This Violent Land

by William W. Johnstone

  “Not at all.”

  Mrs. Boyle led them into the small house, into a room that had all the shades pulled so that it was in deep shadow, except for one flickering lamp. A hulking form sat in a chair situated just outside the circle of light.

  “Colonel, Sheriff Donovan is here to see you.”

  “Hello, Emerson,” a deep voice rumbled from the shadows. “Come closer.”

  “How are you doing, Colonel?”

  “I’m doing about as well as any three-hundred-and-fifty pound man can expect,” Colonel Boyle said. His face was as round as the moon, topped by strands of lank, fair hair.

  As Smoke drew closer, he could see that three hundred and fifty pounds wasn’t an exaggeration, unless, perhaps, the number was lower than the man’s actual weight. He wondered how the chair could even support such weight, but a closer examination showed that the chair was well constructed, with extra bracing.

  “Who’s your friend, Emerson?”

  “He’s a deputy United States marshal, name of Smoke Jensen.”

  “You’re the man who took care of Morgan, Babcock, and Winters, aren’t you?” Colonel Boyle asked.

  “Lord, Colonel, how could you know that?” Sheriff Donovan asked. “It only happened a couple hours ago.”

  “Word gets around, my boy. Word gets around.” Colonel Boyle patted his hand on the arm of the chair. “Even when you are chair bound as I am.”

  “Colonel, Smoke was in the war on the same side as you, and he’d like to ask you some questions.”

  Boyle chuckled. “Well, Emerson, you damn Yankee, now you are outnumbered by Rebels. How does that feel?”

  “Intimidating,” Donovan replied with a little laugh.

  “Good, good. Now you know how we felt for the entire war.” Boyle turned his attention to Smoke. “Who were you with, son?”

  “I was with Briggs.”

  “Gregg? General Gregg’s Brigade? Yes, I knew it well.”

  “No, sir, Briggs. Asa Briggs.”

  The smile left Colonel Boyle’s face. “Didn’t he have an irregular unit with Quantrill?”

  “We’ve been lumped in with Quantrill, but other than the fact that we were an irregular unit not attached to any major command, we were nothing like him.”

  Colonel Boyle nodded his head. “That is good to know. Some of those irregulars—on both sides—were nothing but butchers.”

  Smoke surely couldn’t argue with that. “Colonel, I’m looking for three men who took part in the Wilderness Campaign.”

  “On the Southern side?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What do you want with them?”

  “I want to kill them,” Smoke answered frankly.

  Colonel Boyle blinked. “Well, that was an honest answer. Unexpected, but honest. Son, let me tell you this. I fought in the Wilderness Campaign with a lot of good men. I don’t know who you’re looking for or why you’re looking for them, but why should I turn over any Confederate soldier to the Yankees?” He held up his hand to forestall any protest from Smoke. “And before you tell me again that you fought for the South, you are now wearing the badge of a deputy U.S. marshal. That means you are working for the federal government, and that means you are a Yankee.”

  “The men I’m looking for are Wiley Potter, Muley Stratton, and Josh Richards.”

  “Potter, Stratton, and Richards?” Boyle blew out an explosive breath. “Well, why didn’t you say so? Those evil—” The colonel stopped in mid-sentence and squinted at Smoke. “Wait a minute. Jensen? Your last name is Jensen? Would you be any kin to Luke Jensen?”

  “I would be. Luke Jensen was my brother.”

  Colonel Boyle nodded. “Yes, I can see why you’re after them. When those deserters stole all that Confederate gold, they shot Luke. Officially, he was reported dead, but we never found his body, so to be honest with you, I never knew whether he was killed or not. Do you know?”

  “No, sir, I don’t,” Smoke replied. “I’ve had no contact with Luke since he left for the war. But I do know that Stratton, Potter, and Richards killed my pa when he tracked them down after the war. And that’s reason enough for me to go after them.”

  “I wish I could help you, son, I really do. I heard once that they were in New Mexico, but I can’t be too sure about that. I just know this. They stole a lot of gold, a lot of it . . . and somebody with that much money is going to spend enough that they’re going to get themselves noticed. If you look for them long enough, you will find them.”

