Massacre at Powder River

by William W. Johnstone

  Then, when Burt was secure, Jeff swung into his saddle and started back.

  “Jeff, I’ll find the ones who did this,” Matt promised.

  “Yes, sir, I’m sure you will, and I’ll appreciate that,” Jeff said. “Only, it ain’t goin’ to bring Burt back.”

  Matt watched Jeff for a moment, then he mounted Spirit and started off in the opposite direction. It wasn’t hard to track the rustlers. The fifty head of cattle left a trail of footprints and cow plops that was even better than a series of painted arrow signs.

  Matt caught up with the cattle thieves in less than an hour. There were two of them, both wearing yellow kerchiefs, and both wearing hats that had yellow hatbands. Because they were concentrating on the cows they were herding, neither of them saw Matt. About half a mile ahead was a good, wide, clear stream of water. Matt recalled that Jeff had mentioned that the cattle were already thirsty, so he knew that was where they were going. Detouring around the herd, he rode hard and reached the stream before the two rustlers and their cattle arrived.

  He was waiting just out of sight as they rode up.

  “Get all of ’em up here, Zeke. Let’s get ’em watered, then get on. The quicker we are out of here, the better I’ll feel,” one of the two men said. The man who called out was average size in height and weight, distinguished by a terrible red scar that streaked down the left side of his face, starting on the forehead, coming through the eyelid which also bore the scar, then down across his cheek before turning back up, like a fishhook at the corner of his mouth.

  “You don’t have to worry none about gettin’ ’em up here,” Zeke said. Zeke had a full, very dark beard. “They’ve done got a whiff of the water. They ain’t no way we could stop ’em, even if we wanted to.”

  “Ha! You got that right.”

  The two rustlers rode up to the stream together, let their horses water, then moved to one side to watch as the fifty cows hurried up, then spread out along the bank to begin drinking.

  “Woowee! Look at them bastards drink, Clem. Now I would say that is one thirsty bunch of cows,” Zeke said.

  “Have you got a count? How many is there?” Clem asked.

  “They’s fifty-three of ’em.”

  “Ha! And seein’ as we get a dollar a cow, that’s fifty-three dollars we can split,” Clem said.

  “Yeah, and don’t forget the guns we took off them two cowboys. They ought to bring five or ten dollars apiece, anyway.”

  “Next time we go into town, I’m goin’ to get me a bottle of whiskey and the best lookin’ whore I can find,” Clem said. “What are you going to do next time you go to town?”

  “I’ll tell you what he is going to do next time he goes to town,” Matt said, suddenly appearing from behind a large outgrowth of sagebrush. “He is going to hang. Both of you are.”

  “What? Who the hell are you?” Zeke shouted. He started for his gun.

  “No, don’t do it!” Matt called, but Zeke continued with his draw.

  Matt waited until the last moment, hoping Zeke would come to his senses, but he didn’t. Matt had no choice but to shoot, and his bullet hit Zeke in the forehead. Zeke pitched from the saddle, dead before he hit the ground.

  Clem may have had a notion to draw as well, but seeing what happened to Zeke, he threw his hands up.

  “No!” he said. “No, don’t shoot! I ain’t drawin’ on you!”

  Matt rode toward Clem until he was just a few feet away. He could see the hate and anger in Clem’s eyes.

  “Throw his carcass across the back of his horse,” Matt said.

  “You’re the one that kilt him. You do it,” Clem said.

  “All right, I’ll do it. But if I do, then I may as well take both of you back that way,” Matt said, and he pulled the hammer back on his pistol and aimed it directly at Clem’s head.

  “No!” Clem shouted, holding his hands out. “I’ll do it, I’ll do it.”

  “Good thinking,” Matt said.

  A few minutes later Zeke was belly-down on his horse, and Clem was mounted, with his hands tied to the saddlehorn. Matt looped his rope around Clem’s neck.

  “What? Look here! What are you a-doin’? You ain’t a-fixin’ to hang me, are you?”

