Song of Eagles (29 page)

Twice-convicted murderer Luis Valdez listened patiently to Thomas Catron's instructions. Standing beside Luis was another hired killer, Ramón Soto. Both gunmen served as bodyguards for Catron, often handling special assignments for him which sometimes included killing people who knew too much, or got in the way.

“Deke and Roy bungled it,” Catron said, his office door tightly closed and locked after Luis and Ramón came in through the back way.

“The tall man who just left my office killed them both and all of the Apaches, or so he said.” Catron pointed to the pair of gunbelts on his desk. “He delivered these guns, saying they belonged to Slaton and Cobb, and then he gave me a warning—unless John Chisum's and everyone else's cattle in Lincoln County are left alone, he will take what he knows to my superiors in Washington and to Governor Wallace. He claims to have witnesses to confessions telling of my complicity from Slaton and Cobb before they died. I can't run that risk. His name is Falcon MacCallister. He is not from this city. You will have no trouble recognizing him by the description I give you. I want him dead.”

“I will kill him for you, Señor Catron,” said Luis, a big man with a barrel chest. A pair of cartridge belts hung from each shoulder. He carried a modified Colt .44/.40, a Mason conversion known for its speed and reliability, a favorite of many gunfighters. “Tell me his name, what he looks like, and where I can find him. Ramón and I will bring you his head.”

“I'm sure he's still in town. He left less than an hour ago. He's riding a big black stallion. He wears two pistols. He is unusually tall. He wore a dark suit coat and a flat brim Stetson hat.”

Luis bowed politely and turned for the back door. “We will find him, señor.”

Ramón followed Luis to the doorway. Ramón had a pair of Walker Colt .44s buckled around his waist. “If it is not important to you, Señor Catron, one of us will shoot him in the back and it will be finished . . . unless you want us to do it some other way.”

Catron's expression hardened. “I don't care where you shoot him. I don't give a damn how it gets done. Just don't leave any witnesses.”

Luis twisted the doorknob. “He is as good as dead right now, Señor Catron.”

Catron smiled as the gunmen prepared to walk out. “I will be very generous,” he said.

“You always have been, señor,” Luis replied with a grin that showed a gleaming gold tooth in the front of his mouth.

Luis Valdez led the way into an alley behind the district attorney's office, to a
grulla
horse. Ramón Soto mounted a red sorrel with a flaxen mane and tail. The sun was low in the sky, casting deepening shadows behind the row of buildings.

“Where we look first?” Ramón asked Luis as they reined their horses away from the office.

“Split up. You ride the west side, and I will take the east side of town. If you find him, and if it can be done easily with no one watching who can identify you, then kill him at once. If shooting him where he is will be more difficult, come looking for me. We will follow him, and choose the right place to earn our money.”

“Señor Catron looks worried,” Ramón said as they came to the corner of a side street. “Is it possible this Falcon MacCallister was good enough to kill Deke and Roy without ambushing them in the dark, or killing them while they slept? Deke was very good with a gun—”

“I do not care, Ramon,” Luis said, turning his horse east. “This time, Falcon MacCallister will be the hunted instead of the hunter. He will not be expecting us. The advantage will belong to us.”

* * *

Ramón rode his sorrel at a jog trot past the slaughterhouse owned by Thomas Catron and his partners. Stacks of curing cowhides gave off a rancid smell outside the butchering plant where the carcasses were hung and then quartered.

He spied a black horse tied to a fence near the pens where live cattle awaited the sledgehammer and the bleeding knife in a squeeze chute inside.

A lanky man in a dark coat and flat brim hat was peering over the fence examining the cows.

“That is him,” Ramón said softly. “I bet he looking for the brand of John Chisum among the cattle.”

He reined over toward the fence, appearing casual about it as he neared the corrals. And as Señor Catron had described, the man named MacCallister wore two pistols underneath his coat. He did not seem to notice Ramón's approach.

At a distance of twenty or thirty feet Ramón drew his right hand Walker Colt, for there was no one else around and this would be a perfect shot in MacCallister's back. He pulled rein on his sorrel and thumbed back the hammer on his single-action .44. Then he took careful aim at the center of MacCallister's spine.

In a blur of motion, MacCallister whirled around with a gun in his fist. Ramón pulled the trigger, surprised by how quick the stranger was.

