Kate laughed and Jamie smiled. “It does look that way, doesn’t it?” Jamie had brought out two mugs of coffee and set one down by Bonham.
“You got you a hidin’ place, Jamie?”
“I don’t figure on running.”
Bonham cocked his head to one side and narrowed his eyes. “You cain’t fight fifty men all by yourself, Jamie.”
Jamie only smiled at that. “How much time do you think I have, Bonham?”
“Oh, ample time. Ample. It’s nigh a hundred miles to here. Then when they get here, they got to find you.” He stared at Jamie for a moment. “Find us,” he corrected.
“It’s not your fight,” Jamie told him.
Moses had returned with the clean clothes. Wells and Sally and Liza had come over. And now Sam and Sarah and Swede and Hannah made their appearance.
Bonham looked at the men. “Can y’all fight?”
“When angered,” Swede said.
“Well, you better get angry,” Bonham told him. “’Cause if you don’t, in a few days you’re all goin’ to be dead!”
Twenty-one
The women were sent to the cabin in the swamps with enough food to last them for the duration. They did not argue when Jamie told them to go, they just packed up, kissed their men, and went.
The men, with Bonham staying despite the objections from Jamie, packed up what they could of the contents of the cabins, hid the precious articles in the woods, and made ready to defend their land and lives.
Jamie tied his scalps onto the mane of his favorite horse, a stallion he called Buck, and packed up a few supplies. Bonham was amused when he noticed the scalps. When Jamie MacCallister went huntin’, the man thought, he meant business! Bonham did not have to ask what Jamie was going to do, he knew. Jamie was headin’ out to cut down the odds some.
Sam Montgomery’s eyes widened when he saw the dried scalps and Swede could but shake his head.
“They ought to be about a day away,” Jamie said, as he swung into the saddle, his rifle in his hand. He had two pistols in holsters around his waist, and four more in leather on the saddle. His short-barreled carbine was saddle-booted and his bow and quivers of arrows was slung around him. “I’ll be back.” He looked at Bonham and the man nodded his head in understanding.
“I’ll see to things,” Fontaine’s scout said.
Jamie rode out.
“He’s going out to cold-bloodedly kill, isn’t he?” Sam asked.
“He’s goin’ out to do what he has to do,” Bonham said. “Come on. We got work to do.”
Jamie stayed on game trails just inside the swampy edge of the thicket. He had explored the thicket and knew it as well as any living man, except, perhaps, for the Indians who lived in it. He knew it better than any white man. By late afternoon, he knew he was close to the camp for he smelled the smoke from fires and with the smoke came the odor of food being cooked. He picketed Buck on good graze and near water and began working his way to the edge of the enemy camp. Jamie’s eyes were cold and his expression set. His mind was clear. He was a warrior on a warrior’s path. There was no pity in him. These men had come to kill him and do harm to his family and friends. They came for blood, they would have it.
Their own.
Jamie worked in close on his belly. He was one with the land, the grass, the timber, the animals, the elements. Once, a sentry making his rounds came within a few yards of Jamie and did not see him. Jamie let him live. For now. He worked in closer until he could plainly hear the voices. One voice stood out. Hart Olmstead.
“Bradford says by noon tomorrow well be in MacCallister’s home territory,” Hart was speaking. “Dillman, you and Barnett ride out with Bradford before dawn and scout ahead. I’ll give five hundred dollars in gold to the man who brings me Jamie Ian MacCallister’s head.”
“What about your daughter?” a man asked.
“I have no daughter,” Olmstead’s words were cold. “That slut made her choice years ago. Kill her.”
“They got kids,” Bradford said.
“Wipe them all out,” Olmstead’s voice reached Jamie. “They’re nothing but nits and lice and fleas.”
“That’s right,” Jackson said. “They’re all mixed up with niggers and Injuns. God only knows who has been breeding with what. It’s disgusting. We’ll be doing the territory a favor when we destroy them.”
Jamie could see Titus and Robert. He wondered what was going through their minds at Olmstead’s words. Nothing, probably, he correctly guessed.
