Seven
Jamie just about scared the Swede out of his boots when the door was opened and there stood Jamie. There was a confused look on his face, for Jamie had cut his long hair. Then the big man recognized him, hollered one, grabbed him in a bear hug, and hauled him inside the snug cabin.
“Swede, you're crushing me! Put me down, you ox!”
“Jamie!” Swede said. “It's so good to see you. But you are taking a terrible chance, lad!”
“Sit down, Swede. I want to talk to you,” Jamie said, sitting down at the rough kitchen table. The Swede first poured them coffee and then sat down, his face serious. “Pack it up, Swede. Sam will buy your land at a fair price. You get Hannah and head for Illinois. I've talked to people and they said the land there was fine. The soil so rich and black it'll grow nearly anything. I â ”
“But Hannah won't even talk to me, Jamie!” the big man said with nearly a sob. “Not since the... trouble.”
“I'm going to her cabin as soon as I leave here, Swede. I can talk some sense into her. She'll listen to me. Swede, you have to know this: she was the wife of a Shawnee.”
The man smiled. “I guessed that, Jamie. It makes no difference to me. None of that matters. What matters is here and now, lad.” He sobered for a few seconds. “You're heavily armed, Jamie.”
“I'm an outlaw, Swede. A young desperado who is wanted for murder. I have a price on my head.”
Swede nodded his head. “And Sam's place is watched all the time, Jamie. Don't go there.”
“I must. I have to say goodbye when all that I have returned to do is done.”
“You're going to kill John Jackson and his son.” It was not a question.
Jamie nodded. “And then I am taking Kate and we are heading west. We probably will never see you and Hannah again, Swede.”
“Damn! but it's a sorry time. Lad, if you run off with Kate, her father and brothers will pursue you both to the ends of the earth.”
“Let them. I'm taking Kate and leaving.”
“Jamie, think about this. You've killed one man... let it alone, lad. Just take your loved one and leave.”
Jamie smiled. “Swede, you are the biggest, strongest, yet the gentlest of men. You couldn't harm anything. It even upsets you to have to kill game for food. Yet, I can understand that. And I know this too: Hannah must be avenged. And I can do that.” He stood up. “After I am gone, you and Hannah leave. Make a fresh start. Will you promise me that?”
“If you can bring my Hannah back to me, Jamie, I will promise to move Heaven and Earth for you... and do it.”
After Jamie had left the cabin, Swede sat for a time. “That's a
boy?
” he questioned the silence. “No. He left his boyhood back at that damnable Shawnee town. He became a man at age seven.”
* * *
Kate almost fainted when she opened the shutters to her bedroom and saw Jamie. “No time for anything but this, Kate,” he said. “Start packing a few things, including blankets. But just enough to get by. I've left a packet of food by the hollow tree. When the house is quiet, you go there this night and wait for me. I have things to do that are dark and suited for the night. It might be noon tomorrow before I can meet you there. But the place is safe and no one will find you there. When I do come, I will have a mount for you with a proper saddle for a lady.” He leaned in and kissed her lips. “I'll see you at the tree, Kate. And then we'll be rid of this damnable place forever.”
Jamie was gone in the night. Kate closed the shutters and smiled. Then she set about packing a few things.
* * *
The guard who was assigned to guard the Montgomery house never knew what hit him and laid him out cold on the ground. But what hit him was the butt of one of Jamie's pistols. Jamie hog-tied the man â he knew him as a thug and ne'er-do-well who would do anything for money â and left him trussed up tight. Jamie had circled the house twice, and knew there was only this one guard. He boldly walked in the back door and called out his presence.
Sarah threw her arms around him and Sam shook his head. “You've grown some in the months, Jamie. And you've a hard look in your eyes. Sit down, lad, and have some food and drink.”
“I would like that, for I've eaten little this day.” Over food, Jamie said, “I want the gelding for Kate. The bay.”
“Take him. He's yours. And take the saddle, too. Jamie, I've a poke of money for you. It's enough to last you several years if you're careful. What else is on your mind?”
Jamie lifted eyes that were a cold and bright hard blue. “You don't want to know, Sam. Leave it at that.”
“All right, Jamie. Jamie! The guard outside... ?”
“Will not be moving for several hours. I didn't kill him because I want no harm to come to either of you.”
Sam waved that aside. “No harm will come to us, Jamie. We've formed our own militia here in New Town and are left strictly alone. We outnumber those in old town. And they are mightily afraid of us. But that will do you no good, for the warrant against you came after a true bill.”
