The pain came then, when he tried to yell and couldn’t. The pain slashed at him like fire, but only for a moment. It dimmed, right along with everythingelse, and Bob Simms sank into a blackness that would never end.
Owen Blanchard went down fighting, screaming and trying to load shells into the double-barrel greener that was the only gun he owned. He managedto swat one of the attackers with the shotgun’s butt and kick the feet out from under another one, but then they were all over him. A big revolver was shoved into the pit of his stomach, and three of its slugs had blossomed in him before he hit the ground.
Billy Challis looked down at the writhing gurgling man beside the wagon wheel and grinned happily. He put his iron away and stepped over the body. Folly Downs was at the wagon. Slicing lashes, he pulled the canvas back and Billy peered into the wagon bed. Three pale faces full of terror looked back at him from the shadows—pretty faces above the lace collars of demure sleeping gowns. “Well, well,” the gunman crowed. “This here night is our lucky day, fellers! Looky here what we got!”
Stepping up on the rear wheel hub, Billy grabbed a small arm and pulled. Amid screams of terror, he dragged fourteen-year-old Dorothy Blanchard from the wagon and threw her on the hard ground.
Ruth shrieked, and came over the sideboard swinging a skillet. Tuck Kelly intercepted her, swung a hard fist, and sent her rolling.
Beside the wagon, Billy grinned at the terrified girl trying to scramble away. Picking her up by her hair and one leg, he slammed her down again and fell on her. Slapping her hands away, he tore open the front of her gown.
“Come get ’em while they’re hot, boys!” He giggled.“This here one’s mine first!”
With his knife he slashed away her clothes, ignoringher screams and the blood that welled from a dozen cuts. When she fought at him he punched her in the face, breaking her nose.
Tuck Kelly swore and tugged at Asa’s sleeve. “Look what he’s doing!” he shouted. “I don’t like to see that!”
Asa shook him off and peered into the wagon bed. Behind him the girl’s screams died to moans as Billy pinned her arms back and forced her legs apart. Kurt sneered and turned away, not wanting to watch. Even Folly Downs, who would do most anything, turned away in disgust.
“Shouldn’t we put a stop to that?” Casper Wilkersonmuttered, glancing toward Asa, who was climbinginto the wagon. “That crazy son of a bitch makes me sick.”
Asa cut him short. “Let him have his fun,” he growled. “He isn’t hurting you, is he?”
“But, God, that’s disgusting!”
“Keeps him happy,” Asa said. “Let him alone.”
The outlaws took what they wanted that night, and it was a long night. In the dark hours Billy finally slept, sated and content, and the rest stayed clear of him. They all knew Billy was crazy, but he was quick and mean, and no man among them wanted to brace him. The only man Billy feared was Asa Parker, and Asa wanted him happy.
With first light of dawn they hitched up the wagon, and Casper Wilkerson drove it out of the ravine and headed it southeast. The rest saddled up and rode with him, Asa Parker leading the way. There was no one around to see them go, or to see what they left behind them in the little shelteredravine.
Buzzards were still circling when a big man on a tall black horse rode up from the south and angled aside to see what was there.
Long hair the color of winter straw whipped in the wind as he removed his hat, gazing down at the mute evidence of a massacre. Eyes like blue steel went hard and cold as he poked around the ravine, studying what he saw, piecing together what he could find—a name in a trampled Bible, a knife, a piece of a map, a scrap of lace, a locket. Together, they told him their story. Travelers from the east. Movers, off to set their roots in a piece of Colorado real estate.
“You poor fools,” Falcon muttered, shaking his head. “Poor, innocent, greenhorn fools.”
He buried what was left of the family of movers, then stood over the rough grave and bowed his head. “Lord,” he whispered, “in case you’re paying. any attention now to what you let happen here, these were the Blanchard family, from east of Neosho. I don’t know anything to say about them, good or bad, except they didn’t deserve this.”
They didn’t deserve it, his deep grief echoed, any more than Marie Gentle Breeze deserved what happened to her, back then. But, then, things happen all the time that folks don’t deserve.
