“You think they see us?” Casey asks.
“Oh, they see us. And the Gatling.” The captain draws his pistol and steps to where all his men, even the itchy fingers atop the hotel, can see him. I drift down to the edge of the station, where the alley leads to the woodshed behind the hotel, and take a position behind the log pile, with the captain and the riders still in view. “No one fires till my signal,” announces the captain steadily. “Those horses touch Main Street, we cut them down.”
The Gatling man flips up the sights, then gives the adjusting knob a single, calculated click. He settles in behind the gun, smoothly caressing the trigger. I wonder how many Indians he has shredded over the years.
The riders pack tighter as they close within a hundred yards. Then, as if suddenly released from its binding force, the huddled form splinters. The horsemen on the edges set off at full gallop, but not toward the jail that holds their leader.
The men break either right or left, skirting the boundary of the town. Each rider keeps his distance from the horse in front of him, vexing any haphazard potshot from a Pinkerton gun. The Gatling man whirls his barrels around to the left, sending his panicked colleagues to the dirt, until he has the station itself in his sights.
“No, you dang ignoramus,” cries Casey.
“Do not fire!” yells the reddening captain. “They are too scattered.”
The bandits stream ahead, cutting two lines, one eastbound, the other heading west, until the town is encircled. They stay at their gallops, shouting and mocking our inferior numbers. I hold the man in blue in my sights as he makes the turn toward me, passing within fifty yards. His eyes fix on me, and as he passes, he points two fingers dead in my direction, acknowledging that this is not our first encounter.
“I have no shot, Captain,” hollers Delmer, whipping the crank gun wildly from side to side.
“I can see that, Delmer. None of us do,” the captain answers sharply. “And they have numbers on us.”
“Do we engage, sir?” calls the voice in the tower.
“We do not,” the captain says, resigned.
A rider at full gallop makes a difficult target. In this revolving perimeter, a clean shot would be the exception, even for trained marksmen, and the bandits know it. As the lines pass each other in opposite directions, the ring tightens, daring us to shoot. I recognize Finn, raising his rifle tauntingly as he passes. And there is Percy, none the worse from when I winged him, standing high in the saddle, a torch ablaze in his up-stretched hand. Others carry flames too, ready to set fire to the tinderbox town at the slightest provocation. Their incessant hooting proves contagious, like the howl of boneyard dogs.
The Snowman starts up from within his cell. “There it is, boys. Ride on! Ride on!”
I feel the hand on my shoulder. “Not today, son. Not unless they come at us,” the captain says, ever proud in defeat. I let the Spencer drop, knowing I could take out two or three of them without a miss. But that might be it for me if they swarmed me afterward. And they surely would.
After a few minutes, their point well made, the man in blue peels off to the east. The rest of the gang fall in behind him. As quickly as they came they are gone, but not without a final flourish.
“Captain! A fire, to the east,” barks the sniper, pointing in that direction.
“What is it?” the captain asks.
The sniper peers through his spyglass, focusing though the waning daylight. “It appears to be . . . it’s a wagon, sir.”
“They torched a wagon?” The captain wonders aloud.
“Boone,” I say. “And the judge.”
I break for Buster, and then remember that it is Storm, the stallion, I saddled this morning. He sees in my eyes, as I approach, that it is time to run and can hardly contain his eagerness.
The Pinkerton men are barely to their horses by the time the stallion and I have made short work of Main Street. Anxious voices rise and fall from passing doorways as Storm’s rhythm churns the dirt below. We bank left after the post office—I smell the smoke through the dusky air. Storm powers up the gentle slope just past town, into the thickening odor of burning oak and singed whitewash. From there, the source of the smoke fills my vision. A quarter mile off, where the trail rises between two cols, a fireball on wheels sways to one side then topples over. Two figures in black, one frailer than the other, do their best to free a pair of panic-stricken geldings from their reins.
To the men’s credit, they get the first horse free as I close to within fifty yards. Seconds later, I jump off Storm and start on the lines of the second horse. Boone’s little pocketknife does a third of the work of my bowie.