“I'm not worried about that, Sam. For when I leave here this night, I will not be heard from or seen again in this area.” Jamie explained what he wanted Sam to do, and the man instantly agreed.
“You've seen Hannah? We have not been able to convince her that the Swede doesn't care what happened. He just loves her.”
“I just left her cabin. I managed to get through to her. She'll be leaving with the Swede.”
Sarah put her hand over his. “Oh, Jamie. Where did your childhood go? You're shouldering a terrible burden to be so young.”
“I guess I'm like the eagle, Sarah. I am what I am and can no more change than the eagle.”
“I'll fix you enough food to last several days, and we've had your buckskins and other clothes packed ever since you left.” She rose from the table and busied herself so Jamie would not see the tears in her eyes.
Sam left the room and returned with a small leather sack. He placed it on the table. “With care this should last you for quite some time, Jamie. Take it with our love and blessing. Why don't you go up to your room for one last time and change into your buckskins.”
Viewing his old room was hard, for Jamie knew he would never see it, or Sam and Sarah, again. He was not yet out of his teen years and was starting over â again. For the first time in years, he fought back tears. He stepped out of the bedroom and closed the door behind him, forever sealing off another part of his life. When Jamie came back to the kitchen, Sarah had composed herself and a packet of food was on the table.
“I've saddled the horse for Kate,” Sam said. “Both of you go with our blessings, Jamie. And Godspeed.”
Sarah kissed him and then fled from the room, her apron to her face, no longer able to control her tears. Sam stuck out his hand and Jamie took it.
“Goodbye, Jamie Ian MacCallister. Man Who Is Not Afraid.”
“Goodbye, sir. And... thank you and Sarah for everything.”
Jamie picked up the food packet and turned away, walking from the warm home, out into the cool and dangerous night. He rode straight to the Jackson farm. During the months of his fleeing the false charges, he had learned that John Jackson's wife had left him, unable to endure the abuse any longer. So there would be John, John Jr., and Abel at home.
Jamie left the horses a few hundred yards from the darkened cabin. He knew that John Jackson hated dogs, so he did not have to worry about any barking to announce his presence. He slipped up to the cabin and looked through the slightly cracked shutters into Abel's sleeping quarters. The pallet was empty. Abel was probably staying with his friend, Jubal. Good. One less to worry about.
Jamie opened the shutters and climbed into the cabin, making his way carefully through the home. John Jackson was snoring in his bed, and his son John Jr. was snorting and blubbering in his bed. Jamie, a pistol in each hand, walked up to the elder Jackson's bed and stuck the muzzle against the man's temple. Jackson jerked awake, his eyes wide with fear.
“John Jackson,” Jamie said softly, just loud enough for the man to hear. “I'm judge and jury and I find you guilty of rape and sentence you to die.”
The cocking of the heavy pistol was enormous in the quiet house.
“Get up, John Jackson, and go awaken that scum you call a son.”
The man rose from the tick, dressed in a long nightshirt. He padded barefoot to his son's room and called out, his voice quaking with fear.
The son stood up, also dressed in a long nightshirt.
“In the big room,” Jamie said. “Build up the fire so you can see the man who kills you.”
John Jr. started squalling out his fear as he stoked the coals into flames.
“Now tell me the story about how you two brave men raped Hannah. And you'd better speak the truth.”
John Jr. broke apart, babbling out the rape, telling the awfulness of it.
Jamie cocked the second pistol, both of them double-shotted. Jackson started crying, the tears running down his face, begging for his life. Not his son's life, just his. Jamie leveled a pistol and both father and son began weeping and begging, the snot running from their noses and slobber dripping from their lips.
Jamie couldn't do it. He just could not kill the men, although both of them surely deserved it. He slowly lowered the pistol.
“God knows I should kill you both,” he said, his voice hard. “But I cannot. I see you now for what you are. Cowards, the both of you. Live in your own private hell, for you created it.”
Jamie turned to leave. John Jr. leaped for the shotgun over the fireplace and started to bring it down just as Jamie turned. Jamie fired, one ball striking the man in the chest and the second ball tearing into his throat, drenching the father with the son's blood. John Jr. fell into the fire, his nightshirt catching on fire and his greasy hair exploding. The shotgun discharged, the blast blowing a hole into the roof, and sending dust showering down into the cabin.
