by Noel Loomis
“Saw Injuns today,” said Art Grimes, the man with the droopy-brimmed hat. “Reckon they are on the warpath.”
Ferguson looked up. “There are worse things loose. This face did not come from Indians.”
Grimes was silent for a moment. “They sure worked you over. Who was it?”
“Four men who were trying to take half of my land.”
“Maybe they were mad at you,” suggested Roy Ernest.
“They had no occasion to be mad at me—but they did want my land.”
“Simmons and who else?” asked Black Gallagher. Ferguson hesitated. “Three Mawsons.”
“They musta had it in for you,” Roy Ernest insisted, crossing his long, loose-jointed legs.
Ferguson said sharply, “They have nothing against me except that I have something they want. They claimed my south quarter, and took it over today.”
“With them hogs?” asked Dave Ackerman. “I seen them goin’ cross-country about noon, headed northwest. I thought he was leavin’ the country with ’em.”
“He wasn’t.”
“Where’d he git two hundred head of hogs?” asked scrawny Job Sye. “I never seen that many hogs over here.”
“Prob’ly come up from Omaha City.”
“Simmons never struck me as no hog man,” said Gallagher.
“He musta had some help drivin’ ’em,” said Grimes.
“George Keller, that new feller come over yesterday morning,” said Ackerman, and added, “Here he comes now.” The men around the table turned silent, and watched the door as Keller staggered up to it, knocked off his hat on the frame, bent down to pick it up, lost his balance and fell face forward on the floor.
“He’s sure drunk,” said Gallagher.
Keller got up, lurched toward an empty chair and sat down and pounded on the table. “Waiter, waiter!” he shouted.
Tom Turner waddled back to his corner. “There’ll be a waiter. You want food?”
Keller shouted: “Food and whisky?”
“No whisky,” said Turner.
“Beer, then.”
“You’re already drunk,” said Turner.
“Whatsa difference? Ain’t my money as good as his’n?” He pointed at Ferguson.
Tom Turner looked at him for a moment, then drew a tin cup full of beer and took it over.
“What’s this you started to say about the Indians?” Ferguson asked Art Grimes.
Grimes prepared to tell his tale with relish. “They are goin’ around tellin’ people the land belongs to them, and they are goin’ to take it back, then offer to leave it alone for ten dollars.”
“Are people paying it?”
“Who wants to get massacred?” asked Grimes.
“The Indians are only a nuisance,” said Ferguson. “The men we have to fight are men like Simmons.”
Benson came in, looking for Ferguson. He found him and came over to sit down. “Have some beer, Mr. Benson?” asked Ferguson.
“Not right now. I’d like some coffee, though. I get tired of that stuff I make.”
“You’ll get it. How are things at the ferry?”
“That’s what—” He peered suddenly at Ferguson’s face. “Hey, you look like you been run through a coffee-grinder.”
“Not all the way through,” said Ferguson. “What happened at the ferry?’
“I sent the ferry back when you left this afternoon, but I ain’t had no load since then, Mr. Ferguson.”
He thought about it for a moment.
“Teddy Root come over, an’ he says the Mawsons lit out for somewheres.”
Ferguson nodded.
“An’ he said you bet the ferry you could move them sheep—and you got three days from tomorrow morning.” Ackerman stared. “You bet the ferry?”
“It was the only way I could bring things to a head,” said Ferguson. “His idea was to camp there and run everybody away.”
“If you lose the ferry,” said Ackerman in a scared voice, “we won’t have no friend anywhere. Yeakel and Logan will take over.”
“I haven’t lost it.”
“How many sheep you got to move in two days and three nights? Maybe we can help.”
“Twelve thousand,” said Ferguson.
“Jee-rusalem!”
“We already got a hundred and fifty across,” said Benson, “but them fellers kept ’em so choused up a man can’t do nothin’ with ’em.”
Sally came in and looked at Ferguson as she went by and smiled—an intimate little gesture that spoke of secret things between them. She went to Keller’s table and asked: “You want somethin’, mister?”