“Savages! Bloody savages!” cries the older voice.
“That line there,” Boone barks at me.
“Got it.” I do not need to slap the gelding. He is gone the second my blade frees him.
I turn and take in the two men. The judge, old and unfamiliar with labor, sinks down into the grass, trembling. The captain descends the col, followed by Casey and another man. Boone turns his face, sweat-beaded and blackened by soot, toward his assembled audience.
“We try that sonofabitch at nine tomorrow morning!”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Excerpt from Albuquerque Daily Journal, September 23rd, 1887:
by J. Webber Standish.
Reporting from Caliche Bend,
Navajo Territory.
The trial of notorious outlaw Garrison LaForge, better known as the Snowman, commenced shortly past noon in a cramped public meetinghouse with the honorable Cater M. Haggerty presiding. The trial had been delayed nearly three hours to allow for the prosecutor and public defender, both freshly arrived from Agua Verde this morning, to be apprised of the specifics of the case.
Assisting the prosecution and serving as vice-counsel was the mayor of Caliche Bend, Walter V. Boone, Esq., who presented the majority of the evidence to the jury. A gifted orator, Mr. Boone’s opening remarks lasted nearly ninety minutes and regaled all within earshot the infamous exploits of the dreaded Snowman and the reign of terror, murder, and destruction attributed to him and his associates for the better part of five years across Texas and the territories.
With a gruesome tapestry firmly etched in the minds of the jurors, Mr. Boone soberly laid out the charges alleged against the accused: Armed robbery, unlawful use of explosives to commit a crime, and the cold-blooded murder of Caliche Bend’s beloved lawman, Sheriff David Pardell, who was shot dead as the Snowman and his gang made their escape after the robbery of the Loan and Trust. LaForge was also charged with complicity in the murder of Mrs. Harriet Daubman, who unwittingly happened upon the robbery in progress and was executed.
In stark contrast, LaForge’s attorney, a newly-appointed public defender only three months removed from the bar, spoke for less than a minute. He asked simply for a fair trial and that his client be given access to a clergyman should he desire it.
The lawyer’s name is listed as Royland M. Boone. Public records indicate that Royland Boone is the nephew of Walter Boone, the very man seated at the bench to his right. When the issue of their blood relation was raised by the judge, both Messrs. Boone assured the court that their ability to remain impartial in the eyes of the justice system remained unassailably intact. Satisfied that both men were of the highest probity, Judge Haggerty allowed the trial to proceed without delay—a decision that brought forth hearty cheers from the crowd of vested observers, followed by a swift admonishment for silence from His Honor.
As for the accused, LaForge appeared bored and inexplicably disinterested throughout the presentation of evidence and the scant cross-examination. Heavily shackled by wrist and ankle, with another chain around his waist that never left the grip of Captain Gerald Mulgrew of the Pinkertons, LaForge’s only notable reactions were the occasional smirk and a single, vocal outburst during the testimony of the second and final witness, for which Haggerty threatened to remove him from the proceedings altogether.
Only two wit
nesses were called in the trial. The first, providing the cornerstone of the prosecution’s case, was Francis Wallace, the duty clerk at the Loan and Trust and a man believed to be the only survivor of a “Snow-job.” Mr. Wallace, severely injured in the crime, entered the courtroom courtesy of four broad-backed Pinkertons, who carried him in his bed, complete with quilts and linens, and deposited him before the judge. Despite being bed-bound, even in court, Mr. Wallace wore a Sunday topcoat and gave his harrowing account of the crimes with a stoic dignity—laudable for a man who lost an arm in the demolition of the bank vault.
Mr. W. Boone commended his star witness for his detailed account and then thanked God that Providence had allowed Mr. Wallace to speak in his own, well-timbered voice, now that his hearing had returned. Some ladies in attendance wept as Wallace recounted the brutal slaying of the Widow Daubman.