“No!” the father screamed. “My boy. Oh, you've killed my fine boy.” He pulled his son from the fire, spreading flames across the floor. “My God, MacCallister, help me.”
“Not damn likely,” Jamie said.
“Goddamn you!”
Jamie turned and walked out into the night. He wasn't worried about pursuit, for the father would be too busy trying, in vain, Jamie hoped, to save his cabin from the flames.
Jamie charged his pistol as he walked and holstered it before stepping into the saddle and taking up the reins of the horse for Kate. The flames from the burning cabin were beginning to dance in the night sky.
“I'll kill you!” John Jackson's wild screaming reached him. “As God is my witness I'll track you to the gates of hell, you Injun bastard.”
“Wrong, I'm not an Indian, you ignorant oaf.” Jamie turned Lightning's head.
“Do you hear me, you sorry son? I swear on my boy's dead body you'll pay.”
Jamie ignored the man's howling.
“You're a dead man, MacCallister! Do you hear me?”
“Not by your hand, Jackson,” Jamie muttered, and put his horse into a gallop. He rode westward, toward Kate and a new life.
Eight
By dawn, the young couple had put miles behind them. Jamie had traveled no roads, staying with game trails that he knew well. By dawn, both he and Kate and their mounts were exhausted. He had chosen their first stop earlier, on the way east, and the closest settlers were miles away. Jamie made a bed of fresh cut boughs for Kate and she was asleep in seconds.
He rubbed down the horses and picketed them on good grass, then made a walk-through of the area surrounding the camp. He ate a biscuit and sat with his back to a tree and dozed. Lightning would wake him if anyone drew near. He was better than any watchdog Jamie had ever seen.
They both awakened at noon and were ravenous. Jamie built a small fire, using dry wood and placing the fire directly under a low overhang of branches to break up the smoke.
“We'll start cutting slightly south tonight, Kate. I've not been much in that country. But I'm thinking John and your father will feel that we plan on joining Hannah and Swede in Illinois. I hope.”
“I don't care where we go, Jamie. Just as long as we're together.”
“We will be together, Kate. Forever. When we get down into the southern part of Tennessee, we'll find a parson and get married.” Kate smiled and nodded her head.
“I want no union between us until that time. I want us blessed by God.”
She again nodded her head solemnly. “Jamie? What happened last night at the Jackson's?”
“I went there to kill them both, but I found I could not. I tried to give them their lives even after John Jr. confessed to Hannah's debasement. It was disgusting. I turned to leave and John Jr. grabbed a shotgun. I fired in self-defense. He fell into the fire and the cabin was destroyed, I think. It was an ugly scene. I do not think I shall ever forget it. Kate? Do you understand that if your father or brothers ever catch us, they will kill both of us?”
“More than you do, Jamie. My father swore that many times over, making sure I heard it each time.”
Jamie sat silent for a time. “We must put many miles behind us before we stop, Kate. I think your father will never stop searching for me. And I believe John Jackson will be just as determined.”
She scooted over and sat next to him. He put an arm around her and held her close.
“What are you thinking, Jamie?”
“That I wish for us a long and uneventful life together, Kate.”
“Uneventful it may not be, Jamie. But we will be together.”
* * *
“Liar!” Hart Olmstead shouted at Sam, pointing a trembling finger at the man. “You do know where that young killer took my daughter.”
“You're crowding me awfully hard, Olmstead,” Sam told the man, barely holding his own temper in check. “Back off, man. Now back off, I say! I do
not
know where they went. Deliberately so. I don't even know in which direction they went. Now curb your tongue, Hart Olmstead. Curb it before this becomes a matter of honor and I call you out with pistol or blade.”
That got Hart's attention. He shuddered once and then took several deep breaths. He looked around him. All of Sam's friends had gathered in the road, and all of them were heavily armed.
“You've all conspired against me,” Hart said. “Me and John Jackson both. You've all took sides with that damn savage MacCallister boy . . .”
“That's a lie, Hart,” Abe Caney spoke up. “You brought all this on yourself by siding with Jackson, even after he and his boy did those terrible things to Hannah... a good woman if ever I saw one.”
“She was nothing but a damn Injun's whore!” Hart flared.
“You better be glad the Swede ain't here, Olmstead,” a farmer called out. “For he'd sure break your back for that.”
“Time's a-wastin,' Pa,” Hart's oldest boy, Carl said. “If we're going to pick up a trail, we'd best do it now.”
“Yeah, Pa,” Ernest Olmstead said. “These folks ain't gonna tell us nothin'.”
