Crusade of Eagles

by J. A. Johnstone

  “Why are we puttin’ our horses back here?” Logan asked as they tied their horses off behind the apothecary.

  “Think about it,” Loomis said. “There ain’t another horse in sight. We leave ours tied up out there, they’ll stick out like a sore thumb. I don’t know what’s goin’ on here, but I think we should play it careful.”

  “What about the saloon?” Strayhorn asked. “Can we go into the saloon?”

  “Yeah,” Loomis said. “If it’s open, then someone is bound to be in there, even if it is just the bartender.”

  The five men walked back out to the front of the apothecary, then across the street to the saloon. Strayhorn pushed open the batwing doors, then looked around.

  The saloon was empty.

  “They’s nobody in here!” he called back to the others.

  “What do you mean they’s nobody in here?” Loomis said, coming in behind him. “There’s got to be somebody in here. Where’s the bartender?”

  Logan, Seth, and Luke came in as well, and they stood there for a moment, looking around the empty saloon.

  “Look,” Logan said, pointing to a table. There were four hands of cards lying on the table, and a stack of chips in the middle of the table, as well as stacks in front of each hand.

  “They left their money,” Strayhorn said. He took his hat off and went over to start raking the chips off the table.

  “What are you doing?” Loomis asked.

  “I’m takin’ this money,” Strayhorn said.

  “Where do you plan to spend it, fool?” Loomis asked. “That ain’t real money, that’s just poker chips. They ain’t worth a nickel outside this saloon.”

  “Oh,” Strayhorn said, crestfallen. “Oh, yeah, I reckon you’re right.” He dumped the chips back onto the table.

  “Hey, Loomis, what do you make of that?” Seth asked, pointing to the bar.

  There, sitting on the bar, were two bottles of whiskey.

  There was a sign leaning against the whiskey bottles.

  Drink up Boys, they are on Me.

  ~ FALCON MACCALLISTER.

  “Well, that’s nice of him,” Strayhorn said. He pulled the cork, then turned the bottle up to his lips, taking several deep swallows. Then, he set the bottle back on the bar and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “That wasn’t very smart,” Loomis said. “He probably poisoned it.”

  “What?” Strayhorn gasped. He staggered back against the bar and stood there for a second with his hands clasped over his stomach.

  “What about it, Strayhorn?” Logan asked. “Is it poison?”

  Strayhorn took several deep breaths. Then he smiled. “Nah,” he said. “It ain’t poison.”

  Strayhorn reached for the bottle again, but Logan beat him to it.

  “You had your drink,” Logan said.

  Suddenly the clock whirred, then began to chime, but Loomis turned and shot it, stopping the clock in mid-chime.

  Luke laughed.

  “What’s so damn funny?” Loomis asked.

  “You just killed the clock,” Luke said.

  “Yeah, and I’ll kill you if you don’t shut up.”

  “I was just funnin’ with you, Loomis,” Luke said. “I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”

  By now the second bottle had been opened, and the men were passing it back and forth as well.

  “I don’t like this,” Loomis said. “I don’t like this at all.”

  “Hell, have a drink, Loomis,” Strayhorn said. “It’s easy enough to figure out what’s happened.”

  “What has happened?”

  “MacCallister heard we was comin’ and him and his brother and sister skedaddled out of town, that’s all. They’re afraid of us.”

  “Uh-huh? Where is the rest of the town?” Loomis asked.

  Falcon, Andrew, and Rosanna were in Falcon’s hotel room. They had chosen it because it was at the front of the hotel, and had a commanding view of both Lincoln and Pine Streets. It also had a view of The Farmers’ Dell Saloon.

  “Everyone is in the church?” Falcon asked.

  “Yes,” Andrew answered. “Everyone except Posey, the undertaker. And we’ve got somebody out on the road to meet him, to keep him from comin’ into town till it’s all over.”

  “Good,” Falcon said. “This is our fight, not the town’s fight. This way, no one will get hurt.”

