Wyoming Shootout (Gun For Wells Fargo Book 2)

by G. Wayne Tilman

“Thanks. I’ll be behind you as soon as I can. Not a great time for posse formation at midnight in the snow. Only people awake now are drunks in the saloons. They are the last people I want riding behind me armed,” Akin said.

  “It’ll be dawn in four or five hours. Why not wait until then? I will try to leave markers about the direction along the way,” Pope said.

  Akin nodded and Pope left.

  He knew his saddle and saddlebags and bedroll with tarp were at the livery. He went there first and woke the manager up.

  “I have to track prisoners from the jailbreak,” he said.

  “What jailbreak?”

  “The one the explosion allowed about thirty minutes ago. Put my gear on the strongest trail horse you have. I will be back in ten minutes with my rifle and some food, if I can find any.” The man nodded.

  Pope made his way and got the night clerk to go to the kitchen and put together whatever he could take for food. Then, he went to the room.

  “Was it about Hazeltine?” were the first words Sarah uttered.

  “It was. I am going to try to do my specialty night tracking. The livery is preparing a horse. Akin will put together a posse at dawn. You should get some sleep, in case you want to ride with them. Get food from downstairs. Your saddlebags and bedroll are still at the livery. Ask for a tough horse. This is not very nice weather for what we have to do.”

  She reached out and drew him down.

  “Be careful. I will see you on the trail. It’s unlikely you will make contact with them tonight but be careful. Outside of town is virtually wilderness and it’s cold and dark.”

  “I know. Love you!” he picked up his investigative bag with the Dietz lantern and bottle of oil in it and the .45-70 Marlin lever action in its scabbard and went out the door.

  At the desk, he picked up a mystery bag of food. He did not have time to check it. He knew he had coffee and jerky in his saddlebags.

  His horse was saddled and waiting. It was a big dun with a roman nose.

  “I know he’s ugly, Detective Pope. But he has the ability to run most horses into the ground.”

  “One like him is just what I need! Will you give me a bag of feed to hang off the saddle horn?” Pope asked. He got enough for a week, supplementing whatever browse was along the way.

  Pope extracted the Dietz lantern and made sure he had a dry box of Lucifer’s so he could light it. He knew it was already full of oil. He kept his lantern like his guns. Loaded and ready.

  Pope rode off down 17th Street in the direction of travel Akin had indicated.

  He was in his element. A cold night trail against an unknown number of outlaws. He tried not to be overly protective over Sarah. She was tough. But this was a trail most hardened cowboys would find punishing. He would rather have her in the company of Akin and a posse in a few hours.

  After a mile, he began to see relatively fresh hoofprints. It was hard to tell with the wind blowing falling snow, but he thought there may be six sets. He smiled. He could handle six. Handle them just fine! They would not expect anyone to be trailing them tonight. They thought they had a six or seven hour head start on a posse. And he likely, with the .45-70, had power and range on them.

  Pope rode on, content with his situation and enjoying being on the trail again.

  From the spacing of the prints, they seemed to be at a fast trot. He likened the formation to a military one. If he was right, it may not be a good sign.

  He periodically made an arrow out of branches for the posse or used his hatchet o make a blaze mark on a tree.

  An hour later, he thought he had probably gained a bit on them. The last thing he wanted was to ride up on either them or any camp they would pitch.

  Pope guessed the group he was trailing would stop for a quick camp to rest. Riding at a trot in blowing snow was hard on man and beast. He just did not know when they would decide to take their break.

  Reckoning he had the advantage of surprise over them, he found a small grove of trees and stopped for a three or four hour rest.

  Pope saved his Lucifer’s and lit some kindling he found with the flame in the lantern.

  He put the coffee pot on full of snow and melted it for the horse.

  Putting the tepid water in the brim of his Boss of the Plains Stetson, he gave it to the horse. He sprinkled a little feed on the ground and hobbled the horse near it.

  The next snow he melted was to replace canteen water he would use for his coffee.