The second witness, Harlan Two-Trees, a nineteen-year-old (“or thereabouts”) of Navajo descent, is credited with the daring, if not impulsive, capture of LaForge days earlier in the rugged, inhospitable foothills of the Sangre de Cristo—the Blood of Christ—mountain range. The reckless exuberance that inspired the late-night confrontation bears testament not to the young man’s savage bloodstock, but rather to the respectable Christian upbringing afforded him by his benefactors—and his admirable loyalty toward them. The late Sheriff Pardell and his wife, also deceased, raised Mr. Two-Trees after his mother passed, leaving him orphaned at age twelve. “An understandable, blinding quest for justice,” said Mr. W. Boone of the young man’s actions. Before the one true God, the soft-spoken Two-Trees testified that the accused provided an ominous, unequivocal warning that his gang of outlaw associates would bust him (LaForge) from his cell imminently and raze the town in a siege befitting the Book of Revelation.
Closing arguments concluded just before four, with Judge Haggerty sending the jury into deliberation with the solemn task of deciding whether a fellow being shall face the mightiest penalty of all at the gallows.
Well! The gentleman of the gallery had hardly enough time to stretch their legs—indeed the accused had not even been prepared for transport back to his cell—when word came from the foreman that the twelve had reached a verdict. With the spectators hastily returned to their seats (if not still standing in the aisles) and an anxious, humid hush over the courtroom, jury foreman Bennett Whitlock read the four fateful words aloud: “Guilty on all counts.”
Then for a brief moment, the makeshift courtroom transformed into a sort of pirates’ den as robust cheers and more than a few unprintable expletives erupted from the exultant crowd. Fierce gaveling from His Honor brought some semblance of order, while several men, clearly already at the whiskey, were escorted out, courtesy of the Pinkertons.
The prosecution asked that the punishment be meted out at the next day’s dawn, while the defense asked for the customary delays in hope of a pardon from the governor’s office. In the end, it was suggested by none other than Mayor Boone that a compromise be made—the hanging shall take place in three days’ time, at noon this coming Friday. A conclusive fall of Haggerty’s gavel made it so.
Indeed, the tiny hamlet of Caliche Bend has found itself the unexpected center of attention in New Mexico and soon, as word of the verdict will surely spread, all of the Southwest. For a town that recently lost its only lawman, the Bend (as it is locally known) has a worthy steward of order in the Pinkerton Investigative Service. Any prospective perpetrators of unruliness or deviant behavior should take heed at the unprecedented number of private guns now charged with not only securing the condemned, but the general task of civic policing. Your correspondent counted no less than two dozen of the men in black guarding the courtroom, observing from rooftops, and patrolling the environs. Multiple sources report that more Pinkerton men from the neighboring towns of Heavendale and Agua Verde will be arriving in the coming days as the population of Caliche Bend swells considerably in anticipation of the sentence being carried out. The Daily Journal will remain on the scene with regular dispatches.
“‘Dispatches’?” Elbert asks. “I never heard of no patches like that.”
“Means reporting, you blasted dullard,” Merle says, his voice hoarse from reading aloud. He drops the fresh newspaper on the bar and cools his throat with a sip of beer. The incessant hammering from outside, peppered with sporadic orders barked in rapid Spanish, fights for the attention of those of us gathered around him. Big Jack picks up the paper and offers it to me.
“Your name in print. That is something, Harlan. You will want to keep it for posterity, I reckon.”
“Guess I could wipe down a saddle with it,” I say.
“Like heck, you will,” Big Jack says. “I will hang on to it, then. Not every day a newspaperman come to town.”
“I hear he stays over at the hotel. He come in here yet, Merle?” Elbert asks.
“Not yet, but whatever flask he brought with him will not last forever,” Merle says. “He will crave a drop eventually. And maybe a place to dip his pen. Either way, the Jewel can accommodate him.” Merle pours a dab of mineral oil onto a chamois and rubs it into the bar, darkening the wood to a surprising luster.
I have never seen the Jewel this clean. Or this empty. But Elbert looked about to pop with excitement when he bounded up to me on the street, clutching that silly newspaper. He insisted on buying me a beer to accompany the reading of it.
Merle works his way down toward where I sit. “Another round, your highness?”
