by Ben Bridges
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
By the same author
Storm in the Saddle
It’s the scorching summer of 1878, and a bitter range war is threatening to blow Montana Territory sky-high …
On one side there’s the all-powerful Stock Grower’s Association and its fifty-strong army of hired guns. On the other there’s just a handful of families who’ll fight to the death to keep the land they’ve settled on.
Trouble is, the Association is slowly but surely winning the struggle. When they’re not stealing the settlers’ stock, they’re burning them out and shooting them down, and there’s not one damn thing the victims can do about it.
Until, that is, Ash Colter happens along. And when he buys into it, the odds change overnight. Colter really is the fastest gunfighter in the west, and as the Association soon learns to its cost, you don’t mess with the man they call the Gunsmoke Legend.
STORM IN THE SADDLE
First Published by Robert Hale Limited in 1996, under the name ‘Matt Logan’
Copyright © 1996, 2012 by David Whitehead
First Kindle Edition: September 2012
This Revised Kindle Edition: April 2013
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
Our cover depicts a detail from Shot of Vengeance, painted by Andy Thomas, and used by permission.
Andy Thomas Artist, Carthage Missouri
Andy is known for his action westerns and storytelling paintings and documenting historical events through history.
This is a Bookends Book
Chapter One
Over the years, many people have asked me why I became involved in that blood-soaked page of history now known as the Fairfax County War.
The answer is simple.
I was invited.
I rode northeast to the Montana Territory in that late, grass-browning summer of 1878 at the behest of the Montana Stock Growers’ Association, whose members had, for several months, been suffering a virtual epidemic of rustling. They wanted me to go to work for them as a range detective, and bring this widespread larceny to an end.
My name is Ashley Colter, known more familiarly as Ash, and in those days I was what you would call a gunfighter. The Association chose me for the job because I was a shootist of some note. I had learned to use my double-action Adams .442 from no less a teacher than ‘Hair-Trigger’ Jack Page himself, and had subsequently secured a place for myself in the annals of frontier lore as the man who killed the outlaw John Kidd.
For my part, I answered their call because I needed the money.
You must understand this about me; Fate had set me upon my violent life. I had never actively sought the gift I had for killing. Quite the contrary, I had only ever craved to settle upon some fine grazing land and raise horses in peace. But to do that I needed money, and while the bounty on John Kidd had provided some, I hoped that my affiliation with the Montana Stock Growers’ Association would eventually furnish the rest.
You may recall that I revealed the truth behind my relationships with Jack Page and John Kidd in two previous memoirs, entitled Gunsmoke Legend and Ride the High Lines. If I am honest with you—as I fully intend to be—I must confess that at no time did I ever consider recounting any more of my adventures in this way.
But a few weeks ago I received a communication from one J Taylor Cadwell of the University of Bon Air, in Virginia. He had written a book about the Fairfax County War and, since I am now the only survivor, he wanted me to read it prior to publication to ensure that his account of that terrible time was an accurate one.
It wasn’t. Indeed, it quickly became evident that he had made so many glaring errors that after much debate, I finally decided to set down the truth of it once and for all in my own words, much as I had done earlier concerning my involvement with Jack and John.
Of necessity, I will keep this introduction brief, for I have much of a story to tell. But first, a word of warning.
What follows is not a pretty tale, and I know I shall not relish the telling of it. It is essentially a story of greed and desperation, of how one man tried to settle a volatile situation without the need for violence, and failed. It is the story of a massacre in which there were, in the final analysis, no victors. But perhaps the most sobering fact of all is that, as God is my witness, every word I lay before you now is the Godawful truth.
I was thirty years old that summer, a man full-grown. The pattern of my life should have been comfortably established, but it wasn’t. I should have had a regular job, a wife and family, and a place to call my own.
But the truth was very different. I had nothing to show for those three decades. I was just a baseless wanderer, cursed with a gun-fast reputation that other men would have killed for, and indeed, frequently did.
I was relishing a few brief weeks of relative anonymity in Cody, Wyoming, when the telegraph from the Montana Stock Growers’ Association finally found me. That same afternoon, I threw my old three-quarter rig across my dun-colored mustang and set out for the town of Beaver Dam, where the Association was headquartered.
I have already confessed my main reason for answering their call so promptly, but there is another. As you may already have guessed, my life at that time lacked direction and meaning. It was a pitiful, hollow thing that was occasionally punctuated by the blast of a gun and the sharp, metallic stench of cordite. Riding two hundred miles north and east, listening to the problems of those wealthy cattlemen and then deciding whether or not I could help them...it was really just something to do.
Beaver Dam lay alongside the Sun River, midway between Augusta, to the west, and Black Eagle, to the east. I completed the journey in little over a week.
Even before I reached my destination, however, I was fated to become involved in a conflict that threatened to blow that whole section of the country sky-high.
That part of upper Montana Territory was and remains a network of fertile, well-watered valleys and rolling, short-grass plains. I had come over the Big Belt Mountains to reach it, and enjoyed the isolation of the lonely, forested peaks and scarps along the way. Towards the end of the journey, however, I began to feel that I was no longer entirely alone.
