Eleven
“Pa’s comin’,” Matthew shouted, pointing to the north.
Megan ran out to ring the community bell, and the entire settlement turned out. Sparks had been through and told them what all had happened to the man-hunters, and everybody had a good laugh at what Jamie had done.
All but Kate, although she had managed a smile. She knew that Jamie was tired of the killing, knew he wanted it over. But this time he had made a mistake. Those men would never forgive the humiliation caused them by her husband. Not ever. And they would be back. And Mr. Maurice Evans would not take kindly to this slight against him. He would just outfit the men again, probably hire more men, and send them right back west with orders to kill Jamie MacCallister ... and anyone who rode or sided with him. No, husband of mine, Kate thought, this time you made a mistake.
“I never thought about it, Kate,” Jamie said later that night, snuggled in the feather tick with Kate. “But you’re probably right. I did a foolish thing in the name of humor.”
She giggled. “I do want a picture of those man-hunters, though.”
“Kate!”
* * *
Those close to Maurice Evans stated later that the man went into a towering, screaming rage when he learned of what had happened to his hand-picked mercenaries. Then he saw the pictures, which had been circulated under the table, so to speak, all around the city and almost succumbed to a fatal bout of apoplexy. But Clarence was already the darling of the literary and fledgling photographic societies and was too popular for Evans to touch.
He arranged a meeting with Rolly Hammond. “I want you to be ready to go early next spring,” he told the mercenary. “I want you to find fifty men, good men, outfit them with the most modern of weapons, and get ready to ride. I want you to have your most trusted lieutenant to ride west and find western men who know the country and who hate MacCallister. While MacCallister is out hunting, or fucking Indian squaws, or whatever he does when he is away from the valley, I want you to burn that goddamn settlement to the ground and kill everybody there. Men, women, children, horses, cattle, mules, sheep, goats, dogs. And then bury the bodies so deep they will never be found. Do you have objections to doing any of this?”
“Not if the money is right.”
“Money is no object. Name your price.”
Rolly did.
Without batting an eye, Evans said, “Done!”
* * *
1847 saw more and more settlers continuing the westward push. In April of that year, Brigham Young, prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, pushed off from Council Bluffs to the new Zion—a place that would in only three years be proclaimed as Utah Territory. In June, the Mormons crossed South Pass but then got hopelessly turned around in the Rockies. Toward the last of July 1847, Brigham Young arrived and called the arid expanse “The place.” The state of Deseret was born, later to be called Utah.
In September of that year, Stephen Foster performed “Oh, Susanna” in a Pittsburgh saloon. That same month, General Scott’s troops broke through the walls surrounding Mexico City and raised the American flag over the “Halls of Montezuma.”
Fort Benton was established at the head of the Missouri River, Cyrus McCormick opened a new reaper factory in Chicago, and in November, missionary Marcus Whitman and twelve others were massacred by Cayuse Indians at his missionary station in Oregon.
* * *
By the middle of February, Rolly Hammond had quietly recruited his army of mercenaries to ride after Jamie and the settlement come the spring. They gathered all up and down the western Missouri border, waiting word, well-armed, with the very latest in modern weapons. They would start the ride west to the Rockies in one week.
March 1848
“You feel that old urge to roam again, Jamie?” Kate asked, stepping out onto the porch of the cabin and sitting down in the chair beside her husband.
A few minutes after a beautiful early spring dawn in the Rockies, and husband and wife both had huge steaming mugs of coffee.
Jamie smiled and reached over, taking Kate’s hand. “No, Kate. I have no such urge. I just want to stay here with you and watch our kids and grandkids grow and be happy. And that is the truth, my love.”
“Age might have something to do with that,” Kate said with a smile.
They both were thirty-eight years old. Kate looked as though she might be twenty-five at the most, and Jamie was aging just as well. People traveling through the valley were, to a person, astonished to learn that the young-looking couple had been married for over twenty-five years and had grandchildren.
This spring’s travel to Bent’s Fort had brought a dozen letters to Jamie and Kate, half of them from Andrew and Rosanna. They were planning a trip home in the late spring of that year. Both were enjoying enormous success as musicians and had married musicians, the unions producing four children. The letters contained numerous newspaper clippings hailing their accomplishments as concert pianists. They were due to arrive back in the valley that summer.
The triplets, Matthew, Megan, and Morgan, now sixteen, were all sparking the children of other settlers, and Megan had already announced that she would be getting married that summer. Her beau, a gangling seventeen-year-old named Jim, was hard at work, in his spare time, building their cabin. So far he had managed to fall off the scaffolding once and flatten two fingertips with a hammer. Jim was just a bit nervous about the wedding.
“Good thing he landed on his head,” Jamie remarked, after Jim’s fall. “Otherwise he might have been hurt.”
That got him a very dirty look from Megan.
Joleen, almost fourteen, had announced that she was going to start seeing a boy named Angus. That lasted until Kate took her out into the barn and with the help of a belt convinced the girl that her attempts at sparking could wait at least another year.
Angus started walking past the cabin so often he was wearing a new path. Jamie finally wearied of the love-struck lad and told him that he could sit with the family during Sunday worship services, have supper at the MacCallister cabin every other Saturday night, and sit with Joleen out on the front porch for a time and hold hands, adding, “And boy, that by God, better be all you grab hold of.”
Falcon, now nine, was already playing gun man. Jamie had fashioned his two pistols and holsters, and the boy was stalking everything and everybody he encountered. He was uncommonly quick in getting those toy pistols out of leather.
