“Yeah,” another bounty hunter said. “That trapper we tortured yesterday said the bastard’s daddy was headin’ up this way. If we can kill and behead father and son, that’ll be twicet the money for us.”
“I want Jamie MacCallister alive,” another one said, just as the men in the rocks were sighting in. “I owe that bastard. I want to burn him and see how brave he is.”
The men in the rocks fired as one and three bounty hunters went down dead. Before the echo of the shots faded, three more balls ripped into the knotted up men and four of them hit the rocky ground, as the ball fired by Ian went right through the neck of one and slammed into the skull of the fourth man.
The remaining bounty hunters went into a panic, and the men in the rocks jerked out pistols and let them bang. The distance was really too great for any type of accuracy, but the lead flew true and two more man-hunters were knocked from the saddle.
Those bounty hunters left raced away from the death scene and Jamie’s grandpa watched them go from his high-up position. “They ain’t even thinkin’ about stoppin’,” he called, pausing to reload his weapons. “They’ve had enough for this trip.”
The grandfather, father, and son made their way down to level ground and began rolling over the bodies to check for signs of life. Two of the man-hunters were alive, and one was not that badly hurt, with only a neat hole punched through one shoulder. The other one would not last long.
“Murderin’ bastards!” the slightly wounded bounty hunter spat the words at the trio of men.
“You really ain’t in no good position to be callin’ folks names, laddie,” the Wolf told him. “As a matter of fact, was I you, if I wasn’t goin’ to say kindly things, I do believe I’d shut my mouth.”
The wounded man took the suggestion to heart and closed his fly trap.
Ian was busy retrieving weapons and stacking them. He made a second pile of shot and powder and caps.
“Go on and kill me and get it over with,” the wounded man said, after watching the other man die. “I know you’re goin’ to murder me. Go on and do it.”
Jamie knelt down beside the man, his big Bowie in hand, and the man paled and tensed. Jamie cut open the man’s shirt and looked at the wound. “You’ll live,” he told the man. “I’ll fix up a poultice and you can be on your way.”
“Huh?”
“I didn’t see Wesley Parsons in this bunch. Where is he?”
A sly look came into the man’s eyes. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
“You’re a fool!” Jamie told him, standing up. “Tend to your own damn wound.”
“Is you just gonna leave me here alone and hurt to be butchered by the red savages?” the man cried.
Grandfather, father, and son made no reply to that. The Wolf had rounded up the horses and roped them together. Ian stashed the weapons in saddlebags and boots and Jamie got their own mounts from the rocks. The bounty hunters had left two pack horses behind, filled with supplies and equipment. Jamie tossed the wounded man a rifle and pistol, shot and powder and caps. He pointed to a lone horse.
“You have beans and bacon and coffee in those saddlebags. Ride out of here and don’t ever come looking for any of us again.”
The three rode out, leading the saddled horses and the pack animals.
“Wait!” the wounded man yelled after them. “Ain’t you gonna bury the dead. That ain’t no Christian way to act. Wait! I be feared to stay here alone.”
None of the three looked back.
* * *
The bounty hunters stopped several miles from the ambush scene before they killed their rapidly faltering animals. To a man they were almighty scared. “Damn Wesley Parsons’ eyes!” one said, so badly frightened he could barely stand. “He said this hunt would be easy.”
“Then that makes you a fool for believin’ him,” another said. “If Parsons wants the MacCallisters, he can damn well go after them his own self. I hate this damn western wilderness. Me and this hunt is done.”
“Where you be headin’, Leo?” another man asked.
“Back east. I’m done with this country. It’s bilin’ hot during the day and freezing cold at night. I don’t see why no man in his right mind would choose to live out here. It ain’t for me. Who’s goin’ with me?”
Everybody.
* * *
Jamie had given his grandfather and son the supplies taken from the bounty hunters and bid them both farewell. He had seen within the first few moments of talking with his son that Ian was not going to quit the hunt until all involved in his wife’s killing were dead.
