Thunder of Eagles

Chapter Twelve

The next morning, Billy Clinton came into town driving a buckboard. He stopped in front of the general store where Carl Moore, the proprietor, was sweeping off the store’s front porch.

“Mr. Moore, have you seen my brother Cletus?” Billy asked.

“Not since yesterday, Billy,” Moore answered.

“Do you mind if I leave the buckboard parked here until I find him?”

“No, sir, I don’t mind a bit,” Moore said.

“Thanks.”

Climbing down from the buckboard, Billy started up the walk toward Little Man Lambert’s Café. If Cletus was still in town, like as not he would be having breakfast, and given that the Calhoun brothers owned the Vermillion, it wasn’t very likely he would be there. And even if Cletus wasn’t in town, Billy was hungry, so Little Man’s was as good a place as any to start looking for him.

“Mornin’, Billy,” someone said as he passed Billy on the board sidewalk.

“Good mornin’, Mr. Clark,” Billy replied. “Say, have you seen my brother this morning?”

Clark shook his head. “Haven’t seen him this morning, but I saw him at the Golden Nugget last night. He was feeling pretty good, if you know what I mean.”

“Drunk?”

“Yes.”

“Did he get into any trouble?”

“Well, now, that I can’t tell you,” Clark said. “Seein’ as I didn’t stay too much longer after he got there. He wasn’t in no trouble last time I seen him, though.”

“Thanks, Mr. Clark.”

Billy left the sidewalk and crossed the dirt street, picking his way gingerly through the horse droppings. He pushed the door open at Little Man’s, and saw Cletus sitting at a table in the back.

Billy gasped. Both Cletus’s eyes were black and his nose was purple and swollen. He was also so drunk that it was all he could do to hold his head up.

Billy walked back to the table and sat down.

“What happened to you?” he asked.

“What do you mean, what happened to me?” Cletus asked.

“Your eyes are all black.”

“They are?” Cletus touched himself between his eyes and winced in pain. “Damn,” he said. “That hurts.”

“Well, I should say it hurts,” Billy said. “It’s a wonder you can even see out of them. What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you get into a fight?”

“I don’t know,” Cletus repeated. “I must have. But I don’t remember anything about it.”

“Where did you spend the night? Do you at least know that?” Billy asked.

“Yeah, I know that.”

“Where?”

“In the jail,” Cletus said. “I spent the night in jail. What about Deke and Lou? Where are they?”

Billy shook his head. “I don’t know, I haven’t seen them this morning. Did they get into a fight, too?”

“I don’t know.”

Billy sighed. “Look at you. You are so damn drunk, you don’t know anything.”

The waitress brought a plate of eggs, potatoes, and fried ham to set before Cletus. Cletus looked at his breakfast stupidly for a moment, as if having difficulty making his eyes focus. Then he smiled.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, grinning. “I was sittin’ here waitin’ on another drink, but I must’ve ordered breakfast.” His face paled as he looked at the food, then he pushed it away. “Why’d I order breakfast? I can’t eat this shit,” he said.

“Give it to me, I haven’t eaten yet,” Billy said.

“You can eat it?”

“Yes, I can eat.”

“How can you eat it?”

“I can eat it because I’m not hungover from a night of drinking, fighting, and who knows what else you were doing.”

“Oh yeah, I forget,” Cletus said. “You are the good boy of the family. Pa thinks me and Ray should be more like you. Tell me, little brother, do you think I should be more like you?”

“Would it do any good if I said I thought you should?” Billy asked. He cut a piece of ham and stuck it in his mouth.

“No, it wouldn’t do no good a’tall,” Cletus said. “Besides which, I got me a score to settle with Marshal Calhoun.”

“What score do you have to settle with him?” Billy raked his biscuit through some egg yellow, then took a bite.

“I don’t know.”

“That doesn’t make sense, Cletus,” Billy said. “You say you have a score to settle with Marshal Calhoun, but you don’t even know the reason?”

“I’ve got these here two black eyes!” Cletus shouted. “Ain’t that reason enough?” Cletus’s voice was so loud that a few of the others who were eating their own breakfast looked around nervously.

“You’re making a scene, Cletus,” Billy cautioned.

