Powder River (13 page)

“I hate him,” she said. “That man with Sheriff Canton. I hate them both.”

“You know him?” Dixon was surprised. “How?”

“Cal and me and Billy met them on the road to Buffalo that day, you know, when you went to the village.”

“You didn't tell me. Did something happen?”

Lorna shrugged. “They were mean to Billy. The one in the hat especially, treated him bad on account of he's Indian. I miss Billy, Pa. I do. I wish he could come work for us again. We haven't seen him for so long.”

In fact, Dixon had seen Billy only a few weeks before. He had come to Dixon's Buffalo office to ask if he had recently treated anyone for a gunshot wound. Dixon told him he had not.

“The man with Canton,” he said. “Did you catch his name?”

“The sheriff called him Tom.”

Dixon slapped the reins down on the horse's back and started the buggy. The night was cold and Lorna wrapped herself in her dark cloak, pulling the hood over her shining hair. Canton and Tom stopped talking as they passed, and Tom raised his hat.

“Good evening, Miss Lorna,” he said with his wide smile, his lips red under his full mustache. “It's nice to see you again. I declare, you just keep on get getting' prettier and prettier.”

“Keep going, Pa,” she said. “Keep going.”

But Dixon reined in. “And who might you be, sir, to address my daughter in such a familiar fashion? Do we know you?”

He stepped forward and lifted his wide-brimmed hat. “The name's Horn, Dr. Dixon. Tom Horn, at your service.”

 

—Author unknown

* * *

A merciful chinook finally blew down from the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, arriving well behind schedule and hard on the heels of the last blizzard of that cruel season. The people were grateful, now that the worst of the winter was over, but at the same time they knew the retreat of the ice and snow would reveal the true horror of that terrible time, which would be long remembered as the Winter of Death.

With mighty groans and shudders, the great rivers began to break up, the Rosebud, the Yellowstone, the Tongue and Powder, the Big Horn and Cheyenne, the Little Missouri, overflowing their banks and sending giant cakes of ice crashing and grinding downstream, leaving wreckage in their wake. Valleys and gulches that had been bone-dry the summer before now filled with rushing water that carried the corpses of countless cattle, tumbling and rolling over one another along with downed trees and other debris in the muddy, churning flood. Hapless ranchers and cowboys stood by to watch the deadly flow while the air throbbed with the water's endless roar.

Though the extent of the devastation would never be fully known, it was immediately obvious the large ranchers had lost the most. Richard Faucett lost at least fifty percent of his stock and Moreton Dudley, eighty percent. Early in the roundup, a grim-faced Faucett surprised his men by occasionally riding with them, his face lengthening as they discovered piles of rotting corpses in the creek bottoms, gullies, and the other low places that had offered the miserable creatures false promise of shelter from the iron wind. The air stank of death.

The worst carnage was suffered by the unacclimated steers that were driven up from the south in the fall and dumped, already bony, onto the range. A Texas company that released fifty-five hundred head in August found only one hundred animals, barely alive, in the spring. The owners did not bother to claim them.

Though none emerged unscathed, the smaller operations, such as Jack Reshaw's, lost less. Their cowboys were better able to manage the herds, moving them to sheltered places in the foothills where they could uncover enough grass to keep them alive and, if not, feeding hay—if they had it. In another cruel twist of fate, a legion of ravenous grasshoppers had descended on the range late in the fall, consuming all uncut hay.

The spring roundup was a bleak affair. In the Upper Powder region alone, the number of wagons dropped from twenty-seven, the fleet at the height of the beef bonanza, to only four. Grasslands that once supported ten thousand animals now accommodated only a few hundred. Cowboys would ride for hours, to find only a few bony steers, scarcely able to walk.

One by one that summer, many of the biggest companies started closing out. Horace Plunkett shut down his outfit and returned to his native Ireland. Britisher T. W. Peters sold his interest in the Bar C, and his countrymen Alston, Winn, and Windsor departed also. The Wyoming Stock Growers Association saw its membership plummet as the cattle market bottomed out, partly because of the poor quality of the surviving stock and partly because of an oversupply as the owners liquidated their holdings.

