10
Jamie held up his left hand to caution the man, his right hand hovering over the butt of his Colt. “There are innocent people on the streets. Let them get clear. Let’s don’t have a lot of blood spilled here needlessly.”
“To hell with them!” the man shouted in a hoarse voice. “I’ll kill twenty of them just to get to you.”
“I don’t know you, mister,” Jamie said, stalling for time as the pedestrians began scattering out of the line of fire. “Who are you?”
“The man who’s gonna kill you and become famous, that’s who I am.”
“Have I ever done you a harm?”
“That don’t make no never mind.”
“What’s your name?”
“Boots Lowery. Enough talk, MacCallister.”
“You really don’t want to do this, Boots. It isn’t worth it. Whatever you’re getting paid, it isn’t worth dying over.”
“Old man, I think you’re a damned coward!” Boots hollered. “I don’t think you got no sand no more. I think you’re yellow. Now, draw, goddamn you!”
“After you, Boots,” Jamie called. “It’s your play.”
Boots was fast, and he did clear leather first, but as so often happens, he missed his first shot, the bullet whining off the bricks of a building.
Jamie had turned sideways, to present a smaller target, and his shot was true. The bullet struck Boots in the center of his chest. The man lowered his gun arm as his fingers suddenly turned numb, his pistol clattering to the street. He looked down at the bloody shirt front, then lifted his head to stare at Jamie.
“You’ve killed me!” he whispered. “This ain’t the way it’s ’posed to be.”
“But that’s the way it is, kid,” Jamie said. “You wanted to dance, now pay the band.”
Boots tried several times to pull his left-hand gun. His fingers fumbled at the butt until he finally got it clear of leather. He tried to cock the weapon but could not. The pistol slipped from his fingers, and Boots sat down hard in the middle of the street. He finally toppled over on one side.
Jamie walked over to him and looked down. “Who paid you to try this, boy?”
“Go to hell, MacCallister,” Boots whispered the words.
Several police officers arrived, one of them saying, “I’ll take that pistol, mister.”
Jamie looked at him and smiled, then stuck the hogleg back behind his sash. He turned and walked away just as the first few bits of snow began falling. The gathered crowd parted silently, to give him room.
“They’ll get you, MacCallister!” Boots managed to shout the words through his pain. “Your life ain’t worth a cup of spit.”
Jamie kept walking.
“Sir!” another policeman called. “You can’t just walk off. You shot this man!”
“The man in the street shot first,” a citizen told the policeman.
“But I have to make a written report,” the policeman protested. “Stop, sir. Or I’ll be forced to place you under arrest.”
Jamie stopped and turned around. “All right. Then just write down in your pad that Boots Lowery missed and Jamie Ian MacCallister didn’t.” Jamie turned and continued his walk up the street.
The policeman put away his pencil and pad. “Oh, to hell with it,” he muttered. Then the name registered. “Jamie Ian MacCallister!” he hollered, his voice registering his shock.
Jamie turned the corner and disappeared into the cold night.
“Mama!” Boots Lowery said weakly. “It hurts, mama!”
A doctor pushed his way through the crowd, knelt down beside Boots, and opened the man’s coat and shirt. He inspected the wound. A moment later he looked up at the police and shook his head. “Better call the undertaker for this one. It won’t be long.”
Boots started hollering.
“Lay still,” the doctor told him. “And make your peace with God.”
“MacCallister!” Boots squalled. “This ain’t right. You’re an old man. I’m young.” He coughed up blood. “It’s ’posed to be you here in the street.”
“Well, it isn’t,” the doctor said, standing up. He looked down at the young man. “You actually tried to kill Colonel MacCallisters?”
“Yeah.”
“Damn fool!”
“He got lucky, that’s all,” Boots gasped, the words no more than a whisper. He closed his eyes for the last time.
“Maybe so,” a policeman said, looking down at the body. “But you’re still dead.”
* * *
“Pa’s in Denver,” Morgan said, stepping into his sister’s house, waving the week-old newspaper. “He killed a man on a downtown street.”
Matthew was somewhere out in the county, chasing down a horse thief.
“Then he might be coming home for a time,” Little Ben Pardee said. He and his wife, Kathy, Ellen Kathleen’s daughter, were over for a visit.
“I doubt it,” Morgan said. “Told me ’fore he left he’d rather not look again on Ma’s grave until she was fully avenged.” He held up the newspaper. “According to this, the man who braced Pa was a paid assassin.”
