Eleven
“Once and for all,” Jamie repeated several times a day as he headed toward the spot where the gangs were supposed to have gathered, awaiting word from Layton and Olmstead. “I’ll settle this once and for all.”
But he really didn’t believe his own words. The feud between Jamie and Kate’s father and brothers and kin, as well as the Newbys and the Saxons had been going on for far too long. It would only end when one side or the other—all of them—were in the grave. And Jamie had to smile at that. It would take some doing to kill off all the MacCallisters and their kin. It seemed like Jamie and Kate had more grandkids running around the twin towns of Valley than nuts on a pecan tree . . . with more on the way.
Jamie had to give lawyer Layton his due. He had chosen men who knew the west and knew it well, for the area where they had chosen to gather, while not that many miles from the twin valleys as the crow flies, was a tough three-day ride for a man on horseback. It was also perfect ambush country.
For them, as well as for me, Jamie had to keep reminding himself.
As he rode, he tried to pull up into his memory the faces of some of the names Sparks had told him. He could remember with some amusement the face of Barney Saxon, the man who had accused him of stealing money and who had suffered a busted mouth for that remark. He could recall some of the others but not all.
For a short time, he toyed with the idea of calling John Wilmot out and trying to reason with him. But he soon gave that up as a very bad idea. He had tried to persuade other men to give up the hunt for him and always failed with the leaders.
The letter he had given Sparks would reach his attorney in St. Louis, and the lawyer would handle matters on that end, quickly putting a stop to Olmstead’s attempts to seize the twin valleys. Olmstead was going to be in for quite a shock when he came face to face with Jamie’s lawyer, one of, if not the, most powerful men in the state and well-connected in Washington.
The ride took longer than Jamie anticipated and it was mid-morning of the fourth day before he began to smell the cook-fires of the gang. He immediately began searching for a place to picket his horses and found one after an hour’s searching.
He let the horses roll for a time, and when they had cooled down, he let them drink and then they settled down to graze. Jamie picketed them on a long rope, with plenty of room to walk to water, and shouldered his heavy pack. He figured it was about a two-hour walk to the gang’s campsite.
“Once and for all,” Jamie muttered, as he took the first step on foot to the smoky little valley where the men who had gathered to kill him were camped. “I end it today, Kate. And that’s a promise. After today, we start living the remainder of our lives in peace.”
* * *
Bob Sutter looked up from his plate of beans and venison and stared at the end of the clearing for a moment. He could have sworn he saw the figure of a man standing there. A man dressed all in buckskins. “Impossible,” he muttered and returned to his eating.
Joe Ed Williams was pouring a cup of coffee from the big pot when he paused for a few seconds. He stared at the timber for a moment and then shook his head. “Not likely,” he muttered.
One of Buford Sanders’s gang thought he heard one of the horses whinny. He raised his head from the blanket he was using as a pillow and listened hard. Nothing. Must have been his imagination. He laid back down and dozed off.
Jamie had cut the horses’ halter ropes from the picket line and was slipping around the camp, listening to the men talk. He wanted to be absolutely certain. When he saw Tiny Bates he knew he’d found the gang.
“I want that honey-haired wife of MacCallister’s,” Tiny said. “And by God I’m stakin’ my claim for her right now. Anybody got anything to say about that?”
No one did. They were, to a man, thinking and talking about all the other women in the twin towns of Valley and of all the booty that would be theirs for the taking once the raid was over and done with. They were quite vocal about what they were going to do with the women and the men, and none of it was pleasant to the ears.
When Jamie had satisfied himself that this was indeed the nest of vipers he had come to destroy, he did not hesitate in starting the job at hand. With fully-loaded pistols hanging all over him, Jamie stepped out to the edge of the clearing, a Colt in each hand, and started cocking and firing. It was a rolling thunder of death in the beautiful wilderness of northwest Colorado. Jamie would empty one brace of Colts, holster the empties, hook and draw, step out of the thick whirl of gunsmoke that hung around him, and continue the deadly fire and thunder into the knotted up camp of raiders.