  Shortly, he had coffee brewing and water replaced in his canteen. He delved into the food bag and found four biscuits, some slices of beef and a chunk of cheese.

  Not bad, he thought as he began to eat. He knew neither he nor the horse needed to eat yet. But his grandfather had taught him to eat and drink when he could on the trail.

  “Boy, you never know when your next chance will be!” the old former mountain man counseled.

  He smiled at the thought of the man, who was not as old really as he imagined as a boy. He was young enough to have just courted and married a woman in her forties.

  This was Israel Pope’s kind of trail. He would relish this as much as his grandson did.

  Pope checked on the horse. The big dun was fine.

  He took the rifle out of its scabbard and put it in his blankets with him and rolled up in both the blankets and a small waterproof tarp.

  He was relatively dry and warm and went to sleep quickly.

  Pope automatically awoke an hour before dawn. He stoked the coals in the campfire and heated his coffee. He ate a now-stale biscuit with it.

  He broke camp, saddled the dun and began trailing again. He chewed on a piece of beef jerky was he rode.

  The sun told him the men were heading northwest. So did the increase in elevation as they approached the Laramie mountain range.

  Pope came upon the horsemen soon. Too soon. They were in a military formation. The man at the front was in his sixties. Israel Pope’s age. Pope knew better than to take him for granted. He was probably the military one. Maybe a Confederate officer. Maybe a guerilla. Or maybe just an old time Appalachian hunter.

  While these thoughts were running through Pope’s mind, the man sensed his presence two hundred yards behind them.

  He turned and drew a rifle from his saddle scabbard just as Pope did.

  “Damn!” It looked from a distance like a big Sharps or Ballard single shot buffalo gun. As much power as Pope had. Or maybe more power.

  Pope snapped the Marlin to his shoulder, aimed at the man’s head and pressed the trigger. He automatically levered another .45-70 cartridge into the chamber. The man fell from his horse, hit in the upper torso with Pope’s Tennessee elevation.

  His men began shooting at Pope with smaller carbines and revolvers. Pope rolled off the big horse and away to protect his mount.

  From a prone position, he aimed at the man whose bullets were getting closer to him than others. Shortly, he would get his elevation right and hit the unprotected Pope.

  Pope had to take him out of the fight.

  He took in a long breath and let half of it out.

  Front sight, on the man, he pressed the trigger slowly.

  Usually men hit, even with a big round like the .45-70, crumple forwards.

  This man flew backwards. The bullet hit him in the head, snapping his body back as it followed the direction of his head.

  The other four, including Hazeltine, mounted.

  Pope suspected there were others there, including the man he shot first who were also named Hazeltine. He was too far away to see resemblances, but this had every probability of a family job.

  As the men rode away, Pope aimed carefully at Cletus Hazeltine. He picked a point three to four feet above where he wanted the bullet to go.

  Hazeltine’s horse veered to the right just as Pope fired.

  Pope was using the newer five hundred grain bullet. It had better ballistic performance than the original army load of four hundred five grains.

  His shot was from
two hundred fifty yards. With the horse changing direction unexpectedly, the five hundred grain bullet hit Hazeltine in the leg and went on to kill the animal.

  The horse fell and Hazeltine fell free without being pinned.

  Pope mounted the dun and rode carefully towards the three downed men.

  He rode with the big Marlin still shouldered and ready to fire.

  A glance told him the first man was dead. The bullet hit him in the upper chest. His eyes were open and staring sightlessly.

  The second man’s condition gave even Pope a shiver. A buffalo gun round to the head is never pretty.

  Hazeltine laid on the ground by his dead horse. He was moaning in pain. Soon, Pope knew, shock would set in and he would lose consciousness.

  “Who are these men, Hazeltine?” Pope asked.

  Through gritted teeth, Hazeltine cursed him for almost a minute then admitted “You killed my daddy and my brother!”

  “I’m sorry about your mount. You are lucky your horse turned or you’d be in hell with them, Hazeltine. Or, maybe not so lucky. You are going to die hard, I’m afraid.”

