Red opened his mouth to protest, and Jamie held up a big hand. “No, you boys go on. We’ll hook up again someday. This is something I have to do myself.”
“I do understand,” Logan said. “We’ll stick around long enough to rest the horses and resupply, and then we’ll be on our way.”
Jamie finished his meal and then left the table to walk outside and sit by himself and read the letter again.
“Are we just going to ride off and leave Mr. MacCallister here alone?” Rick asked.
“That’s the way he wants it, boy,” Red said.
“It don’t hardly seem right.”
The older men smiled at one another, Logan saying, “It’s just something he’s got to do by himself, boy.”
Rick toyed with his coffee cup. “I . . . ah. Well, it’s just that I have this feeling we’ll never see him again.”
“Maybe so, maybe not,” Canby said. “But he’ll always be a friend, and that’s something to value, right?”
Rick nodded his head. “I reckon.”
“Mac’s carryin’ a load of grief right now, boy,” Red said. “Mayhaps he’s thinkin’ that if he had stayed to home, this awfulness might not have happened. When it comes to family, a man gets to thinkin’ them kind of thoughts when tragedy befalls.”
Rick looked at Jamie, sitting on the bench in front of the saloon, reading the long letter from home. “He just looks, well, so alone.”
“Sometimes it’s best to stand alone, boy,” Logan told him. “You think about that when you get a quiet moment.” He pushed back his chair and stood up.
“Where you goin’?” Canby asked.
“I’m gonna find me a bottle, crawl up in the loft of the stable and get myself drunk.”
“I wonder what Mr. Mac is gonna do?” Rick said.
“What’s Mac gonna do?” Logan questioned. “Why, he’s gonna wait for them trash who hurt his family. Then he’s gonna kill them. That’s what he’s gonna do. It’s what’s expected of a man . . . leastways out here, it is.”
“Won’t be that way for long,” Canby said. “I seen that comin’ last post I was on back east. Now they got fancy lawyers and duded-up judges who say a man ain’t got the right to deal justice to them who’s done him a hurt. They say only the courts has that right.”
Logan snorted. “Be a mighty sorry damn day when that kind of thinkin’ takes hold out here.”
“Well, it’s a comin’. Bet on that.”
“I hope I ain’t around to see no shame and disgrace like that. But I’ll tell you one thing.” He jerked a thumb toward Jamie. “Yonder sits a man that won’t pay no attention to such foolishness.”
27
Jamie wrote a letter to his family back in Valley, explaining where he was and that he had received their letter about Joleen and Cathy Lou MacKensie. The stage finally made it through the day that Canby, Red, Logan, and Rick pulled out, and Jamie gave the letter to the driver, explaining what had happened and asking if he would pass it along.
“I’ll do better than that, Mr. MacCallister,” the driver said. “I’ll have a telegram sent when I get back to New Mexico, telling them you’re okay and a letter will follow.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“Consider it done. And if you need some help dealing with those bastards, you just holler. They’ll be men a-plenty come runnin’.”
Jamie smiled his thanks, and the stage thundered out, heading back east.
Jamie waited in the little cowtown.
Back in Valley, Matthew had spread the word to all lawmen west of Valley, and hundreds of dodgers had gone out to marshals and sheriffs. They started appearing tacked onto trees and telegraph poles, and when the rapists and kidnappers came out of hiding and started to move, they began seeing the wanted posters everywhere.
“We got to head south,” Stone said.
“There ain’t nothin’ south ’ceptin’ Apaches!” Jack Wallace protested.
“But north, west, and east there ain’t nothin’ but a hangman’s rope for us,” Stone replied. “We’ll head for Mexico and wait it out.”
“We’re damn near out of everything,” Billy Carnes pointed out.
“They’s a little cowtown ’bout two days’ ride from here,” Sterling Drake said. “I think it’s called Holbrook.”
“We’ll head for there,” Stone said. “Let’s ride. I can smell freedom, boys. We’re almost clear. I can smell it!”