  “Where are they now, Rosanna?” Andrew asked.

  “They’re still in the saloon,” Rosanna said. She was looking through the window.

  “Are you ready?” Falcon asked.

  “I’m ready,” Rosanna answered.

  “How about you?” Falcon asked Andrew.

  “I’m ready.”

  “Then let’s do it.”

  Nodding, Rosanna raised the window and stepped out onto the porch roof. She walked to the edge of the porch, then shielded her eyes with her hands, looking toward the end of Lincoln Street.

  “Loomis, come here, look at this!” Strayhorn called. Strayhorn was standing at the door of the saloon.

  “What?”

  “It’s the MacCallister woman,” Strayhorn said.

  Loomis hurried quickly to the door.

  “I don’t see anyone coming!”

  They heard the woman’s voice floating across the street.

  “All right, I’ll look that way,” she said.

  “Son of a bitch! They are in the hotel waitin’ for us,” Loomis said. “They didn’t see us come in!”

  “Well, if they’re countin’ on her to give ’em warnin’, they got another think comin’,” Strayhorn said. He aimed at the woman.

  “No!” Loomis said, knocking his hand down. “You’ll give us away.”

  “You got a plan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What is it?”

  “Follow me.”

  With guns drawn, the five men left through the back door of the saloon, ran up the alley to the far end of the street, then dashed across the street and came back down another alley until they were behind the hotel.

  The back door of the hotel was unlocked.

  “You know which room they’re in?” Seth whispered.

  “It has to be the upstairs front room,” Loomis answered just as quietly. “She was talkin’ to someone in there.”

  The five men went up the stairs as quietly as they could, the silence facilitated by the carpet. When they reached the front room, the door was closed. Strayhorn reached for it, but Loomis waved him away.

  Strayhorn looked at Loomis with a questioning expression on his face.

  Loomis cocked his pistol and aimed it at the door, then indicated that the others should do the same.

  “Now!” he shouted.

  All five men began blazing away at the door. Dust and sawdust flew out from the door as it filled with bullet holes. Shafts of sunlight stabbed through the holes. The noise of the gunshots bounced back from the walls of the hall so that, by the time they had expended their last round, their ears were ringing.

  “Do you think we got ’em?” Luke asked, having to yell to be heard.

  “Reload,” Loomis ordered.

  Quickly, the five men reloaded; then, with pistols at the ready, Loomis opened the door and they rushed into the room.

  Inside the room, they saw evidence of the fusillade they had just unleashed. The window was shot out, the mirror was broken, there were holes in the dresser, in the walls, and in the bed.

  But there were no MacCallisters.

  “Where the hell did they go?” Seth asked.

  Loomis stepped up to the window and looked out over the town. He was about to look away when he saw something that he hadn’t seen before. There was something hanging from the signpost in the middle of town, the post that announced the intersection of Lincoln and Pine Streets.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said.

  “What? What is it?” Logan asked.

  Loomis pointed. “The money,” he said. “The son of a bitch has hung those saddle
bags, with the money, from that signpost down there.”

  “Maybe he’s saying this is the end of it,” Logan said. “Maybe he’s leavin’ us the money, hopin’ we’ll go away.”

  “Maybe,” Loomis said. “But I doubt it.”

  “I doubt it too. There’s probably no money in ’em,” Strayhorn said. “That’s probably just the empty saddlebags.”

  “Nope,” Loomis insisted, shaking his head. “I’m not sure what he is tryin’ to do, but I believe the money is in them saddlebags.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because that’s just the kind of thing that son of a bitch would do,” Loomis said.

  “So, what do we do now?” Luke asked.

  “We go get the money,” Loomis answered.

  Falcon and Andrew were standing just under the overhang of the blacksmith shop, looking down the street toward the saddlebags.

  “There are five of them,” Falcon said. “I thought there were only three. Were those other two with them when they were holding you and Rosanna prisoner?”

  “No,” Andrew said. “This is the first I’ve seen of them.”

