“Your bat is safe from me, sir,” Duff said.
Duff presented a much different appearance today than he did on the day he arrived in MacCallister. On that day he had worn striped trousers, a white shirt, a frock coat, and a bowler hat. Today he was wearing blue denim trousers, a wine-colored shirt, a broad-brimmed Stetson hat, boots, and a belt with bullet loops, holster, and pistol.
“However, I should not complain. Thanks to your heroics, I got my name in the newspaper,” Toots said. “And every time someone’s name appears in the paper, they are one step closer to immortality.”
“Immortality?”
“Well, not in the flesh, my good man,” Toots said. “But it is by newspapers that we chronicle the sojourn of mankind here upon earth. Why, with your name in the paper, it is quite possible that someone one hundred years or more from now will read your name and, for that moment, you are alive again, if only in the mind of the reader.”
“I suppose that is so,” Duff said, not really knowing where to go with this conversation.
Falcon laughed. “Don’t let Toots climb too far into your mind, cousin. He is a—what is it you call yourself, Toots?”
“I am a gentleman out of time, a frustrated poet whose words of wit shall never receive the accolades they deserve.”
“But it’s my understanding that you have never actually written anything,” Morgan said.
“The fact that I have not written anything does not mean I am not a poet,” Toots said. “I am afraid, however, that that is a concept few men can actually grasp.”
“I have no trouble with it,” Duff said.
“Oh? You mean that you can accept that I am a poet, even though I have not written one word of poetry?” Toots asked.
“Aye,” Duff replied. “After all, a drum is a drum, whether someone beats upon it or not.”
Toots smiled broadly, and nodded his head. “Morgan, my good man,” he said. “You should heed your cousin, for he is a man of uncommon genius.”
The whistle of the arriving train broke up the conversation as Falcon hurried to make arrangements for his horse. Duff took his sea bag from the back of the buckboard, and Morgan, with a good-bye wave, drove away.
Duff walked toward the train. The next chapter of his adventure was about to begin.
Rab Malcolm was a structured man who didn’t like to be in any situation that wasn’t well thought out in advance. He had tried to tell the Somerled brothers that going to the theater after Duff MacCallister without a plan wasn’t a good idea. But, even though Sheriff Somerled had told his sons that Malcolm would be in charge of the expedition, the Somerled brothers had insisted upon having their own way. As a result of that insistence, their hasty actions had gotten them both killed.
After agreeing to be a part of Malcolm’s entourage, Pogue found six more men who were willing to join in pursuit of the MacCallisters. Their motivation was to find and kill Falcon MacCallister, but as Falcon and Duff would probably be together, Malcolm had no problem with the arrangement.
Being the kind of man he was, Malcolm found out as much as he could about each of the men who had joined him.
Clyde Shaw had been his first recruit, and had come west with him on the train. Shaw was in his early thirties, a sometime cowboy, sometime handyman, and sometime rustler. He had been fired from his last job because the rancher for whom he worked suspected Shaw of stealing ten head of cattle and selling them for ten dollars apiece.
“It ain’t so much that you stole from me,” the rancher told him, “as it is that you sold the beeves for only ten dollars apiece. That makes it harder for an honest cowman to get a fair price.”
Pogue (Malcolm still didn’t know if that was his first name or last name), was one of the ugliest men Malcolm had ever seen. He had seen Pogue in action when he shot and killed the man named Gentry. He since learned that Pogue had done some time in the Colorado Prison at Canon City, the result of a failed bank robbery. The bank robbery failed because Falcon MacCallister happened to be in the bank at the time. Pogue killed another prisoner while he was incarcerated, but had beaten the charge because it had been self-defense. Malcolm didn’t have any idea how many men Pogue had killed, but if he was to succeed in finding and killing Duff MacCallister he would need someone with the ruthlessness of a man like Pogue.
The other six men were Liam Pettigrew, Asa Moran, the brothers, Carter and Johnny Hill, and two men, McKenna and Garcia, who, like Pogue, had given only the one name. All six men had reason to want to go after Falcon MacCallister, and while none of them had the courage to try it alone, they welcomed the opportunity to do it as part of a larger group. Pettigrew, reputed to have killed nine men, was the most dangerous of the group, and Malcolm considered not taking him because of that. On the other hand, he wasn’t that eager to tell Pettigrew that he didn’t want him.
Asa Moran was the smallest member of the group. Swarthy, with dark brown eyes, black hair, and beard, he was almost rodentlike. Moran had served five years in prison because of Falcon MacCallister.
Carter and Johnny Hill were brothers who had once ridden with Nance Noonan, but were away when Falcon MacCallister went on a killing rampage in revenge for the killing of his father. Their other brother, Pen, wasn’t so lucky and was killed by Falcon. Now they wanted to kill him.
McKenna and Garcia’s reason for going after Falcon MacCallister was more business than personal. Martin Mueller, the father of Clete and Luke Mueller, had put up a reward of $1,000.00 to anyone who would kill Falcon MacCallister to avenge Falcon’s killing of his two sons.2 No one but McKenna and Garcia knew of the reward, and they had no intention of telling anyone else about it. Once Falcon MacCallister was killed, they would claim the reward, no matter who killed him.
And they would throw in the killing of Duff MacCallister as a bonus.
“Tell me about this man Duff MacCallister that you are after,” Pettigrew said. “Is he anything like Falcon MacCallister?”