His nose should have sniffed out another odor.
Gunsmoke.
* * *
Jamie sat on the bench in front of a dry goods store and watched the lone rider come into town and tie up in front of the saloon. The traveler’s clothing was mud-splattered, and his horse was weary. The rider wore two guns tied down low, which meant absolutely nothing, for a lot of men wore two guns, including Jamie.
But there was something about the man....
Jamie rose from the bench and walked across the street, glancing at the brand on the horse. He did not recognize it. Deciding at the last second not to enter the saloon, Jamie took a seat in a chair in front of an apothecary shop and waited. The rider came out of the saloon after only a few minutes and took a gunnysack from behind his saddle, then walked over to the general store. He left there with the sack bulging with only enough supplies to last one man about a week. Jamie relaxed. Unless the men had split up, and he didn’t think that likely, this was just a drifting rider. He watched the man ride out of town.
About an hour later, another lone rider came into town. Just as the first rider, his clothing was dirty and mud-splattered and his horse weary. Jamie perked up.
The man did exactly what the first rider had done: saloon first, then to the general store, and left with about the same amount of supplies in a sack.
“If one more rides in,” Jamie muttered, “it’s the bunch on the run from Valley.”
About an hour later, another rider came drifting in, from the same direction as the other two. Mud-splattered clothing, weary horse. He went first to the saloon, then over to the general store and bought the same amount of supplies.
As he was riding out, heading in the same direction the other two had taken, Jamie was saddling Sundown. He waited for a few minutes, then swung in behind the man, staying well back.
Jamie trailed him for several miles, then stopped and picketed Sundown near a wash that still held a trickle of water. He took a drink from his canteen and settled down amid a jumble of rocks—after checking carefully for sleeping rattlesnakes—near the trail and waited.
Jamie had no physical descriptions of the men who had attacked his daughter and granddaughter, only their names. He had to be sure before he confronted the men, and he hadn’t worked out in his mind how he was going to do that.
Right now, he would wait.
* * *
Russell Clay almost had a heart attack when he finally learned what had taken place in Valley. For several minutes, he actually thought he was going to die. He had to sit down and take several deep breaths and will his heart to stop its wild racing.
He dismissed his trusted manservant and sat for a time in near shock. “Fools,” he finally muttered. “Ignorant, redneck fools.”
He poured a brandy and drank it down. “Assaulting and raping Jamie’s daughter and granddaughter,” he whispered. “If he has to, the man will spend the rest of his life tracking you down.”
He poured another brandy and looked out the window of his luxurious home in Denver. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. As God is my witness, I didn’t. I was only trying to protect myself.”
Then the man who was born Roscoe Jefferson, son of runaway slaves, who became an actor under the name of Ross LeBeau, and now went under the name of Russell Clay, laughed bitterly. “God?” he whispered. “Don’t bring God into this, you fool. Not after all that you’ve done.”
Then he thought of his sister. He had not seen her in years, but he knew she was living in San Francisco under the name of Andrea Petri. He wondered what
her reaction would be when she learned of the debacle in Valley.
* * *
“Rape!” Andrea shrieked at the shyster lawyer who brought her the news. “Dear God in Heaven! Did those fools go crazy?”
The attorney said nothing. He knew only too well how volatile the woman’s temper was, and if the truth be known, she frightened him. He had never before known such a ruthless person.
“Jamie Ian MacCallister will track them to the end of the earth if he has to,” Andrea said, lowering her voice. She faced the lawyer. “And if one of them talks . . .” Her cold eyes bored into the soul of the man.
“The authorities will trace it back to me,” the attorney whispered.
And you’ll blab, Andrea thought. She turned to a table and carefully chose a bottle, pouring the man a drink. Smiling, she held out the glass. “Drink this and calm down,” she said. “And then you must leave.”
“Yes, yes. Of course. We must have no further contact for a time.” The lawyer gulped down the brandy, and she showed him to the door.
“Have a nice day,” Andrea said with a smile.
