Read MacCallister: The Eagles Legacy Online
Authors: William W. Johnstone,J. A. Johnstone
Tags: #Fiction, #Westerns, #General
MacCallister: The Eagles Legacy (15 page)
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The two men sat far into the night, exchanging stories. Falcon said that he could understand the killing rage Duff felt after Skye was killed. His own wife had been kidnapped and murdered, and Falcon went after and killed those who were responsible. He also told of his father and mother, how they had met when very young and run away together, how he was mentored by an old mountain man who was called simply Preacher. He also told of his own, as well as his father’s adventures in the American Civil War.
Duff spoke of his own father, Brigadier Duncan MacCallister, a career soldier in India, where Duff had spent much of his childhood. Brigadier MacCallister was at Lucknow, in command of 855 men, when it was besieged by over 8,000 rebels. He held them off until relieved by Major General Havelock. Though Duff had earned a commission, he had not made a career of the army. He did serve in Egypt for a while, and he told Falcon his own experiences at the battle of Tel-el-Kebir. He also told of his time at sea.
“They are a breed in and of themselves, these men who sail before the mast,” he said. “Good men who have only each other for company.”
In the dark vault of night, a golden meteor streaked across the sky.
“That was Skye, saying hello to me,” Duff said.
“The meteor was Skye?”
Duff chuckled. “Every time Skye saw a meteor, she would say that it was the soul of some departed loved one saying hello. I laughed at her then, but find some comfort from it now. She spoke to me many times while I was sea.”
Duff almost told of hearing her voice in the wind and seeing her eyes in the fluorescent flash of fish, but he knew that Falcon wouldn’t understand. Every time it happened, he had passed it off. But now he wondered—could it be true? Could it have actually been Skye, speaking to him? Was that golden streak across the sky Skye? Or was it merely a dead rock falling to earth from outer space?
“I guess you think that is crazy,” Duff said.
“No, I don’t. Not at all,” Falcon replied, his answer surprising Duff. “The Indians have a much better connection to nature than the White man. And Indians believe, strongly, in such signs. And I know better than to question them.”
The two men sat in silence for several minutes, though it was hardly silent around them. Night insects whirred and clicked, in a nearby pond frogs croaked and sang, and in the distance a coyote howled. The windmill answered a freshening breeze and the blades began to spin. The leaves of the nearby aspen trees caught the moonbeams and sent slivers of silver into the night.
There was no need for the two men to talk any further; they had already shared with each other their pasts, or enough of what they thought was important. They had taken the measure of each other, and had found it acceptable and reassuring. Now they could sit confidently in each other’s presence, content in their own musings and comfortable in the developing friendship that went beyond the remote familial connections. And yet, though the blood they shared of the original Falcon, great-great-great-great-grandfather to both was small indeed, that seed of kinship was still there.
“I wonder if he is looking down at us now,” Duff said. He purposely did not identify the “he” he was talking about.
“I expect he is,” Falcon said. “I have thought many times about the fact that I have his name. I hope he is proud of that. I know he is looking down now and proud that two of his grandsons, though so far separated by distance and time, have come together.”
Falcon knew exactly what Duff had meant. And Duff wasn’t in the least surprised.
Chapter Fifteen
Denver
If the outside of The Black Dog had been rudimentary, the inside was even more so. Whereas the bar at Aces and Eights had been polished mahogany with a brass foot rail and customer towels hanging from rings spaced no more than five feet apart on the front of the bar, the bar of The Black Dog had no such amenities. It was made of the same kind of wood as the rest of the saloon: wide, unpainted and weathered boards, filled with knotholes and other visible imperfections.
There was no mirror behind the bar to reflect the many varieties of whiskeys, tequila, wines, and aperitifs. There were no bottles of any kind visible, for the bar served only one kind of whiskey and one kind of beer. There were no brass spittoons, though there was a bucket sitting at each end of the bar. Perhaps half of the tobacco chewers and snuff users took advantage of the buckets. The rest spat upon the floor, and the floor was filled with old expectorated tobacco quids and stained with squirted snuff juice.
A bar girl came over to greet them, her smile showing a mouth of broken and missing teeth.
“Would you gentlemen like some company?” the girl asked.
“If I wanted some company, I would pick someone better lookin’ than you,” Shaw said.
“Honey, if that’s the case, you are going to have to go somewhere else, ’cause there ain’t no one better lookin’ than me in the Black Dog,” the girl said. She turned and walked away from them.
“This place is a disgrace,” Malcolm said, wrinkling his nose in disgust.
“What does that mean?”
“It means it is a disgrace to pubs and taverns the world over.”
“Yeah, well, maybe so. But this here is the kind of place we’re goin’ to find the men we’re a’ lookin’ for,” Shaw said.
Even as the two men were taking their seats at an empty table, a drama was playing out before them. It had started before Malcolm and Shaw had entered the saloon.
