Dreams of Eagles (22 page)

The first ten men to ride into the settlement were blown out of their saddles by the surprise gunfire that came from all around them. Several of the men had their boots caught in the stirrups and were dragged beyond recognition before the galloping and gunfire-spooked animals finally slowed and stopped from exhaustion. A half dozen more charged the church and were cut down by the withering hail of lead coming from the men and women inside.

With more than a third of his force and the element of surprise gone (something that Rolly only thought he had) he signaled his men to retreat.

But the settlement also suffered losses. Two of the men were dead and one woman was badly wounded. The mercenaries had managed to set some buildings on fire, and the settlers forgot about pursuit and concentrated on saving their homes and barns.

Jamie jerked one slightly wounded man to his boots and shoved him toward a barn. “I ain't tellin' you nothin', MacCallister!” the man shouted defiantly.

Jamie smiled the same sort of smile a rattlesnake does before it strikes.

He came out of the barn about fifteen minutes later. “The man's alive,” he said to Kate. “I just roughed him up a bit.” He looked around him. The fires were all out and had done little real damage. Ian had saddled Thunder and Kate had fixed him a nice bait of food, tucked in the saddlebags. Jamie's bedroll was tied behind the saddle.

“Melinda is missing!” a mother wailed. “My girl's been taken.” Her husband grabbed her as she fainted and looked around helplessly.

The man Jamie had roughed up to get information about the gang laughed from the barn. “You'll not see that squatter's bitch no more!” he shouted. “By now Bob Dalhart's done spread them legs and had his way.”

Reverend William Haywood gave Jamie a bleak look, got a rope from a porch, and started fashioning a noose. “I'm a God-fearing man,” he said, “but trash is trash.”

“I agree,” Swede said. “Toss the rope over that tree limb yonder.” He pointed. “I'll go fetch that brigand.” He looked at Jamie. “You have objections?”

“Not at all. We might as well send a strong signal to any who might think of doing the same thing.” He touched Ian on the arm. “Go saddle your horse. You'll bring back the girl's body for proper burial.”

“Yes, Pa.”

Jamie put his arms around Kate and held her close for a moment. “I'll be back when you see me, love.”

“I know you will. Take care.”

Jamie was in the saddle and riding. Ian could catch up.

Swede picked the mercenary up and threw him into a saddle, then fixed the rope around the man's neck.

“You have anything you would like to say before you meet your Maker?” Reverend Haywood asked.

The man spat at the minister. “Go to hell, you son of a bitch!”

Haywood slapped the horse on the rump and the man swung. He kicked a few times and was dead.

“William,” Haywood's wife said. “We forgot to ask his name.”

“I personally don't give a damn what it was,” the reverend replied.

Jamie found the body of Melinda about five miles from the settlement. The girl had been raped repeatedly and then her neck had been broken.

“That outlaw said the man's name was Bob Dalhart,” Ian said, after getting a blanket from his horse.

“I won't forget.”

Ian handed him the lead rope to a pack horse “You'll be needin' these supplies. I 'spect you'll be gone for some time.”

“I 'spect. Look after things, son.”

“I will, Pa.”

Jamie swung into the saddle and rode west after the gang. Ian picked up the blanket-covered body of the girl and got into the saddle. He remembered that the girl was ten years old. She'd had a birthday party just a few days back.

* * *

Rolly and thirty-three of his men had escaped the killing gunfire in the settlement. To a man, they knew they were in trouble. Men killing men was nothing new. But to attack a peaceful settlement on a Sunday morning and attempt to kill women and kids, plus the taking and raping and murdering of a young girl, that would never be forgiven, not even in the west. Now, to make matters worse, they had Jamie MacCallister on them like a leech. He had already killed nine, all of them either from ambush or after slipping silently into their camp at night. And Jamie had spread the word about the men. No one would lift a finger to help them . . . yet. They were welcome at no trading post. Worse yet, although Rolly and his men did not know it, the residents of New York City were going to be outraged when the news of the attack on the settlement in MacCallister's Valley reached them, and Mr. Maurice Evans was going to be finished in that city. He would be forced to get out and make his headquarters first in St. Louis and then finally in San Francisco.

