“I’ll bet you could beat Butrum. I’ll bet you could kill him,” Green said.
“Green, I said stop it now, and I mean it!” Sue said. “I’m sorry, Mr. Jensen, I don’t know what has gotten into him.”
“It’s all right. As I said, boys are curious about such things.” Matt picked up his hat. “But I really must be going now. And I want to thank you again for a wonderful meal.”
Sue began clearing away the table, but E.B. and Green followed Matt outside. Green retrieved Matt’s horse, and Matt put the saddle back on, then gave Green a quarter. “Your ma and pa wouldn’t take any money for that wonderful meal, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take a little money for your excellent handling of my horse,” he said.
“Gee, thanks!” Green said.
Matt swung into the saddle, then touched the brim of his hat as he looked toward E.B..
“E.B., I thank you again for your hospitality, and do tell Mrs. Fowler of my appreciation for the wonderful meal she cooked,” Matt said. “I hope someday that I can repay you in some way.”
“One never knows,” E.B. said. “You take care now.”
Chapter Eighteen
Not too long after Matt left the Fowler place, he saw a gate stretched across the road in front of him. There were two men watching the gate, which was mounted on a pivot so it could be swung open. One of the men stepped out into the road and held out his hand.
“Where are you headed?” he asked.
“Nowhere. Anywhere,” Matt said. “Wherever this road leads.”
“For you, this road don’t lead nowhere beyond this here gate, without you payin’ a toll.”
“How much is the toll?”
“A dollar.”
“Who is collecting the money?”
The two men looked at each other for a moment, then laughed.
“That’s a dumb question, mister,” the man who had stopped him said. “What’s it look like, who is collectin’ the money? Me and Carver here.” He nodded toward the other gate guard, who was standing just off to one side.
“If you are collecting for the Dakota Territory, I’m afraid I’m going to have to see some authority,” Matt said.
“We ain’t collectin’ for Dakota. We’re collectin’ for Lord Denbigh, and that’s all the authority you need.”
“This is a public road.”
“Not no more, it ain’t. It comes right through the middle of Prestonshire on Elm. That’s Lord Denbigh’s property, and that makes it his road. If you want to pass through it, you’re goin’ to have to pay the toll.”
“I have no intention of paying a toll to pass on a public road. Open the gate.”
“You know what, Bleeker? I think maybe he don’t hear so good,” Carver said as he reached for his pistol. But when he saw a gun suddenly appear in Matt’s hand, he let his own pistol drop back down into its holster. Matt’s draw had been so fast that by the time it registered with Carver that Matt was drawing, he had already done so.
“Take off your pistol belts and hand them to me,” Matt said. “Both of you.”
“Mister, have you gone loco? Do you have any idea who you are up against?”
“I believe this man called you Bleeker, and you said his name was Carver, so, yeah, I know who I’m up against. Now, Mr. Bleeker and Mr. Carver, this is the last time I am going to ask you. Take off your belts and hand them up to me.”
“Lord Denbigh ain’t goin’ to like this. He ain’t goin to like it none at all,” Carver said.
“Who are you, mister?” Bleeker asked.
“The name is Jensen, Matt Jensen.”
“We’ll be runnin’ into each other again, Jensen.”
“I expect we will,” Matt said. “Now, take off those gun belts like I said.”
Bleeker and Carver removed their gun belts and passed them up to Matt. He looped both of them around the saddle pommel. “Open the gate,” he ordered.
With a scowl on his face, Bleeker complied.
“Mister, them guns cost money,” Carver said.
“Really? Take the money out of the toll you’ve collected so far.”
Matt slapped his legs against Spirit’s sides, and the horse burst forward as if being shot from a cannon. Within less than a minute, he was half a mile down the road.
“Are we goin’ after him?” Bleeker asked.
“And do what? We ain’t got no guns. He took them, remember? And even if we did, did you see how fast he drew his pistol? I mean, he was sittin’ on a horse, but still draw’d that gun faster’n anyone I ever seen. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t faster’n Butrum,” Carver said.
“I doubt that. I don’t think there’s anyone faster than Butrum,” Bleeker said.
“Yeah? Well, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a question better left decided between Butrum and this feller. I can tell you true, I ain’t about to go up against him for no dollar. Especially seein’ as it ain’t even my dollar we’d be fightin’ over,” Carver said.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. What did he say his name was?”
“He said his name was Matt Jensen.”
“You ever hear of him before?”
“No.”
“Me neither. Think we should tell Lord Denbigh about it?”
“Hell, no. You know how he is. If we tell him, he’d more than likely make us pay the dollar.”
About one mile beyond where he had been stopped, Matt dropped the pistol belts and guns on the side of the road, then continued on his way. Half an hour later, he saw something that, from this distance, seemed little more than a series of low-rising lumps of clay and rock. As he drew closer, however, the lumps began to take on the shape of houses and buildings, until they finally materialized into a recognizable town. Just on the outside of the town was a sign that read FULLERTON. It gave both the elevation, 1442 feet, and the population, 312.
