by H. H. Knibbs
When he heard the warning cry, Ben returned the shotgun to Billy. The two ran toward the railroad tracks. Ben explained later that he hoped to shoot it out in the open, without danger to bystanders.
Alongside the depot, on a haycart used also to carry firefighting equipment, Ben and Billy took their stand. Aboard this improvised turret, they commanded the square, as well as the approaches from the other side of the tracks. A great hullabaloo of shouting and cursing ensued, and Ben and Billy defied the whole town at this point. The other Texans purposely stayed inside the hotel. They had no desire for a battle at this moment. If there was to be one, the Grand Central might be a good fortress against an armed mob. Meanwhile, they felt confident that Ben could take care of the situation.
Ben blamed Morco and Brocky Norton for inflaming the people of Ellsworth, because Ben had on several occasions stopped them from “rolling” drunk Texans’. While Ben and Billy were on the cart, Norton and Morco poked their heads out from behind doors. Ben fired twice with his rifle. The two shots were near-misses, hitting the door-casing, but so close that Norton and Morco withdrew from combat for the time being.
Now heeding Sheriff Whitney’s advice to stay put, the police officers watched from inside Lentz’ saloon as Whitney strolled across the square. Whitney prided himself on keeping the peace without resorting to armed force, and he had done a creditable job of it. He carried no weapon now as he walked straight toward the Thompsons and said:
“Boys, let’s not have any fuss or difficulty.”
Ben later said of Whitney:
“He was my friend and I esteemed him highly. He was an excellent officer, impartial, merciful and brave.… I told him how the matter occurred, and stated to him my belief that it was the intention of Morco and Norton to murder me.”
“Put up your guns, Ben,” Whitney said, “and I’ll see that you are protected.”
“I’m satisfied,” Ben said, and invited Whitney for a drink at Brennan’s, adding he would persuade Billy to put away his gun.
The three men headed for Brennan’s, Billy in advance, Whitney next, and Ben bringing up the rear and covering the plaza with his rifle. Billy and Whitney had already gone in through the swinging doors, and Ben was following, when a cattleman called to him:
“Look out, Ben, here they come with their guns!”
Ben swung around and discovered Happy Jack, pistol in hand, running toward him. Ben raised his rifle and went to meet Happy Jack. The policeman stopped at Beebe’s store, and shouted to Ben:
“What the hell are you doing?”
Whitney rushed out of Brennan’s, walking rapidly toward Ben and asking, “What’s the meaning of all this?”
At that moment, Whitney heard a yell, turned and saw Billy breaking through the swinging doors and coming forward with his shotgun cocked and raised high overhead. He swung it around in a half-circle, as Whitney, trying to step aside, shouted:
“Don’t shoot…it’s Whitney.”
Billy’s shotgun flashed and roared, flame bursting from both barrels amid a thunderous boom that bounced in overlapping echoes from the hollow wooden buildings around the square.
During the shooting, Happy Jack was dashing into Beebe’s store.
Whitney spun around as the full charge of buckshot hit him high on the right side: arm, shoulder, and breast.
“Oh,” said Whitney, “I’m shot,” and he doubled over before dropping to the boardwalk.
Ben ran back toward Whitney, who was curled up on his side, blood gurgling from his nose and mouth and soaking his shirt.
“Send for my wife,” Whitney said, “I have received a bad shot…
“My God, Billy,” said Ben, “what have you done? You have shot our best friend.”
“Jesus Christ, what luck,” Billy said, “I aimed for Happy Jack…
“Better git!” Ben said.
Billy ducked back into Brennan’s saloon, and out the back to Jake New’s place, and then over to the John Livery Stable.
Ben held officers and townspeople under the threat of his rifle. He slowly backed away, as a group moved in to lift Whitney and carry the badly wounded man home. Ben went to the Grand Central, and then to the livery stable, where Billy’s horse was being saddled. Neil Cain held the horse. Ben took the shotgun and gave Billy the rifle and a six-shooter. Cad Pierce handed Billy a wad of bills, about a hundred dollars.
“Get to your camp and stay out of town till we know how bad Whitney’s hurt,” Ben told him.
