Miss Phipps and the Cattle Baron (26 page)

"I went out there to protect you from
whatever trouble you might stir up. It's a very heated issue, and
you're not going to resolve it with an editorial in your..." he
paused.

"Silly little scandal sheet?" she
offered.

His eyes darkened. "An editorial will only
inflame both sides."

"I don't imagine Nellie Bly gave much thought
to worrying about inflaming both sides of the issue when she went
undercover in an insane asylum for women and learned that they were
forced to eat gruel and spoiled beef and drink dirty water, and
were tied together and made to sit on hard benches for hours, and
they bathed in frigid water and were beaten if they complained, and
rats crawled all around the hospital. But because she did, she
changed the way hospitals are now treating their patients."

"Well, you're not Nellie Bly and this is not
a New York asylum for the insane," Adam said.

"No, but one woman is being treated as badly
as the women in the asylum, and I can make a difference. And I want
my Readyprint. Either you took it off that stage or you had someone
else take it to stop me from printing the editorial in order to
protect the interest of the cattlemen."

When Adam refused to admit he'd taken her
shipment, she said, "I guess we have nothing more to say to each
other." She swept out of the room as fast as she'd entered, and was
out of the front door before Adam could stop her. While pedaling
back to
The Town Tattler
building, she felt a new
determination to get out the editorial the next day as scheduled,
even if she had to post a handwritten copy of it on the town
bulletin board.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

''She is only a woman... and yet she makes
herself

feared by Spain, by France, by the Empire,
by all...'

—
Pope Sixtus V describes
Elizabeth, c1588

The news was all over town, but Priscilla
couldn't believe it until she'd read about it in the
Cheyenne
Daily Leader
, and then in the
Cheyenne Daily Sun
. Still
she stared in stunned disbelief at the headline that read:
DOUBLE
LYNCHING: Notorious Characters Hanged For Cattle Stealing Jim
Averell and His Partner Ella Watson Meet their Fate at the Hands of
Outraged Stock Growers... "Hanging from the limb of a stunted pine
growing on a cliff fronting the Sweetwater River were the bodies of
James Averell and Ella Watson. Side by side they swing, arms
touching each other, their tongues protruding and their faces
swollen and discolored almost beyond recognition..."

In both articles, the newspapers, which were
owned and operated by the Stock Grower's Association, portrayed
Ella Watson and Jim Averell in the most despicable of terms,
calling Ella a prostitute and a virago who cursed everything and
everybody, and Jim a cur and a murderous coward, handy with a
six-shooter. The article also stated that when the posse of
stockmen burst into the cabin with an arrest warrant, they found
the
thieving pair
playing cards and drinking whiskey. The
article went on to say that the six members of the Stock Grower's
Association involved had been arrested for the hanging—Albert
Bothwell among them, Priscilla noted with dark delight—but that the
men had been given a chance to post bail, which they'd done for
each other, so all six were at present walking the streets, while
justifying why the deed had to be done. The article ended with the
words:
An inquest may be held but it is doubtful if any attempt
will be made to punish the lynchers, who acted in self protection,
feeling that the time to resort to violent measures had finally
arrived...

Priscilla was still staring in disbelief at
the headline when a man she'd never seen before, who was dressed in
the work clothes of a farmer, came into the building, and said in
an anxious voice, "Miss Phipps, I'm Frank Buchanan, and I need to
get the facts of what happened out before I leave here. The
newspapers will never print the truth since they're owned and run
by the Stock Growers Association."

"Come on into the back room where we can
talk, undisturbed," Priscilla said, motioning for the man to
follow. After she'd shut the door behind them, Frank Buchanan
introduced himself as a friend and neighbor of Jim Averell and Ella
Watson, and started telling Priscilla his story...

