Jamie kept on walking while he pulled out the empty and shoved in a fresh round.
Suddenly the street was filled with men, all of whom held pistols at the ready.
“separate!” Jamie yelled, as he began running for cover.
Falcon dropped behind a watering trough and let both his guns start to bang. Four Pikes went down in the first few seconds.
Rick, standing in a doorway, lifted his .45 and drilled a man in the chest. Canby lined up a man in his rifle sights and dropped him in an alleyway. Logan brought one down, then shifted positions and drilled another one. Red, a pistol in each hand, stood in front of a closed dress shop and brought down two more.
Just as Asa yelled, “Retreat, boys, retreat!” Jamie fired both barrels of the Greener at two men who had just stepped into the daylight and were lining up Falcon in their sights. The twin barrels roared smoke and rusty nails and screws and buckshot, leaving a big mess on the side of the building the men were hurled against.
As the gunsmoke began drifting away, thirteen men lay sprawled in the street, dead, dying, or badly hurt. The gunfight had taken about two minutes, from beginning to end.
Jamie walked over to a dying man and looked down. “Did I ever do a hurt to you?”
“Can’t say as you have,” the man gasped, his eyes bright with pain. “Not ’til this day anyways.”
“Then what is the point of all this death and suffering?”
“Kin. You understand that.”
“I don’t understand it when Asa was clearly in the wrong by attacking me a couple of years back.”
“He’s still kin. And blood is thicker than water.”
“Well, that makes you a fool,” Jamie told him.
“And a dead one at that,” Logan said, looking down as the man closed his eyes and slipped behind the veil.
“This one over here’s gonna make it, I think,” Red called, squatting down beside a fallen man.
Jamie walked over.
“You’ll have to kill us all,” the man whispered. “And the mountains back to home is filled with Pikes and kin.”
Jamie said nothing. Canby called, “Got another one over here that might make it.”
Jamie walked over and looked down. The young man was about Rick’s age.
“This one ain’t hurt bad,” Falcon called to his pa. “But he sure is cussin’ you for all it’s worth.”
Jamie stepped over a couple of dead men and looked down. “I hate you damn MacCallisters,” the wounded man said. His voice was strong.
“Why?” Jamie questioned. “I never saw you before today.”
“Ever’thin’ comes to y’all easy.”
“What the hell’s he talkin’ about, Pa?” Falcon asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Rest of us have to hardscrabble for anythin’ we have,” the wounded man said.
“I think he must be delicious,” Logan said.
“Delirious,” Red corrected. “There ain’t nothing delicious about this bastard.”
“Whatever,” the mountain man said.
“Folks like you ought to share with folks like us,” the Pike kin continued.
“He’s babbling,” Jamie said, turning away from the man. “You boys collect all their guns; then we’ll see about getting the wounded to doctors.”
“Why?” Logan questioned. “They got themselves shot; they can see to ease their own sufferin’.”
Jamie smiled. The breed of men called mountain men were the toughest, hardest, and most pragmatic group to ever wander the West.
Just as the guns were being collected and put in cloth sacks, a doctor and several citizens showed up and took over the care and transporting of the wounded.
“Way I got it figured, Pa”—Falcon came to Jamie’s side—“we still got about nineteen or twenty to deal with. And I don’t figure they’ll be inclined to give it up and go on back home.”
“No, we haven’t seen the last of it. Unfortunately.”
“What do you want done with these guns?” Rick called from across the plaza.
“We’ll give them to the law. They can do whatever they want with them.”
“Ain’t no law here now,” a citizen said. “They’re all out after Injuns.”
“They’s Fatso Burke,” another local said. “He’s a constable. Not much of one, but he totes a badge and looks after the jail.”
“Go get him,” Jamie requested.
“Are you kiddin’? He ain’t about to get in between this mess. You boys is on your own ’til the regular law gets back.”
“Good,” Logan said. “Then we’ll handle it our own selves.”
The undertaker rattled up in his black hearse and solemnly looked around at all the bodies. He turned to his assistant. “Go back and get another wagon. And tell Abel to start knocking together some boxes. Make them long boxes; these are tall men. Go on now, step lively.”
