Eyes of Eagles

by William W. Johnstone

  No one ever really found out what happened to the ashes of the defenders of the Alamo.

  Jamie motioned for the others to join him and the group walked the grounds and stared in awe at the bullet-and shell-ravaged walls and buildings. Jamie would not let the children look inside the blood-splattered rooms.

  All were glad to leave the compound, Jamie especially, for to him it seemed that the ghosts of the fallen heroes were everywhere. The feeling of their presence was so strong, he had to fight the temptation to look over his shoulder. Years later, when friends came to visit him in the mountains, they would all tell him that the ghosts were still there, roaming the grounds of the old mission. Some would say they could faintly hear McGregor’s bagpipes, the sawing sounds of Crockett’s fiddle, in Travis’s quarters, the sounds of his restless pacing, and in Bowie’s room, the scratching of his pen as he laboriously wrote the stirring last farewell that the editor had refused to print.

  Jamie sent the others on to where they were going to camp for a couple of days, while the ladies provisioned up for the long trip that lay ahead of them. He stood and sat and squatted for over an hour, staring at the outside of the walls of the Alamo, letting memories flood him. He knew, without any doubt at all, that if he lived to be a hundred and fought in that many more battles, he would never stand shoulder to shoulder with any braver men than those who died at the Alamo. For Freedom. For Texas.

  Finally, he mounted up and rode away, leaving it all behind him. Except for the memories. Those, he would take to the grave.

  * * *

  Visiting the cantinas of San Antonio, Jamie found four men, two Mexican and two Anglo — all of whom Senor Ruiz vouched for — who agreed to drive additional wagons west and north into the mountains for Jamie and the others. Where they were going, there would be no stores, no neighbors, no nothing — not for hundreds of miles. Jamie did not yet know about Bent’s Fort, but where he had in mind to take his people was still a couple of hundred miles from the junction of the Arkansas and Purgatory Rivers, where the Bent Brothers build their huge fort.

  It was here, at San Antonio, that Jamie called his little group together for one last chance for anyone to change their minds, if any chose to do that.

  No one did.

  Jamie shrugged his heavy shoulders. Of them all, only he had any idea what the high mountains were like, and that came from talking with mountain men who had been there; lived there for years. It was going to be brutally cold in the winters, with a short growing season. He had reminded them of that.

  “If there is dirt, things will grow,” Swede said. He grinned at Hannah, who was pregnant again, she felt sure. “Including kids.”

  “We pull out in the morning,” Jamie said.

  Of the newly hired men, Carbone and Martine (whose sons would grow up to be feared gunfighters) and Jones and Williams, only Martine had been up to the Rocky Mountains, and he warned Jamie that it was going to be a tough pull for wagons.

  “I’d rather see you with oxen, senor,” he told him. “But these mules will make it, providing you take enough grain along to add to their grazing.”

  “That’s what you and Jones will be hauling in those big wagons.”

  “Then we shall be ready to go in the morning.”

  That night, Jamie stood with his arm across Kate’s shoulder, and together they looked at the candle and lamplights of San Antonio.

  “Hold the sight in your mind, Kate. For odds are good that you will never see its like again.”

  “I won’t miss it,” she said with a smile. “I’ve come to enjoy the solitude of the wilderness. I want our children to grow up knowing and loving the wild country. And with Sam and Sarah along, they’ll also be educated. We’re going to have the best of all worlds, love.”

  “Regrets, Kate?”

  “Not a one, Jamie. Not a one.”

  * * *

  The weather turned against them. Rain developed that night, and by morning it was coming down in torrents.

  “No point in setting out in this,” Jamie said to the others. “We’ll stay right here until it clears. We have time.”

  Rain soaked the land for two days and nights, turning roads into quagmires and making trails impassable. Finally the sun shone in welcome rays and three days after the torrential rains had ended, Jamie felt they could start the next day. At noon, Martine came to him.

  “Men in town looking for you, senor. Talk is, they plan to kill you.”

  “Why?” Jamie asked.

