MacCallister: The Eagles Legacy (11 page)
Read MacCallister: The Eagles Legacy Online
Authors: William W. Johnstone,J. A. Johnstone
Tags: #Fiction, #Westerns, #General
“He means the chicken and dumplings,” the serving girl said.
“Oh, yes, I will tell her,” The bartender replied.
Aware that everyone was still staring at him, Duff left the saloon and walked back down to the depot. The depot platform was crowded, not only with the passengers who were getting back on the train but with several of the citizens of the town who had come just for the excitement of watching a train arrive and leave.
The fireman had banked the fire during the stay, but had re-stoked it in preparation for their departure. The train was alive with sound, from escaping steam to the gurgling of water in the boiler.
“Board!” the conductor called and he smiled and touched the brim of his hat as Duff stepped aboard.
“You gave the bully what was coming,” the conductor said. “Good for you.”
Duff looked at him in surprise.
“I was there, I saw everything. You didn’t notice me, because I took off my coat and hat.” He laughed. “I can’t eat ham and fried potatoes every meal, either.”
Chapter Eleven
Duff had just settled in his seat on the train when he saw the woman from the Occidental Saloon come onboard. She looked around the car for a moment, then seeing Duff, came back to his seat. He started to stand, but she held out her hand.
“Don’t be troubling yourself, Mister, I won’t be bothering you,” she said. “I just wanted to thank you again.” She held up her ticket. “I’m going on to Central City. There’s nothing here for me now, and I’ve got a friend there.”
“You gave up your job?”
The woman smiled. “Mister, in my line of work, jobs are easy to come by,” she said.
The train whistle blew two long whistles, then the train started forward. As the slack in the couplings was taken up, the young woman, still standing in the aisle beside Duff’s seat, was thrown off balance and would have fallen had Duff not caught her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll go find a seat somewhere and be of no further bother.”
“Nonsense, you are no bother,” Duff said. “Please, sit here.”
The woman sat down, not on the seat beside him, but on the seat across, facing him.
“My name is Belle,” the woman said. Then with an uncomfortable smile, she shook her head. “No, it isn’t. That’s just the name I use when I’m working. My real name is Martha. Martha Jane Radley. I don’t know why I told you my real name. I never tell anyone. I would not want it to get back to my pa that I am a soiled dove.”
“Soiled dove? I don’t know the term.”
“Soiled dove is what we, that is, girls who are on the line, call ourselves.”
“On the line?”
“I am going to have to come right out and say it, aren’t I?” Martha said. “I don’t just serve drinks. I am also a prostitute.”
“I see.”
“I came west from a small town in southeast Missouri,” she said. “I thought I could make it on my own, but it is very hard for a woman, alone, to find honest employment. Out of desperation, I drifted into prostitution. You can’t be just a little bit of a prostitute—you either are, or you aren’t. And I am. I was told that it would be easy work, and I would make a lot of money.”
“
Och
, but it isn’t what you thought, is it?”
Och
, but it isn’t what you thought, is it?”
“You got that right, Mister. The saloon gets most of the money, and as for easy work”—she put her fingers to the scar on her face—“there is nothing easy about dealing with drunken cowboys when they get frustrated because they can’t—uh—perform.”
“Yes, I saw an example of that back in the Occidental Saloon.”
“That was Clyde Shaw,” Martha said. “He isn’t the one who cut me, but he does like to slap the girls around a bit. You haven’t told me your name.”
“Oh, please forgive me, lass, I apologize for my lack of manners. The name is MacCallister. Duff MacCallister.”
“Mr. MacCallister, believe me, you have nothing to apologize for.”
Duff chuckled. “If that were but true,” he said.
“MacCallister. Are you kin to Falcon MacCallister?”
“Aye,” Duff said, surprised to hear Falcon’s name mentioned. “He would be my cousin. ’Tis surprised I am to hear ye say his name! How is it that ye know him?”
“I know who he is, but I don’t know him. I’ve never met him,” Martha said.
“Then, how can it be that ye know who he is, if ye’ve never met him?”
“Don’t you know?” Martha replied. “Falcon MacCallister is well known throughout the West. Why, there have been books written about him, as well as his famous father.”
“He has a brother and sister who are famous as well,” Duff said. “They are actors upon the stage in New York.”
“Really? I didn’t know that. Oh, how I would love to visit New York someday. And go to a play. And see all the sights. Have you been to New York, Mr. MacCallister?”
“Aye.”
“If I ever get to visit New York, I will never leave,” Martha said.
Duff and Martha continued their visit for the four hours it took to travel from North Bend to Central City.
“I had a true love once,” Martha said. “But his father was a very wealthy man and he wanted his son to marry the daughter of a wealthy man. My pa was a preacher man and he barely made a living from it. Leo, that was my beau’s name, came to see me the night before he was to get married. He wanted me to still be there for him after he got married. He said he would set me up with a house and would come see me when he could. I got very angry with him for asking me to do something like that. I wanted to know what kind of woman he thought I was. The truth is, I wanted to do it, but I was afraid to. Something like that would have killed my pa. So, I left home, rather than stay there and take a chance that I might take Leo up on his offer.”
Martha made a sound that might have been a chuckle. “I was too good to be a kept woman—but now look at me. I am a whore.”
“We cannot always direct the paths our lives will take,” Duff said. “We can only but go where life leads us.”
