Cattle Kate (25 page)

Chapter Sixteen—How to Stage a Hanging

Albert John Bothwell had been waiting for this morning all winter. It had been a decent winter, as things go in Wyoming Territory. Nothing like the ones so vicious they killed the cows on the open range. No, last winter had been fine and those mama cows had pushed out a whole lot of new calves. Just yesterday, they'd finished the spring branding and now he could relax.

He and the boys were camped in one of his hay fields. Cookie had rustled up a fine breakfast of flapjacks and coffee and of course, steak.

They'd been at this since mid-May, the crew traveling throughout the Sweetwater Valley to brand the new calves of 1889. Bothwell was one of the commissioners overseeing this roundup for the Stock Growers Association. He was joined by Tom Sun and John Durbin—most of the cattle being branded were owned by these three and it was tradition that the main cattlemen supervised the branding. Some nights, all three men bedded down with their cowboys, but forty-seven-year-old Durbin had already decided that part of the ritual was reserved for younger men. At forty-five, Sun wasn't far behind in that thinking. Bothwell still found it invigorating, but his thirty-five-year-old bones weren't as brittle yet.

They were finishing up the strong coffee when Ernie McLean raced up, stammering that he'd found twenty cows recently shot and their calves nowhere around.

“Some…some…somebody's steal…steal…stealing mavericks,” he stuttered.

Everybody instantly suspected it was the nesters who were ruining the valley for honest cattlemen. As Durbin liked to say, you see a settler and you're looking at “a thief or potential thief or sympathizer with thieves.”

Bothwell grabbed at any opportunity that came along. Some crumbled like sand in his hands, but others left a nugget of gold. And on the morning of July 20, 1889, Bothwell knew he was reaching for the gold. He now saw the opportunity he'd been waiting for since he first spied that woman who dared defy him.

“Bet it's that whore over at Averell's.” Some of the cowboys looked at him in surprise, because they knew he was talking about Miss Ella, and they knew she was no whore.

“Ernie, go check,” Bothwell yelled, giving orders to the small-potatoes rancher who was always so eager to please. McLean jumped on his horse—grabbing a flapjack on the way—and headed off toward Ella's claim.

He got there and saw fresh brands on the small herd in her corral and knew this was exactly what Bothwell wanted to know. She must have stolen these cows and branded them as her own and that was the very definition of rustling. He raced back with the news.

“Goddamn, Holy hell, Christ Almighty, that's fuckin' enough,” Bothwell swore, on hearing McLean's news. “I've had it with these rustlers,” and he knew full well he wasn't the only one with that thought. “They think they can steal our cattle and nobody's going to do anything. The courts sure fucking aren't. We can't get a conviction if the guy has his arm up the cow's ass. They're laughin' at us. They think they've got a free fuckin' ride. And I tell you, that Watson woman is one of the worst. She and Averell have been making trouble in the valley for years, and now they're rustling. When are they going to be stopped?” His face was red with anger, and around the circle, other men felt their blood pressure rising.

“There's no fucking respect,” Durbin declared.

Tom Sun agreed, “There's no respect.”

“We have to stop them,” Bothwell pronounced, and he didn't get any resistance. “I say we go get 'em and show them what for.”

Somebody else suggested they “arrest” them and take them to Rawlins, but Bothwell snorted at that. “Yeah, like that would do any good. We've got to make an example of them or this rustling will never stop. I say we string 'em up as a warning that we're at the end of our rope. Hey, that's a joke!” But nobody else was laughing.

Tom Sun, who'd come over from his ranch this morning in his new buggy, protested immediately. “Al, stop talking like that.” He argued—“vigorously,” some of the cowboys would later report—that the most they could do was scare them, and that would put the fear of God in others.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Bothwell backed off. “But we've got to scare them for good, because I want them out of this valley.”

Bothwell jumped on his horse and yelled “follow me” as he took off. Durbin was just as hot—his Irish temper was always just under his skin—and that wannabe Ernie McLean would do anything Bothwell suggested, so he saddled up.

Just as they were leaving, Cap'n Robert Galbraith rode in and was quickly informed of the situation. “I'm in,” he announced, and turned his horse around.

