Massacre at Powder River

Chapter Three

Sussex, Wyoming

Early April 1884

It had snowed that morning, and the cemetery was a field of white, interrupted by grave markers, both crosses and tombstones. The cemetery was crowded with people as Max Coleman and Lonnie Snead were laid to rest. It wasn’t just the cowboys from the Powder River Cattle Company, but from nearly all the other ranches in Johnson County. They were all bundled up in mackinaws, parkas, and sheepskin coats, their breath making little vapor clouds in the air, holding their hats in their hands while the parson intoned the last words of committal.

As the mourners began to leave the cemetery, their departure marked by exiting horses, wagons, surreys, buckboards and carriages, William Teasdale trudged through the snow to come over and speak with Frewen. Well dressed, he was a portly man of about fifty. Red-faced and breathing hard, Sir William Teasdale, Lord of Denbigh, like Moreton Frewen, was an Englishman, part of the influx of wealthy Brits who had come to American to invest in and run cattle ranches. Teasdale’s ranch, Thistledown, was adjacent to the Powder River Cattle Company.

“When your two men were killed, how many cattle did you lose?” Teasdale asked.

“What? Oh, I don’t know, exactly,” Frewen said. “But I’m sure it was over a thousand head.”

“I’ve heard that it was at least fifteen hundred head,” Teasdale said.

“It may have been. I’m not sure.”

“You’re not sure?”

“No, not exactly,” Frewen said.

“Moreton, you do have investors in your ranch, don’t you?” Teasdale asked in an exasperated sigh. “Important men, back in England?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Don’t you think you owe it to them to be able to render accurate reports as to how just many cattle were rustled?”

“I suppose I do,” Frewen said. “But to be honest with you, William, when I learned of the death of two of my cowboys, that sort of pushed everything else out of my mind.”

“Yes, well of course it is a shame that they were killed. But you have investors back in England that you must answer to. You can’t pass that off by saying you are more concerned with the fact that you lost a couple of mere cowboys. Let’s face it, Moreton. The bottom line for both of us is business—cattle business. And the rate of our losses now has just about made our business unsustainable. This cattle rustling is beginning to get out of hand.”

“I agree. But I don’t have any idea what to do about it.”

“William, do come on, won’t you? I’m freezing out here.”

The summons came from Margaret, Teasdale’s wife, who was sitting in the Thistledown carriage wrapped in a buffalo robe. It was a beautiful coach, green with yellow wheels and the Teasdale crest on the door, the letter “T” with two crossbars placed on a shield and surrounded by gold wreathing.

“Yes, dear,” Teasdale replied. He started toward the carriage, then turned back toward Frewen. “My offer still stands,” he said.

“What offer is that?” Clara Frewen asked when her husband climbed into the backseat of their carriage, a more modest brougham.

“He wants to buy our ranch,” Frewen said.

“Has he made a decent offer?”

“Yes, unless you count all the cattle, the house and buildings, and all the horses and equipment. Then his offer is less than one quarter of what the place is worth.”

The driver snapped the reins against the team, and the brougham started out of the cemetery, pulling in behind some of the other vehicles.

“Why would he offer you so little? Does he really expect you to take it?”

“He knows that some of my investors are getting worried and he is gambling that I am ready to pull out of the venture altogether.”

Northern Colorado

Manny Sullivan lay on top of a flat rock, looking back along the trail over which they had just come. The rider was still following them.

“Is the son of a bitch still there?” Paddy McCoy asked.

“Yeah,” Sullivan growled. “We’ve done ever’ thing we could to shake the son of a bitch but he’s clung to us like a sandspur. I believe he could track a bird through the air.”

“They say Matt Jensen is that good,” McCoy said.

“You’re sure, now, that it is Matt Jensen?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Like I told you, I heard that Matt Jensen was askin’ questions about us.”

“Damn. That’s not good. That’s not good at all. You think he knows about the robbin’ and killin’ we done back in Livermore?”

“Of course he knows,” McCoy said. “Why else would he be comin’ after us?”

“I don’t know,” Sullivan said. “I’m just wonderin’ why he’s takin’ such a personal interest in us. And I’m also wonderin’ how he found out we’re the ones that done it.”

“How he found out don’t matter now,” McCoy said. “What does matter is how we are goin’ to get shed of the son of a bitch. We’re goin’ to have to do that, or we ain’t never goin’ to have any peace.”

“How we goin’ to get rid of him? We’ve done ever’thing we could, and we still can’t shake him off.”

“We ain’t goin’ to shake him off,” McCoy said.

“If we don’t shake him off, what are we goin’ to do with him?”

“We’re goin’ to kill him,” McCoy said. He pointed to a coulee ahead. “Let’s go up through there.”

“Ain’t you ever been up here before? That’s a dead-end canyon,” Sullivan said.