“If you mean we have no control over our own lives, you’ve got that right,” Martha said. “Take you, for example. You said you are from Scotland, but here you are in America. Did you plan to come here?”
Duff shook his head. “I had no such plans.”
Duff told Martha about Skye, and that she had died on the day before they were to wed. He did not tell her how she died, nor did he tell her of his own actions after she died. But he did tell Martha how deep his love was for Skye and how much he grieved for her.
Duff’s tale left Martha in tears, and she reached across the space that separated them and put her hand on his shoulder.
“Mr. MacCallister, you are a good and decent man,” she said. “You are as good and decent a man as I have ever met. I hope that you can find peace in your heart. And I hope that someday you can find a woman who is worthy of your love.”
Duff had welcomed Martha’s company while she was on the train, for the conversation helped pass the time on the long journey. As the train continued west, Duff stared through the window at the vast, open, and featureless plains, interrupted occasionally by small, strange-looking houses that appeared to be made of the same ground from which they rose. That idea was confirmed when he asked the conductor about them, and was told that they were sod houses, built by cutting sod from the ground. They passed through places like Elm Creek, Plum Creek, and Oglala, and he was once again alone with his thoughts. Being alone with his thoughts was not all that pleasant, for he could not get that last picture of Skye from his mind.
Skye lifted her hand to his face and put her fingers against his jaw. She smiled. “’Twould have been such a lovely wedding,” she said. She drew another gasping breath, then her arm fell and her head turned to one side.
Duff shook his head to clear it of such thoughts, then continued to stare through the window at the boundless, grassy plains. On the one hand, there was nothing to see; on the other, there was almost a grandeur to the vast openness and desolation, a vastness of solitude without a tree, river, bird, or animal of any kind.
As they approached the mountains, now a purple line far to the west, the plains began to change. The grass was greener and the wildflowers more profuse and more colorful. Finally, the isolation, the rhythmic motion of the car, the drone and clack of the wheels as they passed over each rail section, and the comfort of his seat caused Duff to drift off to sleep.
Duff was cold. It had surprised him when he first arrived in Egypt to learn that the desert could get cold at night. Part of the chill, he realized, might be the task that lay before him. The Egyptians had set up their defenses at Tel-el-Kebir. The desert around Tel-el-Kebir was extremely flat, so any approach by the British would easily be spotted. As a result, the British decided to march across the desert by night and attack the Egyptian positions at dawn. The British army was guided by Commander Wyatt Rawson, naval aide-de-camp to Lieutenant-General Wolseley. Calling upon his experience as a navigator, he plotted their course across the desert as if they were at sea, using the stars to guide him. The army reached their destination, then moved into position silently.
As a captain, Duff MacCallister was the commanding officer of one of the companies in the 42nd Foot, and once they were in position, he visited with his troops, calming them, preparing them for the battle that was to come.
“Captain, will we hear the pipes?” Private Kirk asked.
“Aye, lad, the pipes will play.”
“Pity the man who hears the pipes and was not born in Scotland,” Kirk said.
Although many of the men were visibly nervous, none seemed so frightened as to be unable to perform his duty, and after visiting every one of his men, Duff returned to the front of his company.
“’Tis a good officer ye be, visitin’ with the men like that,” First Sergeant Wallace said.
“’Tis easy to be a good officer when I have good men and good NCOs, First Sergeant,” Duff replied.
“Captain MacCallister? Where is Captain MacCallister?”
Duff heard his name being called in the darkness, and he recognized the voice of Colonel Groves, the commanding officer of the regiment.
“I am here, sir,” Duff called back.
Groves materialized in the dark and Duff saluted him.
“Captain MacCallister, General Wolseley has chosen our regiment to lead the attack, and I want your company on point. Is your company up to it?”
“Aye, Colonel,” Duff replied. “If it’s killin’ o’ the enemy you be wantin’, we are the lads that can do it for you.”
“Hear, hear,” those soldiers who were close enough to overhear the conversation said.
“Very well, Captain, move your men into position and begin the attack,” Colonel Groves ordered. “The rest of the brigade will move forward on your signal.”
“Thank you, Colonel, for affording us this honor,” Duff said.
“’Tis an honor well earned,” Colonel Groves replied.
At exactly five a.m., as the high skirling sound of bagpipes could be heard all across the desert, Duff ordered his men forward. With fixed bayonets, they rushed the Egyptians. The predawn darkness was illuminated by the flash of a thousand and more rifles. Bullets whizzed by Duff’s ear, some of them so close that they made popping sounds. Men to either side of him screamed in pain or fell silently as they were hit. All the while, above the bang and whiz of rifles and bullets, above the deep-throated yells of men in desperate battle, could be heard the sound of the pipes.
The charge continued until the British and Egyptian lines melded. The British soldiers were armed with Martini-Henry rifles, to which were attached bayonets, and they made frightful use of them until their blades were running red with the blood of the hapless Egyptians, who had no bayonets and thus were ill equipped for the hand-to-hand fighting that developed.
Duff, driven by adrenaline, leaped over the parapet and into a trench filled with Egyptian soldiers. Because he was an officer he was armed not with the Martini-Henri Rifle but with the Enfield Mark 1 pistol. Using his six-shot revolver, he killed six of the ten Egyptians who were in the trench. The other four, without regard to the fact that Duff was now out of ammunition, leaped out of the trench and ran.
The pipes were still playing, but one of them seemed badly out of tune and Duff could hear none of the drone pipes but only the high, screeching whistle.
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