Talons of Eagles (34 page)

Jamie turned, walked across the room, and jerked the pistol from the waistband of a very startled traveling drummer who had just sat down to eat.

“Say now!” the man blurted.

“Shut up,” Jamie told him. “And get down. All hell is about to break open here.”

The drummer left his chair and stretched out on the floor. He was relatively new to the West and had heard all sorts of terrible tales about shoot-outs and renegades and outlaws and savage Indians. “I didn't want to come out here in the first damn place!” he said.

Paul Carrington was hurrying across the street when one of the duster-wearing men coldly pulled out a pistol and shot the driver of the stage out of the box. The outlaw leaped onto the stage and grabbed up the reins. Paul turned and took a bullet right between his eyes.

“Here we go!” Jamie shouted, and pushed open the batwings, a pistol in each big hand.

Jamie shot the outlaw out of the driver's box, and the team panicked, running up the street, wild-eyed and frightened.

“It worked, boys!” someone shouted. “There's MacCallister. Kill him!”

Set-up!
the words flashed through Jamie's mind. This whole thing was a set-up to get me. Or at least a part of it was. He ducked back into the hotel dining room just as the lead really started flying.

“They's outlaws comin' from both ends of the street!” a man yelled. No sooner had the words left his mouth than a bullet doubled him over and left him dying in the dust.

Kate!
Jamie thought. The outlaws would have learned where we live. Oh, Jesus, Kate! He ran out the back door and headed for his house, ducking behind houses and into alleys. A duster-clad man, both hands filled with pistols, stepped out in front of him. “Gottcha, MacCallister!” he said.

Jamie shot him in the face and kept on running.

Another duster-wearing man came galloping up the street in front of Jamie's house, firing at the frightened and running women and kids in his path. Jamie shot him out of the saddle just as Kate stepped out of their home, a Henry rifle in her hands. Amid all the other shots, Jamie heard the round that brought Kate down. She slumped bonelessly to the porch.

“Kate!”
Jamie screamed, and ran across the street just as a heavy explosion shook the earth. Someone had blown the safe at the bank, but Jamie's thoughts were not of money or of gold. He jumped up onto the porch just as his sons and sons-in-law threw up a circle around the house and drove off any of the Nelson gang who might have had the stupidity to remain within range of the MacCallister boys' deadly fire.

Jamie knelt down beside Kate. He was weeping almost uncontrollably, the tears falling onto Kate's dress, thick and sticky with blood where the heavy slug had passed clear through her slender body, between her breasts.

“Jamie,” Kate said, her eyes clear and bright. But her lips were pink with bloody froth; more so each time she breathed. Jamie knew then the slug had cut a lung. “I'll be waiting for you on the Starry Path.”

“Kate . . .”

“Don't say anything, Jamie. I know. I can't feel anything from the waist down. The bullet nicked my spine.” She coughed up blood. “I'm not in pain, love. I'm at peace.” She cut her blue eyes. “Baby Karen. I see her.”

Doctor Tom Prentiss was running up the street, ducking and dodging the flying lead from the outlaw guns, making his way to the MacCallister home, carrying his black bag. He leaped the white-painted picket fence that Jamie had just repaired, ran into the yard and jumped up onto the porch.

The fire from the MacCallister guns had driven the Nelson gang far away from that end of the street. No one among the outlaws wanted to face those angry guns.

Jamie leaned down and kissed Kate's bloody lips.

“Jamie,” Kate whispered. “Don't fret. We'll be together again.”

Tom Prentiss had taken one look at Kate and stepped back, leaving the man and wife alone on the porch, knowing there was nothing he could do. He looked at the MacCallister boys and shook his head.

“You be good, darling,” Kate whispered, her voice fading as the life ebbed away from her. “And take care of yourself. I'll be waiting.”

“Oh, God, Kate!” Jamie cried out, his anguish-filled voice ripping into every person within hearing distance. “Kate, Kate!” Jamie put his arms around her and held her close.

But Kate said no more.

She died quietly in Jamie's arms.

Jamie held Kate for a long time. No one tried to interfere. Long after the gunfire had ceased and the outlaws had galloped out of town, Jamie gently lowered Kate to the porch floor and stood up. His crying was done. He was dry-eyed. He felt a coldness take him. He looked at Ellen Kathleen. “Take care of your ma,” he said. He cut his eyes to Jamie Ian. “Help your sister, son.” Jamie stepped into the house and buckled on his twin Colts. He reached up to the peg-board and took down his scalping knife and walked back out to the porch.

“What are you going to do, Jamie?” Reverend Powell asked in a breathless tone. He had run all the way from the church.

“Find out where the gang went,” Jamie said.

“How?” the reverend asked. He shivered at the cold light in Jamie's eyes.

