Falcon knew that during the annual meeting, the town of Miles City would more than double in population, and when the hotels and boardinghouses ran out of rooms, many of the attendees from the smaller ranches would put up tents and camp just outside of town. He didn’t have to worry about that, though, because he had already booked a room at the MacQueen House, the town’s largest and most elegant hotel.
Falcon was standing on the lowest step by the time the train squeaked to a stop at the depot. The depot platform was crowded with people who had come to meet the train, most because they were welcoming guests for the upcoming festivities, but almost as many were there simply because the arrival of the train was always an event.
An enterprising elixir salesman was taking advantage of the crowd, holding up a bottle as he made his pitch.
“Men, do you suffer from nervous debility, exhausted vitality, seminal weakness, lost manhood, impotency, paralysis, and all the terrible effects of self-abuse and youthful follies, such as loss of memory, lassitude, nocturnal emission, aversion to society, dimness of vision, or noises in the head? Then you should take Dr. Mintie’s Kidney Remedy and Restorative. For just twenty-five cents the bottle, I guarantee that you will be cured. And this guarantee is backed by no less an authority than Rutherford B. Hayes, the President of the United States.”
“Mister, are you telling us that the President of the United States suffers from all those things?”
“Although the President is a teetotaler now, it is a well-guarded secret that he had a misspent youth,” the elixir salesman explained. He held up a bottle. “And only the marvelous curative powers of this elixir have saved him from the effects of those youthful indiscretions.”
“You should get some of that, George,” Falcon heard a woman say. “If the President of the United States uses it, it must be good.”
“I’ll take a bottle,” George said.
“One won’t be enough. You’ll need four at least. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. For you, five bottles for a dollar.”
Chuckling, and shaking his head, Falcon walked away. Near the back of the platform, he saw a man holding up a sign.
FALCON MACCALISTER
Falcon didn’t go to him right away. He had made a lot of enemies in his travels, and it would be very foolish to expose himself without first making certain that everything was on the up-and-up. After a moment or two of perusing the situation, he walked up to him.
“I’m Falcon MacCallister,” he said.
“Mr. MacCallister, I’m Bert Rowe,” the cowboy said. “Did you bring Mr. Kohrs’s horse?”
Falcon nodded. “He’s in the stock car.”
“Good. Mr. Kohrs asked me to pick it up for him.”
“Where is Mr. Kohrs?”
“He sends his regards, and says he’ll be coming in town first thing tomorrow morning,” the young cowboy said. “He said he would get a message to you.”
“All right,” Falcon said. “Come on, we’ll get the horse.”
Falcon helped Bert Rowe take possession of the horse, then watched as the cowboy rode off, leading the Arabian. After that, Falcon made arrangements to have his luggage sent to his room at the MacQueen House. Then he wandered through the crowded streets of the town until he wound up at Duffey’s.
A sign behind the bar invited customers to TEST THE SKILL OF OUR BARTENDER BY REQUESTING A MIXED DRINK.
The bartender was wearing a brocaded vest over a clean white shirt and a dark blue tie. A watch, with a massive gold chain, stretched across his chest, while a pair of garters held up his sleeves.
“What can I get you, sir?” the bartender asked.
“A beer,” Falcon answered.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t want to try one of our mixed drinks?” he asked. “They are my specialty.”
“And I’m sure you do a great job mixing them,” Falcon said. “But a beer will be fine.”
“Very good, sir.”
When the beer was brought to him, Falcon turned his back to the bar to survey the room. Half-a-dozen bar girls were moving from table to table, laughing, joking, and flirting with the men. Like everything else about this establishment, the girls were first class. They were all pretty, and none of them had the hard-worn look of dissipation that was so common among most girls of their trade.
One of them, a dark-haired girl with flashing brown eyes, saw him looking at her. Smiling prettily, she came over to talk to him.
“Are you in town for the stockgrowers’ convention?” she asked.
“I am,” Falcon answered. “Can I buy you a drink?”
The girl smiled. “Why, thank you,” she said. “Karl,” she called to the bartender. “Would you make me a daiquiri?”
“I’d be honored to, Miss Lucy,” the bartender replied.
“Karl isn’t just any bartender. He is qualified to make mixed drinks,” Lucy explained.
“So I gather by the sign,” Falcon said.
“It’s very busy in here tonight,” Lucy said.
Falcon had a drink with Lucy, enjoying her company and sense of humor. Though she let it be known by subtle hints that she would welcome the opportunity to take him to her crib, she wasn’t overt about it, so he didn’t have to come right out and refuse the invitation. Finally, she realized that he wasn’t a potential customer, so she smiled, then took her leave, mingling quickly and easily with the other patrons of the saloon.
* * *
After another beer and a few hands of poker, Falcon folded his cards and declared that he was going to have dinner.
“I’m new to the town,” he said. “Do any of you have a recommendation?”
“You could eat at MacQueen’s, of course,” one of the players said. “The hotel does have a dining room, and quite a good one.”
“Yes, I assumed it did,” Falcon said. “And I’ll probably be taking many of my meals there. But I’d like to try somewhere else tonight.”
“In that case, you can’t beat Little Man’s.”
