by Mari Sandoz
"Hell, no law's ever stopped Print. Nor no courts, neither. Maybe he likes to know the men he's going to buy up got the power to deliver."
By now Print Olive, through his biggety ways, was called Nebraska's richest cattleman, the top cattle king, although some restricted the region of his supremacy to the Plum Creek and lower Loup country.
Soon after they moved in, Olive's men discovered what a fire could be in the largely long-grass region, with no large streams and no barren wastes to stop it. At the first cry of "Prairie fire!" and a pointing to the pearly, iridescent little cloud rising against the sky, teams were hooked up, breaking plows thrown into the wagons, water barrels loaded and sacks piled in to soak for pounding out the smaller flames, particularly in backfiring. The wind was gentle at first but it swelled in the heated air. The men fought as well as they could, with the help and direction of men from the surrounding ranches and some settlers, too, and fought until they fell scorched and worn out under the fierce drive of Print Olive. He was cursingly certain the fire was set by an enemy. The plowed fireguards saved the ranch buildings, but the flames swept on, the Longhorns fleeing like the occasional deer and antelope, the coyote and the rabbit. Many were caught in the deep grass of the bottoms and burned to death or had to be killed later. Settlers lost their homes, their little accumulation of corn and fodder. Finally the fire hit the South Loup and spread along the banks, making little sullen headway, edge-on into the wind, and so it died.
The transplantation of the new cattle king and his methods to Nebraska from south-central Texas, where he was almost literally driven out, caused much stir. Everything he did was big, highhanded, overbearing, bulldozing. At the ranch Print's word was law to the white men as it was to his "gun Niggers" as he called them, men who had known slavery and could bend their necks. There was soon trouble among the men now, however, all gun-armed—white, Negro, Mexican, Texas white, and the northern whites that Ira put on. Print had them fight it out—egging them against each other in his half-drunkenness, whether bare knuckled or with knives, even guns a time or two. Afterward there were the fiddlers for a little good time, regular hoedowns, generally. Often there was Sunday bronc riding, calf roping, and steer tailing around the corrals. Men from the neighboring ranches were encouraged to come, including foremen and range riders. Phil DuFran from up on the Missouri River in Dakota, foreman for the neighboring Durfee and Gasman ranch, was usually there. He was as black haired as the Olive brothers, a Frenchy and a little Indian, too, some said, but a genial fellow who could make Fred Fisher, Olive's foreman, laugh and sometimes even the dark-mooded Print himself. When the Pawnee Indians came through the region they had called home not long ago, there was trading and horseracing and betting at the Olive ranch, until Print, with a sudden wave of his gun, shouted the alarmed Indians into hurrying their families out of his way.
When the ranch hands went to town, they emptied their guns into the store windows and shot out the large red lamp globe of the hotel, spreading a stench of coal oil over the place, and then paid for the damages with their supper bill. Olive gave them all a surprise raise in pay because the cattle increased so surprisingly, growing and fattening beyond anything he had ever seen. But then he had never seen grown cows in any region that nurtured and fattened the great buffalo herds, and very recently here.
Before long the little ranchers who ran cattle on the government land were commanded to keep their stock out of it, and homeseekers warned not to come in. This range was now Olive property. The settlers already there, and there were many, got orders to kill no cattle, brand no mavericks and no calves, and to keep their cattle off the grass, including that on their own claims. This was Olive law, issued from a ranch on a leased school section, set up over the surrounding public domain and the land legally the property of the settlers. Those who had heard rumors from Texas were certain Print Olive was preparing to shoot down everybody he wanted out of the way on the pretense that they stole Olive cattle. A man didn't have to come from Texas to know there were ways of planting a settler's brand on the calf of a rancher's cow to furnish the excuse for a shooting—or a lynching.
Several of the settlers, some with families, well-built homes, and crops planted took the hint and left their homesteads. By now the brawling, gun-jerking young Bob Olive had come down from Wyoming and even the other ranchers left the outfit alone as much as possible, put on extra line riders, ordered more guns for the hands, and waited. It was a particularly hard wait for the settlers, and hardest of all for those with wives and children. Someone would have to be the dead owl the Olives were planning to use as a scare for the others.
