Rage of Eagles (14 page)

“You know the easy way to do it, don't you?” Dan broke the silence.

“Oh, sure. But do you think John would go along with that?”

“He might not have a choice in the matter.”

Kill Noonan, Stegman, and Gilman. Take out the leaders and the rest would break up.

“He'll never go along with it, Dan. Put it out of your mind.”

“It was just a thought.”

“I had the same thoughts, believe me.”

“It's what Jamie would have done.”

“Oh, I know that. Pa wouldn't hesitate for a minute. Neither would I, for that matter. But this isn't our show. We're just the soldiers in this little war.”

Dan chuckled and Falcon cut his eyes. “Something funny about that?”

“The soldiers always have the solution, boy. The men who do the actual fightin' always know the simple way. It's the generals and the politicians who drag it out.”

Falcon had to smile, knowing the mountain man was right in what he said.

One by one, the others joined them at the corral, standing and smoking in silence. Finally Cookie made up the last of the nonfamily group. Kip was considered part of the Bailey family.

“John is one of the most decent men any of you will ever run up on,” Cookie said. “He's honorable clear through. He still thinks there's hope for Miles.”

“He's wrong,” Big Bob replied. “Miles Gilman's power-hungry. I can't speak for his other kids, but Terri and Lars is just like him. Terri's lazy and worthless and Lars is just plumb crazy in the head. That whuppin' you gave him, Falcon, shoved him over the edge.”

“I know that now,” Falcon admitted. “I wish I hadn't done it.”

The others looked at him, Mustang saying, “It wouldn't have taken no big push, boy. He was set to step over the line. Borned that way.”

“And the daughter ain't no different,” Puma allowed. “That girl's not right in the head.”

“You mighty right about that,” Cookie said. “She's just mean, that's all. She's always been that way. She's just plain low-down dirty mean.”

“She really is?” Dan questioned.

“She really is. She's just no good,” Cookie allowed. “She's done some dastardly things.”

“Well, I'll be damned. Pretty thang, though.”

Cookie grimaced. Obviously, he did not share Puma's sentiments.

“Miss Angie damn shore wound her clock for her though, didn't she?” Wildcat asked with a grin.

All the men, including Falcon, got a chuckle out of that. After the quiet laughter died away, Falcon said, “We'd better start posting guards now. I hate to do it, but I think it's the smart thing to do.”

“I was gonna suggest that,” Mustang said. “Miles ain't never gonna forget that whuppin' John Bailey hung on him. He was some hot about that.”

“He sure was,” Stumpy said. “And him and that boy of hisn both meant what they said about killing you and John, Falcon.”

“I know,” Falcon's words were soft in the fading afternoon light. “There are threats, and then there are threats. Both father and son meant theirs.” Falcon began assigning men to guard times. When that was done, he added, “And trouble could come any night. Including tonight.”

Falcon had just gone on his watch, midnight till two, when his eyes detected the slightest movement from the direction of the creek. There were no cattle grazing in that area. He waited, watching. There was another movement, off some twenty or thirty feet from the first one. Falcon knelt down, picked up a pebble from the ground, and tossed it against the side of the bunkhouse. That would be all the signal the mountain men would need. They had spent their entire lives living on the edge of danger, and the slightest sound would bring them awake.

Within seconds, the front door to the bunkhouse was cracked open a few inches. Falcon hooted as an owl, then followed that with a nightbird's call. The door closed quickly, the mountain men picking up on one of the Cheyenne signals for danger.

But there was no way Falcon could signal those in the main house. They would have to come up alert and ready at the sound of the first shot. Falcon had told John about his plans to mount a guard and the rancher agreed it was the prudent thing to do, especially after hearing Stumpy tell of the bunch of hired guns he'd seen riding in.

Out of the corner of his eye, Falcon saw the front door to the bunkhouse open, and three men dart out, a few seconds apart, rifles in their hands. One headed for the barn, another took up position behind the woodpile, and the third bellied down behind the rocks of an old well off on the far side of the bunkhouse.

Falcon heard another nightbird call, coming from the main house, and he smiled. John was up and had seen what was going on. The old Indian fighter had been sleeping very lightly. He would have his family up and the adults ready at rifle slits, Jimmy safe behind cover. His puppy, whom he had named Freckles, cuddled safe with him.

Falcon smiled, thinking,
Come on, boys. Hit us with your midnight raid. We're ready.

Falcon looked very carefully all around him, moving his head slowly, ears straining to pick up the smallest of sounds. There! And there! And over there! The hired guns had managed to surround the spread before one moved at the wrong time and Falcon detected the movement.

