C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-FIVE
Well, all of that hit Doubtful, Wyoming, like one of those sudden thunderstorms out of the Medicine Bow Mountains that dump tons of hail on a town even in midsummer. The roses don't survive. Word got around that the supervisors were going to impose taxes on real property, and right away, I thought I'd be more comfortable standing in the path of a tornado.
The first thing that happened was that the Cleggs all quit, bitter about not getting paid, and headed back to their lumbering operation. The supervisors hustled to the courthouse, accepted my resignation, appointed Countess Sally Sweet von Stromberger as the new supervisor, and then the three of them voted to make me sheriff once again.
I was sort of pleased to get out of being a supervisor; I wasn't cut out for that. I'd leave politics to the cobras and rattlers and boa constrictors of the world. It was easier to face thugs with knives and guns than to face glad-handers. So I put on the badge, and I put on my gun belt and my old Peacemaker, and headed for the jail, where I got hold of the jail keys and emptied the Cleggs' pisspots, which they left uncleaned as a sort of retaliation for not getting a pay envelope. I was alone in there, without a deputy, facing the worst storm in Doubtful's brief history.
By then it wasn't just the Cleggs who weren't getting paid. It was everyone the county owed, and they were mad as hornets, even as the rest of the citizens were mad as bees about taxes and the cowboys were mad as wasps because there weren't any saloons just for them. So there were two mobs waiting to hang the supervisors, and I didn't know which bunch was the angriest.
The showdown would come that afternoon, starting at one. That's when the emergency session of the supervisors was scheduled. I decided the best way of cooling things was just to do some walking. Let them see the badge, and let them see that my old, half-forgotten gun belt was back on. Let them ask how I came to be sheriff, and I would tell them. Let them blister me with accusations, and I'd tell them to talk to the supervisors. So that's what I did. The people of Doubtful hardly noticed I was sheriff; what they wanted was a dead halt to any taxation. They were damned if they would submit to tyranny, and they'd hang any supervisors who might try to tax them. That was pretty rough talk, and I realized a lot of it was coming from those I'd thought of as friends. And they weren't just angry; they were threatening. If there were taxes, those responsible for them would hang.
Indeed, a few people, even Mayor George Waller, were pushing and shoving, jabbing fingers into my chest, ranting and howling. I just smiled and said I'd see them in the courthouse, and to come unarmed because no one with a gun was going to walk in. I would not be responsible for a massacre, which is how it was looking to me just then.
Well, by one o'clock a mob had gathered at the courthouse, and that bunch was ominously quiet. Maybe that was a good sign. No one was brawling. I spotted businessmen like George Waller and Belle, my former landlady, and Len Silver, and Hubert Sanders, and also the postmaster, Alphonse Smythe. Turk stood there, looking sour. The former supervisors were standing there, and also their wives, and One-Eyed Harry First, who ran Barney's Beanery. They sure were looking stern. There were plenty of others there, forty or fifty in all, but they could all jam in if people were willing to stand. Rusty and the von Strombergers were already in, so they wouldn't be harassed going in. The one thing I didn't see was people from the outlying ranches. Maybe they hadn't gotten the word. It took a while for news to ripple outward from the county seat. So what I had feared the most, an influx of armed and militant ranchers, wasn't in the cards. But all that could change in an instant.
At about one, I opened the door of the courtroom and let them in, and they came peaceably enough. I couldn't tell who was carrying a concealed weapon, but at least these city people weren't wearing iron at their sides, and that said something. Maybe, just maybe, this would all come off.
They filled the room and stood around the walls, and when the hour arrived, Rusty Irons, the chairman, rapped with his gavel for order, but he didn't need to. This room was quieter than a century-old tomb.
Rusty, always ingratiating, smiled toothsomely at the mob and welcomed them, and explained that the Cleggs had quit because they hadn't been paid, and I had taken their place and Sally had been elected the new supervisor by the others.
“Yeah, and you're taxing us to death,” snapped One-Eyed Harry.
“Yes, and you're sticking the people in town with the bill, while the ranchers got off free,” said the usually dignified Hubert Sanders.
“And the city's not getting any share of it,” said the mayor.
“It's not even remotely fair or equitable,” said the postmaster.
When Rusty tried to find out what would be acceptable and fair, it turned out that nothing would be. The only intelligent request came from Belle, who said there should be one rate for improved town lots and another for unimproved.
