“MacCallister killed my Uncle Henry down the Big Thicket country,” a Bradford said. “I want him dead. And I don’t need to hire no damn bounty hunters. I got five big, strappin’ boys that I can cut loose any time. They’ll take care of MacCallister.”
“Anybody here know a man name of Grover Ellis?” Olmstead asked.
They all shook their heads.
“MacCallister run Grover out of his valley right after the war. Then Grover got killed a couple or three years later over on the Bearpaw. ’Fore he died, he claimed MacCallister done it or had it done. Well, his kin come out to avenge him, and there was a big shoot-out. MacCallister had gotten together some old mountain men and a couple of Injuns and the like, and they fairly whupped a whole army of men. Well, this Grover Ellis has got more kin just achin’ for revenge.”
“Just like I’m aching for revenge for my uncle,” Layfield spoke up. He grimaced. “Who lies rotting in that damnable insane asylum.”
“I personally feel we won’t have to do anything,” Olmstead said. “Jamie Ian MacCallister’s string is just about played out. Let’s start our legal actions against the MacCallister clan’s claim to own all that land. I’ve got a couple of federal judges in my pocket, and they’re ready to go.”
“Sounds good,” the men all agreed.
“It’s over for you, MacCallister,” Newby muttered, pouring himself a glass of whiskey. “After all these years, our good name will be avenged, and my kin can rest easy in their graves.”
The men in the cigar-smoke-filled room did not take into consideration that Jamie just might have something to say about that.
* * *
Jamie waited patiently for over an hour. Finally, his persistence paid off. Three roughly dressed and unshaven men swaggered through the door. Their guns were loose in leather, and they were ready for action. Jamie had no doubt that they had been tipped off to his presence.
“You’ve been damned lucky this far, MacCallister,” Son Hogg said. “But tonight is when your luck runs out.”
Son stood staring and sneering at Jamie. A big man, as big as Jamie. Jamie knew that a man Son’s size could soak up a lot of lead before going down.
“Could be, Son,” Jamie said, then shifted his eyes to Jim Aarons. “You want to flap your big stupid mouth about anything, baby killer?”
Aarons flushed darkly under his unshaven face but kept his mouth closed.
Jamie looked at Anderson. “How about you, child raper? You have anything to say?”
Anderson was suspected of brutally raping at least three young girls during his criminal years.
“I say it’s time for you to die, you washed-out, used-up, old son of a bitch!” Anderson flung the words at Jamie. “What do you have to say about that?”
“Then drag iron, baby raper,” Jamie told him. None of the three could see that Jamie had already drawn and cocked his right-hand .44. “What the hell do you want from me, an engraved invite?”
The three outlaws exchanged glances. Even though they had Jamie three-to-one, none of them were all that anxious to mix it up with him. Jamie was still a very dangerous pistolero... a hard fact that all three were well aware of.
“Old man,” Son said. “They’s three of us.”
“I learned to count a long time before your mother crawled under the porch and whelped you, Hogg,” Jamie said, offhandedly implying the man was a son of a bitch.
“Damn your eyes, MacCallister!” Hogg yelled, his face darkening with rage. “Fill your hand, old man!”
“Oh, it’s already filled, Son,” Jamie told him, then lifted his pistol and shot Son Hogg in the belly.
Hell broke loose in the saloon.
11
Son stumbled against the bar, but didn’t go down. “Kill that bastard!” Son hollered, one hand over the bleeding hole in his belly.
Jamie felt the hot tug of a bullet as the lead tore a hole in his new suit coat and blistered the flesh of his upper left arm, the bullet cutting a slight groove there. He turned sideways and shot Jim Aarons twice just as the edge of the bar was splintered by a bullet from Glen Anderson’s Remington. 44. Jamie turned again just as another bullet from Glen’s .44 burned his leg.
The saloon was rapidly filling with gunsmoke, stinging the eyes of the combatants as Jamie shot Anderson in the chest. Glen toppled backward, falling into Son Hoggjust as Son was leveling his pistol at Jamie. The shot went wild, blowing a hole in the ceiling and bringing a yelp of fright from a man on the second floor who was being entertained by one of the red-light ladies.