  “That’s funny,” Smoke said. “That’s just what my pa said.”

  Summit County, Colorado Territory

  One hundred and fifty miles east of Red Cliff, three men were standing in the middle of the road, just north of Rush Creek.

  “You think three sticks of dynamite are enough, Pete?” Eddie asked.

  “Yeah, three sticks are plenty.” The man was working with the dynamite.

  “Well, let’s get it buried and get the fuse laid. The coach is goin’ to be here any minute.”

  “Don’t you be rushin’ me now, Eddie.You don’t want to be too careless when you’re messing with dynamite, otherwise you could blow a hand off. You have to be slow and careful.”

  “Can’t you be quick and careful?”

  “We’re almost there. I’ve got the sticks buried; all I have to do now is run the detonating wire over to the plunger.”

  “Hurry, I can hear the coach coming,” put in the third man, Merlin, speaking for the first time.

  The three men hustled over to the side of the road, then lay down in the ditch. Pete had his hand on the plunger. “Just keep on comin’,” he said as he watched for the stagecoach. “Yes, sir, just keep on comin’. I’ve got a big surprise all laid out for you.”

  As the six-horse team of the Colorado Springs stage crossed Rush Creek, the hooves of the horses and the turning wheels churned the water, sending splashes into the air where, suspended for a second, they flashed in the late afternoon sun.

  “Hyah! Hyah!” the driver shouted, popping the whip over the heads of the team.

  Three people were inside—George Thomas, his wife Edith, and their seven-year-old son Billy.

  “I do hope we get there before it’s too late. I would hate to think that the hotel rooms are all rented and we wouldn’t have a place to stay,” Edith said.

  “We don’t have to worry any about that,” George said, reassuring her. “Mr. Murphy informed me that he already had a hotel room reserved for us. We can stay there, at his expense, until we find a house of our own.”

  “Oh, what a wonderful thing for him to do,” Edith said.

  Every now and then, Billy would lean out the window and point his carved wooden pistol toward the rear of the coach. “Bang, bang, bang!”

  “What are you shooting at, Billy?” George asked.

  “There’s a bunch of stagecoach robbers on horseback and they’re trying to catch up with the coach. Bang, bang! I got one.”

  “Just one? You shot twice,” George teased.

  “Yes, but one of them I just hit in the shoulder. Bang! Click. Click. Oh, I’m out of bullets.”

  “Already?”

  “Haven’t you been counting them, Papa? I’ve shot six times already, and my gun only holds six bullets.”

  “You’re right,” George said, nodding gravely. “I should have been counting them.”

  “That’s all right, Papa. You aren’t a famous gunfighter like I am.”

  “Oh, so you’re a famous gunfighter, are you?”

  “Yes, sir, I am. Why, I expect there are books written about me.”

  George chuckled. “I expect there are, too.”

  “Mama, will I be going to school in Eureka?” Billy asked, as he “reloaded” bullets into his six-shooter.

  “Yes, of course you will, dear. We are moving there.”

  “But I won’t know anyone in that school. All my friends are in Sandborn.”

  “You’ll make new friends in Eureka.”

>   Billy started to pout. “I don’t want any new friends. I like my old friends.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly. You’ll like your new friends just as much,” Edith said with a smile.

  “I wish we—”

  At that precise moment, the coach was enveloped in a fiery blast as the three sticks of dynamite detonated underneath. The stagecoach blew apart in a brilliant burst of flame.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Woo, damn! Did you see that?” Merlin asked excitedly. “It went up all fiery-like!” He jumped up from the outlaws’ hiding place and danced a little jig as burning pieces of the stagecoach came crashing back to earth in the road.

  The three men waited until all the debris had stopped falling, then cautiously approached the devastation. The coach was in several pieces, none too large for two men to pick up. Some of the pieces were still burning.

  Lying in the wreckage were five bodies—the driver and shotgun guard, a man, a woman, and a child. They were burned and torn almost beyond recognition as being human.

