Olinger’s corpse.

  “You ain’t gonna round me up again,” the Kid snarled, nudging the body with the toe of his boot.

  He came over to the saddled horse, where he hesitated long enough to speak to Godfrey Gauss. “Old fellow,” the Kid said, “if you hadn’t gone for this horse, I would have killed you just like the others.”

  It was with some difficulty that the Kid finally mounted the skittish bay. He swung the horse away from the courthouse steps and jerked it to a halt when he saw the townsfolk watching him closely.

  “Tell Billy Burt I will send his horse back to him as quick as I can,” he shouted. Then he turned the animal again and made off at a gallop.

  He was leaving two dead men behind him, and he knew Sheriff Pat Garrett would come after him for killing two of his deputies and escaping.

  “To hell with all of ’em,” the Kid muttered as the bay took him swiftly into the rugged countryside.

  His first order of business was to free his legs of the iron cuffs and chains. He headed for Salazar’s place to get help with the blacksmithing he needed.

  The Kid also felt sure the new governor, Lew Wallace, would issue orders to begin an all-out manhunt for him now. This part of the territory would be crawling with men trying to track him down.

  He wondered if he might be able to rest up and lay low at the cabin of Falcon MacCallister. MacCallister had shown some sympathy for his plight the day he and Jim French showed up with leg wounds, and he had sure come through for him today by hiding that pistol in the privy.

  The Kid made up his mind on it. After he got these chains off his ankles he would make for MacCallister’s cabin, hoping the big gunman would hide him out for a spell.

  If he did, the Kid vowed to himself to never mention it, for he didn’t want the tall gambler to get in any deeper for helping him than he already was.

  Thirty-one

  The Kid rode Billy Burt’s pony as fast as he could, heading up into the foothills of the Capitan Mountains. He came out of the dense mesquite and creosote bushes into a small clearing.

  Up ahead was a small, adobe cabin with a tiny corral nearby with some scraggly looking horses standing in it.

  “Yo, the cabin!” Kid cried, his hands near the pistol he had stuck in his belt.

  A middle-aged Mexican stepped out of the door of the cabin, an old Sharp’s rifle in his hands. It was José Cordova, a schoolmaster from Fort Sumner, a man Kid had known for some time.

  “José, it’s me, Billy Bonney. Can I approach?”

  “El Chivato!” Jose cried, with a smile. He lowered the Sharps and said, “Come on in, Chivato. You are welcome at my little hacienda any time.”

  The Kid walked his sweating pony up to the cabin and dismounted with some difficulty, as he still had bracelets on one arm and shackles on one of his legs.

  He released the horse, slapping it on its rump and sending it on its way, knowing the animal would find its way back to Lincoln and its rightful owner, Billy Burt.

  “You got a hammer and chisel, Jose? I gotta get these leg irons off, they’re chafing me something terrible.”

  “Sure, Billy.”

  Cordova went into the house and came back with a small sledgehammer and a metal chisel. Together they worked for almost an hour before all the rivets were cut and the irons fell to the ground.

  “I have some beans and tortillas. Are you hungry?” Cordova asked.

  The Kid grinned. “I could eat one of those broncs you got in your corral if you offered.”

  As the two men ate pinto beans and tortillas and washed them down with mesquite bean coffee, Cordova asked what the Kid planned to do next.

  “If ’n you’ll let me borrow a saddle and one of your mounts, I’m gonna head for Mexico, soon as I can get some dinero together to make the trip.”

  Cordova waved a hand in the air. “Take what you need, Chivato. ”

  The Kid grinned his thanks. “By the way, José, I been meanin’ to ask. I speak pretty good Mex, but what does Chivato mean, anyhow?”

  José laughed. “It is not strictly a word, but it comes from Chivo, which is a male goat, and Chiva, which is a female goat. So,” he spread his hands, a wide smile on his face, Chivato means small, or young goat, what Americanos call a ’kid’.“

  Billy nodded. “Oh.”

  Cordova punched him in the ribs, a sly smile on his face, “It is also slang for one who is pretty good with the ladies.”

  Now the Kid laughed. “Well, compàdre, I guess it fits both ways, don’t it?”

  Later, the Kid saddled one of Cordova’s horses and waved as he rode off toward the mountains.

  Just after dark he came upon another cabin, nestled in some tall, live oak and pine trees. He got off his horse and walked around the corner of the cabin, entering through a side door with his pistol in his hand.

  He found two men in the kitchen, cooking supper.

  “Well,” the Kid said, waving the pistol, “I got you, haven’t I?”

  John Meadows and Tom Norris looked up from their cooking.

  Meadows said, “Well, you have, so what are you gonna do with us?”

