I considered this little community to be my home now and I certainly didn’t want to do anything that would hinder my ability to move freely hereabouts. I spent the early summer riding for the Two Bar and my good friend John Coble who had backed me in more than one tight spot and paid the best wages to boot. I’d always been good with a rope and had an easy way with cattle so I helped with branding, watched Jimmy Danks try to tame a black outlaw horse he had started calling Steamboat, and rode by the Nickell homestead on occasion for a glimpse of Miss Katie. You see, I was just biding my time. I knew in another year or so, she’d be of marrying age, and I intended to be the one to set her up in her own home.
I hadn’t thought of that for many years, a home; a place where a man and a woman broke bread, and broke night silence. But the more I watched Miss Katie, well, the more I was ready to settle in to a permanent situation at Iron Mountain. But a man has to ease the pressure sometimes, so I found myself more than once over at the schoolhouse where Glendolene Kimmell was always eager to share my embrace.
The tension at Iron Mountain that started with schoolboy fisticuffs had escalated while I was away in Brown’s Park and then working on the Two Bar. By the Fourth of July, Jim, Victor, and Gus Miller were taking potshots at Kels and his sheep, warning him to get the maggots out of the country or else they would drive the blatting animals over a cliff and Kels with them. He didn’t back down, not one inch, so the anger just continued to fester.
Like I said earlier, it was raining the morning of July 18. I’d seen Willie saddling his father’s horse just after dawn, and then I kicked my own bay into a trot, his hoofbeats muffled by the drizzle. A couple hours later, the sun was driving water dogs from the timber as I lay in the rocks watching for my quarry. He moved into position and I squeezed the trigger of my thirty-thirty, hearing the ricocheting echo from a rifle fired several miles away before I felt the explosion from my own weapon. Satisfied that my shot had hit the heart, I eased up from the rocks, whistled for my horse, went to my target to finish the job.
Sometimes it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s story. Now it is real that I headed down to Denver where I had a few drinks. I shared some stories there about the killing of fourteen-year-old Willie Nickell. When the boys didn’t believe me, I trumped the cards, “Boys, it was the best shot that I ever made and the dirtiest trick I ever done.” They was so impressed by my stories of chasing Geronimo, I figured one more wouldn’t do no harm.
But U.S. Marshal Joe LeFors heard about my stories, found me at Harry Hynds’ Saloon in Cheyenne City a few days later, and joined me for a few drinks. Soon we were upstairs in the marshal’s office, a small room with a tall grimy window that allowed light in just barely. He had me sit in a chair facing the back wall of the room, angling it away from him even though he said he needed to be sure he could hear my answers clearly, and then he grilled me over and over about how I killed Willie. I just kept on a-telling him the same story about it being my best shot and dirtiest trick.
What I didn’t realize is that he was taking his best shot and playing his dirtiest trick. Before I knew it, I’d been pinched for the crime because he had Deputy Les Snow and Charles Ohnhaus in the room beside his office. Their door had been rigged so they could hear and see me, though I did not know it at the time. While LeFors and I talked, Ohnhaus scratched my words onto a pad, and before I knew it, I was locked up in the city jail and told to prepare a defense.
By then I knew that there’d been further bloodshed on Iron Mountain. Kels took a bullet in the leg, another in the arm, but got help and lived. Already he was planning to leave the country, go over to the Grand Encampment, and claim new land there. He’d take Katie with him, I knew. And even if he didn’t, I recognized that my chances with her had fluttered into the wind along with my stories of killing her younger brother.
I spent my days behind the iron bars braiding horsehair into a rope and planning an escape with “Driftwood” Jim McCloud. I had some accomplices on the outside—I won’t name them even now after all these years—and McCloud could pick a lock slicker than a cat could slide down a greased pole. We forced our way out of our cell, tied up the jailer, grabbed a couple of thirty-thirty Winchesters, and raced out the west door of the cell block, just as deputy Snow realized there was a break. The crack of Snow’s rifle quickly alerted the sheriff and the town so McCloud and I barely made it to the horses that had been left in the livery for our use by friends of mine, when we heard the mob and split. I raced into the alley and ran headlong into a posse on bicycles and an irate circus man who fired his revolver twice before cracking me over the head with it. Imagine that, I’d made my living on a horse and now here I was captured by men on two-wheelers.
At my trial two people stepped up that could have gotten me out of my predicament. Two Bar cowboy Otto Plaga had seen me the morning Willie died. At the time I was miles north of the Nickell homestead and had a freshly killed deer draped over the back of my horse. Fiddle-playing Otto told the judge all that, saying it was impossible for me to have fired the fatal shot at Willie because I could not have made such a ride between the two places in the time that had been known to elapse from when Willie left the homestead on his Pa’s horse to when he was found facedown in the mud at the gate. I watched Otto’s sincerity, knew he was telling the truth, as he always did, stood up, and shouted across the courtroom, “Of course I could make such a ride, I’m Tom Horn after all. Plaga is wrong about the time and wrong about my location.” That was one nail in my coffin. And I put it there.