  “They must’ve signed on some help,” Falcon said. He sighed. “Andrew, it’s not too late for you to leave.”

  Andrew picked up a pair of blacksmith tongs. “If you say that again, little brother, I’m going to go right upside your head.”

  Falcon chuckled. “All right,” he said. “It’s your funeral.”

  “Ouch. You could have come up with a better cliché than that.”

  “I’m not worried, though,” Falcon said.

  “You aren’t?”

  “Nah. Here you are, standing right by my side, the same way you stood by Wyatt Earp’s side in Tombstone,” Falcon said.

  Andrew laughed. “All right, I deserved that.”

  Loomis stuck his hand down into one of the saddlebags, then pulled out a fistful of money.

  “Ha!” he shouted, holding the money over his head. “I told you! I told you the son of bitch would leave the money in the saddlebags!”

  The others came running up to the signpost then, and there was a frenzy as they started pulling bound packets of money from the saddlebags and sticking them in their pockets.

  “Remember, half of it is mine!” Loomis shouted.

  “The hell it is!” Seth replied. “It’s ever’ man for himself now!”

  The men started fighting among themselves, trying to grab the saddlebags from each other, dropping packets of money in their greedy attempt to get more.

  “Well, now,” Falcon suddenly said loudly. “What do you think, Andrew? Isn’t this like a bunch of flies, buzzing around a pile of horse turds?”

  “You are insulting the flies, little brother,” Andrew replied loudly.

  “It’s MacCallister!” Loomis shouted, grabbing for his gun.

  Rosanna was in the dress shop across the way, watching through the window. She saw one of the men aiming at Andrew, holding his gun at arm’s length. There was something unreal about it, as if she were watching Andrew performing a drama on stage. But it was Falcon who got his gun out first and the first shot came from his gun.

  Despite the fact that one of the men was aiming at Andrew, Falcon fired at Loomis, who was the leader of the group. Rosanna saw the recoil kick Falcon’s hand up, and she saw the great puff of smoke from the discharge. She heard Loomis call out in pain, then saw him grab his stomach as he went down.

  After that, guns began to roar in rapid succession, and she saw that, though the first man seemed to have the drop on Andrew, his shot missed, whereas Andrew’s shot did not. The man went down; then Andrew turned his attention toward Logan. Andrew and Logan fired at the same time, and Logan went down. As Logan was going down, she saw Falcon drop the second man that she didn’t know, then turn his attention to Strayhorn. Strayhorn staggered back from being hit, then tried to raise his pistol to fire. This time both Falcon and Andrew fired, and Strayhorn was knocked flat on his back.

  The entire battle was over within twenty seconds, and now Falcon and Andrew, the only two left on their feet, stood there looking down at the five bodies. Smoke curled up from the ends of their pistols to join with the larger cloud of gun smoke that was floating out over the town.

  It was over.

  From the far end of the street, the doors to the church opened and the townspeople, who had been convinced to take shelter, now started running up the street shouting in excitement and curiosity.

  Epilogue

  Andrew stood holding a smoking pistol, looking down at the men he had just bested.

  “Oh, sir!” Rosanna said, holding her hand across her heart. “You have saved the town. You have bested the evil killer of men and despoiler of women.”

  “It was nothing,” Andrew replied in a loud, clear voice.

  “Nothing? Why, sir, you are too modest. What you did required courage and great skill.”

  “My adversary also had courage and skill,” Andrew said. “But what made the difference in this contest was the triumph of good over evil.”

  “Yes,” Rosanna said, her eyes shining brightly. “And thus it will always be—good over evil.”

  The curtains closed.

  The curtains opened again, to the continuing applause of the audience. Andrew held out his hand to welcome the other players on stage, appearing in reverse order of their importance to the play.

  The other players came out in ones and twos, until finally, all were standing on the stage. Then, taking each other’s hand, Andrew and Rosanna stepped to the front for one final bow.

