Slaughter of Eagles Read online

  “You are quite welcome, miss. I notice that some of the other passengers have had their beds made. Shall I send the porter to turn down your bed?”

  “Yes, thank you. I would appreciate that.”

  Half an hour later, Janelle was in the lower bunk, which she preferred over the upper because she could look through the window. A full and very bright moon painted the barren landscape in stark shades of black and silver. Seen at night, the landscape seemed softer, and less harsh than it did by day, under the blows of a midday sun.

  At such quiet, introspective moments, Janelle wondered if she had made a huge mistake in leaving New York to come to a land that she had never seen before. She thought of her baby. She missed him terribly, and wished he had been old enough to understand why she felt it was necessary that she leave.

  She wept for a while. Then, listening to the clack of the wheels on the track joints, and gently rocked by the sway of the car in motion, she drifted off to sleep.

  Superstition Mountain

  At dawn the notches of the Mazatzal Mountains, which lay to Ben Hanlon’s east, were touched with the dove-gray of early morning. Shortly thereafter, a golden fire pushed over the mountain tops, filling the sky with light and color, waking all the creatures below.

  Hanlon woke up, checked his mule, then walked away to make water. He craved some coffee, but in truth he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a cup. He had some sassafras root, so he could make sassafras tea, though it was a poor substitute. He was able to have a morning smoke, but even with his strict conservation of tobacco, he was quickly running out. Soon he would have to cut down to only one smoke per day, and the time would come when he couldn’t smoke at all.

  He would have enjoyed a biscuit with his tea, but he had no flour. He wished he had preserved a little of his supper so he could have some breakfast, but he didn’t, so he started work without eating. He could always eat later.

  Thinking he saw some “color” in the dirt under a small, spiny tree, Ben reached for his short handled pickax, then moved over to the mesquite bush. On his knees he worked the ground beneath it until he heard a scurrying noise. He jumped back, afraid he might have stirred up a rattlesnake. Seeing that it was only a kangaroo rat, he chuckled.

  “Damn, you little critter!” he said aloud. “You ought to know better’n to scare a feller like that. What are doin’, lookin’ for your brother? Well, I got news for you. He’s gone. I had him for supper last night. And if I could sneak up on you, I’d have you for breakfast.”

  The rat scurried away and Ben went back to striking the hard packed dirt around the mesquite bush, pulling up clods and breaking them into smaller pieces, looking for ore bearing rock, working with the patience and skill developed by more than twenty years of desert prospecting.

  Born in South Carolina, Hanlon was twenty-five years old when he boarded a ship in Charleston Harbor to be a part of the California gold rush. That was in 1849, and for several years he panned enough gold from the rivers and creeks to keep himself going, though he never made the big strike. Finally, hearing rumors of a gold mine discovered and lost on Superstition Mountain of Arizona—“It’s got a vein of pure gold, ten feet high, fifteen feet deep, and near ’bout one mile long,”—he left California.

  Since coming to Arizona Ben had very little interaction with people, though from time to time he ventured in from the wilderness to take some sort of job, staying just long enough to earn sufficient money to allow him to go back out to continue his quest. He didn’t need much money to survive.

  Not too long after arriving in Arizona, he married an Apache woman. She taught him a lot about desert survival. As a result he was adept at trapping animals for his food, he knew enough edible plants to consider the desert his own private garden, he knew the location of every source of water for miles, and he knew where to find salt. After a few years of isolation she had had enough and returned to her people.

  As Hanlon knelt under the mesquite tree, working the hot, rocky dirt with his pickax, he heard his mule moving around behind him. “Now, Rhoda, you just stay put,” he said. “If you wander off you’re on your own, ’cause I don’t plan to be a’ comin’ after you. And remember, I’m the one knows where to find water.”

  Rhoda whickered, and scratched at the ground with her hoof.

  “What ’n tarnation do you want? Can’t you see I’m a’ workin’ over here?”

