Crusade of Eagles

by J. A. Johnstone

Andrew suspended the skewered rabbit over the open fire and within moments, the rabbit began browning and perfuming the air with the aroma of cooked meat.

  “Now, if we could only come up with some way to duplicate Delmonico’s grande sauce de la viande, the evening would be complete,” Rosanna said.

  “Forget Delmonico’s meat sauce,” Andrew replied. “I’d be satisfied with a little salt.”

  “Ah, who needs salt? Wasn’t it Benjamin Franklin who said, ‘Hunger is the best seasoning’?” Rosanna asked.

  “I don’t know who said it,” Andrew said. “But we are about to put it to the test.”

  Andrew removed the rabbit from the skewer, then pulled it apart into two approximately even pieces. He handed one piece to Rosanna.

  “Ohh,” Rosanna said. “It is delicious.”

  “You see anything?” Loomis called up to Strayhorn.

  Strayhorn was standing on the top of a rocky precipice, looking back toward Eagle Pass.

  “Nothing,” Strayhorn called back down.

  “That’s funny. If they met at four o’clock like they was supposed to, they’ve had plenty of time to get here by now.”

  Loomis, Logan, and Strayhorn were at North Fork, where Beaver and Gopher Creeks joined. It was there that they were to meet Kelly and, presumably, Falcon MacCallister and the money. But though they had been here for a couple of hours, nobody had come.

  “Loomis, you don’t think Kelly would . . .” Strayhorn began, but he didn’t finish.

  “I don’t think what?” Loomis replied. “You aren’t going to ask me if I think Kelly would take the money and run out on us, are you, Logan? Because Kelly is my own brother, and I wouldn’t like you thinking that.”

  “No—no, I wasn’t goin’ to say nothin’ like that,” Strayhorn said.

  “Then what was you goin’ to say?”

  “I was just goin’ to ask if you think maybe Kelly would have got into some kind of trouble, is all,” Strayhorn said.

  Loomis ran his hand through his hair and looked nervously toward the town.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe. Logan, do you see anything yet?”

  “No,” Logan called back down. “I don’t see nothin’.”

  Loomis waited another few minutes, saying nothing as he paced back and forth nervously. Finally, he called up to Logan.

  “Logan, come on down. Get mounted. We’re goin’.”

  Logan picked his way down the side of the rock, then walked over to where the horses had been tethered. Loomis and Strayhorn were already mounted.

  “Where are we goin’?” Logan asked.

  “We’re goin’ into town. I’m going to find out what happened.”

  “Is that a good idea? I mean us goin’ into town and all.”

  “Nobody but MacCallister would recognize us,” Loomis said. “And if he is there, I want the son of a bitch to recognize us. We need to find him.”

  “And Kelly?” Logan asked.

  “Yeah, and Kelly,” Loomis replied almost as an afterthought.

  It was late afternoon, just after the close of business, when they arrived, but the two saloons, the Long Trail and the Jayhawker, were already filling up with their evening trade.

  Both saloons had a piano, and both pianos were banging away, resulting in a cacophony of discordant music, tumbling together in the middle of the street. From one of the saloons came a high-pitched scream. As it was followed immediately by an outbreak of laughter, it was obvious that the scream was not an expression of fear.

  Loomis, Strayhorn, and Logan rode right down the middle of the street, the sounds of the hoofbeats echoing back from the buildings.

  “My God, Loomis! Look over there!” Logan said.

  “Look over where?”

  “Over there, out front of the hardware store. You see that sign?”

  Looking in the direction indicated by Logan, Loomis saw two wooden coffins, standing upright. They could see that there were bodies in both coffins, though, from this distance, they were too far away to see who the unfortunate occupants were.

  But Loomis could read the large sign.

  KILLED IN JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE

  BY FALCON MACCALLISTER.

  IF NO-ONE COMES TO CLAIM THESE TWO BODIES,

  THEY WILL BE BURIED IN POTTERS FIELD

  TOMORROW AT TWO IN THE AFTERNOON.

  Loomis angled his horse over toward the coffins. When he got closer, he could see who was in them. He did not recognize the first person.

