Wyoming Slaughter

by William W. Johnstone

  There was a scatter of applause, but not much. I sat down, waiting to see what came next. I thought it was a pretty good talk I had given, and it got right to the heart of the matter. A man needed some spitting room.

  “Well, young feller, that was eloquent. But I confess I don’t feel hog-tied and lassoed,” said the moderator, Hubert Sanders. “Maybe I’m missing something.”

  The next round involved the enactment of prohibition in Puma County, and once again, Eve Grosbeak was the first to speak.

  “When there is evil in a community, we seek to cut it out. Where there is desperation and darkness, we seek to bring hope and light,” she said. “We sought to bring hope to the drunkard’s family, to spare children and wives the beatings of men made into brutes by spirits. We sought to put food on the tables of families and keep drunks from spending in saloons what was needed by women and children.

  “We sought to keep men who imbibed too much from killing or maiming one another, or shooting up the town, or wounding innocents. We sought to return the drunkard to the bosom of society, where he might again be welcomed by his loved ones and his colleagues. We sought by shutting down the gin mills to reduce the arrests and fines and trials and jailings of men made mad by spirits.

  “We sought to subdue men who become monsters when imbibing, causing all manner of hurts on others. We sought to end the fears permeating Doubtful whenever liquored-up cowboys from the ranches go on a rampage, threatening the lives and honor of the gentlefolk here. We sought to end the exploitation of cowboys by card sharks operating in the saloons, cleaning liquored-up ranch men of every cent they earned.

  “We sought to throw out of the county the conniving, scheming, cruel operators of dives and hellholes, whose only purpose is to extract everything they can get from cowboys, including their saddles, horses, and anything else they might in their stupor leave unguarded.

  “My dear friends, here in Doubtful, we have peace and safety. We have comfort. Liquor and guns don’t mix, and now we have a small paradise where we all can live without violence or tragedy . . . Let me tell you from the bottom of my soul, dear friends, prohibition is the best gift that Puma County ever received.”

  She settled quietly in her seat. I sensed that there were some, all male, who would like to object, but knew they were outsmarted.

  “Well, Mrs. Grosbeak, that was eloquent and moving,” said the moderator. “Now we’ll hear from the incumbent, Amos Grosbeak.”

  Amos got up, adjusted his cravat, and eyed the crowd. “Why, I’ll stand on my record. Crimes of violence have declined, the town is safer, and all is quiet in Doubtful. While I yearn for a little sip once in a while, I think it is wise public policy to keep Doubtful dry. That’s all I need to say.”

  “Now, then, Mr. Pickens, it’s your turn,” said the moderator.

  “Oh, I can see how this here is running,” I said. “Mostly all that bad stuff, it’s an exaggeration. Men just like a nice saloon to get together and chew the fat and enjoy life. Trouble with a dry county is there’s nothing to do. I’m for freedom. A man should be free to do what he pleases. A man should be free to run the sort of shop he wants. That’s all there is to it. You either have freedom or you start oppressing folks. And I’m for letting people have their way. That’s all that needs saying.”

  This time I got a fine round of applause, but I sure didn’t see any women clapping.

  Hubert Sanders began clearing his throat and acting nervous. He finally collected himself and began the next phase of the debate.

  “Now, I’ve got to confess that I’ve never seen a public discussion of this little item, and it’s something I’d rather not see, but here it is, and these brave women sponsoring this event have got it here for the candidates to talk about. I guess you all know what I’m talking about. But we’ll proceed, but if this gets out of hand, why I’ll ask the candidates to cease. And of course, all you sweet mothers, and fathers, too, you may wish to steer your children away. Little ears can be big funnels, and of course we honor innocence in children for as long as possible. So, without further ado, I’ll turn your attention to Eve Grosbeak, and we’ll just see how this goes.”

  Eve paused at the lectern, gazing serenely at the crowd. No one left, and everyone was curious about how this would play out.

  “I’m not going to talk about good and evil. I’m not going to talk about morals. I’m not going to refer to religion. I’m going to talk about something entirely different, the suffering and degradation and torment of those who have been forced into a brutal business, one that exploits its victims and sends them to an early grave in a pauper’s corner of a cemetery.

