Chapter 13

Mid-April 1869

Settlers and entrepreneurs had arrived in Colorado Territory close on the heels of miners in the summer of 1858 when gold was discovered in Cherry Creek, near where the stream dumped into the South Platte River along the front range of the Rocky Mountains. Those early arrivals had given the name of St. Charles to their first gold camp on the east bank of the creek. Scarcely a month later another group under the leadership of Dr. L. F. Russell established its camp on the west bank. They named their community Auraria, after Russell’s hometown in Georgia.

The gold in Cherry Creek ran out all too quickly, and by autumn the weather began to conspire against the settlers who’d planned to spend their first winter in the shadow of the Rockies. Most of the sunshine residents promptly fled back East. Yet the teetotaling entrepreneur William Larimer cast his lot with the sole resident who remained behind in St. Charles when all others had abandoned the infant community. They renamed their town Denver City, after James W. Denver, governor of Kansas Territory, to which the area then belonged.

By 1859 news of another gold strike in the nearby Clear Creek, some thirty miles west of the infant towns, brought west another flood of miners and assorted hangers-on. That same year the town’s first newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News, printed its inaugural issue.

Along both banks of Cherry Creek sprang neatly platted rows of log structures and clapboard buildings, with a scattering of newer brick homes. As early as 1860, when the two towns voted to combine and call themselves Denver City, the settlement boasted some twenty-nine stores, fifteen hotels, such as the Planters, the Broadwell, and the American House, along with various boardinghouses, twenty-three saloons serving a varying clientele, a pair of schools and two theaters, besides an assortment of sawbones and barristers, shoemakers and tailors, barbers and druggists, each kept busy in the boom of those early days.

From sunup to sundown the streets of Denver City were clogged with freight wagons bound for all directions of the compass. Freight came in at the rate of twenty cents the pound from St. Joseph on the Missouri River, a trip taking some three weeks. Here on these streets silk rubbed shoulders with buckskin. Wagonmasters and teamsters, Indians, prospectors and fur trappers mingled with the rich and soon-to-be wealthy in the muddy, rutted byways of the new town. Miners packed the boardwalk outside the office of the town recorder, waiting to record their claims. Businessmen of all sorts made it a practice to carry their own small scales, on which they measured a customer’s purchase at two-bits a pinch.

Here so close to the newest source of gold, E. H. Gruber and the Clark brothers erected a solid two-story brick building to enclose their minting equipment. There they struck their first ten-dollar single-eagle coin in July of 1860.

Money moved fast and easy through the growing community. Luther and Charles Kountze founded the Colorado National Bank. Emigrating from Omaha, David Moffatt opened the first book and stationery shop in Denver City, staying on to found the First National Bank.

By the spring of 1869, which found Bill Cody and his fellow scouts on the trail of horse thieves, Denver boasted a population of more than 7,000 souls.

“Why don’t you get you some sleep, Seamus,” whispered Cody as he came to the window overlooking the Elephant Corral.

The Irishman gazed up at his young friend. “No use sleeping. Can’t with the music Green’s making over there on the floor.”

“Then make yourself useful,” Cody cheered, slapping him on the back. “Go buy us a pot of coffee.”

“Aye, and a good idea that is.”

Donegan rose from his chair, stretching the kinks from his muscles and working his joints. “Nothing much yet. Just Teats’s boy—taking some of the stock out to pasture.”

“Spot anything marked with army brands?”

“Nothing I could tell from here.”

Cody settled in the chair. “Coffee do us both good.”

Donegan nodded and left, pulling the door quietly into the jamb.

Hunched forward in the chair kept warm by the Irishman since the early morning hours, Cody watched the traffic begin to throb as the city came to life below his window overlooking the Elephant Corral.

In the autumn of 1858 businessmen Charles H. Blake and Andrew J. Williams had reached the Cherry Creek settlement from Iowa. Their stock of goods for miners and frontier customers had been packed into four prairie wagons, each drawn by a four-yoke of oxen. The two immediately erected their first double cabin on what was called “Indian Row” in Auraria, but in January of 1859 Blake and Williams moved their business across the creek and established themselves in the growing community of Denver City sprawling in the shadow of the front range.

On the north side of the street they named for Blake, they raised their building of cottonwood logs, thirty feet wide by one hundred feet long. The pitched roof that was first covered with canvas was shingled by 1869. The front part of the place was occupied by a bar with a dozen gambling tables. Beyond that the rest of the interior had been divided by frame partitions to which were nailed canvas to a height of seven feet to set off rooms for various purposes. The first section was a dining hall where meals were served. Behind it were six apartments set off on each side of a narrow passage, all divided by the canvas walls. First called Blake & Williams Hall, then Denver Hall, and finally Denver House, the inn grew through that next decade, becoming Denver’s finest, as well as its first, by that spring of 1869.

