13
“I’m simply flabbergasted,” Ben said, setting his coffee cup on the chair-side table. “You knew all along.”
“Ever since I was old enough to understand,” Page replied. “Oh, I don’t blame mother for hiding it. Had the knowledge leaked out, she would have been ruined. Negroes couldn’t own property. But you must remember this, Ben: our mother and uncle are very ruthless people. There is no doubt in my mind but what they tried to kill you . . . several times. And now that they know you’re back in Denver, and have been to see me—and they will know all that—my life is in danger as well.”
Ben gave that some thought. “You’re right about that. What are your plans?”
“To stay here,” James William said quickly. “If we possibly can.”
“That hinges on the child?” Ben was very quick.
“Yes,” his sister told him.
“Well,” Ben said, standing up. “I won’t visit again. I will not be responsible for upsetting any more apple carts.”
“You can visit whenever you like, brother,” Page told him.
Ben shook his head. “No. But thank you. I shall stay here in Denver for a time; then I’ll go to Valley. I want to start my book about Jamie and Kate MacCallister. Theirs is a story that must be told.”
“Have you a title yet?” James William asked.
“Yes. I think I shall call it Rage of Eagles. ”
* * *
“I don’t want trouble in my town, MacCallister,” the marshal told Jamie.
Jamie had just left the saddle when the marshal, the mayor, and several townspeople approached him.
He turned to face them. “If the men I’m looking for are here, there will be trouble, and you won’t run me out of town, either. Not unless you want the streets to run red with blood . . . and most of it won’t be mine.”
The men exchanged glances, uncertain as to what to do next. After all, this was Jamie Ian MacCallister, a man of whom countless stories had been told from coast to coast and border to border, and all of them true.
“Mr. MacCallister,” the marshal said, softening his tone and becoming much more respectful. “Two of the men you’re looking for are in town. Reed Dunlap and Alonzo Barton. But they aren’t wanted by any law around here, and I have no dodgers on them. They’ve rented a small house on the edge of town, and have caused no trouble.”
“They attend my church,” a tall, skinny man all dressed in severe black with high collar said. “They have found the Lord.”
“They’re damn sure going to meet Him,” Jamie told the preacher. “A hell of a lot sooner than they imagined.”
“You are not God’s avenging angel,” the preacher said. “You have no right to do this.”
“And Reed and Barton had no right to attack my town, killing a dozen people, including my wife, and wounding twenty more, and that includes small children. Now get the hell out of my way. I want to stable my horses, take a bath, and have something to eat.”
“I’ll call the federal marshals,” the mayor threatened.
“You do that. By the time they get here, I’ll have settled my score and be a hundred miles away.” He looked at the marshal. “You just get the women and kids off the street.”
No man could be a coward and be the marshal of a western town. And the marshal was no coward. But he did have his share of common sense. “When I heard you were on your way here, I sent those two men out of town. They’ll stay gone until you leave.”
“No, they won’t,” Jamie told the man. “They’ll be slipping back in the dead of night to ambush me, kill me while I sleep, or back shoot me. Or they might decide to face me in the street. The rest of you men might not realize that, but the marshal does. A skunk don’t lose its stripe just ’cause it gets tired of it, preacher. You ought to be worldly enough to know that.”
“The Lord will punish you for this, Jamie Ian MacCallister,” the preacher predicted.
“Then that’s between me and Him, isn’t it?” Jamie took his saddlebags, bedroll, and rifle, and pushed his way through the knot of townspeople. “Excuse me,” he said, and walked toward the town’s single hotel.
Reed Dunlap and Alonzo Barton were wanted for murder in Texas and Louisiana. They had robbed and raped and killed for more than ten years, and now they had both changed their evil ways and were big workers in the church?
Sure. Right.
But Jamie decided he’d better shave and bathe quickly, for he had him a hunch that word would get to the pair of outlaws shortly . . . and it just might get there through the preacher or some of his flock.
Jamie bathed with his guns close by the tub and then shaved himself instead of seeking out a barber shop. He did not want to be stretched out in the barber chair with a hot towel over his face when Reed and Barton decided to make their play.