Instead, Billy rode around town shooting off the pistol in the air, a detail on which Ben Thompson’s version of the shooting jibes with that of the Ellsworth Reporter. The newspaper described the encounter as follows:
“The trouble originated over a game of cards, the players being well filled with whisky. One or two blows were struck and the parties rushed for their guns… Ben and Bill Thompson obtained their arms, went into the street and called out: ’Bring out your men if you want to fight!’ At this time, Mr. Whitney came over to them and asked them to stop their fussing. They all started toward Brennan’s saloon. Ben remained outside, walking up and down in front, with a rifle in his hand. Presently he pointed his rifle up the street toward Beebe’s store to Happy Jack, who was standing in the doorway, and fired; the ball hit the door-casing, which saved Happy’s life. The next moment Bill Thompson came out of the saloon with a double-barreled shotgun which he pointed at Mr. Whitney, who made two attempts to get out of the way before he shot, and said: ’Don’t shoot!’ Thompson fired, and Whitney received the charge. He whirled around twice, screamed out that he was shot, and called for his wife. Friends rushed to his aid and carried him home.
“After the shooting, Bill Thompson went back into the saloon, and soon afterward went across the street on horseback toward the Grand Central. Ben met him there, gave him a pistol, and said, ’For God’s sake, leave town, you have shot Whitney, our best friend.’ Bill replied that he did not give a damn; that he would have shot if it had been Jesus Christ!
“He then rode out of town, cursing and inviting a fight. Ben Thompson retained his arms for a full hour after this, and no attempt was made to disarm him. Mayor Miller was at his residence during the shooting; he was notified of the disturbance, and he went immediately to Thompson and ordered him to give up his arms, but his advice was not heeded.”
The mayor then discharged the whole police force, the newspaper added. “Thus,” it continued, “the city was left without a police, with no one but Deputy Sheriff Hogue to make arrests…
Meanwhile, some of the Texans had emerged from the Grand Central, one at a time, cautiously, the fingers of their pistol hands spread ready for instant action. Cad Pierce, Neil Cain, George Peshaur were among those who stood out front watching the meeting between Thompson and Mayor Miller.
Whitney’s friends were gathering in the plaza, too, and among them were members of the newly formed Vigilantes.
Forty or more armed Texans waited inside the hotel. An attack on Ben, or a move by Ben to start the ball, would blaze the Texans’ nervous pistols into deadly action. Trigger fingers itched among the anti-Texans, too. Twilight settled over the opposing groups of armed men, waiting grim and tense.
For the moment, there was discussion instead of shooting. After a long talk, Ben consented to give up his gun if Happy Jack, Norton, Sterling, and other enemies were also deprived of their weapons. An agreement to that effect was reached. The immediate hostilities had ceased and there was a relaxation of tension. But there were no illusions on either side that it was anything more than a temporary cease-fire.
Ben went to the mayor’s office and gave up his shotgun, pleaded not guilty to a charge of assault upon Happy Jack with a deadly weapon, and was released under bond.
Whitney’s friends began forming a posse to find Billy Thompson. That same night, Ben was sitting in a back row at the theater, watching a perfo
rmance of “She Stoops To Conquer,” when Jim Langford, a Texas cowman, tapped him on the shoulder. They went outside, and Langford whispered to him:
“Billy’s back in town.”
CHAPTER 34
When Billy Thompson rode out of the Ellsworth plaza, firing his pistol and challenging the whole wide world, he did not leave town right away. Instead, he had turned his horse to Nauchville, and in that district reined up at a house familiar to him. There, Molly Branahan had hung out her shingle, so to speak, and was available for professional consultation. He continued drinking, and after a visit of several hours he wandered away toward the open prairie. Somewhere out there, his boot heel hooked into a gopher hole, and Billy toppled over. He was too drunk to get up, and stretched out on the ground, scaring up a small ground owl. Sleep came like a mallet blow on the head, and Billy blacked out.