  As they left the stage to go back to their dressing room, they were met by a reporter for the New York Times.

  “Mr. MacCallister,” the reporter said. “I have heard that this play is taken from real life. That it is a factual representation of your own exploits during your recent trip to the West. Is that true?”

  Andrew looked over at Rosanna and smiled, then looked back at the reporter. He shook his head.

  “It’s just a play,” he said. “A drama for the stage, and nothing more.”

  TURN THE PAGE FOR AN EXCITING PREVIEW

  OF THE BOLD NEW SERIES FROM

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

  AND J. A. JOHNSTONE

  Matt Jensen: The Last Mountain Man

  Matt Cavanaugh is ten years old when an outlaw band led by the brutal Clyde Payson massacres his family in Colorado Territory, leaving him the sole survivor. He is placed in an orphanage—really a work camp for children, who are brutalized and exploited. Matt escapes when he is twelve, and after days of wandering around is found by the young Smoke Jensen, who takes the boy in, raises him, and teaches Matt everything he knows. Matt can track, trap, and hunt, and is as deadly with a knife as he is with a gun.

  When he is eighteen, he tells Smoke that he is ready to go out on his own. Smoke agrees that Matt is ready, and gives the boy six hundred dollars, which is half of everything that Smoke has. Matt says he would like something else—Smoke’s last name.

  Thus begins the saga of Matt Jensen, the Last Mountain Man.

  Matt Jensen: The Last Mountain Man

  Coming in September 2007,

  wherever Pinnacle Books are sold!

  Chapter One

  Fellsburg, Kansas, November 30, 1864

  Mary Cavanaugh supported her family by taking in washing, and by baking pies and cakes for Childers’ Café. Her day had started before dawn this morning, and it was just finishing two hours after dark. She carried a lighted candle into her daughter’s bedroom and saw that Cassie was sleeping soundly.

  Lovingly, Mary adjusted the covers over Cassie, then smoothed them out. Mary was very proud of her daughter. Though only thirteen, Cassie helped with the laundry that Mary took in, and was already doing the work of a grown woman.

  Stepping back out into the hall, Mary climbed the ladder to the loft where her son, Matt, lay sleeping on a straw mattress on the floor. He had kicked his covers off and was now rolled into a ball
to keep warm. Smiling at her nine-year-old son, Mary put the blanket over him, then climbed back down the stairs to go to her own bedroom.

  As she put on her nightgown, she looked over at the bed. How she wished Martin was here now, warming the bed for her. But the bed was empty, and had been for the last three years, because Martin Cavanaugh was away at war.

  Mary blew out the candle, then got into bed and slipped under the sheet. Before she drifted off to sleep, she said a small prayer for her husband’s safety.

  Franklin, Tennessee

  It was one o’clock in the morning when Brigadier General Jacob D. Cox called his army to a halt. General Cox commanded the Twenty-third Corps of the Army of Ohio, and his adjutant was Captain Martin Cavanaugh. Cavanaugh was from Kansas and, normally, would have been with one of the Kansas units, but had come to the Army of Ohio after he recovered from a battlefield wound.

  “Captain Cavanaugh,” General Cox called.

  “Yes, sir,” Martin said, coming up alongside the general’s horse.

  Cox stood in the stirrups and scratched at his crotch for a second. Then he pointed toward a two-story, brick house. The house was dark.

  “Do you believe that house is occupied?” Cox asked.

  Martin saw the remnants of a summer garden, and well-trimmed shrubbery.

  “Yes, sir, I believe it is occupied,” he replied.

  “It has been a long march and the men are tired,” General Cox said. “We will bivouac here. Go and knock on the door. Offer my regards to the master of the house, then inform him that I shall be using this house as my headquarters.”

  “Very good, sir,” Martin replied.

  It had fallen upon Martin to dislodge families before. He didn’t particularly like this part of his duty, and couldn’t help but think of his own family back in Kansas. He wondered how he would feel if they were turned out in the middle of the night by a marauding army.