Twin pistol blasts spooked Ramón's horse and cattle grazing on stacks of hay in the corrals.

It felt as if a gust of mighty wind had struck Ramón in the chest, sweeping him backward out of his saddle at the same time that his pistol exploded. He knew he was suspended in the air for a moment as his sorrel wheeled and lunged out from under him. What was happening did not make any sense. How could he hang in the air this way? Blood was flying before his face, covering his arms and belly.

And then he fell, landing flat on his back with a spearhead of unbearable pain knifing through his chest, spreading through him like chains of lightning across a stormy sky.

“Dios!”
he gasped, closing an empty fist that had been holding a gun.

A shadow fell across his face. Blinded by pain, he could barely make out the features of the man looking down at him.

“You aren't much good as a backshooter, amigo. You made too damn much noise,” a voice said.

Ramón's mind refused to work properly, although he heard the words the stranger said. “No,” he protested weakly. “I did not mean to ... shoot you . . .”

When his lungs emptied he found he was unable to speak or draw in another breath.

“Die slow, you backshooting bastard,” MacCallister said as warm blood pumped from a hole in Ramón's ribs.

Ramón could feel broken bones grinding inside him when he tried to move. “No,” he whispered, as the shape above him turned fuzzy, indistinct. He opened his mouth to call for his mother the way he did as a child when something hurt him, but no words came out, only a final, bubbling sigh as he closed his eyes.

Luis heard the crack of gunshots coming from the slaughterhouse and he scolded himself for not thinking of the most logical place for MacCallister to go—to the cattle pens, to look for the brands of stolen beeves.

He spurred his
grulla
into a headlong run down a narrow road leading to the Santa Fe Packing Company's butchering plant, where Luis was sure he'd heard at least two gunshots, fired almost at the same instant.

His horse pounded down hardpan caliche. Luis jerked out his Mason Colt, ready for anything. If Ramón had killed this tall stranger, he would need help getting the body away before the city marshal came to investigate the noise.

Racing out of the business district, he swerved toward the long adobe building and cattle corrals a quarter mile away, set off by itself because of the smells green cowhides and entrails produced as they began to dry.

Almost at once he saw Ramón's horse wandering riderless in a vacant field south of the killing plant. He wondered if Ramón had gotten off his horse to slip up on this Mac-Gallister. . . or had Ramón met with the same fate as Deke Slaton and Roy Cobb?

Slowing his
grulla
to a lope, Luis rode straight toward the packing plant without a trace of fear in his heart. He had shot down some of the West's most notorious gunmen, in face-to-face duels, or by stealth. MacCallister would be no different, no better than some Luis had put in their graves. All he had to do was find him.

He jerked his horse to a halt when he saw a body lying next to a corral fence. Blood encircled the still corpse of Ramón Soto; flies had already begun to swarm around him, feeding on the crimson feast.

Luis looked around him, his jaw clamped angrily. He saw a big black stallion tied to a corral pole farther to the north, but there was no sign of MacCallister.

Tightening his grip on his .44./.40, he heeled his winded horse forward to begin a search for the man who would earn him a generous reward from Señor Catron, a reward he would now not have to split with his friend. Ramón had failed, but Ramón was sometimes fearful and careless. Luis had never tasted fear in his life, and, as now, he was always very cautious.

But no matter where he looked, riding past stacks of stinking cowskins, he found no sign of MacCallister. Some of the butchers from inside the slaughterhouse, clad in bloodstained aprons, were standing in an open doorway watching him after hearing the shooting.

“Donde esta?
Where is he?” Luis cried.

As one butcher was raising a hand to point to a spot, Luis heard a deep voice behind him.

“Right here,
cabrón.
I reckon you're looking for me.”

Luis swallowed, certain that as he turned around the man would shoot him. He decided to try to buy some time until he could catch MacCallister unawares.

“I am not looking for anyone, señor,” he said. “I heard a gun and came to see if someone was in trouble.” He still held the Mason in his right fist, partially concealed from anyone who stood behind him.

“You make a lousy liar, amigo. You came to kill me. Thomas Catron sent both of you, just like I figured he would.”

“But you are wrong, señor,” Luis protested. It was time to make his play, while MacCallister was talking instead of shooting.

