Talons of Eagles

by William W. Johnstone

  The slightly wounded and badly frightened Revenger believed every word Jamie said as the man towered over him, his pale blue eyes burning with the heat of emotion.

  Jamie threw the man onto a horse and slapped the crow-bait on the rump, sending him galloping out of town.

  Moments later, Jamie and his Marauders were gone, vanishing into the mountains like ghosts.

  Layfield and men returned to pick up their dead and wounded and then retired some miles away, to lick their wounds and let their hate fester.

  Jamie had not lost a single man, to death or wound.

  * * *

  All through the months of May and June, 1864, the Marauders and the Revengers fought each other in small battles all over the northeastern corner of Georgia. To the west and south, the Union army was slowly clawing their bloody way toward Atlanta. On June the first, the Yankees were on the north side of the Chattahoochee River, only a few miles north of the city. But it would take the Union forces almost seven more brutal and bloody weeks to reach the city. They would measure their daily advance in yards and sometimes feet. Atlanta was being evacuated.

  Jamie and his Marauders and Layfield and his Revengers had been all but forgotten by Richmond and Washington. For them, the war was each other. But it was about to turn decidedly in Jamie’s favor.

  The Henry rifle had just been introduced, and a train load of them, along with other supplies, was on its way to Sherman’s troops, now almost within spitting distance of Atlanta.

  The train never made it. Jamie and his men blocked the rails and seized tons of supplies and all the Henry rifles and .44 ammunition for them. The Henry lever action rifle was a marvel, holding fifteen rounds in a tube under the barrel. Each Marauder carried two in saddle boots and a third in hand, across the horn. It gave them awesome fighting power, for counting the rounds in the pistols they carried, each man could now fire over eighty rounds before having to reload—unheard of in those days. And Aaron Layfield and his Revengers would soon experience the killing effectiveness of those new Henry Rifles.

  Jamie and the Marauders set fire to the freight cars, and then blew up the locomotive, blocking the Western and Atlantic tracks for several days. Then they rode off with their wagons of booty, Gibson tooting on his bugle.

  The loss of a small train and locomotive did not disturb Sherman nearly as much as the loss of those rifles; he had been counting heavily on them. For a brief time he considered sending a brigade of men after Jamie and his Marauders. A dozen commanders immediately volunteered.

  But Sherman had been studying maps of East Georgia, and the terrain was not to his liking. Moreover, he knew that MacCallister was right at home in the mountains and was a master at setting up ambushes.

  “No,” Sherman finally decided. “We’d lose too many men in rooting him out, and besides, we might not succeed.”

  “But if he should come in behind our lines . . . ?”

  Sherman waved that off. “MacCallister has four companies of cavalry, with no artillery to back him up. He could pester us, but not to any large extent. His war is with this Layfield person and I want it to remain so. Send someone to tell Layfield to force the issue with MacCallister or I will replace him with someone who can do the job.”

  The message stung Layfield, and he immediately went to his tent after telling his officers he must be left alone in order to seek Heavenly guidance on how best to deal with Jamie MacCallister and his band of Southern trash.

  Actually, what he was doing was drafting a letter to Jubal Olmstead in Washington, outlining the problem and asking if he could do something to aid the Vermont Revengers.

  While he was composing the letter, a plan came to mind, and Layfield thought hard for a moment. He smiled, a cruel curving of the lips, and wadded up the paper, discarding it. Layfield knew that Southern men held their women in high regard, placing them on almost a spiritual plane. Layfield found that amusing, if not downright sacrilegious, for to his way of thinking, Southern women were nothing but trash and whores.

  Layfield chuckled. Oh, yes, indeed. He knew a way to lure MacCallister and his band of thugs into a trap. And he was sure it would work. He called for a meeting of his officers, and they immediately began making plans to rid the world of Jamie MacCallister, once and for all.

  Layfield did not take into consideration that Jamie just might have a thing or two to say about that.