  The two rearmost horses of the six-horse team were dead. The next two horses were bleeding from wounds, and only the front two were uninjured, but they were trapped in the harness, unable to move.

  The three outlaws picked through the wreckage until they found the canvas mail pouch.

  “How much did we get?” Eddie asked.

  Pete cut the bag open and discarded the letters inside it until he came to a bank pouch. “Here it is!”

  The bank pouch was opened, then the smiles faded.

  “Eighty-seven dollars?” Merlin said after they had counted the money. “All this for eighty-seven dollars?”

  “The big guy ain’t gonna be pleased,” Eddie said.

  “What will he have to complain about?” Pete asked. “We done what we was supposed to do. We held up the stage. If eighty-seven dollars was all it had, that ain’t our fault. He’s the one that picks the jobs out for us.”

  “How come he don’t come with us?” Merlin asked. “We’re the ones takin’ all the risks. He gets his cut, and he don’t do nothin’.”

  “You want to take that up with him?” Pete asked.

  “No,” Merlin admitted.

  “I didn’t think so. There’ll be other jobs. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  Leaving the dead bodies and the nervously whinnying horses behind them, the three men took their paltry proceeds from the brutal robbery and rode off.

  * * *

  Two hours after the three men rode away, Dooley Cooper, owner of the Summit County Stage Line, was one of five men walking around the wreckage. The five bodies had already been loaded onto a wagon, ready to be taken on in to Eureka.

  “Boss, them two hurt horses is goin’ to have to be put down,” said one of Cooper’s men. “I don’t know how they lived this long, hurt as bad as they are.”

  “Yes, Carl, by all means, put them down,” Cooper said. “We’re going to have to dig a big hole to bury them. We can’t leave them here.”

  “I’ve got Dewey and Perkins diggin’ now,” Carl said. “We can use the horses that weren’t hurt to pull the others out of the road.”

  “Take care of those poor beasts.”

  As Carl walked back over to the bleeding and suffering horses, from which the two lead animals had already been disconnected, Cooper continued to look around what was left of his stagecoach. He saw a wooden pistol lying in the road and bent down to pick it up. A name was carved in the handle.

  Billy.

  “I don’t recall taking on a large money shipment.” Fitzsimmons was the clerk of the Summit County Stage Line. Normally he wouldn’t have been out in the field, but when the report came in that the coach hadn’t just been robbed, but had been completely demolished, Cooper had figured he would need every man in his employ to get the mess cleaned up.

  Cooper agreed. “We didn’t have a large shipment. Whatever money the coach was carrying had to be less than one hundred dollars, or the bank would have notified us.”

  “Who would do something like this for less than one hundred dollars?” Fitzsimmons asked.

  Cooper showed Fitzsimmons the carved wooden pistol. “This must have belonged to the kid.” He shook his head. “What sort of lowlife would blow up a stagecoach and kill everyone in it, for any amount of money?”

  “Here comes the sheriff.” Fitzsimmons pointed to an approaching rider.

  “Now he gets here,” Cooper said in disgust.

  Sheriff Jesse Hector was a tall, very thin man with dark hair, a pencil-thin mustache, and a prominent Adam’s apple. Dismounting, he tied his horse to the wagon containing the bodies of the five people killed in the stagecoach blast.

  “Damn, they did a job on it, didn’t they?” Hector said as he approached what was left of the wreckage. Almost half of it had already been cleared away.

  “Sheriff, you say that almost in admiration,” Cooper said. “There’s absolutely nothing about those criminals to admire. They’re animals. They killed five human beings, four horses, and destroyed one of my coaches.”

  “How much money did they get for all this?” Hector asked as he looked over the wreckage.

  “I’m not sure. We’ll have to wait and see what the bank says. All I know is, they got less than one hundred dollars.”

  The sheriff jerked around with a surprised look on his face. “Did you say they got less than one hundred dollars?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But how can that be? It was my understanding that the bank was going to be transferring ten thousand dollars today.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Scott told me.”