The group stopped at the offices of the
Sweetwater Chief,
the phony newspaper set up to sell lots in the “Town of Bothwell.” The
Chief
was in a new flat-topped building that sat all alone on the prairie, but oh, the stories it printed to laud the wonderful “community” it pretended was all around it. Cowboys said you didn't need to know much more about Red Vest than that he could afford his own newspaper, and Bothwell had smiled when he overheard the remark.

The editor and his assistant—Henry Fetz and Isaac Speer—were there and so was Bob Conner, whose own ranch bordered Ella's claim.

“Bring out John Barleycorn,” Bothwell yelled at the editors. Nobody thought it was too early to drink because when you're on the trail of rustlers, it was time to drink. One, two bottles of whiskey disappeared that morning as the cattlemen broadcast their complaints about all the nesters that had moved into their pastures and put up the hated barbed-wire fences.

“That Watson woman had the first barbed wire in this valley,” Bothwell declared, as if that were reason enough to run her off. “God, I hate that stuff. Tears the hell out of a cowhide. Breaks up perfectly good pastures. Barbed wire is going to ruin the West. Mark my words. Ruin it!”

By the time the angry army left the
Chief
, more than one of the men stumbled to his horse. Sun followed along in his white-topped buggy with its tandem seats.

Along the way, they met Sam Johnson, a foreman who knew Ella better than most. He'd had to repair some of her fences when his own cattle invaded her corral. He'd been a gentleman about it and she'd been understanding—“cows have a mind of their own,” she'd joked with him, as he weeded out his cattle from hers. Bothwell filled him in with a shorthand, “going to go show some rustlers they can't get away with it anymore.” But when Sam discovered who the “rustler” was, he reigned his horse around and headed for home instead.

Fetz and Speer took their field glasses and climbed to the roof of their office to watch the procession. From that vantage point, they saw almost everything.

The men arrived at Ella's cabin, but she apparently wasn't there. Durbin wasted no time ripping apart her corral, and cows started running all over the place. A boy ran out of the cabin, waving his arms in protest.

“Oh kid, if you know what's good for you, you'll get out of there,” Fetz said, as Speer demanded a turn with the glasses.

“Hey, that Watson woman just came running up,” Speer reported.

They passed the glasses back and forth for the next fifteen minutes or so, as Ella fought with Bothwell about who was going where with whom.

“She's in the wagon!” Fetz had the glasses now. “Oh man, this is going to be bad.”

“I already knew that,” Speer now admitted. “Those men mean business. Bothwell told me when they were leaving that they were going to hang those two. I'm betting he'll get his way before the day is out.”

Fetz nodded, having had the same conversation with the man somewhere between the second and third bottle of whiskey. “And they're liquored up,” Fetz reminded, as though that absolved them of rational thought.

The men watched the procession stop Jim in his wagon.

“They're makin' him unhitch his horses!” Fetz yelled, and Speer grabbed the glasses.

“Man, they're making him leave his wagon out there. He just got in the buggy.”

“Let me see, let me see,” Fetz said, then whistled real slow as he watched the parade leave the wagon and freed horses behind.

The procession was getting too far away to see anything anymore, so the newspaper men climbed down from the roof and went back to work.

Under normal circumstances, they would have penned an “Eyewitness Account!” of what they'd seen. But this wasn't normal circumstances. They knew they wouldn't be writing about this strange Saturday, revealing what they'd heard and seen. Or what they knew was about to happen.

“Think they'll get away with it?” Speer asked gingerly, and Fetz didn't need any time to think it over: “Of course they'll get away with it. Ever heard of rangeland justice?”

But not writing about it and not talking about it were two different things. Maybe it was the real newspaper men in them coming out, or maybe they were just natural gossips. But that afternoon when a couple cowboys rode up, looking for a place to plant themselves for awhile—knowing there was always a supply of liquor to be had here—Fetz prematurely spilled the beans, “You boys know what happened this afternoon? Jim Averell and Ella Watson were hung!”

“You don't say,” one of the cowboys said in wonderment.