It was mid-afternoon and warm when Jamie stepped out of the hotel and took a seat on a bench under the awning over the boardwalk. School was out, and the word had spread about his being in town. Kids began to gather to his left and right and in a bunch across the street, gawking at him.
The marshal ambled up and took a seat on the bench beside him. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead with a red bandanna. “Gettin’ warm early, ain’t it, Mr. MacCallister?”
“Seems that way. Marshal? Was I you, I’d tell the women to get these kids off the street. A carelessly thrown bullet doesn’t care who it hits.”
“Reed and Barton won’t be comin’ in, Mr. MacCallister. They have changed their ways.”
“They’ll be here, Marshal. And they’ll come shooting.”
The marshal was thoughtful for a moment, then waved one of his men over and told him to shoo the kids home. He turned to Jamie and asked, “Did you really know Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett?”
“For a few days. They were good men. Every man there was a good and brave man.”
“The fight at the Alamo seems a long time away, Mr. MacCallister. I was just a small boy back in Missouri when all that took place.”
“Been a lot of changes since then, for sure.”
“The coming of law and order for one thing, Mr. MacCallister,” the marshal said softly.
Jamie smiled. “Reed and Barton are wanted all over the West, Marshal. For rape, robbery, and murder. And you know it. Why don’t you arrest them and notify the authorities?”
“Because they are not wanted here, Mr. MacCallister. And they have broken no laws here. Men can change, sir.”
“Yes. They can. But there is a little matter of punishment for past sins, don’t you agree?”
Jamie had the marshal with that one, and the marshal knew it. He offered no response to the question. He could only shake his head.
The marshal rose to his boots and looked up and down the now nearly deserted street. He let out a long sigh. “Well, it’s on your head, then, Mr. MacCallister. And the blood spilled will be on your hands.”
“I wash my hands several times a day, Marshal. And they’ll be clean when I ride out of town.”
“If you ride out of town, Mr. MacCallister. Have you given that any thought?”
Jamie’s only reply was a smile. His eyes had already picked up two riders coming in from the east. “I’ll give you odds those riders are your good and decent Reed and Barton, Marshal. And they’re coming in loaded for bear. Would you like to take that bet?”
The marshal’s eyes were bleak. “You gave them no choice, Mr. MacCallister. You know how people in the West feel about a coward.”
“I know how I feel about murderers and thieves and rapists. And as a lawman, you should feel the same way.”
The marshal gave no reply to that. He turned and walked away, his boots clumping on the boards.
The two riders were now clearly recognizable as they reined up in front of the livery and stepped down from the saddle. Jamie watched with amused interest as Reed and Barton took rifles from the saddle boots.
The outlaws began walking up the center of the wide, wheelrutted, and dusty street. They stopped directly in front of the hotel to turn and face Jamie, who had risen to his feet, his Colts loose in leather.
The minister, the marshal, and the mayor were standing about fifty feet away, to Jamie’s right, in front of a general store with a crudely carved wooden Indian on guard out front.
“How nice to see you boys,” Jamie said. “It’s always a pleasure to see men who have made such a drastic change in their lives and accepted the Lord and been washed in the blood of the lamb. I reckon you boys have given up your drinking and whoring and thieving and raping and murdering, right?” The sarcasm fairly dripped from his mouth.
Reed cussed Jamie, the vile words springing from his mouth. The minister stood and gawked in disbelief as the filth rolled over the outlaw’s tongue.
“My, my, my,” Jamie chided the men. “That is no way for a good Christian man to talk. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
It was Barton’s turn to cuss, and cuss he did, tracing Jamie’s ancestry all the way back to the trees and caves, the route liberally sprinkled with profanities.
“My word!” the gangly minister blurted.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Jamie said. “I’m plumb ashamed of you boys. You ought to have your mouths washed out with soap. The minister yonder had such high hopes for the both of you.”
“I am deeply offended,” the minister said to the pair of outlaws.
Barton told him to stick his Bible where the sun don’t shine, and Reed added that there might be room there for his buffalo-butted wife, too.
Jamie cut his eyes and had to laugh at the expression on the minister’s face. He looked as though someone had just goosed him with a hot branding iron.
“You think this is funny, you son of a bitch?” Reed yelled at Jamie.
