Scream of Eagles

by William W. Johnstone

  “And their horses,” Jamie added.

  “True.” The smithy watched as Jamie took off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves. “You gonna pray now and ask the Lord for forgiveness?”

  “No.”

  “You ought to. Terrible thing, taking a man’s life. What are you gonna do?”

  “Wash my hands and face and have supper. I’m hungry.”

  * * *

  Jamie dropped out of sight for almost six weeks after the shoot-out in the dying little no-name town. No one saw him except Indians, and they were not exactly on speaking terms with most whites. When he again surfaced, it was in eastern Nevada, in a wild and wooly town called Pioche. It was an isolated place, the closest town of any size being Hamilton, almost a hundred miles away to the north. One rumor had it that of the first one hundred people to be buried in the local cemetery, none died of natural causes.

  Before Jamie pulled out, two more would be added to that dubious list of honor.

  Jim Levy, perhaps the fastest gunslick ever to belt on pistols, but curiously the least known (some claim he was even faster than John Wesley Hardin), watched as Jamie rode up to the livery and swung down from the saddle.12

  “Going to get interesting around here,” Levy muttered, then turned and walked into one of the town’s many saloons.

  * * *

  After a well-needed bath and shave and haircut, Jamie dressed in his best suit and had the first meal in many weeks that he hadn’t had to cook himself over an open fire.

  By now, thanks to a gabby and very excited desk clerk, every man, woman, and child within the city limits (if indeed there were any known city limits) knew that Jamie was in town and on the prod.

  And so did Barry Herman and Skip Beech, the two members of the Miles Nelson gang that Jamie had tracked to the town.

  Herman and Beech were exhausted and very nearly at wits’ end. They had been on a hard run for more than two years, not daring to stay in one place for any length of time, for Jamie Ian MacCallister was always just a step or two behind them.

  Newspaper accounts and the writers of various Penny Dreadfuls would claim that Barry Herman went insane that night in Pioche, Nevada, driven into madness by the relentless pursuit of Jamie. But in later years, writers with less wild flights of fancy (mainly one Ben F. Washington) would do some research and find that Herman just drank too much Who-Hit-John in an attempt to screw his courage to the sticking place and called Jamie out.

  Jamie obliged him.

  “You son of a bitch!” Herman yelled from the end of the street. “I’m gonna end this right here, right now, this minute.”

  “Then make your play, tinhorn,” Jamie called.

  The edges of the street and what boardwalks there were in the raw town were filled with spectators.

  “You think I’m afraid of you, MacCallister, you damned old buzzard?”

  “I think you’re a two-bit, back-shooting, woman-killing punk, ”Jamie said, his words cutting into Herman like a knife.

  Barry Herman screamed his rage and jerked iron. Stepping into the center of the street, he began wildly banging away. His shots kicked up dirt in the street, busted windows along both sides, sent two dozen men and women scrambling for whatever cover they could find, and finally hit a traveling dress-and-corset salesman in the butt, causing the rather portly gentleman some discomfort for several days.

  Jamie calmly drew his pistol, took deliberate aim in the murky light of dusk, and shot Barry Herman right between the eyes.

  “Now face me,” said a much more sober Skip Beech from the darkness of an alley. Then he lifted his pistol and pulled the trigger.

  The cartridge misfired, the action jammed, and that was all the time Jamie needed. He lifted his .44 and drilled Skip in the belly, doubling the outlaw over in hot agony. Cursing and screaming, Skip dropped the useless pistol and hauled another gun out of his waistband. Jamie fired again, the bullet striking Skip in the hip and spinning him around.

  Still game and still on his boots, the outlaw lifted his pistol and cocked the hammer. The last words to leave his lips were curses, all directed at Jamie.

  Jamie plugged him with a well-placed shot to the heart.

  Skip Beech dropped like a stone.

  Jamie holstered his pistol and walked back to his room. Come the morning, Pioche, Nevada, would see the last of him.

  Christmas day, 1871.

  “I hear tell MacCallister kilt two more men down in Nevada ’bout two months or so ago,” the old trapper broke the silence in the saloon.

  Two unshaven and roughly dressed men seated at a corner table looked up at the words. They uttered silent sighs and exchanged glances at the news.

