Rage of Eagles (20 page)

“You don't want to, neither,” Wildcat continued. “He's just like his daddy when he gets riled: pure hell to behold.”

“That there is a fact,” Stumpy said. “When he gets tired of foolin' with this cattlemen's group, he'll end this fight, John, and it won't make no difference if he has to kill five more or a hundred more. He'll do it.”

“That's what I'm afraid of,” John admitted. “And it won't make no difference what I tell him, will it?”

“Not a bit,” Big Bob Marsh said. “Not one little bit.”

Falcon and Big Bob and Dan Carson stood over the blanket-covered body of the boy and exchanged glances. The mother and father were in the next room of the three-room house, both of them crying. The boy had been walking to the barn just after dawn when the rifle shot came out of the early-morning mist and cut him down. At approximately the same time, a teenage girl had been gunned down about ten miles to the north. John Bailey and Kip had gone to that farm to pay their condolences to the family when they heard the news.

“It just don't make no sense to me,” the father said, wiping his eyes and blowing his nose. “He's just a boy. He wasn't armed. It's just murder. That's all it is.”

Falcon and Big Bob and Dan Carson quietly left the farmhouse and the grieving family and the neighbors who had come to pay their respects.

“We've got to end this thing,” Big Bob said, standing by his horse. “We've got to end it now!”

Dan nodded his head in agreement. “Killin' growed-up men is one thing. Killin' kids is something I can't abide. Let's take the fight to them for a change.”

Falcon was strangely silent as he stood by his horse, looking over the saddle at the death house and at the small group of farm men who were standing outside, smoking and chewing and talking in low tones. The grave had been dug, but the mother of the boy just could not yet stand the thought of seeing her son put into the ground.

“Falcon?” Big Bob said.

“I heard you,” Falcon replied softly.

“Well?” Dan asked.

“It's got to stop,” Falcon said, his voice no more than a whisper. “I don't know how we're going to do it, but we've got to stop it.”

“I know how,” Big Bob said. Falcon and Dan looked at him. “We kill Gilman, Stegman, and Noonan. That'll stop it. Real quick like.”

“After the killing of these kids, those three men are going to be surrounded by hired guns. Getting close to them is going to be next to impossible.”

“I once slipped into an Injun camp to rescue a pal of mine,” Dan said. “Are you tellin' me I can't get close to them men if I take a notion to?”

Falcon smiled. “You were thirty years younger back then, Dan. Give that some thought.”

Dan started to protest, but Big Bob waved him silent. “He's right 'bout that, Dan. Can't argue 'gainst the truth, so don't even try.”

“We either avenge the killin' of these kids,” Dan said, “and do it right quick, or every farmer and small rancher in this part of the country will start packin' it in. You both know that. Folks ain't gonna stand for their kids gettin' murdered by them night-ridin' back-shootin' bastards.”

“That's a fact,” Big Bob said. “I done spent near'bouts most of the summer here. I'd sure hate for all that time to have gone wasted. I think we got to do something, even if it's wrong. And I'm purty sure the rest of the boys will feel the same way 'bout it.”

The wailing of the grief-stricken mother increased as the sound of hammering came from the house. The quickly knocked together casket was being closed for the final time.

“No!” the mother sobbed, the one-word protest easily reaching the ears of the three men standing by their horses near the corral. “No! Wait just a few more minutes.”

“Damn!” Big Bob said. “I can't hardly take this. This really cuts agin the grain.”

Dan gathered up the reins. “Let's ride, boys.” He swung easily into the saddle, doing it with the agility of a man thirty years younger.

Falcon and Big Bob stepped into their saddles and turned their horses' heads.

“Oh, God, no!” the woman screamed. “He's just a boy. Just a boy. He never hurt anybody.”

“I'm fixin' to shoot me some night riders and baby killers,” Big Bob said.

“I'm with you,” Dan said. “I'm real weary of this dilly-dallyin' around with scum.”

Falcon said nothing. The three men rode away, leaving the sounds of the nearly hysterical mother behind them. Halfway back to the Rockingchair, they ran into a mixed group of Double N, Snake, and .44 riders. The riders immediately spread out, covering the road. If Falcon and Big Bob and Dan were going to get by, they would have to leave the road.

