“That’s why he kept reaching back and fiddlin’ with his saddle bags,” said Slim.
“And that’s why he changed tah that big horse before we left,” said Little Jake.
“Where’s his horse at now?” asked Mr.Simms.
“It ran off after he got hit,” said Little Jake without missing a beat.
Mr. Simms leaned the length of his full frame against the wagon as he considered the matter before him. He believed these men did not have the money. Their shocked reactions seemed sincere. In hindsight, it would also appear to be out of character for Kid Del Rio to share anything. Apparently there was not the same honor among thieves in the States that there was in South Africa. Your mates stood by you there.
“I’ve decided not to kill you men,” he announced with a chilling finality that suggested he would have no problem doing so. “I think you are telling the truth.”
Little Jake was about to say something when Slim reached up and gripped his shoulder. He liked the big man’s thinking so far and didn’t want Little Jake to open his big mouth and change his mind.
“I have lost confidence in my plan to end it out here on the open range. I don’t know the land well enough and I can’t seem to hire dependable men to get the job done. I do wish to hire two of you, the best guide and scout among you, for ten dollars a day to take me to the nearest town with a working telegraph and the railroad running through it. The Major has had men cutting the lines around here for days while his circus train lumbers through the countryside. I need to get word back to my employers in Chicago so I can get somebody dependable to finish this.”
“Best guides. That would be Bob and Stubby here,” said Little Jake quickly. Stubby looked puzzled and started to protest, but Little Jake looped his arm around his neck and squeezed playfully. Bob stood smiling at the compliment.
“Charley,” yelled Little Jake towards the teamster in the shadows. “What’s the nearest town that the telegraph works?”
“Gillette,” came the reply.
“They have the railroad there?”
“No, there ain’t. You may as well go back to Cheyenne to catch a train.”
“Then Cheyenne it is,” announced Mr. Simms.
“Hell, these fellas know how to get from here to Cheyenne. It’s only about a day or so ride. I got tah stick with my partner Slim here ‘til he can ride.”
“Fine,” said Mr. Simms. “You two come with me. We will leave first thing in the morning.” As he walked away with Bob and Stubby in tow, he turned back to Little Jake.
“I know you’re the best scout, but I find you so annoying I would probably end up killing you. Then I would be delayed trying to make my own way. Good luck finding that horse with the golden saddlebags. It’s a big country to find one horse in, and you have no guarantee someone else hasn’t already found it and the gold.”
Little Jake smiled sheepishly like a little boy who had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He and Slim disappeared into the darkness.
CHAPTER 28
ON THE ROAD TO BUFFALO
The fugitives from the Hole-in-the-Wall intersected the road to Buffalo about ten miles south of town. They moved in a disconnected column with Red Alvins riding proudly at the head. Butch was careful to keep the posse a safe distance back. He worried that Sean or one of the other Chicago jailbirds might recognize Mike. There seemed to be an unusual amount of traffic going south. Red held up his hand to stop a wagon with six well-armed men in it.
“Where you boys going’?” he said with fake civility. “Got a little huntin’ trip planned?”
“Huntin’ trip, hell,” said the beer-bellied, unkempt teamster driving the wagon. “I’m deliverin’ these fresh recruits to the battlefield. Ain’t you boys heard about the invasion?”
“That’s why I’m headin’ tah Buffalo,” replied Red. “I’m lookin’ for Mr. Snyder. I got some top hired guns for him. We’ll turn back the invasion. No use you boys gettin’ hurt.”
“Well, I doubt like hell Mr. Snyder is goin’ tah hire any guns. He’s got volunteers coming in from all over Wyoming. He can’t find rifles for them all.”
Red looked somewhat agitated at this revelation. Riley and the other malcontents in his gang looked really agitated. The money was the only draw for them. They lacked Red’s fervor to become a part of Wyoming history.
“Well, he sent for me personally,” Red lied.
