Dakota Ambush

Chapter Thirteen

Fullerton, Dakota Territory

As a newspaperman, John Bryce spent a lot of time visiting with the good citizens of the town of Fullerton, not only to sell advertising and subscriptions to his paper, but also to gather news and run down rumors. Following up on a few leads, John learned that the small ranchers and farmers of the valley were planning to gather into one large group to come into town on Saturday, hoping by sheer numbers to force their way through the gate. He decided that he would ride out to the gate to witness the confrontation.

“John, no,” Millie said. “There’s no telling what might happen out there. It’s too dangerous.”

John chuckled. “Darlin’, Shiloh was dangerous, I was there. Fredericksburg was dangerous, and I was there too. What happens today will be newsworthy, but it won’t be dangerous. And I wouldn’t be much of a newspaperman if I let a little danger keep me from going out there to cover the story.”

“All right, but please be careful,” Millie said.

Realizing that the tollgate across the Ellendale Road would be the point of confrontation between the small ranchers, farmers, and Denbigh’s men, John approached from Fullerton, which put him on the north side of the tollgate. He came to within sixty feet of the gate, then stopped. One of the gate guards, a man that John knew only as Bleeker, called out to him.

“You comin’ through the gate, newspaperman?”

“I don’t think so,” John replied.

“Then what are you doing out here?”

John dismounted, tied off his horse, then climbed halfway up the side of a small hill and sat down. “I’m just taking the air,” he said.

“Taking the air, you say? Well, my advice to you is, not to get in the way.”

“Get in the way of what?”

“A bunch of pig farmers are going to try and surprise us, only we ain’t the ones goin’ to get surprised, if you get my meanin’. So, like I said, just don’t get in the way,” Bleeker repeated.

John wasn’t all that surprised that Bleeker knew about what the farmers and small ranchers had planned. After all, he knew about it, so it wasn’t that much of a secret. But exactly what that would portend, he had no idea.

The elevated area where John chose to wait did give him an excellent view of the tollgate, as well as the road on the other side, so he settled in to watch, not having any idea as to what might transpire. Shortly after he sat down, he saw someone else come up to join the two gate guards. He felt a start when he recognized that the new man was Ollie Butrum. Butrum was easy to recognize, because he was head and shoulders shorter than the other two men.

Although Butrum had killed the two young men in town a few days earlier, he was a fairly recent addition to Denbigh’s company. But even before the shootout the other day, Butrum’s reputation with a gun had become well known throughout the Dakota Territory.

For a moment, John wondered what Butrum was doing here; then he realized that Denbigh had probably decided to send Butrum to the tollgate to deal with the farmers and ranchers, rather than let Bleeker and Carver deal with them. That wasn’t good. Bleeker and Carver were bad enough by themselves, but the addition of Butrum could only make the situation much more volatile.

Even as John was contemplating Butrum’s presence, he saw, approaching from the south, a rather substantial body of men. The ranchers and farmers were coming, and John felt a sense of foreboding. He had come out here thinking the challenge to Denbigh’s right to charge a toll might be newsworthy. But now, with Butrum standing alongside the gate guards, he feared it could turn into something much worse.

John wanted to yell at them, to tell them to go back, and he actually stood up, preparatory to doing just that, when Bleeker called out to the approaching riders.

“Hold up there!” Bleeker shouted, stepping out into the middle of the road in front of the gate.

The natural formation of the terrain amplified the voices so that from John’s viewpoint he could hear, as well as see, everything that was going on.

“Where do you think you are going?” Bleeker’s voice was challenging, almost taunting.

“We are going into town,” McCann replied, his voice coming to him, a little more subdued by distance than was Bleeker’s, but clearly defiant. The farmers and ranchers continued to approach the gate. That they were able to do so without further challenge emboldened them, and they came all the way up until stopped by the gate itself.

“Open the tollgate, Bleeker,” McCann demanded.

“Are you in charge of this group?” Bleeker asked.

