Five
The mountain men were hesitant to let Jamie and Kate travel back to the valley by themselves. But Kate merely laughed that off. “I know you boys want to head back east,” she told the men. “Jamie and I will be just fine. Just ask Preacher about the time two fourteen-year-old kids crossed from the Kentucky wilderness to the Big Thicket country.”
Preacher smiled. “They done that for a fact. How you headin’ back, Jamie?”
“We’re going up into Canada and ride east for time, then cut south in time to be home by late summer or early fall. I want Kate to see that country.”
“You watch them Blackfeet,” Lobo warned. “Them ain’t the friendliest Injuns on the face of this earth.”
“I’ve encountered them before,” Jamie said.
Jamie and Kate rode out of San Francisco the afternoon following the killing of Maurice Evans and the beating of lawyer Laurin. MacDuff had ridden off to the east some weeks before without saying a word.
Horse had terrorized anyone who tried to come near him during the stay in the city and had broken down half a dozen stalls. The liveryman was delighted to see him go.
Preacher and the others were taking Kate’s mare back to the valley, and for this long and rugged trip, where endurance and speed might be necessary to save their lives, Jamie had bought her a fine, rugged gelding named Star, who right from the first moment wouldn’t take any crap from Horse. After circling each other and exchanging a few bites and kicks, they decided they’d best be friends, at least for this trip.
Jamie had scoured the city and found four Colt Baby Dragoons for Kate. They were .36 caliber, four-inch barrels, and held a five-shot cylinder. Jamie had a man cut down the handles to better fit Kate’s hand and a leather worker make them matching holsters. They both carried rifles and both had a revolving shotgun in the boot. They might be set upon by hostiles or outlaws—the probability was high—but those who tried it would pay dearly for their efforts.
Jamie had given a goodly amount of cash to Sparks to take back to the settlement, and the rest was carefully banked or invested by reputable people. For the time, Jamie was a rich man.
All of Kate’s shopping, some for herself but most for family and friends, would go to the valley by commissioned wagon train. Jamie had told her to spare no expense, and she hadn’t.
Jamie and Kate had an uneventful ride up through northern California and into Oregon. Sometimes they followed established trails, many times they left the trails and blazed their own. This was a real vacation for Kate, the first time she had been away from the kids in twenty-five years.
The Indians they met riding through Oregon and then Washington were friendly and curious about the pair, many times inviting them to their villages to share their food. Settlers had been coming into this area since the late 1830s, so these Indians were accustomed to the strange ways of the whites and unlike the Indians of the plains, they had seen golden-haired women before. What they had not seen was golden-haired women who could handle a gun the way Kate could. They were impressed and warned Jamie and Kate that there were bad white men up ahead of them, men who robbed and raped and killed for no good reason.
“Do they have names?” Jamie asked.
“Oh, yes,” the chief of one tribe said. “We have heard the names of Jack Biggers and John Wilmot. They are very bad men.”
“Jack Biggers,” Jamie said, when he and Kate were once more on their way. “I had almost forgotten all about him. I dismissed him as being dead years ago.”
“That’s the one who tried to ride Horse?” Kate asked.
“Tried is right.” Jamie patted Horse on the neck. “Ol’ Horse here almost killed him. I’m going to put this fellow out to pasture when we get back. He’s getting old. He’s still got a lot of trails he could ride, but he’s earned a rest.”
They were in north-central Washington, following an old Indian trail when both Horse and Star became tense, their ears pricked. They kept swinging their heads to look behind them. Jamie quickly left the trail and headed into the timber and brush. He and Kate dismounted, rifles in hand, ground-reined the horses, and slipped through the timber until the trail was in sight. Jamie bellied down and put his ear to the hard ground. He looked up at Kate and held up two fingers, then motioned for her to stay put.
He slipped up to within a few feet of the trail and waited. Soon he could plainly hear the sounds of the horses’ hooves coming up the old trail. Then he could hear the men talking.
“I still think we better ride on up ahead and fetch Jack and Wilmot,” one said. “If this is MacCallister and his woman, my guts get all tight just thinkin’ ’bout the two of us tryin’ to take him alone.”
“All that talk ’bout how tough MacCallister is ain’t nothin’ but shit,” the second man said. “Jack Biggers whupped him, didn’t he?”
“Jack says he did.”
“You callin’ Jack a liar?”
“I didn’t say that. But if he whupped him, why didn’t he go on and kill him and take his head for all that reward money that was on him at the time?”
The two men reined up, studying the trail.
“I don’t know, Axel. Do seem queer, don’t it?”
“Yeah. The damn trail just quit, Clyde. What do you make of that?”
