Scream of Eagles

by William W. Johnstone

  He entertained the thought of veering a little south and visiting the Alamo, but decided against it. Too many memories associated with that bloody old mission.

  It was a hundred-mile ride over to Navasota, and it was uneventful. Navasota was one of the earliest Anglo-American towns in Texas, settled in 1822 by families from Louisiana. It was also where the explorer La Salle, while attempting to find the mouth of the Mississippi River, was murdered by his own men. La Salle was just a tad south of his objective.

  There had been no further sign of those men who had dogged Jamie’s back trail in East Texas. Jamie was riding easier, but very much alert for trouble. And he knew once he got in West Texas, he had better keep his eyes wide open if he wanted to keep his hair, for that was Comanche and Kiowa country. In Navasota, Jamie spent the night in a boardinghouse and was on the move early the next morning, heading for Austin.

  Jamie knew he was piddling, just wasting time. But he was without direction, drifting. He just didn’t know what to do with the rest of his life. For almost forty-five years, the center of his existence had been Kate. Now there was a great empty void in his being.

  The reporters from back east who had been sent out into the Wild West to cover Jamie’s life and times had long since returned home. Trying to catch up with Jamie Ian MacCallister was like attempting to get a firm grip on smoke.

  The young men who had been sent west to buy property and check out other investments had visited Valley. The trio were quickly wising up to the ways of the West, and it didn’t take them long to realize that anybody, anybody, who tried any shady deals in and around Valley would not last long, and would probably end up shot or hanged, or both. They told their fathers to forget that area of Colorado . . . unless they had a death wish.

  During Jamie’s brief stay in Valley, he had talked with Ben F. Washington every day, at length, with Ben taking careful notes. And after going through Kate’s diaries and journals, he had given the young man most of them. A few were just too personal, and those he had placed in a lockbox. Ben worked on his manuscript for at least an hour every day. There was no rush, for he had given his word that the book would not be published until after Jamie’s death.

  Those shyster lawyers hired by Newby, Olmstead, Bradford, Layfield, and others to horn in on the MacCallister holdings had hit a stone wall that they could not go around, through, over or under. It had come in the form of one Ulysses S. Grant, President of the United States of America, a good Republican and a man who admired Jamie Ian MacCallister.

  With the intervention of the president, those schemers and plotters quietly backed off. But they didn’t go away. They would bide their time and wait, for their hate ran deep and dark, passed from father to son.

  In Austin, Jamie stabled his horses and checked into a hotel. Austin was the state capital, but it still had its wild and woolly places, and was also the home of the gunfighter Ben Thompson. Ben hadn’t been out of the state pen long, having served his time for shooting his brother-in-law (after the man had beat up Thompson’s wife) and threatening to kill a local justice of the peace.

  Jamie wanted no trouble, and breathed a little easier when he learned from local gossip that Ben was raising hell up in Kansas.15

  Jamie rested his horses, then provisioned up and put Austin behind him as he continued on west. At Fredericksburg, a town settled by Germans in 1846, when it was right on the edge of the western frontier, Jamie was warned that the Comanches and Kiowa were on the warpath. But there were wagons filled with supplies gearing up to head west for El Paso in a couple of days. It would be a prudent move on Jamie’s part to join them. The wagons would be accompanied by a detachment of cavalry heading for Fort Bliss.

  Jamie hunted up the wagon master. After the man had recovered from his shock at meeting one of the West’s most famous men, he quickly agreed to Jamie coming along. It would be an honor, he said.

  The young cavalry officer in charge of the detachment of soldiers (as yet mostly untrained and untested in battle) was clearly in awe of Jamie and for two days followed him around like a lost puppy. The young lieutenant, a recent graduate of West Point and who, until his trip to the Point and this grand adventure out west, had never been more than ten miles from his home in New Hampshire, amused Jamie, and he decided to take the young officer under his wing, so to speak, and try to teach him enough about the frontier to keep him alive.

  “I’m to be posted here for three years, sir,” Lt. Cal Sanders told Jamie. “Then I’m going to request duty somewhere in Montana or Wyoming.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m told the Cheyenne are the most magnificent Indians to be found.”

  “One of my sons married a Cheyenne princess.”