Luis twisted in the saddle, aiming for the sound of the voice, catching sight of a man standing between two big piles of cowhides. He fired three shots as quickly as his finger could pull the trigger, the pistol's blast frightening his horse.

A fourth shot exploded from the stacks of hides. Something flattened Luis's nose, tunneling through his brain, exiting out the back of his head, taking his sombrero with it. He was driven off his horse, jerked out of the saddle before he slammed into the side of a corral fence, landing on his rump.

He dropped his gun, his skull wracked by pain, feebly reaching for his nose with a trembling hand. His nose wasn't there . . . His forefinger entered a large round hole draining blood over his lap. Blood filled his mouth, and when he tried to speak it spilled from his lips like water pouring from a bucket.

He saw someone coming toward him, a man with a pistol aimed down at him.

“Too slow,” MacCallister said. “You gave me enough time to light a cigar before I shot you.”

Luis could not speak, for when he tried he only spat more blood.

“If Thomas Catron aims to stay in the cattle rustling business, he'd better hire some men who can shoot in a hurry.”

Suddenly, Luis Valdez understood that he was dying. For the first time in his life, along with the coppery taste of blood, he tasted fear.

“I reckon I'll be moving on now,” MacCallister said, holstering his gun, talking as casually as if he were discussing the weather. “I've been thinking about riding over to the Arizona Territory. I hear some of those desert mountains west of Camp Grant are real pretty, and they're full of Apaches I can kill if I take the notion.”

Luis felt himself floating away from his body, he could see himself resting against a fence with a hole through his head. He noticed that his eyes were open, glazed, staring at MacCallister.

Luis wondered if the mountains in Arizona were as pretty as the gunman said.

* * *

As Falcon crested a hill, he slowed Diablo and looked back over his shoulder at the bustling town of Santa Fe.
Such a lovely town. It's a shame the beauty hides so much corruption,
he thought.

He wheeled Diablo around and started his journey toward the Dragoon Mountains—his brother had wired him the renegades who killed his wife had headed there.

As Diablo loped down the trail, a lone bald eagle soared overhead, shrieking its mournful song.

Falcon glanced up at the magnificent bird wheeling across an azure sky and was reminded of some words in a poem by Alexander Smith called
Dreamthorp.
He repeated them softly to the back of Diablo's head, as he felt all poetry should be said out loud: “I would rather be remembered by a song than a victory.”

He leaned forward and patted Diablo's neck. “You think anyone will remember Billy the Kid in a song, old feller?”

This is a work of fiction. Falcon MacCallister and his role in the Lincoln County War are creation on my part. I have tried, for the most part, to remain faithful to events in Lincoln County during the conflict, and most of the main characters were real figures, depicted as recorded history portrays them.

The ultimate fate of one major figure, Billy the Kid, is open to debate. Most historians believe that he was killed by Pat Garrett in or near Pete Maxwell's bedroom at Fort Sumner on the night of July 14th, 1881. A surprising amount of evidence, including sophisticated computer photo comparisons of a tintype of the Kid and a photograph of an old man living under the name William Henry Roberts, who died in Texas in 1949, suggest otherwise.

In a book entitled
Alias Billy the Kid
by Dr. C.L. Sonnichsen and William V. Morrison (University of New Mexico Press, 1955), a strong case for Roberts being the Kid was presented.
The Return of the Outlaw Billy the Kid
(Republic of Texas Press, 1997) presents a statistically valid computer comparison of Roberts' face with the only known tintype of the Kid, and the similarities made them a statistical match. The claim made by Roberts that Barlow was killed in his place has been examined on the television programs
Prime Time Live
and
Unsolved Mysteries
. The movie
Young Guns II
depicts events as William Henry Roberts described them in 1948, with the Kid surviving in Texas long enough to see the Atomic Age.

Did Garrett knowingly bury another man as an act of friendship for the Kid? They were friends before, and during, the first days of the Lincoln County War. Or did he simply make a mistake in the dark and try to cover it up in order to collect the reward being offered for the Kid? The debate continues to this day.

Falcon MacCallister knew the truth, but after he left the New Mexico Territory for the Dragoon Mountains of Arizona he refused to discuss his brief association with Billy the Kid with anyone.