Nathan Gould- Gunfighter from Green Mountain

by Bruce Graham

  I picked up my gear and left the office. I arrived back in Trinidad in time to pick up the elder Hogaboom’s warm note of appreciation at the Post Office with a draft for the balance of my fee.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Soon after settling in Trinidad the new Colt ’73 Army pistol became available. I quickly bought one of the short barreled versions, along with a gross of the metallic .45 cartridges that made unnecessary frequent cleaning and reloading, as was called for in the ’51 Navy. I also acquired a Winchester ’73 lever action rifle and a like number of metallic 44.40 cartridges for it. In this I was somewhat spend thrift, as most of the drovers and even gunfighters kept their percussion pistols from the War. But I was loath to leave my fate to the ancient weapons. And the short barrel of the new Colt gave me an advantage in a draw, being able to clear the holster just a tiny bit earlier and from experience I knew that most any gunfire I would be putting out would be at short enough ranges that the difference between the longer barreled pistol and the short barreled gun would be meaningless..

  I fancy that the people who delivered the guns and cartridges to me wondered at the extent of the purchases. There may have been some gossip and speculation, but I refused to play into any of it. If any more astute citizens of Trinidad surmised anything from the purchases I heard nothing of it, or, in a few cases, paid no attention.

  Most of my face to face exchanges of pistol fire dated from after my acquisition of the new firearms and I credit my advantage in weaponry to much of my success.

  Over the years my so called exploits blurred because of their commonplace nature: the ranchers wanting something done about scavengers picking off their cattle, the homesteaders facing attacks from ranchers, sheepherders united against dry-gulching cattlemen, cattlemen wanting justice against high-handed sheep herders. Contrary to popular literature since the turn of the century and the public’s bias in favor of their seeming peaceable natures, the typical sheepherder had no moral superiority to the cattleman, or the usual homesteader a better claim to awards for decency than the rancher. In the rough and tumble new world of the Golden West I applied only one test to whether I would help or not: was the cause going to be just, or would it be just my cause; the first I would accept, the second I rejected or ignored.

  For example, when Riker contacted me about expelling settlers from “his” valley near the Tetons I did a little research and found that I would have been on the opposite side of justice and turned it down. I later learned that Jack Wilson, one of the most amoral of all the fraternity of gunfighters, accepted the job and was his usual brutal self until permanently silenced by a man known as Shane, who also cleaned out the entire Riker gang.

  I subsequently encountered---but did not go up against---this Shane in Montana when we were both somewhat older. I was called---yes, I eventually did business by telephone---by someone claiming to be with one of the big Copper firms wanting me to help break a union that was active in the mines. I had long since become more sympathetic for unions than in the days when I was scrimping for business. But when this man said that agitators were coercing workers to join and be part of a threatened strike my interest shifted toward protecting men in their freedoms. I agreed to visit and decide what I would do, with the Company paying my expenses, of course.

  On arriving in the neighborhood of the works, it immediately became apparent that I’d heard only management’s side of the story, that miners were making free choices, not being strong-armed by agitators. Meetings were openly conducted and it seemed that things were being fairly done. One evening, at one of the laborers’ saloons I witnessed a fracas, when a well dressed, clean shaven young man entered and warned the gathered miners that there’d be trouble if any “weaklings” wouldn’t go along with the union at tomorrow’s gathering at the union hall. He held up a clenched fist and said that “You all know what I’m talking about.”

  Since I wasn’t there to defend anybody except the Company, and maybe not them, I held my tongue. But a gray haired man in buckskin and a Stetson hat emerged from a group at the end of the bar and walked straight to the newcomer. “You’re new here, aren’t you?” he demanded in a loud voice.

  “What’s it to you?” was the man’s reply.

  Buckskin’s Peacemaker was in his hand and on the side of the man’s head faster than I could see.

  The man collapsed in a heap.

  Buckskin holstered his Colt and reached down and lifted the crumpled form to its feet. He hauled the man to the saloon doorway and pushed him onto the plank sidewalk. “And stay out. The miners don’t want or need threats. They’ll decide for themselves, up or down.” He turned toward the crowd. For the first time I realized how short he was, not taller than my nose. But his buckskin marked him and his voice rang out loud and clear. “The union doesn’t want any votes from fear, only from hope.” He moved slowly through the gathered workers while they made way for him.

  I quietly finished my drink and had another. I nursed it along until I could work my way to Buckskin’s side, where he likewise was nursing his beer. “You and I are the only drovers here,” I murmured. “Where are you from?”

  He didn’t look at me. “Everywhere and nowhere.”

  “You liked to have broken that man’s head.”

  “He deserved it. I resent little people being pushed around.”

  “You’re surely not a miner.”

  “Neither are you. I hope you’re not a company man here to break the union.”

  “No,” I answered truthfully. “I’m headed for a job in Idaho,” another truth, since I did have a prospective project further west in case I declined the Company offer. “My name is Gould, from Trinidad, Colorado.” I held out my hand.

  “I had you figured for a gun hand. I’m Jerry McShane.” He took my hand.