Jamie and his group backed off and stayed clear . . . but at the ready in case Asa wanted to continue the fight this day. Within minutes, a man stepped into the plaza, unarmed and holding a stick with a white handkerchief tied to it. “I’m not armed,” he called. “But I’m kin of these men. I’ve come to see to their proper burial.”
“I hope you’ve got some money,” the undertaker said. “This is going to get expensive.”
“We have money. We want a nice service with mourners and wailers and a drum and horn.”
“What the hell are they gonna do?” Logan questioned. “Have a dance or a buryin’?”
“Will you please show some respect for the dead,” the doctor said sharply.
“Why?” Logan asked. “They damn shore didn’t show no respect for us!”
“Let’s get out here,” Jamie suggested.
* * *
The funerals started about mid-afternoon that day. Even from where Jamie and his bunch were seated, in front of the hotel, the sounds could be heard. There were mourners and wailers lifting their voices to the heavens, and a big drum and someone tooting on a trumpet.
Logan walked out onto the side of the street and tried to get a dance step going. The old mountain man was uncommonly spry for his age. “I wish they’d pick up the beat some,” he complained. “I can’t get no rhythm goin’ with that. Least the Injuns got some pep to their drummin’.”
“Pa,” Falcon said, ducking his head to hide a grin at the buckskin-clad Logan’s antics, “I got to say that when you pick men to ride with, you can come up with some characters.”
“You’d be hard-pressed to find better men to ride with, though.”
“I won’t argue that.” They sat for a time, watching Logan do some dance steps in time with the wailing and moaning and carrying on. “Pa?”
“Uummm?”
“What are you gonna do with the rest of your life?”
“Providing we can get out of here alive, I’m gonna see some country boy.”
“Just wander, Pa?”
“That’s about it. Hell, boy, I got more money than I could spend in ten lifetimes. I sure don’t need to look for a job. I’m not gonna hang around Valley doin’ nothing.”
“I think I got it now,” Logan said, doing a slow pirouette to the drum and trumpet.
“Well, keep it to yourself,” Red told him. “It might be catchin’.”
“Mac?” Canby asked.
“Uummm?”
“When we get this here little mess took care of, what say you we head over into Arizona Territory?”
“Sounds good to me. You know anybody over there?”
“Nary a soul. But I always wanted to see the Muggyown.”19
“Why not?” Jamie replied, then cut his eyes to Falcon. “And no, you can’t come along. You’ve got a family to look after. ”
“Never entered my mind,” Falcon said with a smile.
“You lie, too.”
Rick walked up, looked at Logan for a moment, then shook his head in disbelief and handed Jamie a note. “Little boy just give this to me.”
Logan stopped his dancing and wandered over as Jamie opened the folded piece of paper and read: “OLD ABANDONED BUILDINGS NORTH OF TOWN. NOON TOMORROW.” It was signed Asa Pike.
“That’s what’s left of an old village built back in the late 1700s,” Logan told them. “Me and a half dozen ol’ boys camped there one night back in ... oh, ’44 or ’45, I reckon it was.”
Jamie stood up. “Let’s sorta ease on out there now,” he said. “Find ourselves some good fighting positions and get ready.”
“Why don’t we just hide and ambush the bastards when they come ridin’ up?” Logan suggested. “Then we’ll have done with it and can get gone to the Muggyowns.”
“You’re a sneaky old bastard, you know that?” Rick said.
Logan grinned. “Damn right, I am. And I’m alive because of it! You bes’ remember that, boy.”
Jamie didn’t say anything, but he agreed with Logan.
“Let’s provision up,” Canby said. “Then when it’s over, we can just head on west without havin’ to come back here and answer a bunch of damn-fool questions.”
“Good idea.”
The second bunch of funerals were just getting underway as Jamie and the group checked out of the hotel in Old Town and rode out.
“Most depressin’ damn music I ever did hear,” Logan said. “If you boys has to plant me, I want somebody to whistle a happy tune, and the rest of you do a jig over my restin’ place. I’d hate to have to spend eternity with the sounds of that sorrowful mess a-ringin’ through my bones.”
