Snake River Slaughter

by William W. Johnstone

  “Beer,” Poke said, as he began playing.

  Poke stayed at the saloon until it closed that night, drinking beer and playing solitaire. Except for his initial confrontation with the cowboy, and occasionally ordering a beer, Poke spoke to no one, and no one spoke to him. When he left, everyone breathed a sigh of relief and offered up a quick prayer that the strange, brooding, and frightening man not return.

  To the chagrin of everyone, Poke returned the next day. This time the man who was sitting at his table got up and moved without being asked. By the third day, Poke had clearly established a proprietary right to the table, and nobody sat at it, even when Poke wasn’t present.

  On the third day Marshal Sparks came to see him.

  “I’ve done some checking up on you, Terrell,” Marshal Sparks said. “That’s who you are, isn’t it? Poke Terrell?”

  “That’s me,” Poke replied. He continued to play solitaire all the time the marshal was talking to him.

  “What I want to know is, what is a member of the Idaho Auxiliary Peace Officers’ Posse doing in Medbury?”

  “I ain’t a member no more,” Poke replied.

  Marshal Sparks nodded. “Yes, that’s what I found out. At least you are honest about it.”

  “Marshal, I have not violated any of your laws since I arrived, and I’m not wanted. So what do you want?”

  “Nothing, I’m just curious as to why you are here, that’s all.”

  “I think you have a nice little town here,” Poke said. “I just thought I’d visit here for a while. Like I said, I have not broke none of your laws, and I am not wanted.”

  “I hope things stay like that,” Marshal Sparks said.

  For the first few days, Poke Terrell was the talk of the town.

  “He used to be a member of the Peace Officers’ Posse. Did you know that? Leastwise, that’s what the marshal says.”

  “Yeah, but the marshal also says he ain’t a member no more.”

  “You know why he ain’t a member no more? Because he was too violent, that’s why. I mean, can you imagine someone who is too violent for the Peace Officers’ Posse? The Posse makes Quantrill’s Bushwhackers seem like Sunday School boys.”

  By the end of two weeks, though, Poke was no longer the center of conversation or even attention. Because he sat at “his” table playing solitaire he became as ubiquitous as the heating stove. He wasn’t always alone, though. Gradually Poke began to make a few friends, or at least acquaintances. Sam Logan was the first to come sit at the table with him. Al Madison and Ken Jernigan came as well, and sometimes all three would come.

  The telegraph office was located in one end of the railroad depot, so located because Union Pacific Railroad provided the Western Union office in Medbury with at least ninety percent of its business.

  When Poke stepped up to the telegraph window, he could hear the instrument clacking, and he saw the telegrapher writing on a tablet. A sign on the telegrapher’s desk identified him as William S. Tate and, though Poke had no way of knowing, Tate was recording all the latest changes in train departures and arrivals. This was absolutely necessary in order to schedule the use of the track to avoid wrecks.

  Poke waited until the clacking stopped, then saw Tate send a message. Finally Tate turned to him.

  “I need to send a message.”

  Tate gave the man a tablet and pencil, and Poke wrote the message, then handed it back.

  Found three men to work for me. Will pay from profits.

  “Where does this message go?” Tate asked.

  “To Colonel Clay Sherman, Idaho Auxiliary Peace Officers’ Posse in Boise,” Poke said.

  “That will be one dollar and twenty cents,” Tate said.

  “Damn, that’s kind of high, ain’t it? Only cost three cents to send it by mail.”

  “A letter will get to Boise sometime tomorrow. This will get there in thirty seconds,” Tate said.

  Grumbling, Poke paid for the telegram, then went back to his table at the Sand Spur.

  That night when Poke’s three new friends were at the table with him, speaking animatedly but too quietly for anyone to hear what they were saying, Prew was standing at the end of the bar, nursing a beer and looking toward the table. Jenny, one of the young women who worked the bar, was with him.

  “Logan, Madison, and Jernigan,” Prew said contemptuously. “Those are three of the biggest polecats in the entire county. There can’t any of them hold a job anywhere. It stands to reason they would become friends with someone like Poke Terrell.”