Jamie slowly worked away from the encampment and made his way back into the edge of the thicket. He would eat a bite or two and then rest. It was firm in his mind that he had found the right bunch, and what their intentions were — and they were anything but honorable. Tonight, then, he was going to be very busy.
* * *
Bradford lit his pipe with a burning twig from the dying fire and leaned back against the log, content in his mind. Tomorrow, he intended to be the first into the clearing where that damn MacCallister lived, and the first to reach the bastard. He was going to kill him and cut off his head for Olmstead to see. He owed MacCallister that for making a fool out of him down at Smith’s Tradin’ Post that time. And he’d use MacCallister’s own damn axe to do the deed. And he knew that the axe was sharp. By prowlin’ around the place, Bradford knew that MacCallister kept things neat and clean and ready to use at all times.
He sure did. And Jamie used his big blade now to cut Bradford’s throat. The man gurgled softly and Jamie, behind the fallen log, eased him down onto his blankets with one strong hand. Bradford looked asleep. He was. Forever.
Bradford was a man who liked his privacy. He had bedded down away from the others. He would never make that mistake again.
Jamie moved to the picket line and stood silent for a few moments, letting the horses smell him and see that he meant no harm. He had already been there several times that evening; when the sentry was at one end, Jamie would be at the other, or in the middle. The horses were used to him now.
Jamie began working quickly and soundlessly. He cut partway through several dozen cinch straps; just enough so after a few miles of riding, they would break. He had picked up several dozen cockleburrs and he worked several deep into as many saddle blankets as he could find. He silently apologized to the horses for the discomfort he was about to cause them come the morning.
The Shawnee had taught him a deep respect for the land and the animals who lived on that land. They had taught him to never kill any animal for fun, for animals were as much a part of Man Above’s plan as were the human people. He was taught to never kill more than was needed to feed the mouths waiting back at the lodge. They taught him to apologize to the animal after the killing, and to choose his animals with care. Kill a doe with a sucking calf, and the calf will die — that would be a wrong thing to do. The Shawnee taught Jamie Ian MacCallister many things during his years with them.
They also taught him how to kill silently.
When the sentry shift changed a few minutes after Jamie finished with the saddles, Jamie ruined the new guard’s evening and stretched him out on the ground. He silently followed another man into the timber and watched him drop his pants, squat down, and start to grunt. Jamie’s arrow drove all the way through the man’s head, the point exiting out the other side. Olmstead’s man would never have to worry about constipation again.
“What the hell was that sound?” a man asked, rising up from his blankets at the very slight sound of Arrow-Through-His-Head’s body hitting the soft earth.
“Les,” another said. “He makes more noise takin’ a crap than anybody I know.”
The camp quieted down and Jamie took the man’s hair and then flitted as silently as a shadow through the timber on the edge of the encampment. He had already chosen his next kill. Then sudden movement caught his eyes. He froze and watched as John Jackson stood up and walked to the fire, adding more wood, for the night was cool. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. Jamie notched
an arrow, took careful aim, and let it fly. It was true, taking Jackson in the center of his chest. Jackson grunted once, and then fell forward, first on his knees, and then facedown into the fire, his hair catching on fire. Jamie stood for a moment, recalling a similar scene years back. Then he turned and ran toward the safety of the thicket as the camp exploded in sudden activity and shouts. He would return about an hour before dawn to watch the fun.
“Injuns!” a man yelled. “They’s all about us, boys.”
Several miles from the camp, Jamie rolled up in his blanket and went to sleep. Tomorrow was really going to be an interesting day.
Jamie did not underestimate the ability of the men Olmstead had hired on to accompany him on this dastardly mission. Some of them, he knew, would be skilled woodsmen. But many of them, he also knew, had spent too many years in New Orleans and St. Louis, drinking and whoring and gathering flab and fat, therefore losing much of their skill in the wilderness.