* * *

Some twenty-odd very tired and very frightened men sat their exhausted horses and looked at Rolly Hammond for leadership.

“Split up,” Rolly said. “Small groups. It's the only way.”

“I ain't believin' this, Rolly,” a man called Ned griped. “They's twenty-five of us and we're turnin' tail and runnin' from one man.”

Sonny Andrews looked at the man and reminded him, “There was fifty of us when we started.”

“I'm done runnin',” Ned stated. “I make my stand right here.”

“I'm with you,” Lenny said.

“Me, too,” a hulking lout called Claude stated. “I ain't runnin' no more.”

“Count me in,” Peter Hart said.

“I think you're all crazy,” an outlaw called Red said wearily. “But I'm damn tarred of runnin'.”

“Good luck,” Rolly said and lifted the reins, urging his tired horse on. “Let's go.”

Four men rode out with Rolly.

“Good luck, boys,” Vic Johnson said and rode away, taking four men with him.

“I hope you kill the bastard,” Witt Chambers said. “Good luck.” Four men left with him.

Soon the men were all alone . . . or so they thought. Had they looked up they would have seen Jamie squatting about a hundred yards away on the side of a rocky timberless ridge. He was using the oldest Indian trick in the world: simply remaining still where there was no cover.

Jamie waited until the men were busy gathering wood for a fire and moving logs and rocks into a crude fort, then he vanished from the ridge, moving behind the men and settling down in a good concealed position about seventy-five yards to the rear of the barricade. He listened to the men talk, and their talk was filled with what might have been back at the settlement if the attack had been successful. It was disgusting and sickening, evil in its perversion. They talked and laughed and made crude jokes about someone named Fritz using young boys in terrible ways, about Bob Dalhart and the young girls he had raped and abused and killed. And they talked about their own past, dark and twisted and filled with debauchery. They spoke highly and with much admiration of a man called Witt Chambers, whose vile acts made their own evil pale in comparison; of Vic Johnson, who had killed his own mother and father and had then raped and murdered his sister back in South Carolina; of a man called George who enjoyed torture. Jamie could finally stand no more. He lifted his rifle and shot Peter Hart through the head.

The man pitched forward and landed against the man called Red, splattering him with gore. Red screamed and tried to push the body away. His hesitation was just enough for Jamie to pull his second rifle to his shoulder and plug Red in the center of the chest.

Jamie quickly changed locations and reloaded. He waited amid rocks and brush.

“MacCallister!” Lenny shouted. “Damn it, MacCallister. Listen to me. It was a job of work, that's all. Just like cleanin' out a nest of red niggers. It's over. We ain't got no hard feelin's agin you. Let's call it even. Let us be and we won't be back.”

You damn sure won't, Jamie thought. He shook his head. A job of work. Jamie began slowly working his way above the men, trapped in the crude log and stone fort just off the Indian trail. Then he noticed a small band of war-painted Sioux on the other side of the ridge. A warrior made the sign for Jamie to go. Jamie raised his hand and vanished back into the timber, heading for his horses. He had a good hunch that those remaining mercenaries would not die quickly . . . or well.

* * *

Jamie knew Rolly's sign well, having been on it for days, and that was the trail he followed, for he had heard the men back at the makeshift fort say that those with Rolly included Fritz, Calvert, Macklin, Bob Dalhart, and probably a man called Sonny.

These were the worst of the worst including the head of this particular snake pit. The real snake pit lay far to the east: a rich man named Maurice Evans and a lawyer called Laurin. He would get to them. All in good time.

Now that the raiders had broken up into small groups, and since there was no real description of any of them, chances were good that any trading post the small groups stopped in would have no reason to deny them food or supplies. The word was out on a large group of men, not four or five men riding together.

