Revenge of Eagles

by Johnstone, William W.

  “Damn,” Sheriff Meeker said. He laughed. “I really like that line. ‘Get ready to eat supper in hell.’ I may use it someday.”

  “Be my guest,” Falcon said.

  “Oh!” Sheriff Meeker suddenly gasped. He stepped back from Falcon and his eyes grew wide with fear. “I’ve ... I’ve got paper on you!”

  Falcon chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. That paper is very old. I’m not wanted by anyone now. You can send a wire back to the sheriff that issued that warrant on me, if you want to.”

  “No, no,” Sheriff Meeker said quickly, obviously not wanting to get into any argument with Falcon MacCallister. He had read too much about the deadly gunfighter to want to have to face him down.

  “So, back to my original question, Sheriff Meeker. What can you tell me about these two people who were killed?”

  “Other than who they are, I can’t tell you much,” Sheriff Meeker said. “Some of Suzie’s neighbors reported hearing gunshots this morning, around sunup.”

  “Did they look into it?”

  “No, not at first,” Meeker said.

  “Why not?”

  “Gunshots ain’t all that unusual around here,” Meeker said. “Most of the time it’s just a rancher, or maybe a miner, who stayed in town all night. Nobody figured this was any different.”

  “When did you find out it was something different?”

  “Well, sir, the undertaker lives in the back of the hardware store and when he went back to the privy first thing this mornin’, why, he noticed that Miss Suzie’s door was open. He stepped up onto her stoop to tell her about it, and that’s when he seen ’em. They was both lyin’ there in Miss Suzie’s bed. Nekkid as jaybirds, both of’em was.”

  “Do you know who did it?”

  “No, not yet. But in case you don’t know it, Miss Suzie was a soiled dove. So what some of us has figured out, it was probably someone who got jealous or something.”

  “Maybe,” Falcon said. “But it could’ve also been Fargo Ford and his gang.”

  “What? No! Didn’t I tell you? Miss Suzie was Fargo Ford’s own sister. I don’t think a body, even someone as evil as Fargo, would kill his own sister.”

  “Unless she got in the way of money Fargo figures is his,” Falcon said.

  “Well, I’ll be damn,” Sheriff Meeker said. “I never thought of that.”

  “Fargo is from Mesquite, isn’t he? So, if he came into town recently, someone might have seen him who recognized him?”

  “If he came into town and somebody saw him, yes, they would have recognized him,” Meeker admitted.

  “Then, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll ask a few questions around town to see what I can find out.”

  “No,” Sheriff Meeker said. “No, I don’t mind at all. If fact, I’ll go with you and help you out. If people see me with you, why, they might be a little more willin’ to talk to you.”

  “Good idea,” Falcon agreed.

  The two men started at the saloon. Falcon, who had eaten nothing but trail food for the last several days, had a meal of spiced beef, beans, and rolled tortillas. He sat at a table in the back of the room while Meeker, with great fanfare, called people over, one at a time, to ask if any of them had seen Fargo Ford.

  “Yeah, I seen him a few days ago,” one of the men said.

  “You seen him, Billy?” Sheriff Meeker asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Come on over here. Billy Cates, this here is my friend Falcon MacCallister,” Sheriff Meeker said. “I reckon you have heard of Falcon MacCallister, haven’t you?”

  “I reckon I have,” Billy answered.

  “Where did you see him?” Falcon asked, looking up from his meal.

  “He come in here with three other men. They was all talkin’ to Frederica and Ava, but I don’t know what they was talkin’ about. I was too far away to hear ’em.”

  “Did he say anything to you?” Falcon asked.

  “To me? No, sir.” Billy Cates cleared his throat. “Look, this here ain’t somethin’ I’m very proud of, but I used to ride some with Ford. Me’n Ponci Elliot and Les Wilson. But that was a long time ago and I’ve been on the up and up ever since then. Why, you can ask the sheriff about that.”

  “Billy’s tellin’ you the truth,” Sheriff Meeker said. “He’s rode the straight and narrow for a long time now.”

