Matthew had been staring at Mary Kate, and finally he couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“Mary Kate, what in the world are you doing in that getup?”
By now several of the other girls had come out from the House of Pleasure, including Gladys.
“I put her in it,” Gladys said. “I thought it would be a good way to hide her from Ackerman.”
“It worked, too,” Mary Kate said with a smile. “Jerrod came in and looked at all of us when he was looking for me. I was right there in the room with the rest of them, and he didn’t even recognize me.”
“I hope you don’t mind,” Gladys said.
“Mind?” Falcon said. “Why should we mind? I think that’s one of the smartest ideas I’ve ever heard.”
“Gentlemen,” Dempster called to the others of the town who were gathered in the middle of the street. “I think it’s time we organized.”
“Organized what?” one of the others asked.
“Organized ourselves into a real town,” he said.
“Wait a minute, Hodge, they’s some of us come here to get away from the law. Are you sayin’ we won’t be safe here, no more?”
“Those whose crimes were most egregious are lying dead in the street,” Dempster said. “As for the rest of us, I think a fresh start is in order.”
“The first thing we should do is change the name of the town,” Peggy said. “Purgatory has an evil connotation.”
“You got ’ny ideas what to call it?” Dempster asked.
“Yes,” Peggy said. She looked at Mary Kate and smiled. “I think we should call it McVey.”
“Any objections?” Dempster asked.
No one objected.
“You know what you have just done?” Falcon asked.
“What?”
Falcon smiled. “McVey has just held its first democratic town meeting.”
EPILOGUE
From the Helena Independent, April 23, 1889:
WE WILL BE A STATE!
STATEHOOD APPROVED
November 8, 1889, the Date
John Kemp Toole, First Governor
The preamble of our new state constitution, approved in convention in Helena, reads thusly:
We the people of Montana, grateful to Almighty God for the blessings of liberty, in order to secure the advantages of a state government, do in accordance with the permission of the enabling act of Congress approved the 12th of February, 1889, ordain and establish this constitution.
Much is owed to Edward Hamilton of Deer Lodge, and Hodge Dempster of McVey, who toiled long and hard to secure statehood for Montana. Now all citizens of Montana will be able to gaze upon that Star Spangled Banner and know that one of the stars represents us. Long may it wave, and long live the state of Montana.
A celebration of statehood was held at Brimstone. Falcon, Morgan, and Matthew were there, as was Mary Kate, who had remarried to Mark Worley, a lawyer from Deer Lodge. Mark had been very active in helping put together the statehood convention, his contribution so valuable that Governor Toole had appointed Mark as his chief of operations.
At the moment, Edward and Megan Hamilton, Hodge Dempster and his wife, Peggy, Mark and Mary Kate, Falcon, Morgan, and Matthew, were all out on the patio behind Denbigh Castle. Mary Kate’s twin sons, Johnny and Edward, were playing in the backyard. A pig, being rotated over an open fire, filled the air with an aroma that promised a delicious dinner to be served, later.
“You know, Falcon, Governor Toole offered Mark the position of U.S. Senator, but he turned it down,” Edward said.
“Why did you turn it down?” Falcon asked. “That seems like a pretty powerful position.”
“I suppose it is, but I would have to spend too much time in Washington. And I love this territory . . .”
“Soon to be a state,” Dempster said.
“Soon to be a state,” Mark corrected with a grin, “too much to leave it. I wouldn’t be very good in congress, I would be homesick for Montana. Look at this.”
Mark took in the purple vista of the mountains. At this hour of late afternoon, the mountains were limned with a golden glow from the sun that had gone down behind them. “Can you imagine anyplace more beautiful? Certainly nothing like this in Washington.”
“No, nor anywhere I’ve ever been,” Edward agreed.
“Falcon, I’ve always wondered why you never got into politics,” Megan said. “You’ve certainly made a lot of friends. I think you could be elected to any office you aspired to.”
“I’ve made a lot of friends, yes. But don’t forget, I’ve also made enemies,” Falcon said.
“Not that many enemies,” Matthew suggested. “It’s not healthy to be one of your enemies. They either wind up dead, or in prison.”
“Matthew,” Megan scolded. “That’s not a nice thing to say.”
“I mean nothing untoward about it, Megan. Everyone who knows Falcon, knows that he has always been on the up and up.”
“And lest someone forget, Falcon, and you two,” Dempster said, taking in Morgan and Matthew with a wave of his hand, “not only saved Mary Kate, you also freed a town. And speaking as mayor of McVey, our town will always be grateful to you. To all of you.”
“But my mother-in-law is right, Falcon. You could be elected to any office you might want,” Mark said.
“But what would I do with my shining armor, and my white horse?” Falcon teased.
“What?”
Only Mary Kate knew the joke, and smiling, she walked over to give him a kiss.
“Use it to save damsels in distress,” she said.
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Now, driven from Texas by carpetbaggers, former
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bandits shoot to kill, and rustlers rule the night,
it takes more than one man to run a ranch.
