“No, never.”
Falcon nodded. “I’m afraid he will have no choice. It will be an act of honor—twisted honor to be sure, but its hold on him will not let him go.”
Falcon attended the church part of Travis Calhoun’s funeral, but as the funeral cortege moved slowly down Front Street toward the cemetery, Falcon saw Cletus and Ray Clinton going into the Hog Waller. Jefferson Tyree was with them.
“Corey,” he said. “Give my apologies to Troy.”
“What do you mean? You aren’t going out to the cemetery?”
“I’ve got some business to attend to,” Falcon said without further explanation.
Evidently, someone had said something very funny just before Falcon stepped in through the door, because everyone was laughing. But as they saw Falcon, the laughter stopped, not all at once, but in ragged spikes so that the last bit of laughter was Rosie’s single cackle. Then, realizing she was laughing alone, she turned to see why.
“Well, now, if it ain’t my old friend Falcon MacCallister,” Tyree said. “My, my, look at you, all dressed up like that. You been to a wedding or something?”
“I’ve been to a funeral,” Falcon replied.
“A funeral? Oh, yes, you must be talking about the marshal. I’m just real sorry ’bout that. All I saw was someone pointing a gun at me. Maybe if he had come in here and talked to me just right, I wouldn’t have had to kill him. He was your friend, was he?”
“He was.”
“Well, I tell you what. Just to show you that there’s no hard feelin’s, how about steppin’ up to the bar and havin’ a drink with me. Bartender, give Mr. MacCallister anything he wants to drink, on me.” A broad, arrogant smile spread across Tyree’s face.
“I didn’t come here to drink with you, Tyree. I came here to kill you.”
Falcon spoke the sentence so calmly that, for a moment, those who heard him weren’t sure what they heard. Then, as they repeated it to each other, and as they measured the cold set of Falcon’s eyes, they realized what he had actually said.
“Hold on there, MacCallister,” Cletus said. “You can’t just come in here and—”
“Shut up, Clinton,” Falcon said.
“You can’t talk to me—”
Suddenly, Ray brought the back of his hand across Cletus’s face, hitting him so hard that his lip began to bleed.
“Shut up, Cletus,” Ray said. “This is between MacCallister and Tyree.”
When Tyree saw that the Clinton brothers had just taken themselves out of it, and he was going to have to face Falcon alone, the smile on his face faded. He had thought that with the Clintons he had an edge. Now he saw that edge taken away. That left Tyree with self-doubt, and the self-doubt caused him to feel fear, perhaps for the first time in his life. And that fear was mirrored in his eyes and in the nervous tick on the side of his face. His tongue came out to lick his lips.
When he saw Tyree’s fear begin to manifest itself, an easy grin spread across Falcon’s face. Even that, the grin in the face of a life and death situation, seemed to unnerve Tyree.
Suddenly, Tyree’s hand started for his gun. He was fast, but Falcon was just a heartbeat faster. Falcon fired, and Tyree caught the ball high in his chest. Dropping his gun, Tyree slapped his hand over his wound. He looked down in surprise as blood squirted through his fingers, turning his shirt bright red. He took two staggering steps toward Falcon, then fell to his knees. He looked up at Falcon.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. He smiled, then coughed, and flecks of blood came from his mouth. He breathed hard a couple of times. “Son of a bitch, you’re fast.”
“No, you were just slow,” Falcon said easily.
Tyree fell facedown, then lay still.
Cletus, seeing that Tyree was dead, held his hand out in front of him.
“I ain’t goin’ to draw on you,” he said. “If you kill me, ever’one in here will be able to testify that you killed me in cold blood.”
“Go home, both of you,” Falcon said. “Tell your pa he has thirty days to sell his ranch and move out.”
“What?” Cletus replied, practically shouting the word.
“You heard me,” Falcon said. “You have thirty days to sell your ranch and move out of the state.”
“What the hell! You can’t order us out of the state!”
“I just did.”
“And if we don’t?” Cletus asked.
Falcon didn’t say a word, but he smiled. It was the same smile he’d had just before he killed Tyree. The impact wasn’t lost on either of the Clintons.
Chapter Twenty-one
J. Peerless Bixby, the Higbee undertaker, put Tyree’s body in a wooden coffin, then stood him up in front of his establishment. One of Tyree’s eyes was closed, the other was half open. His hands were crossed in front of his body, and he was holding his gun. A sign was pinned to his chest.
JEFFERSON TYREE
Noted Murderer And Outlaw
Killed in a FAIR FIGHT
by Falcon MacCallister
The Vermillion was decorated with black bunting around the windows and a black wreath on the door. It had been closed since Travis was killed, and had just reopened for the first time tonight.
Rachael had accepted Falcon’s invitation to dinner, and the two of them were sitting at a table at the back of the restaurant.
When the waiter came to the table, Rachael ordered baked chicken, green beans with mushrooms, and a salad. The waiter nodded, then started back to the kitchen with her order. He didn’t ask Falcon what he wanted.
“Aren’t you going to order?” Rachael asked.
“I don’t need to,” Falcon replied. “He knows what I want.”
“And what would that be?”
“Steak and baked potato.”
“You have the same thing every time?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I like it,” Falcon said simply.
For a long moment, Falcon and Rachael sat in silence, a single candle lighting the distance between them. Finally, Falcon broke the silence.
“You’re going back East,” he said. It wasn’t a question, it was a statement.
Rachael nodded, but said nothing.
“Edwin?”
“He wants me to come back and join him again for a series of performances.”
“You should go back,” Falcon said. “You are wasting your talent by playing piano in a saloon, even a saloon as nice as the Golden Nugget.”
“That isn’t the only reason I’m going back,” Rachael said.
“Oh?”
“May I be frank with you, Falcon?”
“By all means.”
“I have had romantic illusions about you, even before I met you, based in part on the way your brother and sister speak of you. Then, when I met you, I thought you were everything they said, maybe even more. But—”
“It’s the more, isn’t it?” Falcon asked.
Rachael nodded. “Yes, that’s a good way of putting it. It’s the more. Falcon, you are just too violent for me. No, wait, that isn’t fair. It’s this, this accursed West that is too violent for me. I had never known anyone who had been killed before. Since coming here, I have seen nothing but killing. And you—you are right in the middle of it. You killed the two men who killed the first Marshal Calhoun; then you killed the man who killed the second Marshal Calhoun.”
“I didn’t choose the life I live, Rachael, but I make no apologies for it. I’ve killed, yes, but I no longer kill anyone who doesn’t need killing.”
“You—you no longer kill anyone who doesn’t need killing? What an odd thing to say.”
“During the war, I killed men for no reason other than the fact that they were wearing a uniform different from my own. They were good men, with families that loved them. If I can kill such men during time of war, do you think I would hesitate for one minute to kill someone like the sorry example of humanity that J. Peerless Bixby is displaying in front of his mortuary right now?”