Song of Eagles

by William W. Johnstone

  Waite grinned. “A roasted turkey dinner does sound mighty nice. Let’s see if we can down a couple.”

  “Suits hell outta me,” the Kid replied, reaching for his Winchester .44 rifle booted to the front of his saddle.

  They took off at a trot toward the tops of a string of low hills thick with brush, following Brewer and Middleton and Charley Bowdre.

  The Kid jacked a shell into the firing chamber of his rifle and watched the brushy hilltops.

  “Don’t see a damn thing,” Waite said, urging his horse to a faster trot.

  “Me neither,” the Kid replied, wondering what it was Fred had seen.

  Waite pointed down to the horse herd and John Tunstall riding at the front. “You reckon the bossman won’t mind if we leave him for a spell?”

  “I’d imagine he’d be just as happy to have turkey as the rest of us.”

  They came to the top of the first rocky hills and saw John Middleton spurring his horse to a gallop.

  “Yonder they go!” Bowdre cried, pointing the barrel of his rifle at a pair of wild turkey hens flying low over the tops of the sagebrush.

  “Supper time!” Waite cried, asking his horse for a hard run over the hilltop.

  The Kid had forgotten to look back at the horse herd for the moment, intent upon the turkey hunt. Only seconds later he heard a gunshot coming from behind him.

  He jerked his sorrel to a sliding halt and turned back to the valley leading to the Penasco. What he saw made his blood run cold.

  Four men on horseback were charging toward Tunstall from the rear, and seven more came galloping from the north, from the direction of the river. Rifle barrels and pistols gleamed in the late day sun.

  “Hold up, Fred!” the Kid cried. “Look down there! If I ain’t mistaken that’s Jesse Evans an’ that bastard Billy Morton, coming after Mr. Tunstall with drawn guns!”

  “Son of a bitch!” Waite cried, swinging his horse around. “What are we gonna do, Kid?”

  “We’ve gotta ride back an’ help Mr. Tunstall.”

  “But look, Kid! They’ve got us outnumbered. We’ll get our heads shot off.”

  The Kid saw riders coming from both directions. “We can’t just leave him down there. They’ll kill him for sure if we don’t do something—”

  “This ain’t our fight, Kid. I say we stay out of it. Maybe Evans an’ his bunch are only after the horses.”

  “They wouldn’t have brought so many men,” the Kid replied, squinting in the sun’s late glare. “They aim to do Mr. Tunstall harm, or they wouldn’t have needed to bring along a whole damn army.”

  “Let’s stay out of it, Kid.”

  “I ain’t made that way . . .”

  Just as he said it, the Kid saw one of the lead riders coming from the north take aim at John Tunstall. The crack of a bullet resounded off the hills.

  Tunstall fell off his horse, collapsing in the dirt as most of the horse herd scattered.

  “Sweet Jesus!” Waite exclaimed. “They shot Mr. Tunstall down in cold blood!”

  “Just like I figured they would,” the Kid snapped, pulling his rifle to his shoulder. “We gotta do somethin’ to help him or he’s dead, for sure.”

  “They’ll come after us,” Waite warned.

  “Let the sumbitches come,” the Kid said as a strange calm came over him. “I ain’t scared of Jesse Evans or Morton or none of them gunslicks.”

  Off to the east, John Middleton and Charley Bowdre were watching the affair. Dick Brewer was nowhere in sight.

  The Kid saw Tunstall squirm in the dust and rocks, holding his belly. “He’s gutshot. He’s gonna die anyway, most likely, if we don’t get him to a doctor.”

  “But there ain’t no doctors this side of Mesilla, Kid. How the hell are we gonna get him there? First off, we’ll have to shoot our way down there to run them bastards who work for Dolan off.”

  “We can do it. There’s enough of us.”

  Waite looked around. “Where’s Dick? He’s foreman of this outfit. It’s his job to tell us what to do.”

  The Kid wagged his head. “It’s our job to help Mr. Tunstall, if we ain’t too late.”

  “We’re already too late,” Waite protested, pointing down to John Tunstall’s writhing form.

  The Kid chewed his bottom lip. “We can’t just sit here an’ watch ’em do this.”

  Waite swallowed hard. “Jesse Evans is one mean hombre, an’ he’s got plenty of friends with him. I heard stories from up in Denver that Tom Hill is a backshooter.”

  “We won’t give ’em a shot at our backs, Fred. Let’s ride down. Give a signal to the others.”

