Eleven
“Once and for all,” Jamie repeated several times a day as he headed toward the spot where the gangs were supposed to have gathered, awaiting word from Layton and Olmstead. “I'll settle this once and for all.”
But he really didn't believe his own words. The feud between Jamie and Kate's father and brothers and kin, as well as the Newbys and the Saxons had been going on for far too long. It would only end when one side or the otherâall of themâwere in the grave. And Jamie had to smile at that. It would take some doing to kill off all the MacCallisters and their kin. It seemed like Jamie and Kate had more grandkids running around the twin towns of Valley than nuts on a pecan tree . . . with more on the way.
Jamie had to give lawyer Layton his due. He had chosen men who knew the west and knew it well, for the area where they had chosen to gather, while not that many miles from the twin valleys as the crow flies, was a tough three-day ride for a man on horseback. It was also perfect ambush country.
For them, as well as for me, Jamie had to keep reminding himself.
As he rode, he tried to pull up into his memory the faces of some of the names Sparks had told him. He could remember with some amusement the face of Barney Saxon, the man who had accused him of stealing money and who had suffered a busted mouth for that remark. He could recall some of the others but not all.
For a short time, he toyed with the idea of calling John Wilmot out and trying to reason with him. But he soon gave that up as a very bad idea. He had tried to persuade other men to give up the hunt for him and always failed with the leaders.
The letter he had given Sparks would reach his attorney in St. Louis, and the lawyer would handle matters on that end, quickly putting a stop to Olmstead's attempts to seize the twin valleys. Olmstead was going to be in for quite a shock when he came face to face with Jamie's lawyer, one of, if not the, most powerful men in the state and well-connected in Washington.
The ride took longer than Jamie anticipated and it was mid-morning of the fourth day before he began to smell the cook-fires of the gang. He immediately began searching for a place to picket his horses and found one after an hour's searching.
He let the horses roll for a time, and when they had cooled down, he let them drink and then they settled down to graze. Jamie picketed them on a long rope, with plenty of room to walk to water, and shouldered his heavy pack. He figured it was about a two-hour walk to the gang's campsite.
“Once and for all,” Jamie muttered, as he took the first step on foot to the smoky little valley where the men who had gathered to kill him were camped. “I end it today, Kate. And that's a promise. After today, we start living the remainder of our lives in peace.”
* * *
Bob Sutter looked up from his plate of beans and venison and stared at the end of the clearing for a moment. He could have sworn he saw the figure of a man standing there. A man dressed all in buckskins. “Impossible,” he muttered and returned to his eating.
Joe Ed Williams was pouring a cup of coffee from the big pot when he paused for a few seconds. He stared at the timber for a moment and then shook his head. “Not likely,” he muttered.
One of Buford Sanders's gang thought he heard one of the horses whinny. He raised his head from the blanket he was using as a pillow and listened hard. Nothing. Must have been his imagination. He laid back down and dozed off.
Jamie had cut the horses' halter ropes from the picket line and was slipping around the camp, listening to the men talk. He wanted to be absolutely certain. When he saw Tiny Bates he knew he'd found the gang.
“I want that honey-haired wife of MacCallister's,” Tiny said. “And by God I'm stakin' my claim for her right now. Anybody got anything to say about that?”
No one did. They were, to a man, thinking and talking about all the other women in the twin towns of Valley and of all the booty that would be theirs for the taking once the raid was over and done with. They were quite vocal about what they were going to do with the women and the men, and none of it was pleasant to the ears.
When Jamie had satisfied himself that this was indeed the nest of vipers he had come to destroy, he did not hesitate in starting the job at hand. With fully-loaded pistols hanging all over him, Jamie stepped out to the edge of the clearing, a Colt in each hand, and started cocking and firing. It was a rolling thunder of death in the beautiful wilderness of northwest Colorado. Jamie would empty one brace of Colts, holster the empties, hook and draw, step out of the thick whirl of gunsmoke that hung around him, and continue the deadly fire and thunder into the knotted up camp of raiders.
