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.”