In his wanderings through the West, Matt Jensen had encountered scores, maybe hundreds of towns like this, so that after a while there was a sameness to all of them. He had never been to Fullerton, but the houses of ripsawed lumber and false-fronted businesses were all familiar to him.
An earlier rain had left the street a quagmire, the mud and horse apples melded together by horse hooves and wagon wheels so that it was now one long, stinking ribbon of slime. There was no rain now and the sun, currently a blazing orb midway through the afternoon sky, beat down upon the manure and the mud, creating a foul-smelling miasma to offend the nostrils and burn the eyes of all who dared to go outside.
On Monroe Avenue, halfway between First and Second Street, Matt saw the office of the newspaper, identified by a sign as the Fullerton Defender. Matt rode over to the building, dismounted, then pushed the door open and stepped inside.
“I know I had more capital f’s than this,” a man was saying as he was searching through his type boxes. “I can’t very well set an ad that says window and door frames without the letter f now, can I?”
“You could spell frames with a ph,” a woman replied.
“Ha. Door p-h-r-a-m-e-s. Mr. Johnson would love that now, wouldn’t he?”
“Here you are, John. Maybe this will help,” the woman said, holding out a box.
“F’s! Yes! Millie, I love you. I would even marry you if I wasn’t already married!”
“What would your wife say about that?” Millie asked.
John smiled. “Oh, I think she would approve.”
John and Millie kissed, then, with a start, Millie pulled away. “Oh,” she said.
“What?”
“It appears we have company.”
John turned toward the front of the room and saw a man standing there, smiling.
“Can I help you, Mister…” John started. Then he stopped in mid-sentence. “I remember you. You are Matt Jensen!”
“It’s good to see you again, Mr. Bryce.” Matt extended his hand.
“Please, it’s John, not Mr. Bryce,” John said as he shook Matt’s hand. “I wasn’t sure you would c
ome.”
“Why not? You asked me to, didn’t you?”
“Yes, it was shameless of me to hold you to a passing remark you made back in Swan, Wyoming, so long ago. But I was desperate enough to eschew all honor.”
“Not shameless at all, and it wasn’t just a passing remark. I meant it. I am well aware, John, that if it hadn’t been for you I might not even be alive today. So whatever I can do for you, I am more than glad to do it.”
“Oh, since the last time you saw me, there has been an addition,” John said. He held out his hand toward his Millie and, smiling shyly, she walked over to join the two men.
“This is my wife, Millie.”
“Oh, after what I just saw and heard, I hope so,” Matt teased.
“A bit of foolishness,” John said, laughing.
“Mrs. Bryce, it is very nice to meet you,” Matt said.
“And I am especially pleased to meet you,” Millie said. “John has talked about you. You made quite an impression on him.”
“Believe me, he made an even larger impression upon me,” Matt replied. “If he hadn’t written that story when he did, I might be dead by now.”
“I’m glad he was able help you when he did. But I think he was wrong in getting you involved with this.”
“Not at all, not at all,” Matt replied. “I meant it when I said if there was ever anything I could do for him, I would do it.”
“Yes, well, the truth is, I really don’t know what you can do,” John said. “I mean, being just one man against a veritable army.”
“Denbigh has an army, does he?”
“For all intents and purposes he does,” John said. “Do you know about him?”
“Only what you said about him in your letter. And I did run into a couple of his men—Bleeker and Carver, I think they said their names were—on the road coming into town.”
“Bleeker and Carver, yes, a couple of his worst, though not the worst. I’m sorry about the toll. I’ll be glad to pay back the dollar it cost you.”
“It didn’t cost me a dollar,” Matt said.
“What? You mean they didn’t charge you a toll?”
“Now that you mention it, I believe they did say something about a toll,” Matt said. “But I convinced them to let me through, anyway.”
“You convinced them?” John looked confused for a moment. Then he understood what Matt was saying, and he laughed out loud. “Ha!” he said. “See there, Millie? This is exactly the kind of person we need around here.”
“John, don’t forget, you just said yourself that Mr. Jensen is just one man up against an army.”
“Yes, but from what I know of Matt Jensen, he’s not your ordinary one man. Yes, sir, I feel a lot better about the situation now.”
“From what you know of him? I thought you only met him that one time,” Millie said.
“True, but I’ve read a great deal about him since then. His name is often in the newspapers, and I am a man who follows the news, as you know.”
“I am glad you have come to help us, Mr. Jensen,” Millie said. “I just hope we haven’t gotten you involved in something that is going to be more than you bargained for in answering John’s letter.”
“I appreciate your concern,” Matt said.
“If you encountered Bleeker and Carver, you already have an idea of what we are up against,” John said.
“I also had lunch with a family not too far from here. The Fowlers. Do you know them?”
“E.B. and Millie Fowler, indeed I do know them,” John said. “And their son Green. They are as nice a family as you would ever want to meet.”
“They told me a little about Denbigh, I expect you will tell me more.”
“What do you want to know?”
“You said he has a veritable army working for him. How many men does he have, do you know?”