“I know it’s a dead-end canyon,” McCoy said. “One of the reasons I come this way is because I know this canyon real good, and I know it has a cave about halfway up the wall on the left side. And not only that, there is a bunch of rocks around the mouth of the cave so that if a feller don’t know it’s there, it ain’t likely that he will ever even see it. I figure we can hide in the cave till he passes underneath, then we’ll shoot the son of a bitch in the back. All we have to do is let him follow us in.”

“What if he don’t come in?”

“He’ll come in, all right. He wants us pretty bad, else he wouldn’t be doggin’ us so hard.”

The two men rode on into the canyon, ground-tied their horses around a bend and out of sight, then climbed up the wall to the cave.

“What did I tell you?” McCoy said. “Get ready. He’ll be coming by directly, and when he does, we’ll let him have it. He won’t even know what hit him.”

“We shoulda gone on up to Cheyenne with Plummer,” Sullivan said. “If we had, we wouldn’t be in this mess now.”

“There is a reason why we didn’t go into Cheyenne, remember? We killed that deputy up there last year, and there’s just too many people that knows us,” McCoy said.

“I guess that’s right. Still, it don’t seem right that Red Plummer has got away scott free and we’re the ones bein’ hounded. Especially since it was all Plummer’s idea in the first place,” Sullivan said.

“Yeah, well, it ain’t all that bad. Once we get rid of Jensen, we’ll get as far away from here as we can,” McCoy said. “And don’t forget, we got us enough money that we can start over somewhere else. Maybe down in Texas.”

Matt had been in this same canyon less than a year earlier, and he knew that it was a dead end. But the two men he was chasing had gone into it, and that left Matt asking the question: did they not know it was a dead end? Or did they know, and were just trying to draw him in to set up an ambush?

It didn’t matter. They might think they were setting up an ambush, but as far as Matt was concerned, they had just ridden into a trap.

He rode all the way up to the mouth of the canyon, but instead of riding in, he dismounted and pulled his long gun out of the saddle holster.

“You go on in, Spirit,” Matt said. “But when you hear gunfire, you run like hell, you hear me?”

Spirit started on into the canyon, his hooves making loud clops on the stone floor. Several seconds after his horse entered the canyon a gun roared, and, as Matt had asked him to, Spirit broke into a gallop. The canyon exploded with gunfire as Spirit galloped through, the bullets whizzing harmlessly over the empty saddle, then whining loudly as they ricocheted off the rock wall on the opposite side of the canyon.

When the firing started, Matt tried to locate the men he was trailing, but it was impossible to do so by the sound of the gunfire because it was echoing and reechoing back and forth for the entire length of the canyon. However, he did see a wisp of smoke drifting up from halfway up the wall on the left side, and he smiled because he knew exactly where they were. There was a cave there, a cave that Matt had personally explored.

As he stared toward the area where he knew the cave was, he saw someone rise up to take a look. The acoustics of the canyon were like a giant megaphone, and when one of the two men spoke, Matt could hear him as clearly as if he were standing in front of him.

“What the hell? There wasn’t nobody on that horse, was there?” The words was there, was there, was there, like the gunshots, were repeated many times down through the length of the canyon.

As Matt studied the area where the two men had positioned themselves, he smiled. He not only knew about the cave, he knew what the men who had taken shelter there might not know. He knew that the cave had another entrance. When he had been up there last year, he had explored the cave just out of curiosity. He had no idea at the time that his curiosity would ever pay off, but now he was about to cash in on that knowledge.

Jacking a round into his rifle, Matt fired toward where he knew the mouth of the cave was, then he repeated it, firing and cocking the lever to jack a new shell in, then firing again.

Matt knew that he didn’t have a clean shot from here, but that wasn’t why he was shooting. He was shooting to drive them back into the cave, and to let them know that he knew where they were.

“You boys seem to have gotten yourself into a little trap, haven’t you?” Matt called up to them. “As long as you are in that cave, all I have to do is wait here until you decide to come out.”

“What do you want? ... What are you chasin’ us for?” one of the two men called back down.

“That was my brother and his family that you killed back in Livermore,” Matt said.

“You’re chasin’ the wrong people. We didn’t do that. What makes you think we did it?” the other of the two men yelled down at him.

“Jarvis Winslow told us it was you.”

“What? That’s impossible! The son of a bitch was dead when we left him.”

“Sullivan, you dumb shit, you just confessed!” McCoy said.

“Anyhow, I know he didn’t tell you.”

“He didn’t exactly tell us,” Matt replied. “But he left us a note in the bank.”

“I knew somebody should have went with him.”

“Why don’t you two come on down with your hands up?” Matt asked. “You know damn well that I’ve got you trapped there. The only way you can go is to come down, and unless you come down without your weapons, I’ll shoot you as soon as you poke your head out.”

