Massacre at Powder River

by William W. Johnstone

  The smile left the sheriff’s face. “Yes. That was a terrible thing. The woman and the girl.” He shook his head. “I’ve been in the law business for a long time and I’ve seen some grizzly things, but I tell you the truth, Matt, that is about the worst I have ever seen. I don’t know what kind of animal could do such a thing. They had both been raped, Matt. Then their throats were cut and they bled to death. Not only that, we found ’em both naked. The sons of bitches didn’t even have the decency to cover ’em up.”

  “Jarvis Winslow was a personal friend of mine,” Matt said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” the sheriff replied.

  “Sheriff, I intend to hunt down the men who did this, if you don’t mind the help.”

  “Of course I’m glad to have your help. I can even deputize you if you’d like. That would make it legal, as long as you catch up with them in Larimer County. Once they get out of the county, your badge wouldn’t do you much good.”

  “That’s all right,” Matt said. “I’ve got my own badge.”

  Over the years, he had done investigative work for the railroad, for which he had a railroad detective’s badge. Even though the badge had no actual legal authority, a detective for one railroad was recognized on a reciprocal arrangement by all other railroads. It was also given a courtesy recognition by the states served by the railroads. He showed the badge to Sheriff Garrison.

  “I don’t see how that is going to help. This crime had nothing to do with the railroad.”

  “I read in the paper that Plummer, Jenkens, and McCoy got away with twenty-three thousand dollars. Is that right?”

  “I’m afraid it is right,” Sheriff Garrison said.

  “Sheriff, are you going to try and tell me that not one single dollar of that money was ever on a train?”

  Sheriff Garrison chuckled. “That’s sort of stretching the intent, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Matt replied, his answer almost a challenge.

  Garrison threw up his hands. “Well, you’ll get no argument from me. Go after them.”

  “Oh, I intend to.”

  Chapter Two

  Moreton Frewen was an unquenchable optimist, prolific in ideas, and skilled in persuading his friends to invest in his schemes. Although he owned the Powder River Cattle Company, his personal field of operations covered America, England, India, Australia, Kenya, and Canada. He had crossed the Atlantic almost one hundred times.

  A brilliant man who urged the building of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, as well as a means of connecting the Great Lakes to the sea, he was, despite his intellect and creativity, a man who had failed in nearly every business enterprise he undertook. Frewen had the build of an athlete with long legs, a flat abdomen, a high forehead, bright blue eyes and a baroque mustache. An avid hunter and sportsman, he had attended Cambridge University in England as a gentlemen, spending his days betting on horse races and his evenings in the university drinking club.

  After graduation he continued the life of a country gentleman, fox hunting and wenching in the shires through the winter, and horse racing and wenching in London during the summer. Living in such a way as to show no interest in a career, he ran through his rather sizeable inheritance within three years. Shortly thereafter, he came to America, married Clara Jerome, daughter of the very wealthy Leonard Jerome and sister of Lady Randolph Churchill, and set himself up as a rancher in northern Wyoming.

  Along the Powder River was a stretch of prairie with grasslands watered by summer rains and winter snows. A large open area, it was impressive in its very loneliness, but good cattle country, and it was there that Moreton Frewen built his ranch.

  Two of the Powder River Cattle Company cowboys, Max Coleman and Lonnie Snead, were at the north end of the twenty-thousand-acre spread, just south of where William’s Creek branched off the Powder River. They were keeping watch over the fifteen hundred cattle gathered at a place providing them with shade and water, and were engaged in a discussion about Lily Langtry.

  “They say she is the most beautiful woman in the world,” Snead said.

  “That’s a load of bull. I’ve seen pictures of her, and she ain’t half as good-lookin’ as Mrs. Frewen is.”

  “Yeah, well, Mrs. Frewen is the wife of our boss. We can’t really talk about her like that.”

  “Hell, I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ about her that ever’-body else don’t say,” Coleman said. “All I’m talkin’ about is that she is a real good-lookin’ woman. You ain’t a’ doubtin’ that, are you?”

