by Bruce Graham
By the time I arrived back in Trinidad a letter was waiting for me withdrawing my hire from the Casper, Wyoming, firm, since the sheriff had tracked down and scattered or killed the rustlers. But several more invitations were on hand. The first one I accepted was from a small town in the Colorado foothills that was faced with being shut down because a landowner through whom the town’s water line ran from mountain springs was threatening to cut the line unless the town paid an exorbitant amount. The plea was for help, but the 49 signers of the letter said that the most they could afford to pay was five dollars apiece for as long as the job lasted. I calculated that the town was only two days’ travel each way, which meant that if I was able to resolve their problem in two days my pay would just about cover my daily rate. I wired them that they could expect my help within a week, and not to look for me, that I’d know what to do.
I arrived on horseback two evenings later and spent the night near the spring. In the morning I rode around the buildings of the troublesome rancher, making a point of being seen but not speaking to anyone. I went to the town where I found the author of the letter to me and learned the details. The settlers of the town had found the spring and built the cistern and laid the pipe to the town’s storage tank. The rancher, from somewhere out East, named McMurray, built his buildings and developed his own spring, but it wasn’t enough for his spread. He discovered the town’s spring and was angry that it had been put in without his approval. A couple of arguments with the town people led to the rancher giving “thirty days for you people to take it out or I’ll just run the pipe to my place.” The thirty days were almost up.
“Your town site is patented?” I asked.
“It was patented to the Corwins. They laid out the town and sold lots to all of us.”
“You don’t have a patent to the place where the spring is, or the pipe line?”
“No, nobody gave it a thought.”
I left and followed the pipe line to the spring. The spring was well out of sight of the ranch buildings. I sat and looked out over the verdant fields and the just barely visible tops of the town’s buildings a mile away. The situation was almost the same as the one that I’d heard discussed by several old timers at the Bartonsville Store at least a dozen years before. Asa Bigelow’s farm was about a mile east of Bartonsville on the flat and enjoyed a spring on the Wiley farm. The deed to the spring and water line was vague, and the old line was soapstone from the Goodrich Quarries in Grafton. When the line began to leak, Asa tried to put in a new line, but old Daniel Wiley wouldn’t allow it. For the life of me I couldn’t remember how, or if, Bigelow and Wiley worked it out or didn’t. But I decided that there was more than one way to skin a cat.
I rode back to the ranch buildings and walked my horse into the yard where several ranch hands were about their business. I said nothing to any of them, but strode directly to the front door, my pistol clearly hanging low. I pounded on the door.
A young man in work clothes answered the door.
“I want to see the owner,” I said in a low voice.
“He’s busy right now.”
“He’ll be a lot busier if he doesn’t see me now.” I pushed past him. I called out: “McNeill, you need to talk before the shooting starts.”
A middle-aged man in a suit and shoes appeared in a doorway. He stared at me. “What’s this all about?”
I went to the fireplace and grabbed a log from a pile alongside it. I threw the log onto the fire. “McNeill, sit near the fire and we’ll talk. I’m chilly.” I sank into one of two chairs angled toward the fireplace.
“Who are you and what right do you have---.”
“That’s what I’m here about, rights,” I said, arms spread, hands open. “I’m hired by the town to work out your problem and I don’t want to have to do it with lead. Now, sit down.”
The man waved a hand. “Go ahead, Tom. Get on with the branding.” He shuffled toward me. “What do you know about my problem with the town?”
“I know the town’s side. I need to know your side if I’m to help both of you avoid bloodshed. Please, sit.”
The man stood in front of the chair. “It’s McMurray. And I have a dozen hands outside who’ll throw you out.”
“You have a problem with a few hundred people in a nearby town taking water from a great, gushing spring over a mile from your buildings. They need the water and just want to keep it. Your hands don’t want to be killed in a range war. What is your problem?”
“They have no right to the spring, the water or the pipe line. And I want the water. That’s it.”
“Do you know how long the works and pipe have been in place?
“I don’t care, they don’t have any right.”
“First off, I’ve killed a half dozen men in fair fights with this iron.” I tapped the grip of my pistol. “None of your hands have any skill with guns. If they try to fight it out there’ll be a bunch of them dead. I’ll be gone and you’ll have to live with it. Second, the right or wrong here should be decided in court, and that’s a far distance from here. Time you spend there and going back and forth isn’t going to help your spread here, and the cost of lawyers is pretty big. Look, how about I talk them into simply letting you have equal shares of the water with them and both you and the town have a reservoir, you run your pipe and they’ll put in a new one if necessary. And I go away and everybody has peace.”
“But they don’t have any right.”
“Do you know what prescriptive rights are?”
“No. Do you?”
“Before I became a gunfighter I was in law school. First year we study real estate law. Ten years of peaceable possession gives permanent rights. They tell me that this water system was put in before the War.”
“So I hear.”
“Add up the years.” I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. “I make my money fighting and killing. You make yours ranching. I think that if each of you give some you both gain some. By the time you die, thirty, forty, years, the world will change and you’ll look at this as not very important.”