“You ever seen a man skinned alive, Reverend?”

“Good Lord, no!”

“Then you better plug up your ears,” Jamie told him. He stepped off the porch and started walking toward town.

“He doesn't mean that,” Reverend Powell said.

Falcon spat on the ground. “You wanna bet?” He pushed past the man and went to his mother's side.

Jamie dragged one slightly wounded outlaw off the street and into a blacksmith's shop and closed the big double doors. Those outside heard the outlaw curse, and then say, “You go to hell, MacCallister. I ain't tellin' you nothin'!”

Then the screaming began.

A few minutes later, Jamie stepped out of the smithy's and walked back to his house. There was a bloody scalp hanging from his belt.

“I'll fetch the dress that she bought in San Francisco,” Megan said, her cheeks still wet from tears.

“No,” Jamie told her. “Your ma always said she wasn't cut out to be silk and lace. She said she wanted to be buried in gingham. Pick out a simple dress.” He looked at his children and the crowd of other kin that had gathered. “They's plenty of tragedy to go around in this town today. Some of you go give solace and aid to others. Jamie Ian, you get a couple of picks and shovels and meet me up yonder where Grandpa is buried. That's where your ma and me planned to be planted. Go on, now.”

“Pa?” Falcon said. “Did that outlaw tell you anything?”

“He told me plenty.”

“We gonna ride?”

“Not we, boy. Just me. And don't give me no sass about it.”

“Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir. I won't.”

Jamie looked at his family, still standing in the yard, on the porch and in the street . . . they made up about one-fifth of the town's population. “There is nothing that can be done for Kate. But there are plenty of others in this town who are badly hurt and there are lots of scared kids. Go help. Make yourself useful. That's what Kate would have done.”

Jamie turned and walked toward the barn. A few minutes later he rode out, toward the high ridge where his grandfather was buried.

* * *

Kate was buried late that afternoon, just as the sun was beginning to sink in the west and the shadows were long. Reverend Powell kept it short, as Jamie had requested. After the service, Jamie told everybody to go on back home. He was going to stay by the grave for a time.

Jamie built a small fire and put on water for coffee. He had fixed him a poke of food from the house before leaving to dig the grave.

“I'll have a proper headstone up 'fore I take off, Kate. I promise you that. Then I'm goin' to find those that both plotted and carried out this terrible thing. I know that don't come as no surprise to you. Kate, some of the kids will be up here most every day after I pull out, puttin' flowers and such on your grave. Then it'll taper off to once a week and then once a month and then once a year. But that's the way it is, Kate. They got to live their own lives. I'm goin' to make you a promise, Kate. And I'll do my damndest to keep it. I will be laid to rest beside you. The kids will know that 'fore I pull out, and some of them will come get me no matter where I fall or where I'm planted.”

Jamie sighed and took a drink of the hot, black, strong coffee. “Kate, we had just over forty-five years together, and to my mind, they were good ones. I loved you the first moment I put eyes on you, and I love you now. There has never been another woman for me. And there never will be. I think you've always known that, but I just wanted to remind you one more time.

“Kate, I'm not ridin' off to get myself killed. You know me better than that. But it ain't gonna be right without you here, honey. I'm feelin' . . . well, sorta lost right now. I guess you know that, listenin' to me ramblin' on like an idiot. But there are things I have to say, and I got to say them now.”

He drained his coffee cup and leaned back against the mound of earth that covered Kate. He took comfort in being just that close to her, and he was silent for a long time, drawing strength from her nearness.

“Well, old woman,” he finally spoke. “I thought I had a great deal to say, but I reckon I've said it all. They was said silently, and I truly believe you heard them. I'll sleep now, beside you for the last time on this earth, and then tomorrow I'll see to your stone and then I'll be gone.

“Good night, Kate. Sleep in peace. I love you, Kate.”

* * *

Jamie chiseled these words into a huge stone. KATE MACCALLISTER. B. 1810 D. 1869 BELOVED WIFE OF JAMIE IAN MACCALLISTER B. 1810 D.

He left that blank.

Jamie packed up his tools, saddled up, and rode down to the town. Matthew was sitting on the front porch of the house. Someone had cleaned up Kate's blood; or tried to. Jamie could still see a spot where Kate had lain.

“I got to talk to you, Pa,” Matthew called.

“So talk, boy. I'm goin' to put on some water for a bath and a shave. You can talk while I'm doin' that.”

“Pa, we got laws in this country now.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Damnit, Pa, don't make light of that. This territory is soon gonna be a state.” That was a few more years away, coming in 1876 as the 38th state. “But we got to show the folks back east that we're civilized enough for that to happen.”

