Killer Take All

“The floor is open to any and all suggestions,” Dakota replied.

“Duff MacCallister is the biggest rancher in the valley ’n probably is the best known and most respected. I think that we should ask him to go down to the C and FL office to have a visit with Poindexter, and find out just when this road is goin’ to be built.”

“Yeah, and ask him not to take no more land,” Lewis said.

“Duff, would you be willing to do that?” Dakota asked.

“Aye, I’ll do that, but seeing as Elmer may know Poindexter’s father, I would like for him to go with me.”

“Sure, I’ll go,” Elmer said.

“Gentlemen, I don’t want to butt into what would be the business of the cattlemen, but since the C and FL is doing so much business with the bank, it might be helpful if I went with Duff and Elmer when they visit with Poindexter. That is, Duff, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind at all. I think it would be a good thing for you to come with us,” Duff said.

“Good, then it’s settled,” Dakota said. “Is there any more business?”

“Yeah,” Lewis said. “Jonas and Merlin, seein’ as neither one of you can get to Bear Creek anymore, if you’d like, you two can bring your cows onto Trail Back to get to the water.”

“Thank you, David,” Jonas said. “I really appreciate that.”

“Yeah, me too,” Merlin added. “Thanks, David.”

After the meeting was adjourned, Duff, Elmer, and Dempster walked down to the C&FL building, then stepped inside, where they were met by Streeter.

“What do you want?” Streeter asked gruffly.

“We would like to speak with Mr. Poindexter,” Duff said.

“What for?”

“We’ll be for taking that up with Mr. Poindexter,” Duff said. “If he has nae objection to you bein’ there when we talk, that’s fine.”

“Yeah, all right. Wait here for moment.”

Streeter stepped into another office then a moment later came back out. “He’ll see you.”

When Duff, Elmer, and Dempster responded to the invitation, the man they had come to see was standing behind his desk. “Yes, what can I do for you gentlemen?” he said by way of greeting them.

“We’ve just come from a meeting of the ranchers, ’n we’ll be for asking you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

“Whether I mind or not depends on the questions.”

“Then I’ll ask the most difficult questions first. ’Tis the way you are taking the land that is causing the most concern.”

“We haven’t taken any of your land, so what is your interest in this?”

“I am a friend to those you have taken land from, and they ’n the Cattlemen’s Association have asked that I”—Duff paused, then with a motion, took in Elmer and Dempster—“that we speak to you about the problem.”

“Mr. MacCallister, as I have explained to everyone who has been affected by our land acquisition, this is a necessary step in building a railroad. Some may be hurt initially, but that is only temporary. In the end, most will benefit.”

“Yes,” Dempster said, speaking for the first time. “That is the way of progress. But as Mr. MacCallister has just pointed out to you, there seems to be no discernable pattern to your land acquisition. You’ve taken land parcels that are widely separated and inconsistent with what one would perceive to be the most logical route between Cheyenne and Fort Laramie.”

“Yes, as the local newspaper pointed out before the tragic fire, we have not yet surveyed the route. And until the route is surveyed and agreed upon, we must consider all options, and that means acquiring land for several possible routes of the railroad.”

“Is it true, Mr. Poindexter, that you have taken land, then attempted to sell it back to the very people you took it from?” Duff asked.

“Yes, that’s true, but it is certainly within our right to do that. You see, the Land Grant Act of 1864 isn’t just to give us land over which to lay our track, it is also to provide us with real estate that we can sell in order to raise construction money.

“I’m told, Mr. MacCallister, that you are an immigrant, but recently arrived from Scotland. What you may not know is that this magnificent network of railroads that joins the Atlantic to the Pacific, and crisscrosses so much of America, was built by the same tactic we are employing here. We acquire land to sell, and in order for these land sales to be profitable, the land we acquire must be valuable.”

“Even if it results in breaking the very people you are here to serve?” Duff asked.

“Our number one priority, Mr. MacCallister, is to make a profit. If, in making a profit, the people are served, then that is good. But you must understand that everything we have done, and will continue to do, is legal. And because the law is on our side, any resistance to our activity would be illegal, and we will act accordingly. That is why our railroad police also hold commissions as deputy United States Marshals. Now, gentlemen, will that be all?”

Duff and Dempster exchanged looks, but Elmer, as he had been doing from the moment they had entered the office, was staring at Poindexter. “You don’t act nothin’ at all like Pete. ’N you don’t look like him, neither.”

“Who is Pete, and why should I look like him?”

“It don’t matter none.”

“Gentlemen, I know that the ways of business and high finance may be a bit beyond your comprehension, so may I suggest you leave all the details to us? After all, we share the common goal of getting the railroad built, do we not?”