“Little Man’s?”
“Little Man Lambert. The meals aren’t fancy, but they are good.”
“Thanks,” Falcon said. “Open chair,” he announced to anyone who might want to sit in the game. Then, as another customer took Falcon’s abandoned chair, he left the saloon and walked down to Little Man Lambert’s Café.
Little Man Lambert’s was not a very large place. In fact, it was quite small, but it was very crowded, which, Falcon deduced, was a testimony to the quality of the food. Directed to a seat in the back corner where he shared the table with another diner, he picked up the menu. Suddenly he saw a roll flying by, and looking up in surprise, saw a man standing at the kitchen door, throwing rolls about the room.
“What is this?” Falcon asked.
His dining partner chuckled. “Throwed rolls is what Little Man is famous for,” he said. “The dining room is too crowded for him to walk around, so he makes fresh rolls, then comes out and throws them to whoever wants one.”
“How does he know who wants one?”
“You want one?”
“Yes.”
“Hold your hand up in a catching position.”
Amused by it all, Falcon held his hand up. He no sooner got his hand in position than a roll came sailing across the café floor, hitting him squarely in the hand. He caught it easily.
“He’s very good at that,” Falcon said with a smile.
“He ought to be. He throws about one hundred rolls a day,” his table partner told him.
* * *
After Gilly Cardis escaped prison, his first order of business was to get some money. In order to do that, in the middle of the night he broke into the only place available on such short notice, a small general store just outside Yuma. He stole a change of clothes, thirty-one dollars, and a Colt .44. A few minutes later he stole a horse from a private barn. He rode the horse to the nearest stagecoach way station, but about one mile before he got there, he let the horse go. That was just in case someone might have r
ecognized the horse.
He walked to the way station and stopped at the pump outside, then began pumping, holding his hand over the spout of the pump, letting the water build up so he could lean down and suck it in through his lips.
The station attendant came out to see him.
“You come here without a horse?” he asked.
Cardis nodded. “He stepped in a prairie-dog hole about five or six miles back,” he said. “I had to put him down.”
“Sorry,” the attendant said. “I know that’s always a hard thing to do.”
“Can I buy a stage ticket here?”
“Sure can. Where would you like to go?”
“To the nearest place I can catch a train, I reckon.”
“That would be Adonde,” the attendant said. “You’ll get there in time to catch the seven o’clock train tonight.”
“Good.”
Cardis had not planned much beyond his escape from prison. Once he got to a railroad station, he planned to buy a ticket to Phoenix, because he hoped to meet his brother there. He wasn’t sure that’s where Willy would be, but that was where the three of them had planned to go after the stage robbery.
The robbery had gone bad. They got no money, and Gilly was shot and captured. At least his brother and Kofax got away.
“Come on in and I’ll sell you a ticket,” the attendant said. “That’ll cost you three dollars. The stage should be here within half an hour or so and they’ll be stoppin’ for their lunch. You want lunch, it’ll cost you an extra quarter.”
Cardis had not eaten since the prison supper the night before. The excitement of the escape, and his need to get away, had kept him from thinking about food, but now that the station attendant mentioned it, he realized just how hungry he was.
“Lunch sounds good,” Cardis said. “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.”
The station attendant laughed. “Well, sometimes these stringy old longhorns can taste like a horse,” he said. “But I promise you, it is beef.”
* * *
Cardis was in the privy when he heard the trumpet blast signaling that the coach was arriving. Finishing quickly, he was out of the outhouse and standing on the front porch as the stage pulled in. The shotgun guard glanced toward him and held his gaze for so long that, for a moment, Gilly was afraid that he might have been recognized.
The shotgun guard spit a quid of tobacco just over the wheel as the coach creaked to a stop. Then, losing interest in whatever had held his attention during the long, piercing look, the guard put his weapon down, stood up, and stretched.
“Gray’s Station,” the driver called. “We’ll be here for half an hour. Food inside.”
Half an hour later, the coach, now with a fresh team, was under way again. Besides Gilly, there were only two other passengers on the coach: a drummer, who slept through most of the trip, and an old man who wasn’t very sociable. That was fine with Cardis, who would just as soon not talk to anyone anyway.
By the time the coach reached Adonde, the train was already standing in the station. Hurrying, he bought the cheapest ticket he could to Phoenix.
“Do you have any baggage to check through?” the ticket agent asked.
“No,” Cardis said, taking the ticket and starting toward the track. “It’s just me.”
* * *
A woman, carrying two packages and a baby, was struggling to get onto the train. A boy of about six was with her. She glanced toward Cardis, hoping he would offer a hand, but rather than assist her, he stepped in front of her, got on the car, found a seat, and sat down.
Another male passenger, who was already on the train, saw the woman struggling with her load as she came into the car, and he jumped up quickly to help.
“Thank you,” the woman said. She looked at Cardis again, as if trying to make him feel embarrassed by the fact that he had not offered to help, but Cardis paid no attention to her.
The train car had hard wooden benches and smelled of kerosene, strange foods, and unwashed bodies, but Cardis wasn’t a man of discriminating sensitivities, so none of it mattered. At the moment all Cardis was looking to do was to put as much distance between himself and the Yuma prison as he could, as fast as he could.
