Jamie walked the littered alley and stepped out at the edge of town. His hands were filled with Colts, hammers back. About fifty feet from him, two men were standing in the street, yards apart, each of them carrying sawed-off shotguns.
“Taking no chances, huh, boys?” Jamie called.
The men whirled around and fired the shotguns, the heavy charges blowing off chunks of the building where Jamie had been standing.
But as he spoke, Jamie was moving. He hit the ground belly down and fired his Colts. One slug punched a hole in the belly of Phil Howard, doubling him over and setting him down hard in the street. As he sat down, he pulled the trigger to the second barrel of the Greener and blew off all the toes on his left foot. The other slug went high and caught Fred Allison in the throat, tearing a great hole in the back of the man’s neck as it exited.
Jamie stood up by the buckshot-torn corner of the building. Both men died within minutes of each other. Jamie walked over to the bodies and removed their money belts.
“The money is stolen,” he told the gathering crowd. “It belongs to Wells Fargo and to the bank in Valley, Colorado.” He slung the money belts over his shoulder and picked up one of the sawed-off shotguns. It was a good gun; well made. Jamie took that and a sack of shells lying by the body. His eyes found the desk clerk from the hotel. “I’ll have my bath now,” he told the man, then turned and walked up the street. He stepped into the hotel without looking back at the bloody street and the stunned crowd.
* * *
Roscoe, who had changed his name to Ross LeBeau and then to Russell Clay, was shocked right down to the soles of his handmade shoes when he looked up from studying the Denver Hotel’s menu to see his sister’s child, his own niece, Page Woodville Haywood, walking into the lobby of the hotel, her husband with her.
Great God in Heaven! Ross thought, once his heart resumed its beating.
The handsome couple were seated across the room from Ross, with Page’s back to him. As soon as they were seated, Ross left the dining room as quickly as possible, with as much dignity as he could muster under the circumstances.
The world is certainly becoming a smaller place, he thought, as the doorman hailed a carriage for him. Ross would hire a detective to find out what Page and her husband were doing in Denver.
Then he didn’t know what he’d do.
* * *
Ben Franklin Washington arrived in the West with three other reporters, a photographer, an artist, a man who was gathering material for a book he was writing on the Wild West, the sons of three wealthy industrialists from back east who came along for the adventure of it all (they left their wives behind and brought their girlfriends), a couple of gofers, several valets, two cooks, and four so-called professional mercenaries who were hired as bodyguards.
They brought enough equipment with them to outfit a small army. They rode the trains as far as they could, then bought wagons, teams, riding horses, and hired men to drive the wagons.
“It’s all so, well, thrilling and grand!” cooed Miss Evelyn Wadsworth (better known as Fifi the Feathered Fan Lady to a certain segment of New Yorkers who frequented the burlesque houses), as she took in all the sights and sounds (and smells) of the raw frontier town.
“It is that,” her companion, Marshall Henry Ludlow, agreed. “What say you, Richard?”
“Oh, quite,” Richard Farnsworth replied. Dickie to his friends.
“I must say, it’s all rather primitive,” Charles Bennett remarked. Chuckie to his friends. “I’ve never seen so many guns in my life.”
“I’m awed and overwhelmed and a little frightened,” the Brooklyn-born Rebecca Willingham said, with an accent so pronounced a voice coach would have been reduced to tears of despair. Rebecca was better known as Lulu, in that part of the city where at night the glass of the lanterns glowed red.
Dickie put an arm around her waist. “I’ll personally see that no harm befalls you, dear.”
Dickie couldn’t protect a pork chop from a devout Jew, but everybody has illusions.
However, as the three former fraternity brothers were about to discover, the western frontier was no place to put those illusions to the test.
Mary Marie O’Donnell, a flaming redhead with a scattering of freckles across her nose, whose family had come over from Dublin, and who possessed more common sense in her little finger than the others did in their entire bodies, took one look around her and decided that she had made the right decision by agreeing to accompany Chuckie to the Wild West. It was indeed a grand place. “All this fine land for the homesteadin’,” she muttered. “New York City, ye’ve seen the last of this Irish lassie.”
