Law at Angel's Landing: A Western Story

by Wayne D. Overholser

  Freight wagons rolled in every day, many loaded with lumber. It seemed to me that each minute of the daylight hours was punctuated by the pounding of hammers and the scream of saws. A brick building across the street from Yager’s Bar was being renovated and was scheduled to open soon as the Angel’s Landing State Bank.

  We had a drugstore, a jewelry store, a millinery shop, and half a dozen new saloons along with a bunch of whorehouses that for the time being were located in tents. Some of the newcomers were con men, professional gamblers, and pimps, and others were just plain sneak thieves.

  Tug and I ran some of them out of town, but more came. I talked to Scully about it and he said I could expect this kind of scum, but that they didn’t make a real threat. They were like mosquitoes; they could be handled. What I had to watch out for were the organization men who worked together and would try to take over the camp if it got big enough to be worth their trouble.

  I knew what had happened in Leadville and what Soapy Smith had done in Creede. I told Scully that, if he got wind of anything like that, to let me know. I was convinced now that Ben Scully would work with me and could be depended on.

  The week was quiet enough. We had our hands full again on Saturday night, but we stayed on top of it. By midnight we had the jail full. If the camp got any bigger, we’d have to find more space to hold the drunks who could be dangerous if they were allowed to roam around town.

  I thought we had done a good job. Then, on Sunday afternoon when Angel’s Landing was so quiet you’d have thought the town was deserted, old Rip Yager threw his bombshell.

  Chapter Eleven

  Abbie spent Sunday morning working in the garden, hoeing and thinning the vegetables. Spring always came late at our altitude, but when the warm weather came, every kind of plant seemed to try to outdo the others. The radishes particularly were coming fast.

  When I returned to the house from the livery stable, Abbie had dinner almost ready. I kissed her and she asked: “When are we getting married, Mark?”

  “Getting impatient?”

  “A little.” She laughed, then sobered, and added gravely: “No, it’s just that I get a funny feeling sometimes that we’re waiting too long, that something’s going to happen to you. If it does, I want to be married.”

  I sat down at the table. Abbie brought me a cup of coffee. I sat there, sipping it, knowing that Abbie expected me to say something. I was afraid to tell her the truth, but I finally decided I’d better.

  “I’m impatient, too, Abbie,” I said, “and I’ve got that same feeling. It’s kind of like having a nightmare. You know you’re in danger but you can’t wake up enough to ward it off. I feel cornered. I’ve got a bear by the tail and I can’t let go. I just had no way of knowing what was going to happen when I agreed to run for sheriff.”

  She came to the table and put an arm around my shoulder. “I know. I stay up on Saturday nights until I see a light in your house and I know you’re back and safe. It’s more than I can stand to have you walking the street and arresting drunks. There’s bound to be one who’ll get drunk enough to want to kill a lawman.” Her grip tightened on my shoulder. “We can’t wait for men like Rip Yager to give you the help you need. Let’s get married tomorrow.”

  I looked up at her. I could not understand how this plain-faced schoolteacher could have become a beautiful woman in a few weeks, but it had happened and I was glad she was going to be my wife.

  I knew then I had to say it, all of it. “Abbie, I know how my mother scrambled and scrounged around raising me after my father went sashaying off to find gold. I won’t put you through that, not until our situation has shaped up and I know I can live a reasonable life and have the help I need. I can’t resign now that I’m into this business, and I won’t run a chance of getting killed and leaving you pregnant. The way it stands now, I’ll be a dead man in a month.”

  She turned away and I thought she was crying, but she did not let herself break down. Finally she said: “I’d rather have it that way than not to ever have you, Mark. I’ve waited so long.”

  I told her about Ben Scully and his idea of the county charging a license fee. “Maybe I’ll get the help I need,” I said. “If I do, we’ll get married.”

  She nodded and let it go at that. I spent most of the afternoon irrigating, and all the time the pressure of what I expected to happen kept weighing on me. I knew what we’d have in a few weeks. I could not logically expect any help from the county, and I certainly could not afford to pay a second man’s salary.

