Wyoming Slaughter

by William W. Johnstone

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  That three-strand fence running straight down a section line out on the plains shocked me worse than anything that had ever happened to me. I rode Critter home, hardly aware of where I was going. It felt like being sentenced to jail the rest of my life.

  I pulled into Turk’s Livery Barn late in the day, unsaddled and brushed Critter, and fed him a bit of hay while Turk glowered.

  “I hope you know you’re running up a big tab,” Turk said.

  “Yeah, well, maybe you can take Critter off my hands. There’s no place to ride anymore.”

  “No place to ride, is there? No place to go on a horse? No wonder the supervisors got rid of you, Pickens.”

  “It’s all over,” I said. “Everything died.”

  “What you need is a good woman, Pickens.”

  “That’s like going to jail,” I said.

  “You have my condolences, Pickens.”

  I ignored him, closed the stall gate, stared at Critter a while. A mean horse and no fences was better than a fenced world and a little wife. I wanted to head for the sheriff office, but it wasn’t mine anymore. I finally headed for Leonard Silver’s Hardware Emporium and found what I was looking for. A back room was stacked with rolls of barbed wire, floor to ceiling. There was more wire in there than I had seen in a lifetime.

  “You looking for wire, Pickens?”

  “Didn’t know there was any in Puma County.”

  “We got lots of it, any type. You want two strand, three strand? You want two-barb, that’s cheapest, or four? You want staples? We got several sizes. Some fellows want real long staples to hang the wire on, whiles other gents want to cut corners a bit.”

  “You been selling a lot?”

  “It’s been walking out the door all spring, Pickens. Thaddeus Throckmorton’s got most of his ranch fenced, and he’s not alone. I figure I’m selling a mile of fence a day from here. Two, three years, all the ranches will be fenced in. Oh, there’ll still be some open range, some big roundups, but it’s gonna disappear pretty quick now.

  “By the time you’re middle-aged, Pickens, it’ll all be fenced. They won’t hardly need any cowboys anymore. Just one or two to haul feed or drive the cattle into the pens. Once they fence, they can grow crops without having stray stock trample it down and eat it up. And then the next big thing, irrigation. Pretty quick, you’ll see a lot of big outfits putting in dams across creeks, or building pump houses and running water through irrigation ditches to the pastures or grain fields they want to water. It’s the future, Cotton.”

  “I got born too late,” I said.

  “Oh, there’s more coming. Once things get fenced up proper, there’ll be lots of breeding up. The old common cattle, they’ll gradually get sold off to the butchers. There’ll be good-blooded bulls brought in, to breed up the herds, put more meat on each animal. That takes fencing, you see. Can’t have runty bulls crowding in and leaving their mark on a herd. And they’ll start breeding up the cows, too, so they’re more fertile and grow quicker. Not so many barren cows anymore. And that takes fencing so ranchers can control who mounts what.

  “Can’t have some low-class, dumb, half-educated bull around, messing with nice, refined, sweet-natured cows. You get the picture, Cotton? You looking for some wire? Gonna fence some pasture for Critter? Now if I was you, I’d fence in Critter, six feet of barbed wire, just to keep neighbors from getting upset with you. Who’d want a mare bred by that outlaw?”

  “No, just curious,” I said, fleeing the gloomy rear room where rolls of barbed metal awaited buyers.

  That left me even worse off. No wonder me and Critter lived in a sort of truce. We were brothers.

  I headed back to Sally’s boardinghouse and found Rusty and Count Cernix and Sally sipping cold coffee.

  “You’re back earlier than you thought,” Rusty said.

  “Ran into a fence.”

  “Why didn’t you go through it?”

  “No gate. Just fence.”

  “Can they do that?”

  “It’s done, Rusty. The world’s changing. Leonard Silver told me he’s selling enough wire each day to build a mile of fence. It ain’t ever going to be the same.”

  “How’s a lawman supposed to chase outlaws if there’s fence everywhere?”

  “I guess they think there won’t be any outlaws anymore.”