“Those damn Saxons and Newbys and Olmsteads again,” Joleen said, laying aside her sewing.
With the exception of Ben Pardee, everyone in the large room was blond-haired and blue-eyed. Ben said, “Hard to believe the colonel’s been gone near’bouts a year and a half. I wonder when he’ll come back.”
“When it’s done,” Megan said.
* * *
Jamie stood at the bar, one boot on the railing. He was dressed to the nines, wearing a new tailor-made dark suit, sparkling white shirt with string tie, and a new dark hat with a silver band. His boots were polished to a high shine. He wore both Colts in leather, low and tied down. He was clean-shaven now, except for a neatly trimmed moustache. His hair was trimmed short. Jamie stood alone at the bar, at the far end, facing the front door and batwings.
The bar was one of many located on Holladay Street, a four-block area known as the “Street of a Thousand Sinners.” The four blocks were filled with saloons, whorehouses, and gambling houses. It was said that those four blocks contained more wickedness than any other four blocks west of the Mississippi River.
Any outlaw who hit town immediately gravitated to Holladay Street.
Jamie waited at the bar. He’d heard that three of Miles Nelson’s gang were in town, and knew that sooner or later, they’d surface, and he would be waiting and ready.
There were outlaws in the saloon, but Jamie left them alone. They were not the ones he sought.
Jamie sipped his drink and waited.
A man dressed in rough and stained clothing left a table and walked to Jamie’s side, placing his mug of beer on the bar. He was very careful to keep his hands away from his guns. “I ain’t never done you a harm, Mr. MacCallister,” he spoke in low tones. “And I ain’t never been in Valley, Colorado, nor anywhere’s close to it. I’ve rid the hoot-owl trail more’un once, but I ain’t never harmed no woman nor child. And I can’t abide a man who would. The three you’re lookin’ for is up to Belle’s House of Pleasure. Soon as they get done with the Doves, they’ll be here. Son Hogg, Jim Aarons, and Glen Anderson. Nice talkin’ to you, and I’m gone.”
Jamie nodded his head in acknowledgement. The outlaw downed his beer, set the mug on the bar, and walked out.
Those seated at tables close to the long bar began seeking other places to sit, getting out of the line of fire. Obviously, the outlaw who had warned Jamie was known to many of them, and they probably had discussed it among themselves.
Jamie waited with the patience of a born hunter.
* * *
In Boston, the editor of the paper accepted Ben F. Washington’s letter of resignation with a great deal of reluctance. Not only was Ben a fine reporter, but he was a friend of the family.
“Not to worry,” Ben assured the man. “I have money. I’ve got to go back to the West. I have to resolve this personal issue.”
The editor leaned back in his chair. “I think you’re underestimating this Falcon MacCallister, Ben. He’s a known gunfighter and a bad man to fool with. If he says he’ll kill you, I believe he means to do just that. Ben . . . let sleeping dogs lie. What you plan to do is pure vindictiveness . . . it won’t help you. And it’s so unlike you.”
Ben sat down and looked at his boss and friend. “It was vindictiveness, at first. I will readily admit that. And as Falcon pointed out, jealousy. But since I’ve been back east, I’ve had a chance to think things through and realize how silly and petty I’ve been about this matter.” He shook his head. “I really behaved as a fool. Oh, hell, Frank! I’m not going to write a book that would ruin my sister’s life. Our parents won’t even be in the book. I want to write a book about Jamie Ian MacCallister. Not a Penny Dreadful. But a real book about the man, factual. Jamie Ian and Kate. They’re both legends, Frank. Real legends. And somebody needs to chronicle their lives. But Frank, my sister needs to be told of her background. If she becomes pregnant and gives birth to some nappy headed breed . . . that would destroy Page and her husband.”
The older man nodded his agreement. “But do you have the right to do it, Ben?”
“Since I’ve come to my senses, I’ve been giving that considerable thought. I don’t really know what to do about the situation. Well, that’s not correct. I know what to do. I just don’t know how to go about it.”
“Ben, I’m going to put this resignation in my personal safe. No one else will know about it. In the meantime, I want you to continue working for us. Send in a story every now and then. When your manuscript is ready, I can get your book published. What do you say?”
Ben smiled and reached across the desk, hand extended. “I accept.”
“Good, good. When are you planning on leaving?”
“In the morning.”
“Going back to Denver?”
