by J. R. WRIGHT
Luke even suggested a parlor be built at one end of the grand lobby so gentlemen coming to town would have a place to gather and chat of a night. Of course cigars and drinks would be available there as well.
And, with the hotel expanded, the livery across the alley in back that fronted Fourteenth Street would need to be expanded to compensate for the additional demand. With most of the hotel patronage expected to arrive by train, nobody knew how much extra space would be needed. That’s when Kenny, who knew something about stables, suggested the place, once expanded to double the space, be opened to outside business, and be operated as a separate entity. Luke thought that was a great idea and put Kenny in charge of finding adequate management once completed.
The following day, Luke bought a Colt revolver for himself, and a dozen more Winchester repeating rifles for Tea Cup hands that didn’t get one the last time, because of a shortage of them in town. He then went on to the bank to deposit the government draft awarded as a part of the Certificate of Merit. He wanted to talk to Oxley anyway about the cattle sales to the Englishmen, and give him notice on what to expect when they came in with the money.
“Will they be bringing cash?” Titus asked.
“I assume so. How else would they do it?”
“Could be a draft, just like the one you gave my teller, except drawn on a London bank. But I doubt it. There’s a rumor going about town among bankers, that new Cattleman’s Bank, a block down from the Cattleman’s Club, is owned by Londoners. Could it be these same fellows? What are their names?”
“Rainford, Kent, Hicks, Wiggens…”
“I don’t know about Wiggens, but those other names ring a bell. I believe they’re all on the board over there. A man named Simmons is the chief officer.”
“It appears these guys are settling in for the long haul,” Luke said. “So what is the bank worth?”
“They’re bragging twenty million on deposit.”
Luke whistled a high note. “I guess I didn’t get all their money.”
“Far from it.” Oxley drew a broad smile, as if he knew more than he was telling. “I hear they’re being backed by Lloyd’s.”
“Lloyd’s?” Luke doubled back. “And that’s supposed to mean something to me?”
“Lloyd’s of London! They’re only the largest insurance company in the world, going back to the sixteen hundreds.”
“How much are they worth?”
“Nobody knows. It’s a private and very secretive investment group. But I will hazard a guess that they would have no trouble buying all of Wyoming, if they had a mind to.”
“And I thought I was well off.” Luke exhausted the air from his lungs.
“You are well off, Tom. And that’s something we need to talk about.”
“Fire away! I’m all ears, Titus.”
“I know you’re not interested in gambling with your money, as you have said many times when I suggested buying stock in various corporations. But this is different. So just hold your tongue till I’m finished, okay? Who would have thought Cheyenne would have grown from a prairie dog town to a bustling city in two short years. And it’s growing more every day.”
“I said something similar to that over at the Cattleman’s Club just yesterday. I may look like I’m not paying attention, but I am, Titus.”
“Good, then you’re going to like what I’m about to tell you. When Cheyenne was laid out by the Union Pacific surveyors, they planned for a big city. The total area platted was five miles square or twenty-five square miles of land. That’s sixteen thousand acres.”
“Why so big?”
“Because for every acre platted, the government granted them the land, in addition to all the other grants issued for the laying of the rails,” Oxley patiently explained. “As it stands presently, the Union Pacific has sold less than five hundred acres of that, chopped up into small lots.”
“What in hell are you trying to say, Oxley?” Luke became impatient. “I’ve got a hungry woman about now, waiting for me to take her to dinner.”
“I’ll make it quick! Okay, the Union Pacific, now that they’ve kept their commitment to the government and joined up with the Central Pacific in Utah somewhere, now find themselves heavily in debt. And with the stock market the way it is, they’re having difficulty staying afloat. That’s where you come in, Tom. How would you like to own the future of Cheyenne?”
“You have my attention, Titus.”
“Okay! Here’s the deal. The Union Pacific is ready to part with all remaining city land, even that already platted for lots, for a round sum of two million dollars. Owning that would ensure you, your family, and their families, for generations to come, untold riches. You would have a goddamned monopoly on the future expansion of Cheyenne, nearly forever.”
Luke didn’t blink. “How much is that an acre?”
“About a hundred and twenty, give or take. But divided into lots, at present day prices, will return ten or twenty times that,” Oxley exclaimed excitedly. “Hell, Tom, as it is your money is just piling up here, drawing nothing but dust in my vault. And now you’re adding a million or so to it. You really ought to get some of it invested.”
With that, Luke turned for the door. “I’m late for dinner, Ox! Get me a map. I want to see the land with my own eyes too. If I like what I see, offer half of what they’re asking. It may be more valuable because of where it is, but otherwise it’s still just dirt.”
Titus laughed. “Come back after you’ve eaten. I’ll have the map by then.”
“Mind if I bring White Bird? Since we’ve been here she hasn’t been out much except for eating and that thing at the Cattleman’s Club.”
“Please do, Tom. She’s a fine lady.”
As soon as word got out someone other than the Union Pacific now owned the future expansion of Cheyenne, Titus Oxley, who had brokered the deal, was bombarded with requests from the mayor and city council. They were afraid the future needs of the city would not be taken into account, now that the railroad was out of the picture. More land for schools would be needed, and parks, and what of an area set aside for the new capitol, which surely would be built someday.