The lawyer nodded his head and hurriedly walked away. Four blocks later, he dropped stone dead to the street.
“Such a pity,” Andrea said, carefully tucking that bottle away. “He was such a useful man, too.”
* * *
Jamie seemed to rise out of the earth like some demon out of the pits of hell. The horse reared up in fright, and Pete Drew felt himself jerked from the saddle and slammed to the ground. The air whooshed out of him, and his eyes could not focus. When he could focus, he was looking into the cold eyes of a big man with gray hair. Then he saw the muzzle of a pistol and heard the hammer being eared back.
“Name,” Jamie said. “And you better get it right the first time.”
“Pete Drew!” the outlaw said. “Lord God, mister. I ain’t done nothin’ to you.”
“You raped my daughter and granddaughter and tried to kill Ben F. Washington.”
“It was a mistake!” Pete screamed. “We didn’t mean to do that. I’m sorry it happened. It was . . . it was . . . just . . . one of them things that happened.”
“You son of a bitch!”
Pete was blubbering, snot running out of his nose. He soiled himself, and the stench was awful. “It wasn’t my idee! ” he squalled. “It was . . . it was Stone’s idee. I had to go along with it. If I hadn’t a-humped them women, the rest would have laughed at me.”
Jamie cussed the man for a moment. “You know what you’re going to do next?” Jamie asked, his voice low and cold.
Pete shook his head.
“Kiss the devil’s hot butt!”
“No!” Pete screamed.
The last thing Pete Drew saw on the living side of the veil was the flame that erupted from the muzzle of Jamie’s pistol. His final scream echoed over the land.
* * *
Jack Wallace felt the hammer blow in his chest that knocked him sprawling. He looked down at his bloodstained shirtfront and wondered, briefly, what the hell had happened. Then he lowered his head to the ground and died.
Billy Carnes jumped to his feet and grabbed for his guns. Jamie’s rifle barked again, and Billy’s head snapped back, a black hole in the center of his forehead.
Marcus Hinton looked wildly all around him, certain they were under attack from the Apaches. He began firing his pistols in all directions, hitting nothing but late afternoon air. Jamie’s rifle boomed, and Marcus was knocked off his boots, hitting the rocky ground hard. He looked stupidly down at the spreading stain on his shirt.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” was the last thing the outlaw said before he toppled over and died. He couldn’t have uttered a more apt truism.
Sterling Drake spun around and around like a child’s top, firing his pistols until Jamie’s bullet cut him down, the bullet entering one side and blowing out the other side. Sterling was still trying to cock and fire his empty pistols when death spread its dark cloak over him.
Stone Gibson, Nate Clapton, Jeff Hooks, and Carter Young made it to their horses and galloped off, toward the north. Eric Armer stood in the midst of the carnage, screaming and cussing his unknown and as yet unseen enemy.
“Come out and fight me like a man!” he shouted to the big empty all around him.
“Over here,” Jamie called.
Eric spun around and fired. But there was no one to be seen.
“How about over here, punk!” Jamie called.
Eric whirled around just in time to catch a bullet in his chest. He stumbled backward, lost his footing, and sat down on his butt, hollering as the pain reached him.
Jamie appeared at the edge of the camp.
“Damn you!” Eric cussed. He tried to lift his pistols but found he did not have the strength.
“Who hired you to attack Ben Washington?” Jamie asked.
“Go to hell!” Eric gasped.
“What were you looking for?”
Blood began leaking out of Eric’s mouth, a pink froth that told Jamie the man had been lung shot.
“You don’t have long,” he told Eric. “Why not tell the truth for once in your life?”
“I got a right to know who killed me.”
“Jamie Ian MacCallister.”
“Them women up north? . . .”
“My daughter and granddaughter.”
“Bad mistake, wasn’t it?”
“You’re dying because of it.” Jamie walked closer, giving each man a glance to make sure they were out of action.
“You gonna bury me proper?”
“I doubt it.”
“That ain’t decent!”
“Neither are you.” Jamie squatted down beside the dying man.
