Talons of Eagles

by William W. Johnstone

  “Drop your gun belt where you stand, Decker,” Jamie told him.

  The gun belt quickly hit the ground.

  “Now take Lew’s gun out with your left hand, thumb and forefinger only, and toss it to one side. And when that is done, drag him over there.” Jamie pointed with the muzzle of the Henry.

  Lew screamed in pain as Decker dragged him off to one side.

  “Now drag Cal over there beside him,” Jamie said, after relieving the unconscious man of his pistol.

  That done, Jamie pointed the rifle at Decker. “You can heat up some water now, and see to their wounds. But don’t get any cute ideas. I’ll gut-shoot you and leave you all for the bears and the pumas.”

  “Whatever you say, mister,” Decker said. “We just wanted some coffee and food.”

  “You’re a liar. You were going to kill me, steal my horses and rape any women you found in camp. I heard you talking.”

  Jamie poured himself a cup of coffee and backed away from the outlaws. He petted Lightning and calmed him down, then moved to the packhorse and calmed him. Then he sat down on a log and watched Decker work on the wounded men.

  “They both need doctors,” Decker finally said. “I think Cal’s skull is cracked, and Lew is chewed up and stomped on something fierce.”

  “Goldtown is that way,” Jamie said, jerking a thumb.

  “Do you mean for us to walk? ” Decker asked.

  “Unless you can fly.”

  Cal moaned and sat up, rubbing his aching noggin. He blinked a couple of times and stared at Jamie, sitting on the log, a cup of coffee in one hand, the Henry rifle in the other big paw. Jamie held it like it weighed no more than a feather.

  “How many of me do you see, Cal?” Jamie asked.

  “One,” the man said, a surly edge to the words. “And that’s one too many.”

  “He’s just got a bump on the head,” Jamie said. “Between the two of you, you can manage to get your friend to Goldtown. Take you about two days. Providing you don’t run into Indians.”

  “What about our guns?” Lew gasped the question through his pain.

  “They stay with me.”

  “You’re a black-hearted devil, mister,” Lew said. “You ain’t got no call to treat us like this. We’s human beings, not niggers nor Injuns.”

  Jamie chose not to reply to that. He sat on the log and stared at the men.

  “Will you give us some food?” Decker asked.

  “I’ll give you some jerky and a canteen of water. What happened to your horses and supplies?”

  “Stole by Injuns, I reckon.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “West Virginee. We was supposed to hook up with kin of ourn, but we got lost, I reckon. These damn mountains got us all turned around. They some bigger than the ones back to home.”

  “You should have stayed to home,” Jamie told him.

  “Cain’t do that,” Cal spoke. “We swore to avenge our kin. The family honor is at stake.”

  “So you’re manhunters, right?”

  “Kin is kin, mister,” Lew said. “When a man does a hurt to one Ellis, he hurts us all.”

  Jamie had noticed that Decker was slowly moving his hand toward his right boot top. Hide-out gun, he thought. “Ellis, hey? I’ve heard that name. There was a no-count piece of white trash got all up in my face some months ago, demanding this and that and threatening me. I ran him off. His name was Grover Ellis. That your kin?”

  “Who you be, mister?” Decker said, his face flushed and his eyes mean with hate.

  “Jamie MacCallister.” Jamie set his cup of coffee down on the log.

  Decker let out a vile oath and grabbed for his boot. Jamie let him get the pistol clear, and then he shot him, the .44 slug taking the man in the center of his chest. Decker stretched out on the ground, dead.

  “If you feel lucky, go for the pistol,” Jamie told the pair, dropping one hand to his side. “I haven’t levered in a fresh round. You might make it.”

  Cal grabbed for the pistol, and Jamie drew his right-hand Colt and let it bang. Cal was sprawled out on the ground, belly down, one hand reaching for the pistol when Jamie fired. The slug entered the top of his head and exited down near the base of his spine.

  “That leaves you,” Jamie told Lew.