When he had emptied eight Colts, Jamie ran back into the timber and quickly began the job of inserting freshly charged and fully loaded cylinders into all his pistols. Behind him, he had left a camp of death and pain. But he wasn't nearly through just yet.
He still had some snakes to stomp on.
Jamie had poured forty-eight .44 caliber balls into the camp and had personally witnessed two dozen men go down in the first fusillade. The cut-loose horses had panicked and bolted during the attack and by now were a good mile away and still running hard. A dozen had run right through the camp, destroying supplies and doing no small amount of damage to any man who happened to be in their way.
From where he knelt behind a small rise, Jamie could hear the crying and moaning of the wounded in the ruins of their camp . . . and the hard cussing of others.
Jamie flitted through the brush and timber until he had circled the camp, coming to rest on the opposite side of where he had launched the first attack.
“The goddamn hosses is gone!” a man yelled.
Jamie lifted a .44 and drilled the man about three inches above his belt. Without hesitation, he emptied both pistols into the still startled and confused camp and then changed positions again.
Jamie's philosophy of warfare was simple for this day: just attack until you defeat the enemy. He watched as several of the would-be raiders grabbed up blankets and a few supplies and hit the timber, running in the opposite direction of the gunfire. He let them go. It was the leaders he wanted.
“Rally around me, men!” a man shouted, a pistol in each hand.
“Go to hell, Thompson!” another man shouted, and ran for the timber.
“Coward!” Thompson shouted and shot the running man in the back.
Jamie leveled a Colt and plugged who he assumed to be Pete Thompson in the belly. Pete sat down hard and tried to lift his pistols. He gave up that idea after a few seconds and toppled over on his face.
A few of the men had found their horses, or somebody's horse, and were hightailing it out of that area. When the sounds of hooves pounding the earth had faded, Jamie lay in brush and listened to the sounds of what remained of the camp.
“Yeller-bellied, red-nigger-coward!” Tiny Bates shouted. “You ain't got the balls to fight lak a man, goddamn you, Jamie MacCallister!”
Jamie lay motionless and silent in the brush.
“He's gone,” a man said.
“Don't you believe that,” Rodman said.
The moans and cries of the wounded were fading as the badly hit died and most of the less seriously wounded kept quiet, not wanting to draw Jamie's fire.
“Oh, dear sweet baby Jesus, help me!” a gut-shot man screamed.
“Somebody shoot him,” Wilmot said.
“Damn you, John Wilmot!” the wounded man cried.
Jamie heard the sound of gunfire coming from south of where he lay and couldn't figure out what was happening.
“Jamie MacCallister!” came the shout, and Jamie recognized the voice of Lobo. “We got this camp circled, friend. We found your camp and left fresh venison. Get on back to your hosses and put on some coffee and get them steaks a-cookin'. We'll take care of the rest of these hyenas.”
“You didn't think we was gonna let you have all the fun, did you?” Preacher shouted.
Big Jim Williams yelled, “They's a dozen of us out here, Jamie. You done your part, now let us take care of the rest of it.”
“Can we deal?” John Wilmot shouted.
“At the end of a rope, you damned worthless ne'er-dowell,” Audie yelled.
“Have to it, boys!” Jamie shouted. “I'll have coffee on when you finish.” Jamie headed for his horses, glad that his part was over.
“Wait a minute!” Tiny Bates hollered. “You ain't hangin' me, you bastards!”
“Then we'll just shoot you,” Preacher said. “That's faster, anyways.”
“I protest this!” Buford Sanders squalled. “This ain't right! ”
“Take it up with the Lord,” Lobo yelled. “'Cause you ain't far from comin' eyeball to eyeball with Him.”
Jamie found several of the raiders' horses and led them back to his camp. He had sliced the venison, started it broiling, and was just dumping in cold water to settle the coffee grounds when the last shot rang out.
