“I know how I feel about murderers and thieves and rapists. And as a lawman, you should feel the same way.”
The marshal gave no reply to that. He turned and walked away, his boots clumping on the boards.
The two riders were now clearly recognizable as they reined up in front of the livery and stepped down from the saddle. Jamie watched with amused interest as Reed and Barton took rifles from the saddle boots.
The outlaws began walking up the center of the wide, wheelrutted, and dusty street. They stopped directly in front of the hotel to turn and face Jamie, who had risen to his feet, his Colts loose in leather.
The minister, the marshal, and the mayor were standing about fifty feet away, to Jamie’s right, in front of a general store with a crudely carved wooden Indian on guard out front.
“How nice to see you boys,” Jamie said. “It’s always a pleasure to see men who have made such a drastic change in their lives and accepted the Lord and been washed in the blood of the lamb. I reckon you boys have given up your drinking and whoring and thieving and raping and murdering, right?” The sarcasm fairly dripped from his mouth.
Reed cussed Jamie, the vile words springing from his mouth. The minister stood and gawked in disbelief as the filth rolled over the outlaw’s tongue.
“My, my, my,” Jamie chided the men. “That is no way for a good Christian man to talk. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
It was Barton’s turn to cuss, and cuss he did, tracing Jamie’s ancestry all the way back to the trees and caves, the route liberally sprinkled with profanities.
“My word!” the gangly minister blurted.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Jamie said. “I’m plumb ashamed of you boys. You ought to have your mouths washed out with soap. The minister yonder had such high hopes for the both of you.”
“I am deeply offended,” the minister said to the pair of outlaws.
Barton told him to stick his Bible where the sun don’t shine, and Reed added that there might be room there for his buffalo-butted wife, too.
Jamie cut his eyes and had to laugh at the expression on the minister’s face. He looked as though someone had just goosed him with a hot branding iron.
“You think this is funny, you son of a bitch?” Reed yelled at Jamie.
“Mildly amusing, yes. You sure pulled the wool over these folks’ eyes. How much of the money you helped steal from the Valley Bank and the stage line do you have left?”
“Enough to buy some whoors and celebrate and get drunk after we kill you, MacCallister,” Barton said.
“Well, then, you got a mighty big mountain to get over, boys. So why don’t you start climbing?”
Jamie’s eyes were on the faces of the outlaws; all else was ignored. He heard the minister begin praying, but the words were indistinct. The mayor was saying something, but his words were garbled in Jamie’s ears. Time seemed to stand still. The marshal was urging the men to give it up; they’d get a fair trial. If dogs barked, birds sang, or horses whinnied, the sound did not register on Jamie. His concentration was all on the outlaws standing in the street.
Then their expressions changed, and Jamie knew they were going to make their play.
Reed’s rifle came up, and Jamie palmed his Colt and fired, the bullet taking Reed in the chest, knocking him to his knees. As soon as he fired, Jamie shifted positions, taking several steps to his right.
Barton’s rifle barked, the bullet slamming into the awning post. Jamie fired, the lead hitting Barton about two inches above the belt buckle, the impact turning him in the street.
“We should have burned your damn town to the ground!” Barton hollered. “After we had our way with your females.”
Jamie’s .44 roared again, and Barton joined his buddy in the dirt, sitting down hard and losing his grip on the Henry rifle.
Reed lifted his pistol and fired, the hot lead burning Jamie’s shoulder. Jamie ignored the burning pain and the wetness of blood oozing from the wound and shifted his Colt and pulled the trigger. Reed stretched out full-length in the street and did not move.
A photographer’s flash pan popped off to Jamie’s left, and the muted mini-explosion almost got the picture taker shot, Jamie holding back at the last instant.
“I’ll see you in hell, MacCallister!” Barton yelled, lifting his pistol.
“Say hello to your buddies when you get there,” Jamie calmly and coldly told him, then drew his left-hand Colt and fired both pistols, the twin bullets striking the outlaw in the chest.