“I can’t quote an exact number for you, but when I said he had an army, I wasn’t just talking about the number of men. I mean it is literally an army. He has a lot of rough men, well armed, who don’t actually do ranch work. As far as I can determine, their only purpose is just to intimidate the folks in Fullerton, in the valley, and in the whole county. That’s why neither the sheriff nor Marshal Tipton will have anything to do with him.”
“Does Denbigh do much business with the town?”
“Oh, my, yes. In fact, most of the business the town does is with Denbigh. And because of that, many of the citizens of the town have been perfectly willing to overlook the thing about the toll, afraid they will lose his business. What they don’t realize is that because of the toll, he has squeezed out all the other customers, and he can dictate what he will pay for goods and services, which means he can conduct business on his own terms. I have talked to the people about that, but they are too frightened to do anything about it. So I took it upon myself.”
“That’s why you wrote the letter to me? You were smart to send it to Smoke, by the way. If I hadn’t just happened to drop by Sugarloaf when I did, there is no telling when, if ever, the letter would have reached me.”
“Yes, but I’m not just talking about the letter. I also put out an extra.”
“An extra?”
“Yes. My paper only comes out once a week, but I published a special edition last week so that the paper came out twice—the regular edition and an extra edition.”
“I told him not to do that,” Millie said. “I was afraid for him.”
“Millie, you knew when you married me that I was a journalist.”
“Yes, but I thought you would be writing about church socials, weddings, new businesses, that sort of thing. I didn’t think you would be declaring war on someone like Nigel Denbigh.”
“Be honest, Millie. Did you really think I would just turn my back on it?”
“No,” Millie admitted. “I knew that, eventually, you were going to take him up on it. I guess that courage is one of the things that attracted me to you.”
“Damn, really? And I thought it was my striking good looks,” John said, and all three laughed, somewhat easing the tension.
“I’ll show you that extra,” John said.
John walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a copy of the newspaper, then brought it back to show to Matt.
EXTRA EXTRA EXTRA EXTRA Denbigh Hurting Business
CHARGING TOLLS ON PUBLIC ROADS
Stage Service Suffers
These are the times that try men’s souls. So wrote Thomas Paine at the founding of our country, in his broadside, The Crisis.
We, the citizens of Dickey County, are facing our own crisis now, having found our once idyllic life threatened by the draconian policies of one who calls himself “Lord” Denbigh. By taking possession of land in such a way as to totally isolate Fullerton, the despot Denbigh is squeezing the life from our community as surely as does a boa constrictor who enwraps its hapless victims within its powerful coils.
Denbigh has seized control of a road that was constructed by the Territory of Dakota as a public thoroughfare along which people should have clear and unfettered access. Now, by means of armed thugs, he demands a toll from honest citizens who seek only to traverse this throughway. This inhibits not only personal travel, but business travel as well. As a result fewer and fewer businessmen are willing to engage in commerce with our town, creating higher costs for the most basic items.
After making a careful study of the law, this newspaper editor has determined that charging a toll for passage on a public road, even though that road might pass through private land, is illegal, and to do so is little more than highway robbery. Were a masked bandit to stop the stagecoach and demand money from the driver and passengers therein, he would be no more a thief than is Nigel Denbigh for extracting this unlawful toll. I call upon Sheriff Hightower of Dickey County to show the courage of his profession and put an immediate stop to this robbery. And I call upon all citizens of Fullerton, indeed, upon all citizens of Dickey County, to refuse to do any business with him. Perhaps, by a unifie
d effort, we can remove the heel of oppression from the necks of our citizens.
“A courageous article,” Matt said after reading the story. “What was Denbigh’s reaction to it?”
“After the article came out, he sent me a letter, asking me to meet with him.”
“And did you meet with him?”
“Yes, but it was a waste of time.”
“Why?”
“I had thought by the tone of his letter that we might be able to come to some accommodation. As it turned out, all he actually wanted was to bribe me to stop writing articles critical of him.”
John laughed. “In fact, he actually wanted to buy advertisements in the newspaper, extolling his virtues.”
“How did he take it when you turned him down?”
“He wasn’t very happy about it,” John replied. “As I recall, that was when he asked me to leave.”
“What about the people in town? How are they reacting to your critical articles? Didn’t you say that Denbigh does a lot of business with people in town?”
“Yes, and because of that, I think my articles are making some of the people uncomfortable. But nearly as many appreciate them as are opposed to them.”
“And you are going to continue to write articles that are critical of Denbigh?”
“You’re damn right I am. That is, as long as I can afford to keep the newspaper going. The problem now is, many of my advertisers have dropped their accounts. They say that they do not want to do anything that would offend Denbigh for fear of losing his business. And without their ads, I may not be able to continue for lack of money.”
“How much would it cost for you to continue?”
“I don’t know exactly. I can put out a few more editions, but then I will need new newsprint and ink.”
“Suppose I buy in as a partner?” Matt suggested. “How much would it cost for me to invest in one fourth of the paper? That would still leave you in control.”
“Are you serious?”
Dakota Ambush Page 15