He got into position long before the sky began to gray. The bodies of the four men had been wrapped in blankets and laid to one side, for burial come first light. The camp began to stir and as soon as men had swilled coffee, a few took shovels and began to dig. Jamie sat amid thick foliage, only his eyes moving. And as he had anticipated, the men were wary and Olmstead had posted many guards. To try anything now would be foolish. So Jamie sat through a short sermon and prayer — from Hart Olmstead, of all people — and waited.
Before leaving his hidden camp, Jamie had fixed up two arrows, attaching small bags of gunpowder just behind the arrowheads. Just as the men mounted up, he planned on dropping the arrows into the dying coals of the fire. With the already weakened cinch straps, the explosions would produce some very interesting results.
The scalped bodies committed to the earth and the services over — sacrilegious, to Jamie’s mind, coming from such a man as Hart Olmstead — the crowd broke up and began packing up, then moving to their horses. Jamie notched an arrow and stood up, concealed behind a tree. Two men made a halfhearted attempt at putting out the fires and then moved toward their saddled horses and climbed aboard.
Jamie let his arrows fly, one to each fire pit. The explosions were enormous in the early morning air and the horses started snorting in fright and pitching and bucking. Riders went flying in all directions and a few saddle cinches broke, adding to the confusion. Abel Jackson was tossed to the ground and when he attempted to get up, he presented his big butt to Jamie and Jamie put an arrow into one cheek. Abel shrieked like a woman and started grabbing at himself. Jamie put another arrow into a man, straight into his chest, the next arrow went into Carl Olmstead’s leg. Jamie jerked out his pistols and let the lead sing their death songs. Then Jamie raced back into the thicket and kept on running until he reached his saddled horse. He knew none of the men would pursue him very deep into the dark and dangerous mysteries of the thicket.
He rode hard for several minutes, then slowed to a walk, then put the big stallion into a trot, eating up the distance. He had his next ambush point already chosen.
Several miles behind him, Olmstead and his men had just managed to get things under control. By this time, Olmstead and his men had figured out that they were being harassed not by Indians, but by Jamie. Hart Olmstead was angry to the core, his face mottled by rage.
Olmstead’s ’field surgeon’ for this expedition, a barber from New Orleans who usually stayed about half drunk most of the time, was busy with the wounded. A cursing and shrieking Abel Jackson was forcibly held down while his buttock was sliced open and the arrowhead removed. Waymore Newby had retreated to cover and was keeping a good eye out for Jamie. He knew from experience just how dangerous the young man was.
Hart Olmstead surveyed the damage done. To his mind it was unbelievable that one young man could wreak such havoc.
“They’s a doctor at Nacogdoches,” LaBeau said. “Some of the wounded will make it. A couple won’t.”
Hart assigned men to take the wounded into the town with orders to say they were wounded during an Indian attack. His force of fifty-odd men had been cut to less than forty. And they still had a long way to go.
Titus and Robert were scared and they made no effort to hide that fear. Robert had known all along just how dangerous Jamie Ian MacCallister was and had tried his best to tell the others. But none of the men showed any interest in anything a nigger had to say. Up ’til now. Now they approached him with questions.
Shaking with fear, Robert said, “He can walk among wolves and panthers without being harmed.” Not quite true. “He can stand next to a tree and you can’t see him.” Pretty close to truth. “He knows every inch of the swamps.” Jamie knew the thicket well, but not that well. “He can move like a ghost.” True. “He’s as strong as any man alive.” Probably. “And he don’t know fear.” True.
Hart Olmstead dismissed the talk as a scared nigger’s babbling. But the man realized he had major problems. With Bradford gone, so went the location of Jamie’s cabin and how to get to it. He had seen paths and trails and even wagon ruts leading off to the east, into the darkness of the thicket, but to follow each and every one of them would take weeks or months, and his men were not at all anxious to enter that foreboding-looking swamp. Tell the truth, neither was he.
“We know he lives just east of that settlement called San Augustine,” Olmstead told his sons, Ernest, Patrick, and Jubal. Carl had gone with the wounded to Nacogdoches. “We’ll concentrate our search there.” He looked over at the mound of earth covering John Jackson, the best friend he’d ever had, and shook his head. Abel Jackson had been placed on a padded and horse-drawn travois and taken to Nacogdoches. “Mount up. We’re pulling out.”
