Thunder of Eagles

by William W. Johnstone

  “Kyle Pollard left behind a child and a pregnant wife, did you know that? He was a good man,” Crawford said.

  “He couldn’t have been that good of a man. I mean, what kind of man would take a dangerous job like prison guard when he has a family at home?” Tyree asked.

  “You son of a bitch,” Mullins said. “You don’t have the slightest degree of contrition, do you?”

  “Contrition?” Tyree replied. He laughed. “Ain’t that somethin’ you’re supposed to get by goin’ to church?”

  “Enough talk, Tyree,” Crawford said. “I’m taking you back to prison.”

  “Really? Well, now, how are you going to do that? I heard that you lost your job. The prison fired you for letting me escape. This is true, ain’t it?”

  “It’s none of your concern whether that’s true or not,” Crawford said. “It has no bearing on what is right and what is wrong.”

  Tyree laughed. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “It is true, isn’t it? But that leaves you with a little problem, Crawford. If you don’t have a job, you don’t have the authority to take me back. That’s right, ain’t it, Sheriff?”

  “Normally, he would not have the authority,” Mullins agreed. “But we have it worked out. I’ve appointed Mr. Crawford as my deputy.”

  Tyree clapped his hands gently. “Well, now, ain’t that somethin’? I mean, our man Crawford here, goin’ from bein’ chief of guards in a state prison to being a deputy in some mud-hole place like this? My, how the mighty have fallen. Tell me, Crawford, does that make you real proud?”

  “I told you, whatever my position is doesn’t concern you,” Crawford said. “You’re going back to prison with me. And this time, you’ll hang.”

  “You think you’ll get your job back if you take me in?”

  “I don’t care whether I get that job back or not,” Crawford replied. “It’s not about the job anymore. It’s about honor.”

  “Honor?” Tyree laughed out loud.

  “Yes, honor,” Crawford said. “I know honor is a difficult concept for you to understand, but you will understand this.” Suddenly, and inexplicably, Crawford smiled. “What I really want, even more than honor, is the privilege of watching you hang.”

  “Really? Well, don’t get your hopes up, Crawford, because I can tell you right now that you ain’t goin’ to live long enough to see that,” Tyree said.

  Slowly, and without calling attention to themselves, the other patrons began moving away from the bar to be out of the line of fire should shooting break out. But they were faced with a dilemma. No one wanted to be close enough to be hurt, but everyone wanted to be close enough to witness whatever was about to happen.

  “What about you, Mullins?” Tyree asked. “What part are you playin’ in all this?”

  “I am a law enforcement officer,” Mullins said. “You are a wanted man. I intend to see that you are brought to justice.”

  “And just how are you going to do that?”

  “Let’s put it this way,” Mullins said. He pulled the two hammers back on the double-barrel shotgun. “Before all this plays out, you are either going to leave here as Crawford’s prisoner, or as a dead body.”

  Tyree shook his head slowly. “And here, I though me’n you had become good friends over the last few days. You knew all along who I was, but you never said or did anything about it,” Tyree said. “I guess the reward got to you, huh? Just too much money for a greedy fella to pass up.”

  “Unbuckle your gunbelt and come along with us nice and easy,” Mullins said.

  “Sure, Sheriff, whatever you say,” Tyree said, moving his hand down toward his pistol belt. Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, he drew his pistol, drawing and firing so fast that it appeared to be no more than a twitch of his shoulder. Seeing Tyree start his draw, Mullins pulled the trigger on both barrels of his shotgun, but it was too late. By the time he reacted to what he was seeing, it was over. The double-aught charges from his shotgun tore large, jagged holes in the floor of the saloon, even as the heavy bullet from Tyree’s gun was slamming into his heart.

  Nobody was more surprised that Crawford. He had not even bothered to draw his pistol, believing that, because Mullins had the drop on Tyree with a double-barreled shotgun, the situation was well in hand. He realized too late that he was wrong, because even as his pistol was clearing leather, Tyree’s second shot crashed into his forehead. Crawford went down, dead before his body hit the floor.

  “You all saw it!” Tyree shouted, still pumped up from the excitement of the incident. He pointed to the two bodies. “They drew on me first.”