“I don't think so,” Big Bob said, and hauled iron and started shooting, Dan a half second behind him. The action was so unexpected it caught Falcon completely off guard. By the time his mind had registered what was happening, there were four empty saddles in front of him and three riders sitting their saddles with their hands in the air, stunned and disbelieving expressions on their faces. Four riders lay on the road, dead or dying.

“This is the way it's gonna be, boys,” Big Bob said. “From now on. Ever' time I see you bastards, I'm gonna start shootin'. I ain't gonna say a word. I'm just gonna plug you.”

“That goes double for me,” Dan Carson said. “I just seen a little boy get put in the ground, a little boy that was gunned down by one of you or some of your friends, and it pissed me off somethin' fierce. I ain't gonna put up with child killers.”

“So you that's left, pass the word,” Big Bob said. “If you work for the .44, the Snake, or the Double N, you're dead. From now on, that's the way it's gonna be. The only way you're gonna stay alive is if you're not wearin' a gun. We won't shoot no unarmed man. Now gather up your dead and wounded and get gone.”

The cattlemen's alliance riders, badly shaken by what had just taken place, got the dead across saddles and the wounded in saddles, and rode out, back to home range.

“Well,” Falcon said, “it's open warfare now, boys.”

“That's the way I like it,” Big Bob said. “This way it don't leave no room for doubt.”

“None atall,” Dan said.

* * *

“They've gone slap crazy,” Stegman said, stunned by the news. “The whole bunch of them. Nobody goes around just blowin' people out of the saddle on sight!”

“ 'Bout a dozen more boys just packed up and rode out,” Noonan announced, turning away from the window in the study of Gilman's house. “There'll probably be more that follow them.”

“Them boys that brought the dead and wounded back said it wasn't Falcon who opened the dance,” Gilman said. “It was them crazy ol' mountain men.”

“What the hell difference does it make who started it?” Stegman asked. “It's started and the boys is spooked, and I mean spooked something awful.”

It was the day after the shooting in the road, and the three main players in the cattlemen's alliance were meeting, trying to decide what course of action to take. None of them had ever had to face something like this. A range war was one thing; they'd all been through that before. But this? ... Hell, this was unheard-of.

“We could back off and wait them out,” Gilman said. “Those mountain men are wanderers. They won't stay for no long length of time.”

“Can't none of us afford to do that,” Stegman said, nixing that suggestion. “Not and keep all these hired guns on the payroll. We'd go broke 'fore they left.”

“ 'Sides,” Noonan added, “I got seven brothers and their families on my back. Plus thousands of head of cattle only a few days away. I got to have range and water and then ship out to the army and back east 'fore winter. I ain't got no choice in the matter. None of us do.”

“Them ranchers over west of us say we bit off more than we can chew,” Stegman said. “I got that word a few hours ago. They're not gonna support us. No way, no how. They said killin' them kids done it for them.”

“They can afford to get all righteous about it,” Gilman said. “They've shipped their cattle and don't have a damn army on the payroll.”

Gilman walked to the window and looked out at the low hills that surrounded his ranch complex. It was about an hour before dark. He turned just as one bullet smashed through the window and hit a water pitcher on the table and another bullet tore through another window and knocked a chunk of plaster off the wall. The three most powerful ranchers in the area hit the floor. Outside, hidden riflemen in the hills close in opened up and started spraying the lead around.

The riflemen were the mountain men, Falcon, and the Rockingchair foreman, Kip. While John Bailey had not given his blessing to this type of action, neither had he forbidden it. He had just nodded his head when Kip told him what his men were going to do and walked back into his house without saying a word. The body of the dead girl he'd seen buried just hours before, a girl just barely in her teens, had affected him deeply. The rancher had no more patience with men who would condone such a thing.

The long bunkhouse of the Snake ranch was fully exposed. One rifleman in the hills could keep those inside pinned down. Two slugs had gone through the bedroom window of Terri, sending the young woman scrambling and cussing to the floor. She was still on the floor, hollering and cussing.

Lars had been caught outside, between the corral and the main house. He was now pinned down behind a woodpile with absolutely no place else to go. He could not move. He could do nothing except cuss and cringe each time a bullet came close.