"What's written in the papers is made-up,"
Buchanan said. "I was back in the storeroom at Jim Averell's store
when the men came in. Albert Bothwell claimed they had a warrant
for Jim's arrest, and when Jim demanded to see the document,
Bothwell and John Durbin pulled their guns and forced Jim into the
buggy with Ella, who they'd already taken from her place. I
followed them up the river, staying a good long distance behind so
they wouldn't know I was following, and when I finally caught up
with them and got close enough to see what they were doing, Jim and
Ella were standing on a couple of large rocks under the pine tree
and the men had put ropes around their necks. Jim and Ella's feet
were tied, but not their hands, and both were trying to get the
ropes off. At first I thought the men were just trying to scare
them, but when I realized they intended to hang them outright, I
opened fire and kept it up until I ran out of bullets. The men
started firing back, so I left then and raced to Dan Figer's place
for help, but by the time I found him and we returned, it was too
late. Jim and Ella were dead, and the men had left."

"Did anyone else see what happened?"
Priscilla asked.

Buchanan nodded his head. "Dan Figer saw the
hanging. He was plowing his hay meadow and could see the lynching
party down at the river. But after learning it was Jim and Ella and
seeing them hanging, he's too scared to come forward. Ella's boy,
Gene Crowder, and Jim's nephew, Ralph Cole, also know what
happened. I talked to them yesterday, right after the hanging. I
guess when Ella saw the men coming to her place she told Gene to
hide in the shed, which he did. Gene said the men didn't break into
Ella's cabin with an arrest warrant, like the newspapers are
claiming, but instead tore down her fence, letting out her cattle,
and threatened to kill her unless she got in the buggy, which she
did. Gene said they rode off with her then. I went back to Ella's
place today to find Gene, but he's gone, probably too afraid to
stay. I'm going to try and find him, but then we'll be leaving here
because those men will be after both of us."

"What about Ralph Cole?" Priscilla said. "You
said he knows something."

"He does. According to Gene, he arrived just
as the men were riding off. The men didn't see Ralph because he
came from the opposite direction, but he saw them riding off with
Jim and Ella. I haven't seen him since though, so he must be laying
low for now. But that rider who came racing into Cheyenne to bring
news of the hanging to the
Daily Leader
—Ernie McLean—he's
not a witness. He's a friend of Tom Sun, A.J. Bothwell and John
Durbin, three of the lynchers. They wanted to make sure the story
got out the way they wanted it."

"Which they succeeded in doing. It's nothing
less than premeditated murder," Priscilla said in disgust, wishing
she could have gotten Ella's story out sooner, knowing it would
have already been too late by the time her Readyprint was stolen,
presumable by Adam. "Do you plan to come forward?" she asked.

Buchanan shook his head. "I don't want to end
up like Ella and Jim, maybe not hanging from a tree, since that
would be too obvious, but they'd get me somehow. No, I want to find
Ella's boy and leave. There's nothing for me here. My place needs
too much work, and I'm tired of fighting the cattlemen. Those men
won't be prosecuted, so anyone who knows the truth of what happened
and might later come forward, will always be a threat to them and
will have to be taken out one way or another. I just wanted to get
the facts to you the way they are before I left."

"Are you wiling to write it all down in your
own words?" Priscilla said. "That way I could print the story
exactly as you told it."

Buchanan thought about it for a few moments,
then nodded, and said, "I'll do it right now, but then I have to
go."

"I understand," Priscilla replied. She went
into the main room for paper and an ink pen, then left Frank
Buchanan hunched over a small table while tediously documenting the
incident in his own words. But while he was doing that, Priscilla
went to find Edith and Mary Kate, who were just down the street at
Herman's Dry and Fancy Goods
, so they could come and witness
Frank Buchanan's signature on the document.

After Frank Buchanan left, Priscilla drew in
a long, wearisome breath, and said to Edith and Mary Kate, "Those
six cattlemen have sent a very chilling message to the
homesteaders, and Frank Buchanan is doing exactly what they'd hoped
he and others would do. But I refuse to turn tail and run, at least
not until I get out the truth about what happened. After that,
we'll get back to what
The Town Tattler
is all about."

"Well actually, Miss Priscilla, I'm not
staying here after what happened," Edith said. "My Frank is real
worried about me working here, so he asked me to marry him, and I
said I would. He says he'll make good on the money I owe you for
the wagon trip here."