  * * *

  On September the first, Rebel commanders finally realized the futility of any further holding on, and Atlanta fell. During the night, Confederate troops began slowly retreating. The next day, the mayor of Atlanta officially surrendered the city to the Union forces.

  From the very outset, from the moment Sherman had marched out of Tennessee, it had taken a hundred and thirty days of combat, much of it with knife and bayonet, to finally reach and conquer Atlanta. No one could ever offer any disparaging remarks about the bravery of the men of the Blue and the Gray. The casualties were staggeringly, unbelievably high. Both sides combined suffered over seventy-five thousand men dead, wounded, captured, or missing. It was an incredibly bloody price to pay.

  But on both sides, the survivors could boast that their fallen comrades had, “Died for the Cause.”

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  In Virginia, Federal troops were gradually putting the squeeze on Richmond; but the Confederate lines hardened, and they held back charge after charge of Yankees. At the Battle of the Crater, the Federal commanders made the mistake of pitting Negro troops against the Rebels. That so outraged the Southerners they threw caution to the wind and charged the Union line and turned what might have been a Federal victory into a slaughter. Finally, the Union troops were forced to build breastworks out of mud and clay and the bodies of their own dead comrades in an effort to hold back the enraged Southern troops. From behind the bodies of their own troops, the Yankees finally stopped the wild Confederate charge and held. For a time. Then the Rebels regrouped and came over the top after them in what would be some of the fiercest fighting of that battle. When it was over, the dead Union troops, white and black, would be stacked twelve feet high.

  All during the summer of ’64, Union troops fought against Lee’s troops around Richmond, sometimes as close as four miles from the Confederate capital, but they could not break through the Rebel lines.

  There were several dozen black regiments fighting against Lee’s Army of Virginia, and they distinguished themselves well against the Confederates. Although led by white officers, the black troops often had to act on their own initiative and proved their mettle time and time again.

  Even diehard Rebels were forced to admit, albeit grudgingly, that, “The damn niggers can fight, by God!”

  That they could, and did. Twenty-three of them won the new Congressional Medal of Honor for gallantry during the Virginia campaign alone.

  In mid-September, Falcon MacCallister and his company of cavalry joined the Virginia fight, as did Wells and Robert, assigned to a colored regiment from Massachusetts. Sam Montgomery, Jr., and Pat MacKensie were there, and so were Jorge and Tomas Nunez. They would soon be facing each other across the battle lines of the Blue and the Gray.

  The troops of Lee’s Army of Virginia would hold on for about six more bloody months.

  * * *

  “It’s a trap,” Jamie said, after a few minutes of thought. He looked at the scout who’d just returned from a nearby town. “Who told you this, Will?”

  “It’s all over town, and the people are scared, Colonel. Really scared. Most of the younger men are in uniform. Only men in town are real old or those who was bad wounded in the war and sent home.”

  “Layfield must think I’m stupid to fall for something like this. But for the time being, we’ll let him think I’m going to blunder into his trap.”

  Jamie knew exactly where Layfield was camped, but since Jamie and his Marauders kept on the move, the South-hater had no firm idea where Jamie was. Jamie kept his men split up into units small enough to hide, but large enough to eas
ily repel any unit of comparable size.

  Despite Jamie’s threats, Layfield had kept up his attacks on small towns, and so far, at least, the Union commanders had done nothing to stop the man.

  “They just might not know about it,” Sparks told Jamie. “The villages Layfield’s been hitting are tucked ’way off the beaten path.”

  Jamie had to admit that was a possibility. “But some of them know. They have to know. There have been too many complaints for them not to know that something is going on.”

  “Some of our boys have been raiding in Maryland and Ohio, Colonel,” Dupree reminded Jamie. “Maybe the Yankees think what Layfield is doing is tit for tat?”

  Several raids had been carried out up north by Confederate raiders; Morgan had hit installations in Ohio and Indiana. “They haven’t raped and plundered,” Jamie reminded the man, although Jamie knew there were rogues and rakes on both sides in this conflict. But so far he had heard of no officially sanctioned excursions into the north that involved the manhandling and molestation of women, or the hanging of civilians at Confederate hands.