Those who chose to stick it out, including Faucett and Dudley, were more determined than ever to succeed, though they could no longer enforce their ownership of the public rangelands. An era of ill will followed the Winter of Death. The few remaining cattle barons faced stiff competition for graze lands and water rights from scrappy homesteaders and small ranchers who flocked to the territory as the European lords departed. Faucett and Dudley repeatedly accused these “nesters” of theft, of marking mavericks that “by rights” should be theirs, blotching or otherwise altering brands and, worst of all, stealing horses. Juries, however, refused to indict the accused, men like themselves trying to scratch out a living in a beautiful but hostile land. Jurors were sympathetic to the so-called thieves, hardworking cowboys like Jack Reshaw, who had been blackballed by the association during the bonanza years.

Indeed, newcomers to Powder River country found a champion in Reshaw, who was boisterous, full of fight, and a natural politician. He wrote funny, literate letters to the newspapers, skewering the big ranchers and praising the “little man.” In 1888, he took on four partners, giving each man a one-fifth interest in his Lazy L and B outfit. Billy Sun and Nate Coday did not buy in, though they remained tight with Reshaw and his boys, or the “Rustler Elite” as Faucett and his associates called them. Though they never filed on a homestead, Nate and Billy set up an operation on the headwaters of the Middle Fork, in a protected valley shielded by trees and brush on the north and red sandstone walls on the southwest. There was only one way into the valley, and it was along this narrow trail that Nate and Billy built their cabin, a rough, two-room pine-log affair set up on foundation stones buried in the earth to keep out the restless Wyoming wind. It was barely big enough for two built-in bunks and a stove, but, because of Billy's horse work, Nate was alone there most of the time. He managed their growing cattle herd of about two hundred head.

Billy spent the warm-weather months riding from ranch to ranch on Sugarfoot's successor, a piebald paint named Heck. Billy's skills were much in demand, for he was able to gentle even the wildest, meanest horse in a single afternoon and never injured the animal, or turned him into a man-hater, in the process. People said he was successful because of his Indian blood, because only red men had such ancient understanding of four-leggeds, but whatever the reason he had a reputation as a man of merit, a man who could be trusted. For the first time in his life, Billy felt his future held promise, not simply days to mark off on a calendar. Billy Sun had money in the bank, a place to call home, and he was in love.

* * *

The killings started the next spring, though the first one took place outside of Johnson County, so it wasn't immediately recognized at the beginning for what it was, the opening salvo of the Johnson County War. The victim was Tom Waggoner, the German rancher who kept horses in the north, near Newcastle. For a long time Billy refused to work for him. It was a far ride up to Newcastle, and there were no ranches where Billy could stop and pick up extra work along the way. But the main reason Billy said no was because of the man himself. Waggoner brought a darkness with him, an aura of gloom and misfortune. People avoided him, and laughter stopped whenever he joined a circle. He was unclean in his personal habits and carried an earthy, animal scent like the smell of the grave.

Eventually, however, Billy agreed to break Waggoner's horses, but only when the German agreed to pay seven dollars a head. Even for that kind of money, Billy did not like going there. Waggoner did not take pride in the look of his place. He lived in a filthy, two-room cabin with a dirt floor and no furniture other than empty wooden crates and boxes. His common-law wife was a small, frightened-looking woman, who struck Billy as not right in the head, with three dirty children including a newborn. The woman and her babies were pitiful to look at, so Billy tried not to.

Despite his lack of personal charm, German Tom Waggoner had one thing and that was plenty of horses. How he got them Billy didn't know, and he wanted to keep it that way. Most bore Waggoner's mark, but some—if Billy looked close—appeared to wear a brand that might have been blotched or had new elements added. As with the woman and her babies, Billy made it a point not to look too close.

He rode to Newcastle in late May for a job that had been arranged the previous fall. When Billy arrived at the ranch he saw right off things weren't right. The cabin door was hanging crossways on its leather hinges, and one of the children was sitting bare-assed in the dirt, bawling.

“Tom?” he called. “It's Billy Sun. I'm here to work your horses.”

No answer. He looked around the dusty yard. There was a water barrel beside the house, a child's wagon with only three wheels, an empty chair rocking in the wind. Though it was nearly noon, Billy saw no sign of industry, no sign of the simple-minded woman, no sign of Tom. The wailing child appeared to be alone.

He dismounted and walked toward the house, his gun at the ready. Stopping beside the open door, he peered into the darkened room. “Tom?” He heard a scuttling, like a desperate animal in its hole, and saw a shadow flit across the window on the far wall. “Who's there? Show yourself!”

He pressed his back against the side of the house and waited. Finally he heard a strangled sob and the woman shot out the door. She made straight for the child and took him in her skinny arms, holding him close. Immediately the boy stopped wailing. Billy smiled. A boy loves his mother, no matter what. The woman turned to Billy with wild eyes.

