Cattlemen

by Mari Sandoz

  The men behind the go-devil pushed a little faster now, puffing hard, afraid they would be cheated by a suicide break. On the bottoms horsebackers rode fast from one wet bale of hay to the next, and to the little breastworks thrown up in spots around the ranch, some not much over thirty, forty yards from the house fence now and drawing almost no fire any more. "Be ready!" the riders shouted to the waiting men. "Be ready!" Shouting it particularly on the far side from the Ark, where men lay with their rifles aimed on the doors and windows beyond the fence, ready now that most of the barricading was gone there. Once one of the doors was thrown open, a man in it a moment and then jerked back as the bullets helped slam the closing door, hitting it like hail. Up on the ridge Dead Center Dave and his men waited, too, Dave's handful of long cartridges reloaded, the men looking anxiously up to the sky, afraid the rain would thicken, cover an escape.

  The ponderous, lurching Ark was still moving, painfully but steadily. It started up the little slope to the ranch, blue powder smoke clinging around it in the wet air, the dynamite men ready, with their fused bundles, their matches safe and dry.

  Then suddenly the go-devil stopped, everything stopped. Far off, thin and faint, but clear, a brassy call sounded on the rainy wind. A shout went up from the Invaders and was choked off by loud cursing and arguing voices. Again the clear trumpet call broke the stillness as a blue column topped the low ridge and started down the slope at a gallop, guidons flapping heavily, Colonel Van Horn, his aide, Captain Parmalee, Sheriff Red Angus, and a newspaperman riding abreast, the blue double column lined out smartly behind them.

  Down at the dirt fort a head appeared and a dirty rag was raised high, and another one at the TA ranch house.

  So Wolcott and his lieutenants surrendered, making it pointedly to the colonel, not the bristle-whiskered Sheriff Angus, in whose custody they rightly belonged—all the forty-six still there, twenty-four of them the hired Texans and many of the rest prominent in ranching and ranch finance, and in the government of the state, all whiskered, soiled, and rumpled, gaunted out.

  Van Horn accepted the surrender but with plain distaste. An hour later, in a hard shower with sleet to bounce from the saddles, everybody mounted, all except the wounded men, including the one whose falling pistol put a bullet into his stomach at the little fort this morning. Dunning, the Idaho man, was missing, too. He was hidden in the attic and none sought him out. Others were planning to get away along the trail, Bill Booker under Clay at the Swan ranches and eight, ten others. It was bad enough that Wolcott, Whitcomb, Hesse, and a dozen such men were too well identified to escape. Their embarrassment wouldn't be theirs alone but state-wide, international.

  The trumpet sounded Forward, and as the weary, gaunted Regulators, as they still liked to call themselves, rode out, rain dripping from their soiled and sooted Stetsons, the troops closed in around them, making a protective square, a wall to hold the bullets out. Even so some of the besiegers charged down toward them in their anger and frustration. They stopped a good distance off, held back by the determined bluecoats, but they gave a loud and derisive yell that echoed up and down the Crazy Woman Fork and far out over all the cow country.

  CHAPTER III

  SCATTERED TO THE WINDS

  BY THE evening of April 13, 1892, the Invasion of Johnson County was over, the Invaders safe at Fort McKinney, to be delivered only to such civilian authorities as Van Horn's superiors directed. But who could say when the effect of such action, such a crusade in the land of the cow, could ever be done. The Regulators, the Invaders, had attempted to return to the wilderness days of twenty-five years ago, when those marked for extermination were only Indians —thieving, murdering, bloodthirsty savages, now that the white man wanted their lands, although only a short time ago they were the Noble Red men that the world came to see. There had been an arrogant charge in where the men had no right be be then, too, only a few miles north, up along the Big Horns. Unfortunately Captain Fetterman had no political pipeline to Washington to bring help galloping in time. He and his men had to die in their entrapment.

  Now Buffalo still had the dead from KC to bury and two days after the surrender people came in over the gray spring prairie from early morning. They came by wagon, horseback, afoot, many from far off and never to the town before. They came in time for the morning funeral of Coroner Watkins, who had dropped dead on the street after he. returned with the bodies from KC. It was a large and dignified service, conducted by the Masons, the K. of P., and the G. A. R., each group including men who bore arms in the cattle war, men on the Dead List, and men among the Invaders locked up at the post.

