“Yes, I did, and it will. But if it will just hold off for another half hour or so, we’ll be to Black Hawk.”
“Black Hawk? What’s Black Hawk?”
“It’s a town me and Clete have already scouted out. No railroad comes to it, there’s no telegraph wires, and even if they have heard of us, there ain’t likely no one there who has ever seen us. We’ll be safe inside, and the rain will wash away the tracks. We can hole up there for a while until they quit lookin’ for us.”
“And spend some of our money?” Terrell asked, hopefully.
“Yeah,” Luke replied with a grin. “We can spend a little of our money there.”
“I ain’t never been to Black Hawk,” Caldwell said. “What’s it like?”
“It’s got beer, whiskey, food, and women,” Poole said. “What else do you need to know about it?”
Terrell chuckled. “Don’t need to know nothin’ more about it a’tall, I don’t reckon.”
It took the better part of a quarter hour to reach the town after they first saw it, and they rode in slowly, sizing it up with wary eyes. It was a town with only one street. The unpainted wood of the few ramshackle buildings was turning gray and splitting. There was no railroad, but there was a stagecoach station with a schedule board announcing the arrival and departure of four stagecoaches per week. The first few drops of rain started to fall, and the few people out on the street ran to get inside before the rain started in earnest.
“There’s where we’re headed,” Luke said, pointing to a saloon. Painted in red, outlined in gold on the false front of the saloon were the words Lucky Nugget.
The five rode up to the front of the saloon, dismounted, and tied off their horses. Luke reached for the little cloth bag that was tied to his saddle horn.
“You takin’ the money in with you?” Terrell asked.
“You don’t think I’m goin’ to leave it out here, do you?”
“I reckon not. Just think it might be a little strange for you to be carryin’ all that money.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Luke said as they stepped onto the porch. Almost as if on cue, the clouds opened up and the rain fell in torrents.
“Ha!,” Clete Mueller said, a few minutes later. “I’ll just bet you that ol’ Egan Drumm is a’ wishin’ he was with us now, after all the money we just stoled. He got to thinkin’ he could do better goin’ out on his own, so he left. But now here we are. We got us all this money, and he ain’t got nothin’.”
“We don’t know that he ain’t got nothin’,” Luke said. “We don’t know nothin’ about him, not even where he’s at.”
“Yeah, but I’d be willin’ to bet he ain’t got nothin’,” Clete said.
“Speakin’ o’ goin’ out on our own, I think maybe we ought to divide up the money now, and go our own ways,” Ollie Terrell said, bringing up the subject again.
“We’ll divide the money when I say we divide it,” Luke Mueller said. “Anyway, what are you worried about? We got plenty of money to spend now, ain’t we? Order whatever you want, we can afford it.”
“Yeah,” Clete added with a cackle. “We can afford it.”
“What about women?” Terrell asked. “What if I’m a’ wantin’ me a woman?”
“Don’t you be worryin’ none about gettin’ yourself a woman,” Luke said. “They’s plenty of women around, and once we start spendin’ the money, the women will be comin’ out of the woodwork.”
Terrell laughed. “Women comin’ out of the woodwork. I like that. I ain’t never heard nothin’ like that before.”
“How bout we start spendin’ some of that money now?” Caldwell asked. “I’m hungry. And I got me a thirst worked up, too.”
“Barkeep!” Mueller called. “Bring us a couple bottles of whiskey, some glasses, and some food. Lots of food.”
“And some women!” Terrell added. “Let’s get some women over here.”
Three of the bar girls who had been wandering around the saloon, flitting from table to table like bees around flowers, answered the call and within a moment the five bank robbers and three women were having themselves a party.
Though Luke Mueller was the smallest of the men, he turned all his attention to the biggest of the women.
“Ain’t that there’n a little big for you, Luke?” Terrell teased, laughing out loud.
As quick as a thought, a pistol appeared in Luke’s hand, and he pointed it at Terrell, pulling back the hammer.