  “That’s ’cause they was lawmen,” one of the patrons said. “They was here to arrest you.”

  “Are you saying it wasn’t self-defense?” Tyree challenged. He looked directly at the man who had pointed out that Mullins and Crawford were lawmen.

  “If you ask me, it was self-defense,” one of the other men said. “Mullins was pointin’ a double-barrel shotgun right at him.”

  “Of course he was. He was tryin’ to arrest him,” the first man said.

  “Don’t you understand, Bob? It was self-defense pure and simple,” the second man said, staring pointedly at Bob.

  Suddenly, Bob realized that he might be placing his own life in jeopardy. “Oh, uh, yes,” he said. “Yes, now that I think about it, it was self-defense.”

  The others in the saloon, catching on quickly, began agreeing that it surely was self-defense.

  “But here’s the thing, Mr. Tyree,” one of the men said. “I don’t see no way folks ain’t goin’ to hear about what just happened here, and they’re bound to come after you. Now, far as I’m concerned, and ever’one else for that matter, I mean, you’ve heard ’em.” He took in the others with a wave of his hand. “They all say you didn’t have no choice except to do what you done. But if more law was to come here, why, it’s just goin’ to wind up makin’ trouble for you. So, if I was you, I’d leave now.”

  “Leave and go where?” Tyree asked.

  “You might come to work for me,” a new voice said.

  Tyree looked over toward the man who had just spoken. He was an older man, but with a hard look about him.

  “Who the hell are you?” Tyree asked.

  “The name is Clinton. Ike Clinton. I own a ranch near Higbee.”

  Tyree laughed. “You wantin’ to hire me to punch cows, do you?” He shook his head. “Sorry, Mr. Clinton, but I ain’t no cowboy.”

  “I’ve got plenty of cowboys,” Ike replied. “Cowboyin’ ain’t what I have in mind.”

  “Then I don’t understand. If you own a ranch, and you want me to work for you, but not as a cowboy, what do you want me for?”

  “Oh, for about a hundred dollars a month,” Ike said.

  Everyone in the saloon gasped. One hundred dollars per month was four times as much money as a cowboy normally received.

  “A hundred dollars a month?” Tyree replied.

  “That’s right,” Ike replied. “Are you interested?”

  “Who do you want me to kill for that much money?”

  Ike chuckled, then took a swallow of his beer before he answered. “Funny you would ask me that, Mr. Tyree,” he said. “Because the answer is, I want you to kill whoever I tell you to kill.”

  Tyree stared at Ike for a long moment. Then suddenly, he broke into a great belly laugh. “What did you say?” he asked.

  “You asked who did I want you to kill, and I answered that I want you to kill anyone I tell you to kill.”

  Still laughing, Tyree slipped his pistol back into the holster. “Mister, I like the way you think,” he said. “I’d say you just hired yourself a ranch hand,” he said.

  “How long will it take you to get ready to leave?” Ike asked.

  “About as long as it takes me to walk out to my horse,” Tyree replied.

  “Let’s go,” Ike said.

  Thompson Arroyo

  “How long is your pa going to be gone?” Lou asked.

  “I
don’t know, he didn’t say,” Ray replied.

  “You sure he knows about this?”

  “It don’t make no difference whether he knows about this or not,” Ray said.

  “It’s just that I don’t like to do things without him knowin’ about it.”

  “Reeder, as far as you are concerned, anything me or my brother tells you to do is the same as Pa tellin’ you to do it,” Cletus said.

  “Yeah, I know that, but—”

  “There ain’t no buts,” Cletus said.

  “Stop talkin’. If my information is right, we’ll be comin’ up on them soon,” Ray said.

  “Your information is right, big brother,” Cletus said. “There they are,” He chuckled. “Look at them. Ha! It’ll be like shooting ducks in the water.”

  Cletus pointed in the predawn darkness to the construction camp, consisting of a dozen or more sleeping rolls circling the still-burning campfire.

  “Looks like they’re making it easy for us,” Cletus said. “They’ve even kept the fire lit to light the way for us.”

