Eagles Legacy: The Killing

Chapter Eight

Back in Cheyenne, Duff continued to take care of his business. He went into Union Mercantile, where he bought a hay mower.

“Yes, sir, Mr. MacCallister, you are buying the finest hay mower on the market,” Elliot Whipple said. “This one machine, pulled by a team of horses, can do more in one day than a whole field full of farmhands can do in a week.”

“I will need to have it transported to Chugwater,” Duff said. “Can you disassemble it for me?”

“I can disassemble it, and have it shipped for you. I have an arrangement with Rollins Freight.”

“Thank you, but I will make shipping arrangements from Chugwater.”

“Very well. I will see that it is ready for shipment,” Whipple promised.

Duff’s very good friend, R.W. Guthrie, owned not only the lumberyard and building supply company in Chugwater, he also owned the town’s only freight-wagon company. But it wasn’t only because R.W. was Duff’s friend that he wanted to use him. Duff believed that because he lived in Chugwater it was incumbent upon him to patronize the Chugwater business establishments, and he did that whenever it was possible.

After buying the hay mower, Duff visited the Cheyenne office of the Kansas City Cattle Exchange, where he intended to make arrangements to buy a herd.

“Well, I don’t know,” Terry Conn said. “Most of the business I do is with the local cattlemen, arranging to buy their herds. I’ve not had to deal with selling cattle before.”

“But your company does this, do they not?” Duff asked. “I was informed by the American Aberdeen Angus Association in Chicago that I could make arrangements to purchase a herd of Angus cattle through the Kansas City Cattle Exchange company.”

“Oh, yes, we can do that. It is just , as I say, a little unusual. Though, as you want a specific breed, I suppose it isn’t all that unusual. Black Angus, you say? Well, I know they are doing well back in Missouri and down in Mississippi. I think you would be the first to run them out here. They aren’t as hardy as Longhorns, you know. Could be you are biting off more’n you can chew.”

“Aye, they can be a bit troublesome, ’tis true, but this won’t be the first time I’ve raised the breed.”

“You’ve raised Angus before?”

“Aye. I did so back in Scotland.”

Conn smiled. “Scotland, is it? Well, I’m not all that surprised. I thought you sounded like a foreigner. All right, how many do you want?”

“I’d like five hundred head: four hundred and eighty cows and twenty bulls.”

“That’s quite an order. Let me see what that would cost,” Conn said. He walked over to the ticker-tape machine, a glass half-globe that enclosed the device itself. It made a constant clicking sound, all the while spitting out a long, narrow strip of paper. Conn picked up the paper and ran it through his hands as he looked at the symbols printed thereon.

“Ah, here it is,” he said. “The latest price is twenty-seven dollars and fifty cents a head for mature cattle. You want five hundred head. Let’s see, that would be ...” he paused for a moment as he figured the cost, “thirteen thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars. Then, of course, there is the fifteen percent handling and service fee.” Conn put a pencil to paper and did some figuring. “That will bring it to fifteen thousand, eight hundred twelve dollars and fifty cents. I’d advise you to make arrangements with your own bank for the loan, as the Cattle Exchange cannot extend credit.”

“Aye, so I have been told,” Duff replied.

“Now, what do you say we get your order written up?” Conn said. He sat at his desk and took out a pre-printed form. “And what is your name, sir?”

“MacCallister. Duff MacCallister.”

“MacCallister? Of course, I read about you in the Cheyenne Leader this morning. You are the one they were writing about, are you not?” Conn asked.

“Aye, ’tis me. I had no idea ’twould be the stuff of newspapers.”

Conn chuckled. “The stuff of newspapers? My good man, it is stories like this that become the stuff of legends.”

“I’ve no wish to be a legend, I wish only to be a rancher.”

“Well, with this,” Conn held up the order document, “it would seem you have made a favorable start.”

“Aye,” Duff said. “Would that my trip had been only to tend to business for my ranch, and none of the other.”

“It is obvious that you saved the young lady’s life by what you did, Mr. MacCallister. There is no need for you to feel remorse over it.”

“It had to be done, that is true.”

“The young woman who was killed ... will you be going to her funeral?” Conn asked.

“I have been asked to do so by her friends at the Tivoli,” Duff said. “I feel that I must.”

“From what I’ve been hearing, the whole town will be turning out for it,” Conn said. “It is to be held in St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. That’s a large enough church, but I don’t know if it has enough room for all who wish to attend. You’ll need to get there early if you want a place to sit.”