“Aye, ’tis our goal, all right.”

“Then please allow the Poindexter Railroad and Maritime Corporation the opportunity to get the job done without all this troublesome opposition.”

“Good day to you,” Duff said as he led the other two men out of the C&FL headquarters.

“Good day, sir.”

“Duff, if we’re leavin’ now, why don’t we have us a drink a-fore we go back home?” Elmer asked, once they were out on the street.

“Aye, a wee bit of scotch would go down just fine, now. Mr. Dempster, would you be for joining us?”

“I’d better not. I told Julia I would come home immediately after the meeting,” Dempster replied.

“Give the missus my regards.”

* * *

Back in the C&FL building, Streeter stood watching at the window until he was sure they were actually leaving. Then he turned around to ask the question that had been bothering him for the last few minutes. “Who’s Pete?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea. But I feel that these men, at least MacCallister and this Elmer person, are going to cause us trouble.”

“We can take care of that. All we have to do is kill all three of ’em.”

“No.”

“Why do you say no? Like you said, they’re goin’ to cause us trouble, and that means we’re for sure goin’ to have to get rid of ’em.”

“When I say no, I mean don’t do anything about Dempster as he is the banker and we are dependent upon him in order to keep our operation going. As for as the other two, MacCallister and Gleason, yes, I would like to see them, uh, eliminated. But I don’t want any of our men to do it, because it would inevitably lead back to all of us. This is the West, some call it the Wild West. You certainly should be able to find someone who can handle the job for us.”

“It’s going to cost money.”

“We’ve got money. We’ve got a lot of money and as long as everything continues to go our way, we’ll have a lot more money. But to ensure that, it would be best if MacCallister and Gleason were, uh, no longer around to cause any trouble for us. I’ll leave it up to you to make the arrangements.

Streeter smiled. “Yeah, I’d be happy to take care of it for you.”

* * *

“Elmer, would you be for telling me who Pete is?” Duff picked up the shot glass and took a drink after he asked the question.

“That would be Preston Poindexter, the boy’s daddy,” Elmer answered. “He was my cap’n when I served as bosun on the Appalachia.”

“And you called your captain by his given name?”

“No, his given name was Preston. Pete was just what we called him, but we never even done that while we was still on the ship. We didn’t start callin’ him that until after the Appalachia went down ’n we was stranded on the island.”

“Elmer, you mean to say that you were on a ship that sank, and you were stranded on an island?”

“Yeah, for more ’n three months we was stranded.”

“Oh, do tell us about it,” Kay asked enthusiastically. “Was your ship sunk by pirates?”

“Well, there warn’t no pirates, but I’ll tell you the story if you’d like.”

Kay, Biff, and Webb Dakota and Jonas Perkins, who had come from the Cattlemen’s Association meeting, as well as some of the other customers who were present in Fiddler’s Green knew that Elmer was quite a raconteur. And upon learning that a story was about to be told, they all gathered around to hear the tale. Many of them moved chairs over from the other tables so that they became an audience to the drama as described by Elmer Gleason.

At sea, on board the S.S. Appalachia

The typhoon was unexpected, bowling down on them from out of the Western Pacific. Bound for Australia when the typhoon hit, they were in the central Pacific, just north of the equator, and some 1,700 miles southwest of the Hawaiian Islands.

The canvas was struck, and Captain Poindexter gave the order to bring the ship into the wind, but Elmer saw right away that they weren’t going to be able to weather the storm. The foremast was whipping back and forth like a wand, and when Elmer heard a loud crack he was afraid it was going to come down.

“Cap’n, we need to take down the foremast before it comes down on its own,” Elmer said. “If we take it down, we can control it.”

“Aye, Bosun, take it down,” Preston Poindexter ordered.

“Lemon, Shuler, Bennet, you three go aloft and cut all stays and braces from the foremast then get some lines attached. Lamdin, when they’re ready, you ’n Cook take axes to it. Bring it down to port,” Elmer ordered, though the shrieking howl of the storm was so loud he had to cup his hands around his mouth and shout at the top of his voice.

Once the three men he had ordered aloft were in place, he could only watch. No way he could shout any instructions to them. He saw Shuler slip and thought he was going to fall, but somehow, he seemed to be hanging by his legs.

“Bosun, Shuler has got his leg stuck betwixt the t’gallant spar ’n the brace,” Cook said.

“I see ’im!” Elmer said as he started up the mast.

“Bosun, you try ’n get Shuler loose ’n you’ll both get killed,” Lamdin shouted, but his warning was carried away by the wind.

