Talons of Eagles

by William W. Johnstone

  “Sound the charge!” Jamie yelled. “Forward at a gallop.”

  The notes of “Charge” split the cold air, and Gibson changed to “Dixie” as the cavalrymen thundered around the wooden bridge and galloped right up the main street of Layfield, the Marauders screaming the Rebel yell.

  Women fainted and grown men shit their pants as the Marauders struck the town, which was filled with people from the outlying areas for Saturday shopping.

  The first shot was fired by a citizen. He missed, but the Marauder who returned the fire did not. The citizen took a bullet through the chest and died in front of Stottlemire’s General Store. That ended the resistance from the citizens of Layfield.

  The townspeople were quickly herded into the streets. The elderly and mothers with babies in arms were escorted to a church (after Jamie made sure the church was not where Colonel Layfield spewed his hate). All others were forced to watch as the Marauders began burning their town.

  “Where is Aaron Layfield?” Jamie asked a group of badly frightened citizens.

  “Out of town. Why are you doing this to us? We’ve done nothing to you.”

  Jamie stared at the man. “You’ve done nothing? You’re either a liar or a fool, sir.” He rode on.

  Jamie threw a leather dispatch case on the ground in front of a man who had been pointed out as the mayor. “There, sir, are the official reports of the rape, looting, arson, torture, executions, pillaging, and plundering done by your goddamn Aaron Layfield and his Revengers. We thought you good citizens of the town would like just a small taste of what you supported and sent, with your blessings, to the South.”

  The flames were roaring like banshees as fire quickly ate the town.

  Dupree rode up to a group of citizens all huddled together and smiled down at them. “Y’all have a nice day, now, you hear?”

  Jamie led his men out of town, leaving behind them the Stars and Bars and the battle flag of the Marauders fluttering from atop the flagpole.

  Now the chase was on.

  * * *

  The news of the raid spread all over the eastern half of the nation. Telegraph wires sang with reports of the daring act. But the White House remained strangely silent about the attack on Layfield. Eastern newspapers hypocritically wrote damning stories about the assault on innocent civilians, glaringly forgetting that innocent civilians in the South had been enduring much worse for several years.

  Along the cold and hungry and tired battle lines of Lee’s army in Virginia, men were joyous at the news, while the Union side stoically endured the taunts and cheering.

  It is said that when Lee heard the news about the raid, he smiled. He would have little else to smile about the next few months.

  * * *

  That was the last raid for the unit known as MacCallister’s Marauders. Just outside of the ruins of Layfield, Pennsylvania, Jamie split his unit up and told the men to go home. The war for them was over.

  Ten of the Marauders were killed in the days following the raid. They refused to surrender and fought to the death just inside the West Virginia state line. The patrol that trapped the Marauders was led by a newly commissioned captain in Layfield’s Revengers, a man named Carl Miller. Carl Miller personally slipped the noose around the neck of young Gibson, the Marauders’ bugler, and hanged the badly wounded young man. Gibson went to his death whistling “Dixie.”

  Deep in the mountains of West Virginia, Jamie smashed the Gatling gun, rendering it useless rather than see it fall into Yankee hands.

  Jamie and the ten men with him spent the month of January and part of the month of February hiding in a cave in the mountains of West Virginia, fishing, trapping, and hunting for their food.

  When Kate heard about the raid against the town in Pennsylvania, she smiled. Her man would never change, and she didn’t want him to—she just wanted him to come home.

  Jamie was unaware that peace talks had begun between Davis and Lincoln, with Davis asking for two countries. Lincoln refused, and the war dragged on through the bitter winter months. But many on both sides had lost their zest and zeal for the battle. Desertions ran high among the ranks of the Blue and the Gray. The majority of men just wanted to get this thing over with and go home. Jamie Ian MacCallister included.

  “The war is lost,” he said one night in early March, sitting with a few of his men around a camp fire in Kentucky. “There is no point in any further deaths.”