Jim Aarons was down on his knees on the floor, mortally wounded but still game. He managed to lift his Remington and cock it before Jamie turned out his lights with his left-hand Colt. A muscle spasm pulled the trigger on Aaron’s Remington and blew yet another hole in the ceiling.
Then it was Jamie and Son Hogg facing each other, about twenty feet separating them.
Upstairs, several of the district’s “brides of the multitudes” were screaming bloody murder, and men were cussing and shouting, fumbling for pants and boots.
No one noticed the painter, John A. Bellingham, sitting in a far corner of the saloon, sketching furiously as the gunfight was winding down to its bloody conclusion.
Son Hogg was standing on his own now, legs spread wide apart, seemingly oblivious to the bloody hole in his stomach. He cursed Jamie and lifted both his guns.
Jamie began firing and cocking with both .44s. One long, thunderous roar in the saloon. Son shuddered with each bullet’s impact but did not go down. He fired, the bullet striking Jamie on the outside of his left leg, causing him to stagger and lean against the bar for support.
Son was now hanging on to the bar with his left arm, his face and chest bloody. He was still cursing Jamie as he lifted his pistol one last time.
Jamie drilled him in the center of the chest, and Son’s gun slipped from numb fingers to clatter on the floor. Son clung to the bar with a death grip, a macabre smile on his bloody face. “Damn you, MacCallister,” he gasped. “Damn you to the fiery pits of hell for this.”
“You should have stayed out of my town,” Jamie told him, leaning against the bar.
“Hell of a time to tell me that,” Son whispered. Then he died with his eyes wide open and staring at nothing the living could see.
Jamie stood erect, ignoring the pain in his arm and leg. He reloaded carefully, first his right-hand Colt, then his left-hand Colt.
Bellingham was sketching as fast as he could, squinting against the thick clouds of gunsmoke.
“They was wrong for what they done in Valley, and you was right doing what you did, Mr. MacCallister,” a man spoke from the gaming tables. “But you got to give Son his due: he was game to the end.”
“That he was,” Jamie said.
Son’s dead fingers still clung to the edge of the bar, holding him there.
The front door opened, for a moment allowing the cold, late winter winds to blow away the gunsmoke. James William stood there. “Grandpa!” the young man said, moving quickly to Jamie, carefully stepping over the two dead men sprawled on the floor.
“Hello, boy,” Jamie said. “I was going to look you up when this shootin’ party was over.”
“Let’s go home, Grandpa,” James William said. “I’ll get the doctor.”
“Sounds good to me, boy.”
Jamie and his grandson moved toward the front of the saloon and walked out into the cold night.
“I’ve seen some shoot-outs in my time,” an outlaw said, walking to the bar to stand next to the dead Son Hogg. “But that one was about the best I reckon I’ve ever seen.” He looked into the dead eyes of Son. “You ain’t no prettier dead than you was alive, Son. Why don’t you just close your eyes and give it up?”
Son’s muscles relaxed, and he fell to the floor.
“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” the outlaw said in amazement. “You reckon he heard me?”
* * *
Telegraph wires had finally reached Valley,
and the morning after the wild shoot-out, James William sent a telegram to his parents, Ellen Kathleen and William: GRANDPA STAYING WITH US FOR A TIME. SLIGHTLYHURT IN GUNFIGHT. HE’S ALL RIGHT. TAKE THREE MORE OFF THE LIST.
“How many does that make?” Morgan asked Matthew.
“Twenty-one, I think,” the sheriff of the county said.
His wife, the former Ginny Hawkins, opened her purse and took out a pad. “Twenty-two,” she corrected.
“Well,” Falcon said. “Pa’s got near’bouts half of them. If he keeps this up, another year and a half and he’ll come ridin’ back into the valley.”
Morgan walked to the window and looked out. “I’m bettin’ spring will come early this year. All the signs point thataway. Soon as possible, I want flowers planted on Ma’s grave. She was always partial to violets.” He looked at his sisters. “You reckon you could get violets to grow up yonder, girls?”