The expected blowup came very fast and no one could ever know the whole of it, so complex were the factors involved in this fight for grass for the cow—certainly not Print Olive or his brother Bob, with their gunmen, white, black, and brown.
Conspicuous among the settlers who would not scare out were Mitchell and Ketchum over near Clear Creek. They had filed on adjoining homesteads and built a long, double soddy across the homestead line, with Ketchum's end of the house on his claim, Mitchell's over on his. Mitchell was a slight, middle-aged man, old for homesteading in a raw country, although the Loup region was not as new as some, with a railroad in reach for ten years. He had his wife with him and two stepdaughters, the elder, Tamar Snow, a pretty sixteen-year-old who was to marry young Ami Ketchum. Like his brother Lawrence Ketchum, a government scout, Ami was a crack shot. He had brought his forge and anvil and started to set wagon tires, shoe horses for the icy ground of winter, sharpen plowshares and sicklebars, and braze an occasional gun with a broken breech tail. They were sociable people, going to the country dances and house raisings, even if two, three days away by wagon. They sat up with the sick and helped bury the dead.
Unfortunately the homesteads of Mitchell and Ketchum, although several townships away from the Olives, were a rallying center for the settlers around there, on range Print intended to take over. Soon it was said around that Ketchum was overeager to get enough money ahead to marry and that when a rancher's herd ate up his shirttail patch of corn, some of the cows left their calves in his corral. At least that was the story the Olive hands were spreading. Their friends, including Phil DuFran, foreman of the neighboring Durfee, were glad to follow the lead of this Texan if he could clear the range they had about given up. Print Olive got his brother Bob appointed stock inspector, in spite of the $400 reward for his return to face the murder charge in Texas. He was to watch Ketchum. Maybe plant an Olive calf in the settler's corral or some fresh Olive hides around his place somewhere, old-timers from Texas and Wyoming warned. One even rode over to tell Ketchum about the "Death of the Skins" killing down in Texas, in which two men were smothered, rolled in drying hides with the Olive brands.
Ami Ketchum laughed, but others warned him, too. "You better think about hittin' it out of here," an old cowhand told him at a dance. The fiddler, who was a preacher on Sundays, agreed, and offered to loan Ami the money to go back to Iowa. Once more Ami laughed and swung pretty Tamar in a dough-see-dough.
Yet all that first fall there had been trouble in the region, stirred up, some said, by the Olives. It was inevitable, this trouble in an old range country already half taken up by settlers when an Olive outfit pushed in with their big herds, after the local ranchers were already hard pressed. Some bodies showed up on the new Olive range when the snow cleared toward spring, missing hunters, all full of bullets. Nothing was disturbed in their camp, no money or watches taken.
"That's how it went down in Texas," the southern cowhands said.
By now everybody knew that both Mitchell and Ketchum had been warned to get out of the country. Then in April word got around that the Olives had a man named Roberts arrested for stealing cattle and took him up before a justice of the peace. Roberts had dared to hire an attorney, Aaron Wall, county judge in the next county, for his defense. The Olives kept Wall out of the justice court with their guns, although he opposed the half-drunken brothers an
d their outfit all afternoon. Finally, by a trick, Wall got them to let the prisoner come out to consult with him a minute, and got him away, for an open trial elsewhere.
Furious, the Olives went over to Wall's court to arrest him for interfering with justice, Bob leading the cowboys. Once more, with drawn guns, they bulldozed him, but did not quite dare shoot a county judge at the bench before witnesses. Finally Wall got a deputy to grab Bob Olive and fined the outfit for contempt of court. They didn't all pay but agreed to leave town, swearing they would get even.