In the early days the inn’s patrons fetched water for their tin washbasins from a common water barrel standing in the hallway. Those patrons emptied their basins on the dirt floor to hold down the dust.

Surrounding the hotel stood an eight foot wall, two feet thick, constructed of logs covered with groat, a mud and pebble mixture—something capable of withstanding the capricious climate of the high plains. Loopholes for riflemen were cut through the wall during construction, in the event of Indian attack. Enclosing the hotel itself, this corral spread 125 feet by 150 feet.

Near the end of the Civil War, Blake and Williams sold the corral and gaming house. Ed Jumps managed the famous gambling room of the Denver House, while Robert Teats and his son Eugene ran the former, which they renamed the Elephant Corral. It was to Denver City that stockmen from all across the central plains brought their horses and mules to auction. And there was no finer place in Denver City than the Elephant Corral for a man expecting top dollar.

Bill Cody watched as the first of the day’s patrons entered the corral, passing through the huge iron gate that fronted on Wazee Street. From his tiny room on the second story of the Chase Hotel that faced Fifteenth Street, Cody could look directly down on the corral and watch the activity in each of the stalls that bordered the corral’s three sides.

Over the next hour a curious mixture of customers entered the corral, eager to peruse the day’s selection of animals for auction. Some wore the coarsest frontier clothing, or were dressed in fine Indian-made buckskins, while a minority sported styles freshly imported from the East—garments made of the finest velvets, silks and satins were in evidence. The few women who accompanied their gentleman friends carried parasols; flashing diamonds and sparkling jewelry accented their décolleté gowns.

Most of the early activity centered on the long row of tables near the east end of the corral, where owner Teats had spread a sumptuous repast for his guests that would easily rival even the famous Delmonico’s of New York City. Here the contract teamster in muddy boots rubbed shoulders with the wealthy barons of this new city, every man with an eye kept on the auction ring.

“We’re going to have to do something about dinner soon,” Seamus Donegan groaned, watching the feeding frenzy below. He poured the last of the coffee into his tin cup, grounds and all. “Having to sit here and watch them starch-shirts eating canned oysters and goose livers.”

“You’re not the only one whose belly is hollering for fodder, Irishman,” joked Cody. “We’ll get Green to get us something—”

Donegan pushed the tin cup of cold coffee across the washstand, watching Cody go tense. “You see something down there?”

“Could be,” then he pointed out the window. “See that mule they’re leading ’round the crowd. Next up for auction. I’d lay my mother’s watch that’s Forbush’s mule.”

“The lieutenant’s animal?” asked Farley.

“Damn if it ain’t!” Cody cheered, standing of a sudden, flinging the chair out of his way. He yanked the pistol from his belt, slowly spinning the cylinder.

“How you want to play this?”

Cody smiled at the three of them. “Green will come inside the corral with us. Farley, you best hang back at the gate—in case the bastards make a run to light out.”

“How many guns you figure on us coming up against?”

He wagged his head. “Don’t know, Seamus. Farley counted two sets of tracks down there on Sand Creek. Chances are they’ve got someone up here in on things—help ’em get these animals sold off.”

“Could be three, eh?” Green replied.

“That’s why there’s three of us going in—and Farley closing the door behind us, boys,” Donegan said.

Entering the Elephant Corral, Cody sent Green up the north wall of stables. “Hang ’round the auction ring to see what comes up when the mule goes for sale.”

He nodded for Donegan to follow him into the milling crowd. “Let’s have us a look at the mule, Irishman.”

The vivid perfumes of lilac water mingled with the earthy fragrance of horse dung and old sweat as the two strode slowly through the crowd, on a direct course for the black mule being led toward the auction ring.

Closer and closer they drew to the animal and its handler until the handler nervously looked back over his shoulder at the same moment the crowd parted.

“I know him!” Cody hissed.

The handler broke for it, pushing his way through the spectators and bidders, the mule rearing and scree-hawing, frightening the ladies with its gyrations.

“Damn well seems he knows you too!” Donegan shouted as they both darted into the pandemonium.

“He’s going for the gate—cover me!”

Lunging heedless into a small knot of monied stockmen dressed in silk and fine skin boots, the thief stumbled, fell to a mud puddle and picked himself back up as the young scout reached out, snagging the thief. Cody wrenched him about by the shoulder.

“Williams! By damn—it is you!”

