Defiance of Eagles Read online

  “All right, Mrs. McVey. You owe it to your father not to try any more stupid stunts like the one you just pulled. I’m going to give you back to him once he pays the money, whether you are in one piece or not. For your father’s sake, I hope you are as healthy when he gets you back as you were when we took you.”

  Brimstone Ranch—two days later

  Megan put four shot glasses on a tray, filled them halfway with bourbon, then carried them into the parlor where the other two of her triplet siblings were seated. So, too, was her husband, Edward.

  “As you suggested, we have not told the sheriff that we know who did this,” Edward said.

  “And there has been no further contact?” Morgan asked as he took his glass.

  “There has been no contact of any kind,” Edward said. “Nothing since the sign we found posted above poor Johnny’s body.”

  “I see.”

  “I still don’t understand why you suggest that we not tell the sheriff that we know who did this,” Edward said.

  “If the sheriff gets involved, it will just make our job more difficult,” Morgan replied.

  “But wouldn’t the sheriff be better equipped than just the two of you to handle this?” Edward asked.

  “Tell him, Megan,” Morgan said.

  “Darling, if Mary Kate is still alive, and I pray God that she is, no law enforcement agency in the world would have a better chance of getting her back, safely, than my brothers.”

  “But there are only two of them, Megan. And God knows how many men were involved in this beastly affair. For all Ackerman’s faults, I know that he is a skilled tactician. Also it has been said that he is traveling with his own private army now.”

  “We won’t be alone,” Matthew said. “We’ll send a telegram to Falcon. That will make three of us.”

  “Knowing Jamie as well as I do, I know he would also want to take part in it, but the truth is, he is just too old,” Morgan said, speaking of their oldest brother, Jamie Ian IV.

  “Ha, I’d be willing to bet that Jamie doesn’t think he’s too old,” Megan said.

  “Which is precisely why we won’t contact him,” Morgan said. “I have no doubt but that Falcon will be here as soon as he can. So, like I said, that makes three of us.”

  “Four,” Megan said.

  “Four?” Morgan chuckled. “Surely, you aren’t thinking about Andrew.”

  “No, I’m thinking about me,” Megan said.

  Both Matthew and Morgan shook their heads.

  “No. You aren’t a part of this. You are a woman,” Matthew said.

  “I am also a MacCallister. And beyond that, I am Mary Kate’s mother,” Megan added firmly. “So, if you think you are going to, somehow, keep me out of this, you have another think coming.”

  “I think you should listen to your brothers, Megan. What do you think you could do to help?”

  “Come outside,” Megan demanded. “All of you. Come outside.”

  As they started outside Megan reached into the front hall closet and took down a gun and holster set. She began strapping on the gun, buckling it up just as they reached the front porch.

  On a tree limb, about fifty yards distant, there was a small Y-shaped twig.

  “I’ll take them off one at a time,” Megan said. She fired twice, and both arms of the twig were severed.

  Morgan chuckled. “She’s been showing off like that since she was twelve years old.”

  “It’s good that you sent word to Falcon to get him up here,” Megan said. “But just remember, when you start after whoever did this, I’m going with you.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” Edward said.

  “Edward, we’ve known her a lot longer than you have,” Matthew said. “Believe me when I tell you that you aren’t going to be able to talk her out of this. But I promise you, we will look out for her.”

  “There is no need for you to make such a promise,” Edward said. “If Megan is going, then I am as well.”

  “Don’t you think you would be better off staying here to run the ranch?” Matthew asked.

  “I have enough hired men that the ranch will practically run itself,” Edward said. “And, if we are going after Boyd Ackerman, you might find my presence helpful. Having once been his commanding officer, I know him quite well.”

  “Poor Mary Kate, to have watched her husband killed, and now be held by that evil bunch of bastards,” Matthew said. “I’m going to take special delight in tracking down the sons of bitches who did this, and making them pay for it.”

  “What about Johnny’s funeral?” Matthew asked.