  “I’m not talking about wicked women and men, but victims. I’m talking about the poor women who are driven from their childhood homes by abusive fathers and have nowhere to go but this bleak life. I’m talking about women fleeing mean husbands, cruel families, or places with exaggerated ideas of right and wrong. I’m talking about desperate girls, who would not otherwise enter the life of an inmate of a bawdy house but for the sheer cruelty of circumstance.

  “They are victims, made sick, made melancholy, made suicidal, made hopeless, made addicted, by the life they have fallen into. We, the Temperance women of Doubtful, are all proud that we have talked the supervisors into ending this awful, bleak slavery, this misery, in our fair county. We have closed these grim places. We have sent the exploiters who made money from this misery away from Puma County forever.

  “We have eradicated evil in our midst, simply by enacting laws prohibiting it. What more is there to say? Along with closing the saloons, closing the houses of ill repute is our proudest achievement. I’m running on that achievement. There is work yet to do to make Doubtful a sanctuary of good marriage, the peaceful relationship of the sexes, and an island of respect for man or woman that we all can enjoy. Let us continue to fight vice and misery, which leads only to an early grave. I stand proudly before you, knowing that we have brought sunshine into the lives of many women and men, too, in our county.”

  She smiled gently and returned to her seat. The crowd was very silent. More puffball clouds raced across the firmament. I sure didn’t know what to say. I thought a lot of those girls liked the trade, but how could I even mention it? There were some gals, wild as March winds, who’d sure hate to give up the life. And they should be free to do so.

  As expected, old Amos Grosbeak seconded his wife and said he was running on his record, and thought the world was better because there were real sweet ladies in it.

  “And now we’ll hear from Mr. Pickens,” said Hubert Sanders. “Where do you stand, sir?”

  “This here’s a private matter, and the county’s got no business poking its nose in. I think it’s none of anyone’s business. My motto is, ‘If there’s an itch, there needs to be someone to scratch it.’”

  Well, that was all that needed saying, so I returned to my seat.

  Old Sanders, he thanked the crowd and said to come next week to hear the next debates, and pretty soon the crowd drifted off. No one came to me with a handshake or a slap on the back, but there sure were a mess of people smiling and shaking old Grosbeak’s paw, and a mess more, mostly womenfolk, who’d gathered around Eve Grosbeak, and the women were all chattering away so fast it was plain unlikely anyone heard anyone else.

  I slid out of there, entirely alone, and no one even noticed my passage. So that’s how it was to run for office, I thought.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I was blue. I’d hardly ever been blue before, and the feeling was so strange it didn’t seem to belong to me. The world was changing. This thing called civilization was sneaking in, day by day, and along with it all sorts of people and laws telling me I couldn’t do this and couldn’t do that, and I’d better learn to live with it.

  None of the small crew at Sally’s boardinghouse could cheer me up. Sally smiled and told me I needed to move to the Far East. Rusty told me I’d be fine if I got my badge back and could start arresting people for sp
itting on sidewalks. Count Cernix said that if Puma County switched to a parliamentary monarchy, things would go better.

  But that didn’t help me one bit. Up until recently I had been free as the wind and could do whatever I damned well felt like doing. Now there were naysayers on every corner, people who’d got out of grade school and done some high school, too. There were meetings and committees and bunches of people intending to do good. All this hit me right in the gut. Rusty said he felt it, too, but he wanted to hold out as long as he could. But that didn’t sit well with me. I still thought it was all woman inspired. The world was just fine until all these women starting messing around with it, and now what was left? I couldn’t even belly up to a bar and buy a drink.

  I couldn’t figure out who was right or wrong, and all I knew was that a melancholia had crept into me, and I spent my days in a dour mood, avoiding company. Maybe there were other frontiers I could escape to, now that this one was sliding into a quiet, settled life. But the country was running out of frontiers.

  I mourned, because it was like watching a funeral of something I loved. The wild freedom was dying. One morning I headed for Turk’s Livery Barn and eyed Critter.

  “Guess we’ll get the hell out of town,” I said.