  Rhoda whickered again and, with a sigh, Hanlon put his pickax down and got up.

  “All right, all right,” he said as he walked over to his mule. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  Again, the mule raked her hoof along the ground.

  “What? You got a thorn in your foot? All right, I know how them things can hurt. Lift up your foot and let me—”

  He stopped in midsentence, then dropped to his knees to look where Rhoda had been scratching. There, on the ground at Rhoda’s front two hooves, was a small pile of color bearing rocks.

  “What in the world?” Hanlon asked. Dropping on his knees, he began moving the rocks around. “Rhoda, is this real?” he asked in excitement.

  Pulling his knife from its leather scabbard, he scraped away the dirt, then poked the knife into the color. The knife punched easily into the color. “Gold!” he shouted. “Rhoda, these here rocks is all gold nuggets. Ever’ damn one of ’em and lookie here! They got more gold than rock!”

  How did they get there? Why were they just lying here? Where did they come from?

  “Rhoda, ol’ girl! You know what you’ve just done? You’ve found what we been lookin’ for all these years! The next time we go into town I’m a’ goin’ to buy you the biggest sack of oats you’ve ever seen!”

  Rhoda whickered and nodded her head as Ben began gathering up the nuggets.

  Denver

  Janelle found a seat in the middle of the car. It was the fourth time she had changed trains since leaving New York, and the first train that had only day cars. Fortunately, she had only one more night to spend on the train. Though it was bound to be uncomfortable for her she was certain she would be able to handle it.

  She was told they would be going through the Rocky Mountains, and the flyer she had picked up in the Denver depot, promised wonderful vistas of canyons, lakes, crags, and streams in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. You never saw, nor have you ever dreamed such wondrous sights as will greet you along every mile of track.

  She thought about writing another letter to her sister, describing some of the scenery to her, but the very act of writing would take her eyes away, so she simply stared through the window, soaking up memories she could access later.

  She still felt some remorse over having left her baby behind, as well as sadness for isolating herself from the rest of her family. But, given the grandeur of the marvelous country she was passing through, that sadness was temporarily set aside and she found herself looking forward to the excitement before her.

  Chapter Seven

  Idaho Springs

  Because he was without a horse, Falcon had to take a train back to MacCallister.

  “Do you have any baggage, Mr. MacCallister?” the station agent asked.

  “My saddle and saddlebags,” he said.

  “What about your rifle?”

  Falcon considered checking his rifle through, but decided against it. “No, thanks, I guess I’ll just keep it with me. I’m only going a few stops, so it won’t be that much of an inconvenience for me—if it doesn’t violate any of the railroad rules.”

  “No sir, no problem at all. However, we do have a rule that no game shall be shot from the train.”

  “What would be the sense of shooting game from the train, if you can’t get off to get it?” Falcon asked.

  “Precisely, sir,” the station agent said. He wrote out the ticket and handed it to Falcon. “The train should be here within the hour.”

  Falcon thanked him, then took a seat in the waiting room. True to the station agent’s promise, it was just under an hour when
he heard the whistle of the approaching train. He walked out onto the platform to wait for it.

  The train swept into the station with belches of steam and smoke, and the squealing sound of steel on steel as it drew to a stop. Falcon waited until the arriving passengers on the train, two young men, stepped down. Once all arriving passengers had detrained, the conductor looked out over the platform then, with all the dignity and authority of his office shouted out, “’Board!”

  Having issued the call, he moved toward the boarding step to greet those who were climbing onto the train. Falcon was the last of six passengers to board, and as he approached the step the conductor smiled broadly and said, “Mr. MacCallister, it’s good to see you, sir. It’s been a while since you rode with us.”

  “Hello, Andy. Yes it has, hasn’t it?” He left unstated the explanation as to why he was riding the train. Carrying his rifle low in his left hand, Falcon passed from the front to the rear of the car. Midway to the back, he saw a very pretty woman sitting next to a window. She noticed him looking at her and returned his gaze with a smile.