“I am.”

“How many of you are there?”

“There are twenty-three of us.”

“Then the toll will be twenty-three dollars.”

“Bleeker, you can tell your boss that we don’t intend to pay the toll,” McCann said. “Not now, not ever again. And as you can see, we got no cows with us for you to kill. Now, kindly step aside and open that gate.”

“I’ll open the gate when you give me twenty-three dollars.”

“And if we don’t give you twenty-three dollars, what are you going to do? Do you plan on shooting two or three of us like you did my cattle?” McCann asked. “I don’t think even you would shoot a man in cold blood, so I’m asking—no, I’m demanding, that you open that tollgate.”

“Mister, you ain’t in position to demand nothing. And you ain’t goin’ through the gate without paying the twenty-three dollars,” Bleeker said.

“Yes we are, and by God you ain’t stoppin’ us,” Frank Tanner said, moving away from the rest of them. That was when John saw that Tanner was holding a gun in his hand, and he was pointing it at Bleeker, who, so far, had not drawn his own pistol.

“Frank! I said no guns!” McCann shouted.

“I know what you said,” Tanner called back. “Maybe the rest of you are afraid to face these people, but I ain’t. No, by God, I ain’t scaired at all.”

Tanner turned his attention back to Bleeker. “And I’m tellin’ you right now, mister, if you don’t open that gate I’ll shoot you as dead as McCann’s cows.”

Ollie Butrum stepped out in front of the other two guards and, though he had not drawn his pistol, it loomed large and ominous from his side.

“Put that gun away, cowboy,” Butrum said.

“Oh, my God, Frank, do what he says!” McCann said. “That’s Butrum, the one we were talkin’ about.”

“I don’t care who it is,” Tanner replied. “Maybe the little turd ain’t noticed that while his gun is still in his holster, mine is in my hand.”

“You ain’t afraid of me?” Butrum asked.

“Why should I be afraid of you? Like I said, your gun is in your holster, my gun is in my hand.”

“So it is,” Butrum said. “So it is. But your gun isn’t pointed at me, is it?”

“No, it ain’t. It’s pointed at this feller, and you’ve just give me an idea. Iffen you don’t unbuckle that gun belt and let it fall, I’ll just have to blow this fella’s brains out.”

“Go ahead,” Butrum said.

Tanner was a little surprised by the unexpected answer, and he blinked a couple of times.

“What? What did you say?”

“I said, go ahead, shoot him,” Butrum said.

“Maybe you think I ain’t serious,” Tanner said.

“No, you told me you are goin’ to do it, so I figure you are serious, but I don’t care. Go ahead, kill him. He don’t mean nothin’ to me. I don’t even like the son of a bitch,” Butrum said.

With a loud yell, Tanner suddenly swung his pistol toward Butrum but, as he did so, Butrum drew, the gun appearing in his hand so fast that John wasn’t certain it hadn’t already been there. Butrum pulled the trigger and Tanner, with a look of shock on his face, dropped his pistol, then slapped his hand over a chest wound. Blood began spilling through his fingers as he fell back onto the road.

After the shot, at least ten men, all armed, came out of the trees alongside the road. John recognized Slater, Dillon, and Wilson, but there were also some he had not seen before. That was when he realized that Denbigh, having heard of the plans of the small ranchers and farmers, had put into operation, a plan of his own.

“Well, now,” Bleeker said. “It looks to me like Mr. Butrum just saved you boys a dollar. With that feller dead, that means you only owe me twenty-two dollars, and you can either pay me now, or you can turn around and go back home.” He paused for a moment, then added, “Or you can try and force your way through and wind up just like your friend there. Which will it be?”

“Come on, men,” McCann said, turning his horse. “We’re goin’ home.”

A couple of the men with McCann dismounted and picking up Tanner’s body, laid it belly-down over his own horse. Then, remounting, they rode off with the others.

