Massacre at Powder River

Chapter Twenty-three

Over the several days since young Winston Churchill had been given access to a horse, he spent at least four hours a day in the saddle. He gained confidence and poise, but he also learned the meaning of the term saddle sore. However, he neither complained nor even mentioned it, bearing up stoically in order to continue with this, his newfound passion.

By now, Winnie had become not only a familiar sight around the ranch, but a favorite of the cowboys as well. He joined them as they attended to their regular duties, such as seeing that the cattle were moved around the ranch to water and grazing areas, mending the fences, even branding when necessary. He was invited to eat in the cookhouse with the other cowboys, and he became a regular at mealtimes, learning not only to eat but to relish the cowboy fare of biscuits, beans, fried steak, and especially apple pie. And though he was used to drinking tea, he was teaching himself to drink strong, black coffee.

“They call it grub,” he explained to his mother. “And it is quite tasty.”

“Heavens,” Jennie said. “How can anyone eat something that is called grub?”

“You can eat it if you are a cowboy,” Winnie said.

“I see,” Jennie said with a smile. “And you are a cowboy now, are you?”

“Yes.”

“What makes you a cowboy?”

“Mama, I have given blood, toil, tears and sweat on the range. I believe that makes me a cowboy.”

Jennie leaned down and kissed Winnie on the forehead.

“I certainly won’t question that,” she said.

Believing that the time had come to put his plan into operation, Teasdale rode out to Logan’s headquarters at Nine Mile Creek. Following the ritual which would let the lookouts recognize him from some distance, he rode up the coulee until he reached the shack. Word had already reached Logan that Teasdale was on his way in, so he was waiting out front.

“If you’re here to complain that I ain’t brought you no more cows from the Frewen ranch, I already know that I haven’t,” Logan said. “And there ain’t likely to be any more either, till we get rid of that bastard Jensen.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Teasdale said. “I think I know how to get rid of him.”

“Yeah? Well you’re going to have to let me in on it, ’cause I sure as hell ain’t figured out a way, yet. We’ve got a five thousand dollar reward out on him. Six men have tried to kill him and all six are pushin’ up daisies.”

“Mr. Jensen appears to be a man of extraordinary acumen, reflexes, and nerve,” Teasdale said.

“If you mean he’s harder to kill than cockroaches, I agree.”

“I do have a plan in mind, though,” Teasdale said. “It isn’t one that I wanted to use, but I believe it may be our best chance. Indeed, it may be our only chance.”

“What is it?” Logan asked.

“Frewen’s sister-in-law and nephew are here, visiting from England. The nephew is a ten-year-old boy, the son of Lord Randolph Churchill. His name is Winston. If Winston were to be abducted ...”

“To be what?” Logan asked.

“Taken,” Teasdale explained. “We could set up a scenario whereby ...”

“Look, you’re goin’ to have to talk English to me. What the hell is a scenario?”

Teasdale sighed. “What I am trying to say is this. The boy goes riding just about every day, and he is getting bolder and bolder, which means he is going farther and farther from the house. If you would send a couple of men out to abdu—to grab him—and bring him here, we could lure Jensen into a situation that would allow us to take care of him once and for all.”

“What you are saying is, you want us to use the boy as bait, and set a trap for Jensen,” Logan said. “Is that it?”

“Yes, that is exactly what I am saying.”

“Then why didn’t you say so in the first place, instead of all this other blather—scenarios and that sort of thing?”

“Never mind,” Teasdale said. “The point is, you know exactly what I am talking about.”

“All right, where will the boy be?”

“I can’t tell you that, because I don’t know, exactly. All I know is that he is doing a lot of riding, all over the ranch. I think there will be several opportunities to find him out on his own, and when you do, all you have to do is take him.”

“What if he don’t want to be took?”

“It is obvious that he will not want to be taken,” Teasdale said. “But he is a ten-year-old boy, so I expect you to be able to deal with it. But, and this is very important,” he said, holding up a finger to emphasize his point. “I don’t want the boy hurt. If he is hurt, he will be useless to us as bait.”

“All right,” Logan said. “If he is wandering around out there on his own, like you say he is, we ought not to have no trouble in snatching him. But what do we do after we get him?”

“Get a message to Moreton Frewen, telling him that you have the boy, and that you will only release him to Matt Jensen.”