He looked at her for a moment, and his eyes widened. He looked her all the way up and down, and her face turned red. Tom Turner started over toward them. “Go back in the kitchen, Sally. I’ll take care of him.”
“No, you won’t!” said Keller. “Sure I want somethin’, sister. I want you!” His arm went around her hips and he got up, raising her dress to the middle of her bare white thighs.
Sally struggled to get away. Old Tom tried to hurry to them. Ferguson jumped to his feet.
She beat on his chest with her doubled-up fists, but Keller laughed. He held her tight, and with his right hand he unbuckled his belt. She screamed, and Ferguson leaped across the room. He seized Keller’s left arm and tore it from around Sally. Keller paused, seeming now to be cold sober. His eyes narrowed, and he told Ferguson: “You figger to do to me what you done to Jerome Talbot?”
Ferguson began to circle him. It would have to be quick and fast, for Ferguson was too bruised to take many blows. Keller turned, and Ferguson watched his feet from the corner of his eye. When he saw Keller off-balance, he stepped in, throwing long, looping blows at the man’s face, maintaining a coldly furious tornado of bone-hard fists.
Keller tried to back away but couldn’t. He tried to get his arms up, but it was too late. Ferguson was working on his chin with savage intensity, and Keller began to crumple. He went to the dirt floor, and Tom Turner, white as sand in the sunlight, put his foot in the middle of Keller’s face and stepped on him with all the weight of his four hundred pounds. Sally fled to the kitchen.
Dave Ackerman looked around at the men. “What are we gonna do with him?” he asked.
Art Grimes said, “He didn’t really do nothin’.”
Ackerman looked at him with scorn. “He tried, didn’t he?” Simon Hudson offered a suggestion: “He was drunk when he done it. He wasn’t really responsible.”
Black Gallagher said with fine scorn: “Well, now, Mr. Hudson, any man can get himself drunk and commit any crime he has a mind to, and you would let him go free. If he acts like that when he gets drunk, he has no right to get drunk.”
Dave Ackerman said, “Mr. Hudson, if a man tried to rape your daughter before a roomful of men, would you excuse him for it?”
Hudson said timorously, “Why do we have to take the law in our hands? We’re in the right, aren’t we? And right will prevail.”
Ferguson said, “In a new country, being in the right is not enough, because there are other men in the country who don’t care about the right, who know there is no law to protect their victims, and who think only of their own avaricious or perverted desires. That kind feeds on the man who thinks he is safe because he’s in the right.”
Hans Osterman offered his judgment: “There’s sure somethin’ wrong with Keller, and we don’t want his kind in Nebraska. I say the sooner we dispose of him, the better off the country will be.”
“You turn him loose,” said Roy Ernest heatedly, “and what have you got? The next time, it’ll be your wife, and it may be in the dark when nobody is around. I say we hang ’im!”
“Me too!” shouted a dozen men.
Dave Ackerman asked, “What do you say, Mr. Ferguson?”
“I see no excuse for this sort of conduct,” said Ferguson, now more shaken than before. “The reason makes no difference; the fact is that this man tried to commit the most unforgivable crime on the front
ier. The only protection our women have is what we give them: the sure knowledge that any man who violates them will be punished immediately.”
“Hang ’im! Hang im!”
Dave Ackerman started to drag Keller across the floor, but Keller recovered consciousness and tried to get to his feet.
“Wait a minute,” said Ferguson. “You can’t just take a man out and hang him. That’s lynch law.”
“What else have we got?” demanded Gallagher.
“We can have an organized body here when we form the claim club.”
“That’s nothin’ but vigilante law, anyways,” said Grimes.
“Partly,” Ferguson admitted. “It has been used all over the country where the law is slow getting in, and has some legal standing. It keeps things in control until the law gets there.”
Keller got to his feet. His face was bloody, and his nose was sunken in where Turner had stepped on it; he looked wildly around the room and said huskily: “You can’t hang me without a trial.”