  “I believe him,” Falcon said.

  Billy looked relieved. “If you want, I’ll send Frederica and Ava over so’s you can talk to them. Maybe they can tell you what they was talkin’ about.”

  A moment later the two bar girls stood in front of the table looking with admiration at the tall, handsome man who was asking so many questions.

  “I know nothing about them,” Frederica said. “I know only that they asked for Suzie.”

  “Suzie?”

  “Fargo Ford’s sister,” Sheriff Meeker said.

  “Oh, yes, I remember the sign in front of the coffin.” At the mention of the coffin, Frederica and Ava suddenly remembered that Suzie was dead, and both of them made the sign of the cross very quickly.

  “Thank you, ladies, you have both been very helpful,” Falcon said.

  After learning that Fargo Ford had been in town recently, Falcon spent the rest of the day talking to everyone who knew him in order to get as good a picture as he could get of the man’s habits. By nightfall, he had gathered enough information to give him an educated guess on the best way to track him down.

  Falcon took a room in the hotel, spending the night in bed, his first night in bed in several nights.

  It was still dark when Falcon left town the next morning. When the sun came up and the undertaker came up front to close the caskets of the two bodies, he noticed that Ponci Elliot was wearing a hat. That seemed strange. He hadn’t put a hat on Ponci’s head. He wondered where the hat came from.

  Removing the hat, he gasped.

  Ponci had been scalped.

  CHAPTER 21

  “It stinks in here,” Dagen complained as he, Monroe, Casey, and Fargo looked through the cave where Ponci had done his self-amputation to see if they could find the money.

  “You can put up with a little stink,” Fargo said.

  “A little stink? We could be up to our bottom lip in shit and it wouldn’t stink anymore,” Dagen said.

  The others laughed.

  “What the hell are we lookin’ for?” Monroe asked.

  “What are we looking for? We’re looking for the money,” Fargo replied.

  “Yeah, I know that. But is it in a bag or what?”

  “It could be,” Fargo said. “But like as not it’s ...” He stopped in mid-sentence, then leaned over and started tossing a few rocks aside.

  “Have you found something?” Casey asked.

  Fargo pulled out a set of saddlebags, then opened the flap and looked inside. A broad smile spread across his face.

  “Here it is, boys.”

  “Is the money there?” Dagen asked.

  “It’s here.”

  “Let’s divide it up,” Dagen said.

  “Not here.”

  Dagen looked at the other two men and, sensing that they were behind him, he looked back at Fargo. Fargo was holding the saddlebags and looking down inside. He didn’t notice that Dagen had pulled his gun.

  “Yeah, let’s do it here,” Dagen said.

  “I’m in charge here,” Fargo said. “And I’ll decide when and where we divide the money.”

  Dagen pulled the trigger and the gun flashed and boomed loudly inside the cave. A little puff of dust flew up from the front of Fargo’s shirt and his eyes opened wide in pain and surprise. He dropped the saddlebags and put his hand over the wound.

  “You son of a bitch,” he said. “You killed me.”

  “Yeah,” Dagen said easily. He pulled the trigger a second time, and Fargo went down.

  Monroe and Casey looked on with shock.

  “What the hell did you do that for?” Casey asked.

  “Because
I don’t believe the son of a bitch had any intention of dividing up that money,” Dagen said. “I think he was planning on just stringin’ us along for a while, then, first chance he got, he was going to run out on us.”

  “When do you plan on dividing the money?” Monroe asked.

  “Right now,” Dagen said. He smiled. “That is, as soon as we get out of this stink.”

  Leaving Fargo dead inside the cave, the three bandits walked outside into the bright sunlight. Dagen took a deep breath.

  “Damn, it feels good to be able to breathe again,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Monroe said. “I don’t know how much longer I could’ve stayed in there.”

  “Ha,” Casey said. “If you think it stinks in there now, what’s it goin’ to be like when ole Fargo gets ripe?”

  “Ain’t goin’ to be that much worse,” Dagen said. “Fargo always did have a stink about him anyhow.”

