Massacre of Eagles

CHAPTER FOUR

Big Horn Basin, Wyoming Territory

Don Kelly and his brother Al were knee-deep in the rapid-running stream of Thoroughfare Creek. The water was white foam where it broke over the rocks, but otherwise crystal clear, and they could see all the way to the bottom as they dipped their pans into the rocks and sand. Slowly sloshing the water around, they gradually emptied the pan of the water, sand, and lighter gravel. Then they studied the residue remaining in the bottom of the pan. They had been doing this for the better part of an hour when Al suddenly let out a whoop of joy.

“Don! Don, get over here! Look at this!”

Al turned his pan slightly, and Don could see, in the bottom of the pan, bright flashes.

“That’s gold!” Al said. “There’s bound to be more here.”

“All right!” Don said. “Now we’re getting somewhere!”

Don joined his brother in the part of the river he was working, and with his very first pan came up with gold of his own.

“If we keep this up, we’ll take seventy-five to a hundred dollars out of here just today,” Al said.

As the two men continued to pan the river, they spread out a cloth on the bank and piled their gold there. Some of the gold was coming in nuggets as large as kernels of corn, and within two hours they had accumulated several ounces.

“Seventy-five dollars my hind leg,” Don said. “We’ve got two, maybe three hundred dollars here if we have a dime.”

Mountain Saloon, DeMaris Springs, Wyoming Territory

The town of DeMaris Springs was in the shadows of Cedar Mountain, bordered on the south by Stinking Water River, and on the north by the hot springs that gave the town its name. The Mountain Saloon was made of rip-sawed wide, unpainted boards, though it did have a false front with the name of the saloon rendered in black outlined in red. It was the center of activity in a little town of under two hundred people, and it had the distinction of having one of only two pianos in the town, the other being in Mme. Mouchette’s House for Discriminating Gentlemen.

Excitement was keen in the saloon because Don and Al Kelly had just come in with news of their gold find.

“There ain’t no tellin’ how much gold there is up there,” Don said, holding court among all the other saloon patrons.

“Where’d you find it?”

“Huh, uh, I ain’t a-goin’ to tell you that,” Don said. “You’re goin’ to have to look for yourself to find your own gold.”

“But it’s up there,” Al said. “If we was able to find what we did, why my guess is that it’s all over the valley.”

“I’m goin’ up there,” someone said.

“Yeah, me too!” another added, and within moments, nearly every patron in the saloon had stated his intention to go up into the Big Horn Basin to try his luck at gold hunting.

Two of the patrons of the saloon were Sam Davis and Lee Regret.

Davis was a man of medium height and size. Clean-shaven, his most distinguishing feature was a pockmarked face and a drooping left eye. The droop was the result of an old wound, suffered in a knife fight the first time Davis was ever in jail.

Regret was relatively small and so dark that he was often mistaken for a Mexican. He had a full beard that was as dark as his long black hair.

Unlike the others, Davis and Regret weren’t crowding around the two brothers trying to get more information. They already had the information they needed.

“Bellefontaine ain’t goin’ to like this,” Regret said. “They’s too many prospectors up there already, this is just goin’ to bring a lot more.”

“No, he ain’t goin’ to like it at all,” Davis agreed.

“We’re goin’ to have to tell him,” Regret said.

“Not yet.”

“What do you mean, not yet? He’s goin’ to find out sooner or later, then he’ll be mad at us for not tellin’ him.”

“We’re goin’ to tell him,” Davis said. “But not until after we have took care of the problem.”

“Took care of the problem? How we goin’ to do that?”

“You’ll see.”

When Don and Al left the Mountain Saloon, they were so excited by their discovery that they didn’t notice the two men following them. Their only thought was to get back to the creek where they had first made their discovery, and start panning again. It took two hours of riding before they returned to the spot where they had discovered gold, and within a few moments after they started panning, they were bringing up more color.

Sam Davis and Lee Regret watched the two men for a few moments, and saw with their own eyes the success the Kelly brothers were having.

“They wasn’t lyin’,” Davis said. “They really did discover gold. They just got started, and look at the gold they done got piled up alongside ’em there.”

“Yeah,” Regret said. “I see it.”

“That sure is somethin’,” Davis said.

“What are we goin’ to do now?” Regret asked.

“Like I said when we started out, we’re goin’ to take care of the problem,” Davis replied. He pulled his pistol, and Regret pulled his as well.

With pistols in hand, the two rode up to the goldpanning brothers. Not until they were right upon the two brothers did Don notice them.

“What are you doing here? What did you do, follow us?” Don asked. “We told you people back in town to find your own place. This is ours.”

Davis and Regret aimed their pistols at the two brothers.

“What? No, wait!” Don said. “You don’t need no guns, you can have this spot! Me ’n my brother will find someplace else.”

