The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier Part 5

"I wonder how it will all end!" Allison used often to remark while lying idly staring into the camp-fire. "Of course I know I can't keep up this sort o' thing; some one's sure to get me. An' I'd jes' give anything in the world to know _how_ I'm goin to die--by pistol or knife."

It turned out that Fate had decreed other means for his removal.

One day Allison and his brother-in-law John McCullough had a serious quarrel. Allison left the ranch and rode into town to think it over.

In his later years killing had become such a mania with him that his best friend could never feel entirely safe against his deadly temper; the least difference might provoke a collision. McCullough was therefore not greatly surprised to get a letter from Allison a few days later, sent out by special messenger, telling him that Allison would reach the ranch late in the afternoon of the next day and would kill him on sight.

Early in the morning of the appointed day Allison left town in a covered hack. He had been drinking heavily and had whiskey with him.

About half-way between town and the ranch he overtook George Larramore, a freighter, seated out in the sun on top of his heavy load.

"h.e.l.lo, George!" called Allison; "mighty hot up there, ain't it?"

"Howd'y, Mr. Allison. I don' mind the heat; I'm used to it," answered Larramore.

"George," called Allison, after driving on a short distance, "'pears to me the good things o' this world ain't equally divided. I don't see why you should sit up there roasting in the sun an' me down here in the shade o' the hack. We'll jes' even things a little right here. You crawl down off that load an' jump into the hack an' I'll get up there an' drive your team."

"Pow'ful good o' you, Mr. Allison, but----"

"Crawl down, I say, George, it's Clay tellin' you!"

And the change was made without further delay.

Five miles farther up the road John McCullough and two friends lay in ambush all that day and far into the night, with ready Winchesters, awaiting Allison. But he never came.

Shortly after taking his seat on top of the high load in the broiling sun, plodding slowly along in the dust and heat, Allison was nodding drowsily, when suddenly a protruding mesquite root gave the wagon a sharp jolt that plunged Clay headlong into the road, where, before he could rise, the great wheels crunched across his neck.

CHAPTER IV

TRIGGERFINGERITIS[1]

On the Plains thirty years ago there were two types of man-killers; and these two types were subdivided into cla.s.ses.

The first type numbered all who took life in contravention of law.

This type was divided into three cla.s.ses: A, Outlaws to whom blood-letting had become a mania; B, Outlaws who killed in defence of their spoils or liberty; C, Otherwise good men who had slain in the heat of private quarrel, and either "gone on the scout" or "jumped the country" rather than submit to arrest.

The second type included all who slew in support of law and order.

This type included six cla.s.ses: A, United States marshals; B, Sheriffs and their deputies; C, Stage or railway express guards, called "messengers"; D, Private citizens organized as Vigilance Committees--these often none too discriminating, and not infrequently the blind or willing instruments of individual grudge or greed; E, Unorganized bands of ranchmen who took the trail of marauders on life or property and never quit it; F, "Inspectors" (detectives) for Stock Growers' a.s.sociations.

Throughout the seventies and well into the eighties, in Wyoming, Dakota, western Kansas and Nebraska, New Mexico, and west Texas, courts were idle most of the time, and lawyers lived from hand to mouth. The then state of local society was so rudimentary that it had not acquired the habit of appeal to the law for settlement of its differences. And while it may sound an anachronism, it is nevertheless the simple truth that while life was far less secure through that period, average personal honesty then ranked higher and depredations against property were fewer than at any time since.

As soon as society had advanced to a point where the victim could be relied on to carry his wrongs to court, judges began working overtime and lawyers fattening. But of the actual pioneers who took their lives in their hands and recklessly staked them in their everyday goings and comings (as, for instance, did all who ventured into the Sioux country north of the Platte between 1875 and 1880) few long stayed--no matter what their occupation--who were slow on the trigger: it was back to Mother Earth or home for them.