“I don’t care. This here thing with Marshal Calhoun and his two brothers has gone far enough. I’m goin’ to stand up to them today. Are you goin’ to stand up with me? Or are you goin’ to turn tail and run?”

“What do you plan to do?” Billy asked.

“It don’t matter what I plan to do. What I want to know is, whatever I do, will you be there with me?”

“I’m your brother,” Billy said.

“I know you’re my brother,” Cletus said. “That ain’t the question. The question I’m askin’ you is will you be there with me?”

“I hope it never actually comes to that, but it if does, yes, I’ll be with you.”

“What if it actually comes to gunplay? Would you be there to back me up?”

Billy sighed. “Yes,” he said. “Like I told you, you’re my brother. If it comes to gunplay, I’ll back you.”

Suddenly, the anger left Cletus’s face and he grinned broadly. “I was hopin’ you would say that,” he said. “Just knowin’ I can count on you makes me happy. Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re goin’ home,” Cletus said. He laughed. “If Calhoun and his brothers want to have a shootout, why, they can just have it amongst themselves.”

Billy laughed happily. “Now you’re making sense,” he said. “Come on, I have a buckboard parked just down the street.”

“A buckboard? Where’s my horse?”

“It came back to the ranch last night,” Billy said.

Kathleen Garrison stood at the front window of the CNM&T office and watched as Billy drove by in the buckboard. Billy’s brother, Cletus, was sitting in the seat beside him, his head hanging forward as if he were asleep.

She wondered if Billy would glance toward the window, and when he did, she felt a little thrill pass through her. She waved at him, and she saw the small smile play across his face as he nodded in response.

Leaving the front window, she returned to the desk, then pulled out the poem he had written for her. She read the poem again, allowing each word to go to her heart.

Then, the joy she was feeling was suddenly replaced with a jolt of reality.

He had said it in the poem.

She was a Garrison.

He was a Clinton.

Kathleen heard her father’s footsteps on the front porch, and quickly, she folded the poem and stuck it between the pages of a copy of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations.

“Hello, Papa,” she said to him as he came in.

“I was just down to the telegraph office,” Garrison said. “All the material I need for building the depot has arrived in La Junta. Mr. Thompson is sending wagons after it tomorrow.”

“That’s wonderful, Papa,” Kathleen said. “Let’s just pray that it arrives without anyone being killed or hurt.”

“Prayer is good,” Garrison agreed. “But you’ve heard the old expression ‘God helps him who helps himself’?”

“Yes, of course.”

Garrison nodded. “I’m helping myself,” he said. “I’m sending Falcon MacCallister along with the wagons. I pity anyone who tries to stop them this time.”

Mounted on a horse supplied by Wade Garrison, Falcon was on the way to La Junta with the wagons. They had left Higbee at first light, and were now halfway between Higbee and La Junta.

Garrison wasn’t the only one to take steps to ensure the safety of the shipment. For this trip to La Junta and back, Thompson had hired guards to ride with the drivers, arming each of them with double-barrel shotguns.

As the wagons rolled slowly toward La Junta, the three guards shouted directions at each other.

“Tom, you check the tree line over there. Do you see anything?” one of the guards called.

“No, what about you?” Tom replied. “Anything in those rocks?”

“Nothing I can see.”

“Uh, Tom, Larry, and, Frank, is it?” Falcon asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you mind if I make a suggestion?”

“No, why should we mind? We’re in this together,” Larry replied.

“Good,” Falcon said. “Take a look at the wagons.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The wagons,” Falcon said. “Take a look at them. What do you see?”

The three guards looked at the wagons, then at each other, than at Falcon. It was obvious they had no idea what they were supposed to be looking for.

“I don’t see anything,” Tom said.

“Neither do I,” Larry added.”

“How about you, Frank? Do you see anything?”

“No,” Frank replied, confused as to where all this was going.

“Good, good, you’ve just made my point,” Falcon said. “Nobody is going to hit us with empty wagons,” he explained. “If they are going to hit us, it will be on the way back, when they can do the most damage.”

“Ha!” Smitty, the lead driver, laughed. “Shouldn’t of been all that hard for you boys to figure that out.”

“Yeah,” Tom said sheepishly. “Yeah, I guess we should have thought about that.”

