Cry of Eagles (18 page)

Falcon and his small band lay on their stomachs in heavy brush less than a hundred yards from the cross where the female Apache and the brave with her found Cuchillo.

Falcon propped his elbows on the ground and watched them through his binoculars as they cut him down. Though he couldn't hear what they were saying, he could read body language well enough to know they were worried, as he had hoped they would be, by what they'd found.

The woman warrior kept looking over her shoulder, her hard face glancing to and fro as if searching for imaginary enemies about to come out of the dark and pounce on them.

The young brave walked stiffly, carrying his rifle at port arms, and even from where Falcon lay he could see the man's knuckles were white where he gripped the long gun as if it were going to jump out of his hands.

Falcon smiled to himself. His plan seemed to be working. The usually imperturbable Apache, people who were generally thought to not know the meaning of fear or trepidation, were beginning to realize there were forces after them they could not escape, forces that could defeat them as easily as they were accustomed to defeating the white man's army. It was just what he wanted them to think.

After the brave managed to find and catch one of the ponies belonging to the war party, he and the woman helped the wounded Indian up on the back of the animal.

They slowly rode off back down the trail, both of the newcomers looking continuously back over their shoulders to make sure no one was there.

When they were out of sight around a bend in the trail, Jasper Meeks slapped Falcon on the shoulder. “I never would'a believed it was possible, Falcon,” he said, sitting up and sticking a long, black cheroot in his mouth. He struck a lucifer on his pants leg and applied it to the cigar, puffing out clouds of evil-smelling smoke. “I never thought I'd see the day Apaches were spooked.

“It was a good idea you had, Falcon. Killin' them Injuns in the same manner they kill whites seems to have stuck in their craw. They don't seem to know what to make of it all.”

“That's the plan, Hawk. Throw something different, something they're not used to, at them, and see how they react,” Falcon answered.

“Well, it may be workin' like you said, an' it may be causin' the Injuns some troubles, but I still don't like it,” Cal Franklin said in a low voice. “It just ain't Christian, doin' what we done to them bodies. They may be Injuns, but that don't mean we should cut 'em up like they was cattle being butchered.”

Hawk glanced at Cal, his eyes hard. “Maybe you just don't have the stomach for this little war we got goin' on, Franklin.”

Franklin turned his head to stare into Hawk's face, not giving an inch. “I got as much stake in this as you do, Hawkins. They killed my friends and partners, an' I came along to get vengeance. The Good Book don't say nothin' against vengeance.”

“The Bible, if that's what you believe in, also says ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,' my friend,” Meeks said. “I personally don't believe in no God, but if'n there was one I can't hardly see how He'd object to doin' to the Injuns what they been doin' to white folks for years.”

He took a deep puff of his cigar, lay back against the grass, and blew smoke at the stars overhead.

“Besides,” he added, “what difference do it make what happens to your body after you're dead and gone? It's not like we was torturing those braves while they was still alive.”

Hawk took out a plug of Bull Durham and sliced off a thick piece with his knife. He popped it in his mouth and began to chew as he talked. “Any time it gets too rough out here for you, feel free to hightail it on back to your mine, Franklin. We can get along just fine without you.”

Before Cal could answer, Falcon interrupted. “Hold on, gentlemen. We need every gun we have, Hawk, and every man has a right to his own beliefs and feelings. If Cal doesn't feel right about the way we've been treating the dead Indians, he doesn't have to help with that part of it.”

Hawk turned his head and spat, the brown liquid steaming in the chilly night air. “If'n you say so, Falcon,” he said grudgingly, not looking at Franklin.

Falcon glanced at Franklin. “Cal, you have to realize why we're doing this. Cutting up those dead men has confused the Apache and made them stop and worry about what is going on. If they're confused and worried about us, they don't have time to go running around the country killing other people like they did your friends. Do you understand?”

Cal hung his head, looking at the ground as he made circles in the dirt with a stick. “Yeah, I guess so. I was just sayin' it bothered me, that's all.”