“Guess that makes sense,” Rusty said.
“Two bits a lot unimproved, four bits for an improved,” she insisted.
“That'd hardly pay to keep the county going, Belle,” Rusty said.
“Then quit trying to screw city people and go where it counts. All those rich ranchers with big herds eating free grass on free land. Tax them. They're getting away with robbery.”
“If they don't own land, what should we tax?” the count asked.
“I don't know and don't care. Tax children. The more they've got the more they should pay. It's schools, isn't it? Pay per brat. Five dollars a brat a year.”
It went on like that, everyone trying to cut the tax or shift it to someone else, and no one getting anywhere. I listened real sharp. I didn't see any bulging breast pockets, but you never knew, and it was my job to keep the whole meeting from blowing up.
The whole thing droned on, everyone yelling about fairness. The supervisors mostly just shut up; the real fight was between all those people wanting to stick someone, anyone, with the taxes.
“I'll tell you this,” Turk was saying. “There's no way on earth that you're gonna stick me with a tax. There's no way I'll pay. Especially since the county owes me money. You try to take my property from me and it's over my dead body. You try taxing away what I've earned by hard work, and I'll move out. I'll leave this damned county behind. I'll leave the livery barn to rot because I'll go where people care about business and a property owner has some respect. You hear me? Give me liberty or give me death. That's what the colonists said, and that's what I'm saying.”
That was quite a speech, and it set off a howl. No one disputed him, and everyone joined him. “Go ahead, tax me and tax my bank,” Sanders said. “I won't be here to assist your robbery. I'll be long gone from this accursed county.”
That's how it went. One by one they stood up, said they wouldn't pay a nickel, swore that the proposed taxes were unfair, and said they'd move out, turn the place back to the devil. That sure was some rhetoric, and they sounded like they meant it.
“And don't tell us the county needs money,” George Maxwell, the funeral parlor man, said. “We know that. You register deeds, keep the peace, operate a court, maintain roads, and all the rest. We know that. But it's not right, not fair, to tax Doubtful when the whole cost should be shared by Puma County. So I join the rest. Not one cent will I pay, not now, not ever.”
He sat down, and suddenly no one had any more to say.
“You fellers all done?” Rusty asked.
No one responded.
He turned to the other supervisors. “Guess we'll have to vote. Hope you fellers have got your armor on.”
“I think you ought to tidy up the language a bit, gents,” said Lawyer Stokes. For once he was smiling, because he was among the unpaid employees of Puma County.
They hashed it out: Property tax for that year, beginning January 1, would be a dollar for unimproved city lots, two dollars for improved, a dollar for agricultural homesteads, and ten cents an acre for patented range. Other rural holdings would be a dollar.
“The ranchers get off cheap,” Stokes said. “They're mostly using free public land.”
All of this was swiftly put to a vote, and it was so recorded, and the last dour citizen of Doubtful abandoned the courthouse to go weep over the loss of a dollar or two of his annual income. That was a real blow in a town as poor as Doubtful. But the deed was done, and new tax laws were sent off to the printer.
Somehow Doubtful had escaped a disaster. I sensed that it wasn't over. The town sat like a butterfly on a wooden case of DuPont Hercules dynamite. I thought the next few weeks would be pretty tough, and I'd have to keep a careful eye on the supervisors. There had been plenty of threats, and there were people wandering town who thought that taxing them to keep the county afloat was a criminal act. Rusty could probably take care of himself, but the count and countess were another matter entirely. The count was a foreigner, and his wife an ex-madam, and it sure would be easy for a disgruntled citizen to put the blame on them.
Times had changed. The frontier was disappearing fast. The good citizens of Doubtful seemed to grasp that. When they ejected the establishments that catered to randy, rowdy, thirsty cowboys, they also cut off the revenue that the town and county had depended on. And at last the grumbling citizens came to understand that. If you were going to have a government to keep you safe and protect your property and school your children, you were going to place a tax burden on people. It was all a little boring for me. I could bust heads and explode caps with the best of them, but this was the new world settling into place.
The printers got the tax ordinances published. The county clerks got busy with assessments, and after a while all those tax notices sailed out from one end of Puma County to the other.
I felt pretty fine about having my badge back on my chest. Mayor Waller wasn't demanding that