  Waite seemed uncertain. Then he gave a wave to Middleton and raised his rifle.

  John Middleton shook his head against it . . . he was a quarter mile away, but the Kid could see it clearly.

  “The yellow bastard,” he whispered. “Are the rest of us gonna let Evans an’ his boys kill Mr. Tunstall without puttin’ up no fight at all?”

  “I ain’t goin’,” Waite said quietly, unable to look the Kid straight in the eye.

  “Mr. Tunstall gave us all a job when nobody else would, an’ now you say you won’t help him?”

  “This job don’t pay enough.”

  Another pistol shot cracked from the shallow valley as one of the horsemen fired down at Tunstall.

  “Goddamn!” the Kid said, grinding his teeth. “They’re shootin’ at a defenseless man.”

  One of the Dolan riders stepped down, aiming a pistol at Tunstall’s head.

  “Look!” said the Kid, his voice like sand. “They same as executed Mr. Tunstall. He ain’t even got his gun out.”

  “Leave it be, Kid,” Waite warned. “This ain’t our fight in the first place . . . it’s between Mr. Tunstall an’ Murphy an’ Dolan an’ them boys in Santa Fe.”

  “The hell it ain’t our fight! Look at what they’s doin’ to him . . . leavin’ him lyin’ on the ground, shooting him like he was a pig at butcherin’ time.”

  “It’s a job for the law, Billy Bonney, an’ we sure as hell ain’t no lawmen. We’ll tell what we seen to Sheriff Brady when we get to Lincoln.”

  “Brady’s as crooked as the rest of ’em,” the Kid replied savagely. “He’s the son of a bitch we oughta shoot.”

  “We’d go to prison, for sure.”

  “Not if we killed ’em all. Won’t be none of the bastards left to testify against us.”

  Waite gave the Kid a strange look. “You’ve got a mean streak in you, Billy, if you mean what you say. You can’t just go ’round killin’ the law an’ everybody else.”

  “Maybe,” the Kid answered

  Then a stocky cowboy standing over Tunstall did a strange thing. He jerked Tunstall’s pistol out of his belt and fired two shots into the air.

  The Kid said, a question not really meant for Waite: “What was that all about?”

  Sixteen

  It sickened the Kid when he saw Dolan’s men ride away with the horse herd, leaving John Tunstall lying on his back, as still as the rocks and scrub trees around him.

  “He’s dead for sure,” the Kid whispered, heeling his sorrel off the hilltop to ride down to the spot where the Englishman lay in a pool of blood.

  “We didn’t have no choice, Kid,” Waite said, his face the color of snow. “We’d be dead, too, if we tangled with them boys over a few head of horses.”

  The Kid turned quickly to Waite, anger tightening his jaw. “It wasn’t over any damn horses, Fred. It was over a man’s life, a good man’s life, a man who gave us all a job an’ a place to stay an’ fed us good. I can’t believe you’re too dumb to figure that out.”

  “Don’t get all riled up at me, Kid,” Waite protested. “All I said was, it wasn’t our fight. Besides that, it was up to Dick Brewer to tell us what to do. In case you’ve forgot, he’s ramrod of this outfit.”

  “Not any more, he ain’t,” the Kid said quietly, riding closer to Tunstall’s motionless form. “We’re all out of a job on account of
this.”

  “Leastways, we’re still alive,” Waite answered.

  “To tell the truth, I ain’t all that proud to be breathin’ right now,” the Kid said. “A man’s gotta have loyalty to his friends or his life ain’t worth spit. We damn sure didn’t show no loyalty to Mr. Tunstall.”

  Waite lowered his face, hiding his eyes below his hat brim as they rode up on the body.

  The Kid swung down, squatting on his haunches to look at Tunstall’s face. The Englishman’s eyes were open, glazed over with death. His face had been smashed in by bullets at close range. Two bulletholes in his chest seeped blood onto the rocky soil beneath him. His curious derby hat lay in the dust a few feet away.

  Suddenly the Kid noticed something, just as Fred Waite got down to stare at the corpse.

  “Look here, Fred.”

  “I can see he’s dead, Kid. Don’t need to look no closer to be sure.”

  “That ain’t what I’m talkin’ about. Look at Mr. Tunstall’s pistol. He’s got it in his fist . . .”

  “Don’t see what’s so all important ’bout that, Kid. He’s got a gun in his hand. Ain’t no big deal to me.”

