Fourteen
Now Jamie had two loaded rifles and six loaded pistols, counting the rifle and four pistols taken from Ned, who would no longer have any use for them.
One of the no-counts suddenly jumped up and made a run for better cover. He should have stayed where he was. Ian and Jamie fired as one, both balls striking the outlaw. He was flung forward and was dead before he hit the ground.
“They might be kids, but they can damn shore shoot,” Harold remarked. “What do you think about it, Ned?”
“I’m no kid,” Jamie spoke in low tones. “And Ned can’t hear you. I just cut his throat.”
“Damn,” a man said. “It’s Jamie MacCallister.”
“Back out!” Winslow shouted. “Stay to cover and back out slow and easy. Over to the crick.”
There were at least five outlaws left able to ride, Jamie figured. Maybe one more than that. Either Winslow had hooked up with more brigands, or those at the settlement had been wrong in their count. No matter. They still had to be dealt with.
But not at this time. The outlaws made their horses and were gone in a frantic pounding of hooves and wild cussing and shouted threats.
“Let them go!” Jamie shouted to his son.
“But, Pa—”
“Let them go!” Jamie repeated. “Come on down here. And bring the horses.”
While Ian was working his way down the ridge, Jamie collected the weapons of the dead, gathered up the three pack horses they had left behind, and then began dragging the bodies to a ravine and unceremoniously dumping them into the natural pit. “Stand watch,” Jamie told his son.
“You going to say words over them, Pa?” Ian asked.
“I’ll say something.”
“Something” was very brief and to the point, for Jamie had absolutely no use for outlaws and even less for rapists and child molesters. He caved a wall of the ravine over the dead and told the Lord to do what He felt was best with them. And if He didn’t know what to do, Jamie had a few suggestions. Amen.
“Do we go after the others, Pa?”
Jamie hesitated for a moment. “We probably should, but that bunch will be laying up in ambush for us. Don’t run after a scared man, son. A scared man will hurt you.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Go home.”
* * *
By lamplight, Jamie tallied up the names of those men who had sworn revenge against him and his family since moving west. The list was getting longer. Jack Biggers and kin, Barney and kin, Buford Sanders, Pete Thompson, Winslow and gang. With a sigh, Jamie put down his pen and closed the ink well.
Cold winds blew against the cabin, but the logs were close-fitted and chinked well. The large cabin was snug against the winter’s fury. In the months since Jamie and Ian had confronted Winslow, the brigand had not been seen. Black Thunder had told Jamie his men had reported the outlaws had headed east.
In a few weeks, it would start to warm, and Jamie would have to leave to join Fremont and Carson. The winter had been unusually mild, and hunting had been good; not that a lot of hunting was necessary now. Cows and bulls and a few pigs that had broken loose from wagons on the way west had made their way into the valley and the settlers had a fairly respectable herd going. During the early fall, two weary families, whose wagons had broken down and who had been abandoned by an unscrupulous wagon master had been found by Black Thunder’s men and after getting over their fright (which Black Thunder’s men had found highly amusing), were led to the long and lush valley and welcomed by the settlers there. Sam and Swede returned to the broken wagons—not that many miles to the north—repaired them, and drove them back. As luck would have it, one of the men was a minister and the other a skilled blacksmith and farmer. Both men had families and all were welcomed into the settlement—William and Lydia Haywood, Eb and Mary French, and a total of eight children. The settlement was growing.
But that summer of ’41 was the summer that Roscoe and Anne, the twins, now fully grown and with absolutely no negroid features, left the valley. And as was their way, they stole supplies and horses and pulled out in the dead of night.
Wells, who had married Moses and Liza’s daughter Sally, was beating on the door to the cabin before dawn. “Get up, Jamie. Get up. They’re gone.”
Jamie, clad only in a long nightshirt, rifle in hand, unbarred the door and flung it open. “What’s wrong, Wells? Who’s gone?”
“Roscoe and Anne. They’ve stolen supplies and horses and slipped away.”
“Give me a minute to dress.”
Kate had gotten up with Jamie and was putting on water for coffee, stoking up the coals in the fireplace. During the summer months, she cooked outside, under the dog-trot, on and in a stone and metal stove that Jamie had made for her (many, many years later much the same apparatus would come into vogue as a grill and smoker and people would marvel at how good the food tasted). During the fall and winter months, the cooking was done inside to help heat the cabin.
“Get Moses and Liza,” Jamie told Wells. “And the rest of the people. No point in having to repeat the same story over and over.”
Sally came over, carrying half a side of bacon and Sarah came with a plate heaping with hot biscuits and Hannah brought over several dozen eggs. Maria Nunez brought sliced potatoes and peppers to fry with them, and Lydia and Mary came with bowls of hot gravy and several jars of jams and jellies. Breakfast was a very important meal. The women started cooking breakfast while the men gathered with mugs of steaming hot coffee.
“They won’t be hard to track,” Juan opened the conversation.
“Do we want to track them?” Moses said bitterly.
“They are both grown,” Sam offered. “We don’t have the right to force them to stay.”
“Neither will turn out well,” Wells said. “They’re both sneaks and thieves.”
Jamie stood silently, listening to the exchange. He agreed with Wells, although he felt sorry for both Roscoe and Anne. They were torn between two worlds, never feeling they truly belonged in either one. Their father had been a white plantation owner and their mother, Ophelia, a very beautiful, albeit a rather foolish and shallow, woman of high color. After her husband, a no-count named Titus, had deserted the family back in the Big Thicket country of Texas, Ophelia had hanged herself.
Titus and his son Robert were somewhere in the west. Jamie hoped he would not run into them.
“Let them go,” Jamie finally said, putting an end to the quiet bickering. “The horses they stole were not much, and the supplies can be replaced. Let’s just wish them well and get on with our lives.”
“And eat,” Swede said, his stomach rumbling at the good smells wafting through the cool morning air.