“I’ll do a fancy jig right on top of your grave,” Red promised him.
“I didn’t say collapse the damn thing,” Logan told him. “Big as your feet is, you’d cause an earthquake. Just dance around the hole, will you?”
Laughing, the men put the town of Albuquerque and the funeral music behind them.
25
“I haven’t seen Mr. Washington all day, Sheriff,” the young lady at the newspaper office said. Then grinned and added, “Uncle Matt.”
Matthew winked at his niece and looked toward the rear, where the typesetter was busy working. “Paul? You seen Ben today?”
“Not hide nor hair of him, Sheriff. He’s never been this late.”
“You reckon he’s with Lola?”
Lola Dubois, a beautiful mulatto from New Orleans, had come to town one day and within weeks had bought the hotel and started redecorating it. It was the most elegant hotel outside of Denver. She had named it the La Pierre. She and Ben had been keeping company for months; and recently, Ben had proposed to her, and Lola had accepted his offer of marriage.
“No. She was by here looking for him. She’s worried sick.”
“I don’t like this,” Matthew said. “Not at all.”
“What could have happened to him in Valley?” the typesetter asked.
“I don’t know,” Matthew said. “But I damn sure plan on finding out.”
After carefully searching the town for over an hour, Matthew and his deputies knew one thing for certain: Ben F. Washington had vanished.
The alarm was sounded, and townspeople turned out, armed, mounted, and each man with a three-day supply of food. Matthew sent groups out in all directions. From the saddle, the sheriff looked down into the worried face of Lola. “If he’s within fifty miles of here, we’ll find him,” he assured the woman. “He may have gone for an early morning ride and just got lost. It’s easy to do. And we know his horse is missing. We’ll find him, Lola.”
But Matthew didn’t think Ben was lost. He felt certain that Ben had been taken against his will. But why? was the question.
* * *
“Well, if this ain’t about the dumbest thing I ever saw,” Canby said, lowering his field glasses. “Yonder they come, in plain sight and all bunched up.”
“Get into position,” Jamie told his group. “We’re going to settle this thing today, once and for all.”
Asa Pike halted his men about three-quarters of a mile from the ruins of the village. Jamie watched through field glasses as the men dismounted and bunched up for a few minutes. Then they picketed their horses and spread out, walking slowly, advancing toward the ruins in a long, straight line.
The men in the ruins looked on in silence for a few minutes, as the Pike group slowly advanced.
“This is nuts, Pa,” Falcon said. “They act like they want to get killed.”
“Hell, I can’t bring myself to shoot at them,” Rick said.
“I can,” Logan said. “But I want them a tad closer.”
When the advancing men were about two hundred yards away, Jamie abruptly stood up and shouted, “Asa! This doesn’t have to be. Let’s call this thing off and go on about our business!”
“You go right straight to hell, MacCallister!” Asa shouted, then lifted his rifle and triggered off a round. The bullet howled past Jamie’s head, and Jamie dropped down behind cover.
“I believe they just opened the dance,” Red observed.
“Fire,” Jamie said.
The ruins of the village thundered with rifle fire. When the smoke cleared, twelve of Asa’s kin were on the ground, and those left were running back to their horses as fast as they could go. They pulled the picket pins, jumped into saddles, and were gone without looking back.
“I have been in some strange tussles in my time,” Logan allowed. “But this here has got to be the strangest ever.”
“I saw sights just like it during the war,” Jamie said, punching rounds into his rifle. “Brave men doing foolish things. Let’s go see how many are wounded.”
Six men were dead, six were wounded. Rick and Falcon went to get their horses while Jamie and the others saw to their wounds as best they could with what they had. Of the six wounded, two had only minor wounds, three were hard hit, and one probably would not last the day. The badly wounded man died at noon, just as the county sheriff, his deputies, and a doctor were riding up.
“Good God!” the sheriff said, swinging down from the saddle. He looked at Jamie. “You and your men are under arrest, MacCallister. Surrender your weapons.”