  Matthew Scott was the president of the bank.

  Cooper shook his head. “Well if he was plannin’ on shippin’ that much money, he must have decided to put it off until later. We have a contract. By contract, anytime he ships more than one hundred dollars, he has to let me know. He hasn’t said anything to me about ten thousand dollars, so you better believe it wasn’t on this coach.”

  “Damn,” Fitzsimmons said. “Boss, you know what I think? I think that whoever did this must have heard the same information Sheriff Hector heard. They must have thought the bank was shipping a lot of money. Why else would they go to all this trouble and kill all these people?”

  “I guess you’re right.” Cooper raised the wooden pistol up to look at it. “I can’t believe anyone is mean enough to dynamite a man and his family. Especially a little kid.”

  “Boss, there are some mean people in the world. Me and you both know that,” Carl put in.

  * * *

  From the Rocky Mountain News, October 7, 1870:

  SCURRILOUS ATTACK ON STAGECOACH

  ALL KILLED

  On the fifth, instant, a person or persons unknown planted dynamite in the road over which the Eureka-bound stagecoach of the Summit County Stage Line was required to travel. No doubt activated by some remote means, the dynamite exploded under the coach.

  Killed in the attack were the driver, Lloyd “Beans” Crabtree and the shotgun guard Gilbert Wyatt. The passengers, also killed, were George Thomas, his wife Edith, and their seven-year-old son Billy. Thomas was going to Eureka to take a job as a pharmacist for John Murphy, in the Murphy Apothecary of that city.

  The Summit County Stage Line lost four horses in the attack, two of which were killed in the explosion and two which sustained injuries so grievous that it was necessary for the poor creatures to be put down.

  What is not understood is why the perpetrator or perpetrators chose this particular coach to attack, as, according to the bank’s transfer records, it was carrying only eighty-seven dollars.

  Sheriff Jesse Hector of Breckenridge in Summit County, where the attack on the stagecoach took place, has stated that he is investigating the crime.

  “Eighty-seven dollars? You come here with eighty-seven damn dollars?”

  “That’s all the stagecoach was a-carryin’, I swear,” Pete said
.

  “I know, I know. I read it in the papers. I don’t know what happened. I heard that it was going to be carrying a lot more money than that.”

  “I’m glad you read it in the paper, boss, and ain’t got the idea that maybe me and the others was tryin’ to cheat you out of your cut,” Merlin said.

  The outlaws’ employer snorted in contempt. “I don’t think any of you are dumb enough to try anything like that.”

  “Have you got any more jobs in mind for us?” Pete asked.

  “I don’t have anything yet, but I’ll keep my eyes peeled and my ears open, and when I come up with something else, I’ll let you know.”

  Denver

  Janey stood on the platform waiting for her luggage to be brought to her. She had already hailed a cab. The driver, leaving his hack tied out front, was standing beside her, waiting to receive the luggage from the baggage claim so he could carry it to the cab.

  “Driver, wait here for me, will you? Here is my claim ticket for the luggage. I want to buy a newspaper,” Janey said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the driver replied.

  Richards had given her the five hundred dollars she had asked for, so she needed to plan her buying excursion, which she would take care of as soon as she had the paperwork signed. She figured to start her shopping spree by perusing all the ads in the paper.

  Standing nearby on the platform, Smoke watched the pretty woman walk away. For a fleeting moment, he thought there was something familiar about her, but it was for an instant only. He had seen, and met, a lot of women in the past several years.

  He stepped closer to the driver. “Is your cab for hire?”

  “No, sir, I’m afraid not. I’ve been hired by that pretty lady over there at the newsstand. You can go ask her if she doesn’t mind sharing a cab if you’d like.”

  “All right, thanks. I believe I will ask her.” Smoke started toward the newsstand. The woman might be willing to share the cab with him . . . or she might think he was being a bit forward. At any rate, it wouldn’t hurt to ask. Besides, he wanted to get a closer look at her. He couldn’t shake the idea that he had seen her somewhere before—not only seen her but had actually met her.