I felt that I was being watched.
With Beaver Dam now no more than about ten miles distant, I rode lower through tracts of Douglas fir, larch, ponderosa and lodge pole pine, and without warning came out onto a ridge overlooking one of the largest and most beautiful wheatgrass valleys I have ever seen.
No words can adequately convey what it was like to sit there and drink in such a view, to trace the womanly curves of the flower-speckled slopes as they fed down to the broad, thickly-grassed sweep of the valley floor and then lifted again perhaps a mile hence, the whole valley hemmed in by great jagged belts of timber that formed serrated green borders to the pale blue sky.
About three hundred yards below me, and roughly halfway across the valley floor, four riders were hazing a small herd of pale-colored Texas Longhorns toward the northernmost exit. Their yells and whistles carried
clearly to me through the still, clean air.
I am not much of a cattleman myself, but even I could see that they were having a hard time with the chore. Longhorn cattle were always half-wild and mean of spirit, and this bunch did not care to go any farther than it could help. I dismounted to spell my horse and watch them for a while. The afternoon was warm and I felt hot and stuffy inside my funereal black suit.
Any professional cowboy can move a small herd of cattle without raising too big a fuss, but the four men down there now, though they dressed for the part in wide-brimmed hats, woolen shirts and fringed chaps over stovepipe boots, looked awkward and amateurish in the extreme.
Clearly cattle were not their usual line of business.
I unhooked my canteen and took a drink, then forced the mustang’s head up and trickled water into the corner of his mouth. As I stoppered the canteen and tied it back around my saddle horn, I saw two newcomers appear from the thick timber along the eastern ridge and send their horses down towards the stubborn herd at a reaching, restless gallop. Also noting their approach, the four unskilled cowboys reined in and turned to watch them come.
The newcomers looked to me to be father and son, for they shared much the same coloring. The father was a tall, stoutly built fellow in a big brown hat and heavy black wool pants. His thick red suspenders were a garish splash of color against his collarless white shirt. He was, I thought, perhaps forty, with unkempt sandy hair above a big, jowly, flushed face and a full, slightly darker beard that partially disguised his bull neck.
His son, if son he be, wore a linsey shirt and Levis. His slack-brimmed brown hat was tilted to the back of his head so that a fringe of hair as yellow as wheat, and a round, quite pleasant face across which were splashed brown freckles, were clearly revealed. I put the boy’s age at no more than sixteen.
As they reached the four cowboys, they slowed their horses and the older man began to harangue them and make many wild gestures with his arms to encompass the cattle, the four cowboys themselves and the direction in which they had been going. Although the man’s voice carried as far as my position, the words themselves were somewhat indistinct.
One of the supposed cowboys broke away from the others and walked his reddish-brown California sorrel forward, the better to address the irate newcomer. He was tall and lean through the flanks, dressed in a well-shaped black Stetson, a bib-style denim shirt, tight-fitting black pants and spur-hung, newish boots with underslung heels.
His face, I saw, was long, well defined, with a thick, dark moustache that traced the line of his confident mouth and then sloped down across the firm, belligerent thrust of his chin.
He wore two guns in a sturdy black leather belt around his hips, .44-caliber Smith and Wessons, I thought, though distance made accurate identification difficult.
I watched them converse for a moment more. That they were engaged in a dispute of some sort was obvious, as was the fact that it involved the now milling and blatting Longhorns. But it was none of my affair, and so I remounted and once more set off at an easy walk, keeping to the uneven line of the ridge.
I had gone perhaps a quarter of a mile when a single, high gunshot rang out behind me. With some concern, for the sound of gunfire nearly always signified trouble, I turned my fidgeting horse around to find out what had happened.
In the far distance, the bearded man was rolling slowly over the ground and his horse, which had sidestepped away from him, was prancing nervously. The argument had evidently gotten out of hand. Perhaps the bearded man had tried to strike the fellow with the two Smith and Wessons, and he in turn had gone for one of his matched handguns and shot him down.
Even as I watched, the young boy gigged his horse up to the man with the .44s, and tried to reach for him with clawed fingers. The fellow with the .44s drew back out of reach, then came forward again, brought his right-side gun up and clubbed the boy on the head. Again he struck, and once more still, pistol-whipping him mercilessly across both head and shoulders. The boy went down beneath the blows, fell from his saddle and joined his father on the ground.
My mouth thinned down, for I had no time for men who drew guns on unarmed opponents, or beat up youngsters. I felt the pressure pushing the blood out of my lips. Still I had no desire to get involved. I was not here for that. But...
I sat there atop the dun for one more indecisive moment. Then, with a curse, I heeled the horse to motion and he went careening down across the slope at a run that chopped at the grass in his path.
Down on the ground, the man with the beard came up onto his hands and knees. He too had been bludgeoned, then. The shot had probably been an additional warning. Quickly he checked his son for injury, as the boy, hatless now, screwed his face up and reached weakly to the back of his head. One of the men called a name—’Jameson!’—and the man who had used the .44 to such violent effect turned to watch as I rode in.