“If’un that be the case, yah my as well tag along with us. Mr. Snyder is south of here runnin’ things out of the Covington place. The invaders turned back when they see’d what they wuz up against and now we gottem surrounded at the TA Ranch. They’s all dug in like the Rebs at Vicksburg. It’s gonna be a hell of a fight gettin’ them outah there.”
Butch and the posse closed the gap between themselves and Red Alvins’ bunch. Butch had just finished spreading the word as quietly as possible that they should wait until they got to Buffalo to make their move to capture Sean Daugherty. With the presence of the Sundance Kid in their midst, there was no way to discuss details. Neither Butch nor Elzy were sure how the lethal killer would take to being part of a posse. He definitely knew something was going on and would not leave until his curiosity was satisfied. He seemed to be enjoying the ride, tagging along when he sensed he was not wanted. This made Jack and Luke very edgy. Mike was more difficult to connect with since he stayed towards the back and tried to hide beneath the broad brim of his borrowed hat.
“What’s the matter, Butch?” asked Sundance with mocking concern. “You look as nervous as a tick.”
“Ah, this Texan I’m draggin’ around is starting tah wear on me,” he said as he jerked the reins of Billy’s horse.
“What yah doin’?” Billy protested groggily. He was beginning to grasp what was going on around him.
Butch pushed his horse between Riley and Ticks to hear the conversation with the teamster. He did not like what he heard. The current plan to capture Sean in Buffalo had merit. There would be monumental confusion in town with the approaching invasion. The group would all tend to break up in the crowd and at some point young Sean Daugherty would be left alone. The suggested move south without entering Buffalo would put an end to that idea.
“We don’t know this Snyder is south of here,” Butch protested. “I say we keep to the road and go on into Buffalo.”
“Damn it! I knows what I’m talkin’ about,” yelled the teamster. “Mr. Snyder left on this road an hour before us ah goin’ south. We see’d him with our own eyes, didn’t we boys.” The six men in the wagon grunted to the affirmative.
Butch had an urge to hit the opinionated, loudmouthed teamster over the head with his gun butt. It seemed like there was always a guy like this around to piss on your fire. It was their mission in life. Butch didn’t need anyone making things any more complicated than they already were. He looked at the group milling around the wagon. The pursuing posse had merged with the unwitting pursued leaving Butch with more branding irons in the fire than he could handle. At these close quarters, Sean may identify Mike as a Chicago cop at any moment, in which case Red and his boys would start pulling iron, and a major shootout would occur. The Sundance Kid had already figured out that Mike was not his old outlaw mentor Mike Cassidy, so he might decide to take a shot at Mike too. If this happened, Butch and Elzy would have to shoot him as well as all the Red Alvins’ misfits. And how would the six armed men in the wagon view this sudden civil war? On top of all this, he was dragging along a dazed but potentially dangerous regulator. The gun he had found by the Texan had the trigger guard cut away for a quick draw. Whoever he was hauling around, he fancied himself a gunman.
“I got a prisoner to give you fellas,” said Butch, hoping to eliminate one burden. He jerked the reins of Billy’s horse to pull him into view of the men in the wagon. “This here jasper’s one of the regulators. We found him knocked out and layin’ on the prairie. We’re turnin’ him over to you.”
“Well, we don’t want the sonavabitch,” sai
d the scruffy teamster emphatically. “Why didn’t you just shoot him where you found him. Now he’s a problem.”
“Now there’s a sensible man, Butch,” chimed in Sundance. “Isn’t that what I wanted to do with him?”
“You boys had better take him south to the command headquarters’ at the Covington place,” said a more reasonable man in the wagon. “Mr. Snyder will surely want to interrogate him.”
“Then you take him,” shouted Butch.
“Hell no,” said the teamster. “We ain’t playin’ nursemaid to no damn Texas sidewinder.”
Butch searched through his assemblage of disparaging loyalties until his eyes fell upon his only logical choice. They had invited themselves along looking for a little excitement. Now it was time for them to pay their dues.
“Jack, I need to talk to you and Luke,” said Butch spurring his horse in beside them.
“We didn’t join up to be nursemaids either,” said Jack, anticipating the request.
