Dreams of Eagles (30 page)

“Well, he ain't exactly standin' out in the street, boss,” one gunhand said.

“Where is he?”

“Standin' in front of the saloon.”

“He's still out in the damn open, ain't he?” Barlow yelled.

“Yeah.”

“Jesus Christ!” Barlow walked around in circles for a moment, muttering to himself. “Get into town two and three at a time. Don't ride in,
walk
in. Leave your horses at the edge of town. I want two or three of you in the Mustang Saloon, two or three in Sal's Cafe, two or three in the gun shop. Do I have to spell it all out for you?”

Spoiled brats were the same in 1851 as they were in 1651 and would be a hundred years in the future: overbearing, insufferable, pampered, petted, let's-do-whatever-we-want-to-do-to-anybody-'cause-daddy-will-get-us-out-of- any-trouble loudmouth punks. And Big Ben's brats fit the mold to a T.

Royal puffed out his chest and said, “This MacCallister bunch ain't nothin' but ignorant white trash, Daddy. Let me and the rest of the boys go in and take them.”

Big Ben looked at the six bright candles in his life. Such good boys. All of them smart as a whip, handsome, hard-working, and obedient. That all of his sons were just about as worthless as turds in the street would have come as a complete shock to the man. Oh, he knew they'd all been in a little trouble now and then—just boyish stuff like rape and assault and murder, that's all. Nothing that his power and money couldn't fix. When a good boy rolled in the hay with some Mex slut or some squatter's bitch, even if some people did call it rape, well, that really didn't count for nothing. Class will always tell. He looked at his sons and smiled.

“You boys just stay back here with me and let the hired hands handle this,” Big Ben told his sons. “If any MacCallisters is taken alive, I'll let you boys horsewhip 'em 'fore we hang 'em. How's that?”

That was fine with the boys.

Real nice boys.

Jamie waited in front of the saloon and drank coffee. Morgan had told him all about the Barlow clan, and none of it had been good. Big Ben and his boys had been having their way with folks in this area for years. Not so much with the people of Taos, for men like Kit Carson and some of the other mountain men who had made Taos their home wouldn't have put up with that for five minutes. But in the tiny villages and the lonely farms and ranches outside of town, people seemed to be open game for the Barlow boys. When the Barlow boys saw a woman they wanted, they took her by force, sometimes in front of the girl's parents. In other cases, they beat the husband senseless and then took turns raping the man's wife and/or daughters, and the age of the girls seemed to make no difference to them. The boys all alibied for the other or Big Ben bought the accusers off or killed them, whichever was the easier at the time. And it didn't make a damn bit of difference to Big Ben.

Then the Barlows tangled with a MacCallister. They would have been better off shaking hands with the devil.

Big Ben didn't know it, but his empire was about twenty-four hours away from total collapse.

Jamie held his cup out and a man limped out of the saloon, quickly grabbed it, and had it refilled.

“Thank you,” Jamie said.

“You're sure welcome, Mr. MacCallister. I hope you kill all them damn Barlows,” he added.

“They done a hurt to you?” Jamie asked.

“Killed my boy, stole my cattle, trampled my garden, shot my wife down like a rabid dog, and then took sticks of wood and broke both my legs so's I couldn't work no more.”

“He is telling you the truth, Senor MacCallister,” one of the town's Mexican doctors said from the saloon entrance. “And he is only one of many the Barlows have destroyed.”

“I reckon me and my boys will have to change all that,” Jamie said after taking a sip of coffee.

“You are a man of supreme confidence, Señor,” the doctor said.

Jamie shook his head. “No, sir. I just know right from wrong, that's all.”

Jamie watched as two men did their best to act normally as they tried to slip into the south part of town. Ian leaned out of a doorway and busted one on the side of the head with a rifle butt. He dropped like a stone. The second man whirled around and Matt conked him on the head with a piece of wood. The Bar-B hands were dragged out of sight and trussed up. Another Bar-B hand, after seeing what had happened rushed out into the street, his hands filled with guns. Morgan nearly cut him in two with a shotgun blast from his bed in the doctor's office.

Jamie watched it all as he leaned against an awning support porch in the shade and sipped his coffee.

A half dozen Bar-B hands, who possessed more than a modicum of common sense, met in the livery and had a very brief discussion concerning what they figured would be the fate of Big Ben and his sorry-assed sons . . . and anybody who rode with the Barlow clan. The last time the six of them were seen they were riding north and not looking back.

“Dennis and half a dozen more just rode out,” a hand reported to Barlow.

“The rest of the men?”

“They're stayin'. They like it on the Bar-B.”