  “Not here. At least, not as long as you do things my way,” Matt said as, holding on to the other end of the rope, he mounted Spirit. “Let’s go.”

  “Where are we a-goin’?”

  “We are going to meet the man whose cows you were stealing, and some of the men who were friends of the one you killed,” Matt said.

  “You don’t plan for me to ride like this, do you? With a rope around my neck? Don’t you understand? Anythin’ could happen. My horse could step into a gopher hole, I could fall off, my horse might even decide to take off runnin’. If anythin’ like that was to happen, why, my neck would get broke.”

  “Yeah, it would, wouldn’t it?” Matt replied.

  “This ain’t right!” Clem called as Matt gave Clem’s horse a slap on the rear to send him on.

  “If I were you, I’d do less talking and pay more attention to your riding,” Matt said easily. “You don’t want to fall off, do you?”

  “No!” Clem said, his answer reflecting his concern.

  It took Matt and Clem better than an hour to ride back to Frewen Castle. For the entire time back to the ranch, Clem kept clucking soothingly to his horse.

  When Matt returned with one man belly-down across a horse and another with his hands tied to the saddlehorn and a rope around his neck, the arrival generated a lot of attention among the Frewen cowboys. They were especially interested in the fact that the dead man and Matt’s prisoner were both wearing yellow kerchiefs.

  “I’ll be damn if Jensen ain’t caught hisself a couple of Yellow Kerchiefs,” one of the cowboys said.

  “That’s them!” young Jeff said, pointing to the two men. “That’s the two men that jumped us, and kilt Burt!”

  “What the hell did Jensen bring one of ’em back alive for?” one of the other cowboys said. “Hell, let’s just shoot the son of a bitch now!”

  “Shootin’ is too good for him. Let’s string ’im up. Hell, it won’t be hard to do. He’s done got the rope around his neck.”

  Several gathered around then as Matt rode straight to the barn. Once there, he threw his end of the rope over a beam that extended out over the top of the barn door, then pulled it just tight enough to put pressure on Clem’s neck. After that, he tied his end of the rope off then started toward the big house.

  “What? What are you going to do? You can’t leave me like this! I could hang!” Clem called out in fear.

  Clem was sitting on his horse right in front of the barn door. The rope around his neck went up and over the protruding beam, then was tied off at the other end, so that it formed an inverted “V.”

  “You won’t hang, as long as you can keep your horse still,” Matt called back over his shoulder.

  “You can’t do this! You can’t leave me here like this!” Clem called out to him. “It ain’t right!”

  “Mister, I would quit yelling if I was you,” one of the cowboys said. “You’re liable to spook your horse. Besides which, if you don’t shut up your cat-erwaulin’ I’ll slap your horse on his ass myself.”

  The other cowboys laughed.

  “Ahh,” Clem said, realizing then that what the cowboys said was true. “Stay here, horse,” he said as calmly as he could. “Don’t you be tryin’ to go nowhere.”

  When Matt came back out a few minutes later, Moreton Frewen and his wife Clara, as well as Jennie Churchill and her son Winnie, followed him out of the house and across the yard toward the barn. There, they saw one horse with a body draped across it and another horse, in the saddle of which sat a man with a rope not only around his neck, but looped over a protruding brace, as if he were about to be hanged.

  “What do you want to do with him?” Matt asked.

  “This is the feller that kilt Burt! I say hang the son of a bitch!” one of
the cowboys shouted, then seeing the reaction of the two ladies, he took off his hat. “Sorry ladies,” he said. “I didn’t mean to go cussin’ in front of you.”

  “I think we should take him into town, give him a trial, and then hang him,” Frewen said.

  “Do we have a judge in this town?” Matt asked.

  “I’m a judge,” Frewen offered.

  “All right,” Matt said. “I’ll take him into town and turn him over to Marshal Drew.”