Falcon heard Hell snicker softly in his stall. He wouldn't make a sound if it was someone familiar, so that meant that a mercenary had made his way into the barn. The mountain man waiting in the barn would not give away his position until the first shot was fired outside, or unless the gunhand spotted him, but if the hired gun somehow got into Hell's stall, he would never leave it alive, or at best would leave crippled, for the big mean-tempered horse would kill him or stomp him.

Falcon waited for the hired guns to make the first move. He didn't think it would be long in coming, for if one was already in the barn, the rest were almost in position. And that surely meant that several were closing in on the main house, set some hundred or so yards up a slight incline from the bunkhouse. Falcon hoped John and his family were ready.

That was answered a heartbeat later when a rifle cracked from the house and a lifeless form came rolling down the incline a few yards.

“Go!” someone shouted. “They've spotted us. Burn the place down.”

When the torches the gunhands carried were ignited into flame, Falcon and his men opened up, laying down a hail of gunfire. The men carrying the torches went down almost immediately, mortally wounded. The torches began burning themselves out harmlessly on the ground.

“It's an ambush!” one of the gunslicks screamed.

That's all he got to say before Falcon drilled him in the belly with a rifle shot.

Then the night exploded in gunfire as the night raiders were caught out in the open: dark shapes that clearly stood out as they tried to run for cover.

Many of them didn't make it, for the raking gunfire of the ranch defenders was merciless.

The firefight was over in a few minutes, the survivors making it back to their horses and heading hard for home range, leaving their dead and their badly wounded behind.

The defenders left their positions warily, but all the fight was gone from those wounded left behind. Several of them were calling for doctors. Most would not live long enough to see a doctor.

Martha and Angie stayed in the main house with Jimmy. John and Kip walked among the dead, dying, and wounded.

“You know any of them, Kip?” John asked.

“No. I never seen any of them before.”

Kip held the lantern while John knelt down beside one hard-hit gunhand. The young man had taken two .44 slugs in the belly. He couldn't have been more than twenty years old.

“Boy,” John said, “you got parents somewhere?”

The young man nodded his head.

“You want me to notify them?”

“No,” the young man gasped. “I ain't got nothin' to say to them two.”

“That's mighty hard of you, son.”

“They threw me out. Hell with them.”

John left him and walked to an older man who had taken a slug through his chest. There were pink bubbles forming on his lips. He was lung-shot. John squatted down beside him.

“Forget it,” the hired gun said. “I ain't got nothin' to say to you. Leave me die in peace.”

John walked over to another gunslick and knelt down. “I got money in my pocket,” the man whispered, “and my Ma's name and town writ down on a piece of paper. You see she gets the money?”

“I'll see to it,” the rancher said. “You have my word.”

“Kind of you.” Then the man closed his eyes and died.

John patted the man's pockets until he found his wallet. There were fifty dollars in the worn leather purse and a piece of paper. He stood up and shook his head. “Fifty dollars,” he said softly. “The man died for fifty dollars.”

“Nobody forced him to sign on with Gilman,” Kip reminded his friend. “Or whoever he was workin' for.”

John Bailey sighed. “You're right about that, Kip.” He looked around him. “Falcon?”

“Right here, John.”

“Are there any wounded who can drive a wagon?”

“Oh, yes. One here with just a crease on his head. He's fine otherwise.”

“Have the boys hitch up a team, please. We'll put the dead and the wounded in the wagon and take them to town.”

“All right, John.”

“You think they'll be back this night, Falcon?” Kip asked.

“No. I think they're through for this night. Has anybody counted the dead?”

“Hell, we ain't found 'em all yet,” Dan Carson called. “Here's another one that's hard hit and ain't gonna make it.”

“I don't wanna die!” the hired gun gasped, his words drifting all around the minibattlefield.

“You should have thought about that 'fore you decided to fight for pay, boy,” Dan told him, a hard edge to his words. The older man had seen death come riding up on all kinds of horses during his hard life in the wilderness.

“Them ain't very kind words, mister,” the belly-shot gunhand moaned.

“Wasn't very kind of you and your friends to come in here shootin' up the place and disturbin' our rest neither,” Dan told him. “Hasn't anybody ever told you that older folks need their rest?”

“You're makin' light of my dyin'!” the man gasped.

“Well, I damn shore wish you'd hurry up and ex-pire, boy,” Puma told him. “I was havin' me a dandy dream 'fore all this crap started.”

“Oh Lord!” the man cried.

“He's tryin' to sleep, too,” Big Bob Marsh said. “Now make up your mind whether you're gonna live or die and get on with it.”

“Y'all ain't decent,” another wounded man said. His wounds were painful, but not life-threatening. “I ain't never heard such hard talk in all my borned days.”

“Stick around, sonny,” Mustang told him. “It's liable to get a lot worser”

“Mama!” yet another dying man hollered.

“It's gonna be a long night,” Wildcat bitched.