Glendolene Kimmell also came to my aid, or tried to. She wrote letters to the governor, she pleaded with the prosecutor, she took the stand, and would have said I was with her at the time Willie was killed, but looked into my eyes before such a perjury and instead admitted we weren’t together, but she just knew I did not kill Willie. I might have stood up then and shouted to the courtroom, “Well, if not me, then who?” But chivalry kept me in my chair, my mouth closed.
You see, she and I are the only two people who know about the killing of Willie Nickell. I realized as I sat in that musty courtroom that if I told what I knew, I would not gain my freedom, but instead would be forever burdened with it. And with Miss Katie now almost certainly out of my life, I realized there would be no happy home for me, that my breed was a relic. Truthfully, I just didn’t care any more.
My fate was inevitable. The rock under Willie’s head was the final straw that pitched the jury to guilty. I didn’t place it there, but I put it there by telling the wrong person how I marked my jobs so my employers could pay me. It didn’t much matter to me. Katie was gone with her family to the copper boomtown at Grand Encampment. Glendolene left Iron Mountain, moved to California. The Millers stuck around for years, finally starved out. I swung from a new rope in Cheyenne City as C.B. and Frank Irwin sang “Life’s a Railway to Heaven” and they took my bones to Boulder.
But I came home to Iron Mountain. Been here ever since. It was the best home I ever had, the place I was happiest. Now I keep an eye on the site where Willie died, occasionally roam through the rotting structure that was the Iron Mountain School and the crumbling remnants of the Nickell and Miller homesteads.
I saw the law dogs come that day a century after Willie died. They intended to solve the murder once and for all. They had heat-sensing sonar, Geiger counters, crime tape, cameras. They pulled out the transcript of my trial, forensic microscopes, and some beers. It was going to be hard, hot work solving this Wyoming crime. For days they poked and prodded in the rocks, along the road, around the gate, theorizing and speculating, accepting and rejecting details.
This is the way they set it up. Willie, riding his Pa’s horse and wearing his Pa’s slicker and hat, left the house to go find a hired hand who was with the sheep a couple miles from the homestead. He rode up to the gate, dismounted, started to open the gate, and from a distance of two hundred yards, I shot him with my thirty-thirty, firing three rounds, two of which struck him. Then I walked to the bo
dy, placed a rock under his head, got on my horse, and left the scene. Later I went to Denver, bragged about the killing, did the same in Cheyenne, had a fair trial, and was hanged for a deed I did commit. Or so they said. They never took into account that it only ever took me one bullet to get my man.
Having solved the case once again, these lawmen built a big fire, threw some potatoes, carrots, cabbage, sausage, and water into a milk can they had on the fire, and started cooking as they drank more beer, slapped each other on the back, and congratulated themselves for their crime-solving abilities.
And then the reporter arrived. She drove up in a rusty gray pickup, climbed out, and pulled on a ball cap. Wearing scuffed brown boots, faded Wranglers, and a chambray shirt, she took out her notebook, stuffed in into her hip pocket, poked a pen above her ear, and took a firm grip on a blue bag that she slung over her right shoulder. Walking purposefully she approached the law dogs, their fire and their cooler, but she looked at the land. Her brown eyes moved intently over the ridgeline to the east, swung across the road toward the west, took in the fence and the gate.
“You find anything interesting?” she asked the lead investigator.
“You bet. Some thirty-thirty casings over in those rocks,” he pointed toward the west. “Measurements coincide with the trial transcript. It’s clear Willie rode up, got off his horse, and Horn shot him. Fired three bullets. Two struck the boy who made it sixty-five feet toward home before collapsing.”
The reporter didn’t respond, walked to the gate, looked around, and headed for the rock outcrop and cedar trees where the law dog said I’d been. She moved slowly and even before she got to the place, I knew she sensed something they hadn’t. She pulled her camera out of the blue bag, put on a long lens, pointed it toward the rocks. And looked right at me.
The shutter never snapped, so I know she didn’t take the photo. But she saw me all right. And in that instant the story came clear for her as it had for me.
“You’ve got it wrong,” she told the law dog as she pulled a Coke from her bag.
“How so?”
“Well, for one thing, Willie would not have been off his horse to open the gate.”
“Oh?”
“No fourteen-year-old boy who’d been riding horses since he was two would ever dismount to open a gate,” she said. “He’d ride up to the fence, angle his horse against the gate, reach over, and open it. Then, with the gate in one hand, he’d swing the horse through and shut it.”
“Oh, ya?”
“Of course, the shot that killed Willie came before he could shut it,” she added. “Who are your suspects?”
“You know them: Tom Horn and Jim Miller mainly.”
“And it wasn’t either of them.”
“Who then?”
“Obviously the one who tried so valiantly to save Tom Horn, who swore at his trial he had not fired the fatal shot,” the reporter said smugly.
“Don’t tell me you think the schoolteacher did it?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of passion and jealousy as a motive for murder?”