  “I’m gonna eat supper with you.”

  Meadows slowly let out the breath he was holding. “That’s all right, long as you can stand them beans.”

  After supper, the three men sat around talking, Meadows and Norris smoking hand-rolled cigarettes, the Kid chewing on some peppermint sticks Meadows had in the cupboard.

  “What are you goin’ to do about Pat Garrett, Kid?” Meadows asked. “He’s sure to come lookin’ for you again now that you’ve broken out of his jail.”

  “I don’t have nothin’ against Pat. If I was lyin’ out there in the arroyo and Pat Garrett rode by and didn’t see me, he would be the last man I would kill. I wouldn’t hurt a hair on his head. He worked pretty rough to capture us, but he treated me good after he got me. He treated us humane and friendly, and was good to us after he did get us captured. I have ever such a good feeling for Pat Garrett.”

  “How do you feel about Bob Olinger?” Norris asked.

  The Kid looked up, the grin slowly fading from his face. “I expressed that pretty good a day or so ago, when I shotgunned him to death.”

  Meadows and Norris looked at each other. That was the first they’d heard about the death of Olinger.

  Meadows cleared his throat. “Well, Kid. When I was sick and down and out you befriended me, and there is two things I have never done—I have never kissed the hand that slapped me, nor went back on a friend. Anyway, I’m going to befriend you now. I have got fourteen head of old Indian ponies. Some of them ain’t very much, but you go out and look ’em over, and if one of them does you any good, take it. And you are welcome to them all. But don’t go back to Fort Sumner, for if you do Garrett will get you sure as you do, or else you will have to kill him.”

  “I haven’t got any money,” the Kid said. “And what would I do in Mexico with no money? I’ll have to go back and get a little ’fore I go.”

  “Sure as you do,” Norris said, “Garrett will get you.”

  The Kid shook his head, a sly smile on his lips. “I’ve got too many friends up there, and I don’t believe Pat will get me. I can stay there a while and get money enough and then go down to Mexico.”

  The Kid stood and held out his hands. “Thanks for the grub, boys, an’ the offer of the mounts. I got a friend I’ve got to go see, ’fore I think about headin’ south.”

  * * *

  Pat Garrett was sitting in a saloon in White Oaks with John Poe when he heard the news of the Kid’s escape.

  He looked down at the table for a moment, then up at Poe.

  “Now I’ll have to go do it all over again,” he said.

  He offered Poe and a mutual friend, Tip McKinney, the job of accompanying him back to Fort Sumner to look for the Kid. They both accepted the job offer.

  On the way to Fort Sumner, Garrett and Poe and McKinney stopped off at Bob Olinger’s mother’s house
.

  “Mrs. Olinger,” Garrett said, “I just want you to know I’m going to go back and get the Kid for killing Bob.”

  The white-haired lady shook her head. “My son was a murderer from the cradle until the moment he died. My feeling is he got his just deserts when Billy shot him.”

  Garrett looked over at Poe, who shrugged.

  “Nevertheless, Mrs. Olinger, I’m gonna get him, and either hang him or kill him for what he done.”

  On the ride into Fort Sumner Garrett thought on what Mrs. Olinger had said, and his relationship with the Kid.

  Though he still counted the Kid as a friend, he was in a tough spot. Dolan and his backers in Santa Fe wanted the Kid brought to justice, and fast. If he didn’t do it, they would just hire someone else to get the job done.

  At least, he thought to himself, with me the Kid has a chance of being brought in alive. Anybody else they sent would just shoot him down like a dog.

  Thirty-two

  Pat Garrett stormed into The Drinking Hole, his face red and his neck swollen like a bull in heat. He stopped just inside the batwings, his head swiveling back and forth, looking for Falcon.

  After a moment, when he didn’t see him, he stomped over to the bar.

  “Roy, where the hell’s MacCallister?” he almost yelled.

  Roy ignored him for a moment, continuing to wipe a beer glass until it shone. He slowly cut his eyes up at Pat, and Garrett realized he was no longer counted among the friends at The Drinking Hole.

  “Could you speak a little louder, sir? I’m afraid I didn’t hear you,” Roy said with more than a touch of sarcasm.

  Garrett took a deep breath, removed his hat, and sleeved his forehead of the sweat that clung there.

  “I’m sorry for yellin’, Roy. Things haven’t been goin’ too well for me lately.”

  Roy eyed the sweat stains on Garrett’s silk shirt. “Kinda hot for April, ain’t it?” he asked, a small smile on his face.

  Garrett shook his head, returning the smile. “Yeah, Roy, an’ over in Lincoln it’s really hot for the sheriff since the Kid escaped.”

  “Aren’t you the sheriff, Pat?”