“Mildly amusing, yes. You sure pulled the wool over these folks’ eyes. How much of the money you helped steal from the Valley Bank and the stage line do you have left?”
“Enough to buy some whoors and celebrate and get drunk after we kill you, MacCallister,” Barton said.
“Well, then, you got a mighty big mountain to get over, boys. So why don’t you start climbing?”
Jamie’s eyes were on the faces of the outlaws; all else was ignored. He heard the minister begin praying, but the words were indistinct. The mayor was saying something, but his words were garbled in Jamie’s ears. Time seemed to stand still. The marshal was urging the men to give it up; they’d get a fair trial. If dogs barked, birds sang, or horses whinnied, the sound did not register on Jamie. His concentration was all on the outlaws standing in the street.
Then their expressions changed, and Jamie knew they were going to make their play.
Reed’s rifle came up, and Jamie palmed his Colt and fired, the bullet taking Reed in the chest, knocking him to his knees. As soon as he fired, Jamie shifted positions, taking several steps to his right.
Barton’s rifle barked, the bullet slamming into the awning post. Jamie fired, the lead hitting Barton about two inches above the belt buckle, the impact turning him in the street.
“We should have burned your damn town to the ground!” Barton hollered. “After we had our way with your females.”
Jamie’s .44 roared again, and Barton joined his buddy in the dirt, sitting down hard and losing his grip on the Henry rifle.
Reed lifted his pistol and fired, the hot lead burning Jamie’s shoulder. Jamie ignored the burning pain and the wetness of blood oozing from the wound and shifted his Colt and pulled the trigger. Reed stretched out full-length in the street and did not move.
A photographer’s flash pan popped off to Jamie’s left, and the muted mini-explosion almost got the picture taker shot, Jamie holding back at the last instant.
“I’ll see you in hell, MacCallister!” Barton yelled, lifting his pistol.
“Say hello to your buddies when you get there,” Jamie calmly and coldly told him, then drew his left-hand Colt and fired both pistols, the twin bullets striking the outlaw in the chest.
Barton said no more. He died sitting up and remained that way for a few seconds before toppling over in the dirt. Jamie reloaded and stood for a moment, looking at the bodies in the street.
To his dying day, Jamie could not explain why he did it, but as he stood on the boardwalk that afternoon, the gunsmoke lingering all about him, he let the hammers down on his Colts and spun them a couple of times before sliding them back into leather.
Just as Jamie spun the heavy Colts, the photographer’s flash pan popped again. That picture would be shown from coast to coast and border to border. The tall, gray-haired, but still very handsome man, spinning his twin Colts seconds after leaving two outlaws dead in the street.
Jamie Ian MacCallister would forever be epitomized as the stereotyped western gunfighter. From the moment the picture was shown, hundreds of young men began dressing like Jamie, wearing their guns like Jamie, cutting their hair like Jamie, trimming their moustaches like Jamie, and doing their best to be just like him in every way possible.
Jamie turned and walked into the hotel, cutting to his left toward the bar. A very nervous bartender served him whiskey, from the good bottle usually reserved for the mayor, the banker, and rich ranchers in the area.
Jamie took a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and carefully unfolded it. Taking a pencil, he drew a line through two names.
The bartender heard him mutter, “Twenty-eight down, twenty-seven to go.”
That muttered phrase, and the pictures and later hundreds of drawings of them, would blast out of the small northeastern Colorado town, scattering like birdshot in all directions.
While Jamie lingered over his whiskey, the bodies of Alonzo Barton and Reed Dunlap were carried off the street and to the undertaker, to be measured for a close coffin fit and planted the next day.
Jamie returned to the hotel and told the desk clerk to send up pen, ink, and paper, and retired to his room. He spent the rest of the afternoon writing letters, leaving them with the front desk to be posted as soon as possible.
Jamie told the marshal to use the money found in the pockets of the dead men to pay for their funeral and maybe hire several mourners and wailers for the service. Jamie knew he had recovered all of the stolen money he was likely to find. After almost two years at the hunt, that money would be spent.
Just before the stores closed for the night, Jamie bought supplies for the trail, checked on his horses, and then went back to his room. He was gone when the town awakened the next morning. Not even the night constable had seen him leave, and no one had any idea where he might have gone.
Exactly as Jamie had planned it.