  “No, I ain’ doubtin’ that. But she’s our wife’s boss, so I don’t think about her like that. But now, Miss Langtry, why I can think anyway about her that I want to, ’cause she’s a single woman, and besides which, she goes around the country singin’ up on the stage, so she’s used to people lookin’ at her.”

  “Yeah, but with her, lookin’ is all you can do,” Coleman said.

  “And day dreamin’,” Snead said. “Sometimes I get to day dreamin’ about her and I think maybe she’s been captured by Injuns, or maybe the Yellow Kerchief Gang or someone like that, and I come along and save her.”

  Coleman laughed. “Snead, you’re fuller of shit than a Christmas goose. Ha, as if you would—” He interrupted his own comment mid-sentence, then pointed. “Hey, wait a minute. Look over there. Do you see that?”

  Looking in the direction Coleman pointed, Snead saw someone cutting cattle from the herd.

  “Who the hell is that over there?” Coleman asked. “We ain’t got anyone out here but us, have we?”

  “No, we ain’t got anybody over there. So whoever it is, he must be rustlin’ cows,” Snead said.

  “He’s got some nerve, comin’ out here all by his lonesome to steal cows.”

  “Maybe he thought there wouldn’t be anybody out here.”

  “Let’s run him off,” Coleman proposed.

  The two started riding toward the rustler. Pulling their pistols, they shot into the air, hoping to scare away the rustler.

  “You!” Coleman shouted. “What are you doing here?”

  Coleman and Snead continued to ride hard toward the rustler. A single rustler, being accosted by two armed men, should be running but he wasn’t. Coleman began to get an uneasy feeling about it when the rustler stood his ground.

  “Snead, hold up!” Coleman called. “There’s somethin’ ain’t right about this!”

  Suddenly Coleman and Snead saw why the rustler they were advancing toward was so brazen. He wasn’t alone. At least six others were wearing a patch of yellow at their necks.

  “Damn!” The challenge in Snead’s voice was replaced by a tone of apprehension. “It’s the Yellow Kerchief Gang!”

  “Let’s get the hell out of here!” Coleman shouted.

  The two cowboys wheeled their horses about, and the hunters became the hunted. The seven outlaws started after them, firing as they rode hard across the open distance separating Coleman and Snead from the rustlers.

  The two men galloped away, pursued by the rustlers. Hitting William’s Creek in full stride, sand and silver bubbles flew up in a sheet of spray sustained by the churning action of the horses’ hooves until huge drops began falling back like rain.

  Coleman pointed to an island in the middle of the stream. “Snead, they’re goin’ to run us down! Let’s try and make a stand there. It’s our only chance!” Fear gave enough volume to his voice so he was easily heard.

  The two cowboys brought their steeds to a halt. Dismounting, they took what shelter they could find behind the large rock that dominated the island. The rustlers held up at the edge of the creek.

  “How many bullets you got?” Coleman asked.

  “Four,” Snead said.

  “Just four? You got ’ny in your belt?”

  “No, just these four is all I got. How many you got?”

  “Five.”

  “That ain’t very many,” Snead said.

  “It’ll have to do.”

  “Son of a bitch! Here they come!” />
  The countryside exploded with the sound of gunfire when the Yellow Kerchief riders opened up on the two Frewen cowboys. The first several bullets whizzed harmlessly over their heads or raised sparks as they hit the rocky ground, then careened off into empty space, echoing and reechoing in a cacophony of whines and shrieks.

  At first, Coleman and Snead entertained a hope that the rustlers, who had missed so far, would become frustrated and ride away, leaving them unharmed. Then, three more men wearing yellow scarves rode up to join the other seven. A furious gunfight broke out between the rustlers and the cowboys, but the rustlers were expending bullets at a ratio of twenty to one over the two cowboys. The odds, not only in terms of men, but of available bullets were just too great. Within a matter of minutes, the two cowboys had been killed and the rustlers returned to their task of stealing cattle.

  Frewen had two dozen cowboys working for him, living in two bunkhouses behind the big house. Called Frewen Castle, it was a huge, two-story edifice constructed of logs. The cowboys ate in the cookhouse and when everyone gathered for the supper meal that evening, they noticed Coleman and Snead had not returned.