Immediately, the city fathers were assured all these requests would be accommodated as the need arose, as long as the city didn’t begin taxing the properties until after they were sold or built on, as was their agreement with the Union Pacific. The city accepted.
Tediously, then, Luke and Titus went over the maps for hours on end, studying how they wanted the city to take shape. The capitol should be centrally located, they agreed, to best benefit from its presence. A fairground was added as well, because someone said all states have annual fairs, and surely Wyoming would be a state someday. Upon hearing that, Luke felt even better about his investment.
An office was then set up within the Cheyenne merchants bank to temporarily handle lot sales until a permanent place could be established. All five of the people that had once worked for the Union Pacific in this capacity were brought in, including the chief surveyor, who was set to work immediately plotting new areas for sale. The whole idea was to move the center of activity away from the seedy part of town, near the railroad tracks, where most of the gambling halls, saloons, and whore houses were, to an area closer to where the new capitol building would be someday.
But soon thereafter, Luke left all future decision making in the trusted hands of Titus Oxley and left town. He had finally gotten enough of the city for one visit. After all, he had a ranch to run and did not plan to return to Cheyenne again before fall. White Bird, too, anxious to be rid of all the eyes constantly on her, was ready for the wide open spaces once again. Even so, she had experienced some notable things while in Cheyenne, and was looking forward to relaying all of it to Mary once she got home.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Everything was much as they had left it when Luke and White Bird arrived back at the ranch, with the exception that the tender lime green grass of the valley had taken on an emerald hue. And nea
r everywhere they looked, freshly born calves of near every color tested their wobbly young legs for the first time.
Mary Tinkman made her appearance on the porch when Luke pulled up to the big house. Then she came down to help White Bird down from the buggy. In doing so, White Bird, wearing her beaded buckskin dress with the addition of leggings because of the chill in the air, locked her slender arms around her and hung on with an enduring embrace. It became readily evident from that that she missed her dear friend, and was enormously grateful to be in her company once again.
“Goodness, child!” Mary cast an accusing look to Luke, who pretended not to notice. “Were they ugly to you in town, honey? I have a notion hell has to be a better place than what I saw of Cheyenne, Wyoming.”
“It’s a lot better than it used to be, Mary.” Luke climbed down from the buggy. “Thanks to vigilante justice, as Titus calls it, most of the ruffians were either hanged or run out of town.”
“Did they take the whores with ‘em?”
“Whores?” White Bird gathered a puzzled expression and looked to Luke.
“Don’t look at me! Mary said it.” He took the bags from the buggy. “Let her explain what a whore is.”
“Never mind! Come on, honey, let’s get you inside so you can tell me all about it. I know something ugly must have happened to you there.” Mary shuffled White Bird up the steps and into the house, letting the screen door slam behind them.
“Nothing ugly happened, Mary!” Luke followed with the bags. “I thought she had a good time.”
“Good time!” Luke heard White Bird voice through the screen door.
Luke sat the bags inside the door and went back out to put away the buggy and saddle the red stallion tied behind for a ride out to locate Calvin Tinkman, somewhere in the big valley where thousands of cows were busy dropping calves at a rapid rate.
He located him an hour later near the waterfall, assisting in the birth of a stubborn calf that couldn’t seem to decide which way he wanted go once halfway into daylight. Calvin had a rope around the calf’s front legs, and gently tugged as the calf finally wiggled free of the only world he had ever known until now. Calvin then removed the rope and gave the near lifeless animal a vigorous rubdown until he bellowed. Of course this brought an angry reaction from the cow that sent Calvin scurrying for his horse, getting clear of her just in time to avoid the horns.
“You’d better leave that to the younger ones, Calvin.” Luke laughed as he rode up. “That was close.”
“Yeah, well, they may be quicker, but I’m smarter. Welcome back, Tom.”
“How’s it going so far?” Luke looked around at all the calves already on the ground, and tried to estimate, just on the few he could see, what percentage complete the calving process was.
“Not bad.” Calvin removed his hat and dragged a shirt sleeve across his brow. “Better than those heifers are gonna be come July.”
“There will be no birthing heifers this year, Calvin. I’ve sold them.”
“Sold them? Who to?” Calvin was shocked. All the while he’d been here nothing had ever left this valley that had a possibility of multiplying.
“A group of English investors. They’re coming for them in a week or so.”
“All eighty-three hundred of them?”
“Eight thousand even.” Luke lifted in the saddle and looked to the far south end of the valley where the first calf heifers were kept separate, naturally divided by a deep creek, from the main herd. “You’ll need to sort out the extras and put them with the main herd. Then add sixteen hundred of those cleanup bulls that are with them to the bunch, and drive the whole lot to that grass meadow along the river, five miles south of here. I see no sense of them English fellows coming onto the place here at all.”
“Bulls too?” Calvin looked to him strangely.
“You have a problem with that, Calvin? It was you that said we needed to cut back, or take on new grazing range.”