  If it was up to me and Tug Ralston, we’d simply be swept under. I could expect some help from Scully, but not enough. I simply could not turn my back on the trouble that was bound to pile up until it became an avalanche, roaring down on top of me. Sooner or later I’d have men like Ten-Sleep Morgan gunning for me, and sooner or later one of them would get me. Pride is a hell of a powerful force in a man. To save my life, I could not walk away from the sheriff’s job.

  I was just finishing irrigating when one of Rip Yager’s bartenders came around the house, saw me, and called: “Rip wants to see you right away!”

  I straightened up and looked at the man, so damned mad to think that Yager would order me to come to him that I almost let his bartender have both barrels, but I realized that he was simply obeying orders.

  “If Rip wants to see me, he knows where I live,” I said.

  “He’s having a meeting,” the man said. “He’s sent for Kirk Bailey, Doc Jenner, and Joe Steele. He says it’s important.”

  I leaned on my shovel handle and thought about it. I didn’t like it one bit, remembering Rip’s attitude when he cussed me out for shooting a man who would have killed me if I’d let him. Rip had changed in the last few weeks. I hadn’t seen much of the others, but they were all making more money than they had ever made. Right then I had a hunch they’d changed, too.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

  I went into the house, changed my sweaty shirt for a clean one, and washed up. When I got to Yager’s Bar, I saw that it was deserted except for some cowboys who were playing poker at one of the tables. Except for two strange bartenders, Yager’s Bar was exactly the way it would have been before Catgut made his strike.

  The bartender who had come for me jerked a thumb at the back room. He said: “They’re waiting for you.”

  I nodded and crossed the room. I opened the door, stepped into the room, and shut the door behind me. They were sitting there, all right, all four of them, and I had a hunch they had been there for a while and had been talking about me.

  They sure as hell had changed. I sensed a hostility from them, something I had never felt before from any of them until I’d shot Ten-Sleep Morgan, and then only from Yager. I had considered these men my friends, but now I knew damned well they weren’t. A prickle ran down my spine and I thought of my conversation at noon with Abbie. Something was up and I didn’t like the smell of it.

  Rip motioned toward a chair. I pulled it back from the table and sat down. I filled my pipe, fired it, and puffed for a moment. No one said anything for a time. I had a feeling they were uncomfortable, Rip particularly, and the other three were waiting for him to start talking.

  Finally I said: “Well, Rip, did you send for me to cuss me out again for stopping a couple of men from tearing your place up and for shooting a man who wanted to kill me?”

  “No, I’m willing to let that go.” He looked at the others, then cleared his throat and brought his gaze back to me. “There is something else we wanted to talk about. We used to call ourselves the town council. I guess there are a few others who would like to be included, but we’ve been here a long time and I think we’ve got a right to decide some things.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Well, like keeping the peace,” Yager said. “I told you the other day that we needed a professional lawman.”

  I’d had a hunch what he was driving at; now there wasn’t any doubt, and it made me sore. I demanded:
“Just what’s wrong with the way Tug and I are keeping the peace?”

  “Nothing now,” Yager said, “but you know as well as I do that this is only the beginning. Angel’s Landing is going to be a big camp. The company that’s developing the Lucky Cat Mine is figuring on putting up a mill in Banjo Cañon and there’s been another strike above where Catgut made his. It ain’t a big one, but it’s a promising vein and they’re going to follow up on it. That means another payroll. We need an experienced man who knows how to handle the kind of cussedness that we’re bound to get in a big camp.”

  I didn’t know about the mill and I hadn’t heard about the new strike, and I had to admit there was some sense in what he was saying, but I was still sore. I knew damned well that, if I had the deputies, I could keep the peace. These men weren’t even willing to help pay Tug’s salary.

  I said: “It seems to me that you might give me some help instead of trying to get rid of me and Tug.”