"I understand," Priscilla said. She'd been
expecting Edith to leave to marry young Frank Gifford, but not so
soon. She still needed all four women in order to get the paper
out. It seemed everything she'd worked so hard to make happen was
coming undone. She'd never wanted to take sides in the issue
between the homesteaders and the cattlemen, and until the whole
hideous hanging came up, she'd managed to maintain a fairly even
distribution of articles and editorials from both sides. But now a
principle was involved, and she couldn't just look the other
way.

Priscilla eyed Mary Kate. "Will you be
staying on?" she asked, preparing for the worse, understanding if
Mary Kate was also too afraid to stay.

Mary Kate looked at her with uncertainty, and
said, "You know the man I met at church who's been courting me,
Roger Hotchkins? He's really concerned about my staying here, after
overhearing some of those cattlemen, who know your Lord
Whittington, talking about shutting down your paper and giving you
something to think about other than harassing cattlemen."

"He's not my Lord Whittington," Priscilla
said, to set things straight. "And after the next issue of
The
Town Tattler
, where I plan to run Frank Buchanan's story, along
with an editorial including what Jeanette Jamison and Gene Crowder
and Ralph Cole told me, we'll go back to issues women want and stay
away from the feud between the cattlemen and homesteaders."

Mary Kate gave her a sheepish look, and said,
"Well, you see, Roger also asked me to marry him, but I had been
waiting to tell you that after Edith told you about her and young
Frank Gifford. Roger wants me to leave too, so I will, since he's
to be my husband and I want to do what's right by him."

"And you're both leaving right now, I
suppose," Priscilla said, her tone jaded.

"Well, yes, that's what we decided after
reading the papers this morning," Mary Kate said. "But Abigail and
Libby plan to stay a longer. At least that's what they said
yesterday. But that was before the hanging. After what happened to
that poor woman and man, Abigail and Libby may change their minds,
since they were with me when Roger told me about the cattlemen
talking about giving you something to think about. We're all pretty
scared now."

"Yes, I suppose you are," Priscilla said.
Everyone but her. Maybe she was just too stubborn and naïve to know
when to quit. But she was a newspaperwoman now, just as Nellie Bly
was. And she knew with certainty that Nellie Bly would not have
quit before she got her story out. She sighed. She only wished she
had Adam on her side. For some reason, after news of the hanging
reached town, she'd expected Adam to come by to see how she was
doing. Just the night before he'd claimed he was worried about her
when he'd all but pleaded with her not to print the editorial. Now
she wondered if the disappearance of her Readyprint was more about
stopping the editorial for the cattlemen's sake than about stopping
it to keep her from harm.

She also wondered what Adam's position would
be now, with two people hanged by a gang of vigilantes, and both
newspapers backing the six men who'd done the dastardly deed. But
if Adam heard Frank Buchanan's side of the story, he might be ready
to concede that she was right about the men he was keeping company
with at the Cheyenne Club, and help her expose them and see that
justice was carried out.

She also pondered his mother's stance. Lady
Whittington had her petty grievances against the nesters, but she
was not a woman without principles. Surely she wouldn't condone a
vigilante lynching. Maybe it was Lady Whittington and the
cattlemen's wives to whom she should turn for support. After all, a
woman had been hung without a trial, and without being heard—a
classical style lynching by a murderous gang of wealthy, powerful
stockmen who'd taken the law into their own hands—and Lady
Whittington was one of the more candid and outspoken among her
circle of friends.

Deciding to at least find out what Lady
Whittington's position was, Priscilla changed into a tailormade
with a divided skirt, got on her rover, and pedaled over to Adam's
house. Winslow, the butler, answered the door about the time Lady
Whittington was coming down the stairs. Seeing Priscilla, Lady
Whittington rushed up to her, and said, "It is absolutely
unspeakable what happened, even if the woman was a lady of the
night and had been stealing cattle. This is no longer the wild
west. We do have laws."