by Ed Roberts
Jack Parker Comes of Age
Jack Parker, the fifteen-year-old son of the sheriff of Mayfield, does not enjoy a close and loving relationship with his father. When a vicious range war erupts in the area, Jack and his father are drawn closer when they find themselves fighting against an incursion by a band of Texan freebooters, and for a time it looks as though the youngster is destined to follow in his father’s footsteps by becoming a lawman.
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A Town called Innocence
Jack Parker Comes of Age
Ed Roberts
ROBERT HALE
© Ed Roberts 2019
First published in Great Britain 2019
ISBN 978-0-7198-2944-4
The Crowood Press
The Stable Block
Crowood Lane
Ramsbury
Marlborough
Wiltshire SN8 2HR
www.bhwesterns.com
Robert Hale is an imprint of The Crowood Press
The right of Ed Roberts to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Chapter 1
Folk hardly ever realize that the events they are taking part in at the time will, one day in the distant future, be regarded as history. This is especially so with young people, who lack any sense of perspective. Which is why it wasn’t until many years after the event that Jack Parker fully appreciated the significance of the role he had played as a boy in the great Benton County Invasion of 1891. It was tolerably well known to him that he had at that time saved the lives of better than fifty men, but the wider implication of what had happened and how it related to the general scheme of things, eluded him until he was in his middle years.
In the summer of 1891, Jack Parker was living with his father Tom in the Wyoming town of Mayfield. Jack had turned fifteen almost a twelvemonth previously, but was, at his father’s insistence, still attending school. His mother had died so long ago that the boy could scarcely remember her. With assistance from his spinster sister, Tom Parker had endeavoured, since his wife’s death, to raise his son to be a credit to him, and a fit person to take his right place in society as befitted the son of the sheriff of Benton County.
Jack Parker’s passage from childhood to adolescence had been a stormy one, punctuated by innumerable clashes with his father. The boy had, over the last few years, grown sullen and rebellious against his father’s authority. Matters came to a head on the evening of Tuesday, 5 July, when Jack petitioned his father yet again to be allowed to leave school. He felt it shameful to spend his days learning about such arcane subjects as trigonometry, when most all the other youngsters of his age were working at men’s jobs. His father though, was in no mood to compromise. He said, ‘I’m telling you, once for all, you’ll stay put in that schoolroom ’til such time as I see fit to remove you, and there’s an end to it.’
It was at this point that Jack made a deadly error. He muttered something under his breath which sounded, at least to his father’s suspicious ears, like, ‘You bastard!’ Tom Parker was on his son in an instant, like some agile and ferocious cat going after a mouse. He gripped the young man by the arm and challenged him to repeat what he had just said. The boy’s response was to stare mutinously back at his father, with an expression on his face which, in Tom’s army days, would have been described as ‘dumb insolence’. The two of them had reached an impasse and so the older man limited himself to cuffing Jack around the head and declaring angrily, ‘Speak so to me again, boy, and just see what arrives to you, you hear what I tell you?’
So it was that later that night, when his father had left the house to attend to some official duty or other, Jack Parker rose from his bed, packed a few clothes in an old carpet bag, went downstairs to the kitchen and raided the larder for some comestibles, which he also placed in the carpet bag, and then walked out of the house with a view to running away from home and seeking his fortune in the wider world which lay beyond the town limits of Mayfield. He thought vaguely of lying about his age and enlisting in the army.
After leaving the house a half-hour before midnight, Jack walked out of town and then set off across the fields and agricultural land that surrounded Mayfield. He walked for four or five miles until he found himself in the vicinity of Agatha Roberts’ farm. He was on good enough terms with Aggie and her ‘husband’ John, and figured that neither would mind if he were to spend the night in their barn. He was by now dog tired, and felt that he had put a fair distance between himself and his father. He would start off again right early on the morrow.
The barn, which stood no more than twenty yards from Aggie’s cabin, was a rickety old structure, with many boards and planks either missing or rotted away. Because of this, Jack found that once he’d climbed the ladder into the hay-loft, he had a splendid view of the cabins and the yard which lay in front of them. He sank gratefully into the soft hay and allowed his mind to wander a little, mulling over what he knew about Agatha Roberts. He was aware of the scandalous fact that she was generally believed to be living in sin with John Baxter, but this had always seemed to Jack a matter of little import. He knew, too, that she was commonly known by the sobriquet ‘Cattle Aggie’, for reasons that were obscure to him.