“There is no place else for you,” Davis said. “This whole valley belongs to Mr. Bellefontaine.”

“Bellefontaine? He might own the town, but he don’t own this valley,” Al said. “This is public land!”

“No it ain’t public land. This land and ever’ thing on it belongs to Mr. Bellefontaine,” Davis said. “So, what I’m going to ask you to do is hand over the gold, pack up your belongings, and leave.”

“Hand over the gold? Are you crazy, Mister?” Al replied. “Me ’n my brother been workin’ out here for near a month and this here is the first color we’ve turned up, so we ain’t givin’ it away. Besides which, there ain’t nobody said nothin’ to us ’bout this bein’ private property. Seein’ as you got guns and are makin’ us do it, we’ll go somewhere else, but we ain’t handin’ over the gold we done found here.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Davis said. He pulled the trigger and his bullet plowed into Al’s chest.

“Al!” Don called, shocked at seeing his brother shot before his very eyes. “You bastard! You shot my brother!” Don shouted angrily at Davis. Grabbing a pickaxe from the ground, he started toward Davis.

“Yeah, I did, didn’t I?” Davis said. He fired again, this bullet hitting Don in the stomach.

Don went down as well, and now both brothers were lying facedown in the water. Swirls of blood, caught up by the swift current, began flowing downstream.

Davis got down from his horse and, drawing his knife, proceeded to scalp both of the prospectors.

“Get the gold, Regret,” Davis said calmly as he went about the grizzly process of lifting the two scalps.

Regret dismounted, then walked over to fold the cloth over and scoop up the gold.

“We goin’ to tell Bellfontaine about the gold?” Regret asked.

“We got to,” Davis replied as he stuck his hands into the swiftly flowing water to wash away the blood.

“Why? How’s anyone goin’ to find out?”

“What would we do with the gold, even if we did keep it?” Davis asked. “Bellefontaine owns the bank. Soon as we tried to cash it, he’d find out. Then we’d be in a lot of trouble. We got easy jobs that pay good, why get greedy just over a few dollars in gold?”

“Yeah,” Regret said. “I reckon you’re right.”

DeMaris Springs

Pierre Bellefontaine owned Bellefontaine Mineral Asset Development Company, a large mining company operating in the public land area throughout the Big Horn Basin. One of the largest mining operations of its kind, it employed prospectors, geologists, engineers, and miners, men who willingly gave up the uncertainty of merely looking for gold for the certainty of a paycheck by working for someone else who was willing to take the risk.

Bellefontaine was willing to take risks because he could afford them. In addition to the Bellefontaine Mineral Asset Development Company, he also owned the Bank of DeMaris Springs, the DeMaris Springs Mercantile, the Bellefontaine Freight Line, and the stagecoach line that connected DeMaris Springs with Sheridan, Wyoming Territory, and Billings, Montana Territory, Billings being the closest railhead. Bellefontaine often made the remark, and with some justification, that he owned the town of DeMaris Springs. Located in the Stinking Water Valley, DeMaris Springs was the only town between Green River, Wyoming Territory and Virginia City, Montana Territory, and between Buffalo, Wyoming Territory, and Yellowstone National Park.

He also knew what many others did not know. The “real” gold of the Big Horn Basin wasn’t gold at all. It was coal. The gold finds had been few and far between, but his mining engineers had told him that there was a vein of coal that rivaled that of any other coal-producing area in the entire country. And with steam engines transitioning from wood to coal, this find would be worth a fortune.

But he had two problems. One problem was the number of gold prospectors who continued to work the valley in their quest of the yellow metal, and the other was the increasing number of ranchers and farmers who were moving into and settling the valley. In order for his dream of a coal empire to work, he would need uninhibited access to the entire valley.

At the moment, Bellefontaine was dealing with two of his employees, Lee Regret and Sam Davis. They had brought him information about their encounter with the Kelly brothers, and Bellefontaine drummed his fingers on his desk as he examined the map that was spread out before him.

“And you say they found gold here?” he asked, placing his finger on a place alongside Stinking Water River.

“Yes, sir. And they told the other folks about it as well,” Davis said. “Like as not, there are twenty or thirty more people out there now than there was yesterday.”

“Are you sure they found gold? Or were they just talking?”

“No, sir, they found gold all right. This gold,” Davis said, pulling the little cloth-wrapped package from his pocket. He put the package on the desk in front of Bellefontaine, and Bellefontaine examined it more closely, moving the small nuggets around with his finger.

“How is it that you did not keep this gold for yourselves?” Bellefontaine asked, looking up at the two men.

