Chapter Fifteen
After leaving the offices of Norton and Norton, and taking care of some business at the bank, Brad Houser decided to have a drink at Fiddler’s Green.
“Hello, Mr. Houser,” Biff greeted. “What can I get for you?”
“I’ll have a whiskey.”
“Biff, give the gentleman a Scotch ’n put it on m’ tab,” Duff said, calling from his table.
“I thank you, sir,” Houser said as he took the drink from the bartender.
“Would you be for joining me, Mr. Houser?” Duff invited.
Houser took his drink over to the table and sat down.
“Well, meeting you today is quite serendipitous, I must say,” Houser said. He lifted the whiskey glass. “To your health, sir.”
Duff lifted his glass as well. “And to yours, sir.”
The two men drank, then Duff asked, “In what way is our meeting serendipitous, may I ask?”
“Well, for one thing, I would like to apologize to you for my boorish behavior the other day, when I called upon you to protest the injuries your Mr. Wang inflicted upon my men. I have since heard from many witnesses that the incident was precipitated by my two employees. It was untoward of me, and I ask your forbearance.”
“Dinnae be troubled over it, Mr. Houser. ’Tis more than one man who has underestimated Wang’s rather remarkable skills.”
“That’s most gracious of you. But I’ve another thing I wish to discuss with you . . . you being the owner of the largest ranch in the valley. What do you think of all these . . . upstart . . . small ranchers?”
“I’m nae sure what ye mean by the question,” Duff replied.
“A few weeks ago, I asked my foreman to move part of the herd into the Pine Flats. I am told that Mr. Prescott used the Pine Flats for grazing for as long as he owned Twin Peaks ranch, but Turley came back with the information that Prosser, one of these nuisance small ranchers, had moved his cows there, eating my grass and drinking my water.”
“Ah, but ’tis nae your grass nor your water, Mr. Houser. The Pine Flats is open range.”
“So I have been told,” Houser replied.
“Then dinnae ye think that Mr. Prosser has every right to be there?”
“There is an unwritten law of inverse established domain, which grants to the prior user proprietary exclusion to public land, barring any government action to the contrary.”
“Here now, Mr. Houser, ’n you’ll be forgiving me for nae understanding the meaning of all your words.”
“Basically it means that Twin Peaks has established a prior presence on the property, so that now I, as the present owner of Twin Peaks, have exclusive rights to the land.”
“Aye, but dinnae ye say that ’twas an unwritten law?”
“Unwritten law, sir, is based upon custom, usage, and judicial decisions. And though it has not been enacted in the form of statute or ordinance, it does have legal sanction,” Houser pontificated.
“And you bring up this unwritten law because Mr. Prosser grazed a few of his cows on open range?” Duff asked.
“Captain MacCallister,” Houser started, then he interrupted his comment to ask a question. “I have recently learned that you were a captain in the Black Watch, is that correct?”
“Aye, but I’m nae addressed as such anymore.”
“If you will allow me, I will extend you the courtesy of addressing you so. Captain MacCallister, it may well be that the usurpation of open range means little to you, as Sky Meadow is so large that you can manage your herd completely within the boundaries of your own holdings. But for those of us who depend upon open range, the proliferation of these pesky, small ranchers can be a problem.”
Houser finished his drink then stood. “Thank you for the fine Scotch,” he said. “And do consider my words, Captain MacCallister, for I have no doubt but that other larger ranchers are suffering loss of grazing area and water just as I am.”
After Houser left, Biff came over to join Duff at the table. Knowing that Duff rationed his alcoholic beverages, he brought, instead of another whiskey, a cup of hot coffee to offer.
“What was Houser palaverin’ about?” Biff asked.
“He seems to have a personal animus for the smaller ranchers in the area.”
“Yeah, he would,” Biff said. “He is so full of himself that it’s a wonder his head doesn’t explode. I don’t mind tellin’ you, Duff, I don’t like the son of a bitch.”
“Aye, he can be a bit unpleasant.”
“A bit unpleasant? That’s like saying the fight at Little Bighorn was a ‘bit of a scuffle.’”
Somewhere in Eastern Colorado
“We need us a little more travelin’ money,” Sid Shamrock said to the men who were riding with him.
“How do you propose we get it?” Jaco asked. “There ain’t no banks here ’bout.”
“Which, even if there was, it would more ’n likely not do us no good anyway,” Hawke said. “I mean, seein’ as we didn’t do all that good with the last one we robbed.”