“I got people out looking, boy,” Hart said. “We got to wait 'til this afternoon, 'til after John buries his own. It wouldn't be proper to go off and leave a friend alone with his grief.” he turned to once more face Sam Montgomery. “I'll find them, Sam. And when I kill that MacCallister bastard, I'll scalp him and bring his yeller hair back to wave under your nose.”
“I hope you don't find him, Hart,” Sam replied. “For if you do, you will find nothing but grief. The boy is highly intelligent and brave.”
Hart snorted and spat on the ground.
Sam said, “He didn't force your daughter to accompany him, Hart. They've been in love since the first evening they laid eyes on one another, right over there in that yard. Let them be, Hart. Let them build a life together.”
“When it rains in Hell, Sam!” Hart screamed. “I'll see them both dead. And that's a promise.”
“Are you daft, man!” Farmer Mason shouted. “That's your own flesh and blood you're talkin' about killin'.”
“It's none of your affair!” Hart returned the shout. He whirled and mounted, galloping off, his sons and friends right behind him.
“Ride, Jamie and Kate. Ride like the wind, kids. And be happy.”
* * *
Jamie changed his mind about heading south and he and Kate rode straight west. After nights of hard riding, they stopped at a crossroads store named Pekin.
In a few more years, William Clark, brother to George Rogers Clark, of Lewis and Clark fame, would establish a town here and name it after a Chickasaw Indian chief, Paduke. It would later be called Paducah.
“Where are we, Jamie?” Kate asked.
“I don't know, Kate. But I smell the river.”
“What river?”
“The Mississippi.”
“I'm told that's a fearsome river, Jamie. People say there are monsters in its muddy waters. Great scaly beasts called alligators.”
Jamie laughed at her serious expression. “We're not going to swim it, Kate. I think there is a ferry that crosses over to a town called New Madrid. That's in Missouri.”
“Sometimes the ferry runs,” a man called from the porch of the store. “If the ferry ain't runnin', they's usually a boat to be hired that'll take you 'crost.”
“Thank you, sir,” Kate said sweetly, as Jamie helped her down from her horse. “My brother and I have far to travel.”
Since they both had blue eyes and hair pretty much the same color, they had agreed to pose as brother and sister until they could find a minister and be married.
“Oh? Travelin' far, are you?”
“Central Missouri,” Jamie lied. “Our parents live there.”
“These are perilous times for anyone, especially for young folks travelin' alone,” the man said. “But I see you be armed right well, young feller, so's I allow to how you'll be all right. Come on inside, young lady. My old woman will see to your needs. You're gonna have to see to your own hoss, son. I ain't gettin' clost to that big black. He's got a wicked eye to him.”
“Yes, sir. And he will live up to his looks.”
“Thought so. Biter and a kicker, is he?”
“Yes, sir.”
“See to your own damn horse, then.” The man walked into the store.
Jamie laughed and saw to the horse's needs, then joined Kate inside the dim store. She was buying supplies. Several men lounged at a rough table, a jug of whiskey before them. They all looked longingly and lustfully at Kate, and hard at Jamie when he walked in.
As Jamie walked to the counter, one of the men laughed, and it was not a pleasant laugh.
“The Newby brothers,” the lady behind the counter whispered. “Percy, Howard, and Dick. They's eight of them, all told. They're all bad. Ride on, lad, and watch behind you for a time.”
“What're you whisperin' about over there, you old hag?” one of the men yelled.
The man who had greeted Jamie and Kate looked nervously around him. “They're liquored up and snake-mean, young feller,” he whispered. “I cain't be held good for what they'll do.”
“Old man,” one of the Newby brothers hollered. “I done tole you 'bout that damn whisperin.' We don't like it.”
“Sorry, Percy,” the man called.
“You there,” another brother called. “Gal with the gold hair. I ain't seen you afore. What's your name?”
Kate and Jamie had decided on trail names to help throw off Olmstead and Jackson. Jamie turned to face the loudmouth. “Tess,” he said.
“I ain't talkin' to you, boy.”
“You are now,” Jamie replied, a cold calmness to his voice.
One of the brothers laughed at the expression on his brother's face. “I do believe, Dick, that there young feller tole you square, didn't he?”
“Run!” the woman behind the counter hissed.
Dick Newby stood up. He was dirty, unshaven, and smelled bad. “You need to be larned some manners, boy.”
“Choose your purchases, Tess,” Jamie said, placing money on the counter.