  I must have sounded pretty blue, because Critter just nodded, sighed, and nickered. Critter was behaving in ways unheard of. He didn’t try to kick me or jam me into the stall wall or bite my arm, and he didn’t even load up his lungs with air to make it harder for me to draw the cinch tight. That nag just allowed it all to happen, as if Critter were becoming civilized himself, instead of behaving like the rank bronc he really was. It sure puzzled me. I thought I’d sell Critter if he kept going downhill and buy myself a rank horse.

  “You owe me for a week’s board,” Turk said.

  “I’ll pay it when I’m elected.”

  “From what I hear, you’ll never get a county salary again.”

  “Well, take it from all the money I saved you by not pinching you for public spitting.”

  Turk wheezed and spat. “World’s coming to an end,” he said. “If a man can’t spit, there’s no reason to live.”

  “That’s how I feel.”

  “I need some Chinamen and an opium parlor,” Turk said. “There ain’t anything else interesting about Doubtful.”

  “Nearest one’s in Laramie,” I said. “The university professors keep her going.”

  I mounted, and Critter didn’t even hump or buck. He just stood there and dropped apples, and then we rode out of town. I didn’t know or care where I was going; I just wanted to go where there was less settlement. I was suffocating in Doubtful. Maybe I belonged in a bunkhouse instead of in a town like Doubtful that was growing quieter and more orderly every day. Maybe all I needed was some cowboys around me to start feeling fine again.

  I rode north, vaguely thinking I’d go toward some familiar buttes, where a long spur gave me a panoramic view I cherished of wild, unsettled country. Just get out and look at the open world. Look at the Rockies to the west and the Medicine Bows across the plain. Maybe that would put my thoughts on the right track. When there was too much civilization around, mountains were the cure, and open country the healing.

  A few years ago there were no roads at all through this rough prairie country, but soon there were trails, mostly wrought by ranch people going somewhere, and now there were regular turnpikes, sometimes impassable but mostly clean and hard. This May day there were mud-holes, but that didn’t slow Critter down. He was tired of civilization, too. Maybe he was looking for a bodacious mare, I thought. It was the time of year when males started hunting for females.

  A sharp wind gusted now and then, driving grit into my face, but that’s how Wyoming was. I got several miles out of Doubtful, but it didn’t do me any good. Instead of feeling freed from civilization, it was like being on the end of a fishing line, where all the laws of Puma County could reel me back in. But I continued anyway, mostly because Critter was having such a fine time.

  It got to be noon, but there was nothing to eat. I hadn’t packed a lunch. I’d just wanted to get out of town and stay out. So I decided to ride and starve and face into the west wind, and feel the sun starting to burn my wintered flesh. And that was fine. I was sick of boardwalks and mercantiles and banks and women with parasols.

  Up ahead were riders, lots of them, in a settled trot and coming my way. So I reined in Critter and waited. There sure were a mess of them, maybe twenty, and they were heading toward town. Sure enough, it turned out to be pretty near the whole roster of the Admiral Ranch, and Big Nose George Botts was in the lead. I knew half of these fellers, and they were a hairy and wild bunch when they felt like it.

  “Well, if it ain’t the sheriff,” said Big Nose.

  “Sheriff’s Lem Clegg now, Big Nose.”

  “Yeah, I heard. Him and his deputies, they’ve got to learn to ride a horse. They can’t be the law and run around in a wagon.”

  “Well, the whole place is civilized now. Who needs a horse, Big Nose?”

  The foreman of the Admiral Ranch frowned, pulled a bag of tobacco from his pocket, rolled a cigarette, and lit it.

  “Hear you got pussy-whipped,” he said.

  “It sure wasn’t a pretty sight, Big Nose.”

  “You’re not much of an excuse for a county superintendent.”

  “You took the thought outa my head.”

  “But we’re going to put you in anyway,” Big Nose said. “You’re better than nothing. We’ve had enough of this crappola and we’re going to stop it. You may be a swayback old nag full of fistulas and farts, but we’re riding you to the finish line.”

  “That’s real friendly of you.”

