MacAllister

by William W. Johnstone

  “What about Cheyenne?”

  “Cheyenne? Yes, I think Cheyenne would be a good place to start.”

  “Then what do you say, cousin, that we take a trip to Cheyenne in a couple of days?”

  “I would not want to put you out any,” Duff said. “’Tis not necessary that you come.”

  “Nonsense. You are still new to the country. I’m sure I can be of some assistance to you. Besides, I would enjoy the trip.”

  “Then your company would most assuredly be welcome,” Duff said.

  It was Falcon’s routine to drop in at the post office anytime he was in town, and this morning the postmaster handed him a letter.

  “It is addressed to Duff MacCallister, care of you,” Pleas Terrell said as he handed Falcon the letter. “It’s from your brother in New York.”

  Falcon took the letter from Terrell. “Thank you. This is my cousin, Duff MacCallister, the man to whom the letter was addressed. Duff, this is Pleas Terrell, our postmaster.”

  “’Tis an honor to meet you, Mr. Terrell,” Duff said.

  “Will you be with us for a while, Mr. MacCallister? The reason I ask is because if I should get any further mail addressed to you, I shall know what to do with it.”

  “I shan’t be here for too much longer. But if you should receive another letter for me, please feel free to give it to Falcon.”

  “Thank you, that is how I will handle it, then,” Terrell said.

  From the post office they went to the City Pig Restaurant, and there, as they waited for their meal to be served, Duff read his letter.

  Dear Cousin Duff,

  I hope this letter finds you, for I am writing to impart some information that I believe to be of great importance to you. Percy Fowler, whom you will remember as one of the stagehands, has betrayed a confidence. As a result, Fowler has lost his position with the theater. However, it is an act of closing the door after the horse has left the barn for I have learned, upon good authority, that Fowler provided information to Deputy Sheriff Malcolm from Argyllshire County in Scotland. Malcolm has learned that you are in Colorado and I am certain that he will be coming out there to find you, so please be on the lookout for him.

  “The Highlander” continues to run with naught but glorious accolades from the newspapers. The “New York Tribune” said of Rosanna: “Rosanna MacCallister portrays Lady Margaret in the play ‘The Highlander,’ and such a luminary is she that Mr. Edison’s electric lights, by which the theater is illuminated, are scarcely needed. Miss MacCallister brightens the stage by her mere appearance.” I report this to you in all great pride of my twin sister’s accomplishments, though I dare not say this to Rosanna, lest her head grow too large.

  With regards and affection from your American cousin, I remain yours faithfully.

  Andrew MacCallister

  “The New York newspapers speak well of Rosanna,” Duff said as he finished reading the letter.

  “They always do,” Falcon said as he spread butter on a biscuit. “They praise Rosanna and Andrew alike, and I agree. I have seen them perform and think it is more than mere brotherly pride that makes me believe them to be players of great talent.”

  “’Tis no mere brotherly pride, for I have seen them, too, and they are very good.”

  “What else did my brother have to say?”

  Duff hesitated for a second before he responded because he didn’t want Falcon to think that he would be asking for help in dealing with Deputy Malcolm. Then he thought that to hold back anything Falcon’s brother may have said would seem impolite, so he passed the letter across the table.

  Falcon read it quickly, then glanced up at Duff.

  “This man, Malcolm, would be the deputy who came for you in the theater?”

  “Aye.”

  “Then Andrew is right, we should be on the lookout for him.”

  “I thank ye kindly, Falcon, but this isn’t your battle.”

  “Duff, do you really think this deputy will come after you by himself?”

  “I don’t know,” Duff answered, though not too convincingly.

  “He will find as many men as he can,” Falcon said.

  “But how will he be able to recruit so many?” Duff asked. “He knows no one in America.”

  “He knows that you have come to join me,” Falcon said. “He will use that as his means of recruiting. Believe me, Duff, he will be able to round up an army just by collecting men who want to see me dead.”