  “Oh, hell,” Doc Jenner said. “It’s not a matter of getting rid of you. As a matter of fact, you two will have all you can do to keep things under control out in the county. What we want is a town marshal who’ll ride herd on Angel’s Landing.”

  “Who’s paying him?” I asked.

  “We’ll all chip in,” Bailey said. “We’ll ask every businessman to help out.”

  “Then you can chip in on Tug Ralston’s pay,” I said. “Right now it’s coming out of my pocket.”

  “You made the deal with Tug and you can pay it,” Yager said tartly. “We aim to hire a tough marshal and we want you to deputize him.”

  I could feel my temper skidding out of control, not so much because of what they were saying, but because of the way they had done it. They sure hadn’t invited me to their meeting, and now they were telling me what to do.

  “Just where do you figure to find a man like that?” I asked. “The tough lawmen like Wyatt Earp and Bill Hickock are dead or retired.”

  Yager shook his head. “Not quite. Captain John Wallace is alive, he is not retired, and he is available. I’ve sent for him.”

  My temper quit skidding. It was paralyzed. My gaze moved from Yager to Doc Jenner and on to Bailey and finally to Steele. They all looked a little uneasy, maybe a little ashamed, and more than anything else, just plain scared.

  “You know anything about Wallace?” I asked finally.

  Yager nodded. “I met him in Leadville when he was a peace officer there. I know his record.”

  I doubted that. If he had, he wouldn’t have sent for him. I said: “He must be about a hundred years old. He goes back to Hickock’s time.”

  “No, he’s in his fifties,” Yager said. “He was in his early twenties when he started in Dodge City.”

  I took a long breath. I said: “Before I tell you what I think of what you’ve done, I want to know if you’ve done this out of ignorance or what. You know that Wallace is not really a lawman. He’s a gunman, a murderer who has gone unpunished because he’s always been able to hide behind his star. I doubt that he knows how many men he’s killed.”

  “We didn’t invite him out of ignorance,” Doc Jenner said sharply. “We know his record. Rip says it’s exaggerated.”

  Yager leaned forward and said: “Mark, we want a man who has the kind of reputation that will help him keep the peace. Wallace has that kind of reputation. Everybody knows about him and they’ll be afraid to get drunk in town. We have made him an offer for one month. After that, the riff-raff will be gone and we can let him go.”

  “You’re a good cowboy,” Doc Jenner said patronizingly. “So is Tug, but that doesn’t make either one of you good law officers. You took the sheriff’s job because you had time and you lived here, so we urged you to run. You didn’t bargain for the kind of job it’s turned out to be.” He waggled a forefinger at me. “We don’t want Angel’s Landing run by some con man like Soapy Smith ran Creede.”

  Ben Scully had called me a clodhopper sheriff. Maybe I was and maybe Tug Ralston fitted the same description, but we’d done our best, we’d risked our lives, we had kept the peace, and I was damned sure that no Soapy Smith was going to run Angel’s Landing.

  “You’ve lost something,” I said. “All four of you. We had something good here, peace and harmony and nobody wanting more than his share, but now you’re in it for all you can get. You’re as bad as Rip, who got sore because I arrested two men who were tearing up his place and because I shot a man who aimed to kill me.”

  They got red in the face. Doc Jenner said harshly: “Angel’s Landing wasn’t what it is now. It’s not our fault that Catgut Dolan made his strike, but he did, and now it’s our job to handle the problems that he gave us.”

  That was sorry reasoning to explain sending for a man like Captain John Wallace. It struck me that Doc Jenner was the leader, the one who was responsible for bringing Wallace here, and I remembered how often I had heard him say that he liked things just the way they were, that he didn’t make much money, but then he didn’t need much.

  I couldn’t be sure what had changed his mind, but I knew he owned a good deal of property in town and I also knew that every lot was skyrocketing in price. He could make a fortune if he could maintain what investors would call law and order, and to hell with the little man who got hurt. They would get hurt if Wallace was running the camp, but Doc Jenner would have sold his lots by that time.