***

“They looked so mad. So mean.”

Gene Crowder had never been as scared as when the armed men took Ella away. John DeCorey had to second his observations. The boys huddled together inside Ella's cabin, daring not disobey the last order to “Stay put!”

“They let all the cows out,” Gene said in astonishment, and John started reciting all the reasons that rustling was a ridiculous indictment.

The boys paced inside the cabin, frantic that they couldn't help Ella. Disgusted that they couldn't stop those terrible men.

“I tried to help,” Gene wailed, remembering the first moments the men had arrived.

“Me, too.” John knew nobody could blame them when men with guns stopped them.

“Ella was worried about us,” John declared.

“Do you think they'll hurt her? Oh, please don't let them hurt her.” Gene started to cry. John told him to cut it out, they had to help.

They sneaked a look outside. When they saw the procession disappear around the mountain, they ran out and started to repair the damage. John discovered he could round up cows better than he'd imagined, and Gene wasn't too bad at it, either. They got most of the cows back in the corral and rigged up the fence as best they could and then ran for the roadhouse.

Ralph was behind the counter when Frank Buchanan rode up to the roadhouse that Saturday morning. Ralph had to smile because you always knew when Buchanan was coming—he wore a brightly colored bandanna that he knotted so it would stick out from his shirt. Ralph didn't know anybody else in the entire valley that wore their neckerchief that way.

“Your usual?” Ralph asked as he grabbed the coffeepot, and Frank grunted his thanks. He was the first customer since Jimmy left for Casper, and Ralph was ready.

Ella had made extra pies, knowing cowboys would be coming in, now that branding was over. Ralph figured he'd sell all the pies and most of the stew she left to be heated up, and by the time his uncle got back Sunday night, he would have a nice profit to show off. He was feeling very adult to be in charge.

The boys burst in, so out of breath they could barely speak, but finally blurted out what was happening. “Bothwell and a gang of men grabbed Miss Ella and Mr. Averell and said they were rustlers and they're going to show them what for.”

Then they remembered to add: “And they made Mr. Averell unhitch his horses and they're running around out there.”

Ralph ran to retrieve the most valuable possessions his uncle had—the boys helped. They found the horses hadn't decided to go far, and it wasn't hard to get them hitched up to the wagon again.

Frank Buchanan didn't spend one second worrying about the loose horses. He didn't need any translation to know what was going on. Not on the range. Not for a charge of rustling.

Frank was an all-around cowboy. He'd worked the round-up crews for many men in the Sweetwater Valley—Durbin, Sun, Conner, Galbraith—but he never would work for Bothwell. He thought the man was evil. “Pure evil,” he'd say in the most ominous tone. He knew cowboys who worked for the man, and none of them ever had a nice thing to say—worked them hard; paid them little; showed cruelty whenever possible; filthy mouth and even dirtier mind.

Frank was having a bowl of beans at the roadhouse one day when Bothwell showed up, and the way he talked to Miss Ella, Frank bet the man was sweet on her. But she handled herself very well, polite but positive that she wanted none of it. Frank had smiled to himself that day, thinking that old Red Vest wasn't used to not getting his way, but he certainly was not getting his way with Miss Ella.

Now he had a bad churning in his gut at this news that Bothwell had Ella and Jimmy.

Frank Buchanan ran to his horse and headed out after the procession.

***

Buchanan heard the caravan before he actually saw it. They were down in the Sweetwater River, men on horseback and the buggy with his friends, all sitting there in the water, like this was a swimming party or something. He hid behind a rock and watched the noisy scene.

He couldn't make out everything they were saying, but there was no mistaking that this was a heated argument. The ranchers were all yelling at each other, obviously in discord. The angry tone gave Frank his first ray of hope. He guessed the argument was over what to do next. He prayed that “next” was to take Ella and Jim home and let that be the end of it. At one point, Bothwell pointed his horse downstream and took a few steps before he realized nobody but Durbin and McLean were following. He went back to the group and yelled some more. Someone, Frank wasn't sure exactly who, was bellowing that they'd made their point and the law should take over now. Somebody else was barking they should “string 'em up.”