“Hawke, you can go off on your own, if you want to,” Jaco said. “I know how well you were doing by yourself until you joined us.”
“I didn’t say nothin’ ’bout goin’ off nowhere,” Hawke replied. “I was just sayin’ as how we didn’t get as much money as we thought we would, is all. They was all of us some upset about that, ’n you know it.”
“It’ll get better,” Shamrock promised.
The six men came over the top of a hill and saw a stagecoach parked out in front of a building. The building appeared to be in the middle of nowhere.
“Damn, it’s a way stop for stagecoaches,” Shamrock said. He smiled. “Boys, that’s where we’ll get our money.”
“You mean we’re goin’ to rob a stagecoach?” Wix asked.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean. ’N seein’ as this coach ain’t even movin’, it don’t seem to me like it’s goin’ to be very hard to do.”
“What if the coach ain’t carryin’ no money?” Evans asked.
“The passengers will have some money. ’N more ’n likely, the stagecoach station will have some, too. Right now we ain’t got hardly two coins to rub together amongst us all, so anything we get will be better than what we’ve got.”
“You got that right,” Pete said.
As the six men approached the way station, the attached team stood quietly, as if the horses were mentally preparing themselves for the ten miles they would have to pull the coach before reaching the next way stop where they could rest.
“Hey, Shamrock, look at that,” Evans said. “The shotgun guard didn’t even take his rifle in with ’im.”
“I don’t know how much we’re goin’ to get from these folks, but whatever it is, it’s goin’ to be like takin’ candy from a baby,” Shamrock said.
The six men tied off their horses, then went inside. They saw seven people sitting around a table, being the five coach passengers, the driver, and the shotgun guard. The passengers consisted of one overweight man who appeared to be a drummer, a second man who had the worn look of someone who had worked hard for his entire life but had little to show for it, a woman and two children, a boy of about ten or eleven and a girl who couldn’t have been over six. Neither of the male passengers was wearing a gun, but the shotgun guard and the driver were.
There was a man and a woman bringing plates of food to the table.
“Oh my,” the station manager said when he saw the six of them. “If you fellers are here for a meal, I hope you like beans, seein’ as that’s all I’ll have left after feedin’ the stagecoach passengers. ’N they come first, you know.”
“Take the driver and the shotgun guard first,” Shamrock said quietly. “Now,” he added.
Shamrock and the five men with him drew their guns.
“What the hell?” the shotgun guard shouted as he started to stand up. He was trying to draw his pistol at the same time, but was shot down before he could even get to his feet. The driver put his hands up, but that didn’t stop him from being shot, either.
The station manager had started toward the counter as soon as he saw the men draw their guns, and he managed to bring up a shotgun but was cut down before he could shoot.
The two women screamed, and they were the next to be shot. The man who looked overworked made a desperate grab for the driver’s pistol, but was shot before he could pull the pistol from the holster. The fat man who had raised his hands and made no move was the next to be shot. That left only the two children.
“We goin’ to shoot them, too?” Wix asked.
Shamrock made no verbal response. Instead, he shot the two children, who were on their knees alongside their dying mother.
The carnage the six men had wrought was over in less than a minute, and now all stood there, wreathed in gun smoke, the room very quiet.
* * *
Back in the kitchen Lorenzo Wilks, the black cook, had heard the shooting. When the shooting first started he ran to the kitchen door to see what was going on. He saw the women and children being shot, horrified by what he was seeing, but knowing there was nothing he could do about it without getting himself shot.
He knew he should run out the back door and put as much distance between the murderers and himself as possible, but he found himself completely unable to move. Instead he stood in the kitchen, looking through the barely open door.
He saw the man who appeared to be the leader, a man with the mark of Satan, in the form of a scar on his face.
* * *
“We’ll eat first,” Shamrock said, shoving the pistol back into his holster. “Then we’ll see what we can come up with in the way of money.”
Fifteen minutes later, after having gobbled down all the food that had been put on the table, the six men rode away from the way station. The six horses stood, immobile, unaware that their trip had been interrupted. Finding an unexpected feast, flies began buzzing around the nine bodies that lay spread out on the floor behind them.
The murder and robbery had netted them a grand total of $83.63.
“We ain’t been makin’ a whole hell of a lot of money, have we?” Wix asked.
“I’ve got somethin’ in mind—don’t worry about it,” Shamrock said.
* * *
Lorenzo Wilks waited until he was sure the outlaws were gone, then he went out to the barn, saddled a horse, and rode into Wild Horse, which was the nearest town. Stopping in front of the sheriff’s office, he went inside.