  I chose not to demonstrate that I knew him. “You say you’re from everywhere and nowhere. The same could be said of me. I hail from Vermont, was in the Army during the Unpleasantness between North and South and eventually went into this sort of work.”

  McShane turned and faced the back bar loaded with liquor. “I was on the other side. But that’s long past.”

  “You must have been young.”

  McShane smiled. “I was a drummer boy, too young to even be able to carry a musket. That was in ’64 and ’65, we held out after Appomattox. But I grew up fast and took to guarding stages. They were really bad years, the Reconstruction. That’s over now, though, Johnny Reb and Billy Yank can drink together in the frozen North.” The man downed his drink, turned and strode from the saloon.

  I waited for him to return, but he did not. The next day I visited the mine’s business office and asked for the man whose name was given to me over the telephone.

  The prissy looking woman behind the desk smiled. “Mr. Jenkins is in our Chicago office, but if you are Mr. Gould he left word that you might be in.”

  I put a sheaf of bills onto the woman’s desk. “This is the balance of his expense advance. I’m passing on the job.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  As soon as I’d established more or less permanent digs at Trinidad I decided to surprise my father with a telegram. I’d sent him several letters, but since I had not established a home I had no way of expecting replies to reach me. But I was certain that a telegram would get to him, since there was an office in Bartonsville. The wire I sent simply wished him well, gave my address and asked him to send me news. I was surprised to hear from the telegraph office that my wire was rejected.

  “Sorry, Mr. Gould, but it says the office is closed, or more precisely, been put out of business as of several years ago.”

  “But the office was there when I left.”

  “Sorry, that’s all she wrote.”

  I then took the time to write a longer letter, addressed to my father at Bartonsville, again with my address where he could write. I was again surprised when the letter came back marked “Attempted but not known.”

  I considered writing to my
sister, but I had no idea where she’d be living and I was ashamed to realize that I didn’t even remember, if I ever knew it, the name of her intended husband. I spent several days pondering the problem, and finally dispatched a letter to the Rockingham Town Clerk, with an envelope containing enough postage for a response. I explained my predicament and asked help in locating my father or my sister.

  Three weeks passed, with me away on a job. When I returned the reply was there from the Town Clerk. It seemed that the hamlet of Bartonsville had been struck by a storm of unparalleled severity in the autumn of 1869, all of the mills and businesses and the railroad destroyed and several homes washed away and even the course of the Williams River changed.

  Most of the inhabitants who weren’t killed moved away. The Clerk didn’t know about my father, because she had no record of him since the disaster, but provided the name and address of my sister in Chester. That would explain why the wire and letter weren’t delivered, the telegraph office was destroyed and my father gone away.

  I wrote to my sister at Chester and received a polite but distant reply that my father and his wife lived in Brattleboro, and that she was expecting a child. She gave me his address and invited me to visit if I returned East.

  I must admit that the multiple changes, the destruction of my home town, the relocation of my father, his new family were convulsive to me. I felt alienated from my Vermont origins more than ever, and realized that even if I considered it, there was really no “home” to which I could return.

  I did write again to my father, and in due course received a cordial response, sorry that there hadn’t been more communication between us, and asking if I could provide him with a photograph, since the flood had caused his loss of most possessions, including my Army picture. He commented that he was employed at one of the mills and expected to become a manager in due course. He even told me news about mutual acquaintances from Bartonsville. He didn’t speak of his wife and apparent new child on the way.

  I did have a photograph taken and had two extra prints made in addition to the one I sent to my father. One of the extras I mailed to Spence and Jennifer, with a short note of appreciation for having started me on my gunfighting career.

  Almost always I could judge the work I was offered at the outset and when finished could count the outcome fair. For example, there was the little newspaper in WaKeeney, Kansas, whose proofreader carelessly overlooked a mistake in a front page story, in which an outlaw gang in the area was identified as the “Grearson Gang,” instead of the correct “Pearson Gang.” The article alleged that the patriarch of the clan had led Confederate renegades and raiders during the years leading up to the War and during the War, and been affiliated with Quantrill’s Raiders. What would otherwise have been soon forgotten or looked on as an honest mistake became a major source of conflict because a large ranch not far from WaKeeney was owned by a Grearson family, who, as luck would have it, was very Yankee in its roots, and which had spent many years minding its own business and included three brothers who had served in the Minnesota Union Volunteers.

  The real group which was the subject of the otherwise accurate story was a Pearson family that was scattered about several Kansas counties and if noticed at all was known for its disreputable repute as troublemakers and petty criminals of all sorts. They wouldn’t worry about the mistaken reference, if they could have, or would have, read or heard about it.

  But the Grearsons certainly were upset. Within two weeks, the newspaper published two prominent corrections and apologies, emphasizing the contribution of the Grearsons to victory in the War, and going out of its way to excoriate the Pearsons as the reprobates who were the real object of the original story. The Grearsons were placated and glad to acknowledge the honesty of the mistake and expressed the desire to “let bygones be bygones.”