  “More of the Nelson gang?” the bartender asked, polishing a glass with a towel.

  “Yep. Some gunslicks name of Herman and Beech. Ol’ Mac never flinched. Just stood out tall and tough and plain in the street and gunned ’em down like the dirty bastards they is—or was, I should say.”

  The front door to the saloon was pushed open, and for a second, the bitter winds of Montana winter howled inside, flakes of snow briefly landing on the floor, quickly melting and puddling. All heads turned to stare at the tall and rugged-built man who stood there.

  “Goddammit!” one of the two men at the table muttered under his breath.

  The tall, erect, and powerfully built man with the gray hair and moustache, deeply tanned face, and cold, piercing eyes removed his heavy winter coat and hung it on a peg, brushed back his hip-length coat, exposing twin Colts, and walked to the bar, his spurs jingling. “Whiskey,” he said.

  The trapper took his drink and moved away from the bar, as did the cowboy at the far end of the bar. They both knew who the tall stranger was and had absolutely no desire to get caught by a stray bullet.

  Jamie Ian MacCallister. And the old lobo wolf was on the hard prod.

  Jamie took a sip of his whiskey and carefully placed the glass on the scarred bar. “Good whiskey,” he told the bartender. “Hits the spot. But it stinks in here,” he added. “Smells like outlaw scum to me.”

  Outside, the wind howled in a mindless fury.

  “Damn!” the other man at the table muttered. “I knowed it had to come someday,” he whispered to his friend.

  Tom Brewer stood up from the table. “Old man,” he said to Jamie’s back. “You been doggin’ my back trail for more’un two years now. And I’m tired of it. You’ve killed my friends and even some of my kin. But your killin’ stops right here.”

  Jamie turned to face him. It was then that Brewer noticed the short-barreled twelve gauge shotgun that Jamie had been holding in his left hand, pressed tight against his leg. “Is that a fact?”

  “That’s a fact, MacCallister.” But there was a very sick feeling in the pit of Brewer’s stomach.

  Will Judy slipped away from the table and edged along the wall until coming to the storeroom door. He opened the door and stepped out into the cold winds and blowing snow, heading for the livery across the street. If Tom had just used his head, they could have double-teamed MacCallister and taken him out. But Tom had allowed his hate to overcome logic.

  Will hated a fool.

  He and MacCallister would meet on another day.

  “I don’t think so, Brewer,” Jamie was saying. “I still got a goodly number of you trash to deal with.” He had let Will Judy leave. There was always another day.

  “Why, you beat-up buzzard! You ain’t half the man you used to be. You just think you are, you gray-headed old son of a bitch!”

  Jamie, standing tall and unbending in the Montana saloon, smiled at the killer. Outside, the winter winds screamed like angry eagles. “Make your peace with whatever God will claim you, Brewer. Then hook and draw.”

  Brewer cursed Jamie and grabbed iron. Jamie lifted the sawed-off and blew the killer all over the back end of the saloon. He broke open the Greener and pulled out the empties, loading it up fresh. Then he drained his glass of whiskey and walked out of the saloon, r
etrieving his coat from the hook.

  “Who in the hell was that?” a salesman from St. Louis blurted.

  “That’s an ol’ lobo wolf name of Jamie Ian MacCallister.” The grizzled trapper spoke from the corner table. “The Miles Nelson gang kilt his wife down in Coloradee two year ago. He’s been on the prod ever since. And he’ll be on the prod ’til he kills ever’ one of them.”

  “You reckon he’ll get it done?” the bartender asked.

  The old mountain man smiled. “Bet on it.”

  18

  Winter still locked the high country in a blanket of cold white when Jamie pushed open the door of the trading post located just outside of what was left of Fort Phil Kearny, which had been abandoned in 1868, on the east side of the Bighorn Mountains. Jamie was as rough-looking as his horses, wild and uncurried.

  Will Judy threw his cards on the table and shouted, “Son of a bitch!” He pushed back his chair and stood up as the others in the room scattered for cover. “Goddamn you, man, why don’t you give this up and let people alone?”

  “Because I made a promise whilst standing over the grave of my wife,” Jamie replied. “And I always keep my promises.” Jamie kept his eyes locked on the eyes of Will Judy.