“Okay, I’ll just keep draggin’ him around,” said Butch. “You go ride up there and tell the Sundance Kid we’re really a posse and we’re here to arrest somebody. Now be careful how you spring the news because he’s known to be real temperamental, so you want to say it in just the right way. If you say it the wrong way, or even if you say it the right way, and he takes it the wrong way, he’s liable tah kill you.”
“Heck, Jack don’t worry none about that,” said Luke defensively. “Why he’s the best shot in Fremont County. He won the pistol shootin’at the fair two years in a row.”
“Well, this ain’t a county fair and the Sundance Kid can put a bullet in you before you get either one of those fancy ivory handled Colts out of their holsters.”
“The hell he can,” Jack protested.
“He can shoot you while your blinking,” declared Butch. “I saw him do it once. He was called out by this fella for cheatin’ at cards. They was staring each other down waiting tah see who’d make the first move. The fella blinked first and Harry shot him before his eyes opened. The guy’s gun never even got out of the holster.”
“Damn,”exclaimed Luke, “he’s as quick as a snake.”
“Quicker,” Butch assured him.
“Okay,” said Jack reluctantly. “I guess we can play wet nurse to that worthless piece of cowshit for awhile.”
Good, thought Butch. Now to get this circus moving before all hell breaks loose. He whipped his horse around and quickly headed south, hoping everyone would spread out again. It sounded like there was enough confusion down the road to provide an opportunity to snag Sean Daugherty and finish the job. Then he could head back to jail until his trial in July. Right now a little solitude didn’t sound half bad.
CHAPTER 29
A DESPERATE BATTLE
When the morning of Tuesday, April 12, began, the besieged regulators in the T.A. Ranch south of Buffalo were beginning to see their situation in a different light. Their arrogant leaders, members of the prestigious Cheyenne Club, had leisurely plodded across the state of Wyoming with the mistaken notion that no one would dare oppose them. They knew their objective was the rustlers on the list and saw no need to inform any of the honest citizenry (if they even believed there were any in Johnson county) of their intentions. The honest citizenry, however, fired up by rumors and exaggerations, became very concerned about the regulators’ intentions. The previous morning, Sheriff Angus seized the regulators’ three huge Studebaker wagons. In addition to thousands of rounds of ammunition, they also found dynamite and poison. Word began to spread they were going to poison the wells and kill as many people as they could. Concerned citizens began arriving from all over the state to repulse “the invasion.” If the regulators could have seen Robert Foote, the town’s leading businessman, charging through the streets on his black horse, his white hair blowing in the wind, calling for all male citizens to take up arms for the sake of their manhood, they may have known how emotionally charged the situation had become. Folks had taken to calling them the “Whitecaps” after the infamous Klu Klux Klan. As forces unknown to them gathered, the regulators’ arrogance did not allow them any insight into the advantages the other side might possess. Gen. Custer had displayed the same sort of disregard for the enemy up the road aways a few years earlier.
As the morning light began to illuminate the snow-dusted landscape, the regulators saw a countryside bristling with rifles. Those among the elite of the Cheyenne Club who had questioned Major Walcott’s decision to fall back to the TA Ranch and fortify it were now silent. He had found timber on the ranch that he used to build a fort of sorts on the knoll by the ranch house. About twelve feet square and made of heavy timbers, it was complete with firing portholes and commanded a sweeping view in every direction.
Working all of Monday night, they had dug trenches from the house to the fort as well as to several other smaller triangular log redoubts. The major had placed them in such a way that would make a foot charge upon the ranch house a suicide mission. Although many were questioning his competency as a military campaign leader, the major was still one hell of an engineer.
Standing on a far ridge surveying the regulators’ fortifications was Elias Snyder and his popularly-elected field commander, Arapahoe “Rap” Brown. Rap was one of those strange individuals that hangs around the backwaters of humanity until a dangerous situation presents itself. Then they step forward to temporarily lead, feeling very much in their element. He was a huge, unwashed man with an unsavory reputation and a love of danger.
