“All right then, that’s better, that’s . . . ,” he paused, realizing then what she had said. Falcon and Rosanna both laughed, then Andrew laughed with them. He reached out to take Falcon’s hand.
“I agree with her,” he said. “You are also my favorite brother.”
As Falcon and Cody started toward the gate, Falcon heard one of the reporters behind him call out.
“Hey! Look there! Aren’t those the MacCallisters? Yes, that’s Andrew and Rosanna, the famous actors.”
“What are you two doing here?” another asked and, glancing back over his shoulder, Falcon saw that the entire press corps had hurried to their side. He saw, too, that his siblings were handling it with their usual aplomb.
“It’s Buffalo Bill Cody!” a passenger said as Falcon and Cody stepped into the palace car of the train. Almost instantly the other passengers crowded around him and, obligingly, Cody began signing autographs. Smiling and shaking his head, Falcon found a seat at the rear of the car and watched with bemusement.
“Do you know Buffalo Bill?” one of the other passengers asked Falcon.
“Yes.”
“Is he a real man of the West? Or is he merely a showman?”
“Trust me, Buffalo Bill is a real man of the West,” Falcon said. “He was a Pony Express rider, a buffalo hunter, a soldier, and a scout for the U.S. Cavalry. He is also a recipient of the Medal of Honor.”
“I thought that was all hokum, just to promote his show,” the passenger said.
“It isn’t hokum,” Falcon said. “And I’ll correct something else you said. He isn’t
“Is that so? Maybe I have made a mistake in my judgment of him,” the passenger said. “I wonder if I could get his autograph. For my children, of course.”
“Of course,” Falcon said. “If you ask for it, I am sure he will give you his autograph. I have found him to be most generous in such things.”
That night, as Falcon lay in his berth, feeling the gentle rocking motion of the train and hearing the sound of steel wheels rolling on steel track, he recalled the last time he had been with Buffalo Bill. The memory was so strong and so real that he didn’t know if it was a memory or a dream.
It was a time before the Buffalo Bill Wild West Exhibition, when he was still known as Bill Cody. Falcon had been wandering through the West with no particular reason or destination when he found himself in Hayes City, Kansas. He met Bill Cody in the saloon, and because Cody had once ridden with the Pony Express, as had a close friend of Falcon’s, the two discovered a mutual connection.
The two men were enjoying each other’s company, exchanging stories and gossip, when they learned that a local rancher and his wife had been killed and their eighteen-year-old daughter raped, leaving a soulscarred shell of the vibrant young girl she had been.
The man who had perpetrated the crime was Drew Lightfoot, a well known desperado who had boasted that he would never be taken alive. Already a wanted robber and murderer, Lightfoot had committed crimes against one of the leading families of the county, and the reward for his apprehension had doubled. He was now worth two thousand dollars, dead or alive.
“And he says he’ll never be taken alive?” Falcon asked the man who had brought the news to the saloon.
“That’s what he says, all right.”
Falcon finished his beer, then stood up.
“Where are you going?” Cody asked.
“I’m going to see what I can do about granting that fella’s wish that he not be taken alive,” Falcon said.
Cody stood up as well. “Do you want company?” he asked.
“A good friend is always welcome company,” Falcon replied.
Soon after they got onto Lightfoot’s trail, they learned that he wasn’t traveling alone, but had five others with him, and was riding as the head of a gang of robbers and cutthroats. If that made Lightfoot more formidable, it also made him easier to track, for the Lightfoot gang was leaving a path of murder and robbery all across western Kansas and eastern Colorado.
They caught up with him in Puxico, Colorado. Passed up by the railroads, Puxico wasn’t even on most maps. Falcon surveyed the town as he rode in. He had seen hundreds of towns like this one, a street faced by falsefronted shanties, a few sod buildings, and even a handful of tents, straggling along for nearly a quarter of a mile. Then, just as abruptly as the town started, it quit.
In the winter and spring the single street would be a muddy mire, worked by horses’ hooves and mixed with their droppings, so that it became a stinking, sucking pool of ooze. In the summer it was baked hard as a rock. It was summer now, early afternoon, and the sun was yellow and hot.
The saloon wasn’t hard to find. It was the biggest and grandest building in the entire town, and Cody pointed to it.
“I’d say our best bet would be to start there,” Cody said.
“I’d say you are right.”
Loosening their pistols in their holsters, the two men walked inside.
Anytime Falcon entered a strange saloon he was on the alert. As he surveyed the place, he did so with such calmness that the average person would think it no more than a glance of idle curiosity. In reality it was a very thorough appraisal of the room. He checked out who was armed, what type of weapons they were carrying, and whether they were wearing their guns in a way that showed they knew how to use them. There were five men sitting together in the back of the room, and they were surveying Falcon and Cody as carefully as Falcon was surveying them. Falcon knew it wasn’t idle curiosity that had drawn their attention, and he was certain they were the men he and Cody were after.
“Cody,” he said quietly.