  “Oh, my. I didn’t realize that. And you’re friends with the Indians?”

  “I’ve been friends with them and fought them on occasion. But mostly I’m a friend with the Sioux, the Cheyenne, the Nez Perce, the Ute, the Arapaho. I don’t know much about the Apache and Kiowa and the Comanche . . . except they’re great fighters, and don’t get captured by them.”

  The young lieutenant didn’t have to ask why Jamie said that. He had already heard horror stories about what happened to men, and women, too, who were unfortunate enough to be taken alive by the savages.

  “It would be a great honor to have you ride along with my detachment, sir,” Lt. Sanders said. “I mean, beside me, sir. Not back with the . . .” The lieutenant got all flustered. “You know what I mean, sir.”

  Jamie laughed. “Relax, Cal. You’re going to do just fine out here.”

  “I’m looking forward to an encounter with the hostiles.”

  “Not after the first one you won’t be,” Jamie muttered, as the lieutenant walked away. “If you live through it, that is.”

  But the Indians obviously thought the wagon train, some twenty-five wagons long, with both civilian guards and soldiers, was too strong for them. Much to the disappointment of Lt. Sanders and the great relief of all the others, the trip to El Paso was uneventful.

  Scouting around, Jamie picked up a lot of Indian sign, but saw no Indians, although he was sure they had seen him.

  Jamie did his best to pass along to the young lieutenant at least some of his knowledge about the frontier. By the time the wagons reached El Paso, in the dead of late winter, 1873, Lt. Sanders knew a little something about survival on the frontier.

  Jamie lounged around El Paso for a few days, trying to make up his mind where he wanted to go next. He did not want to strike out alone across New Mexico and Arizona, for the Apache nation was at war with the whites—a war that would continue until the surrender of Geronimo, in 1886.

  On a cold morning in February, Jamie and five other men, all of them well-seasoned (which meant in the vernacular of the West, they were all gray-beards), rode out of El Paso, heading west, into New Mexico Territory—statehood was still years away: January, 1912.

  In Las Cruces, two of the men decided to drop out of the group. That left Jamie, Red Green, an old mountain man who was called Logan, and a retired army sergeant named Canby.

  Jamie’s eyes were amused as he looked at his new friends, who now sat around a table in a saloon. “Boys,” he said, “I reckon between the four of us, we’ve got about two hundred years of Indian fighting. I aim to see me some new country ’fore I cash in. I have ample money and can get more. What say you we provision up and head into country few white men have seen?”

  The three “well-seasoned” men exchanged glances, and all of them smiled.

  “Why the hell not?” Logan was the first to speak. “We damn shore ain’t gettin’ no younger.”

  “Suits me,” Canby said. “Why not? But let’s just make damn sure we got enough ammunition to ward off some Injun attacks. ’Cause sure as God made little green apples, we’re gonna have to fit some fights.”

  Red Green nodded his head in agreement. “I like you boys’ company, for a fact. I generally shy away from folks, but you boys is d
ifferent. We get along. And you boys is trail wise and don’t jibber-jabber nonsense all the damn time. But you bes’ understand somethin’: Odds are that some of us, maybe all of us, won’t be ridin’ back. ’Paches is about the most notional of all Injuns. I’ve lost good friends to the ’Paches. And on the other hand, I’ve made friends with some ’Paches. A few. This ain’t gonna be no Sunday school picnic.”

  Canby looked at him. “You all done preachin’?”

  “Shore.”

  “Then let’s ride,” Logan said.

  21

  The four men, average age sixty-two, rode out and headed north, each trailing a packhorse. Most of the townspeople thought they were crazy, but kept that opinion to themselves. They were heading into the Caballo Mountains and a trading post located on the hot springs, about sixty miles north of Las Cruces.16

  Each of the men wore two pistols belted around them, and two pistols on holsters located on each side of the saddle horn. They all carried lever-action rifles and long-bladed Bowie knives.

  Whether the four men had angels riding with them, or if the Apaches were just looking the other way when they rode by, was not known. But whatever the reason, Jamie and his compadres rode from Las Cruces to the springs without incident. The owner of the post shook his head in wonder.