  People kept coming into town until the Main Street hitch racks were crowded. Soon after one o'clock the townspeople gathered into the crowd, women clutching their hoods and their shawls, or perhaps clinging to feathered hats and sweeping skirts in the sunny April wind, the men grim and silent, their boot heels loud on the boards as all began to move toward a vacant store. There the women went in, the men filling the street outside, spilling away to both directions, waiting.

  Inside, on the mourners' side, were two men, the brothers of Nate Champion, and in the back, under shaded lanterns, two handsome coffins rested in a great mound of flowers that had come by carriage, by stage, and mule train. There were many simple little bunches, too, perhaps brought carefully in newspaper pokes and twists from some remote settler log shack or soddy. It seemed that every geranium, every fuchsia and begonia for a hundred miles had been shorn of its precious bloom. In this surrounding of color and fragrance Nate Champion's face had the quiet and the remoteness of the courageous dead, but only the black burial coat of Nick Ray was exposed. All the rest of the charred body was covered by the flowers, even the burnt features shaded to spare the horrified eyes.

  The Baptist minister began with the Scriptures and the prayer, then Reverend Rader spoke a little, his voice so quiet it could scarcely be heard. "These men have been sent to eternity. We know not why. They were not criminals. They were of Christian parents. Ray leaves five brothers and three sisters. His parents could not be notified, as the wires were cut. But the same honors have been paid as if they were here."

  Many were in tears, many sobbed softly as they movedpast the coffins and away through the back so all those waiting out in front might eventually enter, too. Afterward the procession moved up the main street, the ministers leading, then the hearse, followed by carriages, buggies, carts, wagons, a long string of people afoot, and finally a rear guard of 150 horsebackers, with three women and two boys among them, some from those who had lost their men to the rope and the ambush. Last of all Jack Flagg led the saddle horses of Champion and Ray, the stirrups hooked up over the horn. And far out from town people stood beside the road in the pleasant April sun as the funeral passed, their faces naked.

  Later that night some gathered in the saloon where the easy-talking Phil DuFran from down around the Olives of Nebraska had tended bar and spied on them all. Here, too, the Britishers led by Fred Hesse and the young Canadians, Hesse's brother-in-law Sutherland, and George Well-man, from Blair's ranch, had gathered for a warming drink. Here, with the Association's inspectors and detectives, such as Canton, Smith, and Shonsey, and a dozen others, they found companionship in an unfriendly town, unfriendly even before Hesse and Canton had to skip out after the attack on Champion and the ambush of Jones and Tisdale. Not that no one ever challenged them here. Once a slightly tipsy Irish cowpuncher strolled in to shout that he was willing to fight every damned Englishman in the house, "In this damned bar of Victoria, Empress of Wyoming." But Phil DuFran had coaxed him away with a bottle, even told him he was a little late, that the bar had been known as Clay's Inn by the rustlers for years.

  Tonight there didn't seem to be anybody there except those so-called rustlers. There were rumors of new management coming, the bartender already a settler. It was here that Foote's words of the afternoon were repeated. "The burning of Ray, and Champion's stalwart fight awoke us, gave us time to save the rest
of the Dead List and many, many more. A great red flood would have swept all over the ranch country if the Invaders had succeeded, yes, perhaps reaching even into the statehouse and the legislative halls for men like Senator Tisdale."

  There was much complaining that around eleven of the Invaders had got clear away, including those who slipped out before the surrender in addition to some who evidently cut down a canyon or a ravine on the way to the fort—men like William Booker, range foreman of the Swan ranches under John Clay and potentially most embarrassing to him and the foreign owners, as most of the others were, too.

  By now three of the Invaders had died of gangrene, caused, as Wolcott announced, from "accidentally shooting themselves," perhaps so the cattlemen wouldn't have to pay the promised damages to their families. Jim Dudley, the young Texas giant, who, of all the eager gunmen, had stopped the escaping Champion, was buried without a mourner, some wondering about the wife he had missed so much. Perhaps the telegraph was cut for her, too, and she might never know the end of the venture she resisted from the start, or receive the promised bounty.