  “Ma’am,” he said, touching the brim of his hat and nodding as he continued toward the back of the car.

  Falcon chose a seat that was unoccupied so he could spread out a bit. It wasn’t that he was too big to sit in one half of the seat, it was just that he found it more relaxing if he could have the entire seat to himself. Putting his rifle butt down on the floor between his knee and the wall of the car, he settled back to get comfortable for the ride.

  Janelle had almost blushed under the tall, handsome man’s scrutiny. He was handsome, courteous, and possessed all the qualities vile Boyd Zucker lacked. Why couldn’t she have found someone like that?

  Wait a minute, she scolded herself. What on earth was she thinking? She didn’t know that man. She had less than a three second encounter with him, a brief exchange of glances, and she was extolling him with virtues that, though they may have been correct, were certainly not in evidence from the brief meeting. With nothing more than his looks and polite greeting to validate her hasty assessment of him, she was lamenting the fact that she had not met him before she met Zucker.

  Besides, the man was armed to the teeth. He had a big pistol strapped to one side, a knife on the other, and was carrying a rifle. Did he expect to get into a war? No, she would be better off not getting such silly romantic notions in her head as to start fantasizing over a well armed, albeit tall and very handsome, stranger on the train.

  Once the train pulled out of the station Janelle again turned her attention to the magnificent scenery outside. The long trip from New York had been exhausting, and the first part of the trip, through the farmlands of the Midwest, had been boring. But since coming farther West the vistas were becoming more and more magnificent and she found that she was actually enjoying the trip, tiring though it might be.

  Two stops later a young man dressed all in black, got onto the train. The black was alleviated only by flashes of silver—a silver band around his hat and a silver belt buckle. He wore a pistol with an ivory handle and though she had grown somewhat used to seeing armed men over the last couple days, most were wearing their weapons in an understated way. The young man made a show of his pistol.

  There was something about him, a cockiness and an arrogance, that she found most unappealing. As he came closer to her seat, she turned to look out the window so as not to make eye contact with him. She inhaled a sharp breath when she sensed he had stopped right beside her seat. She willed herself not to look around, hoping, praying, he would take the hint and pass her by.

  “Now, darlin’ how do you think that makes me feel, you starin’ out the window like that just to keep from lookin’ at me?” she heard the man ask. “Why, that’s pure insultin’.”

  “I’m sorry,” Janelle said. “I meant no insult.”

  The arrogant young man laughed. “Oh, I think you did mean to insult me.”

  The train started with a jerk and the young man had to grab the back of the seat to keep from falling. Janelle tried, unsuccessfully, to smother a laugh.

  “Now you’re laughin’ at me,” the young man said.

  “Please, won’t you leave me alone?”

  “You want me to leave you alone, do you?”

  “Yes, please.”

  The young man giggled, not pleasantly, but with an evil cackle. “And what happens if I don’t leave you alone?” he asked.

  “I’ll tell you this, mister. You aren’t going to like what happens, if you don’t leave her alone,” Falcon said, stepping up to the young man.

  “Mister, if you don’t mind your own business I’m going to—” the young man started, reaching for his pistol even as he was talking. He stopped midsentence when he realized his pistol wasn’t in his holster.

  “Are you looking for this?” Falcon asked, showing the man his pearl handled Colt.

  “What? What are you doing with my gun?”

  “I’m keeping you alive,” Falcon answered.

  “What do you mean, you’re keeping me alive?”

  “If you still had this pistol, you might try and use it on me. And then I would have to kill you.”

  “Mister, who the hell do you think you are?” the young belligerent asked.

  “Mister MacCallister, is there any trouble here?” the conductor asked, coming into the car at that moment.

  “No trouble, Andy, as long as you keep this arrogant young fool out of this car,” Falcon replied.

  “MacCallister?” the young man said, the arrogance and anger on his face replaced by an expression of fear. “Did you call him MacCallister?”