  “Loomis, look!” Logan said, pointing to the second coffin.

  “Yeah.” Loomis’s voice was tight with anger. “I see him.”

  The person in the second coffin was his brother Kelly.

  “I guess that means Kelly didn’t get our money,” Logan said.

  “Money?” Loomis replied. “Goddamnit, Logan, that’s Kelly in that coffin, and you’re worryin’ about money?”

  “That is what we come to town for, ain’t it? The money?” Logan said.

  “And to find and kill MacCallister,” Loomis said.

  “Well hell, Loomis, there ain’t really nothin’ changed just ’cause MacCallister killed Kelly,” Strayhorn said. “We was goin’ to kill him and take the money before Kelly got hisself kilt. We’re still goin’ to kill him and take the money, ain’t we?”

  Loomis looked at his brother for a moment. Then he sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Yeah,” he finally said. “That’s what we’re goin’ to do. Let’s spread out and look through the town. If either of you see him, don’t do nothin’ yet. Come get the other two. I don’t care how good the son of a bitch is. He can’t beat all three of us together.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  When the albino opened his eyes, he wondered what he was doing sleeping on the floor. Then he realized he wasn’t sleeping, he was on the floor because he had been knocked out. Somehow that Eastern dandy had managed to get himself untied.

  He didn’t have to wonder what he had been hit with. There were pieces of broken chair lying all around him.

  The albino got up too fast, and a sudden wave of dizziness swept over him. He staggered over to the wall, then put his hand out to support himself until the dizziness passed. He was also nauseous and his head hurt. Putting his hand to the tender spot on his head, he came back with bloody fingers. The blood appeared especially bright red against the pallor of his skin.

  Dropping his hand to his side, the albino realized that his gun was gone, and not only his gun, his gunbelt as well.

  If Loomis and the others came back to find the prisoners gone, they wouldn’t let him hear the end of it. It was bad enough that he had let some Eastern dandy and a woman make a fool of him; he wasn’t going to wait around and let the others have their laughs at his expense. He was going after them, and he was going to bring them back.

  The albino went out to the barn and saw that his horse was still there. So was his saddle. He allowed himself a smile.

  “That was your first mistake. You should’ve taken my horse,” he said aloud.

  Going to his saddle, he opened one of the saddlebags and pulled out the gun and holster he had taken from the deputy when they escaped from jail back in Colorado Springs.

  “And that was your second mistake. You should’ve checked my saddlebags,” he added.

  He pulled the pistol from the holster, then spun the cylinder, checking the loads.

  “Now you are going to pay for being so dumb,” he said as he took the saddle over to the horse and dropped it on the animal’s back.

  A few moments later, saddled and mounted, the albino rode out of the corral. For a moment, he was puzzled as to which was the best way to go; then he saw the tracks on the ground. Three sets of tracks trailed south, two sets went north.

  Smiling, he slapped his legs against the side of his horse and broke into a gallop, heading north. A man and woman from New York, alone in the wilderness of Kansas—how far could they get anyway?

  Logan and Strayhorn went into
the Jayhawker Saloon, while Loomis went into the Long Trail. Loomis bought a beer, then moved around the bar listening in on the various conversations.

  “Larry said he was leavin’ the Doublecreek, said he was tired of cowboyin’.”

  “What’s he goin’ to do?”

  “Said he was goin’ to work at the livery for McGee.”

  Finding that conversation nonproductive, Loomis moved to another position. Here, they were arguing about how long it had been since the last rain.

  One more move brought him success, when he heard MacCallister’s name mentioned in the very first sentence.

  “Where did MacCallister shoot that fella?”

  “Which one are you talkin’ about? Dunaway or Tate?”

  “I know he shot the one in the middle of the night in the hotel when he broke into his room. I’m talkin’ about the second one, what was his name? Tate?”

  “Yes, Kelly Tate, and MacCallister shot ’im over at Tinkers’ Café. Him ’n Marshal Kingsley and Blanton was all havin’ lunch together. Then Tate come in and Kingsley recognized him. So Kingsley goes over to say somethin’ to him. Well, without so much as a fare-thee-well, Tate pulls his gun and kills poor ole Crack Kingsley. Then he turns his pistol toward the table where MacCallister and Blanton was sittin’, and he commenced shootin’ at them.”