One burly teamster that the odd group had hired took a hard look at his employers just before they pulled out the next morning, and summed up the feeling of the other drivers. “Lord have mercy on my soul!”
* * *
It was nearing dark when Jamie topped the ridge and looked down at the small cluster of buildings standing around the larger structure that was the trading post. An army fort had just been constructed not far from the trading post. It had started out as Fort Augur, but recently changed to Camp Brown, in honor of Captain Fredrick H. Brown who had been killed in ’66 in the Fetterman massacre. The camp would be abandoned in early ’71.
Jamie stripped the saddle and pack frame from his animals and stabled them. He rubbed down his horses and saw that they both had ample feed and water before even thinking about seeing to his own needs.
Jamie had bathed that morning in the cold waters of a creek and, after stropping his razor, had carefully shaved around his neatly trimmed beard and moustache; like his close-cropped hair, the beard and moustache were gray. A few weeks back he had stopped in a Shoshoni village, spent a few days with them, and traded for new buckskins, moccasins, and leggins.
Now he had to resupply, for he was low on some things and completely out of coffee, bacon, and beans.
He entered the low-ceilinged trading post and stepped to one side, as was his habit, carefully looking all about him, sizing up the half dozen or so men sitting at the rough-hewn tables, playing cards and drinking snake-head whiskey. (Some who made their own whiskey actually did toss in a few snake heads during the “curing” process, claiming it added flavor to the brew. History does not record if anyone died because of that practice.)
Jamie ordered a plate of stew from the counterman and sat down at a vacant table. Before his meal arrived, a question was thrown at him, springing out of the darkness of the far smoky depths of the room.
“You be Jamie MacCallister?”
“I am.”
“I got a message for you, MacCallister: Call off your hunt.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You’ll not live to see summer turn to fall.”
The heaping plate of stew was placed before him, and it smelled good. Jamie tore off a hunk of bread and sopped up some liquid, chewing slowly, savoring the flavor of food not cooked on the trail.
“You hear me, MacCallister?” the unknown questioner asked.
“I hear you. Now leave me alone and let me enjoy my meal.”
“Look here, MacCallister,” the man persisted. “Most of them boys you’re a-huntin’ didn’t put no lead in your wife.”
“They were there,” Jamie replied, laying down the unwritten code of the West. “They’re all thieves, murderers, rapists, and worse. And I’m going to see that every one of them steps up and shakes hands with the devil. Now leave me alone.”
A chair was pushed back, and boots struck the floor. Jamie did not look up from the food as the boots walked to the bar. “Miles Nelson says the killin’ of your wife was not done deliberate. It was an accident.”
“She’s still dead.”
“Goddamn you, MacCallister. Cain’t nobody reason with you about this thing?”
“No.”
“Then stand up and face me, MacCallister!”
Jamie pushed his plate from him. “Were you with the gang that attacked V
alley?”
“No.”
“Then I have no quarrel with you.”
“My name’s Jones.”
“That’s good, Jones. Everybody ought to know their name.”
Jones cursed at that. “My younger brother rides with the Nelson gang.”
“I see. And you’re going to stop me from killing him, right?”
“That’s right, MacCallister.”
“Is he worth it, Jones?” Jamie asked softly. “Really worth it?”
“He’s my brother, MacCallister! Now stand up and face me.”
Jamie moved very quickly. Not as fast as when he was thirty, but fast enough. He grabbed a chair and threw it at the man. The man’s hands flew up from the butts of his guns to protect his face. Jamie closed the distance between them and slammed a big fist into Jones’s face, pulping his lips. He followed that with a left hook that smashed into the man’s jaw, then hit him twice more in the face. Jones sank to the floor, blood streaming from mouth and nose.
Jamie jerked the man’s guns from leather and laid them on the bar. He looked at the barkeep. “Put those away. Unless you want a killing in this place.”