“If any of you folks want to come through here on your own and pay the toll, why you’ll be mighty welcome,” Bleeker called out to them as they rode away. He, and the men with him, laughed out loud.

John Bryce had not shown himself throughout the entire event. Now, sick at heart over what he had just witnessed, and angry to his very core, he remounted his horse and rode back to Fullerton.

As the newspaper editor rode back to town, he began composing the article he was going to write. His newspaper was a weekly, and the next issue wasn’t due until Thursday, but he had no intention of waiting that long. He was angry, and he wanted to take advantage of that anger in order to give the story the piquancy it needed.

John Bryce was forty-five years old, and had been in the newspaper business for twenty-five years. A bad leg had kept him from the war, but he had become a correspondent for Harper’s Weekly, covering the war from battlefield and campground, facing the same dangers and hardships as if he had been a soldier.

After the war he came West, working for one newspaper after another until his chance encounter with Matt Jensen enabled him to buy a press and start his own newspaper. Before coming to Fullerton, he had published newspapers in four other towns. He had named his newspapers The Avenger, The Crusader, The Monitor, and The Guardian, choosing such names in keeping with his philosophy of being an investigative journalist, always ready to crusade for truth, right, and justice.

Oftentimes, he would attach himself to the fortunes of a particular town, moving on when the town itself went bust. But sometimes, he was forced to leave when his method of crusading journalism stepped on too many toes. Two years ago, which was one year after he’d arrived in Fullerton, Dakota Territory, he’d met and married, Millie, the daughter of Reverend Landers, the preacher of the only church in Fullerton. On their wedding night, he took an oath to quit moving from town to town, promising her that the Fullerton Defender would be his last newspaper.

He had been here for a little over three years now, and in that time had built up quite a loyal following. But a newspaper could only be as successful as the town it served, and that was becoming a problem. Fullerton had once shown great promise of developing into a productive city—there had even been talk of building a spur railroad to connect them to the Chicago and Western at Ellen-dale. But now the town was dying, and the cause of the demise of Fullerton was Nigel Denbigh.

John had already written a few articles about Denbigh, and though he knew that most of the citizens of the town agreed with him, a few had asked him to tone it down a bit.

“Why be such a crusader?” Doc Purvis had asked. “You are just going to get yourself on Denbigh’s bad side, and he doesn’t seem to me to be the kind of man you want to anger.”

“I don’t have any choice, Doc,” John had told him. “Denbigh is killing this town and if this town dies, so does my paper. I promised Millie I would stick it out here, and I don’t intend to let some English son of a bitch take over this town without a fight.”

John’s wife, Millie, was cleaning the newspaper office and arranging the type for Thursday’s issue when she heard John come in.

“Well, was your ride out there newsworthy?” she asked.

“Yeah, it was newsworthy,” John replied. The tone of his voice was flat, and pained, and Millie picked up on it immediately.

“What happened?” she asked.

“They killed Frank Tanner, Millie. They shot him down in cold blood.”

“Oh, John, no,” Millie gasped. “His poor wife. Amy will be lost without him.”

“Yes,” John said.

“And he was shot down in cold blood, you say? Who did it?”

John sighed. “Actually, it wasn’t really cold blood,” he said. “Tanner had his pistol out and was threatening to use it. He always was pretty much of a hothead; you remember how he got into a fight with that miner at the dance that night, just because he asked Amy for a dance.”

“Yes, I remember. Who shot him, do you know?”

“Oh, yes, I know. It was Butrum, the same person who shot those two cowboys.”

“And you say Frank already had his gun out?”

“Yes.”

“Then that means there won’t be anything done about this killing either, will there? Butrum will just go on killing with impunity, backed by Denbigh and tolerated by the marshal and this town. Nobody will do anything about it.”

“No, that’s not true. I’m going to do something about it.”

“Do what? I don’t like it when you talk this way.”

“I’m going to put out an extra.”

“An extra? Oh, John, I don’t know. So many people have pulled their advertising from us that we barely have enough money to put out our regular paper. Do you really intend to do an extra?”