  Suddenly I realized I was pussyfooting, and then my temper skidded clear out of control. I looked Jenner right in the eyes and said: “Gentlemen, you didn’t see fit to take me into your confidence, but I’ll take you into mine. By God, I’ll see all of you in hell before I deputize John Wallace.”

  I wheeled and strode out of the saloon, and I swear that, if one of those men, all older than I was and smaller than I was, had tried to stop me, I’d have knocked him flat on his ass.

  Chapter Twelve

  I started home, thinking about Captain John Wallace and trying to recall what I knew about the man. He had become a legend in much the way that Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday had, and for much the same reason. He was, as I told Yager and the others, a killer who hid behind a badge and therefore had been immune to arrest for murder.

  According to the stories I’d read or heard, Wallace had learned to kill during the Civil War when he’d ridden with Quantrill. There was some talk that he’d hooked up with the James and Younger gangs, though I’m not sure that it was ever proved. He drifted West before he ended up the way Jesse James had and served as marshal in several cow towns like Dodge City and Abilene.

  Wallace must have known the famous ones like Wild Bill Hickock and Bat Masterson, but I never heard of him fighting any of them. Somehow he managed to outlive most of his contemporaries. I wasn’t sure whether he was not as fast with his gun as a man like Hickock, or whether he had a way of avoiding trouble with such men. The ones he killed were unknowns, and I suspected most of them were kids trying to make a reputation for themselves by knocking over a famous gunman.

  What I’d heard about Wallace were fragments that got into the newspapers when he had a gunfight, so I’m sure there was a good deal about him I didn’t know. I’d read that he had, like others of his stripe, come on West to Colorado and had served as a lawman in mining camps like Leadville, where Rip Yager had known him.

  I also had heard that he’d been in the Black Hills for a while, and then had gone to Montana, where he had spent time in Miles City when it had been a booming cow town, but I hadn’t heard anything about him for a long time. I had assumed he’d ended up like so many others of his caliber, that he’d met a man who was faster with a gun than Captain John Wallace.

  I was almost to my house when I reached a decision that turned me around and sent me back to Main Street. I needed to know more about Wallace and it struck me that Ben Scully could tell me. He did, too, more than I wanted to know.

  I found Scully working on his books just as I had the previous Sunday. Ten-Sleep Morgan was sitting across from him, his foot still band
aged. The only difference was that two women were with Scully. I’d never had much to do with whores. I knew there were some you would never recognize for what they were, but I had no trouble with these two. They were overdressed, over-painted, and over-used.

  Scully greeted me with a friendly handshake. Even Morgan shook hands with me. Then Scully introduced me to the women. He called them Dolly and Daisy. They giggled and fauned around as if they thought I’d come in to do business with them. Scully said they were using two tents behind his big one. He expected to start construction on his building the following Monday and the women would have rooms upstairs.

  “My building will be a credit to Angel’s Landing,” he said. “I figure on living here a while, so I’m not going to do anything to cheapen the camp. I expect this place to grow. You heard about the new strike up Banjo Creek?”

  I nodded. “I also heard that the people who are working the Lucky Cat Mine are figuring on putting up a mill.”

  He shook his head. “I hadn’t heard that, but I doubt that they’ll do it. They might just as well haul the ore to Durango. We may get a railroad spur up here. That would beat building a new mill since they already have one in Durango.” He motioned toward a chair. “Sit down, Sheriff. What can I do for you?”

  “I came for information and advice,” I said.

  “I’m great on advice.” Scully laughed and slapped Dolly’s fat thigh. “I don’t know about the information. Ain’t that right, Dolly?”

  “Oh, yes,” she agreed. “You’re great on advice.”

  “All right, Sheriff, what do you want to know?”

  I sat down and filled and lighted my pipe, thinking how much the situation had changed since last Sunday when I had come into this same tent loaded for bear. What really shocked me was the knowledge that in my thinking and planning I’d come to rely on Ben Scully, a man I might have had a gunfight with before now.