  “You’re a cold-hearted, black-souled bastard, Jamie MacCallister,” the last man said. “But I’ll not play no fool’s game. You let that damn horse of yourn make a cripple out of me. And you done it deliberate, ’cause you knew what he was gonna do. That makes you snake-shit low. But I’ll live. Somehow I’ll make it to Goldtown and recover. Then I’ll find my kin and we’ll come after you, Jamie MacCallister. And if we don’t find you, Colonel Layfield and his Revengers will.”

  Jamie kept his face bland at that. So Aaron Layfield was really coming after him. The man certainly held a grudge for a long time.

  “Your funeral,” Jamie told him. “Now belly down on the ground, Lew.” Jamie walked over to the man and threw the pistol into the timber. “If you raise your head up, I’ll kill you.”

  Jamie quickly packed up and saddled up. He left a canteen of water and some jerky on the ground. In the saddle, he looked down at Lew, who had turned over at Jamie’s command and was staring up at him, his face shiny from pain-sweat and his eyes flashing with dark hate. “If you have any sense at all, Lew, you’ll give up this hunt.”

  “I’ll see you in hell, MacCallister!”

  “Whatever,” Jamie said, and rode off.

  * * *

  Jamie paused at the cemetery at the edge of the still-growing town of MacCallister. He sat his saddle for a moment, looking at the headstones, his mind filled with memories. The early settlers were going, faster now as the years piled up behind them. Sam and Sarah Montgomery now lay side by side in the cemetery. Both had lived into their eighties and had died within weeks of each other. But they had left behind them kids and grandkids to proudly carry on their name.

  Falcon had seen his father ride up and rode out to meet him. “Any trouble, Pa?”

  “None to speak of. How’s your ma?”

  “Fine. Misses you.”

  “Any trouble?”

  “Not the first sign of it.”

  “It’s coming. And it’ll be coming in large groups when it does. Let’s go home, boy.”

  After a long hot bath and a shave, Jamie sat down to eat with Kate.

  “Is this Cord the girl’s father, Jamie?”

  “Yes. And we both agreed there was nothing we could do, or should do, about the marriage—which has probably already taken place. Did you tell Ellen Kathleen about, ah, the, ah ... well, you know?”

  “No. I wanted to talk to you about that.”

  “Why should we worry her? But on the other hand, if something were to happen, like, ah, with babies . . . oh, hell, Kate, you know what I mean.”

  “I’m going to have to give that some thought, Jamie. Did you have any trouble on the trail?”

  As was his custom, Jamie leveled with her, leaving nothing out.

  “Will these men be coming here?”

  “I’m certain of it.”

  She poured them both coffee and put out a fresh-baked berry pie. She cut a small slice for herself and half the pie for Jamie. Age had not diminished his appetite one whit.

  “That young Smoke Jensen is a polite young man, but he has the coldest eyes I believe I have ever seen. Falcon says he’s the fastest with a pistol and the deadest shot alive, and coming from Falcon, that is a compliment.”

  “I’d say so. He’s a quiet young man, but I’d not want him doggin’ my back trail.”

  Kate looked at her husband to see if he was serious. He was. For Jamie, called Man Who Is Not Afraid, Man Who Plays With Wolves, and Bear Killer . . . for him to say such a thing was practically unheard of.

  Kate studied her husband’s face. This Smoke Jensen must have really impressed him.

  “One thing about being married to you, Jamie Ian MacCallister,” Kate said.
“I have never lacked for excitement in my life.”

  Jamie looked at her and chuckled. “But it has been a good life, has it not, love?”

  “I wouldn’t trade it for anything, Jamie. Nothing in this world.” She sighed. “I just wish . . .” She fell silent.

  “What, Kate. What is it you wish for?”

  She shook her head. “Finish your pie, honey. Then we’ll talk.”

  “Tell me now, Kate.”

  She sighed and said, “It’s nothing your gold can buy, Jamie. The Swede is down in bed. Doctor Tom says there is nothing he can do. It was a stroke, Doctor Tom says.”

  Jamie looked down at his desert plate and pushed it away from him. “I knew Swede was ailing some when I left, but... I was only gone ten days, Kate.”

  She wiped suddenly moist eyes. “He went down very fast, Jamie.”

  “I’ll go see him.”