Barton said no more. He died sitting up and remained that way for a few seconds before toppling over in the dirt. Jamie reloaded and stood for a moment, looking at the bodies in the street.
To his dying day, Jamie could not explain why he did it, but as he stood on the boardwalk that afternoon, the gunsmoke lingering all about him, he let the hammers down on his Colts and spun them a couple of times before sliding them back into leather.
Just as Jamie spun the heavy Colts, the photographer’s flash pan popped again. That picture would be shown from coast to coast and border to border. The tall, gray-haired, but still very handsome man, spinning his twin Colts seconds after leaving two outlaws dead in the street.
Jamie Ian MacCallister would forever be epitomized as the stereotyped western gunfighter. From the moment the picture was shown, hundreds of young men began dressing like Jamie, wearing their guns like Jamie, cutting their hair like Jamie, trimming their moustaches like Jamie, and doing their best to be just like him in every way possible.
Jamie turned and walked into the hotel, cutting to his left toward the bar. A very nervous bartender served him whiskey, from the good bottle usually reserved for the mayor, the banker, and rich ranchers in the area.
Jamie took a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and carefully unfolded it. Taking a pencil, he drew a line through two names.
The bartender heard him mutter, “Twenty-eight down, twenty-seven to go.”
That muttered phrase, and the pictures and later hundreds of drawings of them, would blast out of the small northeastern Colorado town, scattering like birdshot in all directions.
While Jamie lingered over his whiskey, the bodies of Alonzo Barton and Reed Dunlap were carried off the street and to the undertaker, to be measured for a close coffin fit and planted the next day.
Jamie returned to the hotel and told the desk clerk to send up pen, ink, and paper, and retired to his room. He spent the rest of the afternoon writing letters, leaving them with the front desk to be posted as soon as possible.
Jamie told the marshal to use the money found in the pockets of the dead men to pay for their funeral and maybe hire several mourners and wailers for the service. Jamie knew he had recovered all of the stolen money he was likely to find. After almost two years at the hunt, that money would be spent.
Just before the stores closed for the night, Jamie bought supplies for the trail, checked on his horses, and then went back to his room. He was gone when the town awakened the next morning. Not even the night constable had seen him leave, and no one had any idea where he might have gone.
Exactly as Jamie had planned it.
14
The small Nebraska town just north of Julesburg was not known for being any haven for outlaws during the growing period of the West. Perhaps that was the very reason that three members of the Miles Nelson gang chose the town to reside in for a few months during the spring of ’71.
But it wouldn’t do them much good.
The three outlaws had taken up residence in the abandoned cabin of a homesteader who couldn’t make a go of it and had gone back east. Roy Bellar, Carl Dews, and Jack Moore rustled a beeve every now and then—but never, if they could help it, from the same rancher or farmer—and in general kept a very low profile, going into town only occasionally for beans, salt, bacon, flour, tobacco, and what not.
When the marshal of the town saw Jamie ride in one sunny mid-morning, he wisely decided to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. The marshal
was by no means a coward, just a very prudent man who had a wife and several kids to look after. And after seeing Jamie MacCallister ride into town, he quickly reached the conclusion that it would be very difficult to take care of one’s family from the grave.
The lawman returned to his office, made a fresh pot of coffee, and waited for Jamie to pay him a visit.
It was not a long wait.
The marshal had never seen Jamie up close, just heard stories about him all his life. When Jamie opened the door, the marshal winced at the size of the man. He was about sixty years old, the marshal accurately guessed, but still one hell of a man, and not one the lawman would want to tangle with.
“Just thought I’d stop by and howdy and shake with you, Marshal,” Jamie said.
“Pleasure is all mine, Mr. MacCallister. I’ve been hearin’ about you all my life. Have some coffee—it’s fresh made—and sit.”
Coffee poured, Jamie sat down and came right to the point. “You’ve got three outlaws living outside of town, Marshal. Part of the old Miles Nelson gang.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“You want me to go arrest them?” the marshal asked, with about as much enthusiasm as a man facing the prospect of an impacted wisdom tooth.