  “It happens,” the old man said. “Apaches is like rattlesnakes. I’ve walked a foot from a damned rattler and he didn’t even raise his head to look at me. Other times they’ll start rattlin’ and strikin’ if you get within fifty feet of them. ’Paches is the same way, I reckon. But if you see one, don’t hesitate, just blow the damned dirty heathen right off his horse. I hate ever’ damn one of them.“

  “Caused you some grief, have they?” Jamie asked.

  The old man spat a stream of brown tobacco juice into a spittoon. “Grief? I should say so. I tried to make friends with them when I furst come out here. I’m still carryin’ the ar-reyhead in my side for that trouble. Then I tried agin. That time they burned down my cabin, killed my wife, and stole my horses. Shot me in the process. For the last ten years I been shootin’ ever’ goddamn one of ’em I could. We gonna have to wipe ’em all out one of these days. Might as well get on with it, I say.” He poured them all drinks and gave them a good look. “You fellers is all past your prime, I’d say.” He looked at Jamie. “ ’Ceptin’ you, maybe. I can’t figure you. You boys just wanderin’?”

  “Seein’ the country,” Red told him.

  “Yeah? Well, all I can say is good luck. ’Cause you’re shore gonna need it.”

  Days later, the four men found themselves pinned down on the east bank of a tiny creek in what would years later become the Gila Primitive Area.

  During a lull in the fighting, Red Green asked, “You reckon them’s Apaches?”

  “They ain’t your grandmother’s tea party,” Logan told him, shifting his chew of tobacco from one side of his mouth to the other.

  Red ignored the sarcasm and asked, “Where’s Jamie and Canby?”

  “They’re in good positions in the rocks. Jamie’s to the right and Canby’s to the left. Horses is safe to our rear under the bluff.”

  “They made a mistake attacking us here,” Jamie called. “And I think they’ll soon realize it.”

  Canby was too far off to the left to hear the comment, but Logan did. “Yeah, you be right, I’m thinkin’. We got cover and water and a good field of fire in front of us. But you and Canby best watch keeful to your flanks come the night.”

  Logan had roamed and trapped all over the Northwest and worked at various jobs all the way down to central Texas, but he was new to this country. “I thought Apaches never attacked at night.”

  “Shit,” the old mountain man replied. “Some do, some don’t. Depends on whether their medicine’s strong enough.”

  One small brown object had appeared in Jamie’s line of view. He lifted his rifle, took careful aim, and fired. There was a short scream of pain as the bullet shattered a kneecap.

  The Apaches came in a rush then, darting from rock to rock, bush to bush, until they were right on the edge of the clearing. Then they seemed to vanish into the earth.

  “Excellent,” Jamie said. “They’ve learned very well the Warrior’s Way.”

  “They didn’t have to larn it so damned good,” Logan groused. Then he tensed for a few seconds, jerked up his rifle and fired. They all heard the ugly sound of a bullet striking flesh. A young Apache, looking to be in his late teens, stood up in his moccasins, his chest bloody, and then fell face forward on the rocks. He did not move.

  “That one didn’t learn it so good,” Red remarked, as Logan thumbed another round into his rifle.

  The fight continued all that afternoon, without either side inflicting any more damage to the other. As the shadows began to lengthen, Jamie softly called, “Now it gets real interesting, boys. Canby? Slide back and make up a big pot of coffee, brew it strong. Do it before it gets full dark and let the fire die down to coals; just enough to keep the coffee good and hot. We’re going to need it. If you sleep tonight, you die.”

  “What a cheerful thought,” Canby replied.

  Darkness soon covered the land, and Jamie could taste moisture on his lips. He looked up. Clouds had moved in, obscuring the stars. Rain was not far away, and that was not good for the four defenders. As soon as the rain started, the Apaches would attack, the falling drops covering any sound they might make.

  Jamie did not have to tell the others that. They knew.

  Lightning began licking the sky, and thunder rumbled high above the Mimbres Mountains. There was a searing and sudden flash of lightning, and the eyes of the men widened as they caught sight of the warriors coming across the creek, the lightning catching them on the rocks and in the water.