What Jack did know about Aggie was that she invariably had time to talk to him when he came across her, and that she listened sympathetically to his problems. The two of them had connected in some strange way, when first they met, and Agatha Roberts, who had no children, and Jack Parker, who lacked a mother, had each found in the other something that was missing in their lives. Either Jack was the son she had never had, or Aggie the mother Jack had never known, or perhaps a li
ttle of both. Whatever the reason, it had not been chance alone which had directed his steps to her farm that night. He was more than half hoping to speak to Aggie the following morning, in order to solicit her counsel and advice.
Hardly had Jack Parker settled himself down into the hay, than he became aware of the drumming of hoof-beats. His first thought was that his father, in his capacity as sheriff, might have raised a posse to hunt him down and return him to his home. A moment’s thought, though, told him that there would hardly have been time for such an enterprise to have been launched – he couldn’t have been gone from his bed for more than a couple of hours, which was scarcely time for Mayfield’s sheriff to raise the alarm, organize a band of mounted men and then reach the spot where his son was now concealed. Still, even if it wasn’t his father coming to drag him home by the scruff of his neck, there was certainly a bunch of riders heading hard and fast in his direction, and Jack wondered what their urgency could be at this time of the night. He levered himself up from his bed of hay and went over to a part of the wall that was missing a number of planks. He saw at once that something unusual was happening, but what it could be, he hadn’t the least notion.
The moon was full and shedding a cold, pale light on the scene. A troop of horsemen were riding down on Aggie Roberts’ farm, heading, by the look of it, for the front yard, in front of the cabins. The men formed a neat and compact column as they rode down the dirt track that led to the house. Some of the riders carried flaming torches, and there looked to Jack to be fifteen or twenty of them. Something was certainly afoot. As he watched, the men cantered into the yard and then reined in, turning their mounts so that they were all facing the little log cabins where Aggie and John Baxter lived. Jack had a sudden thought, that these riders meant harm to Aggie and John. Then he recognized one of the men and realized that it was absurd to suppose that this person would be mixed up in anything out of the ordinary: Mr Timothy Carter was one of the most prominent citizens in the district, and ran the Lord knew how many cattle. He spent much of his time away over in Cheyenne, but when in Mayfield he was treated as a man deserving respect. What he could be doing with a bunch of men like this in the middle of the night was something of a mystery to Jack.
It didn’t take long for the purpose of this visit to Aggie Roberts to be explained, for she had evidently been awakened by either the sound of the horses or the light from the flickering torches. The front door was thrown open and she emerged, wearing a long nightgown, covered with a wrapper. Agatha Roberts was not one to mince her words, and when she spotted Carter among the men, she hailed him in a loud and fearless voice, crying, ‘I’ll thank you not to disturb my sleep at this ungodly hour, Timothy Carter. What’s the meaning of it?’
‘The meaning is that you’ve been dancing between the raindrops for too long Aggie, and this is the night you get caught in the storm!’ called back Carter, raising a laugh from the other men.
‘Care to speak a little plainer? I say again, what do you mean by this?’
It was at this point that John Baxter came out of the house, also in a nightgown and with a nightcap upon his head. Truth to tell, he presented a faintly ridiculous spectacle in this get-up, and there were more chuckles at the sight of him. Baxter was a Justice of the Peace, and when dealing out the law, few people would have dared to laugh out loud at him; but there was a wild and lawless spirit abroad that night, and all the usual rules seemed to be in abeyance. Even Jack Parker, young and green as he was, could feel that this was one of those occasions when anything might happen.
Despite his undignified attire, John Baxter had lost none of the peppery manner for which he was renowned. He was in his early forties, but had an air of authority and erudition that always made him seem older than his years. He was good and mad at the scene in Agatha Roberts’ yard, and made sure to let the men present there know just how he felt about this invasion of private property. Catching sight of Timothy Carter, he said angrily, ‘What the devil are you about, Carter? I’ll be mighty obliged if you and the rest of these scallywags remove yourself from here as soon as you like. You’re trespassing.’
For a moment there was dead silence, and it seemed to Jack as though this had all been just some piece of high jinks which had, for a moment, threatened to get out of hand but was now brought under control by a few well chosen words from the local Justice of the Peace. The spell was broken, though, by Carter’s mocking laughter. He chuckled richly and said, ‘You got a way with words Baxter, I’ll allow. We all been reading your piece in the Examiner last week. Speculators and land grabbers, is it?’
‘I tell it like it is. Now clear off this land or by God, I’ll swear out a warrant right this minute for your arrest on a charge of threatening behaviour.’