  By now the newspapers were carrying stories of the kidnaping of Jones and Walker, the two men who happened to be at the KC the morning of the attack, the only outside witnesses to the murders and burning. Although charged with no crime they were held in jail and then moved down to the Nebraska Panhandle, with threats and possible attempts at ambush. Bill McCann, George Wellman, and Jim Craig of Johnson County were apparently in the mob that took them over down in Nebraska, when they had managed to escape. After A. E. Sheldon, a former homesteader running a newspaper at Chadron, managed to get an interview with them, gave them a write-up, the two men vanished, killed, many believed, while others whispered of a man named Dixon back in Rhode Island who had been hired to "look after" witnesses against the Wyoming Association in the past.

  Men still kept pouring into Buffalo, demanding the Invaders be turned over to Johnson County for trial. Hastily Governor Barber got a change of venue to Cheyenne and the Invaders were escorted south by troops, and properly so, Sheriff Angus agreed, and brought abuse upon himself, even a gun stuck in his ribs for it. Down in Cheyenne the Invaders were nominally in charge of troops but they were loose on the town, even the Texans, all local heroes and bragging they would soon return up north there in force and "clean the rascals out."

  Up north there the Johnson Countyites turned their anger on everything of the Invaders. The rustlers from the Hole in the Wall and along the Montana border had picked up stock from both the cattlemen and the settlers during the week of the Invasion and the excitement afterward. Now the ranches involved were raided in earnest, not only by outsiders and known rustlers but by settlers and little ranchers on the Dead List. The foreman of the I jam outfit sneaked out of the country and Pap Whitcomb's man over near Newcastle was threatened with lead in his guts if he returned there. Charlie Carter, foreman of the TA now that Ford was detained with the Invaders, was ordered out of the country. Chambers, foreman of the Ogallala Company, tied in with Clay's Swan, managed by Billy Irvine, was warned out, too. Alarmed, he hurried the Irvine children to their father at Cheyenne. At the Hesse ranch an unidentified mob shot the piano to pieces, destroyed the furniture, and divided the packable loot among themselves, including much fancy stuff from the Frewens. All those known to have aided or perhaps even seemed to favor the Invaders around Buffalo left, too, or walked a line narrow as the old hand-wide buffalo trails. Even DeForest Richards, banker and mayor of Douglas, and commander of the Wyoming National Guard, had to defend himself by protesting that two weeks before the invasion he was instructed by the governor and the adjutant general to obey only orders "from these headquarters." There were rumors that he and some other officers resigned, declaring the orders cheapening. Others said the orders were illegal. But always there were some who questioned whether this was more than enlightened hindsight.

  Cattle were worth very little above the freight and commission charges, now that the panic was deepening in the East, yet the stock of the big outfits was disappearing as fast as gold nuggets almost, and the Johnson County commissioners asked the ranch managers to send in trustworthy and discreet hands to look after their property. Instead, the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, chiefly Blair, Baxter's Western Union Beef with Shonsey the foreman, and Billy Irvine of the Clay-dominated Ogallala Cattle Company, got an injunction against the "outlaw" roundup of the new Northern Wyoming group, but it was dated May 10, five days after the northern wagons moved out. It named many men on the Dead List and stirred even Red Angus to heated words again. So far he had kept the guns cool partly because the Invaders found that state and national, even some British, opinion considered them arrogant lawbreakers and cold-blooded murderers. Instead of more overt action they turned to the advocates of indirection, some, like Billy Irvine, saying "We tried to tell you—"

  Then in May George Wellman was shot. He had come as a youth from Canada and rode the local ranges for eleven years, lately for Blair's Hoe Ranch. After the KC attack he helped kidnap Jones and Walker, the men who were captured there. Wellman married since then, on the money he got for ridding the Invaders of these two eyewitnesses to the killing and the burning at KC, it was said. Although he was warned to keep out of the country, he took over the foremanship of the Hoe while Laberteaux was "detained" with the rest of the Invaders down at Cheyenne. In addition Wellman was appointed deputy U. S. marshal, apparently to serve the Association's injunction papers against the independent roundup, the riders already far out and moving. Others thought he was going to Buffalo to post the declaration of martial law.