Before Clyde could reply, Jamie flung one of the stones he’d picked up and hit Clyde’s horse solidly on the butt. The sharp stone scared the animal and he started buck-jumping on the narrow trail. Jamie flung another stone and the animal really went wild. Clyde was holding on and hollering as the horse started chasing its tail, going round and round on the trail.
Jamie left the brush, grabbed the other man and jerked him off his horse, slamming him on the ground so hard the wind was knocked out of him. Clyde was facing the other way and saw none of it. Jamie dragged the man into the lush timber and quickly trussed him up with lengths of rawhide he always carried on his belt. Kate crept forward and placed the muzzle of her .36 caliber Baby Dragoon against the man’s head. He looked up at her through frightened eyes and nodded his head, indicating that he understood perfectly that he was to remain still and quiet.
Clyde finally got his horse calmed down and jumped out of the saddle, holding the reins. He looked around him, a rather confused expression on his face. He could see Axel’s horse, but where the hell was Axel?
“Axel? Where you is, boy? You answer me, Axel. This ain’t no time for games.”
Kate pressed the muzzle harder against Axel’s head and the man peed his pants. Kate sniffed and glanced down at him, a disgusted expression in her eyes. Axel blushed under the dirt on his unshaven face.
“Damn it, Axel!” Clyde shouted. “You bes’ talk to me, boy. You hear me?”
Jamie stepped out silently and tapped Clyde on the shoulder. When he spun around, his mouth open and his eyes wide with fright, Jamie popped him with a big fist. Clyde’s eyes rolled back into his head as he hit the ground hard. He did not move. When Clyde awakened, he was lying on the ground beside Axel, both men trussed up tight.
“Oh, shit!” Clyde whispered. “MacCallister! Axel, we be in big trouble.”
“You got that right, Clyde,” Jamie told him. He slowly pulled out his big Bowie knife and laid the sharp cold steel against Clyde’s cheek.
“Oh, LordyLordyLordy!” Clyde said. “Don’t kill me, MacCallister. I didn’t do you no harm a’tall.”
“Me, neither!” Axel whispered.
“You boys are riding with Biggers and Wilmot. Where are they camped?”
“Northeast of here,” Clyde quickly replied. “Over on the Chewack. It’s the truth, I swear it.”
“How come you boys are such a long way from your friends?”
“We been down to the settlement to drink some,” Axel said.
“What settlement?”
“’Bout three days’ ride from here, over to the south and west. It ain’t been there long. Used to be just a tradin’ post.”
Jamie stared in silence at the men for so long they both got very nervous. “Where on the Chewack?” he finally asked.
“Down to where it runs into that other river. I don’t know the name of it,” Clyde said.
“Any unfriendly Indians around here?” Jamie asked.
“Not no more,” Axel spoke up. “Unless you run into some Blackfeet, and they can be downright quarrelsome.”
“How many members in the gang?”
“Oh ... near ’bout thirty, I reckon. They come and go.”
Jamie took Kate aside and said, “We’ll set them afoot with ample food and the guns they have with them.”
“And the gang?”
“We avoid them. If there were four or five of them, I’d tangle. But twenty or so.” He shook his head. “No.”
Jamie returned to the men and stared down at them. They were plenty scared and made no effort to hide that fact. “I’m going to let you boys live,” he finally said.
“Oh, thank you, Jesus!” Axel said.
“But I’d think twice about returning to the gang. They’re going to come to no good end.”
Staring down at the men, Jamie sensed his words had not gotten through to Clyde. Axel was too scared to do anything other than bob his head up and down. Jamie shrugged and walked off. Gathering up the reins to their horses, he led them back into the brush and dropped the men’s saddlebags and bedrolls to the ground.
“Thank you kindly, Mr. MacCallister,” Clyde said, but Jamie could see the meanness in the man’s eyes shining plain. “You’re a real gentleman, you are. Is you goin’ to loosen these bonds just a mite, kind sir?”
Jamie looked down at the man and decided he might as well get it over with here and now. Clyde wanted to kill him so bad the odor of it very nearly fouled the cool air. Jamie reached down and cut the man’s bonds, then stepped back and kicked his saddlebags to him, figuring the man had a couple of guns in the saddlebags. Jamie took a couple of more steps back.
“There is no money on my head anymore, Clyde. Not a penny that I am aware of. And if you’re looking to make a reputation, my advice would be to forget it.”
Clyde rubbed his wrists and grinned. “Man who kilt Jamie MacCallister could name his own price.”
“If that’s the kind of business you want to be in, I suppose so,” Jamie said softly.
“What kind of a break is you gonna give me, MacCallister?” Clyde asked.