  “The hell it ain’t. You saw the same thing I did while we was sitting up on that ridge. One of Dolan’s men bent down an’ pulled out Mr. Tunstall’s pistol, remember? Then he fired it up in the air two times.”

  “I remember,” Waite said, scratching his beard stubble thoughtfully.

  “Some rotten son of a bitch put the gun in Mr. Tunstall’s hand after they killed him. They fired his pistol so it’d look like he was shootin’ back.”

  “Hadn’t thought of that,” Waite agreed.

  “That way,” the Kid continued, “when Sheriff Brady rides out here to investigate what happened, it’s gonna look like Mr. Tunstall was shootin’ at Dolan’s boys. Dolan may even try to claim Mr. Tunstall fired first. Jimmy Dolan can claim it was self-defense.”

  “But we seen the whole thing, Kid. Hell, nearly all of us did. We can set the sheriff straight on how it really happened today.”

  “If he’ll listen.”

  “I ain’t sure what you mean by that, Kid. He can’t help but listen to so many of us.”

  The Kid stood up, watching Middleton and Brown and Brewer and Charley Bowdre come riding toward them from the hills. “I’m convinced Sheriff Brady is in cahoots with Murphy an’ Dolan an’ Riley. I can’t prove a damn thing, only I’ve seen ’em together too many times, talkin’ real quiet. Sometimes that rotten lawyer, Billy Matthews, was with ’em.”

  “That don’t make Sheriff Brady a crook,” Waite said, with little conviction in his voice. “I’ve seen ’em together my own self a few times, over at Beaver Smith’s old saloon, the one that stranger named MacCallister took over. The barkeep, a big, tall feller named Garrett, tole me they was in there quite often.”

  “I know Garrett,” replied the Kid. “We’re friends, sorta. I met him when he first came to this country. He was flat broke an’ said he’d gotten in an argument with his partner somewhere down in Texas an’ had to kill him. Claimed it was self-defense, just like Dolan’s gonna say happened here today. They’re all gonna swear Mr. Tunstall fired first, an’ it’ll be our word against theirs it didn’t happen that way. If Sheriff Brady is an honest lawman, he’ll listen to us. But if he’s the crook I think he is, won’t be no charges filed against Jesse Evans or Billy Morton or Tom Hill . . . none of them boys we saw commit the murder of our friend.”

  Brewer and Middleton and Bowdre rode up, halting their winded horses a few yards away. Dick Brewer’s face was twisted hard.

  “He’s dead, ain’t he?” Brewer asked, looking at the Kid when he spoke.

  “Yeah. Me an’ Fred saw the whole thing. They shot him down like a dog. Mr. Tunstall hadn’t even pulled his pistol.”

  Brewer frowned. “But he’s got it in his fist right now, Kid.”

  “Evans, or Morton, put it there. One of ’em jerked out Mr: Tunstall’s gun an’ fired it in the air two times.”

  “I heard the shots,” Brewer remembered. “I was on the far side of them hills when the shootin’ started.”

  “I seen what happened,” Middleton said. “The Kid’s tellin’ it right. They rode up on Tunstall an’ shot him off his horse, then one of the bastards shot him in the face an’ swung down an’ fired the Englishman’s pistol twice, straight up in the air.”

  “They murdered him,” Charley Bowdre said. “Billy Morton’s gonna claim they was a legal posse, sworn in by Sheriff Brady, an’ that Tunstall fired first.”

  Brewer gave the others a look as Henry Brown rode up on a lathered chestnut. “This is war, boys. Mr. Tunstall was my friend, an’ he don’t deserve to die like this.”

  “He sure as hell don’t,” the Kid agreed.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Brewer continued. “We’ll ride back to Lincoln an’ pay a visit on Justice of the Peace Wilson. We tell him what happened, an’ ask him to swear us in as legal deputy constables of Lincoln County. Judge Wilson likes Alexander McSween. We’ll ask lawyer McSween to go with us when we see the judge.”

  “Then what are we gonna do?” Fred Waite asked, hooking his thumbs in his gunbelt.

  Brewer’s jaw turned to granite. “We’ll ask Judge Wilson to give us arrest warrants for Jesse Evans, Billy Morton, Tom Hill, an’ anybody else who was with ’em today. Then we’ll hunt ’em down an’ put ’em in jail up at Mesilla.”

  “That’s sure enough gonna start a war,” Waite said. “Dolan an’ Riley won’t take it lyin’ down.”