Preacher rode in out of the silence and swung down. “It's over, Jamie. You and Kate can rest easy for a time.”
“Where are the rest of the men?”
“They ain't civilized like me. They're takin' scalps.”
“What's that hangin' on your belt?”
“Well, hell, I only took
one!”
Twelve
The next five years were peaceful ones for those who called Valley, Colorado, their home. But turbulence rolled and rumbled all around them. The United States congress began setting spending precedents that all future congresses would follow: in 1855 they appropriated thirty thousand dollars to import 30 camels from Egypt to settle them in the western deserts. One hundred and thirty-five years later, congress would spend nineteen million dollars of taxpayer money to study cow farts.
In 1856, the first bridge across the Mississippi River was built, running from Rock Island, Illinois, to Davenport, Iowa. The first real blood-letting of what would in a few years become an all-out civil war between the states erupted in Kansas Territory as Missouri pro-slavery forcesâincluding the Kickapoo Rangers of Colonel Bufordâattacked and burned Lawrence, Kansas. Later that same year, John Brown, along with his sons and a few other men, murdered five pro-slavery men at Pottawatomie Creek in Kansas. John Brown was later hanged for that. In July of 1856, Fort Lookout was built on the Missouri River in what would someday become South Dakota. By November, when Buchanan defeated John Fremont in presidential elections, the nation had begun to tear apart along pro-and anti-slavery issues and talk of war was strong. In the south, uniforms were secretly being manufactured.
In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court, in ruling on the Dred Scott decision, declared that Congress had no right to deprive people of their property without due process of the law. The Butterfield Overland Mail Company was awarded a contract to provide mail and passenger service from St. Louis to San Francisco.
* * *
“Imagine that,” Kate said, laying down her weeks-old newspaper. “Just get on a coach and ride all the way from St. Louis to San Francisco.”
“How long will it take?” Jamie asked.
“About a month. The coach goes from St. Louis to Memphis then down to Texas then over to Los Angeles and San Francisco.”
“I want to ride the steam cars,” Jamie said. “Preacher said they were fearsome things. He said they can roll along faster than a puma can run and do it all day long and all night long without ever stopping.”
“Preacher tells big wackers, too,” Kate said, adjusting her reading glasses.
“He swears it's the truth.”
Kate laid aside the newspaper and picked up a catalog, staring disbelieving at a full page ad of ladies modeling the latest in corsets and bustles. “That's
disgraceful!”
she said.
Jamie leaned over for a peek. “Looks pretty good to me.”
Kate hit him in the head with the catalog and knocked him clean off the porch.
* * *
In 1857, the last mile of track was laid connecting New York City with St. Louis, Missouri.
In May of 1858, Minnesota was admitted to the Union. A modern mowing machine was patented, as was a machine that could bundle grain.
In 1859, Oregon entered the Union, the thirty-third state and the eighteenth non-slave state. Nearly everyone east of the Mississippi River now sensed that a terrible war between the states was inevitable.
“Pikes Peak or Bust”
became the new slogan as gold was discovered in Colorado. Jamie found that mildly amusing; for the past four years he had been steadily mining his claims and caching the gold. Using just a fraction of his wealth, he bought up all the twin valley that had not been staked out and much of that which had been claimed. At the opening of the National Women's Rights Movement in New York City, Susan B. Anthony, in her address, stated, “Where, under our Declaration of Independence, does the white Saxon man get his power to deprive all women and negroes of their inalienable rights?” Sam Houston became governor of Texas.
The
Rocky Mountain News
began publication at Cherry Creek, later to be called Denver. The
Weekly Arizonian
began publication in Arizona.
In 1860, the Pony Express was started and Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States.
* * *
In the spring of 1860, Morgan rode into the valley for a visit. After his brothers and sisters and all their kids left the homestead, Morgan said to his mother and father, “Falcon's gettin' quite a name for himself.”
“As what?” Kate asked.
