“What about this O’Brien? Have you talked to him?”
“He isn’t here. Bud thinks he lit out this afternoon,heading for the Neutral Strip.”
“His horse is gone,” Bud Wheaton said. “Real nice sorrel racer. One of the hide traders across the river saw him going southwest. I guess he’s headed for the Neutral Strip, because there sure isn’t much else in that direction.”
Falcon cut his eyes toward the deputy, then back to Stroud. “So what do you want from me?” he asked.
Outside the barn, a racket arose as two buckboard wagons passed slowly, both loaded with talking, laughing men. “Potatoes?” a jovial voice whooped. “You plan to grow potatoes in Colorado? Blanchard, you’re crazy as a loon!”
“Tell me that when I’m rich, Tom!” a man answered,“I’m tellin’ you, that’s the best cash crop a man can have. Sell direct to miners an’ railroaders! I’ll sell potatoes by the long ton, you watch!”
“I’ll put my money on corn and beans!” another offered. “Potatoes take sandy loam, and regular water. You won’t find that just ever’place!”
“It’ll be there!” the one called Blanchard said. “My brother’s already out there, pickin’ and choosin’. He left early to get us the right claims!”
The wagons passed, and from somewhere else nearby a chorus of taunting voices erupted: “Squatters!”“Live good while ya can, fools!” “You’ll starve on dry-land claims!”
“We’ll be there when you’re gone, cowboy!” someone responded. “We won’t be starved out nor burned out, neither!”
Slowly, the mounting hostilities receded up the street. “I’ve got me a handful of town here,” MarshalSam Stroud said. “Settlers and speculators, gunslingersup from No Man’s Land, grudge fights and brawls. Night riders burnin’ barns for twenty miles around, and the damn lawyers and land sharks alwaysstirrin’ things up. I just try to keep Dodge as peaceful as I can. I’d appreciate your cooperation.”
“I don’t aim to start any trouble,” Falcon assured him. “I’m here for a meal and a night’s sleep, and to use the telegraph when the office opens. Then I’ll be on my way.”
“That sounds all right,” Stroud nodded. “I’d let you bed down at the jail if you want, but that’s just an offer. I don’t have cause to insist.” He glanced at the big .44 at Falcon’s hip. “Word is, you’re mighty sudden with that iron. What if somebody takes a notion to try you on for size?”
Falcon smiled coldly. “What would you do, Marshal,if somebody shot at you?”
“I’d shoot back, of course.”
“Then you understand my inclinations. I appreciateyour offer, but I don’t believe I want to spend the night in jail. I’ll make do.”
“Palace Hotel,” Bud offered. “You can get a meal there, too. They’ll have the kitchen fire goin’ ’til midnight.”
Out on the street, the noise level was rising. Some riders had come in—men from the farms downriver and from the wagon camp out on the flats—and the sounds of voices carried into the barn. Somewhere a piano was being tuned up.
The saloons were serving, the dance halls were open, and the gaming tables were getting some use. There was talk on the street of night riders and squatter disputes. There were some powerful grudges out there. It was going to be a typical Dodge evening.
“Oh, Lordy.” Stroud shook his head, listening. “Drifters, land sharks, politicians, mean drunks, and lawyers. First sign of spring, they pop up like ragweed.Not to mention the hell bein’ raised over those rawhiders butcherin’ stolen cattle down around Hardwoodville.”
“That’s a little outside your jurisdiction, isn’t it?”
“It would be.” Stroud sighed. “Except they bring their beef to Dodge and sell it. The Sawlog and Smokey Hill ranches are out to put a stop to that, sure enough.
“I don’t mean offense, Mr. MacCallister,” he added, “but I’ll rest easier after you move on.” The marshal turned and strode out of the barn, followed by his grinning deputy.
Eugene Paul hadn’t said a word through the entirediscussion. Now he watched the law depart, then turned to Falcon. “Jamie Ian MacCallister was your father, wasn’t he?”
Falcon turned. “He was.”
“Then you have a friend in me,” the smith said. “And some others, too, if you want them. Hadn’t been for Jamie Ian MacCallister, my family would never have made it through the war. I don’t recollect much of it, and I never quite sorted out all of Pa’s stories about what happened in sixty-seven, but I know I owe your daddy my ma’s life, and maybe my own and my sister’s.”