  “They weren’t plannin’ on stayin’ out there all night, were they?” Jeff Singleton asked.

  “No, they were comin’ back,” Burt Rawlings said. “Me ’n Snead was goin’ to ride into town tonight after supper.”

  “Well, where are they?”

  “I think something must have happened to ’em,” Burt said.

  Burt and Jeff went to see Myron Morrison to tell him of their concern. The foreman agreed to send several cowboys out to look for Coleman and Snead.

  When the cowboys reached the range the first thing they noticed was that there were no cattle.

  “Whoa, this ain’t right,” Burt said. “There’s supposed to cattle here. I know, ’cause we moved at least fifteen hundred head up here last week. Where are they?”

  “You don’t think—” One of the other cowboys paused in mid-sentence.

  “Don’t think what?” Burt asked.

  “You don’t think Coleman and Snead run off with the cows, do you?”

  “Maybe you could tell me just where in the hell they would go with them?”

  “To Logan and the Yellow Kerchief Gang, maybe?”

  “No,” Burt insisted. “They wouldn’t do that.”

  “Well somethin’ has happened to the cattle.”

  “Right now I’m more concerned about what happened to Coleman and Snead than I am about what happened to the cows. I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

  “Look! Ain’t that Snead’s horse?”

  The four cowboys hurried over to the horse, which made no attempt to run from them. When they got closer they saw that the horse had been shot.

  “Damn! Look at this,” Jeff said.

  “Looks like he come from that way, from the crick.” Burt pointed toward the creek.

  Jeff took the wounded horse’s reins and led it as they rode toward William’s Creek. They saw Coleman’s horse standing on the island in the middle of the creek. Hurrying to it, they saw what all were beginning to suspect, but no one wanted to see.

  Coleman and Snead were lying dead on the island. Both men were holding pistols. Burt picked up Snead’s weapon and checked it, announcing what he found. “Empty.”

  One of the other cowboys picked up Coleman’s gun. “This one is empty, too.”

  “Looks like they were in one hell of a gun battle,” Burt said.

  “Injuns? They ain’t come this far north, have they?” Jeff asked.

  “It wasn’t Injuns,” one of the other cowboys said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Look over there.” The cowboy called attention to a stake in the ground, to which was tied a yellow scarf.

  “Son of a bitch, the bastards is braggin’ about it,” Burt said. “They left us a sign just so’s we’d know who done it.”

  “Wasn’t no doubt about who done it, was there?” another asked. “Who the hell else could it be, if it wasn’t the Yellow Kerchief Gang?”

  At a small cabin located at the head of a long, deep ravine carved into a butte at the end of Nine Mile Creek, the ten men who had killed Coleman and Snead and stolen the cattle were celebrating their success. The men ranged in age from twenty-one to forty-five years old. Every one of them had a record from burglary to murder. They had been operating in Johnson County for the last six months, and had been quite successful in rustling cattle, but it was, by far, the biggest job they had ever done.

  “I make it at least a thousand head, maybe more,” a man named Poindexter said.

  “Hey, think maybe we could butcher one, have us some fresh beef?” Clayton had not been on the raid with the others. He was a good enough cook the rest of the men didn’t mind that he never joined them on any raids.

  “What about it, Logan?” Greer asked. “Some fresh beef would be pretty good.”

  “All right,” Logan agreed. “I guess we got enough this time that we ain’t goin’ to miss one cow.”

  The Yellow Kerchief Gang was led by Sam Logan. He had started his outlaw career in New Mexico, riding with two desperadoes, Kid Barton and Coal Oil Johnny. He may have had a last name, but if so, nobody ever learned what it was. The three men terrorized anyone who happened to be on the Santa Fe Trail, whether it be stagecoach, freight wagon, or a single rider on horseback. If they were attacking a stagecoach or freight wagon, all three of them would participate. If it was a single horseman, then only one would approach, slowly, quietly, and without giving any hint of danger. He would ride alongside their mark for a few minutes, carrying on a friendly conversation, then turn to him and suddenly shoot him dead.