  “Och,” Duff said, hitting his forehead with the palm of his hand. “I did not think of that. I left New York so no’ to bring danger to Andrew and Rosanna, and here, I have brought it to you instead. I am sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” Falcon said. “I’ve been in danger before. And this may be a good way of bringing my enemies out.”

  After they ate, they went to the depot, where they bought tickets to Cheyenne. They would leave on the train the next day, then change trains in Denver for the northbound to Cheyenne. After making their travel arrangements, Falcon took Duff around the town, introducing him to the sheriff, the doctor, and several of his friends. They participated in a game of horseshoes, in which Duff did poorly, and a game of darts, which Duff won handily.

  Then they went to the saloon, where Duff was introduced to Argus Fincher, the saloon keeper.

  “You’re Scottish?” Fincher asked.

  “Aye.”

  “I’ve something to show you,” Fincher said.

  Fincher went into the back room, then reappeared a moment later, gingerly carrying something.

  “Pipes!” Duff said. “Sure an’ I haven’t heard that sweet sound since I left Scotland.”

  “Can you play the bagpipes, Duff?” Falcon asked.

  “Aye, and would I be Scot if I couldn’t?”

  “How did you come by this, Argus?” Falcon asked.

  “A couple of years ago a drummer sold them to me for ten dollars,” Fincher said. “I thought I might learn to play them, but they are the devil’s own device. I can barely get a sound from them.”

  “May I?” Duff asked, reaching for them.

  “What is all that sticking out of the bag?” Fincher asked.

  “This is the tube you blow into in order to inflate the bag,” Duff explained. “This is the chanter. You move your fingers over the holes in the chanter to play the notes. And these are the drones, two tenor and one bass.”

  Duff took the bag, inflated it, then began to play. At first the strange sound coming from the instrument surprised the others in the saloon, but then they heard the melody, sweet and harmonious over the steady thrum of the three drone tubes.

  When Duff finished the impromptu concert, every person in the saloon applauded. He thanked them, then handed the pipes back to Fincher.

  “No, sir,” Fincher said, holding his hand out. “That thing belongs to someone who can play it. You keep it.”

  “I can’t do that,” Duff said. “But I’ll buy them from you. How much did you pay for them?”

  “Ten dollars.”

  Duff took out a ten-dollar bill and handed it to the bartender.

  “Thank you,” Fincher said.

  “No, Mr. Fincher. Thank you.”

  “Play us another tune, would you, Mr. MacCallister?” one of the saloon patrons asked.

  “I’ll play for you, ‘Scots Wha Hae,’” Duff said. “That means, ‘Scots Who Have.’”

  Duff played the song, a stately slow melody, then afterward he spoke the words.

  “Scots, who have wi’ Wallace bled,

  Scots, whom Bruce has often led,

  Welcome to your gory bed,

  Or to Victory.

  “Now’s the day, and now’s the hour:

  See the front of battle lour,

  See approach proud Edward’s power—

  Chains and Slavery.

  “Who will be a traitor knave?

  Who will fill a coward’s grave?

  Who will base as be a slave?

  Let him turn and fl
ee.

  “Who for Scotland’s king and law

  Freedom’s sword will strongly draw,

  Freeman stand, or Freeman fall,

  Let him follow me.”

  That evening Duff and Falcon sat on the front porch of the old MacCallister homestead. It was on this porch that Kate Olmstead, Falcon’s mother, had died. And now she and Falcon’s father lay buried twenty-five yards away.

  The two men sat far into the night, exchanging stories. Falcon said that he could understand the killing rage Duff felt after Skye was killed. His own wife had been kidnapped and murdered, and Falcon went after and killed those who were responsible. He also told of his father and mother, how they had met when very young and run away together, how he was mentored by an old mountain man who was called simply Preacher. He also told of his own, as well as his father’s adventures in the American Civil War.