  “You’re just mad because Terrell ran you away from the table the first night he was here,” Jenny said.

  “He didn’t run me away,” Prew insisted. “You did. I would have fought him for it.”

  “I know you would have,” Jenny said. She smiled at him. “But I didn’t want to see you get your face bruised.” She put her hand up to his face and rubbed her fingers, lightly, across his cheek. “It’s such a handsome face.”

  Prew, who’s real name was Jason Prewitt, was a ranch hand at Coventry on the Snake, a huge, 20,000-acre horse ranch that belonged to Kitty Wellington. The ranch was approximately five miles south of Medbury, and it was nearly midnight by the time Prew arrived back at the ranch. Most of the others ranch hands were already asleep when he sat down on his bunk to pull off his boots, and the cacophony of their snores filled the room.

  When he first came to work at the ranch, the snoring sometimes kept him awake. Now it was just a part of the background, a part of his life on the range.

  “Prew?” Tyrone called, quietly from his private room at the end of the bunk house. Tyrone Canfield was the ranch foreman.

  “Yeah?”

  “I just wanted to make sure it was you. Better get to sleep as early as you can. The field where the Arabians are being kept is getting grazed out and first thing tomorrow we are going to move them to fresh grass.”

  “How’m I goin’ to get to sleep with you yapping at me?” Prew teased.

  By any means of measurement, Kitty Wellington was a beautiful woman. Tall and statuesque, she had blond hair and blue eyes, naturally long lashes, high cheekbones and full lips. She was a widow, still young, because when she married, she had been thirty years younger than her husband.

  After her husband died, Kitty inherited the ranch, a parcel of land that was bordered on the north by the Snake River and Castle Creek, on the east by the Bruneau, and on the west and south by a network of interconnecting creeks; the Blue, the Bottle, and the Mill. It was this ready availability of water as well as a plentiful supply of good grass that made Coventry on the Snake so valuable.

  It was not by mere coincidence that the name of the ranch, Coventry on the Snake, had an Old World flavor. Kitty’s husband, Sir Thomas Denbigh Wellington, the Seventh Earl of Buckinghamshire, had named it after his ancestral home, Coventry on the Wye, in Buckinghamshire, England.

  But Kitty was not just a beautiful woman who happened to inherit a lot of land. She had turned Coventry on the Snake into one of the finest horse ranches in the country, and she had done it all since the death of her husband.

  This morning Kitty was sitting in her study working on the books when someone knocked lightly on the door frame. The door to her study being open, when Kitty turned in her chair, she saw Tyrone Canfield standing there, holding his hat in his hand.

  “Yes, Tyrone,” Kitty said, greeting her foreman with a smile. “Did you want to see me?”

  Tyrone rolled his hat in his hand and cleared his throat, obviously not wanting to say what he had to say. The expression of concern on Tyrone’s face caused Kitty to give up her smile.

  “What is it, Tyrone?” she asked. “What is wrong?”

  “I hate to tell you this, Mrs. Wellington, but we’re missin’ seventy-five head of Arabians,” he said.

  “What? Are you sure?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m positive. We’ve been keepin’ a real good count of the Arabians, especially since they are the ones you are sellin�
�� to the army. Last count we had eight hundred and eighty-five. This mornin’ we only had eight hundred and ten. And we counted them twice, just to make sure.”

  “This is a big ranch, with a lot of range land,” Kitty said. “Maybe they just got out of the field where we were holding them.”

  “No, ma’am, we’ve looked all over the range,” Tyrone said. “The horses are gone.”

  “Stolen?”

  “Yes, ma’am. There’s no doubt in my mind, but that they were stolen.”

  “Seventy five horses?” Kitty sighed, and leaned back in her chair. “Oh, Tyrone, that seven thousand five hundred dollars,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am, I know it is. Mrs. Wellington, if you don’t mind, I think I’m going to put out night riders to keep watch from now on.”

  “No, I don’t mind at all. I think that’s a very good idea,” Kitty replied.