“I don’t want any trouble with you, Pogue,” a man, standing at the bar said. The speaker was a big man with wide shoulders, powerful arms, and big hands. His appearance was in direct contrast to the person he was addressing, a man he had called Pogue.
Pogue was slender of build, with long hair, a thin face, and a badly misshapen nose. The nose was more than misshapen, it was flat on his face, and turned up at the bottom with nostril openings so pronounced that they almost looked like a pig’s snout.
“Well, you got trouble with me, Gentry,” Pogue replied. Snorted would be a better way of saying it, for the words came out in a wheezing, grunting sound. “You should’a never butted in between me’n my whore.”
“She ain’t your whore, Pogue, she’s anybody’s whore who will pay her. Hell, as ugly as you are, Pogue, you should already know that. The only way you’ll ever get a woman to pay any attention to you is by payin’ them,” Gentry said.
“If I’m the one payin’ the whore, then that means she’s my whore.”
“Yeah, that’s the whole point. You hadn’t paid her nothin’ yet. That means she don’t belong to you, and if I want to talk to her I can.”
“Stop it, both of you,” a nearby bar girl said. “I don’t belong to either one of you.”
“You stay out of this,” Pogue said to her. He turned his attention back to Gentry. “I reckon there’s only one way me’n you’s goin’ to settle this.” Pogue smiled, though the smile did nothing to alleviate the repulsiveness of his features. “We’re goin’ to have to fight it out.”
“Fight it out?” Gentry laughed. “Pogue, you don’t want to fight me. You’re so scrawny and weak, I’d near ’bout break you into little pieces first time I hit you.”
“Oh, I ain’t talkin’ about that kind of fightin’,” Pogue said. “I’m talkin’ ’bout makin’ this here fight permanent. I’m going to give you the chance to draw ag’in me.”
“Don’t be a dumb fool. I ain’t gettin’ into a fight over a whore. Like I told you, I don’t want no trouble.”
“And like I told you, you already got trouble. Now I’m tellin’ you, again, to draw.”
Gentry turned toward Pogue. He was holding a glass of whiskey in his hand.
“Go away, little man, before I come over there and break your neck.” Suddenly Pogue pulled his pistol and fired. A little mist of blood sprayed from Gentry’s earlobe, and he dropped the glass, then slapped his right hand to his ear.
“What the hell? Are you crazy?”
Pogue put his pistol back in his holster as quickly as he had drawn it.
“Draw,” Pogue said again.
“I ain’t a’ goin’ to draw ag’in you.”
Again, Pogue drew and fired. This time he clipped Gentry’s left ear. Gentry let out a cry of pain and slapped his hand to his left ear.
“Next time it will be a kneecap,” Pogue said.
With a yell of rage and fear, Gentry made an awkward stab for his pistol. With the macabre smile never leaving his face, Pogue waited until Gentry made his draw and even let him raise his gun.
For just an instant, Gentry thought he had won, and the scream of rage and fear turned to one of rage and triumph. He tried to thumb back the hammer of his pistol, but his hand was slick with his own blood, and the thumb slipped off the hammer. He didn’t get a second try because by then Pogue had drawn his own pistol and fired.
As the bullet plowed into Gentry’s chest, he got an expression of surprise on his face. Then his eyes rolled up and he fell, dead before he hit the floor.
“You killed him!” the bar girl Gentry and Pogue had been arguing over shouted.
“Hell, yes, I killed him,” Pogue replied. “He threatened me.”
“He threatened you? How did he threaten you?”
“He told me he was goin’ to break my neck.”
“That’s right,” one of the other men said. “I heard him say that very thing.”
“Is there anyone here who didn’t see him draw first?” Pogue asked.
“No, sir, you give him plenty of opportunity,” yet another saloon patron said. “You not only let him draw first, you was goin’ to let him shoot first.”
“I want all of you to remember that,” Pogue said.
“Surely, he will not get away with that,” Malcolm said to Shaw, speaking quietly.
“Yeah, he will. All the law will ask is who drew first.”
“But he clearly goaded the other man into a fight.”
“They was already a’ fightin’ when we come in. The killin’ didn’t commence until that Gentry feller drawed on him,” Shaw said.
It took about three minutes before a couple of Denver policemen arrived, wearing the blue uniforms, domed hats, and huge badges of their profession.
“What happened here?” one of the police officers asked.
Everyone began speaking at the same time, and one of the policemen had to hold up his hand to call for quiet.
“One at a time. I’ll start with you,” he said, pointing to the bartender. “Who shot this man?”
“I did,” Pogue said, before the bartender could answer. “If you want to know anything about what happened here, all you got to do is ask me.”
“All right, I’ll start with you.”
“This here fella drawed on me,” Pogue said. “I didn’t have no choice but to defend myself.”
“Are you saying he drew first?”
“That’s right,” the bartender said. “I’ll vouch for Pogue on that. You can see the gun is still in Gentry’s hand.”
“Anyone else have anything different to tell?”
