Blood of Eagles

by William W. Johnstone

  “Back-shooting varmint!” Becky stood, lowering her rifle, looking to where her brothers had fallen. “Oh, Lord have mercy,” she whispered. Elijah was down, among shattered sage clumps. The gray-green foliage there was bright crimson from the spray of his blood. And in a clearing between stands of scrub cedar, Rufe—or what was left of him—lay in pooling blood like the twisted carcass of a spine-shot deer. Without looking further, Becky knew that both of her brothers were dead.

  She started toward them, half-blind with rage and grief. She had run a dozen paces when thick brush exploded to her left and a mounted man surged through, directly above her. She tried to turn, to dodge, but the horse’s shoulder hit her solidly and sent her tumbling. She was still scrambling for footingwhen the rider wheeled and kicked her rifle away from her.

  A hard fist from above collided with her skull, and she fell. Then he was on her, and she felt the cuts of his knife tearing at her flesh as he cut her dress away.

  With a desperate heave, Becky drew herself into a tight ball, then uncoiled. Her small booted foot collided with something solid, and the drooling grin above her became a grimace of pain. Her clawed fingers struck out, right into that face, going for the eyes.

  “You damned bitch!” he yelled, and hit her again, knocking her head back against the hard ground. In a daze she fought. Her nails raked his face, her knees and fists pummeled him, but he forced her down, pulling away her bloody clothing.

  Billy Challis knew about pain. With clawed fingers he mauled her, ignoring her screams. Casting aside his knife he went to work on her with both hands, his eyes alight with rage and lust.

  She felt the weight of him, smelled his stench, as he bore her down. With one last desperate heave she freed a hand and its fingers closed on the butt of the gun at his belt. She pulled it, cocked it, and tried to turn it toward him. His hand was on her wrist, then, twisting, and she felt her fingers going numb.

  She twisted, fought, and put all her strength into that one hand—the hand with the gun—but he was too strong. He forced the muzzle down and back, and Becky screamed. In blind rage she twisted, and turned the gun another way. When she felt the cold steel of its muzzle at her own throat, she squeezed the trigger.

  At the time all this was going on, Falcon MacCallisterwas a few miles north, stripped to the waist and sitting on a plank table in front of Doc Linsecum’slittle sod cabin just across the Kansas line.

  “I never seen the like,” Doc said, leaning close for another look at the healing scars on the big man’s back and belly. “I’ve planted corpses with less damage than you got here, Mr. MacCallister. You must be about the luckiest jasper this side of the flint hills. No more bleeding?”

  “Some,” Falcon said. “Sore as hell, too.”

  “Skin’s a tough material,” Linsecum said. “That’s why arrows have arrowheads—just to get through the skin. The shaft is what kills. Best I can figure, that bullet entered your back at an angle and was deflected. It kind of skidded on your ribs. You got a couple that are at least cracked, maybe more. Compoundfracture, possibly, because there’s something inside you that isn’t holding plumb. If you were a horse I’d either put you out of your misery or lace you up in a buckskin truss.”

  “That’s all? Just loose ribs?”

  “Let’s hope it is. No way I can tell. But that bullet did some damage. Like an auger goin’ through. It ricocheted ... along here.” Raising MacCallister’s arm, he drew a callused finger along the livid bruise that still darkened his side.

  “It sort of like dug itself a tunnel through the subdermal tissue,” he explained. “That means it just burrowed along under the skin, but couldn’t get through it until it got to your belly. The skin’s thinnerthere. ’Course, when it did get out ...”—he indicated the ragged scabbed-over wound just left of Falcon’s midriff—“it tore hell out of the epidermal tissue. That’s why you bled so much.”

  He stood back, scratching at his scruffy beard, while Falcon pulled on a shirt. “Some would call it an act of God that you’re still alive,” the horse doctor mused. “First time they brought you in here, I never thought you’d make it. All depended on how much you wanted to live, I figured.”

  Falcon glanced at him ironically. “I guess I wanted it enough.”

