He smelled their smoke before he had walked two miles.
They obviously felt safe against being detected, for the wind was blowing out of the south-southwest, carrying the smell away from travelers coming from that direction.
The outlaws were anything but safe.
* * *
At that very moment, almost two thousand miles away, in New York City, the editor was studying the sketches of John A. Bellingham. Bellingham had redrawn them to size before sending them east by train. The editor decided to use them as an example of how frontier justice and the code of honor worked in the Wild West . . . with an editorial, of course, about how the West needed to be tamed and how guns should be banned (a hundred and twenty-five years later the same newspaper—and several hundred other liberal rags—would still be blathering and blithering about those awful, terrible, dreadful guns).
The drawings were excellently done, and they were very dramatic, depicting the barroom gunfight just as he actually witnessed it happening: Jamie standing at one end of the bar, both guns blazing. Two men down and dying on the dirty saloon floor, and Son Hogg dying but still trying to shoot as he leaned against the bar.
The editor frowned in thought, then smiled as he leaned back in his chair. He knew just how to caption the drawing: THE CODE OF THE WEST.
* * *
Jamie worked his way down a wash, his moccasins making no sound as he moved ever closer to the outlaw camp. He personally knew none of these men he was stalking, but he knew them all well by their foul reputations.
Of these four men, Cuba Fagan was the worst . . . by far. Cuba was wanted by every marshal and sheriff west of the Mississippi River. There was no deed so dark he wouldn’t do or hadn’t done. And the man who called himself Coots was just about as bad. Mario Nunez had killed his first man at age twelve, his father, and hadn’t stopped killing since. Cal Myers was both a murderer and a rapist... many times over.
For a man to have come from such a highly respected and refined family, and to be himself so well educated, Miles Nelson had gathered together some of the most odious and evil men in all the country.
Miles Nelson and his various gangs might have gone on to become as well-known (and among some both loved and respected) as the James or Younger boys. But he had made one terrible mistake: he and his gangs had attacked Valley, Colorado, and killed Kate MacCallister.
Jamie had sworn to wipe the Miles Nelson gangs from the face of the earth . . . and he was saving Miles for last. Dessert, you might say.
When Jamie had the outlaw camp in sight, about three hundred yards away, he paused and drank from his canteen. Then he wiped the dust from his guns and levered a round into his rifle, easing the hammer down. He bellied down on the ground and began crawling toward the muted sounds of conversation and food smells.
In his mind, Jamie had reverted back to his boyhood, when he lived with the Shawnees, learning the Warrior’s Way. He became one with the earth as he inched his way toward the camp. His eyes were blue and watchful, unblinking flint.
During the next hour, the men in the camp looked in his direction a dozen or more times, but never saw him as he worked his way across the flats toward the wallow where they were. Like so many others, the outlaws looked, but did not see.
For his size, Jamie could move like a huge snake, making no more sound than a gentle breeze across the land.
Jamie had closed the distance to less than fifty feet when he decided that was close enough. He could smell the unwashed bodies of the four men, and wondered how they could stand themselves. The white man talked about the dirty Indians, but the Indians Jamie knew were careful about hygiene, many times breaking the ice in a stream to bathe. In their wickiups and tipis, fragrant sage or other incense-like dried plants were always burning. They aired their robes and bedding, and their personal needs were taken care of away from the camp.
The four men that Jamie now looked at, unknowingly sitting and squatting and lying so close to their graves, were a disgrace to the human race in general.
Jamie decided to do something about that.
Right now.
He stood up and eared back the hammer of his rifle.
“You boys waiting for me?” he called.
The man called Coots jumped up. “MacCallister!” he screamed, and clawed for his pistol.
Jamie shot him in the belly, doubling him over and dropping him to the dirt.
Cal Myers managed to reach his rifle before Jamie dusted him and knocked him to one side.
Mario Nunez got off one shot that went wild before Jamie put a .44 round in the man’s chest.