When he had emptied eight Colts, Jamie ran back into the timber and quickly began the job of inserting freshly charged and fully loaded cylinders into all his pistols. Behind him, he had left a camp of death and pain. But he wasn’t nearly through just yet.
He still had some snakes to stomp on.
Jamie had poured forty-eight .44 caliber balls into the camp and had personally witnessed two dozen men go down in the first fusillade. The cut-loose horses had panicked and bolted during the attack and by now were a good mile away and still running hard. A dozen had run right through the camp, destroying supplies and doing no small amount of damage to any man who happened to be in their way.
From where he knelt behind a small rise, Jamie could hear the crying and moaning of the wounded in the ruins of their camp . . . and the hard cussing of others.
Jamie flitted through the brush and timber until he had circled the camp, coming to rest on the opposite side of where he had launched the first attack.
“The goddamn hosses is gone!” a man yelled.
Jamie lifted a .44 and drilled the man about three inches above his belt. Without hesitation, he emptied both pistols into the still startled and confused camp and then changed positions again.
Jamie’s philosophy of warfare was simple for this day: just attack until you defeat the enemy. He watched as several of the would-be raiders grabbed up blankets and a few supplies and hit the timber, running in the opposite direction of the gunfire. He let them go. It was the leaders he wanted.
“Rally around me, men!” a man shouted, a pistol in each hand.
“Go to hell, Thompson!” another man shouted, and ran for the timber.
“Coward!” Thompson shouted and shot the running man in the back.
Jamie leveled a Colt and plugged who he assumed to be Pete Thompson in the belly. Pete sat down hard and tried to lift his pistols. He gave up that idea after a few seconds and toppled over on his face.
A few of the men had found their horses, or somebody’s horse, and were hightailing it out of that area. When the sounds of hooves pounding the earth had faded, Jamie lay in brush and listened to the sounds of what remained of the camp.
“Yeller-bellied, red-nigger-coward!” Tiny Bates shouted. “You ain’t got the balls to fight lak a man, goddamn you, Jamie MacCallister!”
Jamie lay motionless and silent in the brush.
“He’s gone,” a man said.
“Don’t you believe that,” Rodman said.
The moans and cries of the wounded were fading as the badly hit died and most of the less seriously wounded kept quiet, not wanting to draw Jamie’s fire.
“Oh, dear sweet baby Jesus, help me!” a gut-shot man screamed.
“Somebody shoot him,” Wilmot said.
“Damn you, John Wilmot!” the wounded man cried.
Jamie heard the sound of gunfire coming from south of where he lay and couldn’t figure out what was happening.
“Jamie MacCallister!” came the shout, and Jamie recognized the voice of Lobo. “We got this camp circled, friend. We found your camp and left fresh venison. Get on back to your hosses and put on some coffee and get them steaks a-cookin’. We’ll take care of the rest of these hyenas.”
“You didn’t think we was gonna let you have all the fun, did you?” Preacher shouted.
Big Jim Williams yelled, “They’s a dozen of us out here, Jamie. You done your part, now let us take care of the rest of it.”
“Can we deal?” John Wilmot shouted.
“At the end of a rope, you damned worthless ne’er-dowell,” Audie yelled.
“Have to it, boys!” Jamie shouted. “I’ll have coffee on when you finish.” Jamie headed for his horses, glad that his part was over.
“Wait a minute!” Tiny Bates hollered. “You ain’t hangin’ me, you bastards!”
“Then we’ll just shoot you,” Preacher said. “That’s faster, anyways.”
“I protest this!” Buford Sanders squalled. “This ain’t right! ”
“Take it up with the Lord,” Lobo yelled. “’Cause you ain’t far from comin’ eyeball to eyeball with Him.”
Jamie found several of the raiders’ horses and led them back to his camp. He had sliced the venison, started it broiling, and was just dumping in cold water to settle the coffee grounds when the last shot rang out.
Preacher rode in out of the silence and swung down. “It’s over, Jamie. You and Kate can rest easy for a time.”
“Where are the rest of the men?”
“They ain’t civilized like me. They’re takin’ scalps.”
“What’s that hangin’ on your belt?”
“Well, hell, I only took one!”