He rode south and picked up the trail of those bounty hunters who had survived the ambush and was amused by the haste in which they had seemingly elected to quit and go back home. There had not been much sand to this bunch.
Jamie headed back to the valley, for there was much to do before winter closed in the settlement. He carried in his pocket a letter from Ian to his mother. It would be of some comfort to her. Providing she could read Ian’s hurriedly penciled scrawl.
On the fourth day from the rocks, riding easy and trailing what was left of the man-hunters, Jamie saw the smoke from the bounty hunters’ camp. They had not chosen well, for none of them were experienced western men. Jamie, being the man he was, rode right up to the camp and walked Horse in. The bounty hunters looked up at him with a mixture of disbelief and open fear.
“Howdy, boys,” Jamie said, sitting his saddle, his rifle across the saddle bows, the muzzle pointed directly at a big hulk of a man. “I saw your smoke. Figured you might have a cup of coffee for a man.”
“You got a lot of nerve, MacCallister,” the hulking oaf said.
“I suppose I have to take that as a refusal to share your camp with me.”
“Sit down and have some food and coffee, MacCallister,” yet another man said. “Don’t pay no attention to Tiny yonder. He don’t like nobody. We give up the hunt. I had me a bad feelin’ about it all along.”
“I ain’t give up crap!” the huge oaf called Tiny said. “You git off that horse and I’ll pick up the hunt soon as your boots hit the ground.”
“You’ll do it alone, Tiny,” another ex-bounty hunter said. “You’re welcome to sit and drink and eat, Jamie MacCallister. But if you want your hoss tooken care of, you’ll have to do that yourself. I ain’t touchin’ that mean-eyed stallion.”
Jamie laughed and swung down. He tied Horse to the picket line and turned around. Tiny was standing about five feet from him, hate shining through his piggy eyes.
“I warned you, MacCallister. Now you’re dead meat and all mine.”
Jamie stepped forward and hit the man on the jaw with the butt of his rifle. Tiny’s jaw cracked, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he stretched out on the cool ground for a long, involuntary rest.
“Nobody never could tell Tiny nothin’,” a man said. “He always figured he knew it all.”
“You made yourself a bad enemy, Jamie MacCallister. Tiny will carry the hate in his heart for as long as he lives.”
Jamie poured himself a cup of coffee and took the offered pan of beans and bacon and bread and sat down and started eating. “I’ve got lots of people who hate me,” he finally spoke. “For one reason or the other. That seems to be the cross I have to bear for the rest of my days.”
“I’d say you was bearin’ up mighty well under it,” the first friendly man said . . . with a twinkle in his eyes.
The rest of the men laughed and Jamie joined in with them. Whatever tension there might have been vanished.
But not being a terribly trusting man, Jamie thanked the men for the food and company and pushed on for a few more miles before settling down in a cold camp for that evening. None of them knew Tiny’s last name, at least they said they didn’t. But since the man stood over six and a half feet tall and was as ugly as sin was bad, Jamie would have little trouble describing him to other trappers. Someone would know him, for though the west was vast, it was still sparsely populated
.
The trip south was uneventful, and Jamie was grateful to once more top the ridge and look down into the valley. As always, his eyes drifted to the tiny cemetery to check for new graves. There were no new additions. But there was a new building going up, and parked beside the building, a half dozen big wagons.
“Well now,” Jamie said and rode on down to the valley floor.
Kate ran out to meet him, and when Jamie handed her the letter from Ian, she went to the porch and sat down without another word or greeting kiss. “I will never understand women,” Jamie muttered, as he led Horse off to the barn and a well-deserved rest.
“It’s a store, Jamie,” Sam said proudly. “We have a real store here now.”
Jamie was introduced to the man who owned the store, one Abe Goldman, his wife Rebecca, and their three children, Rachel, Walter, and Tobias. Rebecca was very gracious and the kids well-behaved.
“We’ll soon have everything anybody might ask for,” Abe said proudly, obviously eager to please the man whom the valley was named after. “From buttons to bacon.” He smiled nervously, took a deep breath, and added, “And there will be a wagon train in next spring with people to settle in the next valley over.”