Of the supporters of the law in that period Boone May was one of the finest examples any frontier community ever boasted. Early in 1876 he came to Cheyenne with an elder brother and engaged in freighting thence overland to the Black Hills. Quite half the length of the stage road was then infested by hostile Sioux. This meant heavy risks and high pay. The brothers prospered so handsomely that, toward the end of the year, Boone withdrew from freighting, bought a few cattle and horses, and built and occupied a ranch at the stage-road crossing of Lance Creek, midway between the Platte and Deadwood, in the very heart of the Sioux country. Boone was then well under thirty, graceful of figure, dark-haired, wore a slender downy moustache that served only to emphasize his youth, but possessed that reserve and repose of manner most typical of the utterly fearless.

The Sioux made his acquaintance early, to their grief. One night they descended on his ranch and carried off all the stage horses and most of Boone's. Although the "sign" showed there were fifteen or twenty in the party, at daylight Boone took their trail, alone. The third day thereafter he returned to the ranch with all the stolen stock, besides a dozen split-eared Indian ponies, as compensation for his trouble, taken at what cost of strategy or blood Boone never told.

Learning of this exploit from his drivers, Al. Patrick, the superintendent of the stage line, took the next coach to Lance Creek and brought Boone back to Deadwood, enlisted in his corps of "messengers"; he was too good timber to miss.

At that time every coach south-bound from Deadwood to Cheyenne carried thousands in its mail-pouches and express-boxes; and once a week a treasure coach armored with boiler plate, carrying no pa.s.sengers, and guarded by six or eight "messengers" or "sawed-off shotgun men,"

conveyed often as high as two hundred thousand dollars of hard-won Black Hills gold bars.

Thus it naturally followed that, throughout 1877 and 1878, it was the exception for a coach to get through from the Chugwater to Jenny's stockade without being held up by bandits at least once.

Any that happened to escape Jack Wadkins in the south were likely to fall prey to Dune Blackburn in the north--the two most desperate bandit-leaders in the country.

In February, 1878, I had occasion to follow some cattle thieves from Fort Laramie to Deadwood. Returning south by coach one bitter evening we pulled into Lance Creek, eight pa.s.sengers inside, Boone May and myself on the box with 'Gene Barnett the driver; Stocking, another famous messenger, roosted behind us atop of the coach, fondling his sawed-off shotgun.

From Lance Creek southward lay the greatest danger zone. At that point, therefore, Boone and Stocking shifted from the coach to the saddle, and, as 'Gene popped his whip and the coach crunched away through the snow, both dropped back perhaps thirty yards behind us.

An hour later, just as the coach got well within a broad belt of plum bushes that lined the north bank of Old Woman's Fork, out into the middle of the road sprang a lithe figure that threw a snap shot over 'Gene's head and halted us.

Instantly six others surrounded the coach and ordered us down. I already had a foot on the nigh front wheel to descend, when a shot out of the brush to the west, (Boone's, I later learned) dropped the man ahead of the team.

Then followed a quick interchange of shots for perhaps a minute, certainly no more, and then I heard Boone's cool voice:

"Drive on, 'Gene!"

"Move an' I'll kill you!" came in a hoa.r.s.e bandit's voice from the thicket east of us.

"Drive on, 'Gene, or _I'll kill_ you," came then from Boone, in a tone of such chilling menace that 'Gene threw the bud into the leaders, and away we flew at a pace materially improved by three or four shots the bandits sent singing past our ears and over the team! The next down coach brought to Cheyenne the comforting news that Boone and Stocking had killed four of the bandits and stampeded the other three.

Within six months after Boone was employed, both Dune Blackburn and Jack Wadkins disappeared from the stage road, dropped out of sight as if the earth had opened and swallowed them, as it probably had. Boone had a way of absenting himself for days from his routine duties along the stage road. He slipped off entirely alone after this new quarry precisely as he had followed the Sioux horse-raiders and, while he never admitted it, the belief was general that he had run down and "planted" both. Indeed it is almost a certainty this is true, for beasts of their type never change their stripes, and sure it is that neither were ever seen or heard of after their disappearance from the Deadwood trail.

Late in the Autumn of the same year, 1878, and also at or near the stage-crossing of Old Woman's Fork, Boone and one companion fought eight bandits led by a man named Tolle, on whose head was a large reward. This was earned by Boone at a hold-up of a U. P. express train near Green River.

This band was, in a way, more lucky, for five of the eight escaped; but of the three otherwise engaged one furnished a head which Boone toted in a gunny sack to Cheyenne and exchanged for five thousand dollars, if my memory rightly serves.