  Duff spoke of his own father, Brigadier Duncan MacCallister, a career soldier in India, where Duff had spent much of his childhood. Brigadier MacCallister was at Lucknow, in command of 855 men, when it was besieged by over 8,000 rebels. He held them off until relieved by Major General Havelock. Though Duff had earned a commission, he had not made a career of the army. He did serve in Egypt for a while, and he told Falcon his own experiences at the battle of Tel-el-Kebir. He also told of his time at sea.

  “They are a breed in and of themselves, these men who sail before the mast,” he said. “Good men who have only each other for company.”

  In the dark vault of night, a golden meteor streaked across the sky.

  “That was Skye, saying hello to me,” Duff said.

  “The meteor was Skye?”

  Duff chuckled. “Every time Skye saw a meteor, she would say that it was the soul of some departed loved one saying hello. I laughed at her then, but find some comfort from it now. She spoke to me many times while I was sea.”

  Duff almost told of hearing her voice in the wind and seeing her eyes in the fluorescent flash of fish, but he knew that Falcon wouldn’t understand. Every time it happened, he had passed it off. But now he wondered—could it be true? Could it have actually been Skye, speaking to him? Was that golden streak across the sky Skye? Or was it merely a dead rock falling to earth from outer space?

  “I guess you think that is crazy,” Duff said.

  “No, I don’t. Not at all,” Falcon replied, his answer surprising Duff. “The Indians have a much better connection to nature than the White man. And Indians believe, strongly, in such signs. And I know better than to question them.”

  The two men sat in silence for several minutes, though it was hardly silent around them. Night insects whirred and clicked, in a nearby pond frogs croaked and sang, and in the distance a coyote howled. The windmill answered a freshening breeze and the blades began to spin. The leaves of the nearby aspen trees caught the moonbeams and sent slivers of silver into the night.

  There was no need for the two men to talk any further; they had already shared with each other their pasts, or enough of what they thought was important. They had taken the measure of each other, and had found it acceptable and reassuring. Now they could sit confidently in each other’s presence, content in their own musings and comfortable in the developing friendship that went beyond the remote familial connections. And yet, though the blood they shared of the original Falcon, great-great-great-great-grandfather to both was small indeed, that seed of kinship was still there.

  “I wonder if he is looking down at us now,” Duff said. He purposely did not identify the “he” he was talking about.

  “I expect he is,” Falcon said. “I have thought many times about the fact that I have his name. I hope he is proud of that. I know he is looking down now and proud that two of his grandsons, though so far separated by distance and time, have come together.”

  Falcon knew exactly what Duff had meant. And Duff wasn’t in the least surprised.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Denver

  If the outside of The Black Dog had been rudimentary, the inside was even more so. Whereas the bar at Aces and Eights had been polished mahogany with a brass foot rail and customer towels hanging from rings spaced no more than five feet apart on the front of the bar, the bar of The Black Dog had no such amenities. It was made of the same kind of wood as the rest of the saloon: wide, unpainted and weathered boards, filled with knotholes and other visible imperfections.

  There was no mirror behind the bar to reflect the many varieties of whiskeys, tequila, wines, and aperitifs. There were no bottles of any kind visible, for the bar served only one kind of whiskey and one kind of beer. There were no brass spittoons, though there was a bucket sitting at each end of the bar. Perhaps half of the tobacco chewers and snuff users took advantage of the buckets. The rest spat upon the floor, and the floor was filled with old expectorated tobacco quids and stained with squirted snuff juice.

  A bar girl came over to greet them, her smile showing a mouth of broken and missing teeth.

  “Would you gentlemen like some company?” the girl asked.

  “If I wanted some company, I would pick someone better lookin’ than you,” Shaw said.

  “Honey, if that’s the case, you are going to have to go somewhere else, ’cause there ain’t no one better lookin’ than me in the Black Dog,” the girl said. She turned and walked away from them.

  “This place is a disgrace,” Malcolm said, wrinkling his nose in disgust.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means it is a disgrace to pubs and taverns the world over.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe so. But this here is the kind of place we’re goin’ to find the men we’re a’ lookin’ for,” Shaw said.