“I . . .” the girl who had been the subject of the fight started to say, but she stopped when Pogue glared at her.
“What?” the policeman asked.
“I was just going to say that Pogue is right. Mr. Gentry drew first.”
The two policemen spoke to each other quietly for a moment, then the spokesman of the two turned back to Pogue.
“From all we can determine, this was a case of self-defense. I reckon it doesn’t have to go any further than this. But, barkeep, we are going to keep an eye on this place, and if too many things like this happen here, we are going to close you down. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, sir, I understand,” the bartender replied.
“What did I tell you?” Shaw asked after the two policemen left.
“You were right. I never would have believed you, but you were right.”
“Seems to me like this man Pogue would be someone we might want to recruit,” Shaw suggested.
“Yes,” Malcolm said enthusiastically. “See if he will come talk to us.”
Shaw got up from the table, walked over to speak to Pogue, then brought him back.
“Pogue, this here is Deputy Sheriff Malcolm,” Shaw said.
Pogue was startled by the introduction. “Deputy Sheriff? You didn’t tell me nothin’ ’bout him bein’ a deputy sheriff.” Pogue looked directly at Malcolm. “Look here, you got nothin’ on me. A policeman has already been here.”
“Oh, I’m not a local deputy, I have no jurisdiction here,” Malcolm said. “Pogue, is that your Christian name, or your surname?”
“It’s my name,” Pogue answered without being more specific. He wheezed when he talked.
“I watched your—shall we call it performance? You seem to be quite accomplished with a pistol.”
Two men were, at that moment, picking up Gentry’s body and putting it on a litter.
“Put him in the wagon, I’ll drive him down to the undertaker,” someone said. There was considerably more attention being paid to the disposition of the body than to the conversation going on between Malcolm and Pogue.
“I’m good enough,” Pogue replied.
“Have you ever heard of a man named MacCallister?” Malcolm asked.
Pogue’s eyes squinted. “Yeah, I’ve heard of Falcon MacCallister. What about it?”
“Do you think you are as good as he is?”
“I may be. Why are you askin’?”
“Mr. Malcolm has a bone to pick with MacCallister,” Shaw said.
“Yeah, don’t ever’one?” Pogue replied.
“In fact, my particular grievance is not with Falcon MacCallister, but with his kinsman, Duff MacCallister.”
“Duff MacCallister? I’ve never heard of ’im.”
“It is my understanding that Duff and Falcon will be together, so I cannot hunt for one without hunting for the other.”
“You goin’ after them, are you?” Pogue asked.
“Yes.”
Pogue grunted what might have been a laugh. “Just the two of you?”
“And you, if we can come to some arrangement,” Malcolm said. “I think three of us might be enough.”
“Malcolm, let me ask you somethin’,” Shaw said. “Didn’t you tell me that they was three of you tried to take on Duff MacCallister?”
“Yes.”
“And what happened?”
“He killed the other two,” Malcolm said. “But that was an unusual circumstance. That’s not likely to happen again.”
“Wait a minute,” Pogue said. “You’re tellin’ me that three of you wasn’t enough to take on this here Duff feller, but you think three of us would be enough for Duff and Falcon? Mister, I ain’t sure three is enough for Falcon alone, let alone iffen he has someone with him. And this here Duff feller you are talkin’ about don’t seem like he’s goin’ to be too easy his ownself.”
“I thought you said you said you were as good as Falcon MacCallister.”
“I said I might be,” Pogue said. “But you done brought up someone else, and that changes it a bit. You said somethin’ about comin’ to an arrangement with me,” Pogue said. “Does that mean you’d be willin’ to pay me?”
“Aye.”
“That’s good. But I’m not goin’ to get myself kilt by goin’ up against Falcon MacCallister and this other feller you’re talkin’ about. You can’t spend money if you’re dead. We’re goin’ to need some more people.”
“I don’t have enough money to pay for any more people,” Malcolm said.
“Mister, there’s lots of folks that want Falcon dead. Onliest thing is there ain’t none of ’em got the sand to go up ag’in him alone. But if there was to be a bunch of us all gathered together, they wouldn’t be scared and more’n likely we would get the job done. And it wouldn’t cost you nothin’ ’cept what you are goin’ to pay me.”
“The only problem is, Falcon is not the one I am interested in,” Malcolm said.
“That don’t matter none. Iffen they are together like you say, you ain’t likely to get one of ’em, without you get the other,” Pogue said.
“Do you think you could find such men?” Malcolm asked.
“I can find ’em. I know lots of people that would like to see Falcon MacCallister dead. Hell, the problem ain’t goin’ to be in findin’ ’em, it’s goin’ to be in decidin’ which ones to take and which ones to leave.”
Malcolm thought about it for a moment, then he nodded. “All right. Round up the men.”
“We ain’t talked about gettin’ paid yet.”
“Suppose I pay you twenty-five dollars?” Malcolm suggested.
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