Sam took Jamie aside. “In the next valley over, Jamie,” he repeated. “Not here.”
Jamie shrugged his massive shoulders. “The days are gone when I have much say about who settles where, Sam. It’ll be good to have a store close by.”
And that was all he had to say about the new store.
That night, snuggled close together in their bed, Kate asked, “Ian is never coming back, is he, Jamie?”
Jamie was long in replying; so long Kate thought he might have drifted off to sleep. Finally he said, “I don’t know, Kate. If he does it won’t be anytime soon. This valley has bad memories for him. Losing Linda was a terrible blow.”
“Is our son going to turn out to be a gun man?” she asked, using the newly coined western phrase which would soon become just one word. “Is he, Jamie?”
“A gun man, Kate?”
“That’s what some reporters and columnists are beginning to call western desperadoes. I read it in the latest papers several times.”
“Interesting phrase,” Jamie muttered. “I don’t know, Kate. I hope not. But I’m really not sure what it means. I do know that Ian is no desperado.”
“Did he take scalps back at the ambush site?”
Jamie never tried to hide things from Kate. Like most married men, he had found out the hard way that it’s better to come right up front with matters.
“Yes.”
Kate sighed and turned on the feather tick, putting her back to Jamie.
“He’ll come back someday, Kate. When the hate in his heart is gone, then he’ll return.”
“I wonder,” Kate said. “I just wonder about that.”
So did Jamie, but it seemed the right thing to say at the time.
Four
Those in the valley heard no word of Jamie Ian and Silver Wolf all that hard and long winter. When spring finally arrived, after several false starts, the wagons had already begun rolling out of Missouri and onto the Great Plains, and the Indians were getting angry about the influx of whites into country they had long claimed as their own. It was to be the beginning of a terrible and bloody time in the west, a time of sporadic wars that would last well into the 1880s.
In June of that year, Jamie received word that his oldest son had cornered John Wilmot’s younger brother in California and killed the man with a knife. Jamie did not keep the news from Kate. She stood in the kitchen of their cabin and received the news with a coolness in her eyes that belied her true inner feelings. “Was John Wilmot’s younger brother a member of the party that raided this settlement?”
“I ... don’t think so, Kate. But we don’t know the whole story about the killing. Wilmot may have braced Ian, called him out. Let’s not judge until we learn all the facts.”
Kate stepped outside to stand on the porch for a time. After a few moments, she called, “Jamie. I think it’s Grandpa riding over the ridge yonder.”
The old man was still spry, but his color was bad and his face twisted in pain. Jamie really didn’t know how old he was. In his late 70s at least, probably older than that. He walked up to the porch, kissed Kate, ruffled the hair of the kids, and shook Jamie’s hand. Kate showed him to a porch chair and went inside to fix him something to eat.
“I’ll eat first,” the Wolf said. “Then share the news with the family so’s I won’t have to repeat it.”
The Wolf didn’t have much of an appetite. He ate a small bowl of beef stew, a few pieces of fresh-baked and buttered bread, and a pot of coffee before he spoke, and then only after the younger kids were at play or at chores, well out of earshot.
“Ian almost killed them all,” the old man said. “Right down to the last man-jack of them. Sixteen men in all. But he never got John Wilmot, Biggers, or Winslow. And the lad ain’t gonna quit until he does. Them’s his sworn words. I brung you a letter from your boy, Kate. I watched him write the words and sometimes a-cryin’ he was whilst he done it. He loves both of you. But he’s got a devil ridin’ his back. And the only way he’s gonna get loose from it is by killin’ them who kilt his bride. I seen it in him and said it and he agreed. He’s a man growed now, and he don’t need my help no more. He’s stayin’ out from here so’s them kin of them he kilt won’t attack the settlement. That’s why he’s stayin’ away. Too many goddamn bounty hunters lookin’ for him.”