“Clyde!” Axel called. “Don’t be a damn fool, man. He’s give us our lives, let’s take it and get clear of this whole damn dirty business.”
“Shut up,” Clyde said, slowly crawling to his knees and reaching for the saddlebags. “I axe you, MacCallister. What kind of break is you offerin’ me?”
“None,” Jamie replied honestly. “When you reach into those saddlebags, you’re dead.”
“Now that ain’t sportin’ of you.”
“I never said I was a sport.”
“Clyde!” Axel yelled. “Don’t do it, man.”
“I knowed all along you was yeller, Axel,” Clyde said. “Shut up your trap. There ain’t no way he can haul them big heavy pistols out of them holsters afore I can jerk and fire. He’s a fool, he is.”
“You be the fool, Clyde,” Axel said.
“You been runnin’ your trap for months ’bout wantin’ to go back to Maryland and farm the old homestead, Axel. When I see MacCallister dead on the ground, I’ll cut you loose and you can get gone to the farm. Me, I’ll take me a taste of that there woman of his’n.”
Kate laughed at him. “Not you or ten like you,” she told him.
Clyde reached into his jacket pocket and came out with a pocket knife. He cut Axel’s bonds. “You got a hide-out gun they didn’t see, Axel. When I kill MacCallister, you knock a leg out from under the bitch. I’ll pleasure myself whilst she’s bleedin’ to death.”
“I ain’t a-gonna do it, Clyde. And that’s that.”
“Then we ain’t pards no more, Axel.”
“Good,” Axel said from his position on the ground.
Jamie’s hands were by his side, and he appeared to be totally relaxed as he waited for Clyde to make his move.
Clyde slid the leather straps out of their buckles and slowly opened the flap to one of the saddlebags. “I reckon your woman is gonna shoot me after I shoot you, huh, MacCallister?”
“What do you think?” Jamie asked him, sensing that Clyde was having a lot of second thoughts.
“Well, hell! This ain’t a bit fair.”
“What it is,” Axel said, “is stupid.”
“I agree,” Kate said.
“This is getting ridiculous,” Jamie said, and quickly stepped forward. He popped Clyde on the side of the jaw and the man dropped like a stone.
“I hate to say this,” Axel said. “But you should have shot him, Mr. MacCallister. ”He’s gonna come after you for doin’ this.”
“Then he’s a fool.”
“I can’t argue that.”
Jamie cut Axel loose and pointed to the man’s horse. “You want to go back to your farm in Maryland?”
“More’n anything else in this world.”
“Then ride.”
Axel was gone in under a minute, heading south.
“Jamie?” Kate said.
“I have an idea.”
“What is it?”
“Let’s go home.”
* * *
The wagon train from San Francisco with all the presents arrived in the valley just a few days before Jamie and Kate rode in. The crates and boxes were stacked unopened in a barn, awaiting the arrival of Jamie and Kate. The four mountain men had ridden in with the money Jamie had sent to Ian along with Kate’s mare and told the settlers that Jamie and Kate would be along sometime in late summer or early fall.
The man and wife topped the ridge trail overlooking the western valley late one summer afternoon and stopped.
“Prettiest valley in all the world,” Jamie said.
“I don’t care to leave again, Jamie,” Kate said softly. “I had a grand time in the city, but this is my home. I’ve seen the sights now, and those wonderful memories will last me for the rest of my life. It was a grand adventure going to San Francisco.” She pointed to the valley below, her eyes on their cabin. The largest one in the valley. With most of the kids gone, she and Jamie rattled around in the large home like peas in a pod. “That’s where I want to stay. Right down there with family and friends and familiar things.”
“Then we’ll stay here together,” Jamie said.
Kate laughed at the words and cut her blues to Jamie. “Don’t you be making promises to me that you won’t be able to keep, Jamie Ian MacCallister. You’re a wanderer, husband of mine; you always will be, and I love you for that. You’ll stay for a time, then the wild trails will start singing their soft songs to you, and you’ll saddle up and go. I saw that in you when we were just children.”
“Then why did you marry me?”
She looked at him with a woman’s patience and said, “Because I love you, you ninny!”
“Oh,” Jamie said. “Well, I love you too, Kate.”
She laughed at the expression on his face and lifted the reins. “Let’s go see how the kids and grandkids have grown. My goodness, it feels like we’ve been gone for years. I want to sleep in our own warm feather bed this night.”
“Just sleep?” Jamie asked with a smile.
“You have anything else in mind?”
“I could probably think of something.”
“My goodness!” Kate said with mock seriousness. “I just can’t imagine what it might be!”