“Three or four different kinds, Morgan,” Joleen said. “We’ll cover her grave with them.”
“All different colors?” Morgan asked wistfully.
“All different colors, Morgan,” Megan said softly. “White violets, blue violets, and yellow prairie violets.”
“Ma would like that,” Falcon said. “But the bloomin’ time is short. Maybe we could mix in some heart’s delight and pussy paws with them. They’re right pretty. And I know where they grow. I’ll get some come early spring.”
“Black-eyed Susans and kittentails, too,” Falcon’s wife, Marie, said. “And perhaps some paintbrush. I will gather those and sage.”
She looked at Falcon, a twinkle in her eyes. “And late this summer, we will have another child.”
Falcon stared at her. “Another one?”
“Someone needs to tell you how that happens, brother,” Matthew said with a laugh.
“Somebody better get you a bundlin’ board, brother,” Joleen said.
Ellen Kathleen sobered up everybody, real quick, when she held up the telegram from James William. “I didn’t read you all of this. Page is with child.”
“Damn!” Falcon summed up the feelings of all.
* * *
“So you knew all along,” Jamie said to Page.
The three of them were sitting in the parlor, overlooking the street, having coffee and cake. Jamie’s wounds had been minor, at best, and had healed. He was a hundred percent, but hesitant to leave, since he found he enjoyed Page’s company. The young lady had a lot of spunk.
“Since I was a little girl back in Virginia. And James knew long before we were married.”
“I just didn’t see a problem with it, Grandpa,” James William said.
“Well, I think the odds are on your side that the baby will be born white,” Jamie said. “But I’m no expert on that subject. I don’t know that anyone is. Have you leveled with your doctor, Page?”
“Yes,” she said quickly. Then she smiled. “You met him.”
Jamie nodded his head. “Yes. Rufus LeBlanc. He has a gentle hand.”
“He’s Creole, from New Orleans,” Page said. “He’s Negro, French, and Spanish . . . and maybe some Indian. He isn’t sure. He married pure white from around Natchez. They have three children. No problems yet.”
Jamie chuckled. “My word, what a mixed-up family the MacCallisters are. Kate and me sure never dreamt of anything like this. But she would be pleased everything turned out so well.”
“Have you been back to her grave site, Grandpa?” Page asked softly.
“No. I won’t ’til she’s avenged. I told her that whilst she was on the Starry Path. She understood.”
Which was more than James William and Page did, but they kept silent on the subject.
“When are you due?” Jamie asked Page.
“Late this summer.”
“If possible, I’ll be back for the birthing,” Jamie said. “But don’t count on it ’til you see me.”
Jamie looked at the young people, first at James William, then at Page. “If the baby is, ah, not white, you know that you have a home in Valley. Little things like that don’t cause much of a stir there.”
Tears sprang into Page’s eyes. She leaned forward and kissed Jamie’s cheek. “Thank you, Grandpa.”
* * *
On an unusually warm day in late February, Jamie rode out of Denver. James William and Page were sorry to see him go, but not the authorities. They all breathed a collective sigh of relief when Jamie saddled up and pulled out.
Jamie traveled east and slightly north, heading for a small community on the South Platte River, about thirty miles south of the Nebraska line. It had started life as a trading post, and now was a small town of about four hundred souls. Fort Sedgwick was only a few miles from the town; but it was in the process of being deactivated as a military garrison, and most of its troops were gone, having been assigned to other forts. Fort Sedgwick was established in 1864 and abandoned on the last day of May, 1871, when the federal government decided, incorrectly, that all Indian trouble in that area was over.
But it wasn’t Indian trouble that was coming toward the quiet little town.
It was Jamie Ian MacCallister.
* * *
Jamie Ian the Third was courting Mary Marie O’Donnell with all his might. It had taken him some time to convince the Irish lass that he was neither retarded nor spastic, but after that misunderstanding was corrected, the two were very nearly inseparable.