“You have somethin’ to say about what woman I pick?” Luke asked.
The laughter died on Terrell’s lips, his pupils dilated with fear, and he held his hand out as if by that action he could ward Luke off. “’Course, you know I didn’t mean nothin’ by that, Luke. I was just a’ funnin’ you is all.”
There was a long moment of high tension and absolute silence as everyone watched the tableau. Then, suddenly, a smile spread across Luke’s face, and he eased the hammer down and put the pistol back in his holster.
“I didn’t mean nothin’ neither. I was just funnin’ you, too,” he said.
The burst of laughter that followed was precipitated more by the release of tension, than humor.
“What’s your name?” Luke asked the big woman.
“Patsy,” the woman answered. A moment earlier she had been enjoying her flirtation with the little man, but now he frightened her.
“Tell me, Patsy, what will you charge for me and you to go upstairs?”
“A dollar for one hour,” Patsy said. “Three dollars for the rest of the day.”
“Here’s five dollars. I might want to stay longer than the rest of the day.”
Smiling, Patsy took the money and stuck it inside the top of her dress, between her very large breasts. “Oh, honey, we’re goin’ to have us a real good time,” she said. The money had changed her attitude about him.
Luke reached under the table and picked up a cloth bag.
“What’s that, darlin’, your laundry?” Patsy asked. “Honey, for five dollars I’ll give you a very good time, but I ain’t a’ goin’ to be doin’ no laundry.”
The other soiled doves laughed.
“You can leave your—uh—laundry here, if you want,” Clete said.
“That’s all right, I’ll take care of it,” Luke said. “This way, we’ll all know where it is, won’t we?”
“This way, darlin’,” Patsy said, leading Luke away from the table. The others in the saloon watched them go up the stairs.
“Looks like a mouse following an elephant,” someone said on the far side of the room. Having seen the lightning draw of the “mouse,” he made the observation quietly, and his friend’s resultant laughter was just as quiet.
Chapter Three
Two hours later
From the moment he left MacCallister, Falcon had been on the trail of the band of outlaws. Though the tracks were gone, washed out by the steady downpour, before he lost them they had been leading directly and inexorably toward Black Hawk. The cold, driving rain that had started up in the higher elevations then moved down the slopes of the Front Range Mountains had turned the single street of Black Hawk into a rushing river.
Falcon knew if he couldn’t find his quarry in Black Hawk he would have to give up. But he was also reasonably certain the men, confident they had gotten away cleanly after the rock slide, would be there somewhere, taking shelter from the rain. Shivering in the cold downpour, Falcon perused both sides of the street as he rode into town. He rode past the buildings, subconsciously enumerating them as he passed. There was a rooming house, a livery, a smithy, and a general store that had DRUGS, MEATS, GOODS painted on its high, false front. There was a hotel, a restaurant, and of course, the ubiquitous saloon.
It was not exactly a bolt from the blue when he saw the horses he had been tracking—two roans, a black, a white, and a paint—tied up outside the Lucky Nugget Saloon.
“Well, boys,” he said aloud. “I’ll just bet you thought you were home free. Looks like you are in for a
little surprise.”
He steered his horse toward the saloon, the hooves splashing up water from the flooded road as he crossed the street. Stopping in front of the saloon, Falcon slid down from the saddle then walked over to examine the right forefoot of each horse. He struck pay dirt on the third horse he checked. The paint had a tie-bar shoe, the same shoe he had been following for the last two days.
Falcon stepped up onto the porch and used the edge of the wide, weathered planks to scrape mud from his boots. He could hear the discordant pounding of an out of tune piano, and the loud guffaw of a man laughing, followed by the higher trill of a woman’s cackle.
Falcon slipped out of his poncho and hung it on a nail sticking out of the front wall. Taking his hat off, he poured water from the top of the crown, then put it back on his head. Finally, he eased his pistol from the holster and spun the cylinder to check the loads, satisfying himself he was ready for any contingency. Squaring his shoulders, he pushed through the swinging bat wing doors and stepped just far enough inside to be out of the rain blowing in.
