Wyoming Slaughter

by William W. Johnstone

  I sensed, more than saw, that the revolutionaries were fleeing for their lives, climbing on panicked horses, skedaddling on foot, getting out, anywhere, somewhere. Me and Rusty hammered forward, our mounts at a lumbering gallop, Rusty easy in the saddle, tooting away.

  It was a good thing there wasn’t any light, or they would see that Rusty was wearing only his underdrawers. Rusty sensed it, too, and pulled up just beyond what starlight afforded, and began noodling out more bugle calls while I plunged straight into the camp. I pulled that handsome saber out of its sheath and began waving it around, flashing the air with it as I roared in. But the last of the cowboys had fled, howling, into the night. I emitted a rebel yell that might well have carried clear back to Doubtful and headed straight toward the line of panicked horses carrying the county government on their backs. Most of the doomed had not yet had their hands tied, and were hanging onto the hanging ropes or nooses even as the horses plunged out from under them.

  I could see just enough to tell that these people might be hanged after all, so I rode in hard, and with giant sweeps of my saber I severed rope, letting struggling men tumble to earth. I saw my blade slice Sally’s rope, and the count’s, and saw that Lawyer Stokes was struggling, hanging on to the rope for dear life. I thought about it for a moment and decided even Lawyer Stokes needed saving, and sliced the rope in two. Stokes landed in a heap, howling with indignation. I wasn’t so sure the county treasurer should be rescued, but my better nature conquered my instincts, and I sliced the man free. The horses skidded out from under and trotted away.

  I could just make out the count and countess yanking the noose away from their necks, and frenzied officials wrestling with their own strangulation. But there was no time for more. It was getting almost light, and the ruse would likely be uncovered, and the revolutionaries would swarm back in and end the whole charade.

  “Get out of here; get to safety,” I yelled at the count.

  “Safety, you say. Are you daft? Give me a horse! We’re going to whip those scoundrels.”

  Rusty still hung just out of sight in the murk, bugling Boots and Saddles.

  “Where he goes, I go,” Sally yelled.

  “Get the rest to safety,” I yelled.

  But Count Cernix was stalking the horses intended to hang them, caught two, brought them in, and hunted around.

  “There were some rifles lying here,” he said, kicked around, and then yelled happily.

  “Got a repeater and a scattergun. All right there, Sheriff, off we go.”

  “I’ll join you,” yelled Stokes. The man found a horse and mounted.

  A bit more light revealed the county officials knotted about, freeing themselves from their nooses.

  “Get to safety,” I yelled. “The town’s full of cowboys. Maybe two hundred in there.”

  “We’ll rout them out,” Cernix said.

  “Courthouse, Wyoming Street, and all roads out.”

  “We’ll fix them. Time to roll.”

  “Off we go,” Cernix howled, and the howl sent a shiver through me. That man had been in war.

  It had grown quiet. There was no telling where the cowboys had gone. I hoped they had gone straight to their ranches.

  “Rusty, cut that damned bugling,” I said.

  “My lips ain’t what they should be,” he said. “Count, you mind lending me that scattergun? If there’s some fighting in town, it’d be handy.”

  “It’s yours,” the count said.

  The cavalry command rode toward town even as the eastern horizon began to show a line of light blue. I waved the saber around, just to flash some light toward observing eyes. There sure wasn’t much of an army behind me, but it’d have to do.

  “My dear sir, have you any plans?” Cernix asked.

  “Maybe you got some,” I replied.

  “The jail and the courthouse. The citadel of government. The heart and soul of Puma County. Fly the flag.”

  “Which first?”

  “The jail,” Cernix said. “It might yield treasures. But then the courthouse. We’re going to fly the flag by the dawn’s early light, what so proudly we hailed in the twilight’s last gleaming.”

  I had never figured out what all those words meant, but that was fine. They’d hammer the jail and snatch the courthouse.

  “Likely snipers along Wyoming Street,” I said. “Swarmed with them before.”

  “Up the bloody alley, then,” Cernix said. “Scare the daylights out of ’em.”