  “You are sorry about the horse, but not my daddy or brother?” Hazeltine asked.

  “They were a threat. The horse was just an innocent beast carrying an ass. You. Take your bandanna off and fold it into a pad. Push the pad against your leg to help with the bleeding.”

  “Ain’t gonna do not good, Wells Fargo man. You have killed me for sure.”

  “Who used the dynamite?” Pope asked.

  “Go to hell,” Hazeltine responded.

  “Just tell me for the record. It’s not like either of them is going to hang for it.”

  “My daddy would not let me rot in jail!”

  “So, you’re saying he did it?”

  Hazeltine passed out.

  Pope wondered if the three who got away were brothers or cousins. If so, they might double back and try to dry gulch him.

  “But, then again, they were high-tailing it out of here, leaving their family behind in the dust. Not much loyalty there,” he thought.

  He was faced with a dilemma. He had two dead bodies and one which would die soon. He only had two horses in addition to his own.

  Pope was damned if he was going to walk back to Cheyenne so dead outlaws could ride.

  He disarmed Hazeltine and took the canteen off his brother’s horse. He placed it by the man.

  He also removed weapons from the father and brother. He put them in the now-depleted cloth food sack and slung it back on his saddle horn. No need for Hazeltine having a way to kill him if the outlaw miraculously got a pre-death flash of energy.

  Pope rode over to a stand of cottonwoods a half mile away. He cut five straight pieces twelve feet long and three inches thick. He bundled them and dragged them back to where the bodies and one victim were.

  He checked on Hazeltine. He was still alive, though not for long.

  Pope, trained by a mountain man, set out to build a travois to transport the bodies back. If Hazeltine lived, he would ride on the travois. If not, he could go over one horse, while the other towed the travois with his father and brother.

  Building the travois would be easy. Working out a harness to attach it to a saddle horse would be challenging.

  He placed two full-length pieces in a point, then arranged them so the top half was three feet apart and the bottom half was six feet apart. Pope cut appropriate pieces of the lariat on Hazeltine’s saddle and lashed them to provide a base every several feet on the travois. He used latigos from the dead men’s and Hazeltine’s saddles to lash the cross pieces.

  Pope then took two small tarps from behind the saddles and tied them to the cross pieces. He placed the one piece of either side of the end of the travois into the stirrups on what appeared to be the strongest horse. Pope then lashed them tightly so they would not come loose as the horse pulled the body-laden travois over the prairie.

  He dragged both bodies over. Taking the elder man’s coat off, he used it to cover what had been his son’s and Cletus Hazeltine’s brother’s head.

  Pope then tied both bodies securely on the travois. He took a chance Cletus Hazeltine would not need emergency transport.

  Pope was right. When he checked the wounded man, there was no pulse. He had bled to death from a bullet through his femoral artery.

  He appreciated the term “dead weight” when he muscled Cletus onto his father’s horse and tied Cletus’ belt to the saddle horn. He tied the dead fugitive’s his legs together under the horse’s belly. The horse did not like the smell of blood but did not buck or try to dislodge the body.

  Watching over his shoulder in case the other three turned around and came back after him, Pope headed to Cheyenne. He led both horses. It would be a long trip at a walk.

  Before dark, he saw a group of riders coming towards him from the direction of Cheyenne. It had to be the posse. They also had a wagon, probably for supplies and sleeping gear.

  He recognized Sharples, Akin and Sarah in the front.

  She saw him and spurred her horse ahead at a full gallop.

  “Are you alright?” she asked.

  “Nary a scratch.” She looked at the bodies on the horses and travois.

  “He has to be Hazeltine’s father. Looks just like him,” she said.

  “It is. The one with the covered head wound was a brother. Three got away. I think they were family. If they were, there was not much loyalty. They took off as soon as two fell.”

  The sheriff and chief deputy rode up, posse behind.

  “Looks like you had a little set-to,” Sharples said.

