William Johnstone - Thunder of Eagles

“Let’s get out of here, boys!” Ray called, spurring his horse into retreat.

The sun was just coming up by the time Ray, Cletus, and the others returned to the ranch. They pulled to a halt in front of the porch.

“Does someone want to tell me what the hell happened back there?” Lou Reeder asked. “I thought this was supposed to be easy!”

“They was waitin’ for us,” Ray answered.

“Hell, yes, they was waitin’ for us,” Lou said. “But my question is, why? I thought they was not supposed to be nothin’ but a bunch of dumb gandy dancers.”

“Someone must have been with them. Someone must have organized them.”

“It ain’t no mystery who that someone is,” Cletus said. “It was Falcon MacCallister.”

“How do you know that? Did you see him?” Ray asked.

“I didn’t have to see the son of a bitch,” Cletus replied. “I’ve got to where I can smell the son of a bitch anytime I get a mile away from him.”

“Yeah?” Lou said. “Well, it might’a helped us tonight if you had smelled him before we ran into that hornet’s nest.”

Pete was weaving in his saddle, and his face was pasty white. It wasn’t until then that the others noticed he was bleeding.

“Pete,” Cletus said. “Pete, what’s wrong with you?”

Pete was holding his hand over his stomach, and he pulled the hand away from his wound. The palm of his hand was filled with blood, and it spilled down onto his saddle and down his pants leg, though, as his saddle and trousers were already soaked with blood, it was hard to discern new from old.

“I got hit back there, when all the shootin’ started,” Pete said. He weaved back and forth a couple of times, then fell from his saddle.

“Pa!” Cletus shouted. “Pa, get out here!”

Ike Clinton came out onto the patio then, and saw Pete’s blood-soaked body lying very still.

“What the hell happened?” Ike asked, kneeling beside Pete. He put his hand on Pete’s neck, felt for a pulse, then looked up. “He’s dead.”

“Damn, they killed him,” Cletus said.

“Funny, Pete never said a word the whole time we was comin’ back,” Ray said.

“Who killed him?” Ike asked. “Where were you? What were you doing?”

“Pa, while you was gone, I found out that Garrison was beginnin’ to build his railroad,” Ray said. “So what we done is, we rode out at the railroad construction site just to stir things up a bit.”

“Yeah, we figured we could catch ’em all sleepin’,” Cletus said.

“When we got there, the bedrolls was all spread out around the fire an’ all, so we started shootin’ at ’em. We rode all the way into the camp shootin’ at them bedrolls. But it turns out, there wasn’t nobody in any of them. They was all empty.”

“And the next thing you know, all hell broke loose,” Cletus said.

“Yeah,” Ray said. “Yeah, the whole thing was an ambush. They was hidin’ in the rocks just outside the camp, and they opened up on us.”

“That’s when they killed Pete,” Cletus said.

“They didn’t kill him, sonny. You two boys did,” a sibilant voice said.

Both Ray and Cletus looked at the man who had spoken. Neither of them had ever seen him before.

“Who the hell are you?” Cletus asked.

“Boys, this is Jefferson Tyree,” Ike said.

“Jefferson Tyree?” Cletus said. “Wait a minute. Do you mean the outlaw Jefferson Tyree?”

“I mean Jefferson Tyree,” Ike said without commenting on the outlaw reference.

“What’s he doin’ here?”

“I hired him.”

“You hired him? Pa, he’s an outlaw!” Cletus said.

Ike chuckled. “Hell, son, if it weren’t for the fact that we got Belmond in our hip pockets, we would be outlaws, too,” he said.

“Well, what the hell do you need him for anyway?”

“I thought we might be able to use him in our little disagreement with General Wade Garrison,” Ike explained.

“You don’t need him, Pa. You got me’n Ray. What do you need someone else for?”

“Because, like you said, I have you and Ray,” Ike said. “Two of the must useless sons a man has ever been cursed with.”

“Yeah? Well, what is he goin’ to do that we can’t?” Cletus challenged, pointing to Tyree.

“If I had been with you tonight, I would’ve smelled the trap, and I wouldn’t have gotten a man killed. Like I said, you’re the ones who got him killed. You killed him by going out there without knowing what you were doing,” Tyree said. He crossed his arms across his chest and leaned back against one of the columns that fronted the patio. “Don’t be doing anything like that again, unless I give you permission.”

“Now, wait just a damn minute here,” Cletus said angrily. “If Pa hired you, then that means you work for me, I don’t work for you. So you won’t be giving me permission to do anything.”

Tyree uncrossed his arms. “Sonny, I not only don’t work for you,” he said. “I no longer work for your pa.” He started toward the barn.

“What do you mean, you don’t work for me?” Ike called after him.

“Ought not to be that hard to figure out,” Tyree replied without looking back. He continued walking toward the barn.

“No, wait!” Ike called after him. He glared at his son. “Ray, Cletus, Tyree is right. Neither one of you have any business messing in his business. And from now on, you won’t do one damn thing unless he tells you to do it.”

Ray stood there for a moment, seething, as he clenched and unclenched his fists.

“This ain’t right, Pa!” Ray said. “This ain’t in no way right, and you know it!”

“Boy, you know me well enough now to know that I don’t give a tinker’s damn what’s right or wrong,” Ike said. “I only care for results. And so far, neither you nor Cletus has given me any results. That’s why I hired Tyree.”

“We don’t need him, Pa,” Ray said. “Me’n Cletus can take care of—”

“So far you and Cletus haven’t been able to take care of shit,” Ike said, interrupting his son in mid-sentence. “I’ve hired Jefferson Tyree because I’m tired of getting my men killed. I think it’s time we started killing a few of Garrison’s men. Do you understand that?”

“Yeah,” Ray said, biting off his words. “Yeah, I understand it.”

“And you won’t go off on your own anymore. You won’t do anything like that unless Tyree tells you it’s all right. Do you understand that?”

Ray sighed. “Yeah.”

“Yeah, what?”

“Yeah, I won’t do anything unless Tyree tells me it’s all right,” Ray said, nearly choking on the words.

“Cletus? What about you?”

“Hell, Pa, it weren’t my idee to go over there in the first place,” Cletus said. “It was all Ray’s idee and I was just doin’ what he said.”

“Then I take it that you agree to do nothing without Tyree’s permission?” Ike asked.

“Yeah, sure, whatever you say, Pa,” Cletus said, looking away so as not to have to face the angry glare he was getting from Ray.

“Tyree?” Ike called. “You heard all this?”

“I heard it,” Tyree replied from over by the barn.

“Will you stay?”

Tyree didn’t make a verbal response, but he answered in the affirmative by making an almost imperceptible nod of his head.

“What about Billy?” Cletus asked.

“What about him?”

“Are you saying Billy is to take his orders from Tyree same as us?”

Ike shook his head. “Billy ain’t a part of this,” he said.

“What do you mean, he ain’t a part of it?”

“You boys know what Billy is like. When it comes to something like this, he’s as worthless as tits on a boar hog. Hell, I ain’t even told him about Tyree yet.”