  As Jennie watched Matt ride off, she felt a strange mix of emotions. She had never met anyone quite like Matt Jensen. He was the perfect gentleman, kind and sensitive, gentle and patient with her son. But he was also, without doubt, the most dangerous man she had ever met. Despite that, or maybe even because of it, she still found him handsome and exciting and would have enjoyed an innocent dalliance with him. Except that she knew, instinctively, that a dalliance with Matt Jensen would be anything but innocent.

  When Matt took his macabre procession into town it generated as much attention as it had when he had arrived back at Frewen Castle. Men and women came out of houses, stores, and saloons to stand on the side of the street and watch as he passed by.

  “Them’s Yellow Kerchiefs,” someone said.

  “Who’s that leadin’ ’em?”

  “Don’t you know? That’s Matt Jensen. He’s the one that kilt Kyle Houston.”

  Not content to just watch Matt ride by, most of the town moved out into the street then began walking along behind him, following him to Sikes’ Hardware Store, which was also the location of the Welsh Undertaking Parlor. By the time he got there, Sikes and Welsh were both outside, drawn by curiosity as to what had caught the attention of the whole town.

  “Get this one buried,” Matt said, nodding toward Zeke’s body.

  “What’s his name?”

  Matt looked toward Clem. “I heard you call him Zeke. What’s his last name?”

  “I don’t know,” Clem said. “He never told me.”

  “It’s Holloway,” a woman’s voice said.

  The woman who spoke was wearing the revealing attire of a bargirl. Several looked at her, the expressions on their faces reflecting their curiosity.

  “Tell me, Lucy, how come it is you know his last name?” Welsh asked.

  “He told me once that his last name was Holloway.”

  “You’re doin’ business with one of the Yellow Kerchief men?” someone said accusingly.

  “How was I supposed to know he was a Yellow Scarfer?” Lucy replied. “He didn’t have his yellow kerchief on when I seen him. Fact is, he didn’t have nothin’ on a-tall, last time I seen him.”

  The entire town laughed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The next morning in Sussex, a crowd had gathered around Sikes’ Hardware Store to stare at a gruesome display. The object of their attention was Zeke Holloway’s body. He was tied to a board with his arms folded across his chest and a gun in his right hand. His yellow scarf was still in place around his neck, but he wasn’t wearing a hat. His eyes were open and sightless. His face was bluish white, all the blood having drained down from his head; and because of the paleness of his skin, the contrast between the black of his beard, and the white of his face was even more striking. The bullethole between his eyes was black and bloodless. Above the door was a sign.

  Zeke Holloway

  Yellow Kerchief Rustler

  Killed by Matt Jensen

  For the moment, Welsh was busily constructing two coffins, one for Zeke and one for Clem, who was about to stand trial. A few pointed out to Welsh that Clem had not been found guilty yet, but Welsh said he was confident that he would be.

  “And even if they don’t find him guilty, it ain’t like the coffin is goin’ to go to waste. There is bound to be someone that’s goin’ to be needin’ one sooner or later.”

  Zeke Holloway would be buried just as he was now, without embalming, his skin pale and the blood still on his shirt. But it was different for Burt Rawlings, who had already been brought to Welsh to be prepared for burial. He had been embalmed, and cosmetics applied to his face and hands in order to restore some color to the body. He was also dressed in a suit and tie, though no one who knew him had ever actually seen Burt in a suit.

  Burt didn’t need one of the wooden coffins Welsh was making, because Moreton Frewen had bought one of the manufactured coffins Welsh kept on hand for the more affluent of his customers. It was called the “Eternal Cloud” and it was a beautiful casket, painted with a shining, black satin finish, and adorned with silver. The ad for the coffin boldly announced:

  This Coffin is guaranteed to last for ONE THOUSAND YEARS!

  Nobody ever thought to ask how a disappointed customer would be able to collect on the guarantee.

  Rawlings was laid to rest later that morning, borne to the cemetery in a glass-sided hearse. His funeral was attended by half the people from the town and a significant number of people from the county.

  From the window of his cell, Clem was able to watch the funeral cortege as it passed by the jail.

  “Why have so many turned out for one cowboy’s funeral?” Clem asked the deputy marshal.