In the still, starry night, Billy Thompson awoke to the sounds of fiddle music and tired, droning chants, reaching him from far across the prairie. He raised himself on his elbows to a sitting position, shook his head a couple of times, and listened more intently. He recognized the see-saw lullaby of the trail-camp, the cow-soothing song that helped keep a herd quiet and less inclined to stampede. He supplied the words he could not make out in the distant sounds that reached him:
“Sleep, little dogie, sleep, sleep.
“Bye-a-bye, dogie, sleep, sleep, sleep…
Billy got up, loosened his shirt collar with the forefinger of his left hand, and brushed his trousers and shirt with his right hand. He felt for his pistol. It was gone. His pockets were empty. No money, nothing. He poked around in the grass with his boot, going through the motions of looking for his missing six-shooter and cash, but knowing they weren’t there. Then he started off toward the sound of the chant, but it had stopped, and he lost his bearings completely.
Billy wandered around the prairie, gradually coming-to as he sucked in the refreshing night air. His head throbbed and his eyeballs ached. The hangover had left him feeling like a squeezed-out sponge. He seemed to be dried and withered, his bones brittle and powdery. Two or three hours later, as his head began to clear somewhat, he caught a glimpse of some lights far away, and headed for them. Soon he was slouching into Ellsworth, and then a sudden panic seized him.
Through the brain-fog, he remembered that there had been trouble; shooting. He thought he had shot Sheriff Whitney, and then dismissed it as impossible. But soon bits of talk, brief flashes of movement crowded in on his consciousness as he picked his way carefully, back flat against alley walls, to the Grand Central. He had to see Ben and find out what had happened. Unobserved, he got to the room he and Ben occupied. Then he got word out to his brother.
Back at the hotel, Ben told Billy again that he did not think Whitney was badly hurt, since the charge seemed to have struck him quite high, up around the right shoulder. But he advised Billy to stay out of town until things calmed down, and gave him what reports he had heard about a posse being formed, and about the Vigilantes.
Before daybreak, Billy and a friend of his who worked for Frank McGee pulled out of Ellsworth and holed up in camp. Ben heard from Billy, through one or another cowhand, the next day, and the next, and sent word to Billy suggesting that the younger brother lay low. On the fourth day, Ben’s message was that Sheriff Whitney had died the night before, after lingering seventy-two hours. The shot had riddled Whitney’s lungs, and the internal hemorrhages had set up incurable complications. The next thing Ben heard from the camp was that Billy had headed south on The Trail, toward Texas, with a group of cowboys.
In the meantime, Ben Thompson had appeared before Mayor Miller to answer the charges against him. But Happy Jack Morco, no longer an officer of the law, refused to appear as a witness against Ben, and the charges were dismissed.
Ed Hogue was appointed city marshal, and Ed Crawford was added as a policeman. The official guardians of the peace, however, were mere figureheads at this juncture. Law enforcement was taken over by the newly-formed Vigilantes as soon as word got out of Sheriff Whitney’s death. They swept aside those in town who had advised caution so that the Texans would not take their cattle business elsewhere. Cattle money or no, the town was now roused to fury against all Texans. The bravado of Cad Pierce, who had offered a one thousand dollar reward for the capture of the posse after Billy Thompson, was the last straw.
Gambling man Ben Thompson, who would stand up against any man in a fair gunfight, or against a half-dozen men, had no liking for the kind of war that was shaping up in Ellsworth. This, he saw, would become gang murder, a program of extermination in which there would be no intention of giving the victim an even break, or any kind of break at all. It would mean retaliation in kind, a vendetta or feud in which murder would be piled senselessly on murder. Ben never ran from a fight, but this sort of thing was not his dish. The Vigilantes held a strong hand and were staking the limit on it. Ben weighed the odds. As a poker player, he made it a practice never to call a bet. He either raised, or dropped out. He was in no position to raise now, nor were the Texans. Ben advised them all to do what he planned: get out right now.
Ben left town in the morning. That same night, the Vigilantes raided the Grand Central hotel, the Texans’ headquarters. They seized every pistol and gun there, and repeated the raids at other places where Texas guns were customarily parked.
In Kansas City, Ben got a telegram from his Texas friends, asking him to buy thirty or forty outfits of pistols and ammunition and send them, or bring them, to Ellsworth. Again, Ben advised against this move, and urged the Texans to leave town. Some heeded his counsel now, but others stayed on.