Ferguson looked at him. “You will get a trial,” he said.
“I was just foolin’. I never done nothin’ like this before. I was just playin’.”
“No man plays about things like that,” said Ferguson.
“He says it’s the first time,” said Hudson doubtfully.
Ferguson looked at him. “Mr. Hudson, you may be so afraid of doing something wrong that you are afraid to do something right. You ought to know there is no first time for a man like him. He’s been doing these things all his life.”
“How do you know that?”
“I have seen many men plead first offense, and I have defended some of them—and in every case it turned out that it was not a first offense at all. These things grow, and get a little worse every time. They don’t happen all of a sudden.”
“Anybody got a rope handy?” asked Ackerman in a loud voice.
“Wait a minute!” said Ferguson. “Not that fast.”
“Why not?”
“We will have to go through with the formality of a trial by an organized body—and we’ll do it later. Not tonight. Give yourselves some time to cool off. Organize the claim club and appoint a committee to arrange the details of a trial.”
“What’s the use? We’re gonna hang him anyway,” said Gallagher.
“It keeps it from being too easy to do, and it gives an accused man some protection. When you set up the details, you want to consider it as if you are the man accused and you are innocent, and you want a fair trial. That’s the only way we can give it legality.”
“It’s a waste of time,” muttered Ackerman.
“A few hours’ delay in the name of justice is not a waste of time.”
“All right.” Ackerman did not like it, though. “What’ll we do with him in the meantime?”
“Tie him up and hang him about forty feet down the dry well across the road,” said Roy Ernest. “That’ll hold him till tomorrow.”
All this time Keller had been silent, seeming to have sunken into a semi-stupor. Hans Osterman brought a rope, and they tied his feet, and ran the rope around his chest under his arms; then they tied his hands behind him. “There, I reckon he looks like a trussed goose,” said Roy Ernest, stepping back.
“I’ll say he was the handsomest feller in Nebraska,” said Ackerman, “but he don’t look so good now. He looks like he’s just out of bed with bilious fever.”
“Take him out and lower him down the well,” said Ferguson. “He won’t be very comfortable, but I guess it doesn’t make much difference.”
“We better post a guard,” said Gallagher.
“He ain’t goin’ nowhere,” said Ackerman.
“He’ll be all right for a while,” said Turner. “My dogs will hear it if anybody tries to get him out.”
In half an hour they were back. “He tried to buy us off,” said Ackerman.
“For how much?”
“He said he could get a thousand dollars by tomorrow.”
Ferguson thought about it. “He doesn’t know anybody here.”
“He spent most of his time shinin’ up to wimmen,” said Gallagher.
And, Ferguson remembered, he had come over originally to make the ferry deal for Mawson. Would Mawson try to rescue him? They would have to wait to see.
CHAPTER XIII
He looked around the room and ticked them off: Big Dave Ackerman, good hearted and friendly; Roy Ernest, with his long legs and double-jointed ankles; beetle-browed Black Gallagher; Art Grimes with his droopy hat; Hans Osterman; Nosey Porter; Job Sye, scrawny and nervous; Tom Turner; and thirty others. Ferguson called the meeting to order. “We first elect a temporary chairman,” he said. “And I nominate Dave Ackerman.”
“Second,” said Grimes.
“All in favor say aye.”
They voted Ackerman in unanimously, and Ackerman said, “What do I do now?”
“I will propose a constitution and by-laws. If the meeting adopts them, we can go ahead and elect officers. The president can appoint committees as provided in the by-laws, and this can be a working organization before we leave here tonight.”
Grimes said dubiously, “We ain’t in that big a hurry, are we?”
“If you’re not in a hurry,” said Ferguson, “you’d better not organize at all, because these highbinders are already here.”
“You got the constitution and by-laws?” asked Ackerman.
“I have some to suggest.” He stood up. “If you gentlemen will bear with me for a while—” he began. “We will have to have a name first.”