Over the last several days of riding on his uncle’s ranch, Winnie was beginning to be able to find his way around. He discovered that it was very easy to navigate by positioning particular peaks and rock formations. But as a final fallback, he knew that the Powder River ran right behind Frewen Castle, so he could never get lost as long as he followed the water ways. Going out, he would keep the Powder River to his right. If he rode off on an exploration, he knew that he only had to reverse his course and return to the river, then he could follow it back. Today, he planned to be out for most of the day, and he had prepared for it by bringing a lunch prepared for him by the ranch cook. It consisted of a biscuit, fried chicken, and a piece of cake. Reaching the junction of the Powder River and William’s Creek, he turned northwest to follow the creek for a little way before he dismounted to eat his lunch. From there, he had a magnificent view of the Big Horn Mountains to the west and the Black Hills to the east. To the south lay the Powder River Basin, several hundred thousand acres of rich and well-watered grassland that made Johnson County ideal for raising cattle.

The thing that made this area good for cattle also made it good for game, and he could see deer, bighorn sheep, elk and antelope wandering around the area. Finishing his biscuit and chicken, he picked up the cake. The cook had wrapped it in a piece of cloth to keep it moist.

While sitting there eating his cake, Winnie listened to the babbling of William’s Creek as it made its way another quarter of a mile to empty into the Powder River. He had never been anywhere that he considered more exciting or beautiful than this ranch. He thought about the journal his teacher had asked him to keep and realized that it had been a long time since he had posted anything in it. It was just that there had been so much going on that he had not taken the time to get around to it, but he had brought it with him today, and he took his journal and a pencil from his saddlebag and began to write.

When one thinks of the American cowboy one might think it to be a romantic thing, a man on horseback in the open plains, surrounded by purple mountains highlighted by a golden sunset. I know that was my idea when first we arrived here. But in the time I have been here, I have learned that it is not as I thought it was.

I still consider the American cowboy to be a noble person, but now I realize that the nobility is in the work that he is required to do. The work is most arduous and the cowboys who come back to eat their “grub” in the cookhouse in the evening are tired from a long day of moving cattle from one spot to another, mending fences, pulling cows from quicksand, and chasing down the calves that wander off. They do this sometimes with a kerchief tied over their noses to combat the dust, or with their hats pulled down low to stop the rain, and while freezing in the cold winter blasts, or sweating in the almost unbearable heat of summer.

I don’t say that they do this without complaint, for the cookhouse is filled with complaints of the day, but they are complaints without rancor. In fact, complaining is the cowboy’s way of communicating, for they are delivered in a manner that is designed to elicit more laughter than sympathy.

I have come to believe ...

That was as far he got when he looked up and saw three riders approaching him. Thinking they were some of his uncle’s cowboys, he waited until they got very close. Only then did he realize that he had never seen any of them before, not even in the cookhouse at meals.

“Hello, boy,” one of the riders said.

“Hello, sir,” Winnie replied, trying not to show his nervousness over this unexpected meeting. He closed his journal, then lay it down under a rock to keep the pages from blowing.

“Would your name be Winston Churchill?”

“It is, indeed,” Winnie answered with a relieved smile. If they knew his name, then surely they would mean no harm to him.

One of the riders approached very close.

“That’s a nice-looking horse,” the rider said. “Is it yours?”

“It is a loan from Sir William,” Winnie said. “But he has been given to me to use while I’m here, so I have named him. I call him Tudor Monarch.”

“That’s a pretty high-falutin name,” one of the riders said. That same rider reached out and took the reins of Winnie’s horse.

“Excuse me, sir, but why did you take the reins of my horse?”

“Winston, get mounted. We’re going to take a little ride together.”

“I’d rather not take a ride with you, if it is all the same to you,” Winnie said. “I have my ride planned for the day. It is necessary that I do that so that Uncle Moreton and Mama will always know where I am.”

“Don’t worry about that. We’ll tell them where you are.”

The other two riders came up very close, and Winnie knew that he was in great danger.

“Am I being abducted?” he asked.

“If that means are you being snatched up, the answer is yeah, that’s what we are doing.”

“To what end?” Winnie asked.

“To what end?” The rider that was holding the reins to Tudor Monarch chuckled. “Did you hear that, Grant? He wants to know to what end. Ain’t he about the damnedest talkin’ boy you ever been around?”

“I’ll tell you to what end,” Grant said. “There’s a group of us that wants your uncle to do somethin’ for us, and we figure he will do it if he knows that’s the only way he’ll see you alive again.”

“What is it you wish done?” Winnie asked.

“We want him to send Matt Jensen to come fetch you,” Grant said. “Do you think your uncle will do somethin’ like that?”

“I don’t really know Uncle Moreton all that well, so I can’t tell you with honesty whether he will or will not do what you ask.”