Jamie had been walking as he waged war, levering and shooting his Winchester.
Cuba Fagan jerked both his guns from leather just as Mario fell against him, knocking him off balance. Both of Cuba’s shots missed their mark, and Jamie shot him twice, belly and chest. Cuba sank to his knees, cocked both pistols, but could not bring them up. He pulled the triggers and shot himself in both legs. He fell over on one side and died with a scream on his lips.
Jamie walked into the camp, shoving rounds into his rifle as he went. He stood over Coots and kicked his pistols out of reach.
“You got to be the luckiest man alive.” Coots gasped the words through the searing pain in his belly.
Jamie grunted his reply and turned to Nunez. The Mexican was fading fast. He spoke in rapid Spanish, the blood spraying from his lips, calling Jamie some really bad names.
Jamie smiled at him—a hard curving of the lips.
Mario reached for a derringer behind his belt buckle, and Jamie kicked the little over-and-under belly gun away. Mario Nunez died with a curse on his lips.
Cal Myers had been shot through and through, from left side to right side, and his eyes were bright with pain, his lips bloody with a pink froth. “You gonna bury us proper-like, MacCallister? Say a word or two over us?”
“I might do that for you, ”Jamie told him, squatting down and picking up a tin cup. He rinsed it out carefully with water from his own canteen before filling it with coffee from the battered and blackened pot which had been sitting on the rocks around the outlaw fire. He took a sip and grimaced. It was awful. Jamie threw the foul liquid away, cup and all.
“I wush to hell I’d never heared your name,” Cal said. “You a goddamn devil, that’s what you are. You come straight out of hell, MacCallister.”
“That’s an area you’re going to be very familiar with in a few minutes, Cal.”
Cal cussed him.
“Where is Miles Nelson?” Jamie asked, rinsing out the coffeepot and making fresh coffee.
“You go to hell, MacCallister,” Coots gasped.
“Yeah. Go to hell, MacCallister,” Cal said.
“You boys sure have a limited vocabulary. Ten minutes of conversation with you would put me to sleep.” He looked at Coots. “And ten minutes is about all the time you have left.”
“You’re the meanest bastard I ever seen,” Coots groaned out the words. “Here we is dyin’, and you sit there makin’ coffee and insultin’ us.”
“What the hell do you want me to do, kiss you?”
“You got any laudanum?”
“You’ll be dead by the time it took effect. Then you won’t hurt anymore. So quit worrying about it.”
Cal cussed him again, long and hard. The outlaw abruptly ceased his cussing and took a ragged breath. Then he slumped back and did not move.
“He’s dead, ain’t he?” Coots asked.
“Either that or awfully relaxed.”
“You the coldest man I ever seen in my life.”
“Not as cold as my Kate is, you sorry lowlife no good goddamn son of a bitch!”
The venom behind Jamie’s words widened the outlaw’s eyes. He forgot his pain for a moment. “He’s in Canada,” Coots said. “But I don’t know ’xactly where.”
Jamie cut his eyes. “Miles?”
“Yeah. He has him a fine home up there somewheres. But I’m tellin’ you the truth ’
bout me not knowin’ where up yonder it is. Is it gettin’ dark around here, MacCallister?”
“Yes,” Jamie lied to the dying man. “Storm’s coming, I reckon.” The sun was shining brightly, and there were only high, wispy clouds in the blue sky. “Does he go by his Christian name up there?”
“Sort of.” The outlaw spat out a mouthful of blood. “Goes by the name of Nelson Miles. He thinks . . . that’s funny. He’s supposed to be some sort of big, important man up yonder. I can’t see, MacCallister.”
“I’ll give you a proper burial, Coots.”
“Thanks. More’un I deserve, I suppose.”
“You have anyone you want me to write?”
“No. Not nobody that would be interested. I burnt my bridges a long time back.”
The water in the old pot was beginning to boil, so Jamie dumped in grounds and then added a dash of cold water to settle the grounds. He poured two cups of coffee and placed one on the ground by Coots.