  “I’ve contacted his parents,” Edward said. “They are amenable to having him buried here, in the local cemetery. Unfortunately, I’m afraid they won’t be able to get here in time for the funeral.”

  It rained on the day of the funeral, and the preacher continued the service for as long as he could, hoping that the rain would stop before it was time to go out to the cemetery. His ploy worked, because by the time the church service was over and the coffin moved into the hearse, the rain had stopped and the sun was shining.

  The sun might be shining, but the roads and grounds of the cemetery were filled with mud, which made it difficult for the few people who actually showed up at the funeral.

  “Poor Johnny,” Morgan said. “He has no relatives here, and with Mary Kate gone, there are very few to mourn for him.”

  “Wrong,” Megan said. “I am mourning for him as much as if he had been my own son. And I know that Edward is mourning, as are his friends. And as you can tell by the number of people who have come, despite the rain, his friends are legion.”

  “Yes, I can see that now,” Morgan said. “That was a foolish comment for me to make.”

  The sheriff came to the funeral and he stood quietly until the coffin was lowered into the grave. Then he came over to talk to Edward, Megan, and her two brothers.

  “I’m sorry to say that we still don’t have any idea who did this,” Sheriff Tompkins said. “We’ve been over the McVey Ranch with a fine-tooth comb, and we’ve found no clues. You’re sure you don’t have the slightest idea of who might have done this?”

  “No idea,” Edward replied.

  “I mean, there’s nobody that you know of that was mad at your son-in-law, someone who might have wanted to kill him for revenge?”

  “Not unless it was someone who came up from Texas,” Edward said. “As you know, Constable, he had not been up here for so very long. And all the people he met since he arrived were friends. Johnny was a most affable person. He made friends quite easily.”

  “Yes, well, I can attest to that,” Sheriff Tompkins said. “I met Johnny shortly after he arrived with the herd. He had, as I recall, a rather large number of men riding with him, and not a one of them caused us any trouble. He had them well under control.”

  “If your investigation turns up anything, you will let me know, won’t you?” Edward asked.

  “Yes, well, to be honest with you, Colonel, I don’t even know where to go from here. I know that whoever did this has your daughter, but until something else turns up, there’s nothing I can do.”

  “We understand, Sheriff. And thank you for coming to the funeral,” Edward said.

  “Yes, well, comin’ to the funeral is about the least I could do,” Sheriff Tompkins said. “I reckon I’d better get back to the office. Again, Colonel, Mrs. Hamilton, you have my condolences.”

  Tompkins touched the brim of his hat and walked away.

  “I hated lying to him like that,” Edward said. “But I think you and your brothers are correct. I don’t believe there is anything that the sheriff or his deputies can actually do, and having him involved would only get in our way and make our own investigation and rescue operation more difficult.”

  Megan leaned over and kissed him.

  “I’m glad you see it our way, dear.”

  “Might I suggest that we send the telegram to Falcon?” Morgan offered.

  “How are we
going to do that without the telegrapher knowing that we know who did it?” Megan asked.

  “Simple, we will just send a nonspecific telegram asking Falcon to come, telling him that Johnny was killed and Mary Kate taken, but we won’t mention Ackerman’s name,” Morgan said.

  “Good idea.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It was four days now since Johnny McVey had been killed and Mary Kate taken. And during that time Ackerman and his men had been holed up at the Helmville way station, a gray, weather-beaten building that sat baking in the afternoon sun. A faded sign just outside the door of the building gave the arrival and departure schedule of stagecoaches that no longer ran, for a stage line that no longer existed. The stage line had been abandoned when the railroad had gone south, rather than north, of the Rattlesnake Mountains.

  The roof and one wall of the nearby barn were caved in, but there was an overhang at the other end that provided some much-needed shade for their horses. Ackerman had posted guards east and west of their position because the north and south approaches were blocked by mountains.