The consensus of the two men was that they would need a cannon to successfully attack the Major’s handiwork. Their request for one from the Commander of Fort McKinley some twenty miles away had been promptly and emphatically denied. He had just received a plea from the acting governor of Wyoming, a friend of the Cheyenne Club contingent, to ride out to help the regulators. Having no idea of what was going on, he wisely opted to wait for word from Washington before interfering on anyone’s behalf.
The Sheriff’s next idea was ingenious. They found some logs and began fashioning a fort of their own - a moveable one. They took the heavy running gear off the three Studebaker wagons they had captured and with two thicknesses of eight inch logs, created a portable breastworks that could be moved by fifteen men and could hide more than forty. If they could get the “Ark of Safety” close enough to the ranch house, they could lob in the dynamite they had found in the wagons and make short work of the invaders with a minimum of casualties.
This Tuesday morning the “rustlers and citizens,” as they had come to be known, would push the heavy wooden breastworks like Roman soldiers towards an ancient walled city. Rifle bullets by the score would gnaw away at the integrity of the Ark but inch-by-inch they would move it towards the fortified ranch house. To aid them, ever increasing numbers of sharpshooters would dig in throughout the surrounding hills and pepper the ranch house with lead until the mortar between the logs gave way and a few well-aimed shots would ricochet around inside the rooms. The great irony would be that there were not more people killed or wounded on this final day of a fiasco that began in the sanctified halls of the Cheyenne Club a month before. Thanks to fate and the good battle fortifications of Major Walcott, not one member of that arrogant and illustrious group was to have anything injured other than their considerable pride.
The whole slow-moving undertaking with its elegant, leisurely lunches and dinners had the air of an aristocratic big game hunt. The misjudgments were of such grand proportions that there was an air of a comic horse opera about the entire misguided operation. In comedies people usually don’t die and if they do, it must be in an ironic manner befitting the farce. Such would be the case here. The only death among the regulators that day was to be that of an ill-fated Texas gunman. He was dodging bullets crawling on his hands and knees with a cocked six-gun in his belt. The weapon accidentally discharged hitting him in the groin. He would die without his honor or his manhood a few days later.
CHAPTER 30
&
nbsp; IN THE CONFUSION OF BATTLE
As the posse neared the TA ranch on Tuesday afternoon, they could hear the constant crack of rifle fire as the battle escalated in intensity just over the next hill. Mike and Butch knew that time was running out. They had to have some plan to snatch Sean Daugherty before they crested the next rise and all hell broke loose. The confusion could be a good thing if they knew what they were doing. If they didn’t, it could be disastrous.
The main obstacle was the continued presence of Harry Longabaugh, the Sundance Kid. He was too dangerous to leave hanging in the wind if they got into a gunfight with Red Alvins’ bunch when they made their move to arrest Sean. Although Sundance wasn’t any friend of Red’s, when Mike was identified as a lawman in their midst, who knows how he might react. They decided that the Sundance Kid must be told of the situation and, if not recruited into the posse, at least be convinced to be a neutral party. Butch had reluctantly given Elzy the task of keeping the Sundance Kid’s attention diverted while he and Mike had time to come up with a strategy. Elzy and Sundance still had an edgy rivalry going back to the days when they all spent Sundays at the Bassett’s ranch.
“Yah know Elzy, everybody always thought you were the smart one,” Sundance was saying as Butch and Mike rode up beside them. “You carried a book in your saddlebag. Hell, that was all show. Did you know when I was a kid in Pennsylvania, I belonged to a book club?”
“Yep,” said Elzy, “and every time you mention it when you’re drinking, you admit your mother made you go.”
“Would you two knock it off,” said Butch. “You know this ain’t got nothin’ to do with books. It’s about the Bassett girls and yah both know neither one of them would give you two a second look if I was around.”
“Butch, they only invited you so you could play the harmonica,” insisted Sundance. “Otherwise you would have had tah stay in the barn with the other critters that weren’t house broke.”
The Cassidy Posse Page 18