  “Mr. Pickens, have you a plan?” Stokes asked.

  “I’m thinking daylight’s gonna end our game. So we’ve gotta do her on the sly. I might be dressed like cavalry, but my boots are at Sally’s and daylight will show bare feet, and Rusty’s pants, and the rest of you. Say, there, Stokes, can you tell me my rank?”

  Lawyer Stokes edged his mount closer and smiled. “You’re a lieutenant colonel, Sheriff.”

  “That’s enough to command a regiment,” Count Cernix said. “Very good, sir, we are a regiment.”

  “I’m thinking, let’s sneak in, no bugle, nothing to wake up the world.”

  “Done!” said Cernix.

  “Mr. Sheriff, I’d like the honor of storming the courthouse. I would like it on my résumé that I led the charge, and was first into the citadel.”

  “You got her,” I said.

  “Very well, dear friends, and now, into the breach,” Cernix said.

  We stormed the alley, clopping up three blocks, past the business district, and finally onto Courthouse Square, where the only resistance came from a flock of subversive pigeons.

  “Rusty and me, we’ll take the jail. We’ve been there. The rest, you capture the courthouse. We’ve got the shotgun, you’ve got the rifle.”

  “Farewell, dear friends, and may we meet again,” Cernix whispered, and he and Sally and Lawyer Stokes headed their mounts across the square, while some magpies began squawking.

  At the sheriff office, the door hung open. But I took no chances. Me and Rusty slid along to the side and then swung into the dark aperture, Rusty’s shotgun ready and my saber drawn.

  The place was empty. It had been abandoned in a hurry. There was no one in the cells. There weren’t any keys visible, and no arms, but that would all get squared away. Then Rusty spotted the keys on the wooden floor. And soon we found some shotguns stashed under a cell bunk.

  Me and Rusty smiled at each other.

  “Better help those fellers at the courthouse,” I said. “We’ve got the jail in our pocket.”

  The sky was bluing now, and the promise of a fine summer’s day was at hand. A bird trilled. The city of Doubtful scarcely knew what the night had brought. Me and Rusty slipped cautiously into the courthouse, saw no one, and I thought it might be smart not to surprise anyone equipped with a rifle, so we began shouting and pretty quick found the rest in the courtroom.

  Stokes was hunting for something, which proved to be a Wyoming flag, and this he carried to a staff that projected off the front of the courthouse. He opened the window, ran the flag out, and saluted smartly. It fluttered there in the dawn light, caught by the first rays of the sun.

  “It was a great honor,” he announced. “We have conquered the seat of government. We have driven the foe out. We have restored order. We have rescued Puma County from sedition and rebellion. We have pledged our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

  “We subdued the hosts of darkness. We defeated the armies of the night, armies meant to do great harm to the placid and honorable citizens of the county. We have curbed insurrection, fought against insuperable odds, against an insidious enemy, a fiendish cabal of malignant subversives, whose purpose was to deprive this state and these citizens of a just and good government. And all this was done by the perpetrators for the sake of a small, inconsequential, tax on their holdings, which in their unscrupulous and hollow minds, they conceived as an evil to be extirpated by violent means.

  “Gentlemen, lady, we have carried the day, and may it live forever
in the annals of this city, this county, this noble state, and this glorious nation. I am proud to be a part of it. If my own small contribution to this great restoration is someday honored with a bronze statue on the square, I shall be more than rewarded. I shall be humbled. May my children and grandchildren pause at that statue and whisper, ‘This was his finest hour.’”

  With that, he sat down and wiped tears from his eyes. I felt the same things he did; every person present had felt the breath of death on him only hours before. This was no dime novel; this was bitter reality, which almost swept us all into our graves.

  “Guess you fellers ought to get along home,” I said. “Me and Rusty have a lot to do. There’s roadblocks to look at, and a telegraph wire to patch together, and all. Count, there’s a mess of county officials off somewheres, and I’d like you to track them down. I’d also like you to get ahold of the businessmen around here and get a militia together. No telling whether this here rebellion’s over or not.”

  “At your service, sir,” Count Cernix said.