The settlement now boasted three stores and a combination barbershop/doctor’s office/tavern; it was a strange combination but it worked for them. The “tavern” was actually no more than a half dozen tables and chairs and was more a place for the men to get away after a hard day’s work and talk. The settlement had a regular school and a separate church building and a community hall. There was a road of sorts leading out of the valley and over to Bent’s Fort. However, Goldman and the other two merchants still had to wagon travel to the fort to pick up ordered supplies.
About the same time that Andrew and Rosanna and their families were landing in St. Louis and making plans to travel to the wilderness, Rolly Hammond and his army of mercenaries were riding into the area in twos and threes. They would not gather until the afternoon before the raid.
Most of the able-bodied Indian men in the region were gone on the spring hunt, so the mercenaries could slip in undetected and quietly gather hours before they were to do their dark deed.
On a bright, warm Sunday morning, the men and women of the settlement were dressing in their best to attend Sunday services. Kate had noticed that Jamie was unusually quiet and seemed to be tense. He had not dressed for church.
“You’re not going to church?” Kate asked Jamie.
He shook his head. “Something’s come up. You go on. Take Joleen and Falcon. I’m going to need the other kids with me.” He cut his eyes to her. “Go on, Kate.”
As was Kate’s way, she did not question him . . . that usually came later and was sometimes heated. There would be no “later” on this day. She took the kids and went off to church.
Jamie pulled Ian to one side and spoke briefly to him. The son nodded and left the porch. Jamie put Matthew in the barn, armed with several rifles and pistols. He put Megan in the shed, with rifle and pistols. Morgan stayed in the house, in a back bedroom.
Jamie’s senses were working overtime. He had gone hunting the day before, planning to stay out for several days. But the game was elusive and the timber silent. He did not know what was wrong, only that something was not right. He had ridden back into the valley late on a Saturday night and surprised Kate with his arrival. He had nothing to say, but she knew something was very wrong.
Jamie talked briefly with the men of the settlement. Swede elected to man a post between two stores. Sam went to the loft of his barn. Juan chose a place by the livery. Wells and Moses and Robert and Titus positioned themselves between cabins. Eb and Daniel and a few other men took up well concealed positions throughout the settlement.
Finally, Jamie walked to the church and broke into a song service. “There might be trouble coming our way. It just may be my imagination, but I don’t think so. You all know we have long planned for attack.” He stomped the floor with a boot. “There are guns and water and food and blankets stored under here. Get to them and make them ready. Some of you continue singing. Sarah, play the piano—”
“Pa!” Ian shouted. “Riders gathering to the east. A whole damn army, it looks like. You were right.”
Jamie reached down and jerked open the trap door leading to the concealed basement of the church. “Get all the younger kids down here. Move quickly, kids. Joleen, Ellen Kathleen, look after them.”
Jamie walked to a window that could be easily shuttered, with gun slits in the heavy shutters, and called, “Ian! What are they doing?”
“I can’t tell, Pa,” the young man called. “They’ve moved into the timber and appear to be circlin’. My guess is they’ll come in from the south.”
“Goddamn dirty bastards!” Jamie cussed.
Reverend Haywood did not admonish him for his language in the house of God. The reverend agreed with him and silently added a few unChristian-like phrases of his own as he worked loading up rifles and pistols.
Kate had taken a carbine and several pistols from the cache of weapons under the floor and moved to a window. She was quietly and quickly loading up all the weapons. This was nothing new to Kate or to many of the other women who were busy loading weapons.
“We’ll shutter the windows when they start their charge,” Jamie told the men and women in the church. “Hold our fire until they’re in the village. Let them think they have the element of surprise on their side.”
Ian was looking through a spyglass from his position in a nearby barn loft. “They’re all white men, Pa,” he called. “All of them ridin’ fine stock. And all of them heavily armed. They got pistols hangin’ all over them and two rifles in saddle boots.”
“You’re dead, Mr. Maurice Evans,” Jamie muttered. “You are a walking around dead man.”
Jamie was standing close to Kate and she heard him. “Make sure this time,” she murmured low.
“I will,” Jamie said. “Play that piano loud, Sarah,” he called. “Really bang it out. Sing, people. Sing!”
The men and women lifted their voices in Christian song and tightened their grip on rifles. The singing reached Rolly and his mercenaries.
“Sing, you sinners!” Rolly said with an evil smirk. “In ten minutes, you’ll all be in Heaven.”
“Or gettin’ fucked,” one of his men said.
“That’s even better,” another man-hunter said. “I like ’em young. Like to hear ’em holler when I give it to ’em.”
“Plenty of time for that,” Rolly said.
“I like boys,” a thick-lipped man said. “Young and tender.”
Several others moved away from the man called Fritz.
“Ain’t that singin’ purty?” another man said sarcastically. “Them fillies down yonder gonna be beggin’ and prayin’ right shortly.”
“I can’t hardly wait to lift them petticoats,” a man called Macklin said.
“Ain’t another livin’ soul within a hundred miles,” a man called Calvert said. “This here party can last until we wear them gals plumb out.”
“Did you see all them young gals?” Bob Dalhart said. “I’m a gittin’ me a boner just thinkin’ ’bout it.”
“Let’s do it,” Rolly said. “Move out, men. We hit the village from all sides.”
Ian had propped his rifle up against the wall. He was slowly sharpening his scalping knife.
“Jamie,” Kate whispered.
“Yes, love.”
“Kill that damn lawyer in St. Louis, too.”
“I’ll get him on the way to New York City,” Jamie assured her and cocked his rifle.