  “Something about their brothers and a big fight they had with you some years back.”

  “Lord knows I’ve had some fights,” Jamie acknowledged. “But I thought all that was over and done with.” Jamie was thoughtful for a few seconds. “Don’t mention this to anyone else, all right?”

  “As you wish. There are at least five of them, and I suspect more are lounging about town. Do you wish me to accompany you?”

  Jamie shook his head. “I’ll kill my own snakes, Martine. But thanks.”

  Martine watched him ride toward town, then turned and walked over to Carbone. “Saddle up your horse and come with me. Senor MacCallister might need our help.”

  Carbone, never one to avoid a good fight, smiled and quickly saddled his horse. Both men checked their guns, inspected the sharpness of their knives, and rode into town.

  “Eight men, Senor Jamie,” the liveryman told him. “They ride in yesterday. I do not like their looks at all. I believe they are here looking for you.”

  “Gracias,” Jamie thanked him, and handed him the reins to his horse.

  Jamie ducked out the back of the huge building. Keeping to the alleys, he made his way to a cantina at the edge of the village, one mostly frequented by the area’s less than desirable citizens.

  The fight that was only moments away from erupting would be talked about in San Antonio for years. Jamie Ian MacCallister, twenty-seven years old and already a legend for many of those years, was about to enhance that saga.

  As Jamie peeked into the bar from the storage room, he didn’t need a guide to spot those hunting him. Three of them were standing at the plank bar, swilling whiskey.

  The bartender spotted Jamie standing in the gloom of the back room and with a slight nod of his head, the others standing at the bar quietly took up their glasses and moved away. They were all rough men, some of them outlaws and gunrunners to the Comanche and Kiowa, but they all knew Jamie and liked him for his fairness and respected him for his courage. And deep down, none of them wanted any trouble with Jamie MacCallister.

  Jamie pulled both pistols from his belt and cocked them, then stepped into the big room, filled with cigar smoke and the sour smell of whiskey and unwashed bodies.

  “I’m Jamie MacCallister,” he said. “Are you the gentlemen looking for me?”

  The bartender hit the floor with a thud as the three men turned and drew their pistols.

  “You mighty right about that, you son of a bitch!” the biggest and ugliest of the trio said.

  Jamie shot him in the belly, the heavy ball doubling the man over and knocking him into the second man, sending both of them to the floor. Jamie lifted his other pistol and drilled the standing man in the center of his chest. He covered the short distance from the doorway to the storage to the bar in a heartbeat and jerked the third man to his boots and hit him with a crashing right fist that pulped the man’s lips and sent yellowing teeth flying and blood splattering. Jamie bodily picked the man up and threw him across the room. The man landed against the wall and the sounds of bones breaking was loud.

  Jamie took two pistols from the dead man, checked them, and stuck them behind his belt. He took two pistols from the gut-shot and moaning man, checked them, and stuck them behind his belt, at his back. He quickly reloaded his own pistols, and carrying them in his hands, he walked outside.

  “MacCallister!” the shout came from a man standing in the middle of the wide street.

  “That’s me,” Jamie said.

  “You ki
lt my kin a few years back. He were ridin’ with Olmstead and Jackson.”

  “He should have picked better company,” Jamie replied, cocking the heavy pistol.

  “You’re a dead man, MacCallister!”

  “No, I’m not,” Jamie said. “But you damn sure are.” Then he shot the man right between the eyes at a distance of about a hundred feet.

  Standing a half block away, Carbone and Martine exchanged glances. “Asombroso!” Martine breathed. “What a man!”

  Jamie filled his right hand with a loaded pistol and turned at the sounds of running feet. Two unshaven and dirty men, both with pistols in their hands, came to a sliding stop about fifty feet from Jamie.

  “Tonight that whore you married will be a widder woman, MacCallister!” one yelled.