“It bothers all of us, too, Cal. None of us likes doing that sort of thing. But we're in a war here, and sometimes in war you have to do things you wouldn't ordinarily do.”

“I s'pect so.”

“What's next, Falcon?” Meeks asked, still lying on his back and looking at the sky.

“I'm going to trail those three back to the Apache camp and keep a lookout on them. I want to make sure Naiche doesn't move his camp before we can get some help up here to clean them out.”

“What about us?” Hawk asked.

“I'd like you to head on back to Tombstone and send a telegraph to Fort Thomas. We need to let the army know we've found Naiche's main base camp.”

“Why can't Meeks and Franklin go to Tombstone an' me come with you?” Hawks asked.

Falcon looked at him. “Because it's going to be hard enough for one person to watch the camp without being seen. After what I did to their sentry last time, they're sure to have doubled the lookouts. Hawk, there is just no way two of us, no matter how careful, could escape being caught.”

Hawk spat again, his face sour. “Well, all right, but that don't mean I got to like it.”

“I figure it'll take the army two or three days to get a sizable force from the fort to here. Try to get them to agree to meet me here at this location early in the morning of the third day from now, and I'll let them know what the situation is at the camp.”

“Them army commanders is stubborn,” Meeks said. “What if they don't agree to wait for you to get there, an' want to head on in on they own?”

Falcon shrugged. “That's simple. Don't tell them where the camp is, just tell them you'll bring them here and I'll lead them the rest of the way.”

“They won't like it,” Hawk said.

Falcon gave a grin with no humor in it. “They don't have to like it. Just tell them it's either my way or they can stumble around in these mountains for the next year trying to find the camp on their own, while Naiche keeps on killing people.”

As the others got their horses ready for the journey back down to Tombstone, Falcon worked on his rig. He took his spurs off and wrapped them in cloth so they wouldn't jingle or make any sounds. He tightened all parts of the saddle and reins so there would be no rattle or stray sound to give him away to the Indians he was tracking. Just before getting on Diablo, he took a small tin of bootblack from his saddlebag and rubbed it on his face. Though the moon was not full, there was still plenty of light to reflect off his white face and skin and give him away. After that, he removed his buckskins and replaced them with the black shirt and pants he generally wore on the trail.

When he was finished, he moved down the trail as silent as a ghost, and as black as night. By the time he was fifteen yards away from his friends, he was completely invisible.

“Damn,” Franklin said, “That man is incredible. I can't even see him no more.”

“Yeah,” Meeks said, lighting another cigar. “I'm right glad he's not on my trail.”

“Come on, boys,” Hawk said as he swung into the saddle. “We got a long ride to Tombstone ahead of us.”

After Meeks and Franklin got on their horses and the three men were on the trail, Hawk asked, “Jasper, you know anythin' 'bout the man in charge of Fort Thomas?”

Even though it was dark and he couldn't be seen, Meeks nodded his head. “Yep. His name's Colonel Grant.”

“What's he like?”

“He's a big man, barrel chest, hair startin' to go gray. Been out here for some years now, but like most of the army brass, he still hasn't learned diddly 'bout how to deal with Injuns.”

Hawk smiled grimly in the darkness. “Yeah, I know what you mean. The army, an' the politicians back east, keep thinkin' like they's dealin' with white folks. They just can't understand Apaches, or any Injuns, just plumb don't think like we do.”

Meeks nodded again. “You're right, Hawk.”

“You think this Grant will listen to what we got to say?”

“Who knows? Kind'a depends on his mood, an' what's been happenin' lately. If'n he's lost enough men to the redskins, then maybe, just maybe, he'll be ready to deal with us to get this war over.”

Franklin broke in. “Why wouldn't he listen to us? After all, we're trying to do him a favor and help him get rid of the Indians who've been riding around killing people.”

Meeks gave a short laugh. “Cal, boy, you got a lot to learn ‘bout the west. Army folks, lawyers, an' politicians are almost as strange in they thinkin' as Injuns. Only difference is, Injuns is more honest 'bout they intentions.”

