Massacre of Eagles

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Leaving the empty lot, Falcon went to get George and Sherman Canfield, Bill Cody, and Prentiss Ingraham so he could bring them back to the scene of the shooting. George Sherman was carrying a lantern and he held it down low, enabling them to see the faces of the three men Falcon had shot.

“Do you know them, Falcon?”

“I can’t say as I know them,” Falcon said. “But I know the names of two of them.” He pointed. “That one is Billy Taylor. Last time we saw him, he was in jail back in Bismarck.”

“And this fella is named Slayton,” Ingraham said. “Last time we saw him, he was in Sheridan.”

“I wonder how Taylor got out of jail,” Cody said.

“From what I overheard, this man is one of the ones who attempted to hold up the train,” Falcon answered, pointing to Dewey’s body. “And they broke Taylor out of jail.”

“They broke him out?” Cody asked, emphasizing the word “they.”

“Yes.”

“That means the rest of them might be here.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Falcon said.

“Seems strange that Slayton was with them though,” Ingraham said. “I mean, how do you suppose that came about?”

“My guess is they were looking for us, and when they came through Sheridan they recruited Slayton,” Falcon said.

“Yes, I can see that,” Cody said. “It’s for sure that Slayton had ill feelings toward you.”

“What will we do with them?” Ingraham asked.

“We could strap them to a board, stand ’em up in front of the hotel with a sign asking if anyone knew who they were,” Sherman suggested.

“Heavens no, Sherman,” George said. “Most of the people who come through here are from back East. Something like this would scare them off for sure. If you ask me, the best thing to do would be to just let Marv Welch bury them. It won’t be the first time he ever buried someone without knowing who they are.”

Within an hour after the shooting, everyone in Cinnabar, at least those who were still awake, knew what had happened.

The bodies were not embalmed, so the idea was to get them buried as quickly as possible. Because of that, Marv Welch began preparations right away. Welch was not a real undertaker; he was a carpenter, and he had assumed the position of undertaker only because he was able to construct simple wooden coffins. And even though the bodies were not strapped to a board and stood up in front of the hotel as Sherman had suggested, that didn’t mean that they were not objects of attention. Morbid curiosity caused two score and more people to come out of the night and wander through Marv Welch’s carpentry shop to view the bodies. Marv, who had three coffins to build, paid no attention to his nighttime visitors.

Not only did Welch not embalm the bodies, he made no effort to clean them up in any way, so those who came to view them saw them just as they fell, bloodied from their bullet wounds and smudged with dirt from the ground where they fell.

It made a rather macabre scene: visitors strolling through the carpenter shop to view the bodies while the flickering kerosene lanterns cast disproportionately large and grotesque shadows against the wall, giving the illusion of otherworldly wraiths come to earth to welcome their new residents. All the while the visitors arrived and departed, Marv Welch continued to saw and hammer together the three traditionally shaped coffins, flared at the top to accommodate the shoulders and torso, then narrowed toward the bottom for the legs.

Three of the viewers who came through were Ebersole, Hawkins, and Peters.

“MacCallister kilt ’em,” Hawkins said once they went back outside into the night. “He kilt all three of ’em.”

“How did he do that?” Peters asked.

“He shot ’em,” Hawkins said.

“I know that. What I mean is, how could one man kill all three of them like that? Taylor and Dewey weren’t no slouches with a gun. And Slayton was supposed to be pretty good.”

“Ahh. Slayton was probably pretty much of a loud mouth,” Ebersole said. “I wouldn’t have brought him at all, except for the horses.”

“Still, MacCallister must be awful good to have kilt all three of them, though,” Peters said.

“I’ll tell you how he did it,” Ebersole said. “He did it because the damn fools didn’t listen to me. I told them just to keep an eye on ’em, until we could come up with a plan.”

“Yeah, well, what plan can we come up with now?” Peters asked. “I mean if MacCallister kilt all three of ’em, and he’s only one man, what are we goin’ to do now? There’s only three of us and when you count Cody and that writer, that makes three of them. I would like it a lot better iffen the odds was on our side.”

“Just because someone has a reputation, that doesn’t mean he is invincible,” Ebersole said. “Look at Wild Bill Hickok. They say he was about the deadliest gunfighter of all of ’em, and how many men did it take to kill him? Just one.”

“Yeah, just one, but from what I heard, the fella that kilt him snuck up on him while he was playin’ cards and shot him in the back.”

“Front, back, it don’t matter. The point I’m making is, Hickok is still dead, ain’t he?” Ebersole said.

“So, what you’re sayin’ is, wait until MacCallister is playin’ cards then sneak up behind him?” Hawkins asked.

“No. What I’m sayin’ is, wait until the son of a bitch goes to sleep, then sneak up on him,” Ebersole said. “He’s spending the night in the Cinnabar Hotel. All we got to do is find out which room it is.”

“How are we going to do that?” Hawkins asked.

“I’m going to register at the hotel,” Ebersole said. “When I sign the register book, I’ll be able to see which room he’s in.”

