Thunder of Eagles

by William W. Johnstone

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The wagons,” Falcon said. “Take a look at them. What do you see?”

  The three guards looked at the wagons, then at each other, than at Falcon. It was obvious they had no idea what they were supposed to be looking for.

  “I don’t see anything,” Tom said.

  “Neither do I,” Larry added.”

  “How about you, Frank? Do you see anything?”

  “No,” Frank replied, confused as to where all this was going.

  “Good, good, you’ve just made my point,” Falcon said. “Nobody is going to hit us with empty wagons,” he explained. “If they are going to hit us, it will be on the way back, when they can do the most damage.”

  “Ha!” Smitty, the lead driver, laughed. “Shouldn’t of been all that hard for you boys to figure that out.”

  “Yeah,” Tom said sheepishly. “Yeah, I guess we should have thought about that.”

  When Falcon and the wagons reached La Junta, they stopped alongside a low, long, wooden building. A white sign on the either end of the building, bore the name of the station, in black letters.

  LA JUNTA

  “Whoa, hold it up here, boys,” Smitty said. “Barnes, you and Morrell stay with the wagons. I’ll go see Mr. Rudd and find out where our load is.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Falcon said.

  “Here, Tom, hold the reins,” Smitty said, handing the reins to the guard as he climbed down from the wagon. “I got the brake set, so they ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

  “I got ’em,” Tom said.

  Dismounting, Falcon followed Smitty into the little depot. There were a few passengers waiting for the next train: a drummer sitting alone with his case of samples, a couple of cowboys who were engaged in conversation, and a man, his wife, and two children. The smallest of the two, a little girl, was sleeping on the bench beside her mother. A little boy was sitting next to his father, playing with a wooden horse.

  At one end of the depot, there was a ticket counter and telegraph station, and as Falcon and Smitty came inside, they could hear the telegraph clacking away. Evidently, La Junta was not the destination of the message because there was nobody at the instrument. Instead, the one man behind the ticket counter was busy with some printed documents. He looked up as Falcon and Smitty entered.

  “Good morning, Smitty,” he called.

  “’Mornin’, Poke. Is Mr. Rudd around?”

  “Yes, he’s back in his office.”

  Smitty nodded, then started toward the opposite end of the depot. Here, there was a closed door with a frosted glass windowpane. On the frosted pane were painted the words STATIONMASTER.

  Smitty knocked lightly on the door, then pushed it open. “Mr. Rudd?” he called.

  “Yes, come in,” a voice answered from inside.

  Rudd was a man in his sixties, with white hair and white muttonchop whiskers. He was sitting at his desk, writing in a ledger, but looked up, then nodded as he recognized Smitty.

  “Mr. Smith,” he said. “You would be here for the Garrison shipment, I take it?”

  “Yes, sir. Did everything get here that was supposed to?”

  “It did,” Rudd replied. “It’s the rearmost car at the back of the marshaling area. Let’s see, the number of the car is”—he paused to consult a book—“yes, here it is. The number is 10031. Here, I’ll write it down for you.”

  “Thanks,” Smitty said, taking the number from Rudd. “Is all of it in the same car?”

  “Yes, everything in that one car. Will you be signing for it?”

  “No, I will sign for it,” Falcon said.

  “And you are?”

  “Falcon MacCallister.”

  “Falcon MacCallister?” Rudd said, reacting to the name. “Are you the famous Falcon MacCallister?”

  “I don’t know about the famous part,” Falcon replied.

  “Yes, sir, this is the same Falcon MacCallister you’ve prob’ly heard about,” Smitty said. “After what happened to our last shipment, General Garrison hired Mr. MacCallister to ride along with us.”

  “Yes, yes, I heard about what happened to the last shipment. What a shame. Mr. True was a fine man, a true gentleman. I will miss him. Uh, Mr. MacCallister, no offense, but do you have some authorization to sign for General Garrison’s shipment? It’s railroad regulations, you understand.”

  “No offense taken,” Falcon said, showing the stationmaster the letter Garrison had given him before he left town this morning.