  Chapter Five

  A colt whinnied anxiously and a horse responded with a whicker. An owl hooted, while the night insects filled the air with their songs. There was no moon, but the night was alive with stars—from the brightest orbs in the heavens, all the way down to those stars which weren’t visible as individual bodies at all, but whose distant presence added to the ambient glow in the velvet vault of sky.

  Three young men rode around the milling shapes and shadows that made up the herd. It had been a week now since the seventy-five horses were stolen, and since that time, Tyrone had put out riders every night to keep watch over the horses. Though it would have been more efficient for them to separate, the boring aspects of the task caused the three nighthawks to ride together so they could visit. Prew was one of the riders, and he and another rider were teasing the youngest one.

  “What do you mean? Are you trying to tell me you’ve never been with a woman?” Prew asked the youngest one.

  The youngest cowboy, whose name was Hank, cleared his throat in embarrassment. “I ain’t never thought I was old enough. And comin’ from the orphanage like I done, I ain’t never really had the opportunity to be with no woman.”

  “Hell, you don’t need no opportunity. All you got to do is go into town and visit Flat Nose Sue,” Prew said.

  “Yeah,” the other added. He laughed. “And bein’ as you ain’t never been with a woman before, that makes you lucky.”

  “How does it make me lucky?”

  “Tell him, Prew. How does it make him lucky?”

  Prew laughed. “You the one that brought it up, Timmy. You tell him.”

  “All right,” Timmy said. “Here’s why it makes you lucky. If you go into Flat Nose Sue’s place and tell her you’re a virgin, why, she’s such a big hearted woman that on your first time, she will let you do it for free.”

  “I ain’t no virgin,” Hank insisted.

  “What do you mean you ain’t no virgin?” Timmy asked. “You just said you ain’t never been with a woman before.”

  “I ain’t never been with no woman before, but that don’t make me a virgin.”

  “Sure it does. If you ain’t never been with a woman before, then you are a virgin.”

  “Virgins is women, ain’t they?” Hank asked.

  Prew and Timmy laughed. “It ain’t only women that’s virgins. A woman that ain’t never had a man is a virgin, yeah, but a man that ain’t never had a woman, why, he is a virgin too.”

  “Are you sure about that? I ain’t never heard of no man virgin.”

  “And you know all about such things do you?” Timmy asked. “I mean, bein’ as you are so experienced and all.”

  “No, I don’t really. I just thought—that is—I didn’t know that men could be virgins too. All right, if that is the case then I guess I am a virgin.”

  “So, like I said, all you got to do is, you go into Flat Nose Sue’s place and tell her you’re a virgin.”

  “Then what?” Hank asked.

  “Then, you don’t have to do nothing. Flat Nose Sue will take care of that little situation for you,” Timmy said. “Right, Prew?”

  “Right.”

  “For sure?” Hank asked.

  “For sure,” Timmy answered. He laughed. “Flat Nose Sue, she’s the oldest one there and she runs the place. So she’ll break you in her ownself.”

  “Break me in her ownself? Wait, what do you mean? Are you saying I’d have to uh—do it—with Flat Nose Sue?” Hank asked in a voice that reflected the unattractiveness of the offer. “Didn’t you say she’s the oldest one there?”

  “That she is. How old you reckon she is, Prew? Fifty. Sixty, maybe?”

  “Yeah, maybe sixty,” Prew answered. “I don’t think she’s any older than than sixty, maybe sixty-five. And if she is any older than that, then it ain’t by all that much.”

  “But I’m only sixteen. I don’t want to do it with someone who is sixty, or maybe sixty-five years old. Couldn’t I do it with one of the younger ones?” Hank pleaded.

  “You don’t want a young one for your first time,” Prew said. “You want someone who knows what to do so they can break you in proper. Besides, why are you askin’ that? You wouldn’t turn her down, would you? That would hurt her feelings. You sure don’t want to hurt Flat Nose Sue’s feelin’s because if you do that, why, you’ll piss off all the women that’s in the whore house, and they won’t none of ’em have anything to do with any of us anymore. Is that what you want to do?”

  “No, I guess not,” Hank replied plaintively. “If she says I’ve got to do it with her, why, I reckon I will. Why do they call her Flat Nose Sue?”