“He got around some.” Falcon nodded. “I guess none of us ever heard all of it. Your family’s name is Paul?”
“It was Paulson, back in Tennessee. Pa changed it when he got to Missouri.”
“I heard the name Blanchard a bit ago. You know any Blanchards?”
Paul thought for a moment. “None here in town. Maybe out at the wagon camp. Want me to ask around?”
“Never mind. Just take care of Diablo.”
The smith stuck out a hand, and Falcon clasped it. It was a good honest hand, as hard as the metal it worked. “You need anything around here, you just sing out,” Paul said.
“Obliged,” Falcon told him. “But I’m just passing through.” He walked the few feet to the open door and peered out into the deepening dusk. In the distance,eastward along Trail Street, several buckboardsfull of hungry men—and a few women among them—had pulled up in front of a two-story building. Lanterns on posts lit the sign that said PalaceHotel Dinah’s Fine Food.
Eugene Paul stepped into the stall with Diablo and patted the horse on the neck, then worked his way to the black’s nose, murmuring to him. He came out a moment later. “Your horse will be ready when you are,” he said. We’ll get along fine.”
As Falcon picked up his gear the smith said, “Keep an eye out for a big buster named John Moline, Mr. MacCallister. He’s a local bully, hangs around the Palace and Spiro’s looking for trouble. He’s gunned down a couple of drunks, and thinks he’s a bad man.”
A cold wind was blowing from the west when FalconMacCallister stepped into the warmth and glow of the Palace Hotel lobby. The lobby occupied one fourth of the ground floor of the two-story building. The remaining three-fourths, opening off the lobby through a wide open archway with a gilt sign proclaimingDinah’s, was a big dining room served from a busy kitchen.
The place was packed with people of all descriptions.At every table and bench men, women, and children dined on beefsteak and fresh bread while others stood along the walls, waiting. A dozen or so harried-looking women with starched bonnets and long aprons hurried in and out through the back serving door, carrying platters.
Falcon’s stomach growled appreciatively at the wafting aroma of freshly baked bread. It was a while, he realized, since he had eaten any decent cooking but his own. But he had things to do, first.
At the lacquered desk, a night clerk watched him approach and opened the registration book. Any man carrying saddlebags, duffle, bedroll, and a rifle was obviously a customer.
“I need a bed for the night,” Falcon said. “Private room, if you have it. And I’ll want one of those beef steaks in there.”
“Room’s a dollar,” the clerk said. “Clean sheets and two oil lamps. Privy’s just outside, and there’s water on the washstand. Dinah’s charges separate.”
Falcon signed in, glancing at the names on the register. “You know any of those people who just came in?”
“Those are wagon people.” The clerk shrugged. “Homesteaders, mostly. They come in all the time, but just for a meal. They don’t sleep here.”
A big smudge-faced man lounging at the end of the counter had been looking Falcon up and down. Now he said, “That’s big iron you carry there, Mr. Know how to use it?”
“Well enough,” Falcon said, not looking around. He paid over his dollar and picked up his gear. “Which room?”
The clerk handed him a skeleton key on a brass ring. “
Two-oh-five,” he said. “Upstairs, on the left.”
Falcon turned toward the stairs.
The smudge-faced man scowled and straightened. “I believe I was talkin’ to you, Mr.”
“Go talk to somebody else,” Falcon muttered. Withouta backward glance, he went to find his room.
The Palace Hotel, like every other plank-built structure in Dodge City in 1881, was so new its timbers still creaked and settled. But behind its elaboratefalse front it was a sturdy structure, built by a crew of German immigrants out from Mound Ridge.
Falcon glanced around the little room, then tested the bed and judged it acceptable. He stripped down, washed himself at the washstand, then put on a fresh shirt from his pack and cleaned his hat and boots. The dark broadcloth suit in his duffle was a pleasant change from worn buckskins. He shaved, and put it on. Finally, he cleaned and oiled his .44s, strapped one on, and shoved the second into his waistband.