“I move we call it the Ferguson’s Ferry Protective Claim Association,” said Roy Ernest.
A general vote of aye.
Ferguson pulled a notebook from his pocket and began to read: “Constitution and by-laws adopted this blank day of June, 1859, at a meeting of the citizens of the Ferguson’s Ferry community and its environs.
“Whereas it sometimes becomes necessary for persons to associate themselves together for the purpose of protecting their lives and property, their having left the peaceful shades of civilization, friends and homes for the purposes of bettering their condition, we therefore associate ourselves together under the name of Ferguson’s Ferry Protective Claim Association and adopt the following constitution:
“‘First. To elect once a year a president, vice-president, secretary and six directors.
“‘Second. The president to preside, and the vice-president if the president is absent; six members present to constitute a quorum.
“‘Third. Any person taking a claim for farming purposes shall be entitled to three hundred and twenty acres in one body, provided the same shall be in two adjoining squares, and he shall set stakes or mark trees or build mounds, and within ten days shall file said claim with the association.
“‘Fourth. All persons now or heretofore taking claims shall within sixty days from this date have the following improvements: one log cabin twelve foot square, chinked and covered with poles and a dirt roof.
“‘Fifth. Nothing herein shall be construed to prevent parties from selling their claims when they have complied with the constitution.
“‘Sixth. Any townsite company that has organized or may hereafter be organized, shall be entitled to all lands it can take for the purpose of townsites, provided they do not infringe on the rights of any claimant. In no case should the land taken exceed 1,280 acres.’”
“Sure sounds good to me,” said Ernest. “Right nice writin’.”
“‘Seventh. Any difficulty concerning claims shall be referred to the managers.
“‘Eighth. All claims made before this date shall be respected if the owner complies with this constitution.
“‘Ninth.’” Ferguson looked around him. “Section nine provides that the president shall call meetings of the board or of the general association.
“‘Tenth. The board of managers shall make the rules for government of the claim association within the rules laid down by the constitution.
> “‘Eleventh. The board of managers shall, in the absence of other organized law, have the power to appoint a sheriff and a jury, and to direct the conduct of a trial for any offense against the peace and dignity of man.’”
“Hooray!” shouted Osterman. “I’m for that.”
“Twelfth. All persons whose names are attached hereto are hereby declared to be members of this association, and any person desiring the protection of this association shall sign the same and record his claim, for which he will pay the sum of one dollar.
“‘Thirteenth. This constitution may be revised or amended by a two-thirds vote of the members present at a regular meeting, which shall be held on the first Saturday of each month.
“‘Fourteenth. We recognize the decision of the territorial legislature, and hold that each man is entitled to 320 acres if he can locate it without jumping somebody else’s claim.”
Ferguson looked up. “That’s it as far as I got with it. If there are any—”
“I move we adopt it!” said Black Gallagher.
“Second the motion.”
Ackerman said, “All in favor, say aye.”
There was a thunderous chorus of ayes.
“All opposed, say no.”
“I’m not sure,” said Grimes, “but I ain’t voting against it.”
“You better not,” said Ackerman. “I declare the constitution adopted unanimously.”
Ackerman promptly nominated Ferguson for president, and he was elected unanimously; Job Sye was elected Secretary because he could write; and Roy Ernest was elected vice-president.
“Now, then,” said Ferguson, “you realize that any claim that has the improvement of a cabin as provided in the law cannot be jumped, but any claim that does not have such improvement is jumpable, and we cannot do anything about it.”
The men were boisterous. “Now let’s hang Keller,” said Osterman.
“We have at least three items of business,” said Ferguson. “First, to elect six directors. I suggest that be done by written ballot.”
After some delay, six directors were elected: Ackerman, who got the most votes, with Simon Hudson, Black Gallagher, the man named Jones who had come over two nights before, Tom Turner, and Bill Benson who was liked by everybody.
Meantime, Job Sye had been writing out the constitution with a lead pencil, and after the election of directors, forty-six men signed the paper.