So he offers a partnership to his eldest son, Jacob,
with equal shares going to his sons Sam, Patrick,
and Shawn. Together, the brothers O’Brien will
defend their homestead, the Dromore, in this
violent, lawless land . . . and when necessary,
administer their own brand of frontier justice.
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CHAPTER ONE
West Texas, May 28, 1866
Texans are a generous breed, but they do not confer the title of Colonel lightly on a man. He has to earn it.
The two men who sat in the sway-roofed sod cabin had earned the honor the hard way—by being first-rate fighting men.
Colonel Shamus O’Brien had risen though the ranks of the Confederate Army to become a regimental commander in the Laurel Brigade under the dashing and gallant Major General Thomas L. Rosser.
O’Brien had been raiding in West Virginia when the war ended in 1865, and thus escaped the surrender at Appomattox, a blessing for which he’d thank the Good Lord every single day of his long life.
He was twenty-three years old that June and bore the scars of two great wounds. A ball ripped through his thigh at First Manassas and a Yankee saber cut opened his left cheek at Mechanicsville.
By his own reckoning, Shamus O’Brien, from County Clare, Ireland, had killed seventeen men in single combat with revolver or saber, and none of them disturb
ed his sleep.
The man who faced O’Brien across the rough pine table was Colonel Charles Goodnight. He’d been addressed as colonel from the first day and hour he’d saddled a horse to ride with the Texas Rangers. A Yankee by birth—yet the great state of Texas had not a more loyal citizen, nor fearless fighting man.
“Charlie,” O’Brien said, “it is a hell of a thing to hang a man.”
Goodnight stilled a forkful of beans and salt pork halfway to his mouth. “Hell, Shamus, he’s as guilty as sin.”
“Maybe the girl led him on. It happens, you know.”
Speaking around a mouthful of food, Goodnight said, “She didn’t.”
“She’s black,” O’Brien said.
“So, what difference does that make?”
“Just sayin’.”
Goodnight poured himself coffee from the sooty pot on the table.
“Shamus, black, white, or in between, he raped a girl and there’s an end to it.”
O’Brien let go of all the tension that had been building inside him, words exploding from his mouth, his lilting Irish brogue pronounced. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and all the saints in Heaven save and preserve us! Charlie, he’s a Yankee carpetbagger. He’s got the government on his side.”
“Yeah, I know he has, but I don’t give a damn. He’s among the worst of the carpetbagging scum and I’ve got no liking for him. He called me a raggedy-assed Texas Reb—imagine that. I mean, I know it’s true, but I don’t need to hear it from a damned uppity Yankee.”
“Is that why you’re hanging him, because he called you raggedy-assed?”
“No, I’m hanging him for the rape of a seventeen-year-old girl.”
“Charlie, you’re not a Ranger anymore. You don’t have the authority to hang anybody.”
“So the government says. A Union general in El Paso told me my enlistment ran out at Appomattox. Well, I don’t see it his way. The Rangers didn’t tell me I’m done, so as far as I’m concerned I still have a sworn duty to protect the people of Texas, men, women, and children.”
O’Brien was a big man, sturdy and well built, with the thick red hair and blue eyes inherited from his ancestor Brian Boru, the last High King of Ireland. His pine chair creaked in protest when he leaned back. “They’ll come after us, Charlie, I’m thinking. And the gather just completed.”
Goodnight considered that. He scraped his tin plate, the noise loud in the silence and stifling heat of the cabin. Finally he said, “By the time the Yankees give up their plundering and get around to investigating we’ll have the herd across the Pecos and be well on our way north.”
“They look after their own, Charlie,” O’Brien said.
“And so do I, by God.” Goodnight pushed his plate away, leaned back, and sighed. “That was an elegant meal, Shamus.”
His poverty an affront to his Celtic pride, O’Brien said, “I am shamed that my poor house had so little to offer. Salt pork and beans is not a fit repast for such an honored guest.”
Goodnight stepped lightly. “The food was excellent and freely given. You did indeed do me great honor, Shamus.”
O’Brien and Goodnight were Southern gentlemen of the old school, and the mutual compliments were accepted without further comment.
“Will you hang him, Charlie?” O’Brien said. “I mean, after all that’s been said.”
Goodnight consulted the railroad watch he took from his vest pocket. “Yes, at noon, fifteen minutes from now.”
O’Brien listened into the morning, his face grim. “He screams for mercy. You’ll hang a coward.”
“He’s a carpetbagger. He was brave enough to throw women and children off their farms, but he’s not so brave in the company of men.” Goodnight’s eyes hardened. “God, I hate his kind.”
“What’s his name?”
“Do you care?”
“Not really. I’m just curious.”
“Dinwiddie is his last name. That’s all I know.”
“Ah, then he’s not a son of Erin.”
“No, he’s a son of a bitch.”
CHAPTER TWO
His name was Rufus T. Dinwiddie, and he was not prepared to die well.
When Goodnight’s drovers, Texans to a man, dragged him toward a dead cottonwood by a dry creek, he screamed and begged for mercy, and his broadcloth suit pants were stained by the loosening of his bowels and bladder.