It was dark by the time the train got under way, and Cardis was tired and irritable as he sat on the unyielding wooden seat, staring into the darkness outside the train, looking at the little squares of yellow light that, projected by the passenger-car windows, were sliding alongside the track on the ground below. He was so lost in his own thoughts that he was totally oblivious to the sounds, sights, and smells of the car.
“Paper?”
“What?” Cardis replied gruffly, irritated at having been spoken to.
“I’m finished with this. I asked if you would like to read the paper,” a man said, holding a paper toward Cardis.
“Nah, I don’t want the paper,” Cardis said grumpily. “I don’t want to talk to no one neither.”
“I’m sorry,” the man apologized, pulling the paper away. “I had no wish to intrude.”
Just as the man was withdrawing the paper, Cardis happened to see his brother’s name.
“Hold it!” he said sharply, reaching for the paper. “Let me see that.”
“Sure thing, mister.”
Cardis held the paper under the kerosene lantern and folded the paper to the article that had caught his attention. The article read:
A DARING SHOOT-OUT!
Stagecoach Robbers Shot Dead In Saloon.
Reward to go to Volunteer Fire Brigade.
Two villains, Rollie Kofax and Willy Cardis, who had but recently tried their hands at robbing a stagecoach, came to Picacho recently. It is believed they were in Picacho in order to secure passage on a train, thus putting a great distance between themselves and their failed attempt to hold up the Perdition stagecoach.
Thinking they were safe in a small town, the two men had not counted upon the valor of Sheriff Titus Calhoun, who, upon recognizing Rollie Kofax, addressed him with the intention of placing him under arrest. Kofax responded to the sheriff’s demand by issuing a deadly challenge. He felt secure in doing this because he believed that his confederate, Willy Cardis, was in position to offer him a strategic advantage.
What neither Kofax nor Cardis took into consideration was the intervention of a good citizen. This good citizen confronted Cardis when he saw the villain aiming his pistol at the sheriff’s back.
Cardis then turned his pistol toward the good citizen, not realizing that he was facing none other than the legendary Falcon MacCallister, a man whose speed and marksmanship with a pistol is legend throughout the West. Indeed, dime novels proliferate about the many exploits of Falcon MacCallister.
When the smoke cleared away, both Sheriff Calhoun and Falcon MacCallister were standing, while their recent adversaries lay mortally wounded upon the saloon floor. Falcon MacCallister, in keeping with his reputation as an outstanding citizen, declined the two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar reward that was offered for Willy Cardis, suggesting that it be paid instead to the local volunteer fire brigade. MacCallister, it is believed, has returned to his home near Denver, Colorado.
Kofax had no known relatives and Willy Cardis’s only known relative was his brother, who is currently serving a prison term in Yuma Territorial Prison. As a result of there being no interested parties to attend to their last rites, the two villains were buried without funeral or fanfare in the paupers’ section of the local cemetery.
So, Cardis thought. This man Falcon MacCallister lives in Denver, Colorado, does he? Cardis had never been to Denver, but if that’s where MacCallister was, that’s where he was going. And as soon as he found MacCallister, he was going to kill him.
Four
It was dark by the time Falcon finished his dinner. Leaving the restaurant, he walked down to the MacQueen House, where he had taken a room for the night. As he passed through the lobby, he saw two well-dressed men arguing with the desk clerk.
“What do y
ou mean you have no rooms?” one of the men was complaining. “Surely you knew that there was to be a big meeting here this week. You should have made arrangements for that.”
“No, sir,” the clerk replied. “You should have made arrangements for that. All those who have rooms tonight had the foresight to reserve them in advance.”
“Well, just where you suggest we stay?”
“Many are camping just outside of town,” the clerk said. “In fact, I think there are still some tents available for rent.”
“Tents? Are you suggesting that I stay in a tent?” the man asked in a blustering fashion.
“I’m just saying that there may still be some tents available.”
“I’ll have you know, sir, that I own ten thousand acres of prime cattle land back in Idaho.”
“That may well be, sir. But you aren’t in Idaho,” the clerk replied, maintaining his composure.
As Falcon climbed the stairs to his room, he passed out of earshot of the argument going on in the lobby.
Just before he went into his own room, he saw a very attractive young woman trying to make the key work in one of the other doors.
“Allow me,” he said, stepping over and taking the key from her.
“Oh, thank you,” the woman said. “I am so clumsy when it comes to such things.”
Falcon opened the door for her, then slipped the key into the lock from the other side of the door.
“Just turn this when you get inside,” he said. “It will secure your room.”
“Thank you,” the woman said again. “Good night.”
“Good night.”
Falcon let himself into his own room, then got ready for bed. It had been a long, tiring ride on the train for the last few days, so the bed felt very comfortable to him.
As he lay in bed, he could hear the sounds of the town at night ... a playing piano, a woman’s high-pitched laugh, a man’s low-rumbling guffaw, and a couple of cowboys talking out on the street. Soon all the sounds blended and dimmed, and Falcon fell asleep.
Pride of Eagles Page 3