It didn't take Falcon long to catch up with the three Indians heading back to their base camp. He stayed well back of them, and even though they kept looking back over their shoulders; they remained oblivious to his presence.

Falcon, for his part, enjoyed this game of cat and mouse almost as much as he enjoyed the gut-wrenching excitement of life or death battle. A curious mixture of the cerebral and at the same time physical, Falcon had always been somewhat different from most of the men who lived in the West.

Perhaps that was why he enjoyed playing mental chess with Naiche. Move and counter-move, advance and retreat, it was a game the Indian leader had no chance of winning.

Falcon glanced at the sky, noting scudding, scurrying clouds and a moon that was getting closer to full every day. The clouds were sparse enough to show there would be no snow or freezing rain, for which Falcon was thankful. Sleeping outdoors in good weather was all right, but during winter storms it could try a man's soul.

As he rode the Dragoons hunting renegade Apaches with men who carried unusual nicknames like Hawk and Jasper, he thought back to an earlier time, up in Wyoming Territory, where he'd assembled about the oddest collection of mountain men and gunfighters on earth. They'd given themselves downright different handles, and he had to admit that the name Falcon wasn't the least bit ordinary, either.

The whole thing had started when a power hungry cattleman hired gunmen to back his play. The Noonan boys intended to crush all the smaller outfits and put them out of business. They hadn't counted on Falcon MacCallister and some of his old mountain man friends showing up to take a side.

Noonan's foreman, Miles Gilman, also fancied himself a shootist and a bully ... another mistake, made at the wrong time. The odds looked long against MacCallister's friends, but then it would to men who didn't know the MacCallister breed and their inclination to join a fight.

All across Colorado, Northern California, and New Mexico, Falcon had sent wires to old associates. Then he'd gone looking for one man in particular....

* * *

Falcon knew he was being followed an hour after leaving the ranch. The man was pretty good, but Falcon was one hundred percent his father's son.
Nobody
was a better tracker than Jamie MacCallister.

Falcon had ridden through that country many times, but it had been a while, and his memory was busy trying to recall all the ins and outs.

After a few minutes, Falcon came to a spot he remembered. There was a tiny creek that flowed just behind a huge upthrusting of rock. If his memory served him correctly, he knew the place reasonably well.

He quickly swung in behind the rocks and ran back to deliberately cover his trail as clumsily as possible. Then, staying on rocky ground, Falcon got his rifle and ran to a smaller outcropping of rocks about forty feet away and directly across from the rocks that lay in front of the creek.

He made himself as comfortable as possible and waited.

The minutes ticked past and the sun grew hotter. The soft murmuring of the cold waters of the tiny spring-fed creek grew mighty appealing to Falcon. His mouth felt as though it were filled with cotton.

“Gettin' thirsty, boy?”

The voice and question came from behind him.

Falcon's hands tightened on his rifle and he waited for the shock of a bullet.

The bullet never came. Instead, a low chuckling reached Falcon's ears.

Falcon smiled as he recognized the voice.

“Big Bob Marsh,” Falcon said, exhaling anxiety-filled air from his lungs.

“In the flesh, and as handsome to the ladies as ever,” the man said, stepping closer.

Falcon stood up and the men shook hands.

“What in the world—”

Big Bob waved him silent. “I was about a hundred miles north of that pissant town in Utah when you put lead into Chet and Butch Noonan. If two ever deserved killin', them two did. But I knowed Nance would send men out lookin' for you. You took up with them smaller ranchers. I thought and thought ‘bout where you might go to hole up. Felt you wouldn't go back to Colorado, so you wouldn't bring trouble to your kin. Then I 'membered that old cabin built into the mountain. Went there. But by the time I reached the cabin, you'd done hauled it outta there. Been trackin' you ever since.”

“Now you've found me, an' a peck of trouble, too.”