“I have no gripe about you selling whatever you want to sell, Tom. Hell, it’s your place! I just hope you got a decent price. Those are the best we’ve ever had after fourteen years of sorting and culling to make the herd the best it could be.”
“You’re wrong, Calvin! It’s our place. And every other swinging dick’s place that had anything to do with making this bit of wilderness what it is today.” Luke glared at him. “Now that I’ve said that, here comes the bad news. Every one of those guys is going to get near eight thousand dollars in bonuses this year. And you and Mary double that, Calvin.”
Allowing that to digest, Calvin swallowed hard, then began laughing. “Where’s the bad news in that, Tom?”
“Don’t you think a good number of these guys, with that much jingle in their pockets, will walk away from here come fall, when the profits are divided up? Maybe even go off, get married, and start ranches of their own. Then what will we do? It’s bad enough we’re losing Andy Hayes. A bunch more may just follow him.”
“Hell, you and I trained these hands. We can do it with greenhorns again, can’t we?”
“I’m sure we can, Calvin. But I like things the way they are. It took us years to get this operation running the way it is. I, for one, am not anxious to go back to the old days. And it cost us. We had terrible calf losses those first years because nobody knew what to do. Now look at it.” Luke looked into the distance and saw cowboys working independent of each other all over the valley. “Nobody needs to be told what to do. They see something that needs doing, and they just do it.”
“If you’re so damned worried, Tom, don’t give them the money,” Calvin said glaringly. “Give them a percentage of the operation instead. Make them true partners in what’s going on here at the Tea Cup. Let them get married if they want too. Build a house wherever they want, have kids. I guarantee they’ll stay then, if that’s what you want. Speaking for myself, I’d rather have it that way. What good does it do me to keep sticking my money in the damned bank when it’s knowing where I’ll be the rest of my days that’s more important. Mary’s already talking how she’d like to have a house of her own someday, when we’re too old for the work any longer. I know she’d settle for one on that creek yonder.” Calvin tossed his head toward a nearby stream.
“What kind of a percentage?”
“Whatever it figures out to be, considering the total value of the remaining herd. Now, I’m not talking land, Tom. You keep that for yourself, when it’s yours. That way we can still rid ourselves of bad apples down the road. If any of them eventually lay down on the job, we can pay them off and send them packing.”
“If you think they’ll go for it, then tell them, Calvin.”
“I think they’d rather hear it from you, Tom.”
“Okay, then I’ll do it once the Englishmen have left with the heifers. Since Andy Hayes will be going with them, there’s no sense him hearing any of this.”
“I didn’t know Andy was leaving so soon,” Calvin said.
“He may as well, seeing as how they’ll be offering him a job close to Cheyenne. That’s where he wanted to be, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess so, but I was hoping he’d change his mind.” Calvin looked off into the distance forlornly.
“You know better than that,” Luke laughed. “Hell, Calvin, you were young at some time or another. Once a stallion gets wind of a filly in heat, they ain’t no fence gonna keep him in.”
“I guess.” Calvin laughed.
The transfer of the cattle to the Englishmen a week later came off without a hitch. Andy Hayes was happy to be getting back to his gal in Cheyenne earlier than expected, and to have a permanent job nearby when he got there.
The hands at the Tea Cup were very receptive of the offer of partnership in the ranch operation. Especially when Luke told them they would continue to receive their share of the Indian Bureau money each fall, in addition to any profits shown from the ranch herd each year, when like sales of breeding stock were made again. Not one of them turned the deal down, and several
scheduled leave time for the slow months of winter to scout for prospective wives. It seemed to Luke from all the excitement, cattle wouldn’t be the only thing grown on the ranch from now on. There would be a steady supply of future ranch hands raised there as well. And that included himself. Both White Bird and Mary were sending signals that White Bird was early with child. Why she had waited so long to do that was a loss to him, but he was happy for the prospect, nonetheless. It was true… Mother Nature worked in strange ways. He knew that from being one on one with it his entire life.
Three weeks later, Grady came from Cheyenne with a sheaf of letters for Luke. It seemed everyone he knew had written him, and at least one he didn’t know. Among them was a letter from Anne Budd. He had written her a quick note while in Cheyenne, thanking her for the kind letter she had written, and to tell her he had taken her advice and married again, even though her letter had come long after that had happened. He didn’t expect her to respond to that, but apparently she had. He put her letter in a drawer away from the prying eyes of Mary and went on to look through the others.
One from Governor Campbell for the moment seemed the most important, and he opened it first. It turned out to be a formal letter, perhaps written by a secretary, informing him that the U.S. Congress had shot down his request for certain powers to control territorial lands. Campbell wished him luck in his endeavor and noted his door was always open to him in the future. Even though the news was disheartening, Luke still held hope for a satisfactory conclusion to his most demanding challenge.
The second letter he chose was from James Bordeaux. It was to inform Luke that the cattle requirements from the new Indian Agent at Fort Laramie would increase by a few hundred head due to a request from Red Cloud. It seemed there had been a population increase since last year at the Oglala village located nearby. Bordeaux stated he would need to cut into his breeding herd, which he didn’t care to do, unless Luke could come up with the extra cattle by fall.