Scream of Eagles Read Online Free Page A

sweeping the large room. He walked to the long bar and ordered a glass of beer. “Fred Allison and Phil Howard,” he said to the bartender. “They been in here?”
    â€œJust left, Mr. MacCallister. When you rode in. Said they’d be waitin’ out in the street for you anytime you was ready to die.”
    â€œSuits me.” Jamie drained his glass and walked out the back door.
    Jamie Ian MacCallister was many things, among them being a very practical man. The opinions of certain unworldly people notwithstanding (a hundred years later, that group would be known as liberal democrats; in Louisiana those types of people are said to have an alligator mouth and a hummingbird ass), he knew there was no such thing as a fair fight. There was a winner and a loser, and that was all. And when your life, the lives of your loved ones, or your property were on the line, it didn’t matter how you won, just do it.
    Jamie walked the littered alley and stepped out at the edge of town. His hands were filled with Colts, hammers back. About fifty feet from him, two men were standing in the street, yards apart, each of them carrying sawed-off shotguns.
    â€œTaking no chances, huh, boys?” Jamie called.
    The men whirled around and fired the shotguns, the heavy charges blowing off chunks of the building where Jamie had been standing.
    But as he spoke, Jamie was moving. He hit the ground belly down and fired his Colts. One slug punched a hole in the belly of Phil Howard, doubling him over and setting him down hard in the street. As he sat down, he pulled the trigger to the second barrel of the Greener and blew off all the toes on his left foot. The other slug went high and caught Fred Allison in the throat, tearing a great hole in the back of the man’s neck as it exited.
    Jamie stood up by the buckshot-torn corner of the building. Both men died within minutes of each other. Jamie walked over to the bodies and removed their money belts.
    â€œThe money is stolen,” he told the gathering crowd. “It belongs to Wells Fargo and to the bank in Valley, Colorado.” He slung the money belts over his shoulder and picked up one of the sawed-off shotguns. It was a good gun; well made. Jamie took that and a sack of shells lying by the body. His eyes found the desk clerk from the hotel. “I’ll have my bath now,” he told the man, then turned and walked up the street. He stepped into the hotel without looking back at the bloody street and the stunned crowd.
    * * *
    Roscoe, who had changed his name to Ross LeBeau and then to Russell Clay, was shocked right down to the soles of his handmade shoes when he looked up from studying the Denver Hotel’s menu to see his sister’s child, his own niece, Page Woodville Haywood, walking into the lobby of the hotel, her husband with her.
    Great God in Heaven! Ross thought, once his heart resumed its beating.
    The handsome couple were seated across the room from Ross, with Page’s back to him. As soon as they were seated, Ross left the dining room as quickly as possible, with as much dignity as he could muster under the circumstances.
    The world is certainly becoming a smaller place, he thought, as the doorman hailed a carriage for him. Ross would hire a detective to find out what Page and her husband were doing in Denver.
    Then he didn’t know what he’d do.
    * * *
    Ben Franklin Washington arrived in the West with three other reporters, a photographer, an artist, a man who was gathering material for a book he was writing on the Wild West, the sons of three wealthy industrialists from back east who came along for the adventure of it all (they left their wives behind and brought their girlfriends), a couple of gofers, several valets, two cooks, and four so-called professional mercenaries who were hired as bodyguards.
    They brought enough equipment with them to outfit a small army. They rode the trains as far as they could, then bought wagons,