  Linsecum shook his head. “I’ve done some readin’ on that,” he said. “Fellow named Packard, wrote a whole book on the ‘will to live.’ He allows it’s a natural thing in young critters, but a matter of choice when a man’s grown up. He says a fellow has to have a ‘strong abiding reason’ to hold onto life the way you did. And he says generally that comes to a man who’s been ready to die, then found a reason not to. Like unfinished business that won’t let him just turn loose. Somethin’ he just can’t let go of. Did you find a reason like that, Mr. MacCallister?”

  Falcon thought about it, grimly, and nodded. “Guess I did. You know what happened in Colorado... what I found up there. I guess I didn’t care about much anymore, ’til I saw that. But I couldn’t put that out of my mind. It reminded me of other senseless tragedies. It was ... just one straw too many. The men who did that ... they have to answer for it. I can’t let it go.”

  “You fixin’ to kill somebody? That won’t make things right.”

  “It’s retribution, Doc. As close to justice as I can see.”

  “Retribution.” Linsecum shrugged. “That’s like hangin’ the thief after the stock’s been stole. Don’t bring the stock back.”

  Falcon stood, finished dressing, and put on his hat. “You’re a philosopher, Doc,” he said. “Not to mention a pretty fair medic. But I can’t say much for your philosophy. Anyhow, I’m obliged.”

  “Generally I doctor horses, and now and then a cow.” Linsecum shrugged. “They got no use for philosophy.”

  “How many humans have you treated?”

  “Damn few. But skin’s skin an’ bone’s bone, and people’s blood runs red just like any other critter’s. I’ll tell you this, though—you got bone damage, and some muscle tissue and tendons just hangin’ by a hair inside you. You stress those too much, I don’t know what it’ll do. You ought to lay up for a spell.”

  “Pigs ought to fly, too. What’s a truss?”

  “Kind of like a leather corset, laced so tight nothinginside can move. Things either fix or mortify. I’ve tried it twice, on horses. Killed one, cured the other. Best thing you can do is bed rest.”

  As MacCallister dropped a pair of eagles on the table, Linsecum shook his head, resigned. “Like talkin’ to a post,” he said. “Well, at least take it easy and be careful. I hear things from No Man’s Land. Hear tell there’s a war makin’ up yonder. Just try not to get shot any more, will you?”

  “I’ll do my best,” Falcon said.

  “While you’re up here, there’s somebody been askin’ around about you. Railroad dude by the name of Wylie. He’s prob’ly over at the Franklin place by now.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Three miles west, on the road to Hardwoodville.”

  “Thanks.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Pap Higgins found Becky Barlow’s blaze sorrel. He brought it up to Haymeadows because Cassius was there.

  They went backtracking while evening light was still in the sky. Jubal went with them because he knew Becky’s horse. It was a wide land, with few clear trails. It was near midnight when they found the breaks below the bluff. They gathered there, with brush torches for light, and it was a time before they sorted it all out.

  They found the boys, and they found the owlhoot who ambushed them, Tuck Kelly. They were all dead. Then they found Becky ... or all that was left of her. Her head was blownhalf away, and the rest of her horribly mutilated. No animal had done that. Not even the coyotes or the prowling lions of this wild land were so brutish.

  Her pretty dress was scattered all around, torn shreds among the scrub brush.

  “May God have mercy on this child’s sweet soul,” Cassius Barlow whispered over and over again. Mostly they s
tayed back after one look, not wanting to get too close. All except Jubal. He just hunkered there on his knees on the bloody soil, holding his hat in his hands, and never made a sound.

  One of the Higgins boys found two more strayed horses and spread the word, and Homer Smith came with his dray cart. A few others drifted in, drawn by the fires they set.

  “Billy Challis,” some whispered to others. “NobodyI know is crazy enough to do a thing like this except Billy Challis.”

  Come dawn they scouted a little more, then loaded up what they could. With Cassius Barlow’s rig and Homer’s cart they loaded up the bodies of the Barlow boys, and tenderly laid out the mutilated corpse of the girl. Tuck Kelly was slung across the saddle of his own horse. The nearest place with decentshelter was Haymeadows Ranch, so they took them there and laid them out beside the barn.

  They might have taken the Barlows south to bury them on Rabbit Creek, but Jubal faced them down. On a rise above the hay fields some of the men set about digging graves—good, six-foot plots for Becky and her brothers, and a shallow hole for the outlaw.