“Boy's got gold, Percy,” Dick said.
“Has he now?” the brother replied. “Where'd you get that there gold, boy?” he tossed the question to Jamie.
“That is none of your affair,” Jamie said, feeling the old wildness well up strong within him.
Percy stood up, standing beside his brother. “Mayhaps I think it is. Mayhaps I think a young couple like y'all might need bodyguards on the trail, seein' as how you're totin' all that money. Travel ain't safe these days.”
“So we've been told,” Jamie fought the wildness down. “Thank you for your concern. We'll do nicely as we are.”
“My, but don't he talk proper?” Howard Newby said. “He's a regular little prince, ain't he?”
A calmness took Jamie. He was familiar with it. But with the calmness came cold, a freezing wind that blew across the highlands of his ancestry. Hooded Druids, their faces hidden, began chanting, their voices all combined with the ancient and strong warrior sounds of Celts, Anglos, and Normans. It was a volatile and dangerous mixture, and Jamie would fight with it and for it all his life.
“I'm no prince, sir,” Jamie said, a tightness to his voice. “But what I am is a person who minds his own business and goes his own way in peace, if others will let me. Will you be so kind as to allow that courtesy?”
The Newby brother smiled, exposing a mouth full of yellow, rotting teeth. “No,” he said softly.
“Then state your intentions, sir.”
The brigand looked at Kate and licked his lips. He cut his eyes back to Jamie and smiled. “Lay your poke on the counter and walk out that door. Leave the girl.”
Kate hissed in fright and Jamie said, “Do you not be afraid, Tess. No harm will come to you.”
The third Newby brother stood up. “Old man, take your hag and go to the back. Close the door.”
The man and woman scurried to their living quarters and closed the door. The sound of the door being barred chilled Kate. Her eyes were wide and frightened. Jamie seemed not to have noticed, his eyes never leaving the Newby brothers.
“Last chance, lad,” Percy said.
“The same might be said for you,” Jamie replied.
“He's a game one, Percy,” Howard said with an ugly laugh. “Give him that.”
“Pick up your purchases, Tess,” Jamie said. “And step to the door.”
“You stay where you is, wench,” Percy said.
“Do what I say, Tess,” Jamie told her. “You do not take orders from this wretched hulk.”
Holding her purchases, Kate started for the door. Percy stepped around the table and started for her. Jamie shot him.
The double-shotted, heavy caliber balls struck the outlaw in chest and face, making a dreadful mess of the man's head. Dick Newby grabbed for his pistol and Jamie jerked out his second pistol, cocked, and fired. One ball went wide and the other ball struck the brigand in the throat. He went down, making horrible gurgling sounds. Jamie leaped at the third Newby brother, clubbing him to the floor before he could free his pistol. Again and again, Jamie smashed the man's face and head with the butt of his pistol, working with the rage of an ancient Viking berserker.
“Enough!” Kate screamed from the door. “He's done, love.”
Jamie let the thug fall to the floor, his face and head streaming blood. The old couple threw open the door and ran from the rear and looked with a curious mixture of horror and satisfaction at the scene.
“Finish him, lad!” the old man shouted. “Kill him for sure or he and his kind will forever be on your trail.”
The old man grabbed up an axe and ran to the Newby brother. Before Jamie could stop him, he had brought the axe down on the unconscious man's head.
“Now it's done and good riddance,” the old man said, leaning the bloody axe against a table leg. “Run, lad. Take your sister and run. I'll tell their brothers you was headin' south for New Orleans. Go, boy. Now! Them other brothers could show up anytime.”
Several miles from the store, Jamie halted and dismounted. He knelt by the trail and retched up the contents of his stomach. He wiped his mouth and said, “I swear before the Almighty God, Kate, I just want some peace for us.”
Kate came to him and put her arms around him and held him close. “You did what you had to do, Jamie. They would have killed you and then passed me around like a common whore and then murdered me... or worse. You did the only thing you could do.”
He nodded his head. “There is terrible, furious wildness in me, Kate. I've had it all my life. When I'm angered, it's like... like a freezing rain that blots out all else. I'm afraid of it, Kate. When it takes control it's all-consuming in me. I have no fear of those who challenge me. And that's not a normal thing. Now I know why my father rarely spoke of his father. I'm like him, Kate. I'm like that man who rode west and lived in the mountains... maybe he still lives there. Maybe he's more savage than white. I don't know. But I have my grandfather's hot blood within me.”