“You've knowed me a long time, Falcon. When did I ever back away from trouble?”

* * *

That was only the beginning of Falcon's gathering of old friends. Men with names like Puma, Mustang, Wildcat, Stumpy, and Big Bob Marsh, along with a gunman named Dan Carson, joined up with Falcon in the middle of a wide street in a small Wyoming town where things between the rich ranchers and smaller cowmen would come to a head. Falcon remembered it well, almost like it was yesterday....

* * *

The seven men spread out across the main street through town, where the matter would be settled in blood.

“Must be fifty of' em at least,” Stumpy said. “An' another twenty comin' behind that first bunch.”

“That ain't all that many,” Big Bob groused. “You can bet Noonan and Stegman will be ridin' with them boys back behind the bigger bunch.”

“Get ready,” Falcon called, just loud enough for his men to hear. “They're going to be comin' up the street straight at us in a few seconds.”

“Just like I figured they would,” Dan said.

“Yep,” Mustang agreed. “You damn sure called this one right, son.”

“You boys know what to do,” Falcon continued. “Soon as the first lead flies, head for cover and then pick your shots.”

“You watch your butt, Falcon,” Big Bob warned.

“Good luck, boys,” was all Falcon said.

With a distant chorus of shouts, the mob led by Noonan and Stegman put the spurs to their horses and lunged forward, galloping down the street toward Falcon and his line of men.

When they got within good pistol range, all seven jerked two six-guns from leather and let them bang as fast as they could cock and fire.

Twenty saddles were emptied in a matter of seconds. Horses were rearing up and bucking and screaming in fright. Wounded men were crawling around in the dirt of the street, most of them getting trampled on by the hooves of the horses that had been galloping directly behind them.

When the dust settled Falcon and the mountain men were nowhere in sight, and the horsemen were trapped in the center of the street.

Falcon and three of his men opened up from one side of the street, while the three other mountain men opened up from the other. More saddles were emptied, and horses were going crazy from the smell of blood and the roar of gunfire and the screaming of the wounded gunhands.

Less than half of those who had arrogantly charged Falcon and his friends managed to get their horses turned around and gallop back out of town, many of them wounded. The street was filled with the dead, dying, and badly wounded.

Falcon and his men had not suffered even the tiniest of scratches.

Stegman was horrified at the carnage he was witnessing in the street, but Noonan was outraged.

“Dismount!” Noonan roared at his men. “Dismount and go after those bastards on foot! Kill them! Do it! I want all of you to go after 'em!”

A mob of hired guns spread out and began slowly working their way up both sides of the street, front and back of the businesses. There were Noonan and Stegman brothers and kids of the brothers and cousins and uncles, and so forth. For many of them, this would be the last fight. Their blood would stain the streets and alleys and boardwalks and businesses of the small western town in Wyoming.

“Just stay inside the church!” John Bailey told the people gathered for the church social. Preacher, get your choir together and give us some songs, will you?”

“My pleasure, sir,” Reverend Watkins said. Come, sisters, let us raise our voices in song while the Philistines spill their blood in the streets.”

* * *

Falcon came face-to-face with a bearded gunhand and shot him twice just as Big Bob lined up a paid gunny in his sights and blew him to hell.

Dan Carson stood in the doorway of a back door and waited until a gunslick walked up ... then he shot him in the head, and the man dropped dead.

Mustang stepped out of a building and blew one of the Noonan cousins out of one boot. The man was dead before he stretched out on the ground for the last time. Finally, one bare foot twitching, he lay still.

Puma called out to a gunslick. “Hey, you ugly bastard! I'm behind you!”

The man whirled around, and Puma gave him two .45 rounds in the chest.

Wildcat emptied one pistol into a knot of hired guns and sent two to the ground, mortally wounded. The other three jumped for cover and scrambled out of sight.

Stumpy leveled both pistols at several men who were trying to slip out the back of the building, and let his six-shooters bang. When the smoke cleared, two men were dead and the third was crawling away, out of the fight.