  “You’re looking pretty blue, Cotton,” Sally said.

  “Oh, I’ll get by, somehow.”

  “Cotton, you’re really in sad shape. I know how to fix that,” she said.

  “Leave me be,” I said.

  “I can brighten your day,” Rusty said. “There’s been a mess of cowboys at the courthouse fixing to vote.”

  “Yeah, I ran into Big Nose and his bunch. He says every cowboy in Puma County’s vowed to get registered and vote. He says they’re going to elect us, no matter what, and we should get busy and repeal all them new laws so they can start whooping it up around here again.”

  “Well, maybe they’ll pull it off,” Rusty said.

  That didn’t cheer me. I’d seen the future, and I didn’t fit anywhere in it.

  “Cotton, what you need to do is become a politician,” Count Cernix said. “Just promise to cut spending, dole out favors, and get us into a war now and then so everyone profits.”

  “Go to hell,” I said.

  I wasn’t sure what was gnawing at me, but it was making me impossible to live with, even among my friends and allies.

  “What are we supposed to say? Bring on the past? Repeal the future? I just saw the future. It’s a barbed-wire fence across an old trail.”

  “I liked you better when you were sheriff,” Sally said.

  A few days later the next debate rolled around, this time between Count Cernix von Stromberger, Lester Twining, and Manilla Twining. Again it was a fine May day, and a crowd collected at Courthouse Square to hear the candidates. Hubert Sanders again moderated, and Manilla led off.

  “My argument for woman suffrage is that men shouldn’t vote at all,” she began. “Men are the prisoners of their passions, whereas women maintain a cool and objective approach to all the issues of the day. That is why men get into war, while women keep the peace. If men didn’t vote, we could be living in a world without bloodshed and battles and all the false glory of killing one another in the name of some cause or other. All one needs to do is make sure that women vote, women dominate each government, and women edit the press and the magazines, and you will see a revolutionary change in the way human life is conducted.”

  She went on like that a while, and I thought it was pretty good. Maybe men shouldn’t vote or hold office or edit newspapers or any of that stuff.

  Next up was Count Cernix, and he offered a little different perspective. He said female monarchs were top notch when it came to beheading rivals and fighting wars. During the French Revolution who were in the front row during all the guillotining? Women, knitting away, while enjoying the way that eyes blinked and lips moved when the executioners held up the severed heads of the victims. And of course, he went on, who could compete with Catherine the Great of Russia, or Elizabeth of England, when it came to intrigue and blood?

  That sure entertained me. I thought maybe I’d like to have a few guillotines available in Puma County.

  Hubert Sanders next invited Twining, the incumbent supervisor, to speak to the cheering throng. Lester was a retiring sort, not at all comfortable in front of people, and yet a man radiating dignity. I scarcely knew him, because the supervisors all spoke through the voice of Amos Grosbeak, who had a gift of gab. But here was Lester, who nervously adjusted his cravat, eyed the transparent blue sky, and plunged in.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “I am running on my record, and I think I can give you a very good account of what I’ve achieved, simply by inviting our fine new sheriff, Lemuel Clegg, to the podium here, to answer a few questions.”

  He waved, and sure enough, Lem Clegg lumbered up there, about a
s wide and muscular as he was tall, his whole body shaped by his lumberman’s skills. But he wasn’t a lumberman now; he was the county lawman, and the little badge on his plaid shirt shone in the glowing sunlight.

  “Lemuel, you took office shortly after the county closed down all the saloons, houses of ill repute, gambling parlors, and so forth, and prohibited the sale of spiritous drink in the entire county. Could you answer the following please?”

  The sheriff nodded.

  “Since you took over as sheriff, how many murders have occurred in Puma County?”

  “None, sir.”

  “How many assaults against males?”

  “None, sir.”

  “How many assaults upon women?”

  “None, sir.”

  “How many robberies?”

  “None, sir.”

  “How many burglaries?”

  “None, sir.”

  “How many times have you charged and jailed a prisoner since you came into office, sir?”