“A gambler and a mighty slick gunhand. Killed two men during a card game up at Cherry Cheek. They accused him of cheatin'.”
“Was he?” Jamie asked.
“No. He don't need to cheat. He's that good with a deck of cards.”
“Did he take any lead?”
Morgan laughed shortly. “Hell, Pa, them ol' boys didn't even clear leather. He's swift, mighty swift.” He fell silent, staring out into the night.
“Say it all, Morgan,” Kate told him.
“I don't know what you mean, Ma.”
“You want me to slap you?”
Morgan chuckled. “No, ma'am. I shore don't. You always could read me like a good book. It's Falcon. He's says when war comes, he's fightin' for the Gray.”
“The Gray?” Kate asked.
“That's the color of their uniforms, Kate,” Jamie told her.
“The Blue and the Gray,” Kate whispered the words. “But Falcon never expressed any dislike for negroes.”
“Oh, he doesn't dislike negroes, Ma. How could he, him growin' up here? He just says the federal government don't have the right to tell states what to do, that's all.”
“I agree with Falcon,” Jamie said, after a moment's pause.
Morgan stirred uneasily in his chair at his father's words. The exploits of Jamie Ian MacCallister were already the stuff of legend. Books had been written about him and songs had been sung. A play about his life was still running on stages all over the country. Morgan knew that the Union Army wanted his father to join their ranks as a scout.
“But I'll not fight against the Stars and Stripes,” Jamie finished it. “I'll just not fight at all.”
Morgan relaxed somewhat.
“That's a very wise choice,” Kate said, patting her husband's arm. “You're getting entirely too old to be traipsing around the nation fighting.” Jamie and Kate were both fifty. “Is Falcon going to come home for a visit before he goes off to join the southern army?” Kate asked.
“No, ma'am,” Morgan told her. “By now he's in Texas. He said to tell you both that he'd come home after the war.”
“Too
old?”
Jamie questioned.
Morgan smiled and Kate ignored her husband. Except for some gray in Jamie's hair, he had not aged much in twenty years. There still was not an ounce of excess fat on him and he could still work men half his age right into the ground and then some.
“I'm too
old?”
Jamie repeated.
“Hush, dear,” Kate said. “The war will be over and done with before the first news of it reaches Valley.”
How wrong she was about that.
* * *
“You're a damn fool!” Anne Woodville told her husband. “I can't believe you're actually doing this.”
Cort stood before her, resplendent in his tailored uniform of gray and gold. He had been commissioned a captain in the Army of Virginia.
“It's something I had to do,” Cort defended his actions. “Besides, the war will be over and done with in no time. The Yankees can't whip us.”
“What about Ravenwood?”
“What about it? You're doing a fine job of running the plantation. You're a good businesswoman, Anne.”
“Thank you for that, Cort. Would you like to see your daughter?”
Cort hesitated. “No. I think not. I just stopped in to see you and to say goodbye. I've received word that we are being mobilized. Texas has seceded from the Union. Virginia can't be long in following.” He stepped forward and took her hands in his. “Goodbye, Anne.”
“Goodbye, Cort. Cort? Be careful. And take your scarf, please. You know how easily you catch cold.”
Cort nodded and turned away, walking out the front door of the grandest plantation house in all of Virginia.
* * *
On March 31, 1861, a contingent of Texas troops, with Falcon MacCallister as scout, attacked Fort Bliss, and after a brief battle, the federal troops surrendered.
On the 12th of April, Confederate troops opened fire on Fort Sumter, South Carolina. The Civil War, as it was called in the North, begins. In the South, it was known as the War Between the States.
Less than a month later, Sparks rode into the valley with a message for Jamie.
Jamie looked at the sealed envelope. It was from the White House. He carefully broke the seal and read the letter twice. He handed the letter to Kate. She read it, then nodded her head and stood up.
“I'll go pack some things for you.”
“I reckon so, honey,” Jamie said.
Neither one of them knew quite how to refuse a request from Abraham Lincoln, the president of the United States.