When Falcon and the wagons reached La Junta, they stopped alongside a low, long, wooden building. A white sign on the either end of the building, bore the name of the station, in black letters.

LA JUNTA

“Whoa, hold it up here, boys,” Smitty said. “Barnes, you and Morrell stay with the wagons. I’ll go see Mr. Rudd and find out where our load is.”

“I’ll come with you,” Falcon said.

“Here, Tom, hold the reins,” Smitty said, handing the reins to the guard as he climbed down from the wagon. “I got the brake set, so they ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

“I got ’em,” Tom said.

Dismounting, Falcon followed Smitty into the little depot. There were a few passengers waiting for the next train: a drummer sitting alone with his case of samples, a couple of cowboys who were engaged in conversation, and a man, his wife, and two children. The smallest of the two, a little girl, was sleeping on the bench beside her mother. A little boy was sitting next to his father, playing with a wooden horse.

At one end of the depot, there was a ticket counter and telegraph station, and as Falcon and Smitty came inside, they could hear the telegraph clacking away. Evidently, La Junta was not the destination of the message because there was nobody at the instrument. Instead, the one man behind the ticket counter was busy with some printed documents. He looked up as Falcon and Smitty entered.

“Good morning, Smitty,” he called.

“’Mornin’, Poke. Is Mr. Rudd around?”

“Yes, he’s back in his office.”

Smitty nodded, then started toward the opposite end of the depot. Here, there was a closed door with a frosted glass windowpane. On the frosted pane were painted the words STATIONMASTER.

Smitty knocked lightly on the door, then pushed it open. “Mr. Rudd?” he called.

“Yes, come in,” a voice answered from inside.

Rudd was a man in his sixties, with white hair and white muttonchop whiskers. He was sitting at his desk, writing in a ledger, but looked up, then nodded as he recognized Smitty.

“Mr. Smith,” he said. “You would be here for the Garrison shipment, I take it?”

“Yes, sir. Did everything get here that was supposed to?”

“It did,” Rudd replied. “It’s the rearmost car at the back of the marshaling area. Let’s see, the number of the car is”—he paused to consult a book—“yes, here it is. The number is 10031. Here, I’ll write it down for you.”

“Thanks,” Smitty said, taking the number from Rudd. “Is all of it in the same car?”

“Yes, everything in that one car. Will you be signing for it?”

“No, I will sign for it,” Falcon said.

“And you are?”

“Falcon MacCallister.”

“Falcon MacCallister?” Rudd said, reacting to the name. “Are you the famous Falcon MacCallister?”

“I don’t know about the famous part,” Falcon replied.

“Yes, sir, this is the same Falcon MacCallister you’ve prob’ly heard about,” Smitty said. “After what happened to our last shipment, General Garrison hired Mr. MacCallister to ride along with us.”

“Yes, yes, I heard about what happened to the last shipment. What a shame. Mr. True was a fine man, a true gentleman. I will miss him. Uh, Mr. MacCallister, no offense, but do you have some authorization to sign for General Garrison’s shipment? It’s railroad regulations, you understand.”

“No offense taken,” Falcon said, showing the stationmaster the letter Garrison had given him before he left town this morning.

Rudd put on a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, hooking them carefully over one ear at a time. Then he read the letter slowly, as if going over each word. Then, he cleared his throat and put the paper aside.

“Sign here, please,” he said, sliding a bill of lading toward Falcon.

Falcon signed the document, then he and Smitty returned to the wagons.

“Back there in the corner, boys!” Smitty called to the other drivers. He pointed to the car in the most remote part of the yard.

Lee Davis and Gene Willoughby had been cutting weeds around the depot when Falcon went in to talk to the stationmaster.

“Son of a bitch!” Davis said. “Son of a bitch, it’s him!”

“It’s who?” Willoughby said.

“Wait, I’ll be right back.”

“I ain’t cuttin’ all these damn weeds by myself, you know,” Willoughby called out after Davis dropped his weed hook and started toward the depot.

Davis moved up close to the window that opened onto Rudd’s office, then looked in. Seeing what he wanted to see, he hurried back to Willoughby, whose right earlobe sported a ragged, encrusted wound.

“It’s him,” Davis said.

