Thunder of Eagles

by William W. Johnstone

  “Do you mind if I join you?” she asked.

  Falcon stood quickly and pulled out a chair for her. “It would be my pleasure,” he said.

  “When did you last hear from Andrew and Rosana?” Rachael asked.

  “It hasn’t been that long,” Falcon said. “In fact, they came out to Colorado to give a performance at the Broadmoor for Count James Pourtales.”

  “Well, I’ll bet they enjoyed that,” Rachael said. “Seeing you again, and returning to the West they both love so.”

  Falcon chuckled.

  “What is it? What is so funny?”

  “I’m not sure they ‘love’ the West all that much. They have spent their entire adult life in New York. Plus, there was another little factor involved.”

  “Another factor?”

  “They were taken hostage and held for ransom,” Falcon said.

  “Oh, heavens! How awful that must have been for them!”

  “You would think so, wouldn’t you?” Falcon said. “But apparently, they took it as one grand adventure. I wouldn’t be surprised if by now they were reenacting the entire experience in daily matinees.”

  Rachael laughed out loud. “You know, I think you may be right.”

  “Are you going to the dance tonight?”

  Rachael smiled. “I thought you would never ask,” she said.

  For a second, Falcon was confused. Then he realized she thought he was asking her to the dance. He recovered quickly.

  “If you would allow me, I would be happy to call for you and escort you to the dance,” he said.

  “I would like that very much,” Rachael said.

  “All right. Seven o’clock?”

  “Yes, seven would be fine.” Looking around the saloon, Rachael saw that a few more patrons had arrived. “We always get a crowd early on Saturday. I guess I had better get back to the piano. I’ll see you tonight at seven.”

  “Rachael Kirby?” a man’s voice said.

  Rachael was halfway back to the piano when she heard her name. Turning, she looked at the person who addressed her, then let out a little gasp.

  “Edwin Mathias!” she replied. “What on earth are you doing here?”

  “My group is providing music for the dance tonight,” the tall, dignified man replied. “I heard over at hotel that you were here, playing in a”—he looked around with obvious distaste—“saloon? I was certain it would not be you, yet here you are.”

  “Yes,” Rachael said. “Here I am.”

  “May I ask why you are here?”

  “Everyone has to be somewhere,” Rachael answered. “I came west with the J. Garon troupe, and when he absconded with all the money, I found myself stranded and in need of a job. This opportunity came up, so I took it.”

  “So, the story the mayor told me is correct,” Edwin said. He made a clucking sound, and shook his head. “Rachael, Rachael, Rachael. I could have warned you about Garon. Everyone in the business knows what a crook he is.”

  “Apparently, not everyone,” Rachael replied. “I had no idea that the man’s reputation was anything but sterling.”

  Seeing that Falcon was following the conversation between the two of them, Rachael stepped back toward the table. “Edwin, I would like you to meet a friend of mine, Falcon MacCallister. Falcon, this is Edwin Mathias.”

  Falcon stood and extended his hand.

  “MacCallister,” Edwin said. “Would he be any—”

  “He is their brother,” Rachael said, answering Edwin’s question before he finished asking it.

  Edwin smiled and dipped his head slightly. “If you are the brother of Andrew and Rosanna MacCallister, then it is certainly my honor and privilege to meet you, sir.”

  “The honor is mine,” Falcon said.

  “Falcon, Edwin and I are old . . . friends,” Rachael said, setting the word “friends” apart from the rest of the sentence. “We have performed together many times.”

  “Well, by all means, have a seat, Mr. Mathias,” Falcon invited. “I’ll just get out of your way here. I’m sure you two have much to talk about.”

  “You needn’t leave, Falcon,” Rachael said.

  “I was about to leave anyway,” Falcon said. “I need to buy a new shirt for the dance tonight.”

  “Then I will be seeing you again, sir?” Edwin said.

  “Yes,” Falcon replied.

  “Very good, I shall look forward to it.”

  As Falcon left, he glanced back to see that Rachael and Edwin were already engaged in serious conversation. From the tone of their voices, and the way they behaved toward each other, he got the idea that their past acquaintance was more than just casual.

  “I was afraid I would never see you again,” Edwin said after Falcon left.

  “It might have been better if you hadn’t,” Rachael said.

  “Rachael, please, don’t be that way. You have no idea what I went through when you left.”

  “What you went through?” Rachael said. “Edwin, may I remind you that you did not come to my apartment and catch me with a man. It was I who caught you with a woman.”

  “But she meant nothing to me, Rachael. Can’t you understand that? She—she came up to me after the performance that night—she was an outrageous flirt. At first I was just flattered by the attention. Then—”

  “Please,” Rachael said, interrupting him. “I don’t want to hear all the details.”

  “All right,” Edwin said. He sighed. “I wish you were as pleased to see me as I am to see you. I did read the reviews. Rachael, the critics loved us. We could have had it all, the season in New York, the European tour. It was there for us—and we just threw it away.”

  “We threw it away?”

  “Well, all right, I threw it away,” Edwin said. “But if you had just been a tiny bit more tolerant. I would have made it up to you, Rachael. I swear to you, I would have made it up to you.”