“For a time. Then I plan on taking the stage for Valley.”
The editor smiled. “Going to jump right into the thick of things, huh?”
Ben returned the smile. “That’s the only way, Frank.”
* * *
The men met in a hotel suite in Washington, D.C. They were the sons and grandsons and cousins of the Newbys, the Olmsteads, the Saxons, the Layfields, and the Bradfords. And they all, for various reasons, hated Jamie Ian MacCallister. Some of them hated him because their fathers had hated Jamie. That was the sadness of a long-running blood feud: the reasons for the hatred obscured in the mist and shadows of time.
“Now is the perfect time for us to rid ourselves of Jamie Ian MacCallister,” a Newby said. “That bastard has bounty hunters all over the West looking for him. A few more men, on our payrolls, won’t even be noticed in the hunt.”
“Take him alive and torture him,” a relative of Kate said. “It’s common knowledge he’s got gold hidden all over the mountains around Valley. Now that Kate is dead, the gold belongs to the family she deserted down in Kentucky, when she run off with MacCallister back in ’25 or ’26. It’s only right, and I won’t be cheated out of my share.”
“MacCallister killed my Uncle Henry down the Big Thicket country,” a Bradford said. “I want him dead. And I don’t need to hire no damn bounty hunters. I got five big, strappin’ boys that I can cut loose any time. They’ll take care of MacCallister.”
“Anybody here know a man name of Grover Ellis?” Olmstead asked.
They all shook their heads.
“MacCallister run Grover out of his valley right after the war. Then Grover got killed a couple or three years later over on the Bearpaw. ’Fore he died, he claimed MacCallister done it or had it done. Well, his kin come out to avenge him, and there was a big shoot-out. MacCallister had gotten together some old mountain men and a couple of Injuns and the like, and they fairly whupped a whole army of men. Well, this Grover Ellis has got more kin just achin’ for revenge.”
“Just like I’m aching for revenge for my uncle,” Layfield spoke up. He grimaced. “Who lies rotting in that damnable insane asylum.”
“I personally feel we won’t have to do anything,” Olmstead said. “Jamie Ian MacCallister’s string is just about played out. Let’s start our legal actions against the MacCallister clan’s claim to own all that land. I’ve got a couple of federal judges in my pocket, and they’re ready to go.”
“Sounds good,” the men all agreed.
“It’s over for you, MacCallister,” Newby muttered, pouring himself a glass of whiskey. “After all these years, our good name will be avenged, and my kin can rest easy in their graves.”
The men in the cigar-smoke-filled room did not take into consideration that Jamie just might have something to say about that.
* * *
Jamie waited patiently for over an hour. Finally, his persistence paid off. Three roughly dressed and unshaven men swaggered through the door. Their guns were loose in leather, and they were ready for action. Jamie had no doubt that they had been tipped off to his presence.
“You’ve been damned lucky this far, MacCallister,” Son Hogg said. “But tonight is when your luck runs out.”
Son stood staring and sneering at Jamie. A big man, as big as Jamie. Jamie knew that a man Son’s size could soak up a lot of lead before going down.
“Could be, Son,” Jamie said, then shifted his eyes to Jim Aarons. “You want to flap your big stupid mouth about anything, baby killer?”
Aarons flushed darkly under his unshaven face but kept his mouth closed.
Jamie looked at Anderson. “How about you, child raper? You have anything to say?”
Anderson was suspected of brutally raping at least three young girls during his criminal years.
“I say it’s time for you to die, you washed-out, used-up, old son of a bitch!” Anderson flung the words at Jamie. “What do you have to say about that?”
“Then drag iron, baby raper,” Jamie told him. None of the three could see that Jamie had already drawn and cocked his right-hand .44. “What the hell do you want from me, an engraved invite?”
The three outlaws exchanged glances. Even though they had Jamie three-to-one, none of them were all that anxious to mix it up with him. Jamie was still a very dangerous pistolero... a hard fact that all three were well aware of.
“Old man,” Son said. “They’s three of us.”
“I learned to count a long time before your mother crawled under the porch and whelped you, Hogg,” Jamie said, offhandedly implying the man was a son of a bitch.
“Damn your eyes, MacCallister!” Hogg yelled, his face darkening with rage. “Fill your hand, old man!”
“Oh, it’s already filled, Son,” Jamie told him, then lifted his pistol and shot Son Hogg in the belly.
Hell broke loose in the saloon.