Jamie built a fire in the stove and placed a huge pot of water on to boil. Matthew winced as his dad lifted the huge heavy pot with no more effort than pluckin' a petunia from the ground. His pa was still one hell of a man. Jamie turned from the stove, and his eyes were cold with controlled fury. “Your ma lies yonder on that ridge, boy. Cold in her grave. And you're goin' to talk to me about laws? Don't waste your breath, boy, and my time.”

“Pa, every sheriff in the territory has been notified about what happened yesterday. It'll be coast to coast in a few weeks. Maybe less time than that. The Nelson gang will be found, Pa. I guarantee it.”

“I guarantee you they will be found, too, boy. By me.”

“Pa, you're sixty years old. You're not a kid. You're a grown man with lots of sense. Pa, I'll stop you from doin' this if I have to. I'll—”

Jamie knocked him from the kitchen, through the living room, out onto the porch, and sent him tumbling to the front yard, unconscious.

Falcon, Morgan, Jamie Ian, and Andrew sat on the porch and watched Matthew hit the ground.

“Sounded like Pa hit him with the flat side of an axe, don't it?” Falcon said.

“Pa slapped me open-handed one time,” Jamie Ian recollected. “I was, oh, 'bout sixteen, I reckon. I bowed up to him. Once. My head rung for two days and I couldn't hear out of my left side for a week. I never bowed up to Pa again after that.”

“Pa's killed men with his fists,” Morgan said.

“You reckon we ought to throw some water on our brother?” Andrew asked.

“Naw,” Falcon said. “He was up all night. He needs the rest.”

Matthew was up, staggering around and holding his head and moaning and cussing, when Jamie had finished bathing and shaving. “What the hell did Pa hit me with, a singletree?” he finally managed to croak.

“Naw. His fist. You're just lucky you got a hard head,” Morgan told him.

Matthew stuck a finger in his mouth, felt around, and said, “I got me some loose teeth.”

“They'll tighten up,” Falcon said. “Just eat soup for a few days.”

Jamie's tall bulk filled the doorway. “Don't you ever bow up to me again, boy,” he told Matthew. “You understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

Jamie ducked his head to hide a small smile; then the smile faded as Kate's face drifted before his eyes, smiling at him. He was silent for a time.

“Boys, listen to me. Of course I feel sorrow. Deeper than I can describe. Your ma and me was together for forty-five years. We fell in love as children and we're still in love. And we'll be in love forever more when we meet on the Starry Path on the way to Man Above's home. True love lasts forever, boys. It don't ever die. Not even the grave stops it. And that's all I got to say about it.

“Now, you boys say your goodbyes to the family for me. You know I'm not much for long farewells and I don't want to see no tears. I've seen enough to last me for a time. Matt, you go pack my blankets and other possibles. Jamie Ian, put together some food for me; you help him, Andrew. Morgan, go help Falcon; he's about half-scared of that big buckskin.”

He ought to be, Morgan thought. That big son of a bitch is mean as a cornered puma. “Yes, sir.”

The boys left to do as their father had asked.

Jamie sat alone on the porch until the boys had saddled up and packed up the horses and led them around. Jamie watched as more funerals were carried out among the townspeople, for the outlaw raid had left a dozen dead and several dozen more wounded. He could hear the faint crying of the families as the dead were buried.

“Plenty of grief to go around,” Jamie muttered. “Gonna be grief in some outlaw camps 'fore I'm through, too. There'll soon be blood on the moon.”

“You say something, Pa?” Andrew asked.

“Just talkin' to myself, boy.”

Jamie shook hands with his sons and stepped into the saddle. He did not look back as he rode off, right down the main street of the town that he and Kate and few other adventurous pioneers had settled, so many years back.

Little Ben Pardee, Doctor Tom Prentiss, and Louie Huske stood on the boardwalk in front of the hotel and saluted as Jamie rode by. He returned the salute and kept on riding, putting the town behind him.

Jamie rode up to Kate's final resting place, dismounted, took off his hat, and stood by her grave. The kids had been up on the ridge, for the mound was covered in flowers. There were signs that Indians had visited the grave, for their tokens of tribute and sorrow were there, too.

“Well, old woman,” Jamie said. “This is goodbye for a time. I reckon I just got this to say: Your love will be a constant with me, as my love for you will be. I'll see you on the Starry Path, Kate.”

Jamie mounted up and sat for a time looking down at MacCallister's Valley. “All that down yonder would have never happened had it not been for you, Kate. That's your real monument down there. Folks livin' and lovin' and workin' and fussin' and makin' up and then goin' on about their business of buildin' a future for their kids and grandkids and the like.”

Jamie smiled. “Yes, ma'am. I reckon that's what it's all about.”

Jamie lifted the reins and rode toward the north.

High above him, soaring on the currents, an eagle screamed.