  There was only one narrow and curving road leading to the small village that Layfield had threatened to destroy, and anywhere along the road was ideal for ambush. No military man, Layfield fully expected the Marauders to come riding headstrong along the road, open for ambush. Layfield was only a couple of days away from learning a very hard lesson about Jamie MacCallister.

  “We handpick the very best woodsmen. A hundred and fifty men and go in here. We leave our horses here,” Jamie said, pointing to a map. “And go in on foot. Rifles and pistols. Pick your men.”

  Even though all the Marauders wanted to go, they were so well disciplined that none questioned their commanders’ choice of men who would participate in the raid.

  Jamie knew there was no way a hundred and fifty men had any chance at all of putting Layfield out of business, but he could not bring his entire command through the timber without running a real risk of being spotted.

  The day had dawned cool, almost cold, and mist hung in pockets all over the mountains; the leaves of trees dripped with moisture. Jamie and his men slipped silently thought the dense timber, moving on moccasined feet. They had tightly wound pieces of cloth around the barrels of their rifles to prevent any stray bit of sunlight from reflecting off of metal. Layfield and his men were good in the woods and good in the mountains; but they were too confident—too sure of themselves. And they had made the mistake of attempting to second-guess Jamie. Many Indians and white bounty hunters had tried that same thing, and died for it.

  Jamie had started a hundred mounted men down the road so Layfield and his men would be all eyes on the road, not suspecting trouble coming up behind them—Jamie hoped.

  About a mile from the ambush site—townspeople friendly to Jamie had confirmed the spot—the mounted Marauders would swing off, and Jamie and his men in the woods would strike.

  Jamie crept to within a couple of hundred feet of the ambushers, and silently his men moved up in a line beside him, spread out left and right.

  “Here they come, men!” Layfield’s voice carried through the timber. “Get ready.”

  Layfield’s voice could be heard, but the man himself could not be seen. Jamie knew the only way he was going to end this personal battle was to get lead into Colonel Aaron Layfield.

  “They stopped!” a man called. “What’s going on? They just stopped.”

  “Relax,” another said. “They just stopped to finalize their plans, that’s all.”

  “Silence,” Layfield commanded. “Something is wrong. I feel it.”

  He stood up.

  Jamie quickly pulled his rifle to his shoulder and shot him. But just as he squeezed the trigger, Layfield turned, and Jamie knew it was not a righteous hit. Layfield screamed and pitched forward, rolling down the embankment to the rutted narrow road below. The woods erupted in gunfire from the Marauders, Jamie’s men firing as fast as they could work the levers on their Henry rifles.

  A hundred and fifty men poured hundreds of rounds of rifle fire into the ranks of Layfield’s Revengers, working closer in a line as they fired. When their rifles were empty, as they had planned, seventy-five started using pistols while seventy-five reloaded; then the sequence was done over and over again until the Marauders were close enough to touch those Revengers who had not fled in panic across the road to their horses.

  Jamie had been wrong in thinking that a hundred and fifty of his men could not break the backs of Layfield’s Revengers, for they did that bloody, foggy, misty day in the mountains of East Georgia. When the shooting stopped and the Marauders began counting the damages, over five hundred of Layfield’s men lay dead or wounded.

  “You played hell, Johnny Reb,” one wounded man said, looking up at Jamie. “The colonel’s hard hit. Busted his shoulder and collarbone.”

  “He started this personal war, not me,” Jamie told the man.

  “And he’ll end it, too,” the man replied, just then realizing who he was talking to. “Might not be during this fracas; maybe out west in your valley of whores and trash. But he’ll do it. You mind what I say, MacCallister.”

  Jamie squatted down and opened the man’s shirt. He had taken two in the belly and there was no hope for him. “You’ve not got long, Yankee. Tell me, why does Layfield hate me so?”

  When the man hesitated, Jamie said, “The way I hear tell it, you’re all supposed to be fine, up-standing Christian men if you ride with Layfield. That being the case, you wouldn’t want to die with a lie on your lips, would you?”