  Nobody particularly noticed when Falcon MacCallisterrode in with another man—a wiry thin little man with a derby hat and eyeglasses. The stranger held back, but Falcon rode right up to the barn, and after a time some of them noticed him there. He sat atop Diablo, just looking, like he wanted to fix it all in his mind. A big blond man on a big black horse, he looked like death fixing to happen, and those who approached him were startled at the look in his narrowed eyes.

  “It was the same man,” Falcon told Cassius Barlow.“The same one that did that slaughter in Colorado.”

  “Billy Challis,” a tough squatter said. “It was him. He’s been hidin’ out at the Spring place, gettin’ over a sore butt. Him and Tuck Kelly. That’s Kelly, layin’ yonder. Looks like he done the two boys—ambushed ’em from a bluff—while Billy laid in wait for this girl.”

  “You know those men?” Falcon asked.

  “Sorry to say, I do.” The squatter nodded. “I’m Dawson. I wore a yellow flag for a time, but I lit out on my own.”

  “Why?”

  “Didn’t like the company I was keepin’,” the man said simply.

  Jubal Mason squatted by the blanket-covered remains,holding a torn piece of dress in his hand. Now he looked up at Falcon, moisture on his streaked face. “Did we wait long enough now, Mr. MacCallister?” he demanded. “Is this what we were waiting for, for it to all happen again?”

  The funeral they held, out there above the hay fields, was simple but profound. Falcon MacCallister stood apart from the crowd, hearing Cassius Barlow say words for his granddaughter that Falcon wished he had known how to say for those little girls he’d found months ago, up on the high plains of Colorado.

  “Maybe there’s a reason why the Lord tolerates the kind of man that could do a thing like this,” the old man said. “Maybe He’s testing our patience... testing our souls that the Good Book says should be full of forgiveness. Or maybe He has anotherreason for letting such things happen.”

  Cassius raised his face to heaven for a moment, his eyes tight shut. Then he gazed around at them one by one. There was no sting in the gaze that singled out MacCallister, nor any hint of blame, but Falcon felt a pang of guilt. This didn’t have to happen. He had known for weeks who the woman-butcherwas, and where to find him.

  Yet he had held back. At first it was his wounds that delayed him, then that stubborn will to not settlefor just one or two of the gang. He had to get them all.

  “Maybe,” old Cassius continued, “maybe the Good Lord just wants to see how much pure meannesswe—who are made in His image—will tolerate before we let loose our god-given outrage and put an end to it. Killin’ is killin’, but what was done to the dear young soul we have to bury now just never should have happened. Not to her. Not to her, Lord, and not to anybody.”

  Falcon lowered his head, and the spring winds blew haloes of sunlight in his loose blond hair. I’ve been selfish, he told himself. I came upon an atrocity and set out to make amends, because it gave me a thing to hang on to ... a purpose where there was no purpose.

  Then, when the killers were in plain sight, I hesitated. I lingered. Get them all, I told myself. Don’t take a chance, and don’t settle for less. And that was selfishness. I didn’t want to put an end to this, because then I wouldn’t have had a purpose any more.

  Was I really out to avenge those people up in Colorado? I never even met the Blanchards. But it reminded me of what happened to Marie, and it gave me a purpose. I didn’t set out to avenge Dorothy Blanchard and her family. I was trying to make it right about Marie.

  Selfishness. And because I was selfish, this is what happened.

  “Mr. MacCallister?” The voice beside him cut through his dark thoughts, bringing him back to awareness. It was Jubal Mason, and Falcon realized that the memoriams were done and most of the men present had wandered away. Only a few neighbors remained, wielding spades and miners’ shovels to fill in the graves. Jubal stood facing him, an arm’s length away, and his two brothers were right behind him. It was hard to tell which they were feeling most, grief or anger.

  MacCallister unclenched his fists and put on his hat. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Jubal nodded. “We’re all sorry,” he said. “But it wasn’t your fault, for waiting. If we’d gone after that bunch like we wanted to, we’d have missed the one who did this.”