“Millie, the name of this newspaper is the Fullerton Defender. Defender,” he repeated. “If I don’t do something to defend the rights of the people of this town, then the paper is not worthy of its name.”

“What will an extra do but get more people upset with you?”

“A strongly written article can do much to arouse an oppressed people. You have heard of Thomas Paine, haven’t you?”

“Yes, of course I’ve heard of Thomas Paine,” Millie said.

“You might call me the Thomas Paine of the West. Only, instead of a broadside, I’ll be putting out an extra.”

Before starting, John walked over to the front door, turned the sign around to read CLOSED, and pulled down the long, green shade that shut off the door window. “Now, you set the type, I’ll dictate the story.”

Millie walked over to the type trays. Placing the line sticks on the press form, she looked up at her husband.

“I’m ready,” she said.

“These are the times that try men’s souls,” he began.

***

It took but one hour to print five hundred newspapers, that number being sufficient to supply a paper to virtually every family in the county. Once the print run was completed, John stepped out onto the front porch of his office, put his fingers to his lips, and gave a loud whistle.

Hearing the whistle, Kenny Perkins came out of his ma’s boardinghouse, and when he did so, John waved him over.

“I have some papers for you to deliver,” John said when Kenny arrived.

“Today? But this ain’t paper day,” Kenny said.

“I put out an extra. Don’t worry, you’ll get paid extra to deliver it.”

“Yes, sir,” Kenny said.

After Kenny delivered all the papers to the subscribers, he stood out on the street corner shouting “Extra” until the rest of the papers were sold. Less than an hour after he left the office, he came back with the collected money, wearing a broad smile.

“Here you are, Kenny, fifty cents,” John said, counting out the pennies. “You did a good job. Thank you.”

“Yes, sir, and thank you,” Kenny said. “Mr. Bryce, everyone is talkin’ about your paper today. I didn’t get a chance to read it, but you must’ve said somethin’ important, ’cause whatever you wrote got ’em all riled up. But riled up in a good way,” he added quickly.

“I hope it did, Kenny. I sure hope it did,” John said.

Shortly after Kenny left, Mayor Adam Felker came into the office, clutching a copy of today’s extra.

“John, are you crazy?” he asked.

“I don’t think so, Mayor,” John said.

“Well, I think so. Writing this article isn’t going to do a thing in the world but make Denbigh mad.”

“Good, that’s what I set out to do,” John said. “And if you are honest with yourself, Adam, you will agree with me.”

“Well, what if I do? The point is, Denbigh has us between the rock and the hard place. Why, do you know that right now almost eighty percent of all business done in this town is through Denbigh? If he was to pull his support away from Fullerton and take it somewhere else, say up to Lamoure, or Penequa, or down to Emma, where do you think that would leave us?”

“Free of him, I would hope.”

“Bankrupt, that’s where,” Mayor Felker said. “Now, I think you ought to write a retraction and put it in Thursday’s newspaper.”

“A retraction?” John laughed. “What good would that do? And what would make anyone believe me anyway?”

“You could say you’ve been thinking about it, and you have second thoughts,” Felker said. “You’re a good writer, John, you could make it just real believable.”

“Tell me, Adam, do you think the rest of the town thinks just as you do?”

“I know they do,” Mayor Felker replied.

“Has a citizens’ committee come to you and asked you to come talk to me about this?”

“Well, no, but …”

“John!” someone shouted from the street. “Excellent story! You said what is on everyone’s mind! Keep up the good work, the whole town is behind you!”

“Thank’s, Ernie!” John replied, shouting his answer over the mayor’s shoulder. He turned back to Felker. “Well?” he said.

Felker started to say something, and though his jaws worked, nothing came out. Finally, and in obvious anger and frustration, he turned to leave, finding his voice just before he stepped down from the porch.

“This is going to mean trouble, John,” he said. “You mark my words, this is going to mean trouble.”