The men in the hills had moved in quietly, each of them armed with several rifles and bandoliers of ammunition. In addition to the rifles, Falcon and the mountain men each also had a bow and a quiver of arrows . . . the arrows each had a stick of dynamite secured behind the arrowhead, and the fuses were cut short. Falcon and his friends were going to have some fun—fun for them, that is, not for the men trapped below the hills.

Falcon laid his rifle aside and picked up his bow. Using a cigar, he lit the fuse and quickly let the arrow fly. It landed in the front yard of the house and blew. The explosion knocked out the front windows of the house and caused Terri to very nearly go into hysterics.

“Jesus Christ!” Gilman yelled. “What the hell is going on?”

“Some son of a bitch is usin' dynamite!” Stegman hollered.

“Get them men out of the bunkhouse and off their asses and fight!” Noonan yelled.

The second stick of dynamite blew a few yards in front of the woodpile where Lars was huddled. The blast collapsed the woodpile, covering Lars with firewood, ants, and dust. He started hollering and cussing.

Big Bob let an arrow fly. It arched its way downward, landed a few feet from the side wall of the bunkhouse, and blew. The impact knocked a huge chunk out of the wall and blew out both windows, sending those men trapped inside scrambling toward the other end of the bunkhouse, most of them now unable to hear anything due to the nearness of the tremendous explosion.

Wildcat Wheeless hummed a dynamite-tipped arrow toward the complex. It landed on top of the main house, directly above Terri's bedroom, and blew, knocking a huge hole in the roof and covering Terri with splinters, dust, bird shit, and chunks of roofing material. Terri really started cussing and hollering and raising a fuss.

“Lars!” Gilman shouted. “Come help your sister, damn you, boy!”

“How?” the young man returned the shout. “I got a pile of wood all over me and I can't move without gettin' shot.”

“Where's all them damn hired guns of yours?” Stegman demanded from his position on the floor.

“Out looking for MacCallister,” Gilman hollered, over the rattle of rifle fire and the yelling of trapped men.

Noonan put his head down on the floor and cussed just as another stick of dynamite came sailing through the air and the arrow point stuck into the side of the house. The dynamite blew and a huge hole was torn out of the kitchen wall. The Chinese cook was last seen hotfooting it toward the barn, screaming in some incomprehensible language. The cook grabbed the first horse he came to and was gone, galloping off into the hills, waving his arms and still screaming in that strange language.

Puma let fly an arrow that sailed right through a bunkhouse window and blew. Half the roof collapsed, part of one wall disintegrated, and a dozen hired guns were out of the fight with broken arms and legs from falling debris and the concussion of the explosion.

The few horses who had been in stalls in the barn panicked and kicked free and were gone, racing wildly off into the hills. One hired gun apparently forgot where he was and what was taking place and went running off after his horse. Mustang knocked a leg out from under him with a well-placed rifle shot. The man rolled on the ground, yelling from the pain in his broken leg.

“All of them at the house!” Falcon yelled to the man nearest him, and Stumpy passed the word around the low hills. Arrows were fitted and fuses were lit. The arrows were sent humming through the air, the fuses sputtering.

Eight dynamite-tipped arrows landed on, in, or very close to the big ranch house and blew. The front porch collapsed, one side wall was blown wide open, and another part of the roof was destroyed. This time the blown-open roof was over the study, and Stegman, Noonan, and Gilman were covered with debris. Noonan had part of a support timber land on his noggin and the impact knocked him goofy. Stegman was trapped under several hundred pounds of roofing material. Gilman got hammered and bruised and cut with flying stones from the fireplace, which blew apart from the explosion.

Over the hollering of trapped men in the bunkhouse, the vocal ragings of Lars, pinned under several cords of firewood in the side yard, and the yelling and cussing of the ranchers trapped under piles of crap in the study, Terri's voice was clear as a bell.

“Get this goddamn crap off me!” the young lady hollered. “Help, help!”

The men in the hills started shooting fire arrows into the jumble of confusion. Soon tentacles of smoke began arching upward from the wreckage of the house and the bunkhouse.