  “And that’s when MacCallister shot back,” one of the other patrons said, denying the first patron the opportunity to finish.

  “Damnit, Charley, I was tellin’ this story,” the first patron said.

  “Well, hell, Frank, you was takin’ forever to tell it,” Charley said, and the others laughed.

  “Well, I’ll bet I can tell you why he commenced shootin’ at MacCallister,” Frank said.

  “Prob’ly for the same reason Dunaway tried to take MacCallister on,” Charley said. “I reckon he was just wantin’ to make a name for himself for bein’ the one that killed MacCallister. Only, he got hisself kilt instead.”

  “Nope,” Frank said. “It was for the money.”

  “The money? What money? MacCallister ain’t no wanted man. There ain’t no dodgers out on him.”

  “No, not reward money. The ransom money.”

  “What ransom money? I ain’t followin’ you.”

  “Well, you know that MacCallister’s brother and sister was took from the train last week, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, sure I know that. It was in the paper and all. Besides which, ever’one is talkin’ about it.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, it turns out that this Tate fella that MacCallister kilt is one of the ones that took the MacCallisters.”

  “How do you know he was one of ’em?”

  “I heard it from someone who was in the café when it all happened. It seems they had sent a letter to MacCallister askin’ for a lot of ransom money to turn ’em a’loose. And MacCallister brung the money with him. Didn’t you notice how he never let them saddlebags out of his sight?”

  “Yeah, when he was in here I seen that he had ’em hangin’ across his shoulder,” Charley said. “Thought it was kind’a odd, but didn’t give it that much thought.”

  “Well, sir, them saddlebags was stuffed with money, they was. Twenty thousand dollars in U.S. greenbacks. And Tate was supposed to pick up that money in exchange for MacCallister’s brother and sister, only somethin’ went wrong and he commenced a’shootin’. Next thing you know, Tate’s dead, the brother and sister is still captured somewhere, and MacCallister is still carryin’ around twenty thousand dollars.”

  “Twenty thousand dollars? All in them saddlebags? Lord, Lord, but ain’t that a lot of money, though?”

  “Wonder where at MacCallister got so much money,” a third patron asked.

  “Hell, Marty, don’t you know?” Frank replied. “Falcon MacCallister is a rich man. A very rich man. For him to be carryin’ twenty thousand dollars around in his saddlebags, would be like one of us carryin’ two hundred dollars around.”

  “Hah!” Charley said. “If I scraped up all the money I had in the world, it wouldn’t come to two hundred dollars.”

  “I hope you fellas don’t mind my listenin’ in to your palaver,” Loomis said, speaking up for the first time. “But I’m a stranger here, and I don’t mind tellin’ you, that’s one ripsnorter of a story. You had a shootout in the street right here in town, did you?”

  “Wasn’t on the street, it was over at Tinkers’ Café,” Charley said.

  “And the shootout was over twenty thousand dollars?”

  “Well, that’s what Frank here is sayin’,” Charley said. “I figured it was because Tate kilt our marshal.”

  “’Cause the marshal figured out that Tate was one of the ones that took them two actors who was MacCallister’s brother and sister,” Marty said.

  “For the ransom, which gets us back to the twenty thousand dollars that MacCallister is carryin’ around with him.”

  Loomis let out a whistle. “Twenty thousand dollars you say. That is a lot of money.”

  “Prob’ly ’bout as much as they got down the street in the bank right now,” Frank said.

  Charley laughed. “And it wouldn’t surprise me none if the money wasn’t safer hangin’ in a saddlebag over MacCallister’s shoulder than it would be if it was in a bank.”

  “Yeah,” Marty agreed. “I’d hate to be the one that tried to take the money from Falcon MacCallister.”

  “Where at is this MacCallister fella now?” Loomis asked.

  “Why do you want to know?” Frank asked. He chuckled. “You ain’t goin’ to try and take it from him, are you?”