  Inside the building in what had been the waiting room, Mary Kate McVey sat in a chair in the corner. Ackerman sat at a table in the middle of the room, while Casey had biscuits in the oven, and bacon, twitching in the pan, on the stove.

  “Do you want something to eat?” Ackerman asked Mary Kate.

  “No,” Mary Kate answered.

  “You’ve eaten so very little since you joined us that I’m afraid if you don’t start eating, you might get ill.”

  “Since I joined you? What do you mean, since I joined you? I didn’t join you, you brought me here against my will. After you killed my husband.”

  “I’m sorry about your husband,” Ackerman said. “But having him here with us would only complicate things. Sometimes people have to be sacrificed for the success of the overall operation. You might say that he was a tragic, but necessary, casualty.”

  “Major, I don’t know what you have in mind, but believe me, it isn’t going to work.”

  “Oh, I think it will.”

  “How can you do this? You and my father served together.”

  “We didn’t exactly serve together, as you recall. I served under him. He was commanding officer of the Third Cavalry when, by all that is right, I should have been given that command.”

  “Really? As I recall, you were kicked out of the army. My father left with honor.”

  “You talk too much,” Ackerman said. Getting up from the table, he stepped out onto the front porch of the way station, leaned against the supporting pillar of the porch roof, and stared out at the Rattlesnake range.

  Ackerman’s promise to the men he had “rescued” after his expulsion from the army was that if they rode with him, they would be well paid. His proposal was cheered at the time, and so far he had made good on his promise, their operations earning much more money than any of them had ever earned before. And this latest project, if all went well, stood to earn them, even after Ackerman took his thirty percent cut, over one thousand dollars apiece.

  “Major, your supper’s ready,” Waters said, sticking his head out the front door.

  “Thank you, Private Waters.”

  “I’ll take some out to the guards.”

  “Yes, do that.”

  When Ackerman went back into the way station, he saw Mary Kate just as he had left her, still sitting in the chair. At the moment, she wasn’t tied. She had complained, earlier, that the narrow rope Ackerman was using to bind her was cutting into her wrists and making her hands go numb, so he had untied her.

  “You know, Miss Hamilton . . .”

  “Mrs. McVey,” Mary Kate said. “My name is Mrs. McVey.”

  “Yes, but now that your husband is dead, I’m pretty sure you don’t have to use the name McVey anymore if you don’t want to.”

  “What makes you think I don’t want to?”

  “Nothing, I was just telling you of your options. Now I’m going to ask you again to eat. I’m asking it nicely, and this is the last time I’m going to ask you.” He carved open a biscuit and lay a piece of bacon inside.

  “Here, eat this.”

  “No!” Mary Kate shouted loudly, and she knocked the biscuit from his hand.

  In an almost instantaneous reaction, Ackerman slapped her.

  “I told you, that would be the last time I was going to ask you nicely,” he said angrily. “Women are all alike,” he said in a hissing tone. “You can’t be nice to them. Try it, and they’ll go out of their way to try and belittle you. Well, believe me, girly, I’ve shown a woman or two that they can’t do that to me and get away with it. Now I’m going to pick that biscuit and bacon up and give it to you again. You will either eat it, or I will stuff it down your throat.”

  “I thought officers were supposed to be gentlemen,” Mary Kate said.

  “I’m sorry,” Ackerman said in a flat voice. “When they stripped me of my rank, they also stripped me of my gentlemanly decorum.”

  Ackerman retrieved the biscuit and bacon and brought it back to her. Because the biscuit had been on the floor, it had smudges of dirt on it.

  “Eat it,” he said.

  “The biscuit is smudged. It’s dirty,” she said.

  “That is your fault. You should have eaten it the first time it was offered to you,” Ackerman said. “Now eat it!” he shouted at the top of his voice. Gone was the well-modulated dulcet voice he had been using with her.

  With tears streaming down her cheeks, Mary Kate began to eat the biscuit.