  “You know what this is? A voter party. We’re going in to get ourselves registered to vote. And so is every man on every ranch. And you’ll get our vote, even if you don’t deserve it. I’ll tell you something else. There’s two men for every woman in this county, and we’ll see to it that every loose male from the south end of Puma to the north, and maybe beyond a little, gets run into Doubtful to vote, and if he don’t vote the right way, he’s going to disappear from Puma County and float down the river.” He turned to his crew. “Tell this poor excuse for a candidate it’s the gospel truth.”

  “It sure is, Cotton,” said Smiley Thistlethwaite, a notorious womanizer and reformed outlaw.

  “Yeah, Pickens, we’ll make our X for you, even if you’re a piece of dog turd,” said Alvin Miller, who was packing two pearl-handled Peacemakers and had a scattergun hanging in a scabbard.

  “The way we see it, Pickens, is that we’re going to put you in office, along with your worthless deputy and that strange idiot from across the seas, and then you’ll owe us a few things, like repealing a few laws.”

  “Like the dry laws?”

  “That and a lot more, Pickens. You’re going to get your ass in office, and you’re going to repeal the whole thing, and you’re going to send engraved invitations to every saloon man that got drove out to set up shop and enjoy life and expect a good trade again. You got that?”

  “I got it, Big Nose.”

  “And if you welsh on us, Pickens, we’ll string you up so high you’ll have time to recite three prayers before your neck snaps.”

  “I got it, Big Nose.”

  “All right, then. We’re going in to register. And so’s everyone else. We’ve been talking back and forth on the spreads, and we’re sending every man in the county in to get fixed up to vote. I tell you, Pickens, it’s been an ordeal since January. We can hardly keep drovers on the range. Half the outfits can’t hire enough men because word’s out about Puma County. If this keeps up, half the ranchers are going to quit. The first thing any new hire asks is whether there’s a saloon somewhere. But the sheep outfits aren’t so bad off. They tell me they’re doing fine, as long as there’s some ewes around. But we ain’t saying that publicly, are we, boys?”

  He spurred his horse and the whole bunch rode past, looki
ng pleased with themselves. Life sure was interesting.

  I touched my heels to Critter, and the horse swung into an easy jog, heading straight to the buttes. I’d been on this journey a few times. So, maybe the three of us Peckerheads would win after all. At first I thought that was mighty fine, but it kind of worried me. If I actually got into office, and actually tried to repeal all them laws, what would happen? It might be real bad in town.

  I rode another mile to the turnoff and headed west along a familiar trail that would take me straight to the buttes. There were three buttes, and one was easily accessible along a dirt trail that had been used for ages by animals and also by humans seeking to see what lay ahead. The buttes figured in some of the local lore. They were useful to war parties intent on ambush, useful to ranchers looking for lost cattle, useful to the occasional sightseer, like me, who wanted only to see the free world. Some spring storms were brewing fast as I headed west, and from the buttes I could watch the squalls march across the vast open land, towering clouds with blue-black bellies slanting rain into the empty land. Once I had sat on Critter halfway up the butte when a storm engulfed Doubtful while sun shone everywhere else.

  When I came to the barbed-wire fence I could scarcely imagine what it was doing there. Three strands of wire ran arrow-straight north and south, the wires stapled to juniper posts, which was the only irregular thing about the fence. But there was no pine forest nearby, and the sometimes twisted juniper had been put to good use.

  But there was no gate. The wires lay across the trail I had used as long as I had been in Puma County. Me and Critter were on the Admiral Ranch; I wasn’t sure what lay beyond it, but it probably belonged to Thaddeus Throckmorton, who had been collecting sections of land and was now apparently enclosing them. And blocking an ancient trail. I thought wildly of cutting the wire and continuing onward, but I reined Critter around and started back, my planned sojourn out in the wilds suddenly transformed.

  Fencing was rare, but it was coming along, and some day the open range would be under wire. But it sure did annoy me. The world was changing out in the country as well as in the towns, and this wasn’t much different. I’d been stopped by a fence, my will thwarted. In town the new laws were thwarting a lot of cowboys who wanted a drink. I didn’t know what to make of it, but it wasn’t my world anymore, and the worst thing was, I knew it would never return to the old days of the unsettled world. I had ridden all this way to escape melancholy, and now my desolation was all the worse.