  “That’s his name,” the conductor answered. “Falcon MacCallister.”

  “Mr. MacCallister, I’m sorry,” the young man said. “I didn’t mean no harm.”

  “I’m not the one you need to apologize to,” Falcon said. “The person you need to apologize to is the young lady you have been bothering.”

  The young man turned to Janelle. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I was just, well, I don’t exactly know what I was just doin’. But I promise you, I won’t be doin’ it no more.”

  “That’s quite all right,” Janelle said.

  Falcon emptied all the cartridges from the young man’s pistol, then handed it over to the conductor.

  “Hold on to this, will you Andy? Give it back to him when he gets off the train,” Falcon said.

  “Yes, sir, I’ll be glad to do that,” the conductor said. “Come along, son. I’ll find you a seat in one of the other cars.”

  Janelle watched as the young man, much less arrogant, meekly followed the conductor out of the car.

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” she said to Falcon.

  “My pleasure,” Falcon said, again touching the brim of his hat. “I hope the rest of your trip is a pleasant one.”

  The tall, handsome man, who Janelle could now truly call her hero, returned to his seat in the back of the car, though she wished she had the courage to ask him to join her. Over the next half hour, she went over scenarios in her mind whereby she came up with some clever way of meeting him, but before she could work up the courage to approach him, the train made another stop, and with one final, courteous nod, Mr. Falcon MacCallister, as the conductor had called him, left the train.

  Just like that, Janelle thought. Her knight in shining armor was gone, their brief encounter like ships that pass in the night. She would never see him again.

  A week later Luke Mueller’s horse stepped in a prairie dog hole and Mueller had to shoot him. Throwing his saddle over his shoulder, he began walking. Although his ear was healing, it was still sore, and he knew it must look a sight. With every step he renewed his hatred for Falcon MacCallister. He thought he’d had him back in Idaho Springs, but the man had more lives than a cat. He would get him, though. Or, maybe someone else would kill him. That would be all right too. He didn’t care who killed him, he just wanted the son of a bitch dead.

  He had walked about two miles wh
en he saw a little trading post that stood all alone, weather-beaten and drooping. It was the first building of any kind he had seen in the last ten miles. Otherwise indistinguishable from any other desert shack, it was noticeable only because a crudely painted sign had been mounted on the roof, large enough to catch the attention of anyone who might come by.

  BLUM’S STORE

  BEER – EATS – GOODS

  Though it was isolated, the building sat squarely on a much used trail, making it a welcome sight to travelers who might be hungry, or thirsty, or just needing to hear another human voice.

  With a sigh of relief, Mueller dropped his saddle on the front porch and went inside. The interior of the store was dark. Light barely filtered through the dirty windows, or the dust-mote laden bars that stabbed in through the cracks between the weathered gray plank walls. The store smelled of the various products offered for sale—salt-cured bacon, flour, dry beans, and stale beer.

  A middle-aged, very plump woman was sweeping the floor, and a very thin, bald-headed man was standing behind the counter.

  “Your name Blum?” Mueller asked.

  “Yes, sir, just like the sign says. My oh my, what happened to your ear?”

  “It got bit off by a dog,” Muller said.

  “All I can say is, that is one mean dog,” Blum said.

  “Was.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “He was one mean dog. I shot him.”

  “Yes, well, I wouldn’t wonder. Now, what can I do for you?”

  “I’ll have a beer,” Mueller said.

  “Yes, sir, one beer coming up.” Blum picked up a mug, then held it under a spigot that protruded from a barrel. Pulling the handle, the mug was quickly filled with an amber colored liquid, topped with a white, frothy head. He handed the mug to Mueller. “I expect this is goin’ to be tastin’ awful good to you on this hot day. Most especial, since I seen you walkin’ up here, carryin’ your saddle on your shoulder. You bein’ a little feller an’ all, that must have been some load you was a’ totin’. I don’t mean no disrespect by that, I mean, sayin’ you was little and all.”