* * *

Noonan and Stegman arrived the next day, riding far in advance of the herd being pushed up into north Wyoming. They sat in Gilman's study, drinking whiskey and listening to yet another one of the survivors of the abortive raid on the Rockingchair tell what happened.

Finally, Stegman waved him silent. “Get out,” the .44 owner told him. “I'm sick of hearin' all these damn excuses.”

Alone in the study, the door closed even to Gilman's family, Noonan said, “Miles, you was supposed to have all this area clean for us when we arrived. What the hell happened?”

“Falcon MacCallister,” Gilman said bluntly. “That's what happened.”

“One man is responsible for this holdup?” Stegman asked. “I don't believe it.”

“I do,” Nance said, before Gilman could reply. “I'll believe anything about those damn MacCallisters. The old man, Jamie MacCallister, ended up ownin' an entire county down in Colorado, plus bits and pieces of practically half the damn state. Made friends with all the damn Injuns. None of 'em would ever bother no one who lived in that damn valley of his. I don't know how he done it. Plus, I hate that damn Falcon MacCallister. I hate all MacCallisters. Ever' one of them.”

Neither Stegman nor Gilman had a reply to Noonan's hate-filled comments. Both men knew that just the mention of Falcon's name could send Nance off into a towering rage. They waited until Nance had calmed down a bit.

“He's organized and armed all the small ranchers and farmers in this part of the state,” Miles said. “He's armed them with weapons taken from the men I hired to run them out!”

“Where is he getting supplied?”

“From the old trading post.”

“Well, hell, man!” Nance yelled. “Put the damn trading post out of business! Burn it down. Blow it up. Kill the bastard who runs it.”

“Can't do that, Nance,” Miles spoke calmly, hoping that if he stayed calm, some of it would rub off on Noonan. “The place is a stage stop and is also a remount station for the cavalry. We don't want private detectives and the cavalry taking sides with the small ranchers and farmers.”

Nance thought about that for a moment, then slowly nodded his head. “Yeah, you're right about that. Damn! The federal marshal for this area?”

“He won't bother us.”

“You're sure about that?”

“Positive.”

“And the county sheriff is out of it?”

“All the way.”

Nance stared at Miles for a moment. “Six old men join up with Falcon MacCallister and bring everything to a halt. Incredible.”

“You know who these old men are, Nance?”

“No, I don't. What the hell difference does that make?”

Miles named them all and Nance's mouth dropped open. Miles had just named some of the most famous mountain men of the west: army scouts, Indian fighters, explorers, trailblazers, and so much more.

Nance got up to pace the room for a moment. He stopped, poured another drink, then sat down. “Books and stories have been written about those men. We can't afford to have the eastern press get wind of this. They'd come swarmin' in here. But neither can I afford to have this drag on for months. I've got cattle comin' in and they're gonna need graze and water. Money is not the answer—MacCaHister could buy and sell all three of us. And I'm not kiddin' about that. What's a fortune to us is nothin' but pocket change to Falcon. And if all the MacCallisters was to get involved in this fight . . .” He shrugged muscular shoulders and let that trail off. “... They'd just hire a damn army to come in and wipe us out, right down to the last man. There's as many of them as there is my kin, practically, and they've got the money to do whatever they damn well please. If I had any sense I'd back off and out of here and just look somewheres else. But this is personal, 'tween me and Falcon, and by God I intend to see it through to the finish.”

“I've got to stay,” Stegman said. “I got no choice in the matter. And you know that, Nance.”

Again, Noonan nodded his head. “I know, Rod, I know. Don't worry: I'm not goin' to quit on you.”

“We've got to give this situation some hard head rumi-natin',” Rod said. “Miles's way ain't workin', that's plain to see. So we got to come up with another plan.”

“Good thinkin', Rod,” Nance said, very sarcastically. “Excellent.” But the sarcastic words were lost on his brother-in-law. He cut his eyes to Miles. Went right by him, too. Nance knew that when it came to thinkin', Miles and Rod weren't among the best. They were men of action, first, last, and always. If there was to be any planning, it would be up to him to come up with it and spell it all out, carefully.

“We can outlast them,” Miles said. “If you had to, Nance, you could graze your cattle south and west of here until all this was settled.”

Nance changed his opinion of Miles . . . a little bit. That wasn't a bad plan. “If it comes to that, yeah. But we've got a few weeks before the herds arrive. We might get lucky 'tween now and then.”

“Let's just ambush MacCallister and have done with it,” Rod growled.

As if that hadn't been tried about two dozen times over the years,
Nance thought.
The man's as savvy as his father
. Nance stood up. “Let's have some breakfast,” he suggested. “Think on this some. Maybe get some rest. More men will be comin' in today and tomorrow. I want the next move we make to end it. I want to see Falcon MacCallister
dead!
”