In that moment, Falcon MacCallister felt an anger deeper than any he had known in a long time. “I couldn’t do anything about you, Marie,” he continued,aloud, raising his eyes toward the sky where his beloved wife now dwelt among the spirits. “Lord,” he growled, “there’s a limit to what any man can tolerate, and I believe I just found it. Help me if you want to, or not if you don’t care, but I guess I have to go after those men. Somebody else tracked down those savages who should have been mine, but there’s another score here to settle and there’s nobodyelse here right now. Just me. Amen.”
TWO
On that clear spring day in those vast empty lands northwest of Black Mesa, nothing seemed very far away, but almost everything was. A dust-plume, rising from a little herd of buffalo grazing its way northwardamong the scattered bones of the great herds, might seem just past the next rise, and a man could almost count the feathers on an eagle patrolling its range.
But distances were deceptive on the high plains. That eagle might be three miles away, and the buf falo might be twenty.
Nearness was an illusion on the grasslands. What seemed close was usually far away, while the remote might lurk just over the next rise. A campfire or a flash of color might be seen twenty miles away, yet armies could hide where there seemed to be no cover at all. Where horizons stretched past imagination,and the only thing to measure by was the buffalograss, distance meant nothing.
If it’s just yonder, Falcon MacCallister mused, toppingout on another rise that was just like all the rises before it and no different from all those ahead, it’s in the next county. And if you don’t see it at all, it’s probably about to buzz and strike.
Just at dawn, when the winds had stilled for a moment and the giant land lay hushed, he had seen a tendril of smoke to the east. It rose in the morning sky so clearly that he felt he could almost smell it, but he knew from long experience that it was not as close as it seemed. It might be a mile away, or a day’s ride.
He had lost the tracks a day ago, when storm rains and hail swept down from the Sangre de Christos. It had been a cold trail, days old when he picked it up below Hickson’s Ford, but for two days he had found sign enough to stay on it.
In that two days he had covered nearly sixty miles, following wheel ruts and tracks.
Five riders, the faint impressions said. Six men, then, Falcon thought, counting the one driving the wagon. Six men, a prairie schooner, seventeen horses—ten in harness, three under saddle, one on a lead behind the wagon, and three more hazed along as extra stock.
From their trail he learned things about them. They made good time, bearing generally southeast, down through the foothills and onto the high plains of eastern Colorado. The one driving the team knew what he was doing. He was no stranger to teams.
Two of the riders were big men—big boots, deeply imprinted tracks, heavy on their horses. Big and arrogant,he thought, judging by the signs they left. Across the bottoms of the Purgatoire, these two had pushed through thickets, shoving aside anything in their way, while the other three riders and the overlandwound around the obstacles, letting their mounts find easier paths.
The leader was one of the big ones, and despite his arrogance he was a careful meticulous man. The way he held close to the wagon said he didn’t much trust anyone—not even those riding with him.
They weren’t concerned about being followed. The trace they took in the rising grasslands said they didn’t expect anyone to be watching them.
Of course, it would be difficult to conceal a Staake Overland traveling across open country behind a five-team spl
ay, but they made no effort to stay off skylines in that wide open country. They rode like men accustomed to having their own way and taking it.
He found where they had camped below a caprock butte, and it was the careless camp of travelers who saw no threat in the land around them. The wagon had been halted atop a little bluff, and they had made their fire just below. The saddle mounts and dray horses had been turned out to graze on spring grass around a seep, and only three of the animals had been hobbled.
While the leader was meticulous, Falcon decided, the rest were lazy. Lazy and lucky. There had been a time—and it was only a few years back, before Sand Creek—when such sloth would surely have cost the bunch their horses, and maybe their scalps, as well.
Still, they had kept a night guard, and at least two of them had climbed to high ground for a long look at their backtrail. Cautions of old habit, Falcon decided.They didn’t expect pursuit. They were just taking a look around.