  Rudd put on a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, hooking them carefully over one ear at a time. Then he read the letter slowly, as if going over each word. Then, he cleared his throat and put the paper aside.

  “Sign here, please,” he said, sliding a bill of lading toward Falcon.

  Falcon signed the document, then he and Smitty returned to the wagons.

  “Back there in the corner, boys!” Smitty called to the other drivers. He pointed to the car in the most remote part of the yard.

  Lee Davis and Gene Willoughby had been cutting weeds around the depot when Falcon went in to talk to the stationmaster.

  “Son of a bitch!” Davis said. “Son of a bitch, it’s him!”

  “It’s who?” Willoughby said.

  “Wait, I’ll be right back.”

  “I ain’t cuttin’ all these damn weeds by myself, you know,” Willoughby called out after Davis dropped his weed hook and started toward the depot.

  Davis moved up close to the window that opened onto Rudd’s office, then looked in. Seeing what he wanted to see, he hurried back to Willoughby, whose right earlobe sported a ragged, encrusted wound.

  “It’s him,” Davis said.

  “Yeah, that’s what you said a while ago,” Willoughby replied as he continued to swing the weed hook. “Only you ain’t said who.” The expression in his voice showed that he had little interest in whoever it was Davis was talking about.

  “Who? Him, that’s who,” Davis said. “Falcon MacCallister, the fella that shot off your earlobe when we tried to hold up that stage.”

  That got Willoughby’s attention and he looked up sharply. “What? Are you sure?”

  “Damn right I’m sure. I not only recognized him, I heard him tell Rudd that was his name. You might remember, that’s the son of a bitch that took our guns.”

  “Yeah, and our boots, too,” Willoughby said. “Where is he?”

  “He’s with them wagons,” Davis said, pointing to the three wagons that were now working their way across the tracks toward a freight car that was sitting alone.

  “Well, what do you know?” Willoughby said. “I’ve been waitin’ for a chance to get even with that bastard, and here it is.”

  Davis smiled. “Yeah, I thought you might be happy about this.”

  “Damn!”

  “What?”

  “We ain’t got no guns,” Willoughby said. “Like you said, MacCallister took ’em. So, how are we going to do this?”

  “I know where there’s a couple pistols,” Davis said.

  “Where?”

  “In a cabinet in the back of Rudd’s office.”

  “They loaded?”

  “Yes, they keep ’em loaded all the time. But if you can get Mr. Rudd to come out here, I can get hold of ’em.”

  “How’m I goin’ to get him out here?”

  “Here,” Davis said. “Put your hook under these railroad spikes. I’ll do it, too. We’ll see if we can pull a few of them up.”

  Working together, they pulled up a couple of spikes, then were able to move the rail slightly out of line. “That’ll get his interest,” Davis said as he threw the spikes out into the adjacent woods.

  Davis wandered off so that he wouldn’t be noticed. Then he waited as Willoughby went in to summon Rudd. A moment later, he saw Rudd come out of the depot, then stand over the track looking down at it and shaking his head.

  “I’m glad it’s not the high iron,” Davis heard Rudd say, referring to the main line. “But even t
hough this is a spur, it has to be fixed. We can’t be having cars run off the track here.”

  With Rudd engaged, Davis went into the stationmaster’s office, opened the cabinet, and took out two pistols. Checking them quickly, he saw that both were loaded. He was back outside by the time Rudd returned from his inspection of the track.

  “Did you get them?” Willoughby asked.

  By way of answering him, Davis handed him one of the pistols.

  “Let’s do it,” Willoughby said.

  Falcon was standing by the front of the one wagon that had already been loaded, watching as the men loaded the second of the three. It wasn’t that he was too lazy, or too good to help with the loading; it was that he appreciated professionalism, and the three freight wagon drivers were professionals. They knew exactly how to load the wagons to get the maximum efficiency from the available space, and also where to place the weight in order to make the wagon ride better and to enable the team of horses to work more efficiently.