The telegram to Ben Thompson was disclosed to the Vigilantes. Every train from the East was searched as soon as it stopped. A telegram was sent to Salina police, asking them to intercept Ben Thompson, expected on the Kansas City train. But Ben was not on the train. He stayed put, and sent a final word to his friends there to clear out.
CHAPTER 35
The Ellsworth Vigilantes instituted a system of “white affidavits” to order unwanted Texans out of town. The affidavit was a sheet of paper with skull and crossbones and a coffin drawn on it. If it was ignored, the man threatened would be marked for seizure and hanging. A nightly patrol of twenty or more heavily armed men roamed the streets to enforce the affidavits and to continue the search for weapons.
Cad Pierce, John Good, and Neil Cain heard that white affidavits had been ordered for them. Cain got confirmation from Happy Jack Morco, who brought up two six-shooters and held them against the cornered man. Cain pleaded, but the chances are that his begging would have been in vain had not City Marshal Hogue intervened. Cain found a horse in a hurry and galloped away.
On the afternoon of August 20, Cad Pierce approached Marshal Hogue and inquired if it were true that an affidavit was out for him.
“I haven’t heard of it,” Hogue said, “but there are some for a few of the other boys.”
“Well, I want to give Happy Jack a talking-to,” Pierce told Hogue.
“No use, Cad,” Hogue replied, “there’s been too much talk already.”
Policeman Ed Crawford, standing, nearby, walked over to Pierce and said:
“Yes, a damn sight too much talk, bad talk on your side.”
Pierce started to reply, but Crawford continued:
“What did you say yesterday when you had that shotgun in your hand? You said this gun had killed one shorthorn son-of-a-bitch, and that it cost a hundred dollars and now you wouldn’t take two hundred for it.”
Again Pierce tried to speak, but Crawford went on:
“What is it you say? If you want to make a fight this is as good a time as any.”
Crawford drew his six-shooter. Hogue said Pierce put his hand back as if to reach for a pistol. Other bystanders said Pierce stepped back when Crawford pulled his revolver.
‘There’s no white affidavit for you,�
�� Crawford said, “but here’s a red one.”
Crawford’s six-shooter blazed point-blank at Pierce’s head. The Texan reeled, stunned, then ran toward Beebe’s store, and turned momentarily as if he might want to fight back. Crawford fired again at close range, and Pierce, now blinded by the blood from his head wound, staggered inside the store. Crawford was in close pursuit while Hogue and some of the Vigilantes mounted guard at the door. Inside, the Texans heard later, Crawford overtook Pierce as he fell, and leaned over, beating the wounded man about the head with his pistol. Pierce lived only a few minutes after that.
The cow camps around Ellsworth blazed with renewed Texas wrath when news of Pierce’s killing got about. The men talked of burning Ellsworth to the ground. In town, the patrols were increased. Everybody was searched for arms. More men were ordered to leave.
The Ellsworth paper commented on the Pierce slaying:
“We cannot but deprecate such scenes of violence as were enacted yesterday, but the battle had to come off. Whitney has been partly avenged.”
Another shake-up was ordered in the police force. Happy Jack was dropped from the rolls, and Charley Brown supplanted Hogue as marshal. Morco left on the Kansas City train, but was taken off at Salina on telegraphic request from the Ellsworth police. Brown charged that Happy Jack had taken along two pistols which had been seized from John Good. Morco refused to give up his arms to the Salina police, and found a more or less sympathetic attitude there. He was permitted to keep the pistols. Brown tracked him down and demanded their return. Happy Jack drew to shoot. Brown fired first, the bullet piercing Morco’s heart. As he toppled, a second bullet plowed into his skull, and he fell, dead before he hit the ground.
Ed Crawford fled from Ellsworth immediately after the shooting of Cad Pierce. His absence, many believed, prevented the long-brewing armed clash between a force of Texans and the Vigilantes. By then, too, many of the Texans were hitting the trail back to Texas. The season was well along. Many had spent all their money. Some stayed on with the herds for the winter grazing.