The inside of the saloon was a golden bubble of light. A dozen lanterns hung from a couple wagon wheel chandeliers. A large cloud of drifting tobacco smoke spread throughout the room, dimming the light and creating an artificial fog sufficient to becloud the view. The features of people standing no more than a few feet away looked as if they were being viewed through a film of gauze cloth.
The wood burning stove put off enough heat to remove the chill from the damp, dreary day, and the room was redolent with the smell of burning wood, tobacco, stale beer, and wet clothing. It was noisy, with a dozen or more conversations, periodic outbreaks of laughter, and music—if the cacophonous result of a piano player banging away at the old, scarred, upright piano could be called music. The saloon was crowded. After a brief perusal, Falcon’s attention was drawn to a table in the far corner, where four men and two bar girls were laughing and engaged in loud, animated conversation.
“Honey, if you are going to put your hand there, you are going to have to pay for it,” one of the girls said with a loud squeal, her laughter joined by that of the others.
“Darlin’ I’ll be happy to pay for it,” the man replied. “Me’n my pards here done got us a lucky streak in a big poker game.” The speaker had only three fingers on his left hand.
“Yeah,” one of the other men said. “That’s what it was. It was a poker game.” He was wearing an eye patch over his right eye.
The others laughed, as if sharing some sort of inside joke.
“With all the money you boys are spendin’, that must have been quite a game,” the bar girl said.
“It was, darlin’, it was.”
Falcon moved a little closer so he could get a clearer look at the men.
He had been looking for five men, but there were only four. However, with one of them wearing an eye patch, another with only three fingers on his left hand, and a third noticeably shorter than the other three, he was convinced they were the men he had been following. The fourth man, as described, was unremarkable in any way. Those four men, as well the horses that were tied up outside, perfectly fit the descriptions of the men he had been following; the ones who had held up the bank in MacCallister.
Falcon had never seen the Mueller brothers, but he was well aware of them. Not since Frank and Jesse James had a pair of brothers become so notorious, and not even the James brothers had a reputation for killing to match the Muellers. Luke Mueller, particularly, was known to be a deadly gunfighter—deadly because he was both quick with a gun, and willing to use it. The one with the loud mouth was clearly the dominating figure among the four, in spite of being the smallest. Falcon was certain he was one of the Muellers—though which one he didn’t know. He had no idea where the other Mueller was.
“Tell you what, darlin’,” the little man said to one of the bar girls. “Why don’t me’n you go on up and join my brother and that big ol’ gal he is with?”
“What? In the same room?” the bar girl gasped. She shook her head. “No, sir, I couldn’t do anything like that.”
“Don’t get yourself all in a tither,” the little man said. “I didn’t mean join ’em in the same room. I just meant go upstairs like they did. We’ll find our own room.”
“Oh, well, that’s more like it,” the soiled dove replied. “I thought you’d never ask. I was beginnin’ to think you didn’t like me.”
“Oh, I like you, darlin’. I like you just fine. How ’bout gettin’ a bottle to take up with us?”
“All right.”
“Never mind the bottle, miss, he won’t be needing it,” Falcon called out. “None of them will.”
The four men sitting at the table looked at him in surprise, wondering who had the audacity to make such a confrontational declaration.
“Mister, what do you mean I’ll not be needin’ me a bottle of whiskey?” the little man asked.
“You won’t be needing it, because you will either be going back to MacCallister with me to stand trial for bank robbery and murder, or you’ll be dead.”
Falcon’s voice was loud and sharp, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. All conversation halted. The piano playing came to a ragged end, save for the last discordant note that hung in the air as everyone in the room turned to look at the man whose words had been so challenging.
The little man stared incredulously at Falcon for a moment, then he started laughing. The other three men who were sitting around the table with him laughed as well.