  “Many of the men still fightin’ don’t have no homes to go back to, Colonel,” Little Ben Pardee said. “For them, the Cause is their whole life. They’ve lost everything else.”

  The next day, on March 4, 1865, Lincoln would deliver his second inaugural address at the United States Capitol. Among the lines he spoke that day were, “... with malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.”

  Pretty words, but for many citizens of the South, white and Negro alike, there would be damn little charity shown them over the next ten years.

  Exactly one month and one week after his address, Richmond was abandoned by the Confederacy, and the capital moved to Danville. Lincoln entered Richmond on April 14, 1865. He had just ten days left to live.

  Jamie, Ben Pardee, and Doctor Tom Prentiss were in Western Tennessee when the South officially surrendered on Palm Sunday. The war that had divided a nation was over. The toll was staggeringly high: three quarters of a million men dead, and three times that number were wounded.

  For the Cause.

  Jamie, Ben Pardee, and Doctor Prentiss were in Central Missouri when Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. The president had been sitting with his wife and another couple, watching a comedy on the stage below.

  Jamie, Ben Pardee, and Doctor Prentiss were on the Great Plains when Lincoln was entombed in Springfield, Illinois, with his son, Willie, who had died in 1862.

  On May 14, 1865, Major Falcon MacCallister and his forces fought against the troops of Major Matthew MacCallister in Texas, the last battle of the Confederacy. Both MacCallisters were wounded, by each other.

  On May the 28, 1865, Rebel troops west of the Mississippi River officially surrendered. The war was over.

  General Robert E. Lee died five years after his surrender in the home of Wilber McLean at Appomattox Court House.

  General Sherman died in 1891. His old enemy, General Joe Johnston, attended the funeral and stood at attention by his casket. Fightin’ Joe Johnston died a month later.

  John Bell Hood died in 1879.

  Nathan Bedford Forrest, who coined the phrase “Git there fustest with the mostest men,” died in 1872.

  General Ulysses Simpson Grant became the eighteenth president of the United States. He died in 1885.

  Dozens of Confederate soldiers went back to their ravaged homes and gathered up their friends and families and began a long journey to South America, where they set up a community known as Little Dixie; it flourishes to this day, flying both the American and Confederate flags.

  General “Little Phil” Sheridan became general in chief of the United States Army. He died shortly after his retirement in 1888.

  President Jefferson Davis was accused of having a part in Lincoln’s assassination and was arrested in Georgia and imprisoned for several years. Four years after the assassination he was cleared of all charges and formally released. But he remained bitter over his imprisonment until the day he died, in 1889. He passed on still a proud, unrepentant, unbowed, and unreconstructed Rebel to the end.

  * * *

  On a warm summer’s day in 1865, Jamie and his companions topped the ridge that looked down on the peaceful valleys called MacCallister’s Valley.

  “It’s beautiful,” Doctor Tom Prentiss said.

  “I’m gonna rest here awhile and then move on,” Little Ben Pardee said.

  “You’ll probably be married in six months and live here for the rest of your life,” Jamie said. “Lots of girls down yonder, Ben.”

  “Th
ere ain’t no petticoat ever been born who will ever tie me down permanent, Colonel,” Little Ben said. “I got places to go and things to see and lots to do. I like to wander. I just ain’t the settlin’ down type.”

  Jamie smiled at that.

  Five months later, Ben Pardee would marry one of Jamie’s granddaughters.

  Kate stepped out onto the porch of her house and looked up on the ridge. Indians had told her days before that Man Who Is Not Afraid was on the way home. “It’s about time,” she muttered, then went back into the house to put on a fresh pot of coffee and fix lunch.

  “Do you want me to uncase the colors, Colonel?” Ben asked.

  Jamie thought about that for a moment. “No,” he finally said. “Let them forever be cased. It’s time to unite the country. Let’s go home.”

  Kate stood on the porch as her husband rode up. “Well, you look familiar,” she told him. “I guess it’s you. I’m surprised you remembered the way home.”

  “You still have a mighty sharp tongue on you, woman.”