The old man pointed to a bluff about mid-way up a mountain. “See that spot up yonder? Jamie, you told me that’s where you wanted to be buried when your time come. Well, my time ain’t far off and that’s where I want you to plant me. I got me a cancer growin’ in my belly. Feel it near’bouts all the time. I might have a year, six months, or two days. I don’t know. But I know I’m goin’. I left my white buckskins here after the brigands struck, and I want to be buried in them. You plant me with my rifle, my pistols, and my good knife. When I’m gone, you put my horse out to pasture and see that he never wants for nothin’. I’m goin’ up yonder and dig the hole myself, just the way I want it. You won’t see much of me. I’ll chisel out the stone and put the words I want on it. Jamie, you come check on me from time to time, ’cause I’m growin’ weaker daily. Pisses me off, too, it does. Pardon my filthy language, Kate.” He stood up and reached inside his jacket, handing Kate the letter from Ian. “Thank you most kindly for the fine grub, Kate. It hit the spot. I’ll be goin’ up yonder where the winds blow and the pumas prowl and snort. I’ll see you in a few days, Jamie.”
“I’ll be along, Grandpa.”
The old man stepped off the porch, tall and straight and proud. Kate and Jamie watched him ride off into the high-up country.
“A dying breed,” Jamie said softly. “When he’s gone, it’ll be the last of a breed.”
“No, it won’t,” Kate said softly. “You’ll just step in to fill his moccasins.”
* * *
A week later, Jamie rode up to the far-off bluff he had chosen for his own final resting place and checked on his Grandpa. The old man had lost weight and looked bad but was still moving around well and working on his headstone.
“Sit down, boy,” the old Wolf said, pointing to a spot by the fire, for it was cold this high up. “Pour us some coffee.”
Coffee poured, the old man laid out a piece of deerskin, on which was a beautifully drawn map. “Done this myself, boy, over the years. See all these little Xs? That’s where they’s veins of gold. Some veins might not yield no more than ten pounds of gold. Others will give up maybe five hundred or a thousand pounds of it. They’s enough there to see that your family and offspring for a hundred or more years will never want for naught.”
The old Wolf laid back against his saddle and pulled a blanket over him. “Tired, boy. I’m almighty tired. You know how old I am, Jamie?”
“No, sir.”
“I think I was born in 1757.
What year is this, son?”
“1844, I think, Grandpa.”
“How old would that make me?”
Jamie did some head ruminating. “Nearabout 87 years old, Grandpa.”
“Damn!”
“What’s the matter?”
“My daddy lived past ninety and his pa lived to be over a hundred. I thought shore I’d hit ninety at least. Well, I come close, didn’t I?”
“You sure did, Grandpa.”
“Maybe it was 1747,” the old man said, his eyes still closed. “Oh, hell! It don’t make no difference. When your string’s run out, it’s gone. You take that map, boy, and after I’m gone, you tell your woman that you’ll be gone until the snow flies. You dig out that yeller metal and cache it where nobody but you knows where it is. Take a goodly mess of it back to home with you and cache it up here. I found a spot over yonder.” He waved a hand that suddenly looked awfully frail. Jamie’s eyes followed the movement and saw where the Wolf had marked a spot in the rock wall of the bluff.
“I see it, Grandpa.”
“I lived me a full life, Jamie Ian MacCallister. So I don’t want no weepin’ and wailin’ and blubberin’, and a bunch of nonsensical carryin’ on over my bones. You hear me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Fine. Now go on back to your woman and love her. Come back in a few days. Go on, boy. I’ve made my peace.”
Jamie sat for a few minutes beside his grandpa. He could see that the old man was asleep and breathing, if a bit ragged. With a sigh, Jamie tucked the map inside his shirt and rode back to the valley.
* * *
On the third morning after leaving his grandfather in the high-up, Jamie stepped out onto the porch of his cabin just as dawn was splitting the skies. He looked up to the mountain and saw no smoke. He knew his grandpa was dead.
“Is Grandpa dead?” Kate called from the open shutters.
“Yes.” Jamie finished his coffee and saddled up Thunder. No one in the settlement asked where he was going—they knew.
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