The silence for many seconds told me that McMurray was ready to deal.
“I won’t agree to anything in writing.”
I knew that I had him. “I’ll get them to accept your word. After they put in the new line and you build your line and reservoir, you’ll learn to get along.”
The man stared into the growing fire.
“It’s a lot like this fire. When it dies down and goes out it won’t look like there was ever one there. What do you say?”
“I’ll get a crew in here to put in my pipe next week.”
“And they’ll do the same.” I stood up and extended my hand.
McMurray took my hand in a firm grip. “Pax vobiscum”
I went out and the town leaders were more than glad to agree to my terms. I wrote out the understanding, without signatures, with one copy for the town and one for McMurray.
I’m not one to look back with satisfaction, let alone pride, on much of my work, but thirty-three years later I passed through the town en route to where I anticipated a violent showdown. The community had grown to at least five times its earlier size, while the McMurray ranch had prospered and grown partially around the town. The elder McMurray was dead and buried in the town cemetery. Most of the town elders with whom I had dealt had also gone to their reward, or whatever.
But a wizened man sought me out when he heard that I was in town. “You’re Gould, the peacemaker. My uncle was on the council when you worked out the deal with McMurray. He told me about it. Walk with me down the street.” He led the way by faltering steps to a brick building labeled “Gould City Office Building.” Alongside the door was a tarnished metal plaque that read: “Dedicated to one whose wise counsel helped this community to grow and prosper in peace.”
I was speechless.
“There’s a McMurray Park at the other end of town. Every year we have a festival, and the son who now owns the spread and his children and grand
children celebrate with us. But we still don’t have anything in writing about the water system.” The man smiled. “Nobody seems to be worried about it. And we have you to thank.” He held out a wrinkled hand.
I took his hand in a long gesture of goodbye.
Leaving the town, I wondered who was more appreciative: the community’s citizens or I for having the pleasant memory of having been a peacemaker instead of a killer, for once.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Over the years the sort of jobs on which I worked was varied, and not often with the same sort of outcome as the McMurray ranch project. Many of my clients called out to me for justice and fortunately were able to support their pleas with cash. Others simply wanted it their way without a clear claim for justice, and unless the request was clearly without morality on its side, the cash was enough to get my allegiance. Many situations did not call for naked force, but often enough my cut holster and technique of jumping aside spelled the secrets to survival, sometimes with a bit of luck and skill. When I was not currently hired, I pursued wanted desperadoes, with the rationale that it wasn’t my role to determine guilt, but to apply the law by bringing them in; bounty hunting it was called, and it could be very remunerative.
One such episode was in Holbrook, Arizona, during its early days when it was beginning its growth to the lawless bastion of the Hashknife Outfit, where I was after a back shooter named Westerman. I knew that he frequented the biggest saloon in town. He was wanted for dry-gulching two drovers in the Phoenix area at the behest of sheepherders. I found him at the faro game and some in his liquor. I called him out while behind the large potbellied stove. Westerman jumped up and couldn’t see me, but fired his big pistol. A man at the bar fell with a leg wound and his partner blazed away. I did the same, and Westerman keeled over with several bullets in vital areas. I rushed to Westerman while the other shooter tended to his wounded friend.
The law arrived and wanted to know who shot Westerman.
I happened to have my hot pistol in hand.
“You did this?”
The men milling around explained that I fired after Westerman had fired.
The marshal checked Westerman’s gun. “He fired right enough. Come to my office and give a statement. Couple of you men carry him down to Westover’s mortuary, and get Billy to the Doc.”
I followed the sheriff and gave my statement. I flicked my wanted circular for Westerman. “I’ve been looking for him. I’m Nathan Gould of Trinidad.”
The sheriff didn’t flinch.
I paid to get the town’s photographer on the job to take a picture of Westerman in his casket and have the picture ready for me to claim the reward. I left in the morning in anticipation of the $500 payoff. Before I left I visited the Doctor. “Where’s the man who took a bullet last night?”
“He’s gone home. Do you know him?”
“No, and there’s no point in me seeing him. Will he be all right?”
“No broken bones, a couple of weeks and he’ll be as good as new. I’ll check up on him next week.”
I held out $100 in greenbacks. “I was to blame for him getting winged. Maybe this will make him feel better.” Before the Doctor could say or do anything I dropped the money on the desk and strode from his office.
During my first year at Trinidad I received a letter from Austin that caused my heart to skip a few beats. The finest female hand began the letter with the salutation “My Dear Nate.” I was expecting something noteworthy, but wasn’t sure whether it would be positive or negative. I read:
It has been too long, but very much long enough. I’ve followed you in the newspapers, and am glad that your Austin situation has not affected you. Spence travels a lot now, with the firm, around the state. I doubt that many in Austin would recall you from eight years ago, but I would.
Jennifer
I couldn’t help but reply, and I won’t belabor this story with my note, except that I neither sought nor expected a response.