  “You were right, Mr. MacCallister,” Jude added, “We need to wipe out that whole rotten bunch, like you said. This wasn’t your fault for waiting, any more than wanting her to come here was Jubal’s fault. We know whose fault it is, though, don’t we?”

  “Billy Challis,” Falcon muttered.

  “Billy Challis.” Jubal nodded. “And that Colonel DeWitt, and whoever put them up to this land swindlein the first place.”

  “They all killed Becky and her brothers,” Jude added. “Like you said, it was all of them. Just like they killed our kin up in Colorado. We’re going after that bunch, and we aim to get them all, just like you said.”

  “Parker.” Another voice spoke up, and they all looked around. The little dude who had come in with MacCallister was there, holding his derby hat in both hands. “I guess you already know it, but the name isn’t Colonel DeWitt. It’s Asa Parker. He uses a lot of names, and he’s fooled a lot of people. But he’s Asa Parker.”

  “This is Mr. Wylie.” Falcon gestured. “He’s with the Kansas Pacific Railroad. Tell them what you told me, Wylie.”

  “Yes, of course,” Wylie said. “Asa Parker, who calls himself Colonel DeWitt now, is running a scheme to sell a big piece of the Neutral Strip to an investmentsyndicate back east. He’s working with a land shark named O’Brien, and they’re capitalizing their operation with little swindles—selling plots and sites to settlers, then chasing them out and selling again.”

  “Eastern investors?” Jubal frowned. “How do they aim to swing that? Everybody knows the Neutral Strip is No Man’s Land. Those big buyers wouldn’t touch a thing like that.”

  “You’re right,” Wylie nodded. “They’re not fools. But Parker’s gang will offer a plausible title, even though there’s no patent on the land. They’ll offer quitclaim deeds to property described as eminent domain, sealed and sanctioned by an agency of the U.S. government. Who’s going to argue? Especially when they sweeten the pot with a documented railroadroute, for profit.”

  “How can they do that? They got somebody in the government?”

  Wylie sighed. “Exactly,” he said. “A gentleman named Sypher. Technically, Sypher’s a clerk for Jonathan Boles Stratton—head of the agency that designates rail routes. But Stratton’s a lame duck, going out with the present administration. Sypher is running things to suit himself. He has secured forged maps and letters of approval with Stratton’s signature on them, indicating railway intent, with the right-of-way right through here. There are even detailed railroad plans, and Stratton’s office will verifythem. And authenticated trackag
e means governmentsanction.”

  “There really will be a railroad through here?” Jude shook his head. “I never believed that.”

  “Probably not.” Wylie shrugged. “The whole scheme will unravel when it goes before the senate committee overseeing Stratton’s department. But the new investors will have purchased the land by then. Sypher and Asa Parker and the rest will be gone with the money, and only the people swindled will suffer.”

  “Damn!” Jubal breathed. “This Sypher ... is he the one heading up all this?”

  “He is,” Wylie nodded.

  “Where is he?”

  “Probably with Asa Parker and O’Brien, over at their town. Paradise, I believe they call it. It was alreadythere when they came. It was called Prosperity, but it wasn’t a legal town or anything, just a little settlement where squatters exchanged their goods.”

  “Well, it’s more than that now.”

  “Of course it is. Parker’s Vigilance Committee has been at work. Paradise is a stage—a money trap, beingset up to snare the big investors when they arrive.Parker plans to show them a booming town, a settled community, and a fine site for railroad business.That’s where the deal will be made, and the money will be cash transfers to Kansas City and St. Louis banks, not recoverable. It’s a real sweet swindle,if you look at it that way.”

  “When are those investors coming?”

  “They’re probably on their way now,” Wylie said. “There was a private conference in St. Louis a month ago that we wondered about. Big money, very quiet. Boston money, mostly. We heard about it from our bankers, but not much. I think it was about Sypher’s plan.”

  “Damn!” Jubal said again. “Lordy, where’s the law when you need ’em?”

  “That’s what makes it work,” Wylie said. “There is no law. Not any kind, at any level. This is No Man’s Land. According to the U.S. Justice Department and the Department of the Interior, there’s nothing here. Just a hole in the orderly world of bureaucracy that goes away if you don’t recognize it. There’s no law here because this strip doesn’t exist officially.”