“Not likely,” Jamie told him.
Falcon and the others had spread out, the muzzles of their rifles pointed at the sheriff and his men. At this range, if any shooting started, it would be carnage. Jamie had exchanged his rifle for the Greener. And this close up, that terrible weapon could easily take out two or three men, and not leave much to write home about.
“Mr. MacCallister,” the sheriff softened his tone. “Over the past two days, you and your people have killed or wounded twenty-six men—at least. Not counting Indian attacks, this is the worst shoot-out this county has ever experienced....”
“They didn’t start it,” one of the badly wounded men gasped out the truth. “We did.”
“Did you hear that, Dr. Ferrara?” the sheriff asked the doctor.
“I did.”
The sheriff slowly nodded his head. His eyes found the packhorses, then looked back at Jamie. “Are you men leaving this area?”
“Today, if possible,” Jamie told him.
“Thank God,” the sheriff muttered. He cleared his throat and said, “Fine. That’s dandy. The best news I’ve heard in days. You can leave whenever you like. The sooner, the better. Personally, I hope I never see any of you again.”
“You need some help totin’ these folks back to town?” Logan asked, a wicked glint in his eyes and a smile on his lips.
“No! Hell, no!” the sheriff quickly replied. “I want you people gone.”
“Then we’ll be heading for home,” Jamie said, conscious of several of the wounded men listening intently, knowing Asa was too much of a coward to face the entire MacCallister family. “Springtime in Colorado is a beautiful sight.”
“I’m anxious to see it,” Logan said, picking up on the lie immediately.
Falcon produced a badge from his pocket. “I’m a deputy sheriff up in Valley, Colorado. My brother is county sheriff. I want you to tell Asa Pike some
thing for me, Sheriff. If I ever lay eyes on him in Valley, I’ll kill him where he stands, and I won’t hesitate.”
“I’ll see he gets the word.”
“And I mean what I say, Sheriff,” Falcon added.
“I’ve no doubt of that.”
Jamie and his people turned and walked to their horses. Two minutes later they were riding north.
One of the deputies took off his hat and wiped his sweaty face. “That could have got real ugly in a hurry.”
“It ain’t over,” one of the wounded men said. “I can promise you that. As long as they’s one Pike or kin left alive, he’ll be huntin’ Jamie Ian MacCallister and his kin.”
“Then that makes you a family of fools,” the sheriff told him.
* * *
There was no trace of Ben F. Washington to be found. Matthew’s Indian trackers could turn up nothing. Ben had vanished without a trace. Matthew and his weary posse rode back to Valley, and Matthew went immediately to see Lola with the bad news.
She took the news as calmly as possible; Matthew could see she was shaken, but struggling to maintain composure. She waved him to a chair and brought coffee. “It has to be either his mother or his uncle behind this, Sheriff. Or both of them. He told me several times that he knew they were still alive and would someday try to kill him. There have been attempts on his life.”
“I know. Ben’s told me the whole sorry story. And we’ll find Ben, Lola. He’s got to be in this area. Every farmer, rancher, cowboy, and trapper in a seventy-five-mile radius is looking. I think they’re close, Lola. I feel it. But I don’t know where.”
Matthew was right. They were close. The men were holding Ben in Jamie’s cabin, on the ridge overlooking Kate’s grave. But it was just unthinkable to the residents of Valley that anyone outside of the family would dare intrude into the home of Jamie MacCallister.
Matthew went to his office and found several wires waiting for him from various lawmen, some as far away as San Francisco.
The San Francisco wire read: RECEIVED WORD FROM MY STREET INFORMANTS THAT FIVE THUGS ARE HEADING YOUR WAY. STOP. STONE GIBSON BILLY CARNES NATE CLAPTON ERIC ARMER PETE DREW. STOP. ALL ARE KNOWN HOOLIGANS AND STRONG ARM MEN. STOP. ALL HAVE BEEN ARRESTED FOR SUSPICION OF MURDER BUT NO CONVICTIONS. STOP. THEY’RE BAD ONES. STOP. BE CAREFUL WITH THEM.
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