Saloons, cheap hotels, and restaurants lined Fifteenth Street along the two blocks west of the Union Pacific Depot. It was not an area that genteel women frequented, though there was no shortage of women for the soiled doves did business in the saloons, hotels, and even in small cribs that they maintained in the alley behind the buildings.

Between the Western Hotel and Lambert’s Café was a whitewashed building with a high false front. The name of the establishment, painted in large black letters, was Eagle Saloon. Unlike the Tivoli, which had a fine mahogany bar and gleaming electric chandeliers, the Eagle was illuminated by kerosene lanterns and candles.

Dingus, Lee and Marvin, having returned from Laramie on the next train, were now in the Eagle, sitting at a table near the back, close to one of the two coal stoves that heated the building from early October to late May. Although the stove was cold, the smell of coal still hung around it, and the floor immediately around the stove was stained black with ground-in coal dust.

“He should’a gone with us when we asked him,” Dingus said. “If he had gone with us, he’d still be alive now.”

“When are you buryin’ ’im?” Lee Mosley asked.

“I talked to the undertaker this mornin’. I told him to go ahead and bury Tyler today. May as well get it over with, ain’t much sense in letting him just lie around ’til he starts stinkin’.”

“Ain’t you goin’ to have no funeral or anythin’ for him?” Marvin asked.

“Nah, Tyler prob’ly wouldn’t want nothin’ like that, anyway. Beside which, I don’t know nobody that would come ’cept me an’ you two.”

“They’re goin’ to have a big funeral for the whore that Tyler kilt,” Lee said. “I seen it in the paper. The whole town is goin’ to turn out.”

“Don’t seem right that ever’body’s goin’ to be cryin’ and blowin’ snot over the whore, when there ain’t goin’ to be nothin’ done to remember Tyler,” Marvin said.

“Oh, there will be somethin’ done to remember him all right,” Dingus said.

“What?”

“I aim to kill the son of a bitch that kilt Tyler.”

“That ain’t goin’ to be all that easy to do,” Lee cautioned. “They say he was more’n a hundred feet away when he shot Tyler. And what’s more, Tyler was standin’ behind a woman, so this fella MacCallister didn’t have all that much to shoot at.”

“I didn’t say I was goin’ to challenge him to a duel in the street or nothin’ like that,” Dingus said. “What I said was I aim to kill him.”

As the three carried on their conversation, a small man dressed all in black came into the saloon. He approached the table, then halted a few feet away and cleared his throat to get their attention.

Looking up, Dingus saw the undertaker.

“Yeah, Welch, what do you want?”

“If it is all the same to you, Mr. Camden, I mean, seeing as you said that you don’t want a funeral or anything, I wonder if we could go ahead and bury your brother’s remains now. I think it would be best if we got everything taken care of before Cindy McPheeters’s funeral. I expect a rather substantial crowd of mourners for her, whereas your brother’s interment will be, uh, rather simple.”

“Yeah, go ahead and do it, I don’t care,” Dingus said dismissively.

Dingus Camden and his two cousins were the only ones in the graveyard as the two gravediggers, using ropes, lowered Tyler Camden’s body into the hole. One of them looked over at Dingus.

“Do you want to say a few words?”

“Nah,” Dingus said. “Cover ’im up.”

The two gravediggers started shoveling the dirt in, and as Dingus, Lee, and Marvin left Lakeview Cemetery, they could hear the sound of the dirt falling on the wooden coffin behind them.

There could not be a bigger contrast between Tyler Camden’s burial and the funeral that was going on for Cindy McPheeters. St. Mark’s Episcopal Church was filled to capacity, and those who could not find seats stood along the walls on each side and at the rear of the church. Even the narthex was filled, and several more waited out front, ready to accompany the funeral cortege to the graveyard.

Duff, perhaps thinking of the way his fiancé was killed, attended the funeral and, as a guest of the owner and employees of the Tivoli, was afforded a seat up front. Cindy’s coffin sat on a catafalque in the transept, covered with a black pall that had a white cross worked into it. When the music stopped, the priest stepped up to the pulpit and looked out over the congregation, and began to speak. His voice was richly timbred, and it resonated throughout the room. Every eye was turned toward him, every ear attuned.

“We have come today to bury Cindy McPheeters. Cindy was employed by the Tivoli saloon in a position that some may find unseemly for a young woman. But who are we to pass judgment upon her?