  Jamie plugged him and the man standing beside him and left them flopping in the mud of the street. He went in search of the last two. A ball knocked adobe from a building and bloodied Jamie’s cheek. Another ball tore up ground at Jamie’s feet just as he lifted a pistol and drilled his assailant in the belly. The man sat down in the mud on his butt and began screaming. The eighth man jumped out into the street with a loud oath and leveled a rifle. Jamie turned sideways to present a smaller target, lifted the pistol, and fired, the ball taking about half of the man’s head off.

  Jamie quickly reloaded and called out in a calm voice to Martine and Carbone, who were standing awe-struck by a building, “Collect all their weapons and shot and powder. Take them back to our wagons.”

  “Sí, señor!” both men said.

  Jamie walked back into the cantina just as the man he’d hurled against the wall was getting up. Jamie returned him to the dirty floor with a ham-size fist. The sounds of the man’s jaw breaking were loud in the quiet room. Jamie found a bucket of water and threw the contents onto the man’s face. He stood over the utterly terrified man and glared down at him.

  Jamie must have looked like a mountain to the man.

  “I’m going to leave you with a horse pointing east, and these words of warning,” Jamie told him. “If I ever see you again, no matter what the circumstances, I will kill you where you lie, sit, squat, or stand. Is that understood?”

  The man was unable to speak because of his shattered jaw, but he nodded his head vigorously.

  Jamie turned his back to the man and walked out, and yet another chapter was added to the mushrooming legend of Jamie Ian MacCallister.

  Fifty-two

  “Any trouble in town?” Kate asked, noticing the tiny cuts on Jamie’s cheek from the flying adobe.

  “Not much,” Jamie said. “I just met with some ol’ boys who came out west to see me.”

  “Were they glad to see you?” Kate asked, her tone dry enough to empty a well.

  “I don’t think so,” Jamie replied, washing his face and hands in a bucket of water and drying off with a rag. “But I’m the last thing they saw before they met the devil.”

  “Uh-huh. You missed the nooning; we’ve already eaten. But I saved some stew and bread for you. You think you can stay out of trouble long enough to eat?”

  Jamie grinned, bent down, and kissed her. “I will sure try, darlin’.”

  Kate blushed as the kids giggled. She shoved at him, perhaps moving him an inch, at best. “Oh, go on, you!”

  Jamie sat down and began eating, as Martine and Carbone returned and began whispering to the others. Hannah smiled, and the others shook their heads in astonishment.

  A few minutes later, a delegation from town rode out and approached Jamie warily, after making certain Jamie could see they were not armed. “Sir,” a well-dressed man said. “Those men back there... ah, the recently deceased, they were carrying ample funds.”

  “I don’t want it,” Jamie said, sopping a hunk of bread into the seasoned stew.

  “They had no papers on them, so we don’t know where to send the money.”

  “How about the man with the busted jaw?”

  “He left town quickly. Heading east. He was in considerable pain but would not let the doctor examine him.”

  “Smart man. Do whatever you want to with the money. Give it to the poor.”

  “Will you be leaving soon, sir?” another man asked nervously.

  “Come the morning.”

  All the men seemed to sigh.

  “How many men did my husband kill?” Kate asked.

  “Ah... seven, ma’am.”

  “Is that all?” Kate said with a straight face. “A few years ago, he killed forty.”

  “Forty!” a rather plump gentleman blurted. “Good God!”

  Jamie sighed and finished his bowl of stew. He hoped Kate would hush up, for he knew only too well what a wicked sense of humor she had.

  Kate smiled at him and walked over to the wagon to finish packing away supplies. Jamie breathed a bit easier. “We’ll be leaving in the morning,” he told the delegation. “And I apologize for the trouble in town.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Mr. MacCallister,” another man said. “What bothered some people was your... coolness about the entire affair. There was quite a crowd gathered to witness the, ah, demise of the last, two, ah, gentlemen.”

  Jamie grunted. Then he stood up, swiftly and silently as was his fashion. The group of businessmen all quickly backed up and that move infuriated Jamie. But he very carefully held his temper in check and smiled and was cordial as he shook hands with the men, bidding them good day.