“Promise you’ll bury me so’s the varmints can’t get at me and I’ll tell you what I know.”
“You better make it fast.”
“A woman in San Francisco hired me and the four I rode with. Man in Denver hired the others.”
“They have names?”
“No,” Eric said, then fell over on the sand and did not move.
“You dead?” Jamie asked.
“You cold-hearted bastard!” Eric blurted weakly. “You’re a devil.”
“You got a shovel around here?”
“I ain’t never seen no one as hard as you,” the outlaw gasped out the words.
“I’ve heard that before,” Jamie said, looking around for something to dig with. No sign of a shovel. “I’ll pile rocks on you.”
“Thanks.”
“The ones who got away?”
Eric gasped out the names. He was just about at the end of his string.
“MacCallister?”
“What?”
“You read some words over me?”
“I’ll say something. You have folks that might give a damn about you?”
“No. Pa threw me out of the house years ago.”
“Why?”
“I tried to rape my sister.”
Jamie shook his head in disgust just as Eric rattled his last breath, stiffened, and then was still.
Jamie dragged the bodies to a wash and collapsed one side of the wash over them, then stacked rocks over that. He climbed back out of the makeshift grave and stood for a time. He tried to think of something to say over the bodies, but could not come up with anything.
Finally, mounted on Sundown, he looked toward the cave-over and said, “You boys must have done something worthwhile when you were alive. I’m sure that will be taken into account. But it wouldn’t if I had anything to say about it.”
He plopped his hat back on his head and rode off.
28
Jamie rode out the next morning and picked up the trail of those who had escaped his attack. They were heading north and slightly east and making no attempt to hide their tracks.
Days later, they crossed over into Colorado and were forced to stop at a trading post on the Animas River. Their horses were just about done in.23
Jamie was tw
o hours behind them and coming on strong.
The ragged and worn-down outlaws staggered into the trading post and up to the bar. “Whiskey,” Stone ordered, his voice hoarse.
“You boys got law trouble?” the bartender asked.
“If we do, it ain’t none of your concern,” Stone told him bluntly.
“Don’t sass me, sonny-boy,” the older man said. “It’s my business if you bring trouble in here.” He peered closely at the four men, then cut his eyes to the wanted poster tacked up behind the bar.
The man was reaching for a gun under the counter when Stone smashed his pistol down on the man’s head, and Jeff dragged him off and tied him up in a storeroom. “We ain’t seen no sign of that bastard trailin’ us in days,” Stone said. “I don’t figure we lost that law-dog, but we got a good two days on him, way I figure. Time enough for us to swap horses and stock up on food and such. Let’s get some grub goin’. I’m half-starved.”
Nate stoked up the fire in the stove and began slicing bacon while Carter was rummaging through the stacks of men’s britches and shirts to replace their own stinking and filthy clothing. None of the four outlaws even thought about taking a bath.
Their bellies full of hot food, wearing clean clothing, the men relaxed at one of the rough tables in the bar of the trading post, drinking whiskey.
“What happens if someone comes in here lookin’ to buy something?” Nate asked.
“Hell, we sell it to them,” Stone replied. “Then we shoot ’em!”
The four men thought that to be hysterically funny and roared with laughter. They opened another bottle of whiskey and gave no thought to the “law-dog” who’d been trailing them for days.
The man they assumed to be a lawman had picketed his horses about a half mile from the lonely trading post and was now slipping silently toward the building, coming up on a windowless blind side. Jamie had left his rifle in the boot and was carrying his sawed-off double-barreled shotgun.
The owner of the trading post had regained consciousness. After testing the ropes that bound him and finding them well-tied, he lay still and made no noise. He had lived in the West for more than thirty years, and knew these renegades would not hesitate to kill him if he started kicking up a fuss. He looked up as the back door to the storage room began slowly opening and one of the biggest and meanest-looking men he’d ever seen stepped inside. He recognized Jamie instantly, for the man was a Colorado legend.
Scream of Eagles Page 21