  “Yeah,” Ray replied.

  “How are we going to handle this, Ray?” Pete asked. Pete was one of the La Soga Larga riders.

  “We’re goin’ to handle it real easy,” Ray replied. “We’re just goin’ to ride down there and start shootin’.”

  Ray pulled his pistol, then cocked it. “Is everyone ready?”

  “Ready,” the others replied.

  “Let’s go!” he shouted, slapping his legs against the side of his horse.

  The horses thundered down the gentle rise that led to the carefully arrayed bedrolls. Ray fired first, and had the satisfaction of seeing a little puff of dust fly up from the roll and the point of impact of his bullet.

  The others began firing as well, and within a few seconds they were right on the camp, shooting into the bedrolls.

  Cletus noticed it first.

  “Ray!” he said. “Ray, hold it! There ain’t nobody in them bedrolls!”

  “What?” Ray replied.

  “Look at ’em! The bedrolls is all empty!”

  “What the hell? What’s goin’ on here?”

  “Now!” they heard a voice call from the darkness, and the riders suddenly discovered that the tables had been turned. Instead of shooting at targets, they were the targets, and muzzle flashes from the nearby rocks had bullets whizzing by in the night.

  “Let’s get out of here, boys!” Ray called, spurring his horse into retreat.

  The sun was just coming up by the time Ray, Cletus, and the others returned to the ranch. They pulled to a halt in front of the porch.

  “Does someone want to tell me what the hell happened back there?” Lou Reeder asked. “I thought this was supposed to be easy!”

  “They was waitin’ for us,” Ray answered.

  “Hell, yes, they was waitin’ for us,” Lou said. “But my question is, why? I thought they was not supposed to be nothin’ but a bunch of dumb gandy dancers.”

  “Someone must have been with them. Someone must have organized them.”

  “It ain’t no mystery who that someone is,” Cletus said. “It was Falcon MacCallister.”

  “How do you know that? Did you see him?” Ray asked.

  “I didn’t have to see the son of a bitch,” Cletus replied. “I’ve got to where I can smell the son of a bitch anytime I get a mile away from him.”

  “Yeah?” Lou said. “Well, it might’a helped us tonight if you had smelled him before we ran into that hornet’s nest.”

  Pete was weaving in his saddle, and his face was pasty white. It wasn’t until then that the others noticed he was bleeding.

  “Pete,” Cletus said. “Pete, what’s wrong with you?”

  Pete was holding his hand over his stomach, and he pulled the hand away from his wound. The palm of his hand was filled with blood, and it spilled down onto his saddle and down his pants leg, though, as his saddle and trousers were already soaked with blood, it was hard to discern new from old.

  “I got hit back there, when all the shootin’ started,” Pete said. He weaved back and forth a couple of times, then fell from his saddle.

  “Pa!” Cletus shouted. “Pa, get out here!”

  Ike Clinton came out onto the patio then, and saw Pete’s blood-soaked body lying very still.

  “What the hell happened?” Ike asked, kneeling beside Pete. He put his hand on Pete’s neck, felt for a pulse, then looked up. “He’s dead.”

  “Damn, they killed him,” Cletus said.

  “Funny, Pete never said a word the whole time we was comin’ back,” Ray said.

  “Who killed him?” Ike asked. “Where were you? What were you doing?”

  “Pa, while you was gone, I found out that Garrison was beginnin’ to build his railroad,” Ray said. “So what we done is, we rode out at the railroad construction site just to stir things up a bit.”

  “Yeah, we figured we could catch ’em all sleepin’,” Cletus said.

  “When we got there, the bedrolls was all spread out around the fire an’ all, so we started shootin’ at ’em. We rode all the way into the camp shootin’ at them bedrolls. But it turns out, there wasn’t nobody in any of them. They was all empty.”

  “And the next thing you know, all hell broke loose,” Cletus said.

  “Yeah,” Ray said. “Yeah, the whole thing was an ambush. They was hidin’ in the rocks just outside the camp, and they opened up on us.”

  “That’s when they killed Pete,” Cletus said.

  “They didn’t kill him, sonny. You two boys did,” a sibilant voice said.