“Thanks, that’s right decent of you. But I don’t think I’m gonna have time to drink it. It’s so awful dark. MacCallister?”
Jamie looked at the man.
The outlaw’s eyes were looking up at the sky, seeing things that he alone could see. “I ... oh, hello, Daddy,” he said dreamily. “How you been? Yeah?” Coots grinned in a macabre sort of way. “Well, I guess you was right about me, Daddy.”
Then he shuddered, closed his eyes, and died without saying another word.
Jamie wondered what Coots’ father had said to his son before the boy had left home?
“Probably that he’d never amount to a hill of beans,” Jamie muttered.
Jamie sat for a time, drinking his coffee, looking around the camp for a shovel. There was none, so he walked back and got his horses. Unlashing his spade, he dug a hole wide enough for the four of them and deep enough so the varmints wouldn’t dig them up and eat them. Before planting the outlaws, Jamie took their ammunition and what money they had on them . . . which wasn’t much. The cash money and gold taken from the robbery back in Valley was almost gone.
Before he shoveled the dirt over them, he noticed that the clothing of the men was ripped and torn and patched, and their boots weren’t anything to write home about.
“The glamorous life of an outlaw,” he muttered.
He buried the four men and stood for a time, then removed his hat. He knew he should say something, but he just couldn’t find the words.
“Lord, if I knew anything good to say about these men, I’d say it.” He put his hat back on his head. “But I don’t. Amen.”
13
“I’m simply flabbergasted,” Ben said, setting his coffee cup on the chair-side table. “You knew all along.”
“Ever since I was old enough to understand,” Page replied. “Oh, I don’t blame mother for hiding it. Had the knowledge leaked out, she would have been ruined. Negroes couldn’t own property. But you must remember this, Ben: our mother and uncle are very ruthless people. There is no doubt in my mind but what they tried to kill you . . . several times. And now that they know you’re back in Denver, and have been to see me—and they will know all that—my life is in danger as well.”
Ben gave that some thought. “You’re right about that. What are your plans?”
“To stay here,” James William said quickly. “If we possibly can.”
“That hinges on the child?” Ben was very quick.
“Yes,” his sister told him.
“Well,” Ben said, standing up. “I won’t visit again. I will not be responsible for upsetting any more apple carts.”
“You can visit whenever you like, brother,” Page told him.
Ben shook his head. “No. But thank you. I shall stay here in Denver for a time; then I’ll go to Valley. I want to start my book about Jamie and Kate MacCallister. Theirs is a story that must be told.”
“Have you a title yet?” James William asked.
“Yes. I think I shall call it Rage of Eagles. ”
* * *
“I don’t want trouble in my town, MacCallister,” the marshal told Jamie.
Jamie had just left the saddle when the marshal, the mayor, and several townspeople approached him.
He turned to face them. “If the men I’m looking for are here, there will be trouble, and you won’t run me out of town, either. Not unless you want the streets to run red with blood . . . and most of it won’t be mine.”
The men exchanged glances, uncertain as to what to do next. After all, this was Jamie Ian MacCallister, a man of whom countless stories had been told from coast to coast and border to border, and all of them true.
“Mr. MacCallister,” the marshal said, softening his tone and becoming much more respectful. “Two of the men you’re looking for are in town. Reed Dunlap and Alonzo Barton. But they aren’t wanted by any law around here, and I have no dodgers on them. They’ve rented a small house on the edge of town, and have caused no trouble.”
“They attend my church,” a tall, skinny man all dressed in severe black with high collar said. “They have found the Lord.”
“They’re damn sure going to meet Him,” Jamie told the preacher. “A hell of a lot sooner than they imagined.”
“You are not God’s avenging angel,” the preacher said. “You have no right to do this.”
“And Reed and Barton had no right to attack my town, killing a dozen people, including my wife, and wounding twenty more, and that includes small children. Now get the hell out of my way. I want to stable my horses, take a bath, and have something to eat.”