  Kate ignored that. “Well, get down, old man. I have hot coffee and hot food inside.”

  “Is that all?” Jamie questioned, stepping out of the saddle.

  “Hell, no!” Kate told him with a smile, then walked into the house.

  Jamie stepped inside and closed the door behind them.

  Book Three

  Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.

  —Mark Twain

  29

  Those who had left the valley to fight in the war were beginning to return—all those who were coming back. Igemar returned minus his left hand. It had been blown off in Tennessee. Tomas returned and told his parents where Jorge was buried. Wells and Robert were buried with several hundred others in a mass grave in South Carolina, along with their white officers.

  Falcon and Matthew came riding in from Texas together, arguing and fussing about the war.

  “The both of you shut up!” their brother Ian told them. “Before I whup the pair of you.”

  Louie Huske and his family pulled in and were made welcome by all. The old soldier promptly bought some land from Jamie and settled down to farm during the summer and opened up a small saloon to run during the fall and winter.

  Little Ben Pardee immediately started sparking one of Ellen Kathleen’s daughters and began changing his mind about wandering.

  Doctor Tom Prentiss opened his office in Valley, Colorado, and for a time, everybody put the war behind them. All around them the Indians were going on the warpath, but never against any of those who settled in MacCallister’s Valley.

  Union troops visited the twin valleys several years after the war’s end, and they were received warmly—much to their surprise, for they knew all about Colonel Jamie MacCallister and his Marauders—and stayed for several days. They were stationed at Fort Lyon—located on the Arkansas River, just below the mouth of the Purgatoire—and were on a scouting expedition.

  “Any Indian trouble?” the major in charge asked Jamie.

  “We don’t have trouble with the Indians,” Jamie told him. “We live with the land and those who inhabit it. There are some tribes the white man will never get along with, but with most, they’re peaceful if you give them a fair chance to be.”

  “You sound as though you really like the Indians,” the major said.

  “I do,” Jamie said simply.

  “I have never seen so many blond-haired and blue-eyed children in one place,” a young lieutenant remarked. “And adults, too, for that matter.”

  Kate smiled at the young man. “Most of them are our kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids.”

  The young officer blinked at that, for Kate, like Jamie, did not look her age. “You have great-grandchildren?” he blurted.

  Jamie laughed at the expression on his face. “Son, me and Kate got married when we were both fourteen. Our oldest twins are forty years old and they married young. You figure it out.”

  Truth was, if pressed on the issue, Jamie could not begin to name all his grandkids and great-grandkids ... but Kate could, of course.

  The major leaned forward. “Sir, our trip here was twofold. One, we wanted to see this peaceful place in the middle of hostile territory, and two, I wanted to warn you that you have powerful and influential enemies back east.”

  Jamie smiled. “Major, I’ve had powerful enemies since I was about six years old and taken by the Shawnees. As far as my enemies back east, I can just about tell you their names: Olmstead and Layfield, to name two of them.”

  The major studied Jamie for a moment. “That is correct, sir, as far as you took it. But there are others just as powerful, or more so. Do you know a man named Newby?”

  Both Kate and Jamie chuckled. “The Newbys again? Good Lord. Talk about a name from the past. Uneducated trash, the whole lot of them.”

  “One side of the family, yes. The other side, no. But the educated and wealthy side is much more devious and dangerous. Then we have the Saxons—”

  Kate groaned. “Is it never going to end, Jamie?”

  “Doesn’t look like it, does it, Kate.”

  “You killed a man named Bradford down in the Big Thicket country years ago, Jamie,” the major said.

  “I might have. The name doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Some of his relatives have struck gold and silver in the Colorado mountains, and have become quite wealthy. They are also your sworn enemies. Be careful, Colonel,” the major used Jamie’s old military rank. “These mountains abound with men who have sworn to kill you.”

  “That’s going to take some doing, Major.”

  “Yes,” the major said drily. “I just imagine it will.”