  Four rifles crashed and boomed in a deadly crescendo, as fast as the men could fire and lever. Three Apaches made the crossing and leaped onto and then behind the rocks. Logan fired point-blank into the chest of one Apache, the bullet nearly stopping the warrior in mid-air. The mountain man stepped to one side and let the lifeless form fall to the ground.

  Canby deflected the swipe of a knife with the barrel of his rifle and brought the butt around with all his strength. It thudded solidly against the Apache’s head, followed instantly by the sickening sound of the man’s skull being crushed.

  Meanwhile, Jamie wrestled a smaller and younger man to the ground and kneed him hard in the groin. The Apache’s mouth opened in a silent rush of agony, and he relaxed his hold on Jamie’s arms. Jamie closed one big hand around the Apache’s throat and crushed the larynx, twisting his hand as he did. The Apache thrashed about on the sand and the rocks as he fought for breath that would never come again.

  Jamie picked up the warrior and threw him out into the clearing.

  “Anybody hurt?” Jamie called.

  No one was.

  The night grew quiet as the rains came.

  “Get ready for another charge,” Logan said, wiping off his rifle and thumbing rounds into the tube. “It ain’t over.”

  * * *

  Hundreds of miles to the north, the residents of the town of Valley were relaxing after a day of work and a good supper. The cafes were preparing to close and clean up. Card games were beginning in Falcon’s Wild Rose Saloon and Gaming House. Cowboys and miners were drifting in for a drink and some talk. Mothers were putting small children to bed. Older kids were studying textbooks and doing homework. Ben F. Washington was working on his manuscript. Falcon knocked on Matthew’s front door and stepped inside.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Matthew asked, taking a look at his younger brother’s face.

  Falcon handed him the telegram he’d just received from a friend of his in Kansas.

  Matthew opened the single sheet of paper and read: ASA PIKE AND GANG LEFT HERE SEVERAL DAYS AGO. STOP. RIDING FOR NEW MEXICO TERRITORY STOP. BELIEVE YOUR FATHER AND SEVERAL FRIENDS HEADING FOR ALBUQUERQUE. STOP. ASA PIKE HAS AT LEAST TWENTYFIVE MEN WITH HIM. STOP. SWORN TO
KILL YOUR FATHER. STOP. BEST LUKE.

  “Who the hell is Asa Pike?” Matthew asked.

  Falcon shrugged heavy shoulders. “I don’t know. One of Pa’s enemies, I reckon. I think I’ll take me a little ride south.”

  “I’ll get my gear together, and—”

  “Forget it, Matt,” Falcon said, holding up a hand. “You’re the sheriff here. You can’t just up and leave. Big brother Jamie sure can’t go; he’s gettin’ too fat in the butt. Long ride like that and he wouldn’t be able to walk for a month. Morgan’s tied down with all his business interests; more so now since he owns controlling stock in the bank. I’m packed up and ready to ride. I’ve said my goodbyes.” He held out a hand, and his older brother shook it. “I’ll get word to you when it’s over.”

  Matthew stood on the front porch and watched Falcon ride away into the dark. His wife, Ginny, came to his side. “I overheard. Falcon will always be riding off, won’t he?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Matthew put an arm around her waist. “He’s just like Pa. The wilderness calls to him.”

  “And the wildness,” she added.

  “That, too.”

  “He’s lucky to have a wife like Marie.”

  “Ma liked her. In the short time she got to know her, she really liked Marie.”

  Within minutes, the rest of the MacCallister clan had gathered at the house. Matthew handed them the telegram, and they read it, passing it around.

  Joleen asked the question that was on everyone’s mind: “Who is Asa Pike?”

  No one knew.

  “I feel really bad about not going with Falcon,” Jamie Ian the Second said.

  His wife, Caroline, smiled and patted his arm. “When was the last time you sat a saddle for weeks at a time, love?”

  Morgan laughed. “The same time I did, Caroline. And it was a few years back.”17

  Megan turned to her husband. “Hitch up the buggy for me, Jim. I’m going out to spend the night with Marie. She’s had time to do her crying and get done with it. Go on, now.” She turned to face the group. “The rest of you can go on home. There is nothing we can accomplish by standing around with long faces. Besides, we’d better get used to Falcon riding off. You all know he’s just like Pa when it comes to that.”