  “Just one. I got him for spitting in public, and he got himself fined and left an hour later.”

  “And how many jail meals has the county served prisoners since you took over?”

  “None, sir.”

  “And how many complaints have you heard; people reporting a crime or a fight or trouble?”

  “Well, there was that boy beating up a dog, sir. I stopped him.”

  “Anything else?”

  Clegg shook his head.

  “That’s my record as incumbent, and I’ll stand on it,” Twining said.

  “Fine, fine, thank you, Supervisor Twining,” said Sanders. “And now, once again, the esteemed new citizen of the republic of Wyoming, Count Cernix von Stromberger,” he said.

  I had to give the count credit. As he made his way toward the lectern, he smiled, bowed almost to the ground, lifted his wide-brimmed straw hat, saluted the crowd, and finally settled quietly behind the lectern.

  “I imagine I am the first titled person most of you have ever seen,” he said.

  “And hopefully the last,” someone shouted.

  “Well, I agree with your sentiments. We are progressing toward democracy. Now I am running on the sin ticket, and I’ll tell you why. It’s the way to save money. The entire budget of Puma County and the fair and sweet city of Doubtful can be raised with various sin taxes, quietly applied. So I am offering you an argument that goes straight to your purse.”

  I could see that the count had his audience caught and hog-tied.

  The count sighed, smiled, and said quietly, “It’s fine to have expert witnesses, such as we’ve just enjoyed. Sheriff Clegg made an impressive argument. But my witnesses will not be experts, they will be yourselves. You yourselves will answer my questions, and you yourselves will come to your own verdicts, and you yourselves will let those verdicts guide you as you vote for county supervisors in a few days.”

  He smiled and began, almost casually. “You who own real estate in Puma County, how much have you paid in tax assessments upon your holdings until this year?” He waited patiently and then pounced. “None! Because there were no property taxes. The entire county budget was raised by other means!”

  He let that sink in and then pounced again. “Now then, all of you who hold real estate in the splendid town of Doubtful, Wyoming, how much were you assessed in taxes upon your homes and businesses and yards and lots?” Again, he paused. “Nothing, right? There were no taxes, because the city’s entire operations were funded elsewhere, and no burden was placed on you.”

  I looked around. Count Cernix was sure making his point, and all those faces turned his way registered it.

  “My friends and fellow citizens—yes, I am a naturalized American—the entire burden of government in Puma County was indeed paid by someone. By saloon owners who bought licenses, and gamblers who bought table licenses, and the operators of bawdyhouses, who paid licenses not annually, but quarterly, and the inmates who paid monthly, creating a fine revenue flow. Let me point something out to you. All this burden placed on dubious enterprises had the economic effect of discouraging such enterprises. They were heavily taxed and licensed, which discouraged their growth and kept them carefully confined to one small corner of our beautiful city. So my argument is, take advantage of human nature. Take advantage of those whose appetites require these anodynes. Remove the prohibitions, but let the fees and licenses form their own barriers, and you will have a city without the burden of property taxes, and a city that has turned certain appetites into an engine of bright and shining prosperity.”

  I wasn’t so sure about all that. It sounded a little made up. But it sure had started that mess of people to thinking.

  The debate dragged on for a while more, and then Sanders called it quits.

  Sally rushed up to the count. “You clever man, you turned the tide,” she said.

  I thought that maybe the count had done just that. There was one more debate left, between Rusty Irons and Reggie and Gladys Thimble, and after that it would be time for Puma County to elect its supervisors.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The last of those debates sponsored by the Temperance women rolled around too fast, as far as I was concerned. I didn’t like any of it. I preferred to settle arguments with a whack on the head with my billy club and some cooling off in my jail. But that was the past. Doubtful, Wyoming, was marching into a brave new world, and the frontier was vanishing almost day by day.