Things crippled along this way for a while, nobody knowing where the guns would be drawn next. Then Print Olive and Fisher, the foreman, found cattle with the Olive brand at the homestead of Christensen. There were several neighbors at the place. They agreed that Christ had bought the cattle with a brand release. He went to the house to look for the paper, with Print's boots stomping after him. Roaring and impatient, Print struck the settler across the cheek with his .45 and broke his jaw. Standing over the fallen man, Print gave him five minutes to prepare for death. But Christensen begged so through his pain and terror, promising to fetch the release to Olive as soon as he found it, that Print agreed, particularly with the armed settlers still outside. One of the men was George Brill, stepson of the Judge Wall who had defied the Olives. Besides, Brill had ridden the range with Bob Olive up in Wyoming and knew about the reward out for him. Christensen was too frightened to hunt up a doctor and the neglected jaw grew so stiff he could never open his mouth more than about an inch. In a short time he was gone, quit the country.
Afterward Print claimed that Brill and the other man at Christ's shot at him and Fisher from the brush when they left the place. "I should have killed the goddamn Swede when I had him down—"
The release on the Olive brand showed that Manley Caple sold the cattle to Christensen. Manley, son of an early rancher in the region, had been gambling heavily and was suspected of rustling to keep in chance money. The Olives had him arrested. In his confession he seemed to implicate Ami Ketchum, although apparently it was no more than an implication or the Olives would have acted at once. But in the end they got a warrant for Ketchum and had Bob Olive deputized to serve it, although everyone, including the sheriff, knew about the Olive threats to kill Ketchum, make buzzard meat of him if he didn't get out.
Then one night the Olive hands had some news to tell around the bars at Plum Creek, news about a raid planned on some rustlers over on Clear Creek. The news reached Mitchell and Ketchum, some said by the gentlemanly Texas cowboy become horse thief and traveling under the name of Doc Middleton. Others said it was Buckskin Bill, who claimed young Bill Olive shot at him twice for dancing with the kid's girl.
"Startin' early—that kid of Print's is scarcely bearding out," he said.
Although the stories of the next few days differed very much, all agreed that a stranger to Mitchell and Ketchum came to see who was home by pretending he wanted his horse shod. Probably trying to separate the two men, get Ketchum over to the blacksmith shop, perhaps away from his rifle. But the settlers were hooking up to the wagon to return a borrowed bull, and Ami asked the man to come back next day. By the time Mrs. Mitchell and the girls had climbed into the wagon the Olives and their cowboys, mostly Negro and Mexican, charged out upon them, riding low on their horses, giving a Rebel yell and shooting.
Mrs. Mitchell pushed the girls down into the wagon bed as the bullets whistled past. Bob Olive led the outfit, shouting something about "Throw up your hands, Ketchum! Throw up your hands!"
But Ketchum had already pulled his gun and fired. Mitchell grabbed the Winchester from the wagon and shot, too, while bullets splintered the wagon box around him, the younger of the girls inside crying in the hay. At first the settlers didn't shoot to kill, only brought down some horses and grazed a man or two. Ketchum had jumped out into the open to draw the fire from those in the wagon box and got a bullet in the arm. Now Mitchell took aim and at the double report of the rifle and Ami's pistol Bob Olive jerked himself straight in the saddle and started to slide from the running horse but was caught and held by cowboys on each side and carried away as the rest turned, too, spurring for cover. Ami Ketchum got in one last shot from the rifle that Tamar helped him hold.
"Goddamn 'em!" he swore in fury. "I could kill the whole damn outfit, attacking when there's women and children around—"
Off in the brush Print decided to take his brother to a neighboring settler's dugout, less than a mile off. He ordered the man to get his team and wagon ready and laid Bob on a bedding of hay. With the settler driving, Print riding alongside whipping the team along, the cowboys following, they got Bob to the eastbound train. But he died, died, it seemed, on his twenty-fourth birthday.
The body was shipped home to Williamson County, to his respectable parents and sisters, and laid beside his brother Thomas, riddled with buckshot. By rights, some said, Ketchum should have the $400 reward offered for Bob Olive's return to Texas, but perhaps that was for his return to stand trial for murder.