Few of my jobs called upon me for simple speed against speed, where the luck of the draw was, before the episode, not clearly on my side or the other. Even where it was a simple shoot out I could count on enjoying the one or one-and-a-half second advantage, with the man facing me ignorant of with whom he was swapping lead. The early event that stands out originated with a letter from Calvin Hogaboom, of Cheyenne, Wyoming. He identified himself as an important officer of the Wyoming Stock Growers’ Association, which he explained was the “de facto government of the Territory.” He explained that he and his wife and family were troubled by a late adolescent son, John, who was in some ways ungovernable, but not criminally inclined. Hogaboom enclosed several photographs of the lad, who was rigged out as a cowpuncher or gun fighter and spent his free time in the rough cut areas of Cheyenne. In that, Hogaboom explained, he seemed to have incurred the anger of a bunch of young toughs, who had inflicted minor wounds on John. Hogaboom was afraid that one of the gang, Orville Carleton, had visions of becoming a gunfighter and might want to begin his career by goading John into a fight that would end badly for John, who was feeling increasingly that he would confront the gang and stop them with his guns.
I studied the photos and could almost laugh at the sad sight presented by the young man, a gaudy outfit, big boots and oversized hat, wearing a silly frown or ridiculous grin, hands on the butts of two pistols in holsters.
Hogaboom said that he was afraid that John would be killed or, if he chanced to slay Carleton, would be charged with the crime. He asked that I spend a few days in Cheyenne and put an end to the harassment of John “in any way that seemed suitable.” He explained that due to his business situation he could not be known to hire me. He enclosed a Wells Fargo draft in the amount of two hundred dollars and closed with a promise of a like amount if I could get John out of his problem, no questions asked.
Four hundred dollars early in one’s career is a powerful incentive. I promptly confirmed that I would do what I could and asked for details on where and when I could best encounter the troublemakers. I received instructions and sketches and a wish that I do well.
After I consulted a dictionary and determined what “de facto” meant I left for Cheyenne. At Cheyenne I found the Hogaboom residence. I waited to begin in the morning, but young Hogaboom did not appear. The following morning, however, a figure resembling the person in the photographs appeared and meandered toward the downtown.
I followed at a distance. John went into a store and emerged, munching on a licorice stick. He wandered down a side street, greeting an occasional passerby, even pausing to engage a man in mufti in conversation. John met a young man who joined him in his walk until the other went into a shop. A short distance later, another young man joined John and they walked for a while.
Abruptly, three slovenly young men appeared in front of John and his friend. The five of them exchanged harsh talk, while I edged my way along the sidewalk, against the shop windows.
I finally was able to hear the tallest of the three newcomers call out, “You’re afraid. You carry those guns, but are scared to use them.”
“Am not scared,” said John.
“Leave him alone,” called John’s friend.
“He’s afraid. He won’t draw.”
John took several steps toward the three young men.
I strode into the street, wide from John. “Leave him alone. You bullies are afraid to take on a real man, you pick on a kid.”
The ringleader spun to face me. “Who are you?”
“Never mind who I am, worry about yourself. Leave the kid alone or you’ll have me to answer to.”
The ringleader made a snort and went for the pistol in his holster.
I was faster and let fly a shot before his gun was out of his holster. I fired again when his hand was holding his pistol limply.
The ringleader took one step backwards and flopped flat on the ground. He wriggled around and groaned and then was quiet. His companions shrank back.
For the first time I
noticed people scattered against the shops on the sidewalk. I held my pistol in my hand. “Get the law,” I called. I went to John. “You’ll tell the sheriff what happened.”
John’s mouth was open.
“Just tell them what happened.”
The dead man’s companions ran off.
Within a few minutes two deputy sheriffs with a wagon pulled up. I explained the events, John told them what happened, and several bystanders recounted their versions. I was escorted to the sheriff’s office where I told the story again, after turning my gun and gun belt over to the sheriff..
The sheriff, a slender man in civilian clothes rifled through the statements. “Orville Carleton, age 21, father James Carleton, a well-known local person. Do you know either of them?”
“No.”
“Why were you where you were?”
“Just wandering around, on my way to business in Boise.”
“What sort of business?”
“I’m looking for land.”
The sheriff glanced around at a deputy and a man in medical garb. “Two bullets, one in the heart the other in the hip. Not bad shooting.”
I said nothing.
“Orville was a pain for a lot of people. A few of them may have wanted him dead. This John Hogaboom, do you know him?”
“Never saw him in my life. He looks stupid and clumsy with his guns and this Orville what’s his name was picking on him. It looked like Orville was going to harm the boy.”
“John Hogaboom is twenty-one, and out here it’s old enough to take care of yourself. His father is big with the Cattlemen’s Association,” said the deputy. “He came in a couple of times wanting us to take the guns away from John. When we said we couldn’t do it, he wanted us to jail Orville Carleton. We said we had no charges.”
The sheriff shoved my pistol and gun belt across his desk. “We have your address. The statements make clear that Orville drew first and you defended yourself. If we come up with anything else we’ll be in touch.” He crossed his arms.
