“You’re accusing me of horse stealing, then,” Dan said.
“That and murder,” the stranger said. “You owe me, and it’s pay-up time.”
“I owe you nothing, Rowden,” Dan said, “except the same dose of lead the rest of your thieving bunch got. Give the lady time to get to the hotel.”
“Dan, no!” Adeline cried.
“To the hotel,” Dan said. “Quickly.”
Numbly, she obeyed, and Mitch Rowden stepped out into the street. His Colt was tied down on his left hip, butt forward for a cross-hand draw. He seemed a bit too cocky, like he had an edge, and Dan recalled that two of the rustlers had escaped. Where was the other man? Somehow he had to draw the second man into the fight, buying a few seconds before Rowden could draw and lire. Firing to his extreme right, he would have to snatch the Colt from his left hip and make a hundred eighty degree turn. Dan judged the other man would be inside the second saloon tent or on the farthest side, where he had only to step around the corner. Rowden seemed in no hurry to draw, and when there were twenty-five yards between them, Dan made his move. He threw himself as far to Rowden’s right as he could, drawing his Colt as he went. Belly down, ignoring Rowden for the moment, he saw the second man step out from beside the tent, leveling his Colt. Dan shot him once and the man stumbled back against the tent. The move had caught Rowden off guard, and his first slug flung dirt in Dan’s face. Dan’s lead slammed into Rowden’s shoulder, staggering him. Rowden tried to raise the Colt but could not, and the lead tore into the ground at his feet. Dan shot him again and he dropped the Colt. He stumbled backward until his knees gave out, and he slumped in the dirt street before the tent saloon. Men boiled out of the tent saloons.
“God Almighty,” one shouted, “I never seen such shootin’. They was goin’ to ambush him, and he kilt ‘em both. Hey, mister!”
Daniel Ember didn’t hear them. He holstered his Colt and started for the hotel, but Adeline wasn’t waiting. She ran to him and he caught her up in a bear hug. They walked on to the hotel, neither of them looking back.
Dodge City, Kansas. Sunday, April 15, 1871.
Amid much hoorawing, Dan and Adeline returned to the herd. Dan wasted no time in calling the entire outfit together.
“End-of-track is a hundred and forty miles east of here,” Dan said. “I’m proposing the we decide how much of the herd we want to sell, and drive them to the railroad, instead of waiting for it to come to us. Driving the cattle directly to the railroad, we can find a buyer in Newton. The rails have already passed through there. Mind you, this is not something you have to do. You can sit here and wait for the railroad and the cattle buyers to reach Dodge, provided you have your share of the money we need to pay Chato and his riders. Me, I need to sell some cows.”
“It’s decision time, then,” Wolf Bowdre said. “I aim to sell half my herd, keepin’ the rest to start me a ranch, but I don’t want it even close to here. With the railroad comin’, there’ll be farmers in droves.”
“Let’s make it easy on everybody,” Dan said. “I propose we drive half the herd to Newton, sell them, pay off Chato, and divide what’s left equally among us. Likewise, we’ll equally divide the rest of the herd, and each of you can take it from there.”
“Where do you aim to take your herd?” Sloan Kuykendall asked. “I don’t aim to be meddlesome. But we all been together for so long … ”
Dan laughed. “We’re an outfit. Wolf Bowdre and me are taking our cows north, to Dakota Territory. We kind of like that Circle Star brand. With enough cows, all of us usin’ that common brand, we could have us some kind of ranch. What do you reckon, Wolf?”
“I’d welcome any man from this outfit that wants to take the trail north,” Bowdre said. We’re all Texans, ain’t we?”
There were shouts of approval. The Circle Star would ride together ...
*It happened during the winter of 1886-87. The temperature dropped to sixty degrees below zero, and in the plains states more than twenty million cattle froze to death or starved during the blizzard, which lasted many days.
*Wife
EPILOGUE
Clay Allison was born in Waynesboro, Tennessee, in 1840. Allison joined the Confederacy shortly after the outbreak of the war, serving in various Confederate outfits. After the war, Clay and his brothers moved to Texas. Allison cowboyed for a number of outfits, including Charles Goodnight’s, and established a reputation as a hard drinker, mean with his fists and fast with a gun. Allison could be a gentleman, but he had a cruel, sadistic streak, often abusing the corpse of a man he had killed. Strangely enough, he didn’t die by the gun. He fell from the box of a freight wagon and the huge front wheel broke his back. He was just thirty-seven.
Four years before his death on the Washita, Cheyenne chief Black Kettle had survived the infamous massacree at Sand Creek, Colorado Territory. Colonel J. M. Chivington, a former Methodist minister and commander of the Military District of Colorado, led the attack on November 30, 1864. Chivington reported five hundred Indians killed. Actually, only 123 died, ninety-eight of those women and children.
In September 1874 the army broke the back of the Indian rebellion. Colonel Ronald MacKenzie was sent specifically to subdue Quanah Parker and his band. MacKenzie and his soldiers attacked a camp of Coman-ches, Cheyennes, and Kiowas in Palo Duro Canyon, on the headwaters of the Red. Fourteen hundred horses and mules were captured, and MacKenzie ordered them all shot. It was too much. One by one the hostiles surrendered. Quanah Parker and his band held on until the last, giving up in 1875.
Thirty-four-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker was welcomed back by the whites, but her tragedy didn’t end. Repeatedly she ran away, seeking her sons. Four years after her return to civilization, her little girl died with a fever. Cynthia Ann never recovered, and starved herself to death.
The Masterson family moved to Wichita about 1867. Bat and his older brother Ed came to Dodge City and took a grading contract with the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. Bat later went to Texas to hunt buffalo, and on July 27, 1874, fought Quanah Parker and his Comanches at the battle of Adobe Walls, in the Texas Panhandle. Masterson was born in 1853, in Quebec, Canada, and died in New York in 1921. In his time, he worked as a farmer, laborer, army scout, buffalo hunter, gambler, saloon owner, law officer, gunman, sportsman, prizefight promoter, and finally, as a sports writer. Despite the legends and tall tales surrounding his life, there is a record of Bat Masterson having taken part in only three gunfights. He killed just one man, and wounded three others.
The Dodge City Trail Page 32