And Jamie knew of a trading post not a day's ride from where he was. He followed a slow, winding creek south. Rolly and those with him had tried to hide their trail by riding in the creek, but that wouldn't work with an experienced tracker. Jamie could easily see the hoof prints in the bottom of the shallow creek, could see where the men rode out of the water and went back in.

He knew exactly where Rolly was heading, for Goose Creek ran right past a trading post and then petered out just a few miles later.

Jamie stopped long enough to bathe and shave and fix something to eat. He was running out of supplies and planned to resupply at the Goose Creek post . . . after he dealt Rolly and the others their last hands in this game. Would he then go after the others? Jamie doubted it. He knew he probably should, for men like those who had attacked the settlement were the type who harbored long smoldering grudges, and they might well return at some later date.

But his original anger and outrage had tempered somewhat. Jamie had learned over the long and brutal years that men of the type who attacked the settlement usually came to no good end.

But what bothered Jamie was how much damage and destruction and misery to other people they would cause before the end came to them.

He tried to tell himself that was no concern of his.

Didn't work.

But Jamie's mind was still puzzling over some of the gunfire he'd heard back at the settlement, coming from a few of the raiders. It had been just too rapid to make any sense. So rapid that it had to have come from one pistol. But Jamie could not for the life of him figure out what it could be.

And that musing almost cost him his life.

Thunder tensed under him, screamed as only a horse can do, which can be frightening, and jumped to one side, almost throwing Jamie out of the saddle. A rifle crashed and Jamie could feel the hot breath of the ball as it sailed by his head. He kicked out of the saddle and rolled on the ground, still clutching firmly to his rifle.

He came up on one knee just as a man charged out of the brush toward where he'd seen Jamie leave the saddle. Jamie leveled his rifle and shot the man in the chest, stopping the ambusher in mid-stride and throwing him to the ground.

Jamie waited for a moment, watching to see if the man would move. He didn't. Then Jamie could see where his ball had blown all the way through the man, exiting out his back.

Still, Jamie did not move, not wanting to reveal himself in case the man was not alone. After several minutes, Jamie eased up to the dead man and knelt down. The rifle by the man's side was nothing to write home about, but the pistols belted around his waist were like nothing he had ever seen before. Then he realized these were the revolvers he'd heard Sparks talk about before.

Jamie slipped them from their flap holsters and hefted them. To an ordinary man, they would be very heavy, to Jamie they were light.

He didn't know it, but he was looking at a pair of the Walker Colts, .44 caliber, six-shot revolving cylinder, weighing nearly five pounds apiece. Slightly over eleven hundred had been manufactured by Samuel Colt for the Texas Rangers, and each was serial numbered and engraved, starting with the number 1, and then either A, B, C, D, or E for the five companies of Texas Rangers. But these had no such numbers or engraving, for this was part of a shipment that had been stolen from the factory and sold to men traveling to the west.

Jamie went through the man's jacket pocket and found a half dozen fully loaded cylinders for the Colts. There was nothing else except lint to be found. No letters from home, no money, nothing. He rolled the man under an overhang and caved dirt over him. He felt reasonably certain the man had been a part of the gang who had attacked the settlement but could not be sure. So he said a few words over the man and let it go at that.

Then he found the man's horse and discovered two more Walker Colts in the saddlebags with another six full cylinders. He found a sack of brass percussion caps and .44 caliber balls, lead, and a mold to make more.

Jamie turned the horse loose and then rode on for another couple of miles before dismounting and beginning a careful inspection of the weapons. He loved the balance and the feel of the heavy pistols, but he didn't like the flap holsters taken from the dead man. Jamie cut the flaps off, punched a hole through the leather and ran rawhide thongs through the holes that would fit over the hammers and thus secure the Colts in the holsters. Then he started practicing with the pistols.

The thought of seeing how fast he could get the pistols out of the holsters had not occurred to him.