  “I ain’t that crazy,” Loomis answered. He held up his finger to the bartender, signaling a refill for the three men. “It’s just that I’ve never seen a man so rich he could carry twenty thousand dollars around in his saddlebags, and I’d like to see that.”

  Three new beers were put in front of Frank, Charley, and Marty.

  “Thanks, Mr. . . .”

  “Jones,” Loomis said.

  “Mr. Jones,” Frank said, holding up his beer in salute.

  “Well, Mr. Jones, if you’re wantin’ to see MacCallister, you ain’t goin’ to see him anywhere in Eagle Tail,” Charley said. “If you want to see him, you need to find the lowlifes who took his sister and brother.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, sir. Right after all the dust settled from the shootin’ and all, MacCallister went out on the trail after them.”

  “Too bad,” Loomis said. “I’d really like to see me a man that rich.”

  Loomis finished his drink, then with an amicable smile, left the Long Trail, and walked across the street to the Jayhawker.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  The Jayhawker did business with a rougher crowd than the Long Trail. The Long Trail was proud of its polished, mahogany bar and its gilt-edged mirror. The Jayhawker’s bar was made of unpainted, ripsawed wood, and there were no towels or towel rings for the customers. There was a mirror behind the bar, but it wasn’t gilt-edged, and all the images it showed were distorted by imperfections in the glass. There were perhaps half as many spittoons here as at the Long Trail, and whereas the ones at the Long Trail were polished brass, the spittoons here were pewter and looked as if they were rarely emptied, let alone cleaned. Unlike the clean floor at the Long Trail, the Jayhawker floor was riddled with expectorated tobacco quids and chewed cigar butts.

  Even the bar girls showed the difference in quality as they were generally of riper years and more dispirited than the girls at the Long Trail.

  Loomis looked around the room for a moment, squinting through the cloud of smoke. He saw Logan and Strayhorn sitting at a table in the back of the room. They were engaged in animated conversation with two other men. Loomis started toward them.

  “Honey, you want to buy a girl a drink?” one of the bar girls asked, intercepting Loomis as he was crossing the floor.

  Loomis looked at her. The dissipation from her trade had treated her badly. Her nose had been broken and s
he was missing a couple of teeth.

  “Get away from me, you ugly old crone,” Loomis snarled.

  The woman’s face reflected hurt, then anger, as she turned and walked away.

  “I thought you two was supposed to be lookin’ for someone,” Loomis said to Logan and Strayhorn, ignoring the other two.

  “Uh, he ain’t in here,” Logan said.

  “I know he ain’t. He ain’t even in town,” Loomis said. “Who are these men?” He glared at the two men who were sharing the table with Strayhorn and Logan.

  “This here is Luke, and this is Seth,” Strayhorn said by way of introduction. “They’re good men.”

  “How do you know they are good men?”

  “Well, I’ve rode with Seth before,” Strayhorn said. “I don’t know Luke, he’s a local, but Seth has spoke good of him, and if he’s good enough for Seth, then he’s all right by me.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t know either one of them,” Loomis said.

  “I know’d your brother Kelly,” Seth said. “Me ’n him was pards once, and it pained me to see him standin’ in the coffin’ out there for the whole town to gawk at.”

  Seth had a beard. Luke didn’t actually have a beard, but was sporting what looked to be about a five-day growth.

  “So, you know Kelly, huh?”

  “Yep. It’s been a while back, but I know’d him all right.”

  “He never mentioned you to me,” Loomis replied.

  “I don’t doubt that he didn’t say nothin’ about me. Last time he seen me, I was lyin’ gut-shot on the streets of Boulder. I guess he figured I died. Don’t many folks survive bein’ gut-shot.”

  “How well did you know him?”

  Seth grinned, then pointed to Loomis’s drooping eye. “I know’d him well enough to know how you come by that droopin’ eye,” he said.

  “Oh? How?”

  “Your other brother, Drew, hit you in the face with a shovel when you was all kids,” Seth said.

  That was true, and what’s more, Seth would have had to learn it from Kelly, because Loomis had never shared the story with anyone.