  “You can’t beat me, MacCallister,” Will said. “I’m younger and faster than you.”

  “We’ll see,” Jamie said calmly, his eyes never leaving Will Judy’s.

  As soon as Will’s eyes narrowed, Jamie drew, stepping to one side as he did, preparing to fire across his chest. Will was indeed fast with a gun, but Jamie’s sudden move threw the outlaw’s aim off just enough. Instead of the bullet striking Jamie in the center of the chest, it hit him in the left arm and immediately numbed the arm all the way to his hand. But Jamie’s shot was true, the bullet striking the gunfighter/outlaw in the chest and knocking him backward, but not down. Jamie recovered and fired again; this time Will Judy went down hard and stayed down, losing his grip on his pistol.

  With blood dripping from his wound, Jamie walked over to the dying man and kicked his pistol away.

  “I never thought it would be this way,” Will gasped, looking up at Jamie.

  “Nobody ever does. Miles Nelson? Is he still up in Canada?”

  “No. I won’t die with a lie on my lips. I’m gonna ... have a hard enough time . . . convincin’ St. Pete to let me in as it is. You reckon I got a chance of doin’ that, MacCallister?”

  Jamie started to reply and then closed his mouth.

  Will Judy was dead at his feet.

  “I know somethin’ about doctorin’,” a man said, walking to Jamie’s side. “Come over to the light and let me take a look at that arm.”

  Jamie took off his jacket and shirt and peeled his underwear shirt down to his waist. The men in the bar all sat in silence and stared at Jamie’s heavy musculature. It was the build of a man twenty years younger.

  The bullet had passed through Jamie’s arm, tearing a hole as it exited out the back, just above the armpit.

  “You’re lucky,” the man said, after cleaning out the wound, pouring whiskey front and back, and then bandaging the arm and shoulder. “If it had hit that big bone, it might have broken your shoulder or deflected off and wandered around in your chest. But you’ll live. You’re in marvelous shape for a man in his late forties, MacCallister.”

  “I’m sixty-one years old, mister,” Jamie told him.

  “Jesus Christ,” one of the men watching muttered. “I hope I’m so lucky.”

  “You won’t be,” his partner told him. “You ain’t built up that good now!”

  * * *

  Jamie lounged around the trading post for a week, allowing his wound to start its healing and to rest his horses. While he waited, he went through Will Judy’s personal papers and found an envelope. There was no letter inside, but the envelope had been posted from Kansas City, Missouri, and on the back of the envelope, the initials Rev. M.N., Church of the Enlightenment.

  “Yeah,” Jamie muttered. “You could probably get away with that.” He knew that Miles Nelson was the son of a Methodist minister, and a highly educated man, having taught school before turning to a life of depravity. “I’ll just save you for last, Nelson. I might just shoot you down in front of your congregation, after I expose you for what you are.”

  As so many men had learned the hard way, over almost five decades of frontier living, there was no back-up and no quitting in Jamie Ian MacCallister. If he said he’d do something, he did it.

  * * *

  Jamie headed south until he hit the railroad, then followed the tracks east until coming to a town. There, he sent a telegraph to his sons and daughters in Valley: START BUILDING ME A CABIN ON THE RIDGE OVERLOOKING YOUR MA’S GRAVE. BEDROOM, LIVING ROOM, KITCHEN, AND A PORCH IN THE FRONT SO I CAN SIT IN THE EVENING AND LOOK DOWN AND SEE YOUR MA’S GRAVE. I’LL BE HOME BEFORE THE NEXT SNOW FLIES. PA.

  He sent another telegram to his detective agency and waited for a reply. When it came, only a few hours later, he smiled and went for supplies. He had a hard ride ahead of him.

  * * *

  Weeks later, Jamie swung down from the saddle and led his weary horses into a livery in Bismarck, in the northern part of the Dakota Territory. North Dakota was still about seventeen years away from achieving statehood. Bismarck was first called Edwinton, then renamed Bismarck after the German chancellor.

  And it certainly was not an outlaw haven. Those people settling there were solid family folks, farmers for the most part. When gold was discovered in the Black Hills in 1874, the town boomed, becoming an important stopover for stagecoaches and wagons heading for the Black Hills. Camp Hancock was also under construction when Jamie arrived. The military garrison was there to protect workers on the Northern Pacific Railroad.

