William Johnstone - Thunder of Eagles

“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.