She turned and strode toward her truck, pausing as she reached the rusty vehicle, “And boys, mind your backs, he’s watching you even now.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Most of this story actually occurred on Iron Mountain. All of the names are real, although I have compressed some events to fit my story line. The killing of Willie Nickell is one of those Wyoming legends where the truth is so deeply buried it is difficult to discern, but the answers are there somewhere in the rocks above the crumbling Nickell Homestead. I know. I was there with the law dogs. And I had my camera.
The Defense of Sentinel
Louis L’Amour
When the morning came, Finn McGraw awakened into a silent world. His eyes opened to the wide and wondering sky where a solitary cloud wandered reluctantly across the endless blue.
At first he did not notice the silence. He had awakened, his mouth tasted like a rain-soaked cat hide, he wanted a drink, and he needed a shave. This was not an unusual situation.
He heaved himself to a sitting position, yawned widely, scratching his ribs—and became aware of the silence.
No sound…. No movement. No rattling of well buckets, no cackling of hens, no slamming of doors. Sentinel was a town of silence.
Slowly, his mind filling with wonder, Finn McGraw climbed to his feet. With fifty wasted years behind him, he had believed the world held no more surprises. But Sentinel was empty.
Sentinel, where for six months Finn McGraw had held the unenvied position of official town drunk. He had been the tramp, the vagabond, the useless, the dirty, dusty, unshaven, whiskey-sodden drunk. He slept in alleys. He slept in barns—wherever he happened to be when he passed out.
Finn McGraw was a man without a home. Without a job. Without a dime. And now he was a man without a town.
What can be more pitiful than a townless town drunk?
Carefully, McGraw got to his feet. The world tipped edgewise and he balanced delicately and managed to maintain his equilibrium. Negotiating the placing of his feet with extreme caution, he succeeded in crossing the wash and stumbling up the bank on the town side. Again, more apprehensively, he listened.
Silence.
No smoke rising from chimneys, no barking dogs, no horses. The street lay empty before him, like a street in a town of ghosts.
Finn McGraw paused and stared at the phenomenon. Had he, like Rip van Winkle, slept for twenty years?
Yet he hesitated, for well he knew the extreme lengths that Western men would go for a good practical joke. The thought came as a relief. That was it, of course, this was a joke. They had all gotten together to play a joke on him.
His footsteps echoed hollowly on the boardwalk. Tentatively, he tried the door of the saloon. It gave inward, and he pushed by the inner batwing doors and looked around. The odor of stale whiskey mingled with cigar smoke lingered, lonesomely, in the air. Poker chips and cards were scattered on the table, but there was nobody…. Nobody at all!
The back bar was lined with bottles. His face brightened. Whiskey! Good whiskey, and his for the taking! At least, if they had deserted him they had left the whiskey behind.
Caution intervened. He walked to the back office and pushed open the door. It creaked on a rusty hinge and gave inward, to emptiness.
“Hey?” His voice found only an echo for company. “Where is everybody?”
No answer. He walked to the door and looked out upon the street. Suddenly the desire for human companionship blossomed into a vast yearning.
He rushed outside. He shouted. His voice rang empty in the street against the false-fronted buildings. Wildly, he rushed from door to door. The blacksmith shop, the livery stable, the saddle shop, the boot maker, the general store, the jail—all were empty, deserted.
He was alone.
Alone! What had happened! Where was everybody? Saloons full of whiskey, stores filled with food, blankets, clothing. All these things had been left unguarded.
Half-frightened, Finn McGraw made his way to the restaurant. Everything there was as it had been left. A meal half-eaten on the table, dishes unwashed. But the stove was cold.
Aware suddenly of a need for strength that whiskey could not provide, Finn McGraw kindled a fire in the stove. From a huge ham he cut several thick slices. He went out back and rummaged through the nests and found a few scattered eggs. He carried these inside and prepared a meal.
With a good breakfast under his belt, he refilled his coffee cup and rummaged around until he found a box of cigars. He struck a match and lighted a good Havana, pocketing several more. Then he leaned back and began to consider the situation.
Despite the excellent meal and the cigar, he was uneasy. The heavy silence worried him, and he got up and went cautiously to the door. Suppose there was something here, something malign and evil? Suppose—Angrily, he pushed the door open. He was going to stop supposing. For the first time in his life he had a town full of everything, and he wa
s going to make the most of it.
Sauntering carelessly down the empty street to the Elite General Store, he entered and coolly began examining the clothing. He found a hand-me-down gray suit and changed his clothes. He selected new boots and donned them as well as a white cambric shirt, a black string tie, and a new black hat. He pocketed a fine linen handkerchief. Next he lighted another cigar, spat into the brass spittoon, and looked upon life with favor.
On his right as he turned to leave the store was a long rack of rifles, shotguns, and pistols. Thoughtfully, he studied them. In his day—that was thirty years or so ago—he had been a sharpshooter in the Army.
He got down a Winchester ’73, an excellent weapon, and loaded it with seventeen bullets. He appropriated a fine pair of Colts, loaded them, and belted them on, filling the loops with cartridges. Taking down a shotgun, he loaded both barrels with buckshot, then he sauntered down to the saloon, rummaged under the bar until he came up with Dennis Magoon’s excellent Irish whiskey, and poured three fingers into a glass.
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