If Hart Olmstead had possessed any sense from the outset, he would have left Jamie alone. Further evidence of how arrogant and short-sighted he was came when he did not pull the column away from the edge of the thicket and move them over to the west a mile or so. He doggedly maintained the northerly route at the edge of the dark swamps. Just as Jamie suspected he would.
A few miles up the trail, Jamie waited.
* * *
At the small settlement of cabins in the clearings, Sam and Swede noticed how calm Moses and Wells were, and commented on it.
“I doubt they’ll be more than a dozen men left time they get here,” Moses said. “If they even get here.”
“Jamie’s that good?” Bonham asked.
“He’s the best,” Wells said. “There ain’t nobody better at this kind of warfare. He’s been doin’ it since he was seven years old.”
Bonham shook his head. All the stories he’d heard over the past few years about Jamie MacCallister were true. The young man was scarcely twenty-one years old and already a legend. And miles to the south, that legend was growing.
* * *
Just about the only smart thing that Hart Olmstead did was not to lead the column of men. He stayed in the middle of the column, surrounded and therefore protected by his own men from shot or arrow that might come from the swamps that lay silent and deadly to his right.
After several miles had passed uneventfully, the men began to relax. Not a one of them had taken the time to inspect the belly cinches on the horses, even after a few had broken back at their encampment. Cinch straps broke every now and then, and none of them had any reason to suspect that Jamie MacCallister had anything to do with it.
When Jamie struck again, it was not a silent attack. He had brought two rifles, and he used them. Two more of Olmstead’s force toppled from their saddles, dead upon impact with the ground. Before the sounds of the shots had ceased echoing, Jamie was off and running to the north, toward where he had left his horse some distance away. He paused once, to charge his rifles, and then continued running, staying in the thicket, weaving along the game trails. His long hair was braided and his head covered with a brown bandanna. His face was deliberately streaked with mud and the natural green from leaves. His buckskins blended in with his surroundings. Jamie and the swamps were as on
e. He reached his next chosen ambush spot and waited, catching his breath. Then he mounted up and rode out of the thicket and into a clearing. He looked south. The column of men had not stopped to bury their dead. They were riding straight toward him. Jamie lifted his rifle and screamed like a panther, taunting those to the south. Then he turned the stallion’s head to the north, and staying in the open, rode away slowly.
Hart Olmstead did exactly what Jamie hoped he would do. He screamed to his men and they spurred their horses into a gallop. Jamie smiled and stopped, turning around to face the galloping charge. Cinch straps began breaking and men were tossed to the ground, many of them caught beneath the hooves of the horses galloping behind them. Olmstead hit the ground hard, as did his sons. LaBeau, realized what was happening, felt his saddle began to slide and threw himself to one side, landing hard, losing his rifle, but avoiding the deadly hooves of those horses behind him. LaBeau knew one thing: he was through with this hunt. Jamie Ian MacCallister would see no more of him. Hart Olmstead could take his money and go to hell with it.
It was bone-breaking and bloody pandemonium in East Texas. Jamie laughed at the sight and touched his heels to his horse and once more disappeared into the thicket. He rode south for a few hundred yards until he was opposite the scene of confusion. Leaping from the saddle, he fired into the tangled knot of addled men, emptying rifles and pistols. Then he was once more into the saddle, riding hard to the north. Two miles from the costly ambush, Jamie left the edge of the swamps and rode straight west for a couple of miles. Squatting in the timber, this time on the west side of the trail, he charged his empty weapons and waited.
Jamie ate a biscuit and took a drink from his water jug. He was a long way from being through with Hart Olmstead and his rapidly dwindling army of thugs and brigands.
To the south, Olmstead sat on the ground, blood streaming from a cut on his head suffered when he fell out of the saddle, and soundly cursed Jamie Ian MacCallister.
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