The ship was rising and falling on the twenty-foot-high waves, as well as rolling at least forty-five degrees from side to side. Above Elmer, Shuler was hanging upside down by the leg that was jammed into the rigging, and his arms were stretched down toward the deck.

It took maximum effort, not just to climb, but also to hold on to the mast. Just before he reached the topgallant spar, there was another loud crack, and Elmer felt it even above the violent gyrations of the ship. Finally he reached the spar, then straddling it so he could hang on with his legs, he inched his way out to Shuler.

“Shuler, you still conscious?” he shouted.

“M’ leg’s hung up,” Shuler called back.

“Yeah, well, you’d be dead iffen it wasn’t,” Elmer said. Reaching down, he was able to grab Shuler by his waistband, then, with a mighty heave, pulled him upright.

Once Shuler was upright, he was able to regain his purchase on the spar, and after a quick cut of two more braces, he was free and followed Elmer back down the mast.

“All right, Lamdin, you ’n Cook take your axes to it. The rest of you, bear a hand on the lines, pull it down to the port, then push it overboard.”

It took less than a minute to bring the mast down and jettison it, so that there was no longer any danger of it falling into the other masts and rigging.

They fought the storm valiantly for twelve hours, but in the end, even though the winds and the sea had finally abated, they lost the battle. The storm had caused some severe damage below the waterline, damage that they didn’t even know they had sustained, until someone went below and reported that water was pouring in. The water was rising faster than the bilge pumps could handle, and the ship began going down by the bow. Finally, when Preston Poindexter couldn’t save her, he gave the order to abandon ship.

* * *

“Howland Island, it was,” Elmer said. “We knowed where we was, ’cause Cap’n Poindexter was a good navigator. ’N when it come time to get into the lifeboats, well sir, Cap’n Poindexter had his map ’n a pocket compass, ’n he led us. We was in them three boats for ten days till we landed. We didn’t lose a soul while we was at sea neither.”

“What did you eat, Mr. Gleason?” Kay asked.

“We had birds, a lot of birds, ’n we done pretty well fishin’ too, so they didn’t none of us get too hungry.”

“Was there fresh water?” Guthrie asked.

“No, there ain’t no fresh water nowhere on Howland Island. We done what we could to catch ’n hold the rainwater, but the only problem is, it didn’t rain that much. We wound up havin’ to boil seawater so’s that it evaporated, then catch the vapor ’n let it turn back into water so’s that all the salt was gone. That kept us a-goin’ in between the rainfalls.”

“My goodness, how did you know how to do that?” Kay asked.

Elmer chuckled. “Darlin’, I’m from Missouri ’n I didn’t know no one that wasn’t distillin’ corn liquor. I figured if you could distill corn mash, you could distill salt water ’n turns out that we could.”

“I’ll bet all the others were glad you knew about distillin’ whiskey,” one of the customers said.

Elmer chuckled. “Yeah, some of ’em was wantin’ me to make some whiskey, but it was hard enough to get fresh water from the salt water. Anyhow, Pete told me that what I done may have more ’n likely saved a mess of us from dyin’ of thirst.”

“Pete,” Duff said. “Aye, you did say that he asked to be called Pete.”

“Yeah, Cap’n Poindexter said that if we was to all think of ourselves as friends, rather than just sailors on a ship, that we have a better chance of survivin’ ’cause we would do things for one another. It was his idea that we call each other by our first names, ’n that’s when we found out that his family’n friends all called him Pete, instead of Preston.”

“How long were you all on that island, Mr. Gleason?” Kay asked.

“We was on it for three months, one week, ’n four days,” Elmer said. “We was finally rescued by a British ship, the Dauntless, it was. They took us to Honolulu, ’n there we got an American ship to take us back home.”

“Are you sure that this man you knew is the same Preston Poindexter who owns the Poindexter Railroad and Maritime Corporation?” Duff asked.

“No, now to be truthful, I ain’t sure it’s the same one. But if the feller that owns this company is the same one that I know, it just don’t seem nothin’ at all like him to be doin’ things the way he is. And this feller Jake Poindexter don’t look nothin’ at all like Pete.”

* * *

It was Meagan who came up with the idea. “If Preston Poindexter is the same man who is Elmer’s friend, and if he really is the kind of man Elmer believes him to be, he might be willing to put a stop to what his son is doing out here. All you would have to do is go to New York to see him.”

“Aye, I could see Elmer and me going to New York.”

“I’m going with you.”

“You don’t need to, we can—”

“Do you think I’m going to miss out on the opportunity to go to New York?” Meagan asked. “No, sir, I’m going.”