“I’ll call the federal marshals,” the mayor threatened.
“You do that. By the time they get here, I’ll have settled my score and be a hundred miles away.” He looked at the marshal. “You just get the women and kids off the street.”
No man could be a coward and be the marshal of a western town. And the marshal was no coward. But he did have his share of common sense. “When I heard you were on your way here, I sent those two men out of town. They’ll stay gone until you leave.”
“No, they won’t,” Jamie told the man. “They’ll be slipping back in the dead of night to ambush me, kill me while I sleep, or back shoot me. Or they might decide to face me in the street. The rest of you men might not realize that, but the marshal does. A skunk don’t lose its stripe just ’cause it gets tired of it, preacher. You ought to be worldly enough to know that.”
“The Lord will punish you for this, Jamie Ian MacCallister,” the preacher predicted.
“Then that’s between me and Him, isn’t it?” Jamie took his saddlebags, bedroll, and rifle, and pushed his way through the knot of townspeople. “Excuse me,” he said, and walked toward the town’s single hotel.
Reed Dunlap and Alonzo Barton were wanted for murder in Texas and Louisiana. They had robbed and raped and killed for more than ten years, and now they had both changed their evil ways and were big workers in the church?
Sure. Right.
But Jamie decided he’d better shave and bathe quickly, for he had him a hunch that word would get to the pair of outlaws shortly . . . and it just might get there through the preacher or some of his flock.
Jamie bathed with his guns close by the tub and then shaved himself instead of seeking out a barber shop. He did not want to be stretched out in the barber chair with a hot towel over his face when Reed and Barton decided to make their play.
It was mid-afternoon and warm when Jamie stepped out of the hotel and took a seat on a bench under the awning over the boardwalk. School was out, and the word had spread about his being in town. Kids began to gather to his left and right and in a bunch across the street, gawking at him.
The marshal ambled up and took a seat on the bench beside him. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead with a red bandanna. “Gettin’ warm early, ain’t it, Mr. MacCallister?”
“Seems that way. Marshal? Was I you, I’d tell the women to get these kids off the street. A carelessly thrown bullet doesn’t care who it hits
.”
“Reed and Barton won’t be comin’ in, Mr. MacCallister. They have changed their ways.”
“They’ll be here, Marshal. And they’ll come shooting.”
The marshal was thoughtful for a moment, then waved one of his men over and told him to shoo the kids home. He turned to Jamie and asked, “Did you really know Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett?”
“For a few days. They were good men. Every man there was a good and brave man.”
“The fight at the Alamo seems a long time away, Mr. MacCallister. I was just a small boy back in Missouri when all that took place.”
“Been a lot of changes since then, for sure.”
“The coming of law and order for one thing, Mr. MacCallister,” the marshal said softly.
Jamie smiled. “Reed and Barton are wanted all over the West, Marshal. For rape, robbery, and murder. And you know it. Why don’t you arrest them and notify the authorities?”
“Because they are not wanted here, Mr. MacCallister. And they have broken no laws here. Men can change, sir.”
“Yes. They can. But there is a little matter of punishment for past sins, don’t you agree?”
Jamie had the marshal with that one, and the marshal knew it. He offered no response to the question. He could only shake his head.
The marshal rose to his boots and looked up and down the now nearly deserted street. He let out a long sigh. “Well, it’s on your head, then, Mr. MacCallister. And the blood spilled will be on your hands.”
“I wash my hands several times a day, Marshal. And they’ll be clean when I ride out of town.”
“If you ride out of town, Mr. MacCallister. Have you given that any thought?”
Jamie’s only reply was a smile. His eyes had already picked up two riders coming in from the east. “I’ll give you odds those riders are your good and decent Reed and Barton, Marshal. And they’re coming in loaded for bear. Would you like to take that bet?”
The marshal’s eyes were bleak. “You gave them no choice, Mr. MacCallister. You know how people in the West feel about a coward.”
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