  “I’ll not tell a falsehood to any man, MacCallister. You killed Layfield’s brother some years back, and you killed other kin of his, too.”

  “I have no knowledge of ever killing a man called Layfield.”

  “Well, you done it, whether you remember it or not. They was bounty hunters.”

  Jamie grunted. He had killed his share of bounty hunters, for a fact. But they had all been riding after him, for crimes he had not committed.

  He started to ask the man another question, then bit back the words. The Revenger was dead.

  “Colonel,” Louie Huske called. “Come take a look at this contraption, will you? It’s the damndest thing I ever did see. Whatever it is.”

  Jamie stepped over the dead and the wounded and made his way over to Huske, who was standing beside a strange-looking piece of equipment on metal and wooden legs. The thing had a huge round metal tube with a crank on one end and a thin metal rod sticking out of the top.

  “What is that thing?” Jamie asked.

  “Damned if I know, Colonel,” Top Soldier said. “But these metal tubes is filled with cartridges. There’s three cases of the things over yonder.”

  “What caliber?”

  “.45-70.”

  Jamie went around to the front of the contraption and looked. There were a series of muzzles all in a circle.”

  “For God’s sake, Johnny Reb!” a wounded Revenger called. “Don’t turn the crank. That’s a Gatling gun.”

  “A what?” Jamie asked, turning around to face the man.

  “It’s a rapid-fire gun. You turn that crank and the barrel revolves and feeds the ammunition down from that tube. It’s a fearsome weapon, Johnny Reb. Spits out lead faster than anything ever before invented.” He smiled. “That machine thing is going to kill a lot of slavers like you.”

  Jamie had grown so tired of telling people that he didn’t believe in slavery that he ignored the man’s last comment. “Gatling gun, huh? Well, whatever the thing is, boys, we’ve got us one. Some of you find the wagon they used to bring this thing here and load it up. Take all the ammunition for it. Take all the guns and ammunition from the dead and the wounded, and leave their horses so they can get out of here. He looked at the sprawl of wounded men, all looking at him.

  “You’re not going to hang us, MacCallister?” a man asked.

  “I don’t hang prisoners or civilians,” Jamie told him. “Or molest women and k
ids and old people. I’ll leave that to trash like you.”

  The man flushed under his beard and wisely chose to keep any further comments to himself. But another Revenger elected to keep it going.

  “The Union must be preserved, MacCallister. You damn Southerners want to tear this nation apart. So as far as I’m concerned, you’re all traitors and deserve nothing better than the torch and the rope. Now I’ve made peace with the Almighty, so if you want to hang me, you go right ahead. For if you let me live, I will return to fight you. And that’s a promise.”

  Jamie stared at the man for a moment. “Back when the war was just getting started, President Abe Lincoln told me that a man must go where his heart dictates. I made my choice with no rancor toward a person who chose the Blue. Obviously, you are not a big enough man to do the same.”

  Several of the wounded Revengers smiled at that and nodded their heads in agreement with Jamie’s words. Jamie could sense that for them, their minds were made up. The war was over; they would be heading for home as soon as possible. But for most of the Revengers who were sprawled on the damp ground, staring at him, open hate in their eyes, as soon as their wounds permitted, they would be right back in the saddle, riding for Aaron Layfield and his Revengers.

  “Let’s go,” Jamie told his men. “The hate around here is getting more than I can bear.”

  “We’ll meet again, MacCallister,” a Revenger called out. “Count on that.”

  “Damn right,” a Revenger officer said.

  Now that the men realized they were not going to be executed, their courage had returned and traveled up to their mouths. “Yeah,” another one said. “And if by some miracle you make it through the war, if I ever seen you again, I’ll kill you, you Godless bastard!”

  Jamie chuckled at that. His humor could surface at the strangest of times. “If I make it through the war, and I fully intend to do just that, I’ll head back home. Don’t come west with hate in your heart for me or mine, for if you do, I’ll kill you.”