He tore at the grip Cody had on him, freeing himself long enough to go for the two long-barreled pistols stuffed in his waistband.

“Don’t think about it, me friend.”

Williams froze as the voice whispered harsh in his ears, the thief’s hands hanging motionless over his pistols. His eyes grew wider as the big muzzle nudged his backbone a trifle impatiently.

“Good to see you could make it, Seamus.”

“Just trying to help, Cody.” He glanced around at the crowd, finding everything had stopped, everyone staring at the three gunmen. “Suppose you take this man’s guns and we’ll walk ourselves out of here, Bill.”

“Why you steal army property?” Cody asked the thief once they were outside the corral.

“Didn’t steal nothing.”

“That mule you were dancing with belongs to Lieutenant Forbush,” Farley snarled in the man’s face.

“You know him too?” Cody asked of Farley.

He nodded. “Nate Williams. Small-time horse thief and road agent. Plays second fiddle to some bigger fish, Bill.”

“Who’s that, Williams?” Cody prodded, jabbing the muzzle of his pistol into the thief’s ribs as Donegan tied Williams’s hands.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replied.

“I’m not gonna mess with him,” Cody said, walking behind Williams so he could wink at Green and Farley. “Why don’t you both take this lying bastard out of town—get him out of my sight. Hang him so we can get back to Fort Lyon with the major’s horses.”

“H-Hang me?”

“That’s what’s done with horse thieves out here,” Farley hissed. “Didn’t you know that when you started keeping company with Bevins?”

The thief licked his lips, his eyes darting anxiously. He swallowed hard, as if sensing a tightness ringing his neck.

“Bevins?” Cody asked.

“Bill Bevins,” Farley replied. “He’s the big fish in this bad act.”

Cody stepped up to glare into Williams’s face. “Tell you what, mister—I’ll see what I can do so you don’t hang, if you see that I get my hands on Bevins.”

“He … he’d kill me—he found out I told you—”

“He won’t know,” Cody said.

“Here’s the rope,” Donegan said, striding up with a length of hemp he had taken from Farley’s mount.

“We can’t do it in town,” Green said. “I know a tree south of here that’s high enough to stretch his neck good.”

“Help me get the bastard on a horse,” Farley said.

Williams was actually shaking by that time, wagging his head frantically. “You ain’t … no—you can’t! That’s murder … I just—”

“Just what?”

“All right—I’ll tell you,” he spit out in a gusher. “Bevins is out of town. Place we found. Where we got the rest of the goddamned animals.”

“Where?”

“North. Down the Platte a ways.”

“How far?”

*   *   *

Three miles farther down the Platte River, a frightened Nate Williams nodded to show that the rough cabin up ahead through the trees was the one where they would find Bill Bevins.

Seamus glanced at the sky, finding the sun was falling from its zenith, dipping behind some clouds. “Be a good time to go in now.”

“What we gonna do with him?” Green asked, indicating Williams.

“Tie him up here,” Cody directed. “We’ll come back after we’re done with Bevins.”

Williams was left behind, seated, gagged and tied to a cottonwood while the three advanced on foot toward the cabin.

“Awful quiet in there,” Green said as they huddled in the willows, watching for some sign from the cabin.

“Suppose he’s spotted us?”

Donegan shook his head. “I’ll wager the bastard’s taking himself a nap—so he can gamble and play with the ladies all night.”

Cody smiled back at him. “Sounds like he’s a man after your own heart, Irishman.”

Donegan nodded. “He does at that. C’mon, Cody—this is your show. Let’s be about it.”

The young scout led them out of the willows, sending Farley to the left and Green to the right. Donegan backed him up from a cottonwood as Cody ran in a crouch to the cabin door. He stood beside it a moment, as if listening. Then inched closer to the entrance, ears cocked.

Suddenly he whirled about, kicked at the door and burst into the cabin. Donegan sprang from the tree, sprinting toward the cabin as the voices erupted from the doorway.

“Drop it, Bevins!”

“Goddamn you! I’ll see you in hell!”

“Drop the gun, damn you!”

“You all right in there, Cody?” Seamus asked.

It was another half-dozen heartbeats before he saw a tall, thin rail of a man duck out the cabin door, his hands on his head. Behind him came Bill Cody, holding the muzzle of his rifle against Bevins’s backbone. The pair stopped halfway to the Irishman as Green and Farley walked up.

“By the saints, Cody. You gave me a start there.”

Cody laughed, easy and full-hearted. “By the saints, indeed, Irishman! It was just like you said, goddammit—he was taking himself a bloody nap!”