  “Rusty and me, we’ll come with you to the boardinghouse. I’d like some boots and Rusty would like anything to cover his pretty near bare-naked carcass.”

  We locked up the courthouse and the sheriff office, and slipped back to the boardinghouse, where we found some of the rest, who had intuitively come there for news or safety. The count swiftly took over.

  I was feeling mighty peculiar about wearing that uniform, so I ditched it and got into my regular stuff, with the sheriff badge pinned on my shirt and my feet in my scuffed boots, and that felt much better. I’d get that uniform back to Magee real quick, and tell him how it all worked out.

  I was tired. We all were. We had been up all night. It wasn’t over, either. Who could say what Throckmorton was even now conjuring up?

  “Guess we better check things out,” I said to Rusty, and we rode quietly south, where we found nothing, twisted the telegraph wires back together, and then checked the east, north, and west roads out of town.

  “You can see where they were hanging around. Look at the prints. Look at the horse apples. But it all came to nothing.”

  I nodded. I was wearing out fast, and I could see that Rusty was asleep on his feet. I had one more thing to do, which was to get the uniform back to Magee, along with an explanation. I hoped the haberdasher wouldn’t mind.

  But by the time we got back to Courthouse Square, we found a crowd. All the relatives of the county employees had been talking, and now there were plenty of folks wondering what had happened. But Lawyer Stokes was filling them in.

  “We defeated them, with courage and grace, with intelligence and audacity. We faced doom and responded, and drove the vandals out of our precincts. I am proud of the modest role I played, as the Scourge of the Rebellion, flailing away at dark design, chastising evil, encouraging our troops, heartening those whose necks were in the noose. Yes, friends, I am proud. See that flag flying proudly from the courthouse? I raised it this morning. With my own two hands, I defied gunshot and death and ran that flag out the staff, where now it resides, the legitimate emblem of our fair state. Yes, friends, I led the charge into that very building, against all odds, and now you see the result. Good order, peace, and safety.”

  “Holy cow,” said I. “It’s General Stokes.”

  “I’m going to bed,” said Rusty. “Lieutenant Colonel, you gonna dismiss me?”

  “He wants your seat, Rusty. He’s running for office.”

  “Fine, I’ll resign and you can make me your deputy again.”

  “You can bugle that around town, Rusty. Make it Rally on the Chief.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  It sure was a hot day to ride, but me and Rusty hoped to make the best of it. With any kind of luck, the holdouts would surrender and peace would come to Puma County. I had a mess of warrants in my saddlebag. The perpetrators of the tax revolt had been charged with ten counts of attempted murder, insurrection, kidnapping, and a few more items. Lawyer Stokes had gotten busy and had the paperwork done in record time, which was to say, a week after the great midnight revolt.

  And now Sheriff Pickens and Deputy Irons were en route to arrest the whole lot and haul them in. That was going to be entertaining. Word had filtered into Doubtful that the whole bunch was holed up on Throckmorton’s ranch, and they had seceded from the United States and declared themselves the Shorthorn Republic. The boundaries of this new entity stretched across the north side of Puma County and extended to the Montana line, which made it a fancy piece of real estate.

  I had my old Peacemaker with me, and Rusty a short-barreled scattergun in a sheath, but we didn’t know what sort of army the new Shorthorn Republic had recruited to defend its borders. Word had drifted back to town about all this, especially their new motto: “Give me liberty or give me death.” The Shorthorn Republic had made a flag, too, with a prairie rattler on it and the legend, DON’T TREAD ON ME. I didn’t quite know how the new republic embraced the ranches of all six of the perpetrators, but maybe some sort of land swap had been worked out. But word was that most of the whole midnight army was up there, around a hundred cowboys and their bosses, just itching for a chance to teach anyone a lesson.

  “You think they’re legal?” Rusty asked.

  “Ask any Indian,” I said. “They tried it a few times.”

  “I guess they ain’t. You got any notion what’s gonna happen when we get there?”

  “We take our prisoners back; we get shot down; we get took hostage, or we join ’em.”

  “You’re a card, Pickens.”