Jamie walked back to the table and resumed his eating. Several men rose to help Jones to his feet.
“I’ll stop you, MacCallister,” Jones mumbled through mashed and bloody lips. “You’ll not bring no harm to my little brother.”
“Stay out of it,” Jamie warned. “Go on back home and keep clear of me. Your brother is riding with the worst of scum and filth. The Nelson gang has robbed and raped and killed and tortured from Kansas to California. And your brother Lloyd is a part of it. When you take up for him, that makes you no better. Don’t you ever cross my trail again.”
Jamie finished his meal, bought his supplies, and walked over to the livery. He made himself a bed in the hayloft and wrapped up in his blankets. If anyone came into the livery, Buck would warn him. Jamie could understand taking up for kin, but not when kin was clearly in the wrong. That he could not understand. Lloyd Jones had dodgers out on him from Kansas to California, with charges ranging from rape to murder, and the wanted posters read dead or alive. Every member of the Nelson gang was wanted dead or alive.
Wanted dead or alive by the law.
Just dead by Jamie.
* * *
Jamie pulled out before any lamplights or candles were glowing in the trading post or any of the buildings surrounding it. Although he wished it were not so, Jamie was certain he would run into Jones again. The man seemed hell-bent on getting himself killed. All because of his worthless brother. Perhaps the man would come to his senses, but Jamie doubted it.
Jamie headed straight west, crossing over into Utah. He camped along the Bear River for a couple of days, resting his horses, and then moved on toward the Mormon settlements just west of the Wasatch Range, along the Great Salt Lake.
He had no way of knowing there were dozens of reporters waiting there for him.
Ben Franklin Washington among them.
What Jamie did know was that four of Miles Nelson’s men were in the area, hanging out somewhere between Ogden and Logan. And he had learned that four more of the gang were hiding out north of there, up in Southern Idaho. They would be next on the list.
A farmer in a wagon whoaed his team upon spotting Jamie and hailed him. “You’d be Jamie MacCallister, sir?”
“I would,”Jamie replied with a smile, always surprised that so many people knew his face.
“Whole passel of newspaper writers waitin’ for you in town,” the farmer told him. “Snoopin’ around and askin’ a bunch of fool questions. But them thugs that was in the gang that killed your wife is just north and some east of Brigham City, at a tradin’ post. The law won’t interfere, Mr. MacCallister. Long as no innocent person gets hurt.”
“To the best of my knowledge, sir, I have never harmed an innocent person in my life.”
“Good luck to you.” The farmer lifted the reins, clucked to his horses, and rattled on up the road.
Jamie turned Buck’s head and rode north. He had no wish to see a bunch of reporters.
But Jamie was news, and reporters could smell out news like a bloodhound on a scent. And a little money spread out here and there to locals never hurt.
When Jamie stepped Buck out on the road that led to the trading post, the reporters, the adventurers, the photographers, the painters, and the hangers-on were waiting for him.
4
Only a few of the reporters were sympathetic toward Jamie’s manhunt. Even in the 1870s, there were reporters calling for some sort of pistol control.
When Jamie saw the saddle horses and buggies, he muttered, “Howin the hell? . . .” Then he saw Jones, staring hate at him. Jones must have ridden two or three horses into the ground to get ahead of Jamie. However he did it, it was done.
But how did he know where Jamie was going?
Then it came to him: Jones’s kid brother must be with the gang members here in Utah, or with the bunch up in Southern Idaho. That’s the only thing that made any sense.
“Taking the law into your own hands again, Mr. MacCallister?” a reporter yelled.
“Hell with you,” Jamie muttered, then wheeled his horse and headed back into the timber.
A few on horseback might try to follow, but even that was doubtful; for these were city folks, and without their guides, they’d be lost as a child in ten minutes.
Jamie rode straight east at a trot, weaving in and out of the timber, letting Buck pick his own way, the packhorse following. After a couple of miles, Jamie stopped and allowed his horses to blow, then headed north with a smile on his lips.