On the late winter afternoon that Jamie Ian the Second and his wife, the former Caroline Hankins, found the couple groping each other in the hayloft, both of them red-faced and breathing like hard-run racehorses, a wedding was promptly planned.
“Disgraceful,” Caroline said. “I don’t know what this younger generation is coming to.”
“The next thing you know, ladies will be smoking,” Jamie Ian the Second said.
“Pitiful,” Caroline agreed.
The wedding was planned for March, 1871. And it was a very good thing it was, for Mary Marie gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, exactly five months after the wedding.
“We’ll just say the babies were slightly premature,” Dr. Tom Prentiss said drily.
“Premature!” Falcon blurted. “Hell, the babies weigh damn near ten pounds each!”
That got him a dirty look and a thumb in his ribs from his wife.
“Right,” Falcon got the message. “Premature. Lucky we saved them. Touch and go all the way.”
“Red hair and blue eyes,” Joleen said with a smile, looking down at the twins.
It would be months later before Jamie learned that he was a great-grandfather ... again.
* * *
Jamie’s horse woke him with a soft nicker about an hour before dawn. Jamie could just make out the sounds of walking horses from his camp under a bluff on the north side of the South Platte. He rolled out of his blankets and pulled on his boots. Picking up his rifle, he slipped over to his horses and petted them, quieting them. Then he moved closer to the river and squatted down.
Four mounted men and two packhorses. The men carried their rifles at the ready. Jamie moved closer to the river in an attempt to catch any bit of conversation.
“How much further is this place?” the sound drifted to Jamie. “I’m tarred and want some sleep.”
“Quit your grousin’, Coots,” was the reply. “It ain’t far. Where the Pawnee runs into the Platte’s only a few miles ahead. I figure we’re two days ahead of him. Ample time to rest and set up the ambush. Now be quiet.”
The four men rode on, and Jamie returned to his campsite. He didn’t figure there were too many men with the last name of Coots, and Coots rode with the Miles Nelson gang. If the information his detectives had supplied him with was correct, Coots always teamed up with Cal Myers, Mario Nunez, and Cuba Fagan when the gang wasn’t working at their nefarious trade.
And Jamie had no doubts about who the ambush was for. Him.
Jamie had stopped off in Fort Morgan about a week back and had been certain he was recognized by
a couple of hard cases loafing outside the saloon. Those drifters had passed the word along the hoot-owl trail.
Jamie waited for a time, then checked the slight breeze. It was blowing north to south, so the smell of coffee and frying bacon and pan bread would not be picked up by those riding east. Jamie fixed his breakfast and then packed up and pulled out. He headed north for a few miles, then cut due east at a steady, distance-covering gait.
Coots and his buddies wanted an ambush, did they? All right, he’d give them one.
But it wouldn’t be the kind they had in mind.
* * *
Ben F. Washington lingered for a few days in St. Louis, a few more days in Kansas City, and finally arrived in Denver. After renting a small house, he made arrangements to see James William and Page.
Page was in the yard when the carriage let him out in front of the house. Ben saw that his sister was with child, and he sighed heavily.
“Oh, Page,” he muttered. “Do you realize what a chance you are taking?”
James William came out of the house to stand by his wife’s side. Both of them stood silently, looking at the young man standing by the side of the road.
Ben approached the handsome young couple slowly, not at all certain what his reception was going to be. James William was the son of a MacCallister, after all, and his temper just might be volatile.
MacCallisters were not known for their gentle, loving ways when angered.
As Ben approached the couple, Page smiled and held out a hand. “Welcome, brother. What took you so long?”
Ben stopped cold in his tracks, too stunned to speak.
12
Jamie crossed the Platte southwest of the junction with the Pawnee and found a quiet and secluded place to picket his horses. There was plenty of graze and water, and they could eventually break loose should he not return.
And that was always a possibility.
He removed his boots and slipped on moccasins, laced up his leggins, then packed him a small bait of food and slung his canteen over one shoulder. He picked up his rifle and headed out. He did not have to check his ammo belts, for out of long habit he always kept the loops filled.
Scream of Eagles Page 9