William Johnstone - Eyes of Eagles

Jamie motioned for the others to join him and the group walked the grounds and stared in awe at the bullet-and shell-ravaged walls and buildings. Jamie would not let the children look inside the blood-splattered rooms.

All were glad to leave the compound, Jamie especially, for to him it seemed that the ghosts of the fallen heroes were everywhere. The feeling of their presence was so strong, he had to fight the temptation to look over his shoulder. Years later, when friends came to visit him in the mountains, they would all tell him that the ghosts were still there, roaming the grounds of the old mission. Some would say they could faintly hear McGregor’s bagpipes, the sawing sounds of Crockett’s fiddle, in Travis’s quarters, the sounds of his restless pacing, and in Bowie’s room, the scratching of his pen as he laboriously wrote the stirring last farewell that the editor had refused to print.

Jamie sent the others on to where they were going to camp for a couple of days, while the ladies provisioned up for the long trip that lay ahead of them. He stood and sat and squatted for over an hour, staring at the outside of the walls of the Alamo, letting memories flood him. He knew, without any doubt at all, that if he lived to be a hundred and fought in that many more battles, he would never stand shoulder to shoulder with any braver men than those who died at the Alamo. For Freedom. For Texas.

Finally, he mounted up and rode away, leaving it all behind him. Except for the memories. Those, he would take to the grave.

* * *

Visiting the cantinas of San Antonio, Jamie found four men, two Mexican and two Anglo — all of whom Senor Ruiz vouched for — who agreed to drive additional wagons west and north into the mountains for Jamie and the others. Where they were going, there would be no stores, no neighbors, no nothing — not for hundreds of miles. Jamie did not yet know about Bent’s Fort, but where he had in mind to take his people was still a couple of hundred miles from the junction of the Arkansas and Purgatory Rivers, where the Bent Brothers build their huge fort.

It was here, at San Antonio, that Jamie called his little group together for one last chance for anyone to change their minds, if any chose to do that.

No one did.

Jamie shrugged his heavy shoulders. Of them all, only he had any idea what the high mountains were like, and that came from talking with mountain men who had been there; lived there for years. It was going to be brutally cold in the winters, with a short growing season. He had reminded them of that.

“If there is dirt, things will grow,” Swede said. He grinned at Hannah, who was pregnant again, she felt sure. “Including kids.”

“We pull out in the morning,” Jamie said.

Of the newly hired men, Carbone and Martine (whose sons would grow up to be feared gunfighters) and Jones and Williams, only Martine had been up to the Rocky Mountains, and he warned Jamie that it was going to be a tough pull for wagons.

“I’d rather see you with oxen, senor,” he told him. “But these mules will make it, providing you take enough grain along to add to their grazing.”

“That’s what you and Jones will be hauling in those big wagons.”

“Then we shall be ready to go in the morning.”

That night, Jamie stood with his arm across Kate’s shoulder, and together they looked at the candle and lamplights of San Antonio.

“Hold the sight in your mind, Kate. For odds are good that you will never see its like again.”

“I won’t miss it,” she said with a smile. “I’ve come to enjoy the solitude of the wilderness. I want our children to grow up knowing and loving the wild country. And with Sam and Sarah along, they’ll also be educated. We’re going to have the best of all worlds, love.”

“Regrets, Kate?”

“Not a one, Jamie. Not a one.”

* * *

The weather turned against them. Rain developed that night, and by morning it was coming down in torrents.

“No point in setting out in this,” Jamie said to the others. “We’ll stay right here until it clears. We have time.”

Rain soaked the land for two days and nights, turning roads into quagmires and making trails impassable. Finally the sun shone in welcome rays and three days after the torrential rains had ended, Jamie felt they could start the next day. At noon, Martine came to him.

“Men in town looking for you, senor. Talk is, they plan to kill you.”

“Why?” Jamie asked.

“Something about their brothers and a big fight they had with you some years back.”

“Lord knows I’ve had some fights,” Jamie acknowledged. “But I thought all that was over and done with.” Jamie was thoughtful for a few seconds. “Don’t mention this to anyone else, all right?”

“As you wish. There are at least five of them, and I suspect more are lounging about town. Do you wish me to accompany you?”

Jamie shook his head. “I’ll kill my own snakes, Martine. But thanks.”

Martine watched him ride toward town, then turned and walked over to Carbone. “Saddle up your horse and come with me. Senor MacCallister might need our help.”

Carbone, never one to avoid a good fight, smiled and quickly saddled his horse. Both men checked their guns, inspected the sharpness of their knives, and rode into town.

“Eight men, Senor Jamie,” the liveryman told him. “They ride in yesterday. I do not like their looks at all. I believe they are here looking for you.”

“ Gracias, ” Jamie thanked him, and handed him the reins to his horse.

Jamie ducked out the back of the huge building. Keeping to the alleys, he made his way to a cantina at the edge of the village, one mostly frequented by the area’s less than desirable citizens.

The fight that was only moments away from erupting would be talked about in San Antonio for years. Jamie Ian MacCallister, twenty-seven years old and already a legend for many of those years, was about to enhance that saga.

As Jamie peeked into the bar from the storage room, he didn’t need a guide to spot those hunting him. Three of them were standing at the plank bar, swilling whiskey.

The bartender spotted Jamie standing in the gloom of the back room and with a slight nod of his head, the others standing at the bar quietly took up their glasses and moved away. They were all rough men, some of them outlaws and gunrunners to the Comanche and Kiowa, but they all knew Jamie and liked him for his fairness and respected him for his courage. And deep down, none of them wanted any trouble with Jamie MacCallister.

Jamie pulled both pistols from his belt and cocked them, then stepped into the big room, filled with cigar smoke and the sour smell of whiskey and unwashed bodies.

“I’m Jamie MacCallister,” he said. “Are you the gentlemen looking for me?”

The bartender hit the floor with a thud as the three men turned and drew their pistols.

“You mighty right about that, you son of a bitch!” the biggest and ugliest of the trio said.

Jamie shot him in the belly, the heavy ball doubling the man over and knocking him into the second man, sending both of them to the floor. Jamie lifted his other pistol and drilled the standing man in the center of his chest. He covered the short distance from the doorway to the storage to the bar in a heartbeat and jerked the third man to his boots and hit him with a crashing right fist that pulped the man’s lips and sent yellowing teeth flying and blood splattering. Jamie bodily picked the man up and threw him across the room. The man landed against the wall and the sounds of bones breaking was loud.

Jamie took two pistols from the dead man, checked them, and stuck them behind his belt. He took two pistols from the gut-shot and moaning man, checked them, and stuck them behind his belt, at his back. He quickly reloaded his own pistols, and carrying them in his hands, he walked outside.