From the moment that Bob Olive wavered in the saddle, Mitchell and Ketchum knew they would be mobbed by the whole Olive outfit, with perhaps DuFran and others bringing their cowboys, too—clear the range by stringing up the one man nobody had dared to touch, Ami Ketchum. At least Mrs. Mitchell and the girls must be taken away before anything more happened, with Ketchum's arm swollen and useless, Mitchell a scared old man. They turned the neighbor's bull loose to go home, piled blankets into the wagon, and started across the country, whipping the team hard, the wheel tracks so pitifully plain over the late fall prairie. They didn't dare go to a doctor, for with so few in the country it would be easy to have them all watched. Instead, they hurried to Judge Wall, even though they realized that the Olives would strike there immediately, settle two grudges at one time. The judge advised them to get as far away as possible, to friends who would hide them, preferably friends the Olives knew nothing about. But all such friends were around Ami's old home in Iowa.
In the meantime a mob of cowboys gathered under the leadership of the Olive gunmen, burned the roof off the deserted sod house on Clear Creek, all that would burn. From there Print Olive sent his gunmen to scour the country, some pursuing the wagon tracks, others cutting across from settler to settler. The railroad towns he had put under guard by telegraph long ago. Within a few hours notices appeared in every saloon, post office, and crossroads fence post: Print Olive was offering a $700 reward for the apprehension of Mitchell and Ketchum, murderers of his brother Robert Olive.
Nobody dared to help the fleeing settlers now, not even give them a handout of dry biscuits, let alone shelter. To save the woman and the girls, the men let them go on ahead to some acquaintance and struck out alone afoot. But Mitchell was soon worn and limping, Ketchum burning with fever and pain, his arm swollen double in size. They made one more desperate and guilty appeal to Judge Wall, knowing they were endangering his life. Sadly, and in helpless fury, he admitted he could neither protect them nor advise them now. Wherever they were caught they would be returned to the sheriff who threw in with the Olives.
"Only the governor, with the militia, could save you and we can't get them in time. I sent a telegram. Got no reply yet."
The two settlers had known it was hopeless, and slowly they started away into the night. Olive's posse appeared at Wall's home. The judge managed to escape them but only because there was an old tunnel out of the house, big enough for a crawling man, dug back in the days of Indian scares.
In a short time the two settlers were run down on the prairie, put on horses, their feet tied under the bellies, and taken to Kearney for trial. There Print Olive refused to pay the reward until the men were delivered to him in his own region, Custer County. Over the pleading of the two settlers and men sympathetic to them they were smuggled out of jail without the knowledge of their lawyers and turned over to Sheriff Gillan of Keith County, west of there, but the only man of the captors who was willing to claim the reward. He took the two prisoners,
handcuffed together, to Plum Creek by train. There, at Olive Town, Print, his foreman, and his cowboys were waiting. The settlers were thrown into a light spring wagon and with Phil DuFran driving, Sheriff Gillan in the seat beside him, they headed north, the mob following, in and out of sight. The moon came up, red on the prairie, just past full, and was lost in streaks of cloud. The cold of the December night chilled the manacled men but they were silent with only now and then a low word between them. They reached the burnt-over region, dark in the fitful moonlight.
About three miles from the Olive ranch and well within Custer County the mob rode up and Print handed the sheriff the $700 and took over the wagon. While Gillan and DuFran stayed behind watching, the Olives turned into Devil's Gap, a wild little canyon. There, in the light of the December moon, the wagon with the prisoners was stopped under a tree. Lariats were thrown over a limb and two of the cowboys put nooses around the necks of the settlers, still handcuffed together. Ketchum pleaded that they let Mitchell go. Old and sick, he was the only support of a woman and two children.
To shut him up, Ketchum was drawn up first, jerked up by a dally of the rope around a saddlehorn and a spur set to the horse. Mitchell's arm was yanked up by the chain of the handcuffs and held there, as Ami Ketchum kicked his life out. Then Olive put a bullet into Mitchell as pay for the one that killed Bob, and gave the signal to the cowboy with the dally.
Afterward a can of coal oil was brought from the spring wagon and doused up over the men. Print struck a lucifer and the two hanging men shot into flaming torches, the clothing and hair blazing, the brush under them burning, too, flaring up, the sooty smoke carrying the stench of the burning cloth and hair and flesh, too, out of the Gap and over the prairie to where sleeping cattle raised their heads a moment.