  “He won’t know you. He doesn’t know anybody. Not even Hannah. Jamie, Hannah is ten or twelve years older than us, and Swede is five or six years older than Hannah. That makes him near eighty or better. He’s had a good long life. He just . . . ran out of time, honey.”

  “I’ve thought about . . . well, what lies beyond this life, from time to time. More so now that I’ve got more years behind me than what is ahead of me. And, to be honest, the Swede talked to me about . . . when his day came. The Shawnees—indeed most Indians—accept death as a part of life. They don’t fear it like the white man. You leave this life, you begin another one. Well, I best go over and talk to Reverend—”

  Jamie caught himself and grimaced. Reverend Haywood had passed on three years back. Lydia Haywood had followed him a year later. The new minister, Charles Powell, was a nice enough fellow, but one that Jamie just could not warm to. Many of Jamie’s thoughts about the afterlife collided head-on with the new minister’s beliefs, for Jamie thought much like an Indian concerning the Great Beyond.

  Kate touched her husband’s hand. “Hannah and I will see to matters, Jamie. It’s late. You get some rest.”

  Jamie shook his head. “I want to go sit with Swede for a time. I’ll be back early, Kate. I . . .”

  He paused as the door was pushed open. Jamie Ian stood there, his hat in his hands. “Pa, Mother. The Swede just died.”

  * * *

  Reverend Powell did not understand why Jamie did not attend the funeral of one of his best friends. But he and a few others were the only ones who did not understand why Jamie chose to sit his horse on a ridge high above the valley and look down during the ceremony. Reverend Powell also disapproved when Jamie insisted that some of Swede’s tools be buried with him.

  “It’ll help him get by in the new life,” Jamie told the stern young man who always dressed in a black suit and never seemed to smile.

  “God will provide all things, Mister MacCallister,” the young minister said.

  “Even God might need a little help every now and then,” Jamie replied. “Besides, Hannah agrees with me, so no more needs to be said about it.”

  “The man is simply impossible,” Charles Powell told his wife, Claudia, after the services. “I do not understand him . . . at all! Sometimes he behaves like a . . . well, like a heathen! ”

  The wife patted her husband’s hand. “I know, dear.”

  “I’ll convert Jamie Ian MacCallister someday,” Reverend Powell said. “Someday I shall see him Washed in the Blood of Christ. Someday I shall hear him forever renounce the heathen ways of the Indians.”

  Claudia Powell ducked her head to hide her smile. When hell freezes over, she thought. Then stifled a giggle at her blasphemy.

  34

  Ben Franklin Washington awakened to a terrible throbbing pain in his head. He lay still for a moment, trying to get his bearings. It didn’t take him long to realize that he was in a ditch, or a pond, or lake . . . for he was lying in several inches of water. Slowly, slowly, he raised his head and looked around him. There was not a lamplight in sight. He lay in total darkness. He put out one hand and felt a rise in the earth. He pulled himself toward that rise until he was out of the water. The exertion caused him to lose consciousness for a time. When he came around, the eastern sky was turning pink.

  Then panic struck him hard, for his mind seemed a total blank. He did not know his name, did not know where he was, could not recall what had happened to him . . . nothing.

  “Calm down,” Ben said aloud. “Just calm down and relax. You’ve suffered some sort of accident, that’s all. Your memory will return.”

  He slept for a time, until the warmth of the sun awakened him. With full consciousness, bits and pieces began returning to him.

  “I am a writer, a reporter,” he said aloud. “My name is Ben Franklin Washington. I am in Virginia. And somebody tried to kill me.”

  Then it all came flooding back. His search. The detective. The detective’s warning. The detective’s death.

  Ben pulled himself to a sitting position, only then aware of a pain in his left arm and chest. He looked down. A bullet hole penetrated his coat and shirt, the bullet having nicked the fleshy part of his inner arm and gouged a thin line in the side of his upper chest.

  “After I was struck,” he said aloud, “they brought me out here and shot me, and left me for dead. That has to be it.” He smiled ruefully. Just another dead nigger found alongside the road. Not much would be done about that. But who would do such a vile and evil thing? His mother, Anne LeBeau Woodville, and his uncle, Ross LeBeau, of course.