  Anyway, Hathaway, a former cowhand at the Hoe, brought the news to Sheriff Angus. He said he was riding beside Wellman to Buffalo. Down south of the George Harris ranch bullets came from a ridge, or a draw, and Wellman fell in the road. Afraid to hang around, Hathaway left him there and hurried to Buffalo. No, he didn't see anybody, just heard the shots and then caught Wellman's horse.

  Angus went out to investigate, alone as usual, but afterward some of his friends decided this might be a decoy report, to get the sheriff out to a dry gulching. They followed, but Wellman was dead, a .44 carbine bullet in his back.

  Although some suspected Hathaway, chiefly because he told so many conflicting stories, the ranchers blamed the Red Sash Gang. Hank Smith, Clayton Crews, and Charley Taylor were arrested. Taylor and some of his cronies did wear strips of red flannel under their cartridge belts to keep the grease of the shells off their clothing. But nobody believed they killed Wellman because they weren't anywhere around there at the time. Some said it was Ed Starr, a friend of Champion, picked by lot to kill Wellman, as a man had been chosen to dispose of Hard Winter Davis, only Davis hurriedly took his eastern caution and his bodyguards down to Nebraska and showed no immediate nostalgia for north Wyoming. Of the nooses left on the Spectacle Ranch porch back in April, one had Wellman's name on it, another Hard Winter's. By the time the blame for the Wellman shooting was laid on Starr, he was gone. In the meantime most of Johnson County decided that the shooting was a typical Canton and Hesse job, that Wellman was killed by one of their own men to help them bring martial law to the Powder River country. The large outfits did sign a request for troops. The soldiers came with Hotchkiss guns and scattered over Johnson, Converse, and Natrona counties, which included the Sweetwater region and the ranches of the men involved in the Averill hangings and Wolcott's VR—most of the ranches respresented by the Invaders, most of those in which the Clay's interests were involved. Among the troops were some Negro cavalrymen who had been rioting at other stations. One night forty-four of them shot up a saloon at the little tent town of Suggs, in the oil-seeped valley of the Powder, up near the crossing of the new railroad headed for Billings. The saloon was an early settler's log shack and here several members of the Invaders' Dead List hung out. Apparently they were still worth the Stock Growers Association's bounty. Anyway, the Negro troops, with a civilian among them, fired a volley into the lamplit saloon from
across the road, and when the men got to the Winchesters stacked behind the bar and fired into the darkness, the troopers ran, falling over tent poles, yelling and cursing. They made it to the railroad embankment and riddled the whole tent settlement, everybody, women and children, too, hugging the earth as the bullets whistled by. Finally they were driven to the river and to camp, leaving one trooper dead on the ground.

  Certain that the soldiers would return in force to clean up Suggs, the handful of women and children were put into the old settler's cellar and the armed men distributed for such defense as they could hope to make. Cavalry came at a trot, with the rumble of a Hotchkiss gun. This looked like the cleanout the Invaders had failed to make, and the men who had been held back by Red Angus and old Arapaho Brown from clearing out the TA with the Invaders' own dynamite cursed them to hell. What if the man creeping up with the dynamite had been detected and died? He would have died a hero, wiping out the worst den of rattlers the country ever saw.

  But even the most violent men fell silent when the troops were so close that their saddles creaked. Everybody held his fire and there was no fighting. The officer had heard the rifle shots and called a fast roll to find out just who was missing. He brought the Hotchkiss along for an emergency, mostly to manage his own unruly troops. He gathered up the dead man and went to hunt out the culprits.

  Messages had been sent out at the first firing into the saloon and this time nobody of the region held back. By morning men came riding in, around 150 of them, and stayed until they were mighty certain that the soldiers really weren't planning to finish what the Invaders had started. They were doubly suspicious when it was discovered that the civilian with the attacking troops last night was Phil DuFran, just released with Sutherland by the authorities at Cheyenne because he could prove he wasn't at KC for the killings any more than he was actually at the lynching and burning of Mitchell and Ketchum down in Nebraska.