The now cold campsite confirmed what he had already noted. There were six men in the party, two of uncommon size and the others about average. The boots they wore were in fair condition—two of the smaller sets hobnailed in the fashion of mountaindwellers, the rest smooth-heeled and not too run over. The leader’s boots were cobbler-new, the boots of a city man.
They had made a meal of slab bacon and biscuit, with a big pot of coffee. They had finished it off with dried apples and pastries from a tin.
“You fellas aren’t wantin’ for anything, are you?” Falcon muttered, his eyes as cold as the frigid water pooled in the little grassy draw below where the wagon had rested. “Everything you want is right there in that rollin’ store you took.”
He saw where they had slept, wrapped in quilted soogans and oiled canvas where the thick grass gave them comfort, and he saw the marks of rifles kept handy—a Henry and a couple of Spencers, and what appeared to be a Colt’s cylinder repeater. He saw where the horses had grazed, and he saw their tracks where they had packed up, hitched up, saddled up, and moved on, still heading south.
Then, where the long cap of a distant mesa showed on the horizon ahead, they had turned east. It wasn’t as pronounced a feature from the north, but Falcon knew the landmark. That rising monolith out there, still twenty miles away or more, was Black Mesa.
If that was where the men were heading they had picked a hell of a fortress. Whole raiding parties of Kiowa—and sometimes Arapahoe and Comanche war parties—had been known to slip into that wildernessof canyons and gullies that was Black Mesa’s north face, and simply disappear. And where the Indiansholed up, so did the wildest of white men.
Not everybody called it Black Mesa. Some knew it as Robber’s Roost. From the south, they said, where it stood like a sixty-mile-long dark wall above the Cimarron breaks, the mesa was unapproachable. Maybe a man on foot could climb it, given the time and equipment, but no horse could.
If that was where they were going, even Falcon MacCallister would have his work cut out for him to find them.
But the faint trail he followed turned away from the mesa. Out in the high rolling grasslands the ridershad swung eastward. The tracks crossed a couple of draws that would be creeks farther down, then veered due east. And it was there that he lost the trail.
The spring storm swept down from the white peaks westward, and brought hail and wind with it. Hailstones the size of musket balls pelted his back and rattled all around him as he guided Diablo down a cut bank and into the slight cover of an overhung bank. The big black pranced and shied, panicked at the onslaught, but quieted once the punishing hail was blocked.
For nearly an hour, Falcon MacCallister huddled beneath the bank, holding Diablo’s head in a powerfulgentle arm, stroking the horse’s nose and talkingto him, soothing him as the pounding ice fell. Then, when it eased off, the sky darkened still more and there was rain. It passed, as such storms do, but by then the sun was behind the snowy silhouette of the mountains and it was too late to go on.
He made his camp right there in that brushy draw, first scouting around to get the lay of the land, then taking his time to attend to Diablo. The big black had come a long way, but with a brisk rubdown he was ready to graze for the night.
By last light, Falcon walked to the top of the highestrise he could find—a long grassy swell a quarter-milefrom his camp—and stood there, turning slowly while his eyes, as clear as those of the bird he was named for, catalogued every visible detail of the surroundingmiles. Standing better than six feet tall, wide shoulders bulging the buckskin shirt above a slim hard waist, he might have been a statue in the dusk—a flaxen-haired statue that barely moved, slowly and methodically fixing the vastness with his gaze.
When he was satisfied, he returned to the draw and built a hat-size fire right up against the cut bank.
His buckskins and high moccasins were chilling wet, and he stripped out of them and wrapped himselfin a blanket. Then he made a supper of jerked meat, bannock bread roasted on a little basketwork of sapling twigs, and strong black coffee.
He knew the trail he was following would be gone, with the hail and the rain. But he knew the direction,and he could reckon the distance. The men with the stolen wagon were a day or more ahead of him, but he would catch up in good time. If they continued eastward, he would overtake them. If they veered off, he would backtrack and find their trail. If they went to ground, he would find them.
It was a big empty land, these high plains tapering down from the frontal ranges of the Rockies. It was a huge region, so broad and seemingly endless that many a man would turn back—as many had—in the face of such enormity.