  Even as the two men were taking their seats at an empty table, a drama was playing out before them. It had started before Malcolm and Shaw had entered the saloon.

  “I don’t want any trouble with you, Pogue,” a man, standing at the bar said. The speaker was a big man with wide shoulders, powerful arms, and big hands. His appearance was in direct contrast to the person he was addressing, a man he had called Pogue.

  Pogue was slender of build, with long hair, a thin face, and a badly misshapen nose. The nose was more than misshapen, it was flat on his face, and turned up at the bottom with nostril openings so pronounced that they almost looked like a pig’s snout.

  “Well, you got trouble with me, Gentry,” Pogue replied. Snorted would be a better way of saying it, for the words came out in a wheezing, grunting sound. “You should’a never butted in between me’n my whore.”

  “She ain’t your whore, Pogue, she’s anybody’s whore who will pay her. Hell, as ugly as you are, Pogue, you should already know that. The only way you’ll ever get a woman to pay any attention to you is by payin’ them,” Gentry said.

  “If I’m the one payin’ the whore, then that means she’s my whore.”

  “Yeah, that’s the whole point. You hadn’t paid her nothin’ yet. That means she don’t belong to you, and if I want to talk to her I can.”

  “Stop it, both of you,” a nearby bar girl said. “I don’t belong to either one of you.”

  “You stay out of this,” Pogue said to her. He turned his attention back to Gentry. “I reckon there’s only one way me’n you’s goin’ to settle this.” Pogue smiled, though the smile did nothing to alleviate the repulsiveness of his features. “We’re goin’ to have to fight it out.”

  “Fight it out?” Gentry laughed. “Pogue, you don’t want to fight me. You’re so scrawny and weak, I’d near ’bout break you into little pieces first time I hit you.”

  “Oh, I ain’t talkin’ about that kind of fightin’,” Pogue said. “I’m talkin’ ’bout makin’ this here fight permanent. I’m going to give you the chance to draw ag’in me.”

  “Don’t be a dumb fool. I ain’t gettin’ into a fight over a whore. Like I told you, I don’t want no trouble.”

  “And like I told you, you already got trouble. Now I’m tellin’ you, again, to draw.”
<
br />   Gentry turned toward Pogue. He was holding a glass of whiskey in his hand.

  “Go away, little man, before I come over there and break your neck.” Suddenly Pogue pulled his pistol and fired. A little mist of blood sprayed from Gentry’s earlobe, and he dropped the glass, then slapped his right hand to his ear.

  “What the hell? Are you crazy?”

  Pogue put his pistol back in his holster as quickly as he had drawn it.

  “Draw,” Pogue said again.

  “I ain’t a’ goin’ to draw ag’in you.”

  Again, Pogue drew and fired. This time he clipped Gentry’s left ear. Gentry let out a cry of pain and slapped his hand to his left ear.

  “Next time it will be a kneecap,” Pogue said.

  With a yell of rage and fear, Gentry made an awkward stab for his pistol. With the macabre smile never leaving his face, Pogue waited until Gentry made his draw and even let him raise his gun.

  For just an instant, Gentry thought he had won, and the scream of rage and fear turned to one of rage and triumph. He tried to thumb back the hammer of his pistol, but his hand was slick with his own blood, and the thumb slipped off the hammer. He didn’t get a second try because by then Pogue had drawn his own pistol and fired.

  As the bullet plowed into Gentry’s chest, he got an expression of surprise on his face. Then his eyes rolled up and he fell, dead before he hit the floor.

  “You killed him!” the bar girl Gentry and Pogue had been arguing over shouted.

  “Hell, yes, I killed him,” Pogue replied. “He threatened me.”

  “He threatened you? How did he threaten you?”

  “He told me he was goin’ to break my neck.”

  “That’s right,” one of the other men said. “I heard him say that very thing.”

  “Is there anyone here who didn’t see him draw first?” Pogue asked.

  “No, sir, you give him plenty of opportunity,” yet another saloon patron said. “You not only let him draw first, you was goin’ to let him shoot first.”