“You better hope that he will do it, boy,” one of the other riders said. “Because if he don’t, we’ll send you back to him, belly-down, on this horse.”

Donnie Lewis was looking for strays when suddenly three men rode out of a coulee with guns drawn and pointed at him. All three were wearing yellow kerchiefs.

“Whoa!” Lewis said, throwing his hands up. “What do you want? I ain’t got no money and I ain’t herdin’ no cows!”

“We want you to do something for us,” one of the riders said. “We want you to deliver a note to Moreton Frewen.”

“What kind of note?”

“Why should it matter to you what kind of note?” the rider asked. “The only thing that should matter to you is this. If you deliver it you live, if you don’t you die.”

“Now, tell me, cowboy, what is it to be?” one of the other men asked.

“I’ll deliver the note,” Lewis said.

“Yeah, I thought you might.” The rider handed him a folded piece of paper. “How fast is that horse?” he asked.

“I beg your pardon?” Lewis asked.

“How fast is that horse?” the rider repeated. “Do you think he is fast enough to get you out of rifle range in a minute?”

“I—I don’t know.”

The rider pulled his rifle and cocked it. “You better hope he is. ’Cause in one minute I’m going to take a shot at you. So I suggest you get goin’ now.”

Lewis jerked his horse around, then slapped his legs against the side of the horse, urging him into a gallop. He leaned forward, not only to urge the horse to a faster pace, but also to present a smaller target in case the man actually did shoot at him.

A minute passed, and there was no bullet. Either the man didn’t shoot at him, or Lewis was far enough away now that if he did shoot, the bullet was far wide of its mark.

Forty-five minutes later, Lewis showed the note to Myron Morrison, thinking it might be better to go show it to the foreman first. Morrison read the note, then with compressed lips and narrowed eyes, looked back up at Lewis.

“Where did you get this?” he asked.

“Three men come up on me,” Lewis said. “It was them that give this here note to me, tellin’ me that if I didn’t deliver it, they was goin’ to shoot me. As soon as they let me go, I hightailed it out of there. They said give it to Mr. Frewen, but I figured maybe it would be better if you done it.”

“Thanks a lot,” Morrison said, sarcastically.

“I mean, you don’t mind bein’ the one to show it to ’im, do you? Bein’ as you are foreman and all.”

“All right,” Morrison said. “I’ll take the note to him.”

Morrison walked from the bunkhouse across the yard to the huge log edifice. When he pulled the doorbell chain, Benjamin answered.

“Yes, Mr. Morrison?” Benjamin asked in his stiff, upper tone British voice.

“I have a note here that Mr. Frewen needs to see.”

“Lord Moreton is in the drawing room at the moment; if you would like, I can deliver the note to him,” Benjamin said.

“I’d like nothing more in this world than for you to give this note to him,” Morrison said. “But I don’t think it is something you are going to want to do.”

“Oh, heavens,” Benjamin said. “Very good, sir. If you would come this way?”

Frewen was in the drawing room looking at the latest figures that he was preparing to send to his business partners back in England. The figures were not good. The Powder River Cattle Company was operating at a severe deficit.

“Lord Moreton?” Benjamin called from just outside the door to the drawing room.

“Whatever it is, Benjamin, let it wait, please,” Frewen said. “I need to get this report ready to go. Though God knows I wish I didn’t have to.”

“Mr. Frewen, I expect you had better take time for this,” Morrison called in through the door. “It’s pretty important.”

“All right,” Frewen said. He pushed the book of numbers to one side, then turned toward his foreman. “What is it? What do you have for me?”

Morrison handed the note to Frewen. “Donnie Lewis brought it in a few minutes ago. He said that he ran across three men and they gave it to him.”

With an anxious feeling, Frewen unfolded the note.

Frewen—

We’ve got the boy. If you want to see him alive again, send Jensen to junction of Nine Mile Creek and the Powder River at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. He must be alone. If we see anyone with him, we will kill the boy. If he does not show up we will kill the boy.

“God in Heaven,” Frewen said. “Do you think anyone would actually be so low as to kill a boy?”

“Yeah, I think they would,” Morrison said.

Frewen read the note again, then let out a loud sigh of frustration. “I don’t understand. Why do they want Mr. Jensen to come to Nine Mile Creek?”

“It’s pretty obvious,” Morrison said. “They want him there so they can kill him.”

“Oh, my!” Frewen said. “Then I am being asked to choose between the life of my nephew and the life of Mr. Jensen.”

“Yes, sir, I’d say that’s about it,” Morrison said.

Frewen leaned back and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I—I don’t know where to go with this,” he said.