  “Your beer, sir,” Corey said, bringing the mug over to the table at that moment.

  “Thank you, my good man,” Edwin said.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Edwin, must you always be so pompous?” Rachael asked. “He isn’t your ‘good man.’ He is the owner of this establishment, and he is my boss.”

  “I see,” Edwin said. He looked around the saloon. “You call this an establishment, do you? If you call it an establishment rather than a saloon, does that make it seem a bit more palatable for you to be playing piano in such a place?”

  “If I ever wondered what happened to us, I need only to spend a few minutes with you,” Rachael said. “And who are you to criticize me? Here you are, playing for a square dance in a hotel, not performing in a concert theater.”

  Rachael started to get up from the table, but Edwin reached out for her.

  “Wait, please,” he said.

  Rachael looked down at him.

  “Please,” he said again. “Another moment?”

  Rachael sat down again.

  “I’m sorry,” Edwin said. “You are right, I am playing music for a square dance and I am a little pompous.”

  “A little pompous?”

  “A lot pompous,” Edwin corrected with a smile, and Rachael smiled with him.

  “What a joy to see a smile on your beautiful face,” Edwin said.

  “Don’t think that it means anything,” Rachael said. “Because it doesn’t.”

  Edwin sighed. “Is it MacCallister?”

  “What?”

  “MacCallister, the man I just met. The brother to Andrew and Rosanna.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “Of course you know what I’m talking about. Are you in love with this man MacCallister?”

  Rachael hesitated.

  “My God, you are, aren’t you?” Edwin ran his hand through his hair, then sighed. “Well, I should have known better than to think you would just still be out there somewhere unattached.”

  “I’m not in love with him,” Rachael said. “I confess that I find him
fascinating. Do you know that they actually write adventure novels about him?”

  “Adventure novels?”

  “He is quite a daring figure,” Rachael said. “They say he has faced death many, many times.”

  “But you aren’t in love with him?”

  Rachael shook her head. “No, I’m not in love with him. And it is for sure that he feels nothing more than friendship for me.”

  “Good, good, then there is a chance,” Edwin said.

  “No, Edwin. There is no chance.”

  Edwin smiled. “I won’t take that as an answer.”

  “Edwin, what are you doing out here anyway?” she asked. “The last I heard, you were going to Europe on a grand tour of the continent.”

  Edwin shook his head. “I didn’t go,” he said.

  “It’s obvious you didn’t go, because you are here. My question is, why didn’t you go?”

  “The maestro thought it better that I not go.”

  “But why would he think that? Edwin, you are generally acknowledged to be one of the best violinists in the business.”

  “At the risk of being ‘pompous’ again, I agree with you,” Edwin said.

  “Then what happened? I mean, what really happened?”

  Edwin took a sip of his beer, then set the mug down. “The maestro’s wife,” he said.

  “Lucinda?” Rachael gasped. “My God, Edwin, please tell me you were not being indiscreet with Lucinda.”

  “It was more her doing than mine,” Edwin said quickly.

  “Well, now, that I can believe. Lucinda is the biggest flirt in the business. Everyone knows that she has an eye for men. For any man,” Rachael said. “I just can’t believe that you were foolish enough to fall into her trap. No, wait, as I recall, you seem to have a problem in that department as well.”

  “Rachael, you aren’t being fair,” Edwin said. “You had just left and I was feeling—”

  “Oh, no, you aren’t going to blame that on me,” Rachael said, interrupting him.

  Edwin shook his head. “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to sound that way. It’s just that I was depressed, and I wasn’t as smart, or diligent, as I should have been.” He sighed. “So now, instead of playing the violin in a concert orchestra, I’m playing . . . the fiddle for barn dances.” For the last five words he abandoned his normal cultured enunciation for a Western twang. He laughed. “Could you ever imagine me—a’playin’ the fiddle?”

  Rachael laughed with him, then reached across the table to put her hand on his. “I don’t mean to laugh, Edwin. But I am glad that you can laugh at yourself. And I must confess that I think I could like the fiddle player more than I like the concert violinist.”

  “If we couldn’t laugh, we would surely cry,” Edwin said. “I do not believe that it is mere coincidence that the symbol for thespians is two masks, one with a laughing face and the other with a crying face. When you think about it, we could be in the grandest theaters in Europe, performing before kings and queens, but circumstances”—he paused, then nodded—“of my own making, to be sure, have put us here in Higbee playing in a saloon and a hotel lobby—casting pearls before the swine, so to speak.”

  “Or bringing culture to a grateful audience,” Rachael suggested.

  “Oh, my, I was getting pompous again, wasn’t I?”

  Rachael nodded.

  “I must work on that,” Edwin said. He stood. “If you will excuse me, I have to meet with my—orchestra.”

  “I will see you tonight,” Rachael said.

  Chapter Sixteen

  By dusk, the excitement that had been growing for the entire day was full blown. The sound of the practicing musicians could be heard all up and down Higbee Avenue. Children gathered around the glowing, yellow windows on the ground floor of the hotel and peered inside. The ballroom floor was cleared of all tables and chairs, and the musicians had been installed on the platform at the front of the room.