“Hello, Lorenzo,” the sheriff said. “I thought you come into town for supplies just the other day. Mr. Booker think of somethin’ you forgot?”
“He’s dead, Sheriff,” Lorenzo said.
“What? Who’s dead?”
“All of ’em. Mr. Booker, Miz Booker, Mr. Woods, Mr. Parks, ’n all the stagecoach passengers. Them bad men kilt ’em all, ’n they was two kids they kilt, too.”
Valley of the Chug
Ed Chambers could tell, just by looking, that his small herd had grown larger. Curious, he rode down to have a closer look, and that was when he saw at least ten calves.
“Whoa, I didn’t have ten new calves born this year. Where’d you come from?”
Every calf had the Twin Peaks brand.
“How the hell did you get this far? Twin Peaks is at least fifteen miles from here.”
Chambers sighed. He was going to have to take the calves back.
Or was he? Suppose he just kept them? He wouldn’t make any attempt to change the brand, and if Prescott showed up, Houser could just say that he had been holding them for him, and the unchanged brand would validate his claim. But how likely was Mr. Prescott to come over here and examine his calves? And if he didn’t show up, they would belong to Chambers.
Chambers was unaware that Prescott had died and that the Twin Peaks Ranch now belonged to someone else.
“All right, I know it’s wrong,” he said. “But if you wanted to live with me so bad that you walked fifteen miles, who am I to make you go back?”
Ten new calves? That was like seeing $350 lying on the ground, ready to be picked up.
Wild Horse, Colorado
It was the newspaper article that brought Abe Sobel to Wild Horse. The article told of a brutal murder and robbery at a stagecoach station just ten miles west of Wild Horse. The same article also stated that the station had been closed and not reopened.
The article said that there had been a witness who said there were six men, and one was a scar-faced man. Abe knew that it was a long shot, but the number of men and the scarred face were too much for him to ignore.
He dismounted in front of the sheriff’s office. There were two men playing checkers inside. A barred wall separated them, as one of the men was in jail.
“Now, LeRoy, you touched that man, ’n it means you have to move it,” the player outside the cell said. He had a star pinned to his shirt.
“No, I didn’t, I just kinda got close but I never touched that man, ’n you know it,” LeRoy said. “You just think ’cause you’re the sheriff ’n say that, why, I’ll have to go along with it.”
“All right, you can look for another move, but don’t be puttin’ your hand down there till you’re ready to move.”
“Sheriff ?” Abe said.
“If there ain’t somebody ’bout to get murdered, you just hold on for a minute,” the sheriff said with a raised hand. He didn’t look around.
LeRoy made a move, the sheriff countered, then, with a cackling laugh, LeRoy made a series of jumps.
“That just about cleans you out, Sheriff,” LeRoy said.
“Damn!” the sheriff said. He turned back to see who had come into the office. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m looking for the men who killed all those people at the stage station,” Abe replied.
“Who isn’t?”
“Yes, but I think I know who they are. At least, I think I know who their leader is. But I won’t know for sure until I can talk with the witness.”
The sheriff nodded. “That would be Lorenzo Wilks. Come on, I’ll take you to him.”
* * *
Lorenzo Wilks was wearing a white apron and he had his arms elbow deep in soapy water. He was washing dishes in the kitchen of the Rustic Rock Café.
“Yes, sir, I seen it,” Wilks said, answering Abe’s question. “I seen it all. Like I tole the sheriff, the one that was leadin’ ’em had . . .”
“No!” Abe said, interrupting the cook. “I’m going to describe the man to you, and I want to know if it is anything like what you saw.”
“All right,” Wilks said.
“He was about my height, he had dirty blond hair that hung down to his ears. And he had an ugly, purple scar that started here,” Abe put his finger just below the brow of his left eye, “and it came down through his eyelid making it sort of purple and puffed up, then it ended right here.”
Abe stopped his finger just at the top of his cheek.
“Lawd have mercy,” Wilks said. “You done described the mark o’ Satan he had on ’im so’s I can see ’im, just like he was standin’ right here.”
Abe nodded. “It’s Sid Shamrock,” he said. “Thank you, Mr. Wilks.”
“I hope you find ’im,” Wilks said. “A man like that, ’n all those men that was with ’im . . . they don’t deserve to live. What they done to all them people, ’n even the women ’n those poor little chilrun . . . they need to hang for it.”