“I want you to keep the peace in town and let me handle the outlaws.”
“Be my guest,” the marshal quickly agreed to the suggestion. “You’ll not get no interference from me.”
“Fine,” Jamie said with a smile. “What’s the best place to eat in town?”
“Rosie’s. Right next to the hotel.”
Jamie drained his coffee cup and stood up. “Thanks for the coffee, Marshal. I’ll see you around.”
“I ’magine.”
Jamie paused at the door and smiled. “But not if you’re lucky, you’re thinking.”
“Nobody blames you for your hunt, Mr. MacCallister. At least, not nobody I ever talked to. The Nelson gang hit North Platte ’bout three years ago, robbin’ and killin.’ It was just after the railroad had pushed through. There ain’t nobody ’round here gonna shed any tears if you kill three or a hundred and three or three hundred and three of that gang. But I do worry about the women and the kids.”
“When it comes time, you’ll know to clear the streets, Marshal. I’ll make sure of that.”
“Fair enough. You enjoy your meal, Mr. MacCallister. There’s a bathhouse right behind the Chinaman’s laundry. Lots of hot water, and the towels are clean.”
“Thanks.”
After his bath, while his good clothes were being aired and then ironed, Jamie sat in his hotel room and carefully cleaned his guns, then rubbed oil into the pockets of his holsters. He knew it would not be long before word of his arrival reached the three outlaws.
But this time the outlaws didn’t brace Jamie—they ran.
* * *
Shortly after the photograph of the shoot-out taken in the small town just outside of Fort Sedgwick began circulating, several events occurred that would, in time, alter the lives of the residents of Valley, Colorado. The three young men from back east, Marshall Henry Ludlow, Richard Farnsworth, and Charles Bennett, left their wives (and their girlfriends) in Denver, hired a guide and several bodyguards, and ventured off into the wilds of Colorado, heading for Valley. They had heard about land for the taking around there, and their fathers had ordered them to check it out and if it looked promising, buy it or make arrangements to lease it from the government.
The second event, this one directly affecting Jamie, involved the kin of Bradford, Newby, Layfield, Olmstead, and several other men whose families had been involved in the hunting of Jamie and Kate decades back. Most of these men had not yet been born when their ancestors were chasing Jamie. Those original family members were buried in graves that stretched from Kentucky to Colorado.
And now their distant relatives had taken up the hunt.
As Morgan MacCallister said when he heard the news, “Seems like these people would learn to leave Pa alone after a while.”
The third event that would affect both Jamie and the people in Valley was the arrival in town of Ben F. Washington. The first impression that settled in Ben’s brain when he stepped out of the stagecoach was that he had never seen so damn many blond-haired and blue-eyed people in all his life, all mixed in with Chinese, Negroes, and people of Indian and Spanish descent.
But they were all friendly and courteous and helpful, pointing out the hotel and the sheriff’s office and the office of the local newspaper.
Ben checked into the hotel and then went to the sheriff’s office. It did not surprise him one whit to learn that a MacCallister was the sheriff of the county, for in previous research he had discovered that the MacCallisters were the controlling power in not just this county, but also in several counties surrounding Valley.
Ben knew that he would have to walk light until the people learned that he was not here to upset any apple carts, but to write the true and unbiased story of Jamie and Kate MacCallister.
When Ben stepped into the sheriff’s office, he pulled up short at the sight of Falcon MacCallister, sitting at a desk, smiling at him.
“Hello, Ben,” the gambler/gunfighter with the cold pale eyes said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
* * *
When two days had passed uneventfully, Jamie saddled up and headed out in the country. He asked questions at each farm and ranch house and soon began piecing the puzzle together. He rode over to the old homesteader’s shack and found the signs of three men—three men who had very recently and very hurriedly packed up and hauled their asses. Their tracks headed north, toward the North Platte River. Jamie memorized the horses’ hoofprints, rode back to town and checked out of the hotel. A few minutes later he was on the outlaws’ trail.