  Kid Barton and Coal Oil Johnny were the most notorious of the group. They tended to revel in their notoriety, whereas Sam Logan purposely kept a low profile. As rewards were posted, the offers for Kid Barton and Coal Oil Johnny grew, while no reward at all was offered for Sam Logan. Kid Barton and Coal Oil Johnny sometimes took great delight in teasing him for not being worth anything, while the reward on each of them reached one thousand dollars.

  Logan, who had not established a name, killed them both as they were waiting beside the road to hold up a stagecoach. When the coach arrived, Logan waved it down, and pointed to the two men, claiming he had overheard them plotting to rob the coach. He not only got the bounty money, a total of two thousand dollars, he also became a hero for stopping a robbery. He used that publicity to get himself hired as city marshal for the town of Salcedo.

  Logan’s stint as a lawman didn’t work out very well for him. When he killed a personal envoy from Governor Lew Wallace, he wound up in his own jail. Tried and convicted for murder, Logan was sentenced to hang. But on the night before the execution was to take place, Logan killed the deputy who was the acting city marshal, a deputy he had personally hired and befriended, and broke jail.

  He left New Mexico and went north, all the way to Wyoming, where he organized a group of cutthroats and thieves into the Yellow Kerchief Gang. He resumed his earlier career of robbery, entering a new phase when he started rustling cattle.

  Chapter Three

  Sussex, Wyoming

  Early April 1884

  It had snowed that morning, and the cemetery was a field of white, interrupted by grave markers, both crosses and tombstones. The cemetery was crowded with people as Max Coleman and Lonnie Snead were laid to rest. It wasn’t just the cowboys from the Powder River Cattle Company, but from nearly all the other ranches in Johnson County. They were all bundled up in mackinaws, parkas, and sheepskin coats, their breath making little vapor clouds in the air, holding their hats in their hands while the parson intoned the last words of committal.

  As the mourners began to leave the cemetery, their departure marked by exiting horses, wagons, surreys, buckboards and carriages, William Teasdale trudged through the snow to come over and speak with Frewen. Well dressed, he was a portly man of about fifty. Red-faced and breathing hard, Sir Willi
am Teasdale, Lord of Denbigh, like Moreton Frewen, was an Englishman, part of the influx of wealthy Brits who had come to American to invest in and run cattle ranches. Teasdale’s ranch, Thistledown, was adjacent to the Powder River Cattle Company.

  “When your two men were killed, how many cattle did you lose?” Teasdale asked.

  “What? Oh, I don’t know, exactly,” Frewen said. “But I’m sure it was over a thousand head.”

  “I’ve heard that it was at least fifteen hundred head,” Teasdale said.

  “It may have been. I’m not sure.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “No, not exactly,” Frewen said.

  “Moreton, you do have investors in your ranch, don’t you?” Teasdale asked in an exasperated sigh. “Important men, back in England?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Don’t you think you owe it to them to be able to render accurate reports as to how just many cattle were rustled?”

  “I suppose I do,” Frewen said. “But to be honest with you, William, when I learned of the death of two of my cowboys, that sort of pushed everything else out of my mind.”

  “Yes, well of course it is a shame that they were killed. But you have investors back in England that you must answer to. You can’t pass that off by saying you are more concerned with the fact that you lost a couple of mere cowboys. Let’s face it, Moreton. The bottom line for both of us is business—cattle business. And the rate of our losses now has just about made our business unsustainable. This cattle rustling is beginning to get out of hand.”

  “I agree. But I don’t have any idea what to do about it.”

  “William, do come on, won’t you? I’m freezing out here.”

  The summons came from Margaret, Teasdale’s wife, who was sitting in the Thistledown carriage wrapped in a buffalo robe. It was a beautiful coach, green with yellow wheels and the Teasdale crest on the door, the letter “T” with two crossbars placed on a shield and surrounded by gold wreathing.

  “Yes, dear,” Teasdale replied. He started toward the carriage, then turned back toward Frewen. “My offer still stands,” he said.