Dinwiddie was a small man with pomaded hair and a black pencil mustache. His brown eyes were wild, filled with terror, and they fixed on Shamus O’Brien’s wife, who stood beside her husband, a ragged parasol protecting her from the hammering sun.
“Save me, ma’am!” Dinwiddie shrieked, the dragging toes of his elastic-sided boots gouging parallel furrows in the dirt. “In the name of God, save me.”
Saraid O’Brien was pregnant with her second child. Her five-year-old son Samuel stood at her side, frightened, clinging to her skirts.
She turned her head and glared at Goodnight. “Will you hang such a man, Charles?”
Goodnight said nothing, but the shocked, sick expression on his rugged face spoke volumes.
“He shames you,” Saraid said. “He shames all of us here.”
The rope was around Dinwiddie’s neck and the little carpetbagger’s screams had turned to hysterical shrieks that ripped apart the fabric of the young afternoon like talons.
Goodnight had seen men hanged before, but all of them, scared or not, had at least pretended to be brave before the trap sprung. A man who died like a dog was outside his experience and the last thing he’d expected.
He stood rooted to the spot as the drovers threw Dinwiddie on the back of a horse and then looked at him expectantly.
The man was no longer screaming, but he was heaving great, shuddering sobs. Still he pleaded for mercy.
Saraid rounded on her husband. “Shamus, if you hang that miserable wretch today you’ll never again be able to hold your head high in the company of men.”
She grabbed Goodnight by his upper arm. “And that goes doubly for you, Charles.”
He looked like a man waking from a bad dream. “Saraid, he raped a girl.”
“I know, and she stands over there by the cottonwood,” the woman said. “She is the wronged party, so let her say what the justice is to be.”
Goodnight shook his head. “I did not expect this, not in a hundred years.”
If Saraid heard, she didn’t respond. She said only one word that held a wealth of meaning—the name of her husband. “Shamus.” Her green eyes glowed like emeralds.
O’Brien said nothing. He drew his .36 caliber Colt Navy from the holster on his hip and strode toward the cottonwood. “Take him down.”
The hands were confused. “But, Colonel, the boss says to hang him.”
“I know what he said, but this man isn’t worth hanging,” O’Brien said.
The punchers looked toward Goodnight, but the man stood frozen where he was, Saraid’s slim hand still on his arm, as though she was holding him in place.
“Get him down from there,” O’Brien said again.
The men did as they were told.
To O’Brien’s disgust, Dinwiddie let out a loud wail and threw himself at his feet. He kissed the toes of O’Brien’s dusty boots and slobbered his thanks. O’Brien kicked him away.
Rape was a serious offense and there was still justice to be done. “You men, put his back against the tree and hold him,” the colonel said.
As he was hauled roughly to his feet, Dinwiddie cried out in alarm. “What are you doing to me?” he squealed.
“An eye for an eye, me lad.” O’Brien’s face looked like it had been carved from rock.
The black girl, slender, pretty, wearing a worn gingham dress, stood near the cottonwood. Her face was badly bruised. When O’Brien got closer he saw the arcs of a vicious bite on her neck.
He pointed the Colt at Dinwiddie. “Is he the man who raped you?”
The girl nodded. Her eyes were downcast
and her long lashes lay on her cheekbones like ragged fans. “He hurt me, mister.” She didn’t look at O’Brien. “And now I’m afeared I’ll be with child.”
About two dozen men, women, and children had gathered from the surrounding shacks to see the hanging. They called the dusty settlement a town because of its single saloon and attached general store, but within a couple years the place was destined to dry up and blow away in the desert wind.
“Nellie works for me as a maid, Colonel,” a fat woman said, stepping so close to O’Brien he could smell her sweat. “I examined her after she was undone, and she’s tore up all right, fore an’ aft if you get my meaning.”
Tears trickled down the girl’s cheeks and sudden anger flashed in O’Brien. Suddenly he wanted to smash his fist into Dinwiddie’s face.
“Hey, ain’t you gonna hang him?” the fat woman said.
O’Brien ignored her. He grabbed Nellie’s arm and said, “Come with me, girl.”
A breeze had picked up, lifting veils of yellow dust. Near where Saraid and Goodnight stood, a dust devil spun, then collapsed at their feet like a puff of smoke. Insects made their small music in the bunchgrass and the air smelled thick of sage and the new aborning afternoon coming in clean.
Goodnight watched O’Brien, as did the crowd.
The residents of the town had come to see a hanging, but Dinwiddie’s cowardice had spoiled it for everybody, especially the women. The ladies expected the condemned man to make the traditional speech blaming loose women and whiskey for his undoing, though he had a good mother. That always went down well at a hanging. It gave wives the opportunity to glare at their cowering husbands and warn darkly, “You pay heed, or this could happen to you.”
But the spectators, their rapt attention fixed on Shamus O’Brien and the colored girl, had decided that not all was lost, for a fine drama was unfolding.
At least that’s how it looked to Saraid. Why else would the people stay and brave the noonday sun to see a poor, cowardly wretch suffer for his sins, grievous though they were?
O’Brien led the girl called Nellie to within six feet of the cottonwood. A couple grinning punchers held Dinwiddie’s arms, so his back was against the trunk.
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