  “Who gives a damn?” Brewer snapped.

  The Kid nodded his agreement. “We’ll kill the sons of bitches who won’t come quiet, an’ it’ll all be nice an’ legal. We’ll be representin’ the law.”

  “Let’s do it,” John Middleton said. “As soon as McSween hears what they done to Mr. Tunstall he’ll go with us to see Judge Wilson. If the judge will make us all deputies an’ gives us warrants for the killers of John Tunstall, we’ll make Mr. Jimmy Dolan an’ Johnny Riley sorry they ever plotted to kill a good man like this.”

  Brewer looked around at the others. “Are we all in agreement on it?”

  Heads nodded. Fred Waite was last to show his support for the idea.

  “Let’s head for Mr. McSween’s house,” Waite said. “If he agrees with us, you can count me in, too.”

  The Kid turned away from Tunstall’s body to climb aboard his horse. He spoke to Brewer when he was in the saddle. “We gotta leave Mr. Tunstall’s body just like we found it, so when Sheriff Brady shows up he can see for himself where it happened. But my money says Evans an’ Morton are gonna claim Mr. Tunstall fired first.”

  “Some of us can swear otherwise,” Middleton said. “I saw the whole thing. So did the Kid an’ Fred.”

  “I’ll swear to the fact it was cold-blooded murder,” Waite said, mounting his horse.

  Brewer took one last look at their dead friend and employer before he picked up his reins. “Yonder lays a good man, boys, a good friend. I want you all to remember what he looks like layin’ in a puddle of blood, for when we go after Morton an’ his yellow pardners.”

  The Kid rode over to Brewer and halted his sorrel. “If it’s a war they want, let’s give ’em one.”

  Henry Brown patted the butt of his holstered pistol. “We can give ’em a little dose of their own medicine, an’ if Judge Wilson agrees it’ll all be nice an’ legal.”

  Brewer gave his companions another lingering look, passing his gaze across their faces. “We’ll call ourselves the Regulators, ’cause we’re gonna regulate some of the crooked dealin’s in this county. We’ll cover every inch of Lincoln County if we have to, until every last one of ’em is behind bars, waitin’ to stand trial for the murder of John Tunstall.”

  “I like it,” Middleton said, shaking his head. “Regulators sounds good to me.”

  The Kid looked north, toward the township of Lincoln. “I don’t much give a damn what we call ourselves,” he said, speaking in
a low voice. “All I care about is gettin’ the men who killed our friend.”

  Brewer swung his horse around. “Let’s ride for Lincoln, boys.”

  The Kid fell in beside Brewer as the others followed them away from the murder scene. Brewer gave the Kid a sideways glance.

  “How come you an’ Fred didn’t ride down an’ lend a hand when you seen what they was doin’ to Mr. Tunstall?” Brewer asked.

  The question struck the Kid like a knife. “We just sat up on that hill like we was froze solid. They’d already shot Mr. Tunstall off his horse before we realized what they aimed to do. I wish I could do things over, even as bad outnumbered as we was. We shoulda done somethin’ . . .”

  * * *

  Falcon was sitting at his table, laying out a game of solitaire, when Pat Garrett walked over. Pat leaned down and whispered in his ear, “Falcon, one of the cowboys at the bar said John Tunstall has been shot.”

  “What? When?” Falcon exclaimed.

  “Out on the road to Lincoln. The puncher said it was some of Evans’s men that did it. There’s a group of Tunstall’s friends all gathering at Alexander McSween’s house tonight to see what’s to be done about it.”

  Falcon grabbed his hat. “I’d better get on over there and see what’s going on. I have a feeling this may lead to a full scale range war.”

  He walked hurriedly to the livery stable, threw a saddle on Diablo and rode as hard as he could for McSween’s house.

  When he arrived shortly after dusk, he found a group of almost sixty men milling around in front of the house. He shouldered his way inside and found the Kid, Dick Brewer, Fred Waite, Bob Widenmann, and John Middleton sitting in McSween’s living room. All of the men were quite excited and all were drinking whiskey except the Kid, who had a cup of steaming coffee in his hand.

  The Kid smiled when he saw Falcon, but it was a sad smile with none of his usual jocularity in it.

  “Howdy, Falcon,” he said. “I guess you heard what them murderin’ bastards did to the boss man.”

  Falcon nodded. “I heard John was shot by some of Evans’s men. Is that true?”