  Jamie had solid information that there were three outlaws who did live in the country a few miles from the town.

  But if Jamie had his way, they wouldn’t be living for long.

  Jamie was certain he was not that well known in this part of the country. His name was, but not his face. He made arrangements to sleep in the loft of the livery. After a bath, Jamie was standing talking to the smithy when a wagon rolled by, two caskets in the bed.

  “Three hoodlums tried to rob Olenmeyer,” the smithy said. “But Olenmeyer has four big, strapping sons. And they can shoot, too, by golly. Killed those two hoodlums at the farm, and the third lies dying over yonder in that building. Come to find out they was all part of that terrible Miles Nelson gang. The ones that gunfighter, MacCallister, is hunting.”

  “Do you know their names?”

  “Judd, Moore, and Gentry.”

  “How about that,” Jamie muttered.

  Jamie rested himself and his horses for several days and then pulled out, heading south. At a trading post at the confluence of the Bad River and the Missouri, in what would soon become Pierre, South Dakota, Jamie overheard some movers talking about the last of the Miles Nelson gang. He listened without joining in the conversation.

  “Vic Taylor and Jordan Keller tried to hold up a bank down in Texas,” one of the men said. “They got shot up pretty bad, I hear tell. But they’ll live to stand trial and hang.”

  “Yep. Thirteen steps and the hangman is gonna cheat ol’ Jamie MacCallister out of finally gettin’ them all. I hear tell they ain’t but two of the gang left: Miles Nelson hisself and some young punk named Lloyd Jones. Miles Nelson has probably buried hisself so deep nobody will ever find him—he’s a rich man, I heard—and that Jones boy will try to pull something and get hisself kilt, I betcha.”

  “Yep. You be right, I reckon.”

  Jamie bought his supplies and rode away.

  Several weeks later, in a crossroads post that would later become Sidney, Nebraska, Jamie learned that Miles Nelson, going under the name of Matthew Nallin, and posing as a preacher, had been discovered by federal marshals, and there had been a wild shoot-out inside the Church of the Enlightenment, in Kansas City. Miles Nelson had escaped.

&nb
sp; “You’ll show up someday,” Jamie muttered. “And I’ll be there waiting.”

  “You say somethin’, mister,” the counterman asked.

  Jamie smiled and shook his head. “Just talking to myself.”

  “I do it, too. Gets lonesome at times. But they’s people headin’ west by the droves. I sometimes see four or five new faces a day. It’s ’bout got me wore plumb down to a frazzle. Never seen nothin’ like it. More coffee?”

  “Thanks. Tastes good.”

  “You look like you’ve been on the trail for quite a spell.”

  “I have for a fact. But now I’m going home.”

  “Home. Sounds good, don’t it?”

  “It sure does.”

  “You got far to go?”

  “A piece.” Jamie packed his supplies and headed out. For Colorado.

  It was over.

  In mid-July of 1872, the longest and bloodiest manhunt in the history of the West came to a close. Jamie Ian MacCallister had tracked down and killed some forty-four men of the Miles Nelson gang. Later, writers of Penny Dreadfuls would claim that he killed several hundred. A new play was soon written about the life of Jamie, and the gunsmoke behind blank cartridges would sometimes obscure the stage.

  Jamie stopped in at the new town of Colorado Springs for a bath, a shave and haircut, a change of clothing and a meal and a bed. Then he was back in the saddle, heading for Valley.

  In September, Jamie turned Buck’s head and looked down the long main street of Valley. Two minutes later, the whole town had turned out, men, women, and children applauding and cheering. Little Ben Pardee found his harmonica and was playing “Dixie,” much to the amusement of the new owner of the newspaper, Ben F. Washington.

  Jamie’s daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters wept at the sight. His sons swallowed back sudden lumps in their throats.

  Jamie Ian MacCallister, Man Who Is Not Afraid, Bear Killer, Man Who Plays With Wolves, and known now as the Silver Wolf, had come home.

  Before he left the saddle to stand amid the throngs of people, Jamie looked up to the ridge overlooking the miles-long valley, to the flower-covered mound that was Kate’s grave. “Howdy, old woman,” he whispered. “My God, I miss you.”