“Where's Tom?” he said. “What happened here?”

She shook her head but said nothing. Her eyes cut to the door. Looking in, Billy saw the other two children, including the newborn, lying motionless on the earthen floor. He hoped they were sleeping.

“What happened?” he said again. “Can you talk?” He realized he had never heard Tom's woman say a word. “Where is Tom?”

She held the child and rocked side to side. Billy had just about decided she was mute when she said, “They took him.”

“Who took him? When?”

“Them—three men with black hoods. They took Tom two days ago. He didn't want to go with them, but they made him.” Once she started, the words came rushing out. She walked to Billy and, though still holding the child, grabbed his arm with a bony hand. “Tom told me to wait, he said he'd come back but he ain't, and we're hungry. We ain't got nothing to eat. Will you find Tom for us, mister? Please!”

Billy looked at the low, sage-studded hills and felt the hair lift on the back of his neck. About a half-mile over one of those rises was the valley where Tom kept his herd. That's what this is about, Billy thought, the horses. He was sure of it, the same way he was sure Tom Waggoner would not be coming back. He was out there somewhere, hanging from a tree or rotting in a shallow grave.

“Will you, mister? Will you find Tom?”

The woman's plaintive voice pulled Billy from his thoughts. He looked at her; her running eyes and nose left muddy tracks on her face. Had he ever seen a more pitiful creature? Billy wanted nothing more than to climb onto his horse's back and put miles between himself and this hellish place.

“I'll look for him,” he said. “Do you and your children have a place to go? Is there anyone who can stay with you?” Billy knew the answer before he asked the question. People like Tom's woman never had a place to go. She looked at him with blank eyes and shook her head. Billy walked to his horse and emptied the contents of his saddlebags—jerky, crackers, canned peaches, coffee, a can of condensed milk—and offered them to her. “It's all I have,” he said. She put the child on the ground with great gentleness, took the armload of food, and ran into the house where the other children were beginning to stir. At least they weren't dead, Billy thought, but then again, maybe they would have been better off in the world behind this one . . .

* * *

Billy had a good idea where he would find Tom, or what was left of him, and even if he didn't all he had to do was follow the trail left by the three horsemen. One set of prints was deeper than the others; this would have been the horse carrying Tom and one of his killers. Another animal, Billy noticed, was “barefoot,” or unshod. He followed the trail north two miles, heading for the sheltered valley where Waggoner's horses were. There was good pasture there and a pole corral with a snubbing post in the middle.

He was unprepared for the sight that met his eyes when he crested the last hill. The last time he worked for Tom, he owned maybe two hundred head. Now Billy was looking at close to one thousand horses. Some were mustangs fresh off the range, but most clearly were finished, saddle-ready animals that were not bothered when Billy rode among them. He saw a variety of brands and some he recognized, including the U.S. mark. Billy had long suspected Tom was a rustler, and here was proof. He'd heard whispers that Waggoner's ranch served as a way station for highwaymen working out of Montana Territory and Nebraska, but Billy had no idea the scale of it. Tom must've had money—hell, with this many horses he must've been rolling in it—so what the blazes did he do with it all? Billy shook his head. If German Tom wanted to live in filth, that was his choice, but what kind of man made his woman and children live that way, too?

Gray clouds sailed in, obscuring the sun, and a cool wind blew down from the mountains. Billy turned Heck's head toward the creek that ran the length of the valley. The summer before it had gone dry, but now it was full, overflowing its banks. Waggoner's meadow was lovely as a park with lush green grass and a bumper crop of coneflowers, red clover, and white, yellow goatsbeard, bluebottles, dandelions, and devil's paintbrush orange as pumpkins. Heck picked his way daintily through the wet, marshy ground as they moved along the valley floor. The place was so beautiful and the air so pure, Billy did not want to believe anything bad had happened here, but he knew different. They rounded the shoulder of a low hill and there was German Tom, good and dead, hanging from the stout branch of a cottonwood.

Heck wanted nothing to do with the strange, stinking fruit and refused to go farther. Because he and the horse were still getting to know each other, Billy figured it wasn't worth a fight. He slid to the ground and walked forward, jumping when an enormous black crow flapped up out of the tall grass below the body, where it had been feeding on Tom's droppings. The smell got worse the closer he got. Billy covered his mouth and nose with his handkerchief, but it didn't help.