  Timmy and Prew both laughed.

  “That’s right, you ain’t never seen her, have you?” Prew asked.

  “No. I told you, I ain’t never been to no whore house nowhere before.”

  “Well, sir, they call her Flat Nose Sue ’cause she’s done got her nose broke so many times by drunk cowboys and the like, that when you look at her sideways, it purt’ nigh looks like she don’t have no nose at all,” Prew explained.

  “Oh,” Hank said, even more dispirited than before.

  “But she don’t look all that bad when you are lookin’ at her from the front,” Timmy said. “’Ceptin’ for how old she is,” he added.

  “Tell you what,” Prew said. “Why don’t we all go into town first thing in the mornin’ after we get off work? Seein’ as we’re goin’ to be ridin’ herd all night, it’ll be early in the mornin’ and there won’t hardly be nobody else there. We can have our pick.”

  “Except for Hank,” Timmy said. “He don’t get his pick, ’cause he’ll have to lay with Big Nose Sue.”

  “Yeah, but it’ll be free,” Prew said.

  “You lucky dog,” Timmy said, reaching over and striking Hank playfully on the shoulder. “You’re goin’ to get it for free.”

  “Yeah, I’m just real lucky,” Hank said without enthusiasm.

  The colt whinnied again.

  “Sounds like one of the colts might have got somewhere it shouldn’t be,” Hank said. “I’ll go take a look.”

  Prew waited until Hank rode out into the darkness, then he laughed.

  “We got that boy so up tight that right now you couldn’t drive a straw up his ass with a ten pound sledge hammer,” Prew said.

  Timmy laughed, then asked, “You sure Flat Nose Sue will go along with it?”

  “She said she would,” Prew answered. “This is going to be funnier than all hell.”

  “Yeah, I reckon so. But it’s sort of a dirty trick when you think about it. Lord I hate to think of breakin’ him in with Flat Nose Sue. I mean, she could turn a fella off women for life,” Timmy said.

  “She ain’t really all that bad,” Prew said.

  “How do you know?” Timmy asked. Then he laughed out loud. “I’ll be damn. You’ve had her, ain’t you?” He laughed and slapped his hand against his leg. “I can’t believe you’ve actually had her. Does Jenny know that?”

  “What’s Jenny got to do with it?”

  “I thought you was kind of sweet on her. You always ha
ngin’ out with her at the Sand Spur.”

  “She’s s’posed to hang out with me. That’s her job.”

  “It’s the job of all the girls in the Sand Spur, but she’s near ’bout the onliest one I ever see you with.”

  “Maybe you got it backward,” Prew teased. “Maybe she’s sweet on me.”

  “Ha! I can see that,” Timmy said.

  Suddenly, their banter was interrupted by the sound of a gunshot coming from the darkness.

  “What the hell is Hank shootin’ at?” Prew asked.

  “I don’t know,” Timmy answered.

  “Hank? Hank, what is it you are shootin’ at? A cougar?” Prew called out.

  “Hank? Where you at?” Timmy called. “What the hell? Where’s Hank? How come he ain’t answerin’ us?” Timmy asked.

  “Maybe we’d better go see what’s goin’ on,” Prew replied.

  Timmy and Prew were both wearing guns, and though sometimes in town they liked to wear them low and kicked out in the way of a gunfighter, neither of them had ever done anything but take a few pot shots at a rabbit now and then. Nevertheless, both men drew their pistols, then rode out into the darkness to check on Hank.

  Before they had gone too far, gunshots erupted in the night, the herd of horses illuminated by the muzzle flashes.

  “Rustlers!” Timmy shouted.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Prew said.

  Firing their own pistols, even though they had no target, the two young men tried to run, but within less than a minute, both had been shot from their saddles, and once again, the night was still.

  Sitting quietly in his saddle after having dispatched a few other riders to take care of business, Poke Terrell saw one of those riders, Sam Logan, appear from the darkness.

  “What was the shooting?” Poke asked.

  “It was just like you said. She’s got night riders out watchin’ over her herd.”

  “How many of ’em was there?” Poke asked.

  “They was three, but we took care of all of ’em.”