  “Hazeltine’s father saw me. I’m thinking from the way he led them and his presence of mind on the trail he was former military. Anyway, he pulled a Sharps rifle. It’s on the travois. I had to take him out. He probably had some range on me.

  The others opened up with everything they had. I killed one and they ran, including Cletus Hazeltine. The piece of garbage left his father and brother lying dead. All he cared about was himself.

  I took a shot at him from several hundred yards and hit him in the leg. It went through and killed his horse.

  First aid did not stop his bleeding. It must have hit an artery. He went into shock. While in shock, he bled to death as I was building the travois to transport him on. Three took off and I have not seen them since.

  He said his father was the one who used the dynamite.”

  “Well, the explosion and who engineered the jailbreak is solved. It also saves Laramie County the time and cost of hanging Hazeltine. The prosecutor might want a brief posthumous trial to close the books.

  I’m not worried about the three who got away. If they didn’t have any more loyalty than they showed, they were probably just along for the ride. They’ll likely get lost on the way back to wherever they came from.

  I’m thinking we should take the gear out of the wagon and put it on the two horses. We can make better time pulling the wagon with the bodies than the travois with the bodies,” Sheriff Sharples finished.

  Akin directed some possemen in transferring the bodies to the wagon.

  They rode through the night and got back to Cheyenne before dinner the next day.

  7

  The sheriff was correct about a posthumous trial. Pope delivered his ballistics testimony and it was used to find Cletus Hazeltine guilty of the murder of EB Carson and the wounding of one of the two Wells Fargo men posthumously. Perhaps more importantly, the testimony and its exhibits showing the bullets and the guns got wide coverage in the press. Hume was as pleased about the ballistics coverage advancing in the minds of prosecutors and citizens alike as he was the treasure recovery.

  The two detectives prepared an encrypted executive summary and a ten-page case closure on the train and stage robberies and shootings and sent it by express to Hume.

  “Well, the world famous and feared partnership of Watson and Pope has closed another one!” Pope said at the hotel restaurant. They had Champagne with di
nner, on their own tab.

  “We surely did, dear John. I still did not like you riding off like Don Quixote in the middle of a snowstorm though.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind. It does not matter. I realize there are some trails you can make better time on alone. I don’t like it, but I accept it,” she said.

  “Look, Sarah. Nobody considers you more an equal than I do. But there are some things you’ll always be better on. And somethings I will. It’s what makes us such a good team. I will always be bigger and stronger. It’s just the way it is. And, I have a lifetime on the trail. Just a fact,” he said.

  Then, smiling, he raised the Champagne flute and offered a toast.

  “To windmills. They don’t shoot back!”

  “He continually surprises me,” she thought, but said nothing as she smiled and touched glasses with a “clink.”

  Later she asked, “Think we can sleep through the night without an explosion or something equally disruptive?”

  “Probably not. It’s cold, snowing and approaching midnight. Why should everybody else be up and not us?” he asked.

  “I need to know something. How in hell do you know anything about Spanish literature?”

  “My grandfather made me read Don Quixote when I was learning Spanish. So, I read it in the original Castilian.”

  “Are you going to continue to surprise me?” she asked.

  “Every single day for the next sixty or so years.”

  “Got any teasers for now?” she asked.

  “Hmmm. Maybe. Did I ever tell you my grandfather is pretty versed on Indian religion?”

  “I am assuming not Hindu,” she said.

  “All but Cheyenne the most. I don’t know where he learned so much, but he promised to tell me one day. He said it was a story which would take time and emotion to tell.”

  “Mysterious.”

  “He was certainly mysterious, all right. Anyway, he believes we all have spirit animals to look over us and guide us. American Indians know about this. Most whites do not have a clue about it.”

  “How do spirit animals square with Christianity?” she asked.

  “I asked him the same question. He said to think of them like the angel on your shoulder. Then, you would not have to worry about a conflict. Seemed reasonable to me,” Pope said.