Six
Wesley Parsons, leader of the bounty hunters, was ranging out about a mile ahead of the others. Wesley was known as a fearless and experienced man-hunter back east. But this was not the east and Jamie Ian MacCallister was no ordinary man. Wesley abruptly reined up and stared down at the ground. He began cussing, loud and long. On the ground was an arrow made of stones, pointing northwest, a slip of paper under the last stone of the arrow’s shaft. He jumped off his horse and snatched up the paper.
WATER JUST UP AHEAD. GOOD PLACE TO CAMP. YOU BEST REST AND THEN HEAD ON BACK HOME. IF YOU KEEP ON FOLLOWING ME, I’LL KILL YOU.
It was signed Jamie Ian MacCallister.
The others rode up and dismounted, staring at the paper. “What do them words say?” Burl Dixson asked.
Wesley told him.
“You mean MacCallister knows what we’re up to?” a man called Leo blurted.
“I reckon,” Wesley replied.
“That makes me plumb uncomfortable,” Delbert Newby said. Delbert was a distant cousin of the Newby brothers that Jamie had tangled with years back when he and Kate were heading for Texas, just days before they were married in the tiny village of New Madrid, Missouri.
“This here’s a trick!” Delbert’s brother Amos said, pointing to the slip of paper. “MacCallister’s done pisened the water up ahead.”
Wesley shook his head. “No. MacCallister wouldn’t do that. That would be a danger to animals who might come to drink there. MacCallister loves animals.”
“Why would anybody in they right mind love a goddamn animal?” the last of the group, John Mack, asked.
Wesley shrugged his heavy shoulders. “You’ll have to ask MacCallister that.”
“I don’t aim to ax him nothin’,” John Mack said. “I aim to kill him and cut off his head.”
Wesley ignored that and pointed to the ground. “There’s them other hoofprints. That third party is stayin’ with them. One man and a pack horse. Has to be somebody from the Fort who overheard us talkin’ back yonder.”
“I don’t believe that,” Burl said with a shake of his head. “After that first day when MacCallister and the gentry rode in, we never said no more about it. Leastways me and Leo never.”
“Nor us,” Delbert said, jerking a thumb toward his brother.
“Not me,” John Mack said.
“Well, I damn shore didn’t,” Wesley said. He frowned in thought. “It was a guess on his part, I reckon. But MacCallister shore knows ’bout us.”
“He’s a slick one for a fact,” Delbert said, stroking his dirty beard. “We might have to ponder on this some more.”
“Ponder, hell!” Wesley said. “They’s six of us and three of them. We can take ’em. We’ll do the deed just as soon as we catch up with them. Let’s ride. Sooner we can get his head pickled and get back, the sooner we can get our money.”
* * *
Everything had been explained to Sam. But he was mystified as to how Jamie had picked out the bounty hunters from all the men milling about back at Bent’s Fort. Jamie would only smile and shake his head. When Sam and Preacher were alone that first night after Preacher joined them, Preacher explained.
“When you got men on your backtrail for as long as Jamie has, and me, too, I reckon, it comes natural to a man. A body gets all his God-given senses workin’ hard to stay alive. You got to bear in mind that Jamie’s been fightin’ to stay alive since he was about six or seven years old.”
“I wonder when they’ll strike us.”
“Soon. They know that Jamie knows ’bout ’em ’cause of that stone arrey and that note he left back yonder.”
“That was bravado on Jamie’s part.”
“I know what that word means. Tain’t neither. That was a warnin’ to ’em. If they ignore it, then Jamie feels free to do his damnest.” He smiled a grim curving of the lips. “And when Jamie decides to do that, ‘way I hear tell it, that’s sorta like openin’ wide the gates to Hell!”
“And that is putting it mildly,” Sam said.
* * *
On the fifth night on the trail, only Preacher watched as Jamie silently rose from his blankets and left the camp. It was not that Sam was a heavy sleeper, for he was not. It was just that Jamie could move as silently as a ghost. Jamie disappeared into the gloom and Preacher closed his eyes to return to sleep. Those bounty hunters were in for a rough night of it, Preacher suspected.
The guard shift had just changed at the bounty hunters’ camp, and John Mack was rubbing sleep from his eyes with one hand and holding a cup of very strong black coffee in the other. There was no moon and the night skies were filled with clouds, heavy with moisture. The wind was sharp, holding more than a hint of the hard winter that was not that many weeks away. John Mack set the tin cup down on the ground and stretched. One second he was standing, listening to the creaking of his joints, the next second he was flat on his back on the ground, a hard hand clamped like a vise over his mouth. The bounty hunter was dragged a few hundred feet from the dim finger of flame of the small campfire. Dragged by someone, or something, he thought in fright, with enormous strength. John Mack started drumming his booted feet on the ground in hopes of awakening his cohorts in evil. That got him a clout on the side of his head that watered his eyes and caused his ears to ring like church bells on a Sunday morning. John Mack was thrown into a shallow ravine with no more effort than a child hurling a rag doll. He landed on his belly, the air whooshing out of him, the sharp stones in the ravine cutting his hands.