  He patted his pockets. His wallet was gone, of course, and all the change and keys. But Ben was no fool. He looked around him before removing his shoes. He had several hundred dollars in paper money hidden under the inner lining of his shoes. He smoothed that out and then, using a thin rock, pried off one heel and removed several gold coins from the hollowed-out leather. He hammered the heel back on and then did something with his wet and muddy clothing, washing and drying each article carefully. Then he brushed each garment as best he could, bathed his face and hands in the creek water, and dressed.

  His head hurt something awful, and he gingerly probed the back of his head. There was a knot about the size of a goose egg there, but he could detect nothing broken. Thank God I have a hard head, he reflected. Then he sat for a time, his thoughts busy.

  “Yes. All right. Let them think me dead,” he finally said aloud. “I have funds to return to Boston on the train.” Providing I can find a train, he thought with a bit of humor. “I’ll confer with my editor, and then we’ll see about upsetting some apple carts.”

  Ben rose to his squishy shoes. “I wanted to cause you no trouble, Mother. I just wanted to find out where I really came from. Perhaps see you, tell you I hold no rancor toward you; tell you I understand why you sought to pass for white. And then I would quietly return to Boston and let sleeping dogs lie. You will regret this, Mother. I promise you that.”

  Ben Franklin Washington started slowly walking down the road. He could see chimney smoke in the distance. He had a terrible headache. He wondered how much it had cost his mother and uncle to have this done.

  Two hundred and fifty Yankee dollars.

  * * *

  Lew made it to Goldtown. He said nothing about his dead partners back on the trail. He had rifled their pockets, taken all their money, found the pistol Jamie had tossed into the brush, and fashioned himself a crutch of sorts, then hobbled on, after shoving his dead partners over the side of the ridge. Varmints would soon erase all traces of them. Along the way, Lew treated his badly bitten arm with poultices and said nothing about it when he reached the settlement. As for his broken foot, he told the story that his horse bolted, spooked by a puma, and stepped on his foot. His horse had run off in a panic, and he could not find it. It was a good enough story—it had certainly happened to others—and no one questioned it.

  By the time he reached Goldtown, the bones in his foot were beginning to heal, badly, and there was nothing that could be done for it, for there was no doctor in the boom town. Lew
would always have a limp, and for the time left him on this earth, when it rained, his foot would ache something fierce.

  Lew bought a horse and supplies, and then struck out to find his kin. He had a real score to settle with that damned Jamie Ian MacCallister.

  * * *

  There were still a few Indians left around MacCallister’s Valley, and they were all friends with Jamie. They were his eyes and ears, and they did not let him down.

  “White men come,” the old Ute called Three Horses told Jamie. He pointed toward the east and said, “Four days away.”

  “How many?” Jamie asked.

  Three Horses held up both hands, fingers open. He opened and closed them five times, then shook his head and repeated the same thing twice more.

  “A hundred and fifty men,” Jamie muttered, although he knew that was only an approximation on the part of Three Horses. It might mean a hundred men, or it might be three hundred men.

  Jamie pulled at his shirt and gestured to the east.

  Three Horses shook his head. “All same. Blue. But not soldiers like we know. Hat different. Not yellow legs. Red leg.”

  “Layfield’s bunch,” Jamie said.

  “That first group,” Three Horses said. “Second group smaller. Dress all different. Two days behind red legs. I go.” He turned his horse’s head and rode off.

  Jamie stood and watched him leave. Two groups of men, both of them coming after him. Layfield and Ellis’ kin, he felt certain. He could not let them strike the town. Too many innocent people would be killed. There were too many kids living here.

  With his return from Goldtown, Preacher and Smoke had pulled out. But even had they stayed, the odds would have been too great.

  Jamie squatted down and thought the situation over. Falcon and Marie were planning their wedding. Jamie wouldn’t want to leave Marie a widow before the couple even got hitched.

  Jamie mounted up and rode back down to the village—no, he corrected himself. It was no longer a village: it was a town, with stores and a doctor and a church and everything else that made a community. It had to be preserved, and preserved intact.