  * * *

  Matthew had taken over his old job of sheriff. Back before the war, there had been precious little to do, but since the discovery of gold and silver, all sorts of trash and human vermin were flooding into the state, and Matthew found himself staying busy. Sometimes those types even made the mistake of entering MacCallister’s Valley. They usually did not linger long, but as more and more people pushed west, there were those who tried to settle in the lushness of the twin valleys. Jamie sold land to a few people, but most he turned away.

  Most went quietly, but a few kicked up a fuss about it. One of those who got all up in Jamie’s face was a man who called himself Grover Ellis.

  “You can’t own the whole goddamn area, MacCallister!” Grover blustered.

  “Oh, but I do,” Jamie said. “Check it out. You’ll find it all legal and proper.”

  “You can’t keep me from prospectin’ up yonder in the mountains, MacCallister!”

  “I don’t own the mountains, Ellis,” Jamie told him. “Prospect all you like.” Jamie pointed to one of the small peaks in the distance. “I would suggest you look there. At the base on the southwest side.”

  “Huh! Fat chance I’ll do that. You’d have me diggin’ there for the rest of my life and findin’ nothin’. Hell with you, MacCallister. I’ll move on, but I got kin. I got kin. And you ain’t heard the last of Grover Ellis.”

  If Ellis had gone where Jamie had told him to go, and worked hard at it, he would have found a small vein of the yellow metal, enough for the man to live out the rest of his life in some degree of security. But instead he chose to dig on the other side of the peak, and got himself killed because of it.

  * * *

  Cort Woodville never returned to Ravenswood Plantation, and it was two years after the war before Anne found out what had happened to her husband. Cort had been wounded during the battle of Spotsylvania, taken prisoner, escaped, and was wounded during the escape. It was presumed he died in the timber around the Union encampment; but his body was never found, and no one really knew what happened to Cort Woodville. Bodies of hundreds of men, on both sides, were never found.

  Since Anne Woodville owned bits and pieces of many factories up north, a fact that was quietly passed on to Union commanders around Richmond before it fell, Ravensw
ood came through the war unscathed. And while Anne was a ruthless and cunning woman, she was also a very smart woman. She doled out parcels of land to the most trusted of her slaves, and they began farming the land on shares. The South was hungry, and Ravenswood stopped growing cotton and began producing tons of vegetables to feed the hungry. Ravenswood’s ex-slaves were content to own and farm land on shares, the Federal government was content with what Anne was doing, and Anne was making money hand over fist. She was probably, at the time, the richest woman in the state of Virginia.

  Page Woodville had grown into a beautiful young woman, even more beautiful than her mother. She was just as intelligent as Anne, but twice as cunning and devious and dangerous... when she wanted to be. Page had dark hair, and dark eyes, and a figure that turned men’s heads wherever she walked. But when angered, her eyes could be as cold as frozen black water.

  Anne’s brother, Ross, had done well enough on his own. He had married the woman he’d gotten pregnant (the daughter of a wealthy Southern family), and was the father of fine young boy the couple had named Garrison; Gar, for short. Just before the South had exploded in war, Ross fathered another child, this time a girl. On the afternoon of the birthing, Ross sat in the parlor with a loaded pistol by his side, ready to blow his brains out if the child was born with Negro features. The girl was born white, with dark hair and dark eyes; but definitely white. Ross breathed a sigh of relief and put the pistol away. The girl was named Chastity.

  When the South began to fall, Ross’ wife simply could not endure the thought of those horrible Yankees taking control, and she took to her bed, forbidding Ross to ever touch her again, which suited Ross just fine, since his sexual appetites certainly leaned the other way. Ross’ wife succumbed to the vapors and drifted peacefully off to that great cotillion in the sky just before Lee’s surrender, and Ross was left with a huge plantation and two kids to raise. Being no fool, Ross followed his sister’s actions and parceled out the plantation, which met with the smiling satisfaction of the reconstructionists (Ross eventually bought back all the property from the ex-slaves, as did his sister), and began producing vegetables to feed the South.