  “I wish my ma and pa had given me another name. Who wants to be Cotton Pickens?”

  “I’ve heard that before,” Rusty said. “Man up. Face life. You’re stuck with a bad name. Get over it. Let’s go get ourselves killed.”

  It sure was going to be a scorcher. Not even the magpies protested as we rode by. And the lizards hardly bothered to skitter off the trail. We paused halfway up the county, sucking warm water from our canteens and pissing on some prickly pear. Then we boarded our horses and continued. Critter was in a sullen mood, irate at having to haul a hundred fifty pounds on a blistering day, and he was looking for opportunities to bite me, but all he’d nailed so far was my boot toe.

  “Sorry, you’re stuck,” I said.

  We arrived at Throckmorton’s front gate early in the afternoon, and sure enough, all those warnings were true. There were breastworks thrown up on both sides. Two flags flew. One, a white bed sheet painted with axle grease, said SHORTHORN REPUBLIC, and the other was a red woman’s skirt with that DON’T TREAD ON ME emblazoned, with the rattlesnake coiled at the crotch. There wasn’t a breath of air, so the flags hung limp and impotent like a man at the end of a honeymoon.

  There were a few cowboys behind the breastworks, and they had rifles.

  “Who goes there?” yelled one gent.

  “Pickens and Irons,” I yelled.

  “This is the Shorthorn Republic. You got a passport?”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a paper thing issued by your government. Full of seals and stamps. We need that, and maybe we’ll issue a visa.”

  “Sonny boy, I’m the sheriff, and I’m coming in, and I’m on a diplomatic mission.”

  Rusty laughed. Diplomat, that tickled him.

  “Stay there. I will be right back,” the cowboy yelled. The man hopped a nag, and a few minutes later he returned. “You got to leave your arms off, and I’ll take you in.”

  I unbuckled my gun belt and laid it over the pommel, anchored by the saddle horn. Rusty wasn’t wearing anything, but he just got off his buckskin nag and let the sheath hang.

  “Leave your nags here and walk,” the cowboy yelled.

  Some fellers came out from the breastwork and collected the two horses, and me and Irons started up the gray road with two riders behind us. It was going to be a long walk on a hot summer afternoon, and I hoped there’d be some cider or something when we got up to the ranch house. I rea
lized I didn’t even have the arrest warrants; they were in my saddlebags. But I probably wouldn’t need them.

  Throckmorton’s ranch wasn’t imposing, except that he’d added a pillared portico on front, making it look like a southern plantation ranch. It reminded me of a false-front store, the high front concealing a humble one-story building snaking back from the street. But now some glistening white paint had cleaned the building up, and another Shorthorn Republic flag drooped from a pole.

  In the shade of the lofty portico, some men lounged on wicker furnishings, enjoying the shade. And there was Throckmorton, awaiting us, and armed with shiny pearl-handled revolvers.

  “Knew you’d be coming,” he said. “Welcome to the White House.”

  “This is your government?”

  “It is, and this is the future Throckmorton City. I am the father of my country, and it will be named for me.”

  Me and Rusty stepped into the cool shade and found the rest of the perpetrators there, enjoying mint juleps. There was young King Glad, lounging in a squeaking chair; mustachioed Andrew Cockleburr, sipping on a frosty glass. Rocco Benifice, wearing a flat-crowned black hat and a bandolier. Consuelo “Bully” Bowler, smooth, distinguished, a pencil mustache under flint-gray eyes, and Alvin Ream, ratlike and plainly least of these insurgents.

  “Guess I’ve got to take you in, fellows,” I said. “There’s warrants in my saddlebag.”

  “Your writ doesn’t run here,” Bowler said.

  “This is the Shorthorn Republic, and your law stops at our line,” Cockleburr said.

  “There, you see? You’re out of luck,” said Throckmorton. “But gents, do let us serve you a julep.”

  I suggested some cool water.

  Rusty, however, had other dreams. “Suits me,” he said.

  Throckmorton acted crisply. “Two juleps and a glass of water, too,” he said. “Now, you arrived just in time for the inauguration.”

  “The who?” I asked.