  Not so, the Pearsons, however, who got wind of the repeated attacks on them. A follow up article even laid out details of the gang’s depredations during “Bleeding Kansas” and the War. This led to organization of volunteers from the counties in the area, to seek out and bring the justice what the newspaper called the “Predatory Pearsons.”

  Before the vigilantes could accomplish anything, however, some Pearsons visited WaKeeney, vandalized the newspaper office, beat up two employees, and shot up the town when departing. During another visit several days later the Pearsons worked over the publisher and several bystanders and again fired off their guns indiscriminately. A stage coming from Hays City was held up two days later and the passengers relieved of money and valuables. The victims identified the bandits as Pearsons.

  By chance I had passed through WaKeeney a couple of years earlier and became acquainted with the town marshal, who was an elderly former state legislator from Rutland County, Vermont. We spent a day reminiscing over people and places that we knew from around Vermont. He had accidentally fallen into the job as an almost sinecure and had previously had no problems with the sleepy community that did not even have a saloon. When the trouble with the Pearsons erupted the sheriff sent me a wire, asking for help, and promising that ‘some compensation’ would be forthcoming.

  I sent a wire of agreement and left immediately, as I had no work in immediate prospect. I arrived on a blistering hot day that the depot agent said was part of weather problem that were causing crop difficulties. I took a room with the marshal and waited for the next attack by the Pearsons.

  The marshal swore me in as a deputy. We didn’t have long to wait. At a little before sunset the next day the sound of hoof beats alerted us at the office. I took hold of my rifle and pistol and strode from the office. The marshal came behind me and moved into a nearby alley with a Henry rifle.

  Three figures were on horses near the newspaper office, and two men were headed toward the office on foot.

  “Wait right there, all of you,” I hollered, Winchester at the ready. “Throw down your guns and come toward me.”

  One of the mounted men spun on his horse. He went for a gun on his right hip.

  I fired.

  The man’s horse fell down, shot through the head, throwing the man under it.

  “The next one’s for any man who draws,” I shouted, as the man tangled up with the dead horse wrestled to get up.

  The men headed for the newspaper office were facing me, hands at the ready to draw.

  “You’re all under arrest. Throw down your guns.”

  Another of the mounted men drew his pistol.

  I had no choice. I shot directly for his middle.

  The man toppled backwards while the horse reared and stumbled forward.

  “Drop your guns.” I yelled again.

  The final mounted man put up his hands.

  The two by the newspaper office put up their hands.

  “Come this way,” I said. “And take off your gun belts.”

  The men unbuckled and dropped their gun belts. The mounted man climbed down and they all sullenly shuffled toward me. I moved aside and the marshal appeared on the other side. “Into the office,” I barked.

  We all went into the office and the marshal opened the single jail sell. I put down my rifle and drew my Colt. “Turn around.” When they were back to me I went to the first man and searched him, then pushed him into the cell. I did the same with the others and the four of them milled around.

  “What about Billy?” asked one of the prisoners.

  The marshal left and in a few minutes a man with dirty clothes entered the office. “I’m Rikard Lindquist, the nearest thing to a doctor in thirty miles. Your friend is dying, he won’t last long.”

  “All right,” I said and stood silent for a few moments.

  Lindquist left.

  I confronted the four Pearsons. “We’re sending for the sheriff. You’ll all be charged with something. There isn’t one of you over thirty years old. If you want to end up like your relative outside, just keep on with trying to hoorah everybody you meet. I’ve a mind to let you out the door, without your guns so you can tel
l the rest of your clan that you caused your relative to die by your stupidity.”

  “We didn’t mean nothing, we just---.” The oldest of the prisoners didn’t even try to finish his excuse.

  “Who are you? What business is it of yours what we do?” Another prisoner was heard from.

  I reached through the bars and grabbed one of them by an ear and yanked his head against the bars.

  The man howled.

  I pushed him away and pulled his head against the bars again.

  “That’s a fine question from you brainless boobs.” I pushed the man away from the bars. “I’m here to teach you fools a lesson. I didn’t intend for it to be death for one of you, but it wasn’t my fault.”

  The four of them milled around.

  The marshal came in the door.

  “Marshal, they’re all yours. I’m going to bed.” I left the office and, indeed, slept soundly. In the morning I went to the marshal’s office and found him supervising the four Pearsons who were hauling the horse carcass to the end of the street next to the livery stable manure pile. They salvaged the saddle and tackle and somehow arranged it the body of their dead relative on their mounts. As they prepared to walk their horses out of town the marshal gave them a lecture on behaving themselves when in town.

  The marshal waved me into the office. He dropped a bunch of crumpled greenbacks onto the desk. “It’s the best I could do, Nate. I took up a collection.”

  I put the money into my pocket without counting it. I smiled at the marshal. “It’ll do. Between Vermonters.”

  A few months later I received a note from the marshal that, except for very occasional solitary Pearsons in town for legitimate business, there had been no sign of the family and little word of mischief by them in the neighborhood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  One morning in September, 1873, I was leaving my house to collect my mail and telegrams when I almost fell over a young woman who was crouched down on the dirt walkway, doing something with a perambulator. “Excuse me,” I muttered.