* * *
“Where’d he go?” Marshall Henry Ludlow demanded, twisting in the saddle.
“Don’t ask me where he went,” Fifi said, sitting her sidesaddle. “I don’t even know where I am.”
“He’s pullin’ something,” Newby, the reporter’s guide, whispered to Hank. “MacCallister’s got more twists and turns than a snake.”
“Let’s head for the trading post,” a reporter suggested, trying to ease his saddle-sore butt. “We’ll wait him out. He has to show up sooner or later.”
Later. Much later.
* * *
Huddled around a fire, those members of the Nelson gang who were hiding out in Southern Idaho were growing restless and surly. It galled them to the bone to be hiding from one man. One man!
“Who the hell does this Jamie MacCallister think he is, anyways?” Rudy Hewitt demanded, throwing a couple of sticks on the fire. “Hell, he’s an old man! He’s got to be in his late fifties. I could take him with one hand tied behind my back.”
Rudy was in his early thirties. He wasn’t going to get much older.
“This guy fought in the Alamo,” Ollie Brennan said. “Christ, I wasn’t even born when that happened.”
“Yeah,” Lloyd Jones said. “There can’t be much to him. He’s just an old man who thinks he’s still tough. Hell, my brother’s probably done put lead in him.”
Russell Stokes walked back from the spring with a pot of fresh water. He put the pot on to boil. “We’re ’bout out of coffee. I ain’t gonna stand for bein’ out of coffee. I’m tarred of waitin’ ’round here, hidin’ out like cowards. Goddammit, I ain’t no coward.”
Cliff Baylock nodded his head in agreement. He rubbed his crotch. “I got to have me a woman. Let’s mosey on down toward Utah and find us a farm woman. We’ll take turns with her.”
“Her husband might have something to say about that,” Rudy said.
“Hell, we’ll just kill him right off. We might get lucky and find us a farm woman with some daughters. I like ‘em young and tender. I ’specially like it when they fight and beg. Makes it better.”
Lloyd grinned and pulled at his crotch. “Damn, but you’re gettin’ me all worked up, Cliff.”
“I think you got a real good idea, Cliff,” Russell said.
“I’m for it,” Ollie agreed.
�
�Me, too,” Rudy added.
“Bad idea.” The whisper came out of the brush.
“Who said that?” Lloyd demanded, getting to his feet and looking all around him.
“I didn’t hear nothin’,” Cliff said.
“I didn’t neither,” Ollie echoed.
“I could have swore I heard someone whisper from over yonder,” Lloyd said, pointing toward the brush.
Russell laughed at the younger man. “You just started thinkin’ ’bout women and that caused a roarin’ in your head, boy. Settle down and let’s plan this here thing out.”
Lloyd looked all around him, then shrugged and returned to his spot by the fire. “I been out here in the lonesome so long I’m losin’ my mind,” he muttered.
Jamie couldn’t believe the men had dismissed his whisper as imagination. He stood in the brush and timber and listened to the men plan their evil perversions until he could take no more of it.
“It’s still a bad idea.” Jamie spoke the words loud and clear as he stepped out of the brush, both his hands holding Colts, hammers back.
Ollie was the first to react. “MacCallister!” he yelled. He grabbed for his pistol, whirled around, and Jamie shot him. Ollie screamed and fell backward, landing in the fire. His clothing ignited, and soon he was blazing.
As Cliff Baylock levered a round into his Winchester, Jamie shot him twice in the chest just as Rudy came up with twin Stars, converted to take cartridges. Jamie ended his outlaw days and sent him to the grave with a bullet in his brain.
Cursing like a wild man, Russell faced Jamie and managed to fire once, the slug knocking bark off a tree. Jamie shot him twice while a badly frightened Lloyd made it to his horse and went galloping away, toward the south.
Jamie let him go. There was always another day.
Jamie took the money belts from the men, with the exception of Ollie. There wasn’t much left of him. Then he took what ammunition he could use and stretched the men out in a row. He stripped the saddles from their mounts and turned the horses loose.
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