  Both Ray and Cletus looked at the man who had spoken. Neither of them had ever seen him before.

  “Who the hell are you?” Cletus asked.

  “Boys, this is Jefferson Tyree,” Ike said.

  “Jefferson Tyree?” Cletus said. “Wait a minute. Do you mean the outlaw Jefferson Tyree?”

  “I mean Jefferson Tyree,” Ike said without commenting on the outlaw reference.

  “What’s he doin’ here?”

  “I hired him.”

  “You hired him? Pa, he’s an outlaw!” Cletus said.

  Ike chuckled. “Hell, son, if it weren’t for the fact that we got Belmond in our hip pockets, we would be outlaws, too,” he said.

  “Well, what the hell do you need him for anyway?”

  “I thought we might be able to use him in our little disagreement with General Wade Garrison,” Ike explained.

  “You don’t need him, Pa. You got me’n Ray. What do you need someone else for?”

  “Because, like you said, I have you and Ray,” Ike said. “Two of the must useless sons a man has ever been cursed with.”

  “Yeah? Well, what is he goin’ to do that we can’t?” Cletus challenged, pointing to Tyree.

  “If I had been with you tonight, I would’ve smelled the trap, and I wouldn’t have gotten a man killed. Like I said, you’re the ones who got him killed. You killed him by going out there without knowing what you were doing,” Tyree said. He crossed his arms across his chest and leaned back against one of the columns that fronted the patio. “Don’t be doing anything like that again, unless I give you permission.”

  “Now, wait just a damn minute here,” Cletus said angrily. “If Pa hired you, then that means you work for me, I don’t work for you. So you won’t be giving me permission to do anything.”

  Tyree uncrossed his arms. “Sonny, I not only don’t work for you,” he said. “I no longer work for your pa.” He started toward the barn.

  “What do you mean, you don’t work for me?” Ike called after him.

  “Ought not to be that hard to figure out,” Tyree replied without looking back. He continued walking toward the barn.

  “No, wait!” Ike called after him. He glared at his son. “Ray, Cletus, Tyree is right. Neither one of you have any business messing in his business. And from now on, you won’t do one damn thing unless he tells you to do it.”

  Ray stood there for a mome
nt, seething, as he clenched and unclenched his fists.

  “This ain’t right, Pa!” Ray said. “This ain’t in no way right, and you know it!”

  “Boy, you know me well enough now to know that I don’t give a tinker’s damn what’s right or wrong,” Ike said. “I only care for results. And so far, neither you nor Cletus has given me any results. That’s why I hired Tyree.”

  “We don’t need him, Pa,” Ray said. “Me’n Cletus can take care of—”

  “So far you and Cletus haven’t been able to take care of shit,” Ike said, interrupting his son in mid-sentence. “I’ve hired Jefferson Tyree because I’m tired of getting my men killed. I think it’s time we started killing a few of Garrison’s men. Do you understand that?”

  “Yeah,” Ray said, biting off his words. “Yeah, I understand it.”

  “And you won’t go off on your own anymore. You won’t do anything like that unless Tyree tells you it’s all right. Do you understand that?”

  Ray sighed. “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, what?”

  “Yeah, I won’t do anything unless Tyree tells me it’s all right,” Ray said, nearly choking on the words.

  “Cletus? What about you?”

  “Hell, Pa, it weren’t my idee to go over there in the first place,” Cletus said. “It was all Ray’s idee and I was just doin’ what he said.”

  “Then I take it that you agree to do nothing without Tyree’s permission?” Ike asked.

  “Yeah, sure, whatever you say, Pa,” Cletus said, looking away so as not to have to face the angry glare he was getting from Ray.

  “Tyree?” Ike called. “You heard all this?”

  “I heard it,” Tyree replied from over by the barn.

  “Will you stay?”

  Tyree didn’t make a verbal response, but he answered in the affirmative by making an almost imperceptible nod of his head.

  “What about Billy?” Cletus asked.

  “What about him?”

  “Are you saying Billy is to take his orders from Tyree same as us?”

  Ike shook his head. “Billy ain’t a part of this,” he said.