“You’re a funny man, mister. You’ve give me a good laugh. But tell me, what makes you think we held up a bank in MacCallister? Where is MacCallister, anyway? They ain’t none of us ever even been there.”
“Oh, you’ve been there all right,” Falcon said. “I know that, because I trailed the five of you from there to here.”
“You trailed us?” the little man asked in surprise. “Wait a minute. That was you?”
“It was me,” Falcon said.
“But I thought—”
“That you had got me with a rock slide. Yeah, that was close.”
“Who the hell are you, anyway? What’s your name?”
“The name is Falcon MacCallister.”
“Falcon MacCallister?” Terrell gasped. “You and your brother said takin’ that bank would be real easy. Jesus. Now we got Falcon MacCallister after us!”
“Shut up, Terrell, you damn fool! Don’t you realize you just confessed to murder in front of a dozen witnesses!” Mueller said.
“What the hell you talkin’ about? I didn’t kill nobody!” Terrell shouted. “Your crazy brother Luke is the one that done the killin’.”
“I told you to keep your mouth shut,” Mueller said angrily.
The bar girls standing near the table moved away quickly, while all the others in the saloon, sensing something was about to happen, moved back against the walls, opening up the center of the saloon. Falcon and the four men were at center stage in the unfolding drama.
Mueller smiled. Rather than softening his features, the smile twisted his face into a macabre, harlequin mask.
“You seem to have put yourself into a bit of a pickle here, Mr. MacCallister,” Mueller said. “There’s only one of you, and there’s four of us. ’Pears to me like you would’ve been a heap better off, just stayin’ out of this. I’m goin’ to enjoy this.”
“Take your guns out of your holsters and put them on the floor,” Falcon ordered.
Mueller shook his head, quietly. “Huh,” he said. “You want us to take our guns out of the holsters and put them on the floor, do you?” Mueller laughed. “Well now, MacCallister, I would call that bold talk for someone who’s not only outnumbered four to one, but who ain’t even holdin’ a pistol. I’ll tell you right now, the only way my gun is comin’ out of my holster is when I pull it to kill you.”
The grin that appeared on Falcon’s face, though not as broad, nor as forced as Mueller’s had been, was more frightening because it was cold, c
alculated, and confident.
The warmth of the stove felt hotter, and the smells seemed stronger. With everyone rooted in position, the scene could have been a Matthew Brady photograph taken from real life—a piece of time snatched from the present and eternally frozen in sepia tone.
What was different from just a heartbeat earlier was the sound, or more accurately, the lack of it. All music, all conversation, the clinking of glasses, and the scrape of boots on the floor were gone. Only the steady ticktock of the great regulator grandfather clock standing at the wall just under the stairs, interrupted the deadly quiet. More than one person in the room, sensing fortune had chosen them to witness an event that, one day they would speak of with their grandchildren, glanced at the clock in order to have it well memorized. In their telling of the day they saw the famous Falcon MacCallister killed, they wanted to be accurate in every detail, down to the exact time.
There was not the slightest doubt in anyone’s mind as to what would be the outcome of the dance of death they were about to witness. Falcon MacCallister was facing four armed and desperate men, and though MacCallister was wearing a pistol, it was still in his holster.
Outside a sudden, brilliant flash of lightning struck so close it was concurrent with an explosively loud peal of thunder. A couple of men shouted out in alarm, and one of the bar girls screamed.
Perceiving it provided him with the best opportunity to make his play, Mueller jumped up, his gun in his hand.
“Now boys!” he shouted, as the chair he had been sitting in tumbled over behind him.
The other three matched Mueller, jumping up and pulling their guns.
Falcon fired four times, the shots coming so close together it sounded like one sustained roar. Mueller got off one shot, but it was wide of its mark, crashing into the mirror behind the bar. Two of Mueller’s compatriots also managed to get off shots, one going into the floor, the other into the ceiling. All four men fell with fatal gunshot wounds.
“Did you see that?”
“I seen it, but I ain’t a’ believin’ it.”
Slaughter of Eagles Page 3