When I was no more than a dozen feet from the cowboys, I reined down. They had all turned their mounts around to face me by then. Behind them the cattle watched from moody eyes set into lowered, horned heads. Even the man and the boy on the ground seemed frozen in place as they squinted up at me.
I ranged my eyes across the cowboys. But for the fellow with the two guns, Jameson, they were a fairly unremarkable but indisputably tough and well-armed crew. As flies buzzed through the air around us, they appraised me, too. What they saw was a tall, spike-lean man in a flat-brimmed, low-crowned, black hat, a man with lightish hair and sky-blue eyes, dressed in a black Prince Albert and matching pants, a boiled white shirt and string tie, and a gray vest from which looped a glittering watch chain.
At last I settled my eyes upon Jameson. Up close I saw that his was a pale, slightly puffed face with two glassy brown eyes that reminded me of the kind you found in the face of a child’s doll, shiny but somehow lifeless. He had neatly barbered black hair and long, triangular-shaped sideburns, was about thirty-five or so, supremely confident and frankly challenging.
Lord, I had seen his like so many times over the years, had watched them cut down others and then get cut down themselves. They came and they went, and there were always more to take their place.
I said softly, ‘What’s going on here?’
He returned my look, his eyes assured dark windows that masked the workings of a shrewd brain. His friends had already written me off as someone of little consequence, a dude. But this one, he wasn’t ready to dismiss me so easily.
‘I’m not sure that it’s any of your business,’ he replied, leathering the .44 at last. ‘So get along, pilgrim, and leave us to settle our own affairs.’
The bearded man had regained his feet by this time, and was helping his boy to stand. The boy was leaning against him, and there was blood on the collar of his gray shirt and around his left ear. ‘These men’re stealin’ my cattle!’ the man roared indignantly. ‘That’s what’s goin’ on here!’
‘That’ll be enough of that, Tragg!’ growled one of Jameson’s men.
‘Enough be damned!’ replied the bearded man, Tragg.
I could feel the fury coming off him in waves even at that distance, and felt certain that he would have launched himself at Jameson again had he not been supporting his son.
I turned my attention back to this Jameson. It seemed almost too much to hope that I would catch the rustlers in the act even before I met the men who wanted to hire me to run them to ground.
‘That’s a serious charge,’ I allowed.
Jameson nodded. ‘It would be,’ he agreed. ‘If it were true. But it’s not.’ He hipped around and indicated the Longhorns. ‘These cattle,’ he said, ‘are being impounded. Not that it’s really any of your business.’
I frowned. ‘Impounded?’
He nodded. ‘On orders of the Montana Stock Growers’ Association,’ he confirmed. ‘Of which we are duly-appointed representatives. All unbranded stock found wandering in Fairfax County automatically becomes the property of the Association.’
‘But t
hey’re mine, bought and paid for!’ objected Tragg.
‘They’re unbranded,’ Jameson told him harshly. ‘And there’s an end to it, Tragg. If you don’t like it, go and talk to Mr. Linderman in Beaver Dam. If you can stump up the money, he might even let you buy them back.’
I knew then that Jameson was telling the truth about being a representative of the Association, because Robert Linderman, the Association’s chief administrator, had signed the telegraph that had brought me here.
Tragg’s ruddy face, meanwhile, had blanched. ‘Buy them—! I’m damned if I’ll buy back my own cattle!’
‘Well, can you prove they’re yours? Do you have a bill of sale?’
‘You know I don’t! I bought those cattle and another sixty just like ‘em a year ago, down in Hitchens, Kansas. That bill of sale was lost on the way up here eight months ago! But they were on my land! I was jus’ gettin’ ready to put my mark on ‘em! You had no right to go and—’
‘Whose land?’ asked Jameson with quiet authority. ‘You have no legal claim to this land, Tragg. You’re a squatter here. You’re the one breaking the law.’
Tragg shook his head in disgust, and his dark eyes blazed. ‘You won’t get away with this, Jameson. You can’t! So help me, I’ll settle your hash myself before this is over!’
Jameson’s shoulders stiffened then, and he came erect in his creaking saddle, his right hand dropping to finger-brush the handles of his S&W again. ‘That,’ he said gently, ‘is dangerous talk, Tragg. Dangerous for you, I mean. Now catch up your horses, you and your worthless spit of a boy, and get back where you came from. Otherwise we’ll do the settling right here and now.’
Tragg glared up at him, the muscles in his big face twitching as he tried to control his growing anger. Beside him, his son groaned and swayed slightly as he fought to remain conscious.
Pushing it, Jameson said, ‘Well, what’s it to be? I haven’t got all day.’
Reaching a decision, Tragg swallowed hard and said in a voice that trembled, ‘You know damn’ well I don’t stand a chance against you, not with pistols, but...come on then, you son of a bitch. Now’s as good a time as any, I reckon.’