  This one occurred on an overcast spring day with some sharp-edged air pushing through out of the north. Maybe that was good. Anything to shut the mouths of politicians was good. I hadn’t any notion what my former deputy, Rusty Irons, was going to blabber about up there in front of the world, so I’d just have to wait and see. I realized that me and Rusty hadn’t talked much about all this stuff. We had been too busy keeping the lid on Doubtful during the wild times to think much about what was good and what wasn’t.

  The best thing Rusty had going for him was a head of red hair, and also a sunny nature. He sure could take some boneheaded cowboy and get the feller to laughing all the way to the jail. That was Rusty for you. He was the quickest feller with a gun if that was needed, which it wasn’t anymore, but Rusty’s real genius was just being sociable. He enforced the law of Puma County just by gabbing happily with most everyone, by issuing little warnings, by slapping some old rogue on the back and steering him to his horse. So I sure was curious about what Rusty was going to do up there.

  Rusty probably would have easy prey. Gladys Thimble was scarcely known, and not a likely candidate for supervisor. She was one of the ladies with an enormous bust and a skinnier south side, while her husband had a narrow top and a middle that expanded like a pear. I thought that was fitting. If the two of them ever got to hugging, they would fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Her man, Reggie Thimble, had been in office forever and had gotten fat, and some said he’d gotten fat devouring public funds a little too easily, but no one ever proved anything. Gladys didn’t have much to say up there; she sort of trilled like a clarinet and allowed as how it was time to put women into office and get all the problems of the world solved in a hurry.

  Reggie, he made a different sort of appearance. He was a talker, on and on and on, and pretty quick he got himself on all sides of every issue. He talked about his sentimental attachment for saloons, and how they were comfortable clubs for men to enjoy themselves, and he talked about drunkards and how they ruined families, and he talked about how great it was to be young and full of wild oats that needed sowing, and how great it was to settle down and get hitched and start a family in a safe world. It sure was a performance, all right, and by the end of it he had persuaded those listeners who managed to stick with him for twenty minutes that he was on their side. They all heard what they wanted to hear from his lips, and sort of forgot that he’d said anything else.

  I marveled. That feller Thimble was a shooter of words, and he shot more forty-five-caliber words with plenty of powder behind them than
any other politician I had ever heard. He had thousands more words than Rusty Irons would ever have, and he fired them all that cloudy morning.

  Last on the agenda was Rusty Irons, slim, dressed in ordinary work clothes and not fancied up, mostly because he couldn’t afford any better. Now the thing to know about Rusty is that he can talk anyone out of anything. He could talk an old maid out of her maidenhood. But he can also talk anyone into doing something. He can talk an old scrooge into donating to the home for unwed mothers. He can talk cowboys into going to church. He can talk churchwomen into visiting a sporting house. When I was sheriff, I depended on Rusty’s gift of gab to get more done than six deputies who were good with shotguns.

  So Rusty got up there and sort of scratched his red hair, and told us all that he loved women. “I love women in all sizes and shapes, from little ones to old ladies. I grew up in a household full of sisters, and it just comes natural to me to have a mess of sweet, happy, busy women around, looking after things. That sure was a fine household, because all them girls, they just whipped out meals, ran the carpet sweeper over the floors, and mothered the new babies coming along. I just wish there were a lot more women in the world, and especially in Doubtful where there’s about two males for every female, and nothing comes out even. I always figured, when a place has a woman for every man, then that’s about right; and when there’s a man for every woman, that’s what keeps women happy.”

  I couldn’t imagine where Rusty was going with all that, but it didn’t matter. Rusty was a spellbinder.

  “Now, until there’s equality of the sexes in Doubtful, things just ain’t right for either the women or the men around town,” he said. “When there’s a dance, there’s six young fellows for every eligible girl, but their mamas are telling them these six fellows aren’t proper to dance with because they’re cowboys, and they’re not going to treat a gal right, and settle down and earn some money and have a family and all that. Now that just ain’t right. It’s bad enough that there are so few nice ladies compared to all the drovers and ranchers in Puma County; it’s worse because the mamas of these girls are telling them not to get hooked up with a cowboy or even worse, a sheepherder. No telling what a sheepherder will do if he’s desperate.”