  Horses and buckboards began arriving, and soon all the hitching rails on Higbee Avenue, as far up as Front Street and as far down as Bent Road, were full. Men and women streamed along the boardwalks toward the hotel, the women in colorful ginghams, the men in clean, blue denims and brightly decorated vests.

  Once they were inside, the excitement was all it promised to be. Several young women were gathered on one side of the room, giggling and turning their heads in embarrassment as young men, just as embarrassed, made awkward attempts to flirt with them. At the back of the dance floor, there was a large punch bowl on a table, and Billy saw one of the cowboys look around to make certain he wasn’t being seen, then pour whiskey into the punch bowl from a bottle he had concealed beneath his vest. A moment later, another cowboy did the same thing.

  Billy had been there when the doors opened because he wanted to be there before Kathleen arrived. Now his wait was rewarded when he saw Kathleen step through the front door, pause, and look around the room. When her eyes caught his, she smiled. Billy nodded toward the table that held punch and cookies, then started toward it.

  “Good evening Miss Garrison,” he said when Kathleen joined him at the table.

  “Good evening, Mr. Clinton,” she replied. She reached for a cup, but he put his hand on hers to restrain her.

  “I wouldn’t drink any of that punch if I were you,” he said.

  “Oh? Why not?”

  “There may be a little more in it than you think.”

  “I don’t—” she began, then she paused in mid-sentence and smiled. “Oh, I think I see what you mean.”

  “The coffee is all right,” he suggested.

  “Well, I don’t really need anything right now,” Kathleen said.

  “We have a few minutes before the dance actually starts,” Billy said. “Could we take a walk?”

  “No, I—” Kathleen began, then she paused in mid-sentence again. “All right, why not? There can be no harm in a walk.”

  Stepping outside, Billy and Kathleen walked the entire length of the board sidewalk until they reached the edge of town. They continued on for another hundred yards or so until the sounds and the lights of the town were behind them. The Golden Nugget was closed for the dance, but the Hog Waller was still open and its patrons seemed to be trying extra hard to prove that they didn’t have to be at the dance to have a good time. Billy and Kathleen heard a woman’s scream, not in fear obviously, because it was followed by her laugh, which carried clearly above everything else.

  Ahead of them lay the mountains, great slabs of black and silver in the soft wash of moonlight.

  A sudden blaze of gold zipped across the sky, and Kathleen squealed with delight.

  “Oh, look!” she said. “A falling star!” She shivered. “Oh!”

  “What is it?” Billy asked.

  “Someone has just died.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “That’s what a falling star means. There is a star in heaven for every person on earth. And when someone dies, their star falls.”

  Billy chuckled. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. At least, that’s what I’ve always heard.”

  “That’s not true. Besides, stars don’t fall.”

  “What? Of course they do. We just saw one.”

  “What we saw was a meteor,” Billy said. “Aunt Emma has a book about meteors, and I’ve read all about them. They are actually small chunks of rock which are traveling through space. From time to time, one of them falls to earth. I saw one once.”

  “What do you mean, you saw one once? We just did see one.”

  “No, I mean I saw one after it hit. I held it in my hand.”

  “Oh, I bet it was beautiful,” Kathleen said. “They must look like a large diamond, they glow so when you see them at night.”

  “They glow because they are heated up as they are falling. Actually, they just look like any other rock. There isn’t anything spectacular about them.”

  “That’s a shame,” Kathleen said. “I rather like thinking of
them as beautiful things.”

  “Well, they are beautiful when you see them the way most people see them,” Billy said. “So they will always be beautiful in your eyes.”

  You are a strange one, Billy Clinton.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You aren’t like any other man I know. You are different.”

  “I hope that is a good different,” Billy said.

  “It’s a very good different.”

  They heard music from the hotel, not disjointed bits and pieces as if the band was warming up, but a complete number, indicating the dance had begun.

  “I think we should get back now,” Billy said.

  “Yes,” Kathleen said.

  Turning, they walked quickly back to the hotel, stepping in through the door as the caller shouted, “Choose your partners for the Virginia reel!”

  Billy offered Kathleen his arm. “May I have this dance, Miss Garrison?”

  “I would be honored,” Kathleen replied.

  The music began then, with the fiddle loud and clear, the bass fiddle carrying the rhythm, the guitars providing the counterpoint.

  Although the band supplied the music, Prentiss Hampton had stepped in as the caller.

  “All go forward and all go back,

  Once more time forward and back.

  Make a turn with your right elbow.

  A big wide swing and around you go.

  Those in front sashay down

  And sashay back.

  Now let’s have the elbow reel.

  A right to the middle and a left to the side,

  A right to the middle, then reel on down.

  Touch in the middle and a’work your way back.

  Sashay around and down you go.”

  Around the dance floor, those who were without partners watched the dancers, including those who were too old and those who were too young. A few danced along the sidelines as if they had partners, but most participated in the dance by clapping their hands and stomping their feet.

  “Oh, my,” Kathleen said when the dance was finished. She fanned her hand back and forth in front of her face. “That was most invigorating.”

  “Would you like to step outside for a breath of fresh air?” Billy suggested.