“You quit that, now.”
“Not often you darken my door. And never at eleven on a Wednesday morning.”
“I am not alone in that,” I say, nodding toward the surplus of available seating.
“Ha! You just wait,” Merle says, pulling an upturned chair from atop a table and setting it on the floor with a courteous wipe of the chamois. “That is why I am cleaning it while I have the chance.” Merle could soak the Jewel with lye and never banish the stale, thick remnants of so much spilled beer, smoke, and vomit enough to appease my nose. “This time tomorrow, you will be stepping over bodies to get to the piss pot.” Merle looks back at me, amending his thought. “Well, not you specifically.”
Jasper Goodhope bursts through the swinging doors from the street. “You fellas got to see this.” I get up from the stool, Big Jack and Elbert following, and push out from the dim environs of the saloon into the bright, clear sunlight.
The sweet scent of fresh-cut lumber from the gallows cuts the day’s dry, dusty air. Mexican laborers crawl about the rising structure like ants, laying boards, driving nails, and coating the street between the Jewel and the gutted bank with a golden flurry of sawdust. Somebody must have thought the damage the Snowman caused should be the last thing the swinging bastard sees before the sack goes over his head. I cannot say as I mind the sentiment.
All at once the Mexicans rest their hammers and turn toward the approaching sound of measured horse steps. The rattle of a wagon swells behind it. “There it is!” cries Jasper, pointing down the street at something not yet in view thanks to the scaffolding of the gallows. “I saw it cresting the ridge from the store. Never seen anything like it.”
The gilded cornices of the coach bob into sight from behind the stacked woodpile, pulled in crisp undulation by a team of four true black Irish Draughts, a frightfully scarce breed in the territory. The only other time I have seen one was when I was a boy. I recall the Irish Draught huffing beneath the saddle of a visiting Army general who had little use for Indians. The thundering power of that Draught has not waned from my memory. Every elegant, obsidian-coated stride of the four horses restates the power and purpose of their meticulous breeding and the noble fortunes that funded it.
The driver’s fine black suit makes him more undertaker than hired coachman. And the gleaming, black lacquered panels of the coach itself support that morbid assumption. But this is no hearse. No corpse could afford such stately and luxurious passage.
“Lordy mercy,” Big Jack says, slack-jawe
d. “That is not any stage I ever seen.”
“Not a stage,” I say. “Private charter. Out of Santa Fe. Says so on the caboose.” I know the others cannot discern the city’s tiny flag painted above the fender.
“We will have to trust you on that,” Elbert says, squinting. The driver pulls the team to a halt in front of the hotel as every available eye in the Bend looks on. What he does next, not one of us has ever seen. His obedient team halted, the man descends from his seat and unlatches a heavy black box from the sidewall. Placing the box on the ground beneath the door, I see that the oddness of its shape comes from the three steps built into it. He inserts two rods into a pair of drilled holes on the side, snaps a third rod between them, and in a matter of seconds has assembled a tidy staircase.
“Well I will be dipped in pig shit,” Elbert says. “A footman. An honest-to-God footman.” We move closer, edging down the boardwalk as the rest of the townsfolk similarly choke forward, compelled by their curiosity.
“Must be the king of England,” Big Jack offers. The driver, now footman, unfurls a handsome parasol and takes his position attentively aside the stairs before touching the door handle.
“Queen, more likely,” I say. No man, no matter how fancy, needs more that his own hat to walk ten yards. The footman gestures back at the hotel, and from within, Cookie appears, scurrying to the coach to receive some instruction from the man. All at once Cookie sets about unfastening the sizable trunks and cases that fill the hold. The coach door opens. A hint of red leather from a fine upholstered bench catches the sunlight. Then the man steps out.
And quite a man indeed. The striking cream-colored suit, impeccably paired to the wide-brimmed hat of the same shade, denotes a traveler cognizant of his rugged surroundings and the sensible tastes of those who inhabit it, while the fanciful buttons and embroidered piping can only reflect what Eastern tailors must call the latest in “European fashion.”
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