  The others laughed, even though they knew that they probably smelled just as bad.

  Dagen dumped the money out onto the ground; then the three men squatted down around it and began counting it out. It totaled fourteen thousand, two hundred dollars.

  “Looks to me like it’s a couple hundred dollars short,” Monroe said.

  “Ponci must’ve taken some of it,” Dagen said.

  “Maybe, but don’t forget, Fargo had some too. We ought to go back in and see how much he has,” Casey suggested.

  “You want it, you can go in and get it,” Dagen said, picking up his share of the money. “I doubt he has a hundred dollars on him, and for me, it ain’t worth goin’ back into that stink for no more’n thirty dollars, which is about what we would each get.”

  “Yeah,” Casey said as he stuck the money inside his shirt. “Yeah, that’s what I think too. So, where do we go now?”

  “Anywhere we want to go,” Dagen said. “We don’t even have to stay together no more if we don’t want to.”

  “Yeah,” Monroe said. “But till we get back to town it might be better if we stayed together.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I’ve heard talk of some renegade Indians. I don’t want to run into any all by myself.”

  “Monroe’s right,” Casey said. “I say we stay together till we get back to Sassabi Flat.”

  Dagen shook his head. “We can’t go back there.”

  “Why not?” Monroe asked. “They got whiskey, whores, and food there.”

  “Fargo killed one of the whores, remember? And he killed the bartender too.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Casey said. “Damn, where can we go?”

  “How about Providence Wells?” Dagen suggested. “They got whiskey, whores, and food there too. And there ain’t none of us ever been there, so there won’t be nobody there that know us.”

  “Yeah, good idea,” Casey said.

  The three men mounted. Then Casey looked over at Fargo’s horse.

  “What about Fargo’s horse? Should we take him with us?” Casey asked.

  “Why?” asked Dagen.

  “We can sell ’im.”

  “We got enough money, we don’t need to be bothered with tryin’ to sell no damn horse.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t be right just to leave him here,” Casey said.

  Dagen pulled his pistol and shot Fargo’s horse in the head. The animal dropped without a sound.

  “Son of a bitch!” Casey shouted in surprise.

  “Now it won’t bother him to stay here,” Dagen said. “Let’s go.”

  Falcon saw the vultures first, from at least a mile away. Then, as he drew closer, he saw a large brown form on the ground, and knew that it was a horse.

  It looked as if one of the horses had gone down, leaving the outlaws with four men and three horses. Although he felt bad about the horse, he knew it would slow the men down somewhat and make it easier for him to track them.

  Something didn’t look quite right when Falcon finally reached the horse. He couldn’t put his finger on what was bothering him ... maybe it was just intuition. Whatever it was, Falcon decided it was worth a closer look, so he dismounted, then walked over to examine the horse. Kneeling beside it, he ran his hand across the legs of the horse, but he couldn’t find any sign of a broken bone.

  “What happened here?” he asked aloud. “If you didn’t go down on them, why would they shoot you and leave themselves one horse short?”

  Falcon lifted the head, then let it drop. There was still some flexibility in the animal, so it hadn’t been dead long.

  Sighing, Falcon stood up, then removed his hat and ran his hand through his hair. Looking around, he saw a set of saddlebags lying open near a boulder. Looking back at the dead horse, he saw the horse had its own saddlebags.

  Falcon walked over for a closer look at the saddlebags near the boulder, and when he stuck his hand down inside, he pulled out a little paper band, the kind of paper band that is wrapped around stacks of money. He read the printing on the band.

  $100

  WESTERN EXPRESS COMPANY

  Looking around the area, Falcon saw the opening to a cave. Pulling his pistol, he moved up to one side of the opening, then cautiously looked inside.

  That was when he became aware of two things: the overwhelming stench coming from inside the cave, and the fact that Fargo Ford was lying dead on the floor of the cave.

  Holstering his pistol, Falcon pulled his knife and went into the cave.

  “Two down and three to go,” he said aloud. “You men just keep killing each other off. That makes my job real easy.”