John Mack finally sucked enough air into his lungs to roll over on his back just in time to see something very large and menacing looming over him. Jamie MacCallister with a knife in his hand. John Mack had not prayed since childhood. In just about one minute he made up for all his backsliding, whispering prayers that, at the moment, he meant very sincerely.
“Who is paying you to dog my trail?” Jamie asked, his voice as hard as flint. When John Mack hesitated, Jamie laid the sharp edge of his Bowie knife against the man’s throat.
“Kin of Olmstead, Jackson, and the Saxon and Newby brothers,” John Mack blurted out the words. “They all men of substance and quality now.”
“Those men and their kin will never be anything close to quality,” Jamie corrected the man. “They’re white trash, they came from white trash, and they will always be white trash. Just like you.”
“Yessir. If’n you say so, sir.”
“You have anything else to say before I cut your throat and leave you for the buzzards and the scavengers?”
John Mack immediately started praying. He peed his dirty underwear and began weeping. He could not remember ever being this frightened. He managed to gasp out: “Let me live, MacCallister. I ain’t done you no harm. If’n you let me live, I’ll be shut of them others come first light. I swear on my dear sainted mother’s eyes.”
Jamie removed the knife from John Mack’s throat and the brigand almost passed out from relief. “You’ll leave now or you’ll never see another sunrise,” he told the man.
“Yessir! I can do that. I can slip in and get my hoss and be gone ’fore them others know it. I promise I will.”
Jamie didn’t believe the man for a second. John Mack was an outlaw through and through and would die an outlaw. But Jamie did not want to kill the man. Not yet. “If you’re with those after me in the morning, you’ll be the first one shot out of the saddle,” he warned him. “And don’t doubt my words. This is the only break you’ll get from me.”
“Yessir. Thank you kindly, Mister MacCallister. You’re a kind man and a man of quality. I knowed that right off. Tried to tell the others that. Bless your heart, Mister MacCallister. I didn’t want to come along on this hunt. I really didn’t. But . . .” John Mack ceased his stupid babbling. Jamie was gone, melting into the night. John Mack laid on the gravel for a few moments, then jumped to his feet and ran screaming back to camp, jarring the others out of their sleep. They threw blankets in all directions and leaped to their feet, wild-eyed, staring into the night.
“He’s out yonder, boys!” John Mack shouted, pointing into the darkness. “Arm yourselves. MacCallister slipped up into camp like a ghost. Hurled me to the ground like I was a baby and dragged me off into a ditch like a bear with a dead doe. I never been so skirred in all my borned days. Git your rifles.”
The bounty hunters scrambled for their weapons as Jamie lay not fifty yards away and watched and listened. He had pegged John Mack accurately.
“I want him furst,” John Mack shouted, standing up and waving his grabbed-up rifle. “I want him alive so’s I can burn his feet and cut out his tongue. I want to skin him and listen to him holler and beg.” John Mack babbled out all that he was going to do to Jamie.
Jamie notched an arrow, lifted his bow, and put an arrow into John Mack’s stomach. The bounty hunter screamed and sat down hard on the ground, both hands gripping the shaft of the arrow. The others stared in horror at the gut-shot man for a few seconds, then all of them hit the ground, scrambling behind whatever cover they could find. John Mack sat on the ground and screamed.
Jamie did not move.
“Somebody douse that far,” Wesley ordered.
“You douse it,” Burl said. “I ain’t movin’.”
“Oh, Lard, Lard, hep me!” John Mack hollered as the shock wore off and the first hard waves of pain hit him.
“I seen men arrey shot in the guts,” Delbert said. “Hit’ll take him hours, maybe days, to die. Somebody shoot him and put him out of his misery.”
“You black-hearted son of a bitch!” John Mack shouted. “Damn your eyes.”
“Oh, shut up!” Wesley told him. “We’s just tryin’ to save you some pain.”
The campfire popped as the wind picked up and fanned the flames into new intensity. John Mack began squalling as the pain in his belly grew.
“Hell, I’ll shoot him,” Amos said, cocking his pistol. “I dasn’t want to put up with that all night through.”
John Mack pulled out a pistol and shot Amos in the leg.
“You bastard!” Amos yelled. “My leg’s broke.”
“Serves you right, you savage,” John Mack said.
Amos lifted his pistol and shot John Mack in the head, the ball striking John Mack right between the eyes and blowing out the back of his head. John Mack fell over into the fire, his greasy hair quickly blazing in the cool night. The fire spread to his clothing and for a brief time, John Mack illuminated the darkness.
“Toss some water on him,” Wesley shouted. “I can’t stand the smell no more.”
No one moved.
Jamie lay in the darkness and watched and waited. Only his eyes moved. The Shawnee Warrior’s Way now consumed his being. He had warned them. Now it was warfare of the cruelest kind—guerrilla warfare—and Jamie was a master at it. Tall Bull had started his training at age seven, and Jamie had taken to it like candy to a child.