This incident was practically the last of the serious hold-ups on the Cheyenne road. A few pikers followed and "stood up" a coach occasionally, but the strong organized bands were extinct.

Throughout 1879 Boone's activities were transferred to the Sidney-Deadwood road, where for several months before Boone's coming, Curly and Lame Johnny had held sway. Lame Johnny was shortly thereafter captured, and hanged on the lone tree that gave the Big Cottonwood Creek its name. A few months later, Curly was captured by Boone and another, but was never jailed or tried: when nearing Deadwood, he tried to escape from Boone, and failed.

With the Sioux pushed back within the lines of their new reservation in southern Dakota and semi-pacified, and with the Sidney road swept clean of road-agents, life in Boone's old haunts became for him too tame.

Thus it happened that, while trapping was then no better within than without the Sioux reservation, the Winter of 1879-80 found Boone and four mates camped on the Cheyenne River below the mouth of Elk Creek, well within the reserve, trapping the main stream and its tributaries.

For a month they were undisturbed, and a goodly store of fur was fast acc.u.mulating. Then one fine morning, while breakfast was cooking, out from the cover of an adjacent hill and down upon them charged a Sioux war party, one hundred and fifty strong.

Boone's four mates barely had time to take cover below the hard-by river bank--under Boone's orders--before fire opened. Down straight upon them the Sioux charged in solid ma.s.s, heels kicking and quirts pounding their split-eared ponies, until, having come within a hundred yards, the ma.s.s broke into single file and raced past the camp, each warrior lying along the off side of his pony and firing beneath its neck--the usual but utterly stupid and suicidal Sioux tactics, for accurate fire under such conditions is of course impossible.

Meantime Boone stood quietly by the camp-fire, entirely in the open, coolly potting the enemy as regularly and surely as a master wing-shot thinning a flight of ducks. Three times they so charged and Boone so received them, pouring into them a steady, deadly fire out of his Winchester and two pistols. And when, after the third charge, the war party drew off for good, forty-odd ponies and twenty-odd warriors lay upon the plain, stark evidence of Boone's wonderful nerve and marksmanship. Shortly after the fight one of his mates told me that while he and three others were doing their best, there was no doubt that nearly all the dead fell before Boone's fire.

A type diametrically opposite to that of the debonair Boone May was Captain Jim Smith, one of the best peaceofficers the frontier ever knew. Of Captain Smith's early history nothing was known, except that he had served with great credit as a captain of artillery in the Union Army. He first appeared on the U. P. during construction days in the late sixties. Serving in various capacities as railroad detective, marshal, stock inspector, and the like, for eighteen years Captain Smith wrote more red history with his pistol (barring May's work on the Sioux) than any two men of his time.

The last I knew of him he had enough dead outlaws to his credit--thirty-odd--to start, if not a respectable, at least, a fair-sized graveyard. Captain Jim's mere look was almost enough to still the heart-beat and paralyze the pistol hand of any but the wildest of them all. His great burning black eyes, glowering deadly menace from cavernous sockets of extraordinary depth, were set in a colossal grim face; his straight, thin-lipped mouth never showed teeth; his heavy, tight-curling black moustache and stiff black imperial always had the appearance of holding the under lip closely glued to the upper. In years of intimacy, I never once saw on his lips the faintest hint of a smile. He had tremendous breadth of shoulders and depth of chest; he was big-boned, lean-loined, quick and furtive of movement as a panther. In short, Captain Jim was altogether the most fearsome-looking man I ever saw, the very incarnation of a relentless, inexorable, indomitable, avenging Nemesis.

Like most men lacking humor, Captain Jim was devoid of vices; like all men lacking sentiment, he cultivated no intimacies. Throughout those years loved nothing, animate or inanimate, but his guns--the full length "45" that nestled in its breast scabbard next his heart, and the short "45," sawed off two inches in front of the cylinder, that he always carried in a deep side-pocket of his long sack coat. This was often a much patched pocket, for Jim was a notable economist of time, and usually fired from within the pocket. That he loved those guns I know, for often have I seen him fondle them as tenderly as a mother her first-born.