  It was after dark when Falcon got to Providence Wells. Dismounting in front of the saloon, he walked along all the horses that were tied to the hitching rail, then saw one that he had seen before. It was one of the horses Pete Tucker had been holding during the botched holdup attempt back in Calabasas. That meant that the men he was looking for were here.

  Going inside the saloon, Falcon looked around, but didn’t see anyone he recognized.

  “Yes, sir, what will it be?” the bartender asked.

  “A beer,” Falcon said. He decided against asking for any specific information, believing he could find out more just by being quiet and observing.

  Falcon had just about finished when a girl came down the stairs and stepped up to the bar. One eye was red and swollen.

  “Good Lord, girl, what happened to you?” the bartender asked.

  “Nothing,” the girl said, putting her hand up to cover the eye.

  “Don’t tell me ‘nothing.’ You’ve got as big a shiner there as I’ve ever seen on anyone.”

  “He ... he wants a bottle of whiskey,” the girl said, nodding back toward the bar and putting some money on the bar.

  “What happened to you? Did that fella hit you?” The bartender reached up to touch the girl’s eye, but she pulled away from him.

  “No, please,” she said. “I don’t want any trouble.”

  “Honey, it looks to me like you’ve already got it. What’s going on up there? Listen, you want me to go tell him his time is up?” The bartender started toward the end of the bar.

  “No, don’t!” she said. “It’s all right, nothing is going on.” She reached out to grab him. “Nothing, honest. Please, don’t start anything. There are three of them.”

  That caught Falcon’s attention. “Three of them, you say?” he asked.

  “Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t all three with me,” the girl said. “The other two are with other girls.”

  “Why are you interested?” the bartender asked. “Do you know these three men?”

  “I’m not sure. When did they get into town?”

  “No more’n a couple of hours ago,” the bartender said. “At first, we was glad to see ’em ’cause they’re spendin’ money like water. But the drunker they got, the meaner they got, and right now I’d like to see ’em be on their way, money or no money.” Then, to the bar girl, he said, “Honey, you don’t have to go back up there. Not if he’s beating you.”

  “I
t’ll be all right,” the girl insisted, taking the whiskey. “I just don’t want any more trouble, that’s all.”

  She started for the stairs, but by the time she reached the bottom step, Dagen, wearing only his trousers and gun belt, appeared at the railing on the upper balcony.

  Falcon recognized him at once as one of the men he had seen back in Calabasas, and he turned toward the bar and pulled his hat down. Because Dagen was standing on the landing above, Falcon’s hat had the effect of preventing the outlaw from getting a clear view.

  “Hey, you! Bitch!” Dagen called down to the girl. “I sent you down there to get a bottle of whiskey, not to have a quilting bee. You’ve been down there long enough. Get back up here!”

  “Mister, she’s already been up there long enough,” the bartender said.

  “What do you mean, she’s been up here long enough? I decide when she’s been up here long enough.”

  “Well, you know how it is,” the bartender replied, forcing a laugh. “I mean, she is a working girl. There’s other gents in here wantin’ her time too. I can’t let one man just have all her time. Why, how’d it be if you was waitin’ on her right now?”

  “Yeah? Well, I ain’t waitin’ on her,” Dagen said. “But I want to be fair about it,” he added with a mirthless smile. He looked down over the floor of the saloon. “Who’s waitin’?” he asked. “Who else wants her?”

  The bar girl looked out over the floor, her eyes showing an expression of desperate hope that someone would back up the bartender. There was absolute silence. The other men, who didn’t want any trouble, managed to avoid the girl’s pleading look.

  “Well, now, that’s just what I thought,” Dagen said. The smile left his face. “They don’t nobody but me want her, ’cause she’s nothin’ but a worthless slut. Now, you get back up here.”

  The girl shut her eyes tightly, squeezing out a tear. She started up the stairs, then stopped. Clenching her hands into fists, she shook her head resolutely.

  “No,” she said. “No, I’m not coming back up.”

  “What do you mean you ain’t comin’ back up? I paid for you! Do you hear me, girl? I paid for you! You belong to me.”