  “They are all turnin’ out ’cause he was just a boy, only seventeen years old, and ever’body thinks it is a dirty shame that someone who’s never done no evil to anyone gets murdered in cold blood,” the deputy replied. “And seein’ as you’re the one that done it, well, I reckon there’ll be about that many turn out to watch you hang.”

  Clem, who was standing on his bed so he could see out the window, stepped down, then sat on his bunk with his elbows on his knees, and his head in his hands.

  He thought of a fishing hole that was near the house where he had grown up back in Missouri, and he wished with all his heart that he could be there now.

  “Clem, get on back here and feed the chickens now!”

  “I done fed ’em, Ma,” Clem lied. “I just need to catch me a couple more fish here.”

  “You haven’t fed them. I know you haven’t.”

  “Leave me alone. If you want your goddamn chickens fed, feed ’em yourself.”

  “Clem, how can you talk to me that way? I am the one who gave birth to you!”

  “Yeah, well I didn’t ask to be born. Now just feed your chickens and leave me be.”

  Clem couldn’t wait to get out of Missouri. He intended to go West and strike gold. He knew there was gold out here, he had read about it. All you had to do was find a stream then start sifting through that stream with a pie pan, and you could find as much gold as you wanted.

  Or so he had thought.

  The reality was much different. The reality was that he didn’t find any gold, and in order to eat, he had turned to stealing. After that it was an easy step to fall in with murderers and thieves, and now he was about to pay the price.

  When Moreton Frewen told Matt that he was a judge, he wasn’t exactly lying, but he was stretching the truth. He was a member of the Magistrate’s Court in the Judiciary of England and Wales. In this appointed but unpaid position, his authority was limited, even in England. He had no authority whatever in America, except for an honorary recognition of his status, but he believed in the principle of fiat justitia ruat caelum, “let justice be done,” regardless of the circumstances, so when the occasion called for it, he merely assumed the authority.

  Because The Lion and The Crown Saloon was the largest building in Sussex, arrangements were made to hold the trial there. Nearly everyone who had attended Burt Rawlings’s funeral that morning were now present at the saloon turned courtroom. The tables had all been moved to one side, except for three: one to be used by Frewen as the judge’s bench, the second to be used by the defense counsel and the defendant, and the third to be used by the prosecutor. The chairs were then put out in rows, theater-style, but there were far too many people for the chairs, so the rest of the attendees were lined up along the bar and the walls. Two of the bargirls who worked The Lion and The Crown, Lucy and Rose,
were sitting up on top of the upright piano. Their crossed bare legs were the object of attention of many of the cowboys who had come into town for the trial.

  There were only two lawyers in town, so Frewen appointed one to act as the prosecutor, and the other to act as defense counsel. Orin Dempster, the court-appointed lawyer for the defense, registered a protest before the trial even got underway.

  “Mr. Frewen, I submit, sir, that you do not have the authority to preside over this trial,” Orin Dempster said. “This is clearly a case of coram non judice, a legal proceeding without a judge, with improper venue, without jurisdiction.”

  “I am a duly appointed Magistrate,” Frewen said.

  “In England, sir, not in America, and certainly not in Wyoming. We could quite easily send to Buffalo for a judge,” Dempster insisted.

  “No need to waste the judge’s time,” Frewen said. “I am quite capable of presiding over the trial.”

  Clem was sitting at the table with Dempster and with Marshal Drew.

  “You got no right to try me,” Clem called out.

  Frewen looked over at Clem. “You are not to speak until you are asked to speak.”

  “But this here feller is right,” Clem said. “You can’t try me.”

  “If you speak again, I will have you gagged,” Frewen said.

  Clem opened his mouth as if to speak again, but closed it before he uttered a sound.

  “Your Honor, I want my protest to go on record,” Dempster said.

  “Duly noted,” Frewen said. “Marshal Drew, would you bring the prisoner before me, please?”

  Marshal Drew prodded Clem before the table that Frewen was using as his bench.

  “Would the prisoner state his name, please?” Frewen said.

  “Clem.”