“Yeah, that’s what you said a while ago,” Willoughby replied as he continued to swing the weed hook. “Only you ain’t said who.” The expression in his voice showed that he had little interest in whoever it was Davis was talking about.

“Who? Him, that’s who,” Davis said. “Falcon MacCallister, the fella that shot off your earlobe when we tried to hold up that stage.”

That got Willoughby’s attention and he looked up sharply. “What? Are you sure?”

“Damn right I’m sure. I not only recognized him, I heard him tell Rudd that was his name. You might remember, that’s the son of a bitch that took our guns.”

“Yeah, and our boots, too,” Willoughby said. “Where is he?”

“He’s with them wagons,” Davis said, pointing to the three wagons that were now working their way across the tracks toward a freight car that was sitting alone.

“Well, what do you know?” Willoughby said. “I’ve been waitin’ for a chance to get even with that bastard, and here it is.”

Davis smiled. “Yeah, I thought you might be happy about this.”

“Damn!”

“What?”

“We ain’t got no guns,” Willoughby said. “Like you said, MacCallister took ’em. So, how are we going to do this?”

“I know where there’s a couple pistols,” Davis said.

“Where?”

“In a cabinet in the back of Rudd’s office.”

“They loaded?”

“Yes, they keep ’em loaded all the time. But if you can get Mr. Rudd to come out here, I can get hold of ’em.”

“How’m I goin’ to get him out here?”

“Here,” Davis said. “Put your hook under these railroad spikes. I’ll do it, too. We’ll see if we can pull a few of them up.”

Working together, they pulled up a couple of spikes, then were able to move the rail slightly out of line. “That’ll get his interest,” Davis said as he threw the spikes out into the adjacent woods.

Davis wandered off so that he wouldn’t be noticed. Then he waited as Willoughby went in to summon Rudd. A moment later, he saw Rudd come out of the depot, then stand over the track looking down at it and shaking his head.

“I’m glad it’s not the high iron,” Davis heard Rudd say, referring to the main line. “But even though this is a spur, it has to be fixed. We can’t be having cars run off the track here.”

With Rudd engaged, Davis went into the stationmaster’s office, opened the cabinet, and took out two pistols. Checking them quickly, he saw that both were loaded. He was back outside by the time Rudd returned from his inspection of the track.

“Did you get them?” Willoughby asked.

By way of answering him, Davis handed him one of the pistols.

“Let’s do it,” Willoughby said.

Falcon was standing by the front of the one wagon that had already been loaded, watching as the men loaded the second of the three. It wasn’t that he was too lazy, or too good to help with the loading; it was that he appreciated professionalism, and the three freight wagon drivers were professionals. They knew exactly how to load the wagons to get the maximum efficiency from the available space, and also where to place the weight in order to make the wagon ride better and to enable the team of horses to work more efficiently.

Falcon scratched a match on the weathered wood of the wagon, and was just holding it up to light the cigarette he had just rolled when a bullet slammed into the wagon just inches away.

Drawing his pistol and spinning in the same moment, he saw two men standing about twenty-five yards behind him. There was something familiar about them, though for the moment, he didn’t have time to consider what it was.

“Damnit, Davis, you missed!” one of the two men yelled. He fired his own gun even as he was yelling.

Falcon fired twice, and both men went down. With his gun held ready, he hurried toward them. When he got there, one was already dead, the other was dying. That was when he saw that they were the same two men who had tried to hold up the stagecoach between La Junta and Higbee.

“Damnit!” Falcon said angrily. “Are you crazy? I wasn’t after you. Why did you do this? You got yourselves killed for no reason!”

“It was supposed to be the other way around,” the one remaining outlaw said. This was the one with the mangled ear. “We was supposed to kill you.”

“What’s happening? What’s going on?” the wagon drivers called, and seeing Falcon standing over a couple of bodies, they hurried down to see, drawn by a morbid curiosity. By the time they got there, both outlaws were dead.

“I didn’t figure we would be hit until we were on the road on the way back,” Smitty said.

“They weren’t after the loads.”

“They weren’t?”

“No,” Falcon answered. “This had nothing to do with the loads. This was personal. These men were after me.”

“Damn, Mr. MacCallister, I hope you don’t take this wrong, but if you have crazy sons of bitches like these two tryin’ to kill you for no reason, just how safe are we with you?”