  Falcon scratched a match on the weathered wood of the wagon, and was just holding it up to light the cigarette he had just rolled when a bullet slammed into the wagon just inches away.

  Drawing his pistol and spinning in the same moment, he saw two men standing about twenty-five yards behind him. There was something familiar about them, though for the moment, he didn’t have time to consider what it was.

  “Damnit, Davis, you missed!” one of the two men yelled. He fired his own gun even as he was yelling.

  Falcon fired twice, and both men went down. With his gun held ready, he hurried toward them. When he got there, one was already dead, the other was dying. That was when he saw that they were the same two men who had tried to hold up the stagecoach between La Junta and Higbee.

  “Damnit!” Falcon said angrily. “Are you crazy? I wasn’t after you. Why did you do this? You got yourselves killed for no reason!”

  “It was supposed to be the other way around,” the one remaining outlaw said. This was the one with the mangled ear. “We was supposed to kill you.”

  “What’s happening? What’s going on?” the wagon drivers called, and seeing Falcon standing over a couple of bodies, they hurried down to see, drawn by a morbid curiosity. By the time they got there, both outlaws were dead.

  “I didn’t figure we would be hit until we were on the road on the way back,” Smitty said.

  “They weren’t after the loads.”

  “They weren’ t?”

  “No,” Falcon answered. “This had nothing to do with the loads. This was personal. These men were after me.”

  “Damn, Mr. MacCallister, I hope you don’t take this wrong, but if you have crazy sons of bitches like these two tr yin’ to kill you for no reason, just how safe are we with you?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Seth Parker relieved himself.

  “Damn, ain’t you got no more manners than to piss where we live?” Cletus Clinton asked.

  “It ain’t like we’re livin’ here, we’re just campin’ here,” Parker replied as he aimed toward a grasshopper. He laughed as the grasshopper, caught in the sudden stream, hopped away.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t like anyone pissin’ this close to where I’m sittin’, so next time you have to shake the lily, go some’ers else to do it.”

  “I reckon I got a right to piss about anywhere I want to,” Parker replied with a growl.

  Cletus pulled his pistol. “How’s this for a right? If you do it again, I’ll shoot your pecker off,” he said easily.

  “We ain’t goin’ to get nowhere fightin’ amongst ourselves,” Bailey said. “Parker, you keep your mouth shut. We’re ridin’ for the La Soga Larga. That makes Cletus the boss.”

  “I thought Ray was the boss.”

  “We’re both the boss,” Ray said.

  “Hey, Ray, how long you think it’ll be before them wagons show up?” Deke asked.

  “I figure no more’n forty-five minutes—maybe an hour,” Ray answered. “I reckon it all depends on how long it took ’em to get loaded this mornin’.”

  “How many men will there be?”

  “There’s three wagons. Prob’ly after what happened last time, there’ll be at least two on each wagon.”

  “That makes six of ’em,” Bailey said. “I thought you said this would be easy.”

  “There’s six of them and eight of you,” Ray said. “Also, they won’t be expectin’ you. It’ll be as easy as it was the last time.”

  “I notice you keep sayin’ ‘you’ and not us,” Parker said. “You ain’t goin’ with us?”

  “No farther’n this,” Ray said.

  “Why not? You’re the ones wantin’ this job done, ain’t you?”

  “Folks would recognize Cletus and me,” Ray said. “That wouldn’t be good.”

  “What are these here wagons a’carryin’ anyways?” Bailey asked.

  “Lumber, nails, tools, and the like,” Ray explained. “Things that Garrison needs for buildin’ his railroad.”

  “Nothin’ we can take and sell?” Parker asked.

  “You’re gettin’ paid for the job,” Ray said. “There ain’t no need to be worryin’ about sellin’ anything.”

  “Here they come,” Lou Reeder said, calling down to the others from his position atop a large rock outcropping.

  “All right, boys,” Ray said. “Hit ’em hard and hit ’em fast. If you do this right, they’ll all be dead before they even know they’re in danger.”