“Regardless of how Cindy made a living, I want all of you to know that she was not abandoned by our Lord. And those who knew Cindy have all testified that she was a woman with a good heart, truly a child of God. Therefore, we can rejoice with Cindy, because we know that our sister is in Heaven today.”

It had started raining during the service, a torrential downpour that drummed on the roof and beat against the windows of the church. Two of the vestrymen, who had gone about earlier using long, hooked poles to pull the tops of the windows down to provide a breeze, now used those same long poles as they hurried to close the windows. That did keep the rain from coming in but it made the inside of the church grow hotter and muggier. Those who had been waiting outside the church with the intention of accompanying the funeral cortege to the cemetery left. The priest, trying to outlast the rain, dragged the service on as long as he could. But when some of the mourners got up and left the church, then more, and more still until the narthex and wall space, and even some of the pews were empty, he realized that he could not drag it out any further.

The hearse, polished black ebony with glass sides, was backed up against the front door of the church. The team of black horses stood stoically in the rain, their black feather accoutrements hanging down and dripping with water. The pallbearers carried Cindy’s body through the nave and narthex, then slid it into the back of the hearse. By the time the cortege reached the cemetery, only the priest, Polly, the owner of the Tivoli, and Duff remained of the funeral attendees. The two gravediggers who had found a tree to provide them with some shelter from the downpour were present as well. The driver of the hearse waited until Cindy’s coffin was offloaded, then he snapped his reins against the backs of the soaked team and drove away.

Because of the rain, the committal ceremony was brief. As soon as the graveside service was over, the priest nodded at the two gravediggers. They came over from their improvised shelter and lowered the coffin into the ground, then started closing the grave.

“It was good of you to come, Mr. MacCallister,” Polly said. “There were so many in the church, but nobody wanted to come out into the rain.”

“You might say that the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak,” the priest said, as the four of them returned to the carriage that had brought them from the church to the cemetery.

Chugwater

Charles Blanton, editor and publisher of the Chugwater Defender, read the article about Duff’s “magnificent shot” in the Cheyenne Leader. Using the article as his guide, but embellishing it with personal and local information about Duff MacCallister, he rewrote it, then ran it in his own newspaper.

It had long been Blanton’s habit to go down to Fiddler’s Green shortly after his paper had hit the streets. He justified it by saying he needed a break from putting the paper together, getting it to bed, and finally out on the street. But the truth was he liked to hear the feedback on his articles, and the customers who frequented Fiddler’s Green were not shy about commenting on the articles, whether they approved or disapproved.

Today was no different. Everyone in the saloon had already read the paper by the time Blanton arrived, ordered his mug of beer, then walked over to the table to join them.

“That must have been some shot,” Fred Matthews said. “Don’t know as one out of a hundred could have made it.”

“It doesn’t surprise me, any,” R.W. Guthrie said. “I’ve seen him shoot.”

“Well, yeah, we all have,” Biff Johnson said. “I mean that display he put on here, last year, when he killed the eight men who came here after him.”

“He only killed seven as I recall,” Guthrie said. “You got one of them, Biff.”

“Yeah, but still, he got seven,” Biff said. “I tell you the truth, I’ve never known anyone quite like him. He is as generous and good-natured as any man you might ever want to meet. And to meet him, why you might even think he was a Sunday school teacher or something. But you go afoul of him, and he is as deadly as any man alive.”

“And here’s the thing,” Matthews said. “Once he makes up his mind that a body needs killin’, it doesn’t bother him a bit to go ahead and do it. He’s got that—well, I don’t know what you call it, but what I mean is, he can just put it out of his mind.”

“It’s called a detached attitude,” Blanton said. “And yes, he has something that is rare in men, an ability to recognize right from wrong, make an immediate and resolute decision, then act upon it without agonizing reappraisal.”

Guthrie laughed. “I’m not all that sure what you said, Charley. But damn if it didn’t sound good.”

The others laughed as well.

Over in her dress shop, Meghan had read the same article. She was not surprised by it; she had seen Duff in action on the day he faced down the eight men who had come to Chugwater specifically to kill him. She also knew him well enough to know that if he was ever placed in a position of having to choose to act to save an innocent life, such as he had been in Cheyenne, that he would make the decision he’d made.

Meghan had never known anyone quite like Duff MacCallister. She was attracted to him by his rugged good looks, yes. And there was a dangerous excitement about him, yes. But underneath all that was a gentleness that defied all understanding.