By the light of an oil lamp he retrieved a little oilskin package from his saddlebags, unwrapped it, and sat for a moment gazing at its contents. Then he dropped it into a coat pocket and went downstairs.
What must be done now was not going to be easy, but he had it to do.
At the foot of the stairs he paused for a moment, then walked through the archway into Dinah’s. It took him only a few seconds to spot the wagon crowd. They were seated at three tables near the front, working on platters of steak and potatoes.
“Is there someone here named Blanchard?” Falconasked.
At the nearest table, someone turned—a young man, sturdy and clean-shaven, accompanied by a young woman and a little boy. “I’m Tom Blanchard,” he said. “Who are you?”
“Falcon MacCallister. Are you Owen Blanchard’s brother?”
“That’s right.”
MacCallister hesitated. He hated what came next, but there was no alternative. Removing his hat, he handed Blanchard the oilskin package. “I guess this is yours.”
The package contained all that Falcon had salvagedfrom the massacre out in that Colorado gully—a Bible with names and dates, a piece of a map, a battered clasp knife, a scrap of lace, and an ornate locket of inset ivory hearts in a gold oval. They were things the outlaws had somehow overlooked.Every other personal thing he had found out there was either bloodstained and ruined, or destroyed. He had buried all that with the victims’ remains.
Tom Blanchard stared at the mute salvage, his shoulders going stiff. Beside him, his wife gasped and started to cry.
“I’m sorry,” Falcon said. “I found them. What was left of them. They were ... robbed and murdered,by outlaws.”
“Owen ...” Blanchard murmured. “My God!” He turned stricken eyes to the stranger. “Where? When?”
“All of them?” The woman sobbed. “Ruth and ... and the children, too? And Bob Simms?”
In a quiet corner of the hotel lobby, Falcon relatedwhat he had seen and what it meant. The Blanchards sat huddled, too stunned yet to grieve, while others from their wagon party gathered around. The clerk was asleep at his counter, and there was no one else around at the moment except people coming and going from Dinah’s.
“I buried them proper,” Falcon said, finally. “Then I picked up the trail of their wagon. I think I know where those men were going.”
“How about the law?” one of the men demanded. “Aren’t there sheriffs or ... or somebody, to deal with those monsters?”
Falcon shrugged. “Law’s spread real thin out there in the slopes,” he said. “And where those men went, there’s no law at all. I’ll send a report to the authorities in Denver as soon as the telegraph opens tomorrow, and you can contact them, too. Don’t expectmuch, though. There isn’t much they can do.”
“But those men!” Blanchard insisted. “You say you know where they went?”
“I think so, and I’m going after them. I’ll need to know how to contact you, if I can recover your brother’s property.” He stood and put on his hat. “I’m real sorry about what happened to your brother and his family,” he said. “Nothing’s gonna make that right, but I promise you those owlhoots won’t get off scot-free.”
At the door, a couple of the homesteaders caught up with him—young men who could have been brothers. Both had the sloping shoulders and big hard hands of farmers, and both carried sidearms. “Why are you goin’ after those men, Mr. MacCallister?”one asked. “What’s your business in all this?”
“It’s personal,” Falcon said. “I have reasons of my own”.
The answer wasn’t good enough. “Do you know those murderers?” they asked. “Did they do somethin’to you, too? Is that it?”
“I don’t know them,” Falcon shrugged. “Let’s just say I’ve seen way too much of their kind. I guess I just can’t tolerate any more.”
The cold night wind was as bleak as Falcon’s spiritswhen he stepped out into the night. There was music and laughter coming from a place across the street, and he headed that way, wanting to shake off the dismal memories of lonely graves on the Coloradoplains, and of the grief his news had brought to the Blanchards. The memories were pitfalls, leadingdown to the aching emptiness that his wife’s death had left.
Spiro’s Saloon offered a raucous rowdy haven of gaiety in a cold hard world, and Falcon needed a drink.
He spotted a few familiar faces in the crowd. Jack Cabot and Sandy Hogue were at a gaming table off to one side, with several other men. And he saw a little knot of soldiers from the fort, keeping to themselvesin a far corner.
As he stepped to the bar and ordered whiskey, a snarling voice came from behind him. “Why, here’s the gent that don’t talk to common folks!”