They should, they were all drawing top wages, had good living conditions, and were well-fed. And up to this point, a Bar-B brand meant they could ride rough-shod over anyone they chose and could expect no trouble from the law.

“It's time the people in that damn town learned who's the boss hoss around here,” Big Ben said, settling his hat firmly on his big square head. “Let's ride in an' take it.”

A young boy, probably about the same age as Falcon, came running up the side of the street to a sliding breathless halt by Jamie's side. “They're coming, Mr. MacCallister!” he panted the words. “All of 'em. Looks like a whole army riding into town.”

“Thank you. Now get out of the street, son.”

Jamie picked up his sawed-off shotgun just as the first wildly tossed pistol shot from the Bar-B riders reached him.

“That's my horse you shot, you son of a bitch!” a citizen shouted at the mob of riders.

Hugh Barlow laughed and shot the citizen in the belly. The man's wife started screaming that her husband was shot and one of the town's doctors left the saloon on the run, his little black bag in his hand.

The Mexican doctor stepped out of the saloon to take a break from patching up the wounded Bar-B riders. “Nice people aren't they, Senor MacCallister.”

“Wonderful,” Jamie said, cocking both hammers of the sawed-off shotgun. “Now get back inside. The lead is about to fly.”

“And you are invincible, I suppose?” the doctor asked.

“No. I'm just a warrior.”

“Someday you must explain that to me,” the doctor said just as the Bar-B riders rounded the corner. The doctor stepped back inside.

Jamie lifted the 12-gauge and pulled both triggers, clearing four saddles. Across the street, Morgan let his Colts bang, as did Ian and Matt. Twelve men lay dead and mangled and wounded in the street.

The Bar-B riders, including the boss and his sons, wheeled their horses and got the hell gone from that part of town.

Outside of town, Big Ben assessed the situation and found it not to his liking. He had ten men dead, about fifteen wounded, and two captured. He stomped around in a circle kicking and cussing for a moment, then turned to a rider. “Get back to the ranch. I want every hand we have here with me. Strip the range. We can round up the cattle later. Ride!”

“Drag the wounded out of the street,” Jamie told a group of citizens standing under the awning, looking in awe at the carnage the MacCallister family had just wrought in Taos. “But leave the dead.”

One citizen looked up at the clear blue sky. “It ain't gonna take 'em long to get ripe in this weather, mister.”

“They'll cool down come the night,” Jamie said, picking out the empty shells and shoving fresh ones into the tubes of the sawed-off.

There was a reason Jamie wanted the street littered with the dead. No matter how tough and hard the men Barlow had working for him, very few would deliberately ride their horses over the bodies of men they had worked with and fought with and with whom they had endured all sorts of hardships.

While the crowd was working to drag in the wounded, Jamie told his reasons to Dr. Medina.

The man shook his head. “Perhaps I see now a bit of what you meant by being a warrior.”

“Perhaps,” Jamie replied and walked across the street to see about his sons. Few men other than mountain men knew what the Warrior's Way meant, unless they had been seized as children and adopted by Indians as Jamie had been.

“You all right?” Jamie asked Morgan.

“Fine as frog hair,” Morgan replied. “You mind pourin' me another cup of coffee, Pa? It's kind of hard for me to get around on this bum leg.”

His son's cup refilled, Jamie checked on Ian and Matt, who had barricaded themselves in shops. He told both of them the same thing. “Get out of these stores. It's going to be in the streets from here on in and you don't want to get yourselves hemmed in.”

“What about Morgan?” Ian asked.

“Let him finish his coffee and then we'll move him. He's too vulnerable where he is. Right now, let's get us something to eat. We might not get another chance for hours.” The Indian philosophy: eat when you can, drink when you can, rest when you can, for you might not get another chance for a long time.

“Where are we movin' Morgan, Pa?” Matt asked.

Jamie grinned. “To the second floor of the saloon.”

* * *

“Now see here!” the owner of the saloon blustered as Morgan limped in on the arm of Ian. “It's bad enough having my place turned into a damn hospital. But this is—”

“Shut up,” Jamie told him. He flipped him a hard-boiled egg from the free lunch counter. “Use your mouth on that.”

The owner looked at the egg, then shrugged his shoulders and began to peel it.

Morgan safely installed in an upstairs room with plenty of water and sandwiches and good protection from stray bullets, Jamie and sons stepped out into the waning light of late afternoon.

“We'll each catch a few hours' sleep,” Jamie said. “You boys go on and get some rest. I'll wake you in a couple of hours. There isn't going to be much sleeping this night.”

Taos, usually a wild and woolly place when the sun went down, was strangely silent when night spread her cloak over New Mexico.