“Well, sir, it’s like you said,” Davis replied. “The land and ever’ thing in it belongs to you. Wouldn’t be right for us to be runnin’ the other folks out of there by tellin’ ’em ever’ thing out there belongs to you, then us be keepin’ this gold they found. Most especial since we are workin’ for you,” Davis said.

Bellefontaine laughed. “Wouldn’t be right? Or you knew you would be caught?”

“Maybe both,” Davis admitted.

Bellefontaine laughed again, then, once more turned his attention to the map.

“How many people do you think are in this area?” he asked, making a small circle over a portion of the map.

“Don’t nobody know for sure. Could be a hunnert or more,” Davis said. “All of ’em prospectin’.”

“Other than this, are they finding anything?” Bellefontaine asked, pointing to the little pile of gold on his desk.

“Don’t nobody know that neither,” Regret said. “But if them two that was in the saloon come up with gold, then it would be a safe bet to say that others is goin’ to do it too. Especially, like I said, since they come into the saloon mouthin’ off about it. That couldn’t of done nothin’ but start a little gold rush.”

Bellefontaine stroked his chin as he continued to study the map. “I would try and buy all of them out, but if there are a hundred in there, and they all wanted a thousand dollars, it would about break me,” he said. “Especially with all the money I’ve already got in mining equipment. It wouldn’t do any good anyway unless every one of them agreed to a buyout, and I don’t think they are going to do that, do you?”

“No, sir,” Davis said. “I sure don’t.”

“You said you—uh—took care of the two men who panned this gold?”

“Yes sir.”

“Where are they now?”

“Where are they? They’re still lyin’ there as far as I know,” Davis replied, somewhat confused by the question.

“Good. If some of the other prospectors come across them, it may not be a bad thing if they get the idea that it’s dangerous out there.”

“Yes, sir, that’s sort of what we was thinkin’,” Davis said. “That’s why I scalped ’em.”

“You what? You scalped them?”

“Yes, sir. I figured it would make it look like the Injuns done it.”

“Yes, that’s probably a pretty good idea. But I’m afraid that two scalped prospectors won’t be enough to get everyone out of there. And getting everyone out of there is what we need to do.”

“If you’re really wantin’ all them folks out of there, me ’n Regret have come up with this idea.”

“What idea is that?”

“Well, you might mind, Mr. Bellefontaine, that me’n Regret was oncet soldiers. Members of the Sixth Cavalry we was, out of Fort Keogh.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“Well, sir, we still keep in touch with some of our old pards, and they’ve been tellin’ us about Injuns attackin’ prospectors, ranchers, farmers and the like up in Montana. And they been talkin’ ’bout somethin’ new that’s goin’ on with all the Injuns now.”

“Something new? What are you talking about?”

“It’s called Spirit Talkin’,” Davis said.

“Spirit Talking? What’s so new about that? Indians are always talking to spirits.”

“Not like this. Like I said, this here is somethin’ new. Seems like a chief by the name of Mean to His Horses has been sayin’ that the spirits is tellin’ him that all the white men are goin’ to leave, and all the land is goin’ to be give back to the Injuns.”

“And they actually believe that?” Bellefontaine asked.

“A whole lot of ’em do, and, like I said, they been sorta helpin’ it along up there in Montana, attackin’ citizens and all. And it’s got the army all worried,” Davis said. “They’re lookin’ for an uprisin’ among the Injuns.”

“Mean to His Horses is Crow, is he?”

“No, sir, he is Cheyenne.”

“That’s all very interesting, but what has that got to do with our problem?” Bellefontaine asked. “All the Indians we have around here are Crow.”

“Well, that’s just the thing, you see. It ain’t just the Cheyenne that’s been doin’ this Spirit Talkin’,” Davis said. “It’s spread all over the Sioux nation: Lakota, Oglala, Brule, Miniconjou, Hunkpapa, and even some among the Shoshone and the Crow. So, what if we was to sort of give the Injuns a little poke, so to speak, and prod ’em in to goin’ onto the warpath, why it would wind up running all the squatters off,” Davis said.

“What good would that do me?” Bellefontaine asked. “If the Indians run everyone out of the valley, I won’t be able to be in there either.”

“Sure you will,” Davis explained. “What will happen is this. Once the Injuns go on the warpath, why the army will come in and move ’em out, not only from the public land, but more than likely run ’em off their own reservation as well. And once that happens, it will leave the whole valley open. At least from here all the way to the Yellowstone.”

“Do you think you could do that? Get the Indians to attack the prospectors?”

“Oh, yes, I think me ’n Regret could do that just real easy,” Davis said. Bellefontaine stared at Davis for a long moment. Then a huge smile spread across his face, and he hit his hand on the desk.

“By damn!” he said. “You two boys come up with that idea, did you?”

“Yes, sir, me ’n Regret.”

“Well, let me tell you, that is one hell of a good idea! How soon can you get started?”