  “The hell you say. He slapped her?” Powell asked Smith. Powell and Smith were watching Dale and Travis Hastings, Bob Jerrod, and Corporal Jones playing poker for rocks. At the moment Marv Boyle and Waters were on guard. Baker and Maxwell were getting ready to relieve them.

  “Yep,” Smith answered. “He asked her to eat, she wouldn’t, so he slapped her.”

  “I’ll be damned. And here he’s tellin’ us to keep our hands offen her,” Travis said.

  “It’s not the same thing,” Jerrod said. “I’m bettin’ that slappin’ her ain’t exactly what you got in mind.”

  “No, what I got ’n mind is more of a poke than a slap,” Travis said, and the others laughed.

  “Hey, how much money are we goin’ to get out of this?” Travis asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jerrod said. “Corporal Jones, you know how to cipher, I’ve seen you do it. How much money will each one of us get?”

  “How much money was you gettin’ when you was in the army?” Jones asked.

  “You know how much. Eleven dollars a month. We’ve sure talked about it enough.”

  “All right, say you was in the army for eleven years, and for that whole eleven years, you didn’t spend anything, you didn’t buy one beer, one razor, you didn’t buy nothin’. Say you saved ever’ cent you drawed across the pay table. That would be one thousand and five hundred dollars, and that’s how much each one of us will be gettin’ from this.”

  “Sumbitch!” Jerrod said. “With that much money I could have me a whore ever’ night for . . . how many nights would that be?”

  Jones took out a pencil and began to figure.

  “How come you have to figure this, but didn’t have to the other?” Dale asked.

  “ ’Cause I’d already been thinkin’ of the other,” Jones said. “What kind of whore would you be gettin’? A fifty-cent whore or a two-dollar whore?”

  “Hell, a two-dollar whore,” Jerrod replied with a big smile.

  “Ha!” Jones said. “You could have you a two-dollar whore ever’ night for two years.”

  “Whooee! For two years?”

  “For two years. Unless of course you wanted to eat or drink anything during that time.”

  “Well, what if I just had me a whore ever’ night for a year? Then I could use the rest of my money for eatin’ and drinkin’.”

  Powell laughed. “And you wouldn’ have to spend nothin’ on hotels or boardin’ houses, ’cause you�
�d just be sleepin’ with a different whore ever’ night.”

  “How many days is in one year?” Travis asked.

  “Three hundred and sixty-five,” Jones said.

  “Well, there ain’t no towns with three hundred and sixty-five whores, so, like as not, you’d have to sleep with the same one more ’n oncet.”

  “Yeah, and you know that some of them would be fifty-cent whores,” Smith said.

  From Mary Kate’s position inside the way station she could hear the conversation of the men outside. Most of them she didn’t know, though she did remember a few of them from when she lived on the fort with her father. She remembered Sergeant Casey and Corporal Jones. And she remembered Powell, because he had been a bugler. Shortly after she was taken, and when she recognized some of them, she entertained the hope that one of them might help her escape. But listening to them now, the way they were planning on spending the money, she was beginning to realize that she had only two hopes of escape. She would either have to be rescued, or she would have to escape herself. And seeing the way Ackerman used his men, like an army, deploying guards and such, she had very little hope of being rescued.

  MacCallister, Colorado

  At this very moment, Falcon was in the Boots and Saddles Saloon enjoying a game of cards with Dallas Frazier, owner of the local newspaper, the MacCallister Eagle. The other two players were Doc Satterfield and Pogue Willis. Pogue owned the wagon freight line.

  “I swear, Falcon, the way you’re going here, the town’s going to have to put up another statue of you, standing right there beside your father,” Pogue said. “I bet a dollar.”

  “I would hope not,” Falcon said, sliding a dollar into the pot. “Anyhow, I could never stand anywhere but behind Pa. None of us could.”

  “He was quite a man, all right,” Frazier said. “Who dealt this mess anyway?” He laid his cards facedown on the table.

  “You did,” Doc Satterfield said. “And I think you did a fine job. I raise a dollar.”