There was no response from the two men, so Matt waited a few seconds; then he fired again, the one boom sounding like a cannon blast.

“No need for me to be wasting any more ammunition,” Matt said. “I’ll just wait here until you come out.”

“Well you can just wait until hell freezes over, ’cause we ain’t about to give up to you.”

“Oh, I don’t think I’ll have to wait until hell freezes over,” Matt said. “But I’m willing to wait here as long as it takes.”

Now that Matt had them believing that he was going to stay down there, he moved quickly to a part of the mountain that they couldn’t see from the cave. It wasn’t an easy climb up, but it wasn’t impossible, and within half an hour, Matt was on top, standing over the hole that ran, chimney-like, down into the cave.

Matt climbed down the shaft, which was about seventy-five feet long, but at enough of an angle that it was easier to negotiate than had been the climb up. When he dropped down into the cave, he was about two hundred yards behind them. Behind him was all dark, so he could walk almost all the way up to them without being seen. On the other hand, the two men he had been chasing were standing in the mouth of the cave, easily visible because they were backlit by the bright light from outside.

“How about you two boys tossing your guns this way?” Matt ordered.

“What the hell!” Sullivan shouted in shock and fear. It was obvious that neither of the two men had expected Matt to suddenly show up behind them.

McCoy and Sullivan both fired. Although Matt was outnumbered, he had the distinct advantage of being a shadow within the shadows, while they were clearly visible. There were four shots fired, but only two found their mark. Both of the scoring shots were fired by Matt Jensen.

With his gun in hand, Matt approached the two men cautiously. Sullivan had been killed outright, but he saw that McCoy was still breathing.

“I’m dyin’, ain’t I?” McCoy asked.

“Yeah, you are,” Matt replied without emotion.

“I’m dyin’ and you’re just standin’ there watchin’.”

“Not much else I can do,” Matt said. “But look at it this way. Getting shot beats getting your neck stretched with a rope.”

“Yeah,” McCoy said. He tried to chuckle, but instead he coughed, and some blood bubbled from his mouth. “Yeah, that’s right, ain’t it?

“You still lookin’ for Plummer? Or have you already found him?” McCoy asked, his voice strained with pain.

“I’m still looking for him.”

“You’ll find him in Cheyenne. He’s the son of a bitch that got us into this. If I’m goin’ down I want him to go down, too.”

“I appreciate the information,” Matt said.

“Are you just goin’ to stand there and watch me die?” McCoy asked. “Aren’t you even going to try and patch me up?”

“There’s nothing I can do for you,” Matt said.

“You son of a bitch! You are enjoyin’ it, ain’t you? You are enjoyin’ watchin’ me die!”

Matt remembered the description the sheriff had given him of Jarvis’s wife and daughter.

“They had both been raped, Matt. Then their throats was cut and they bled to death. Not only that, we found ’em both naked. The sons of bitches didn’t even have the decency to cover ’em up.”

“Yeah,” Matt replied. “I am.”

McCoy drew a few more ragged gasps, then stopped breathing. When Matt knew he was dead, he pushed the two bodies out of the cave opening, letting them fall a hundred feet to the rocky ground below. Then he climbed down after them and, finding their horses, threw the two bodies over the saddles. He had no idea whether he had matched the right body with the right horse or not, but he didn’t care.

Looking through the saddlebags, he found a little over six thousand dollars in each bag.

The next day, Matt rode into Livermore with the two bodies draped over their horses. Stopping in front of the sheriff’s office, he was met by Sheriff Garrison and a couple of his deputies. In addition, curiosity had drawn at least a dozen townspeople to the sheriff’s office.

“Who did you get?” Sheriff Garrison asked.

“Sullivan and McCoy,” Matt said. He opened his saddlebag. “And I’ve recovered twelve thousand dollars that was taken from the bank.”

“Twelve thousand?” one of the townspeople replied. “Hell, that’s just a little over half the money that was took. Where is the rest of it? Are you keepin’ it?”

Matt fixed the questioner with a stare that caused him to gasp, then begin to wilt in fear.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said.

“How did you mean it?” Matt asked.

“I meant, that is, I was just wonderin’ where the rest of the money is, is all. I wasn’t actually thinkin’ you kept it or nothin’.”

To the townsman’s relief, Matt turned his attention back to the sheriff.

“Before McCoy died, he told me that Plummer had gone to Cheyenne.”

“I’ll wire the sheriff there,” Sheriff Garrison said.

“You can wire him if you want to,” Matt replied. “But I am personally going after him. I will send what money I find on him back to the bank here.”

“You’re a good man, Matt,” Sheriff Garrison said.

Matt left the bodies with the sheriff, then remounted Spirit. He looked back toward the man who had asked him about the rest of the money, but the man wouldn’t meet his gaze.

Clucking at his horse, Matt rode out of town at a trot. He had a long way to go.