Ben Barlow, for the first time since the MacCallisters rode into the town, was finally showing some fighting sense. Under cover of darkness, he began sending men into the town in small groups. The men threw a circle around the block housing the saloon and several other businesses. But there was no sign of any MacCallister.

Jamie had left his position in front of the saloon and was now standing in an alley between a saddle shop and a Mexican apothecary. He saw two men with rifles step out of an alley across the street and called, “Here I am, boys.” Then instantly dropped belly down on the ground.

The quiet night was shattered by heavy caliber rifle fire. From across the street, Jamie's Colts barked and the two men went down and did not move.

A Bar-B rider got separated from his partner and ran right into Ian. Ian's knife flashed in the dim light and Big Ben Barlow was minus one more man drawing fighting wages.

Jamie could hear boots scuffing the ground behind him and knew then that Barlow had ordered his men to circle the block. He took the sawed-off twelve-gauge and crawled on his belly to the rear of the alley. He saw several dark shapes slipping along and fired both barrels waist high. He immediately rolled to his right, but no returning fire came his way.

Matt was standing by the side of a dress shop in the darkness of the alley when two men suddenly appeared at the rear. Matt's Colts flashed fire and smoke and lead and Big Ben's payroll was further reduced.

Nick Geer, Ben's foreman, walked up to his boss on the south end of town. “This ain't worth a damn, boss,” the foreman said bluntly. “At last count we got about sixteen dead, fifteen or more wounded, six who rode away, and two captured. At this rate, we won't have nobody come daylight.”

“There ain't but four goddamn MacCallisters in that town,” Ben Barlow raged. “That means that a lot of the townspeople have joined them against us.”

The foreman shook his head. “No, sir. It don't mean that a'tall. There ain't nobody in that town fightin' us 'ceptin' Jamie MacCallister and his sons.”

Big Ben Barlow went into another of his rages, stomping around, kicking, and cussing. It was inconceivable to him, a man who had been the undisputed Bull of the Woods for years, that only four men could do so much damage. “They got help from somewheres,” he said, finally calming down enough to speak.

The foreman said nothing in rebuttal. He knew there was no point in it. Nick also knew that there was no good way to tell the boss that about half the men left were talking of quitting and pulling out. There was also no way to tell Big Ben that all the right was on the side of the MacCallisters and all the wrong on the side of the Bar-B. The foreman walked away into the night without saying another word.

All through the night there were brief flare-ups of fighting in the south part of the town. Jamie's face was cut by flying splinters, Matt took a bullet burn on the upper part of his left arm, Ian got creased on the right leg, high up on the outer thigh. But Barlow suffered four more dead and six wounded during the night. That brought the total to twenty dead, twenty-one wounded, two captured, and six gone.

Big Ben Barlow was very nearly out of men willing to fight and die for him.

In the grayness of pre-dawn, Ben looked at his top hand, Miles Swift. “How many men are left, Miles?”

“Eight. The rest pulled out about twenty minutes ago.”

“Where's Nick?”

“Gone. He left with them others. He give me a message for you.” Miles hesitated, not looking forward to this a bit.

“Well, say it, goddamn it!”

Miles took a deep breath and plunged ahead into the unknown. “Nick said we was all wrong and the community and the MacCallisters was right. Said he wasn't havin' no more to do with lyin' for them goddamn worthless sons of yourn and wasn't takin' no more part in hurtin' innocent folks who just was tryin' to make a go of things. He also told me something else. He told me to tell you to take your boys and to go right straight to hell with them.”

Miles braced himself for the blow-up, but it did not come. Ben was silent for a moment. He took several deep breaths and clenched and unclenched his big fists. “You know he's been filin' on land that I claim, don't you, Miles?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Some of the boys who left with Nick, they goin' to work for him, eh?”

“Probably.”

“What do you think about this situation, Miles?”

“I ride for the brand, Big Ben.”

“Come hell or high water?”

“That's about it, I reckon.”

“You think that I've been wrong in some of the things I've done, Miles?”

Miles gave that some thought. “I think we could have backed off some, yeah.”

“You ever had any children, Miles?”

“None that I know of.”

“Then you wouldn't understand about a man and his sons. Besides, there are two kinds of people in this world, Miles. Just two kinds, and that's all. Big dogs and little dogs. Call it leaders and followers. I'm a big dog and I damn well intend to stay that way.”

Miles almost told the man that big dogs get buried in the same ground as little dogs but thought better of it.

“At first good light we go into town and call the MacCallisters out, Miles. Pass the word. Hell, it's sixteen to four, man. We use our heads, we can't lose.”

“Right,” Miles said, with about as much enthusiasm as a man about to stick his hand into a den of rattlesnakes.