Falcon turned. It was the tough from the hotel. “You turned your back on me once before, Mr.,” he said. “Nobody insults John Moline a second time. ”
The man was braced, just spoiling for a fight, and ready to slap leather. Falcon gazed at him levelly, then stepped away from the bar. “I’ve had enough of you,” he said.
Whatever Moline may have been expecting—blusteror a move to draw—he wasn’t ready for what came next. Falcon stepped away from the bar, then stepped again, and abruptly Moline found himself doubled over a fist that exploded like a mule’s kick into his belly. He went white and bent over, and anotherfist came from down around the knees to cartwheelhim backward.
The tough sprawled on his back, bleeding from broken lips and nose, and Falcon stood over him. With a quick swoop he hauled Moline’s gun from its holster, emptied its chambers, and cast it aside.
“You picked a real bad time for a chat, fella,” he said.
The room had gone dead still, and every eye was on him. Falcon looked around, sizing up the crowd one by one, then rested his cold gaze on the side table where Cabot and Hogue sat.
“Anybody else?” he asked. When there were no answers he went back to the bar and downed his jigger of rotgut. He really ought to thank John Moline, he told himself. He felt a whole lot better now.
They dragged the unconscious Moline out of the place, and the piano player went back to his work. When Falcon looked around again, Cabot and Hogue were gone, and maybe a dozen others. Three tables had emptied.
Sergeant Jack Lyles was pushing through the crowd with a couple of his fledglings, signaling for a hand in the game the former Noonan riders had left.
“You sure know how to make an impression, MacCallister,”the sergeant said.
Billy Challis and Tuck Kelly were miles southwest of Dodge by the time dawn touched the prairie sky. They had gone up to Dodge on a whim, to nose around and maybe get drunk. But at Spiro’s Saloon they heard the talk—a big yellow-haired man with a big gun was on the warpath. He had blood in his eye, and he was looking for the men who took a prairie schooner over in Colorado.
They heard it from an eavesdropping hotel clerk, from talk among homesteaders. From Sandy Hogue and Jack Cabot, from fort gossip, they heard about Falcon MacCallister.
Then, abruptly, they heard what happened to John Moline, and put two
and two together.
Falcon MacCallister was a legend. But now the legend was real, and taking a personal interest in Asa Parker’s game. And he knew just where to look.
The owlhoots rode toward No Man’s Land, and others joined them for the ride. At Crooked Creek Billy Challis turned upstream, where a bare-limbed cottonwood grove offered some shelter. “Let’s hole up here a while,” he said. “I’d like to get a look at that yahoo Cabot’s been talkin’ about.”
TWELVE
... JRHORNER KPR DENVER STOP ATT WYLIE STOP MSG RCD STOP SEE AUTH DENVERRE RBMD BLANCHARDS STOP SIX MEN STL RIG BND SE WOLF CREEK NTRL STP STOP IN PURSUIT STOP FALMAC STOP DODGE CITY STOP
From the Western Union terminal at Denver, the message was rekeyed to Kansas Pacific’s private wire and received at the division land office in the WaringBuilding. A garter-sleeved clerk delivered it to Sebastian Wylie. Wylie composed a list of questions and dispatched runners to the Denver Constable’s office, the courthouse, and the resident federal marshal.Within the half hour, he had a copy of Falcon MacCallister’s telegram reporting the burial of murderedhomesteaders in the southeast foothills. Armed with this, he took MacCallister’s latest messageand rapped at the door of J.R. Horner.
Together, they peered at the message, and Horner said, “Translate, please.”
“It’s from Falcon MacCallister,” Wylie explained. “We can be fairly sure it’s authentic, because of the survey code shorthand. It was sent from Dodge City, Kansas. He says six men and a stolen conveyance are bound for someplace called Wolf Creek, in the Neutral Strip. He is pursuing them. He says to see the authorities in Denver regarding robbery and murder of someone called the Blanchards. I’ve done that. The federal marshal confirms a report—from MacCallister—of finding a family of movers dead and robbed.”
“Does this have something to do with our missing land money?”
“I can only assume it does, sir.” Wylie shrugged. “Otherwise why would he tell us about it?”
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