  When they had departed, he heard the sounds of muffled giggling coming from the wagons. He turned to see all the women gathered up in a knot, aprons covering their mouths to stifle the laughter.

  “Very dangerous fellow there, Kate,” Hannah said, then bent over double with laughter.

  “Yes,” Sarah said. “How can you sleep at night knowing such a brigand is lying next to you?”

  “Isn’t it a disgrace?” Kate said, trying her best to keep a straight face. “I’ve never been run out of town before.”

  The women all started laughing and Jamie shook his head and walked off, leaving the women howling at the disgusted expression on his face.

  Swede caught up with him. “What in the world is all that about, Jamie?”

  “I just got run out of town.”

  “And they think it’s funny?”

  “Hysterical.”

  Sam and Juan walked up. “What set the women off? They’re laughing like a bunch of idiots.”

  “Jamie just got run out of town,” Swede said.

  “Run out of town? And they think that’s funny?”

  “I guess.”

  “What’s so funny about that?” Juan asked.

  “I don’t know,” Swede said. “You’ll have to ask Jamie. He told me.”

  “Jamie...” Sam started.

  “This is where I came in,” Jamie said. “Excuse me.” He walked off just as Moses and Wells walked up.

  “What’s wrong with the women?” Wells asked.

  “Jamie got run out of town,” Sam said.

  “And they think that’s funny?” Moses asked.

  Jamie covered his ears with his hands and went down to talk to the horses.

  * * *

  Just as dawn was splitting the sky with color, Jamie swung into the saddle and took the lead. “Let’s go see the mountains,” he said, and the wagons moved out.

  Outside of town, Jamie swung off to one side and looked back at the Alamo as the wagons and livestock lumbered past him. The sun was touching the old mission, bathing it in a pure light from the Heavens.

  Jamie smiled, recalling Bowie’s words as he read them by the dim candlelight in Bowie’s room. He imagined Bowie when he was full of life and how he might have spoken those words. He could almost hear Bowie’s strong voice.

  “My fellow Texans, and to freedom-loving people all over America. These are my final words from this post. I pray God they will be read over and over, for years to come. For these words, these thoughts, these emotions, they are not just from me, but from all the brave me
n gathered here who have chosen to die for liberty and freedom.

  “Oh, but shed no tears, for we shall not die in vain. For in the pools of our spilled blood in this old mission, shall be written the song of freedom for Texas. Nay, not just for Texas, but for the whole of the United States. Sing it loudly, men and women of America. Sing it to your children and to your children’s children and to every generation until the whole world knows the tune. Sing it so we shall never be forgotten. Sing it before armies go into battle. Remember the Alamo. Let it be a battle cry that rolls off of every tongue in every conflict from this moment on. Don’t forget us, Americans. Don’t. I beg you. Don’t let our memories die. Don’t have these brave boys die for naught.

  “Santa Anna thinks this will be an easy victory. But we are going to teach Santa Anna a hard lesson about men’s dreams of freedom. I think after the smoke has cleared, and the last ball is fired, Santa Anna will know he’s been in a fight. I have my brace of pistols and my good knife. So let them come. I shall soon be in the arms of my darling Ursula.

  “It will be over for us in a few hours. And I want everyone to know that William Barret Travis has my respect. He is a brave and resourceful leader and I would follow him through the gates of Hell and probably will.

  “So — life ebbs and comes down to this. I wonder what the thoughts are of those men huddled against those walls, seeking relief from the bitter cold and the loneliness of separation from family and home. Much like mine, I would think. Sad, perhaps mingled with a touch of fear. Oh, not fear of the act of dying itself, but fear of the unknown. For who among us knows what lies beyond the veil? Ah, well, we’ll all soon know.

  “So — I will close with these thoughts: Remember the men of the Alamo. For we will never surrender. We shall fight to the last man, until the last breath is gone from the last defender. And these final words I dedicate to the men who wait to die outside this warm room. They are gallant men. Brave men. Free men. And they are dying for you.

  “These words come from a garrison valiant and steeped in courage. And our last word must be — farewell.