A few days later, Jamie knew where they were heading: to the trading post on the North Platte, west of Chimney Rock and just north of the Wildcat Hills area. It would be years after the coming shoot-out at the trading post before the area would be settled, blocked out, and known as Scottsbluff.
On the third day out, Jamie reined up and swung down, studying the tracks. Three more men had joined the trio, riding up from the south.
“Six at one pop,” Jamie muttered to the warm winds of spring that blew gently around him. “This will be interesting.”
Jamie built a small fire and put water on to boil. He went to his pack and took out the derringer he’d taken from Mario Nunez and checked it out, firing it several times. It was accurate up to about twelve or fifteen feet; after that, there was no telling where the bullet might go. He loaded both barrels and tucked it behind his sash.
Jamie fried bacon and made pan bread, then took his time eating and drinking the strong coffee. The North Platte River murmured a few hundred yards away.
Jamie wondered what month it might be, and decided it must be April . . . or maybe early May. He’d lost track of time. One thing he did know for sure: the remaining members of the Miles Nelson gang were getting panicky. In about eighteen months, Jamie had cut their gang size by nearly half, leaving a trail of blood and bodies behind him. Those remaining were running scared.
With damn good reason, Jamie thought darkly. Without realizing it was happening, his face had hardened and his eyes turned cold at his thoughts.
Jamie was reaching for the coffeepot when he heard the whisper of moccasins on grass. He threw himself to one side, grabbing up his rifle on the roll.
“Whoa, now!” the voice called. “Just take ’er easy, big feller. I’m friendly. Smelled your coffee a-bilin’ and your meat a-cookin’. I don’t mean no harm to no man.”
“Come on in. But sneaking up on me is not the healthiest thing to do.”
As the man led his horses into camp, his age was difficult to guess. Jamie thought he might be anywhere from a badly used sixty to a well-preserved ninety.
Jamie pointed to the coffeepot, and the old man squatted down with a grunt and poured a tin cup full, then sat back and
sipped and sighed contentedly.
“Help yourself to some bacon and bread,” Jamie told him. “I can always cook more.”
“Right nice of you, MacCallister. Neighborly.”
“Do I know you?”
“You look just like your grandpa. I knowed him in his de-clinin’ years, boy . . .”
Jamie smiled. He hadn’t been called “boy” in years.
“Then years ’fore you and your family come west, I went out to Californee. Got married to a Mex woman and was happy right up ’til the day she passed over. That were . . . oh, ’bout 1840, I reckon. Then I come back to the mountains. I been to St. Louie this time, for the last time, I reckon.”
“You don’t plan on going back?” Jamie squatted down and refilled his coffee cup.
“Nope. But I do plan on dyin’. Hell, I’m old, boy. I were borned ’fore the turn of the century. 1785, I think it was. That would make me ... what year is this, anyways?”
“1871.”
“Well, then, let me see. That would make me eighty-six year old, boy. Don’t you think it’s ’bout time for me to see the elephant?”
“You going to pick your own time and place, huh?”
The old man smiled. He didn’t have a tooth in his mouth. “Something like that.” He tapped his chest. “Bad ticker. Docs say I could go anytime. But I’ll make it back to the mountains. Even as much as I loved that Mex woman, I always missed the High Lonesome.”
“I know the feeling. You have a name?”
“Shore. Ever’body’s got a handle. Mine’s Jefferson Washburn. Ain’t that a mouthful? But I been called any number of names. I’ll answer to near’bouts anything.”
“How did you manage to slip up on me, Jeff?”
The old man cackled. “Son, when I furst come out here, there wasn’t no other white man that I knowed of where I was. Hell, Bridger wasn’t even born when I come out here. Your grandpa was out here, but me and him didn’t cross trails ’til some years later. Man had to be able to slip up on folks to stay alive. But, I’ll be truthful with you. My horses was down yonder in them river trees, and I was takin’ me a snooze when them outlaws met up with three other bad-lookin’ ol’ boys. They done some real ugly talkin’ ’bout you. You know where they’s headed, don’t you?”
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