It was big, but not big enough for men who had Falcon MacCallister on their trail. He had seen what they did back there, and he would find them. For Marie’s memory he would find them, and when he was done the wolves and the buzzards could have what was left.
Falcon MacCallister had seen the place where those men had ambushed the family of westers. When he had buried what remained of the victims, the pitiful graves made him remember Marie. He had been on his way to Valley at the time, with the idea of spending a few weeks in the company of kin. But Valley could wait, now. Those five movers he had buried ... one had been a woman, and two just young girls!
A limit to tolerance! What the outlaws did to those people reminded him too much of other outrages he had seen—too many, too inhuman, too brutal, to be put aside. He had too many bad dreams alreadyto tolerate any more.
The nearest law, so far as Falcon knew, might be at the little settlement of Pueblo, but more likely was as far away as Castle or Denver. Both were a long way from where he was now, and if there was any law to the east it was even farther—somewhere over in Kansas.
Like most men of his time, Falcon MacCallister respected the law and those who kept it, but recognizedits limitations. Law was at its best in cities and settlements—places where people gathered to make their homes. Where there were no clusters of people,the basis of taw—the fundamental law of right and wrong—was still the will of any man who drew the line, who decided what he would tolerate and what he would not.
And if that man was known as a gunslick, thought by many to be no better than the outlaws who rode the far places, that made no difference. Public opinionwas the stuff of politics, not of fundamental law. That was always, even in the settled places, the functionof judgment—the judgment of the individual. Despite the antics of lawyers and politicians, the basisof practical law was still a matter of simple right and wrong.
“If it isn’t yours, don’t take it,” was the stuff from which law was made. “If it isn’t true, don’t say it.” And “If it isn’t right, don’t do it.”
The momentary little tendril of smoke he’d seen at first light might have been ten miles away, or fifty. But it had been east, in the direction he wanted to go, so he headed that way.
Somewhere ahead of him, six men had a wagon that didn’t belong to them, and it was stained with the blood of innocent people who didn’t deserve what was done to them.
And that just wasn’t right.
THREE
The land office of the Kansas Pacific Railroad occupiedtwo rooms on the second floor of the Waring Building. It offered a bay-window view of Market and Dominion Streets. Beyond were the Opera House, the new Silver Belle, presently under construction, and a panorama of commercial buildings with a sprawling town of fine houses, cabins, avenues, and placer digs in the background and the high mountainsbeyond.
James Lowell Horner stood in the corner window well, where three sets of double-hung panes overlookedthe teeming streets below. To the man behindhim, standing beyond a fine maple table that served as Horner’s desk, the railroad magnate was a bulky silhouette—a barely contained storm cloud of a man, ready to break loose in lightning and thunder at any moment.
From his posture it was obvious that the Kansas Pacific’s project chief had turned away to conceal his anger. For a long moment he stood so, breathing deeply. Then he said, “Say that again, Wylie. I’m not sure I heard you correctly.”
Wylie took a deep breath himself, and invited himselfinto one of Horner’s high-backed chairs. “It was a trap,” he said. “Brockman and his aides were killed and robbed by the very men they hired ... we hired ... to protect them. Their bodyguards.”
Horner stood silently for another long moment, then turned, his composure recovered. An expressionlessmask as perfect as the huge waxed mustache that hid his massive jowls from nose to ears. Only in his hooded eyes were the fires of rage. “You’re sure?”
“Very sure, sir.” Wylie indicated the open valise on the table. It was filled to the rim with papers, telegraph messages, and various other documents. “It’s all there,” he said. “The credential and backgroundinquiries we conducted on the Pasco SecurityAgency, the reference letters from eastern banks, even a note from President Hayes. Sam Brockman was meticulous, sir. The only problem is, the man we interviewed and hired as special guard wasn’t HiramPasco. He was an impostor. Pasco is probably dead. Our ‘Mr. Pasco’ and his so-called ‘personal security experts’ were phonies.”
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