“Just hold what we got,” Delbert said. “Come the mornin’, we’ll git him.”
“Shit!” Amos groaned. “My leg’s broke for fair, brother. Hit’s swellin’ up somethin’ awful. He shot me in the knee. I’m crippled for life. I hope he burns in Hellfire forever. Damn you, John Mack.”
Jamie took that time to move, knowing the loud words and the popping and sizzling of John Mack cooking would cover any slight noise he might make.
Leo, who was closest to the fire, began throwing handfuls of dirt into the flames, finally extinguishing the blaze. The dirt did nothing to dispel the terrible odor of flesh cooking. It gagged them all.
“Come on, MacCallister!” Burl shouted into the night. “Fight like a man.”
Jamie smiled. He knew there were no rules to fighting. Only a fool thought otherwise. There was only a winner and a loser. No more and no less than that. And that was just one of the reasons why Jamie could never again live in any type of structured society. The men and women who settled and tamed the west could not call the sheriff or wave for a uniformed constable to come solve their problems. For many, many years west of the Mississippi the only law was the gun and the knife and the tomahawk and the lance, even though many, if not most, of the people who were called pioneers held the law they had left behind in high regard.
“You’re a coward, MacCallister!” Wesley yelled. “You hide in the dark.”
Fool! Jamie thought. He shouts to hide his own fear. Jamie tossed a fist sized rock far to his left and the now dark camp roared with rifle fire. Jamie used that to cover another move. As on the hands of a clock, Jamie had started at six, and was now at twelve, located not more than fifty feet from the camp. His eyes could pick out the dark shapes of the men. Jamie rose up on one knee and notched an arrow, drawing back and letting it fly. It flew true and buried deep into a man’s shoulder. Burl screamed in pain as the arrow drove clear through and the head ripped out his upper back.
The instant Jamie let the arrow fly, he shifted positions, now coming up behind the camp from the east, or at three o’clock. A man jumped to help the wounded man and Jamie let fly another arrow. This one was a clean miss, the arrow clanging off the hanging cook pot. Jamie again shifted positions.
“I felt the breeze from that arrey,” Leo said.
“They’s more than one of ’em!” Wesley shouted. “I figure all three of ’em is out there.”
“Got to be more than just MacCallister,” Leo called. “Who’d have thought that hoity-toity fancy-pants Montgomery would larn how to use a bow and arrey.”
They know something about Sam, Jamie thought with a frown. Who are these men? Did I meet them while living with Sam and Sarah as a boy? He didn’t think so. John Mack had told him they were being paid by the kin of Jamie’s old enemies. So the hate still ran deep. Would it ever end? Would he and Kate and the kids ever be allowed to live in peace? Jamie didn’t think so.
“We got to go out there after him, Wes,” Delbert said, the words carrying easily to Jamie, along with the stink of John Mack’s charred body. “Hit’s the only way. We stay here, and he’ll pick us off one at a time.”
“No,” Wesley nixed that suggestion. “MacCallister would love that. Just hold what we have and no movin’ around. We can’t see him, but he can’t see us neither. Come the dawnin’, we’ll pull out and head on back to the fort.”
Jamie laid his head on the ground and closed his eyes for a moment. If that meant you would never be back, I’d certainly let you go in peace, he thought. But I don’t believe that. My God but I am so tired of the killing!
Jamie opened his eyes, aware that the loud talking had diminished into whispering. Something was up.
“MacCallister?” came the shout. “I know you ain’t gonna answer me, so just listen. I’m Wesley Parsons. Kin of the Saxons. They’s big money on your head back in the States. But it looks like we ain’t gonna be the ones to collect it. I don’t feel like dyin’ for no small sack of gold coins. Somebody’s gonna have to come up with a lot more money for me to ever ride out into this goddamn wilderness again. I hate this damn place. If’n you’ll let us, come the dawnin’, we’ll ride back east and odds are you’ll never see us no more. Now I ain’t makin’ no promises on that. But right now I’d say you’ve seen the last of us.”
Jamie thought about that. The man was leveling with him, he finally concluded. No doubt about one thing: Wesley Parsons had his share of courage and damn little backup in him to speak so frankly.
Jamie scooted back until sliding into a small depression in the earth where he would be safe from rifle and pistol fire. “Parsons?”
“Right here, MacCallister.”
“Build up your fire, tend to your wounded, and get the hell gone from here. I’ll send no more arrows at you. When you’ve gone, I’ll bury John Mack as decently as possible. But hear this well: If I ever see any of you again, I’ll kill you where you stand. Is that understood?”
“Understood and taken. I’m gonna build a fire and tend to the wounded. We’ll lay our weapons on the ground whilst we move about saddlin’ up and packin’ up. Then we’ll ride. Deal?”
“Done.”
Jamie shifted positions and watched the men break camp. There were no more verbal exchanges between them. Long after the sounds of their horses’ hooves had faded, Jamie stretched out on the cold ground and slept. At dawn, he’d see to John Mack. He had a hunch that Preacher and Sam would be along about that time.
He was right.