After the bodies of the three men who had tried to kill him were removed, Falcon returned to the hotel. He was always somewhat ill at ease after killing someone, even if they had been trying to kill him. And though it wasn’t something he had ever expressed in words, he knew that he never wanted to get over that sense of unease. If it ever got to the point to where killing another human being came as easy to him as stepping on a bug, he would know that he had lost his soul.

When he went to his room he walked over to look out the window. From here he had a good view of the main street. The street, scarred with wagon ruts and dotted with horse droppings, formed an X with the track. The railroad station was halfway down the street but the train had already gone back to Livingston. It would return in mid-morning the next day with another batch of Yellowstone visitors.

On the far side of the track he saw a scattering of buildings, fashioned from log and rip-sawed lumber. On this side of the track the buildings were all commercial so they were somewhat more substantial. Some had false fronts, and a few were even painted. Right across the street from the hotel was the livery stable. Below him and next door to the hotel was the saloon. Because it was nearly midnight, the saloon was much quieter, not because the cowboys were concerned about disturbing anyone’s slumber, but because so many of them were now passed out drunk.

This would be the first night Falcon had spent in a bed in over a week, and he was rather looking forward to it. Walking over to his bed he hung his pistol belt on the headboard, loosed the revolver in its holster, then extinguished the lantern. He was asleep within a few minutes.

By two o’clock in the morning, all the celebration was over. The cowboys who had been serenading the town most of the night were now either passed out drunk or sound asleep, wherever they had been able to throw down their bedrolls.

As he had explained to the others, Ebersole was able to ascertain which room Falcon was in simply by looking at the register when he signed in. Now, Ebersole, Peters, and Hawkins were standing in the lobby of the hotel. It was dark except for one dimly glowing kerosene lantern that was attached to the wall just over the check-in desk. The hotel clerk was sound asleep, and the air was rent by his loud snoring.

Every room in the hotel was rented, as evidenced by the fact that only one key was hanging from each of the hooks which designated a room. Ebersole leaned over the desk, and quietly lifted the key from the hook for room number five.

“All right, you two, you need to be very quiet now,” he whispered. He pulled his pistol from the holster and the others did the same; then, as quietly as possible, the sound of their steps softened by the carpet, they started up the stairs to the second floor.

If anyone had asked Falcon what awakened him from a sound sleep, he probably would not have been able to explain it. He knew only that, in the midst of a deep slumber, a sudden feeling of danger passed over him, a feeling so strong that even as he was awakening, he was slipping his pistol from its holster.

The full moon that had served him well in the empty lot earlier in the night was now in position to send a splash of silver in through the open window. It was that, and the fact that because he had been sleeping, his eyes were accustomed to the dark, that he could see the door.

Falcon did not stare directly at the door but looked slightly to the left of it. If asked, he could not tell anyone the scientific reason for it, he knew nothing about visual purple, or that the fovea centralis in the exact center of the retina stops functioning in darkness. Only the rods in the peripheral field of the retina function in darkness, which meant that in order to see in the night, one must use the peripheral field of vision.

He did not need to know the scientific or physiological reason for this, nor had anyone ever told him about it. It was a trick he had discovered on his own, many years ago. It had served him well many times, and it was serving him well now, because even as he heard the tumblers in the lock fall, he could see the doorknob turning, slightly.

With gun in hand, Falcon slid out of bed, then moved quickly across the room to stand in the far corner opposite of the bed. The door swung open.

“Now!” a voice shouted, and three pistols began firing through the doorway, the noise deafening, the muzzle flashes, like successive streaks of lightning, illuminating the room. The intruders fired several shots at the bed, then stopped.

“Can I help you boys with something?” Falcon asked.

“What? What the hell?” a voice called.

“He’s over there!”

Actually, Falcon wasn’t “over there,” because as soon as he spoke, he dropped to his knees and crawled quickly back over to his bed.

Again the pistols fired through the door, this time into the corner where Falcon had been. And this time Falcon returned fire, using the flame patterns from the muzzle flashes as his target. When he stopped firing, all was silent, except for a quiet moaning.

Even before Falcon could light his own lantern, he saw a light moving down the hall way toward his room.

“Falcon! Falcon, are you all right?” he heard Bill Cody call.

“Yeah,” Falcon called back. “I’m all right.”

By now, other guests in the hotel were coming down the hall as well.

“Who are you?” Falcon recognized Ingraham’s voice. “Who are you? Are you connected with the other three men who tried to kill Mr. MacCallister?”

“I told Ebersole it was a dumb idea,” a pain-filled voice said. “When you run us off from the train robbery, we should have . . .” that was as far as he got.

“Oh,” a woman said. “My goodness! Is it always like this out here? George, I want to go home. I want to go back to Baltimore.”

“We just arrived today. We haven’t even seen the park yet,” George replied.

“I don’t care. I had no idea the West was this wild. Why, we could have been killed in our beds.”

“You were never in any danger, madam,” Ingraham said.

“How do you know?”

“Because these men weren’t after you.”

“Who shot them?”

“I did, ma’am,” Falcon said. By now he had pulled on a pair of trousers and was standing just inside the door of his room.

“Heavens! You shot all three of them?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“But, why?”

“It seemed to be the thing to do at the time,” Falcon said.