  As the iron-rimmed wheels rolled across the sunbaked earth, they picked up dirt, causing a rooster tail of dust to stream out behind them. Because the trail was wide enough, the wagons were moving three abreast. That was preferable to traveling in-line because it kept anyone from having to eat the dust of the wagon in front of them.

  Falcon, who was riding in front, stopped, then held up his hand, signaling for everyone else to stop. From behind him, he heard the squeak of brakes being set and the commands of “Whoa” from the drivers as they called to their teams.

  “What is it, Mr. MacCallister?” Smitty yelled up to him. Falcon reached back into his saddlebag and drew out a telescope. Opening it, he looked at something far ahead.

  “Do you see something?” Smitty asked.

  “I saw a couple of men on horseback.”

  “What’s wrong with that? This is one of the main trails, isn’t it?” Barnes asked.

  “Yes,” Falcon replied. “And ordinarily, seeing someone wouldn’t arouse any suspicion. But for some reason, these men don’t seem to want to be seen. They were bent low over their horses, and they rode quickly across the open gap. Now, they are behind that ridge.” He pointed.

  “So, what do you think?” Tom asked. Tom was the guard riding with Smitty.

  “I think we should have a little meeting.”

  Falcon turned and rode back toward the wagons. The drivers and armed guards looked toward him to see what he had to say.

  “Did you say you only seen two riders?” Larry asked. “There’s seven of us.” Larry patted the side of his Winchester. “What’s the problem?”

  “Have you ever seen just two cockroaches?” the driver asked the guard. “You heard Mr. MacCallister say they didn’t want to be seen. You can count on there bein’ more of ’em.”

  “What do you think they want?” Morrell asked.

  “Hell, Morrell, you know what they want,” Smitty said. “They want to kill us and burn our wagons, just like they done with True.”

  “Mr. MacCallister, what do you have in mind?” Barnes asked. “You think we should go in-line?”

  “No,” Falcon answered. “We’ll stay abreast but we’ll alter it a little. Smitty, you pull your wagon somewhat ahead. Morrell, you and Barnes drop back a little on each side so you form a V. When they hit, we’ll get out of the wagons and get inside the V. That should give us a little protection. Tom, Larry, Frank, now is the time to keep your eyes open. All of you, get your guns ready.”

  The three guards, all of whom were carryi
ng Winchesters, jacked shells into the chamber, then held the rifles, butts down and barrels up, by their sides. The drivers checked the loads in their revolvers.

  “All right, let’s go,” Falcon said, resuming his position in front of the wagons.

  They drove on for another fifty yards or so, silent except for the clop of the horses’ hooves and the creak and rattle of the rolling wagons.

  “Do you see that opening in the ridge, about a hundred yards ahead?” Falcon called back to them. He didn’t point.

  “I see it,” Smitty replied quietly.

  “That’s where they’ll hit us.”

  They rode on in silence for less than another minute. Then, suddenly, eight mounted men burst out through the opening in the ridge, exactly where Falcon had said they would be. With screams of challenge in their throats, they rode at a gallop toward the wagon party.

  “Take cover behind the wagons!” Falcon shouted, jerking his horse around as he yelled. Stopping the wagons, the drivers and guards jumped down into the barricade formed by the V of the three wagons. All had their weapons ready.

  The outlaws, with their pistols extended in front them, began firing. The flat popping sound floated across the open ground, reaching Falcon’s ears at about the same time the bullets began whistling by.

  “Take aim, but hold your fire!” Falcon shouted. Falcon aimed at one of the men and held it as the riders came closer. The outlaws continued pouring in a steady barrage of fire, and as they got closer the bullets came closer. Some of them were hitting the wagons now, sending out splinters as they made a solid, thocking sound.

  “Now!” Falcon shouted.

  Falcon pulled the trigger. His target tumbled from his saddle. A second later, one of the other outlaws went down and the six remaining outlaws, suddenly realizing the precariousness of their position, jerked their horses to a halt. Then, turning them around, they started off at a full gallop.

  “What just happened back there? I thought it was going to be easy!” one of the riders demanded. “Hell, we had two men down almost before you could take a breath!”