Suddenly there was a woman's scream, a terrible scream that cut the afternoon air.

After a few seconds, Falcon decided it wasn't a woman's scream; it was slightly off in timbre. He guessed what it was that made the sound.

A man staggered out from between two buildings, half his face gone and blood dripping from the terrible wound. The man tried to speak, but no words would come from his mouth, only muffled sounds.

“Jenny got him,” Puma called. “I told you she was close by.”

The man with half his face missing screamed in pain and then collapsed in the middle of the street and lay still, the victim of Puma's pet cougar.

“What the hell happened to Dick?” someone called. “I didn't hear no gunshot—”

“I don't know,” another man replied, “but half his face is plumb gone.”

A shot cut the afternoon, and a gunslick grunted and took a header off the hotel roof. He smashed through the awning, bounced on the boardwalk, and lay motionless.

“Falcon MacCallister, you son of a bitch!” Nance Noonan shouted.

Falcon did not reply. He stayed between two buildings, pressed up into a doorway.

“You've played hell, for a fact,” Noonan cried. “But this ain't over.”

For a fact,
Falcon thought,
and if you had any sense you'd pull up stakes and ride on out to another part of the country—that is, if you had any sense.

Then Nance Noonan signed his death warrant when he shouted, “I know you got kids, Falcon. And I know where they are down in Colorado. I'll kill them, MacCallister. I'll make certain none of your stinkin' offspring lives. They're dead, MacCallister. You hear me? Your kids is dead!”

Falcon felt an icy sensation wash over him, as if someone had thrown a bucket of ice water on him. He did not know it, but he was smiling. The smile was awful to behold. It was a curving of the lips that came straight from Hell.

“You're dead, Noonan,” Falcon muttered softly, only the faint breeze hearing his words. “You're a walking-around dead man. No matter where you go, I'll find you and kill you.”

A hired gun suddenly left cover and tried to make the side door to the general store. The guns of three mountain men barked, and the man stumbled and went down to his knees. He stayed in that position for a few seconds, then toppled over and lay still in the mouth of the alley.

“I'm done, MacCallister!” a man called. “I'm out of here. I'm holsterin' my guns and gettin' my horse and ridin' out, so don't shoot!”

Falcon maintained his silence.

“Me, too,” another man shouted. “This is crazy. I ain't gonna die for no damn Noonan. I'm joinin' Pete and ridin' out now!”

“You yeller-bellied bastards!” Nance shouted. “I've been payin' you top wages for months, and now you turn yeller on me. You stand an' fight, you scum!”

“You go to hell, Noonan,” another voice sprang out of an alleyway. “It's time, past time, you understood that you ain't gonna win this fight. It's over, man. And I ain't havin' no part of killin' nobody's kids.”

“That goes double for me,” yet another voice added to the quitting declarations. “I'm done here, MacCallister. My guns is in leather. I'm through. I'm headin' out the back alley and ridin' clear of this town. You understand?”

“Git gone, then,” Big Bob shouted. “All of you who want to live, ride out and don't never come back to this part of the country. If I see any of you again, I'll kill you on the spot. Ride out and don't come back. Hold your fire, boys. Let them ride clear.”

Nance cussed all those who gathered up their horses, swung into saddles, and rode out. “You sorry bunch of yeller coyotes!” he shouted, his voice filled with rage. “You no-good, scummy bastards. Take a man's money and then turn yeller on him. Goddamn you all to hell!”

One of the men who had made up his mind to ride out told Nance how and where he could shove his words—sideways.

Then Nance again screamed out his anger at his departing gunmen.

“How about it, Nance?” Falcon finally broke his silence. “You and me in the street. You have the nerve to face me man-to-man, you sorry piece of crap?”

There was no reply.

Falcon again called for Nance to meet him in the street. Nance made no reply to the deadly invitation.

“We're out of here, MacCallister,” yet another voice filled the late afternoon air. “We're done with this fight. They's five of us ridin' out. Hold your fire.”