While John Baxter and Timothy Carter had been exchanging words, Jack had observed a couple of riders slip from their horses and make their way in the shadows to the front door of the cabin. He had wondered what their aim might be, but it wasn’t until Baxter, now thoroughly roused, said ‘You think I’m bluffing you about the warrant? You’ll see!’ that Jack knew what the men were doing. After menacing the gang with issuing a warrant, John Baxter presumably decided to make good on his threat, for he turned on his heel, saying to Aggie Roberts, ‘Come Agatha, leave these fools to their own devices.’ and headed back inside. At which point, he found his way to the door blocked by two men with drawn pistols.
‘Are you quite mad?’ exclaimed Baxter, when he saw the armed men barring the way into his home, ‘What damn-fool game is this? Just clear the way there, or you’ll both end up in gaol.’ The men stood there imperturbably, waiting for orders from Timothy Carter. These were not long in coming, for Carter said briskly, ‘You all know what we’re here for. Let’s get on with it!’
Now, for the first time, John Baxter showed a trace of fear. He covered this by speaking in an even sharper voice. He said, ‘You men leave here this very minute and happen I’ll forget the whole affair.’ In reply, the men who had been blocking the way back into the house, moved forward and grabbed Baxter’s arms. At the same time, another three men dismounted and moved in on Aggie Roberts. She made as if to run, but they were too quick for her. Other men got down from their mounts and one of them began looking in his saddlebag for something. With a thrill of horror, Jack saw that he was taking out first one rope, and then another.
Even now, the full significance of what he was seeing had yet to sink into Jack Parker’s mind. He was still thinking in terms of some piece of mischief, a cruel and malicious prank designed to scare people, rather than cause them any real harm. Watching the unfolding scene below put him in mind of a group of bullies in the schoolyard, gaining pleasure from shoving around and tormenting a younger or weaker child. Such incidents never ended with anything worse than a few tears or bruises. There is, however, a world of difference between life in the schoolyard, which is all that Jack Parker had, up to that time, known, and the way that matters are sometimes conducted among adults.
A little way from the cabins was a stout oak tree. The man carrying the ropes went to this and, standing beneath it, casually formed a noose at the end of each of them. Then he swung one of the nooses round and round a few times, before sending it sailing up and over a branch. He then performed a similar trick with the second rope and looked across to Timothy Carter, as though awaiting further instructions. These were not long in coming: Carter said, ‘Two o’ you fellows take the end of each rope. And take these two scoundrels over to the tree.’
Both Aggie Roberts and John Baxter offered resistance, but to no avail. They were dragged and pushed inexorably towards the nooses hanging from the oak tree. When they reached it, Baxter said, in a calmer voice than he had hitherto used, ‘You’ll answer for this, Carter. You don’t think you can get away with murder as well as all your other villainies?’
‘I reckon I’ll take my chance on that,’ replied Timothy Carter, ‘With you and your lady friend out of the way, I look to have a free run at things.�
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‘At least spare Aggie,’ said Baxter, for the first time a note of desperation creeping into his voice, ‘You can’t deal so with a woman. Do what you must with me, but for the Lord’s sake let her alone.’
‘Not a bit of it,’ said Carter, pleased to observe what he took to be a sign of weakness in the man whom he regarded as his deadly and implacable enemy. In a louder voice, he cried, ‘String them up. Show what happens to rustlers and cattle thieves hereabouts.’
For Jack Parker, the scene below him was like something from one of his worst nightmares, and just as sometimes happens in the course of bad dreams, he had an overwhelming desire to shout out loud, but found that he could not find his voice. All that came out of his mouth were strangled gasps and whimpers. As he watched, the two victims of the mob had their hands lashed behind their backs and the nooses were then placed around their necks. Jack had an idea that on such solemn occasions, people were generally afforded the opportunity to say a few last words, or to pray or something. In this present case, no such indulgence was offered to the doomed man and woman. No sooner were the ropes around their necks and their wrists secured, than two men each took hold of the loose ends of the ropes and began to pull, until Aggie Roberts and John Baxter were both hauled aloft.
Both of those lynched that night died hard, kicking and choking their lives out for several minutes before they lost consciousness. When it appeared to Carter that they were both dead, he directed his men to tie the ends of the ropes round the trunks of the tree, leaving the corpses dangling from the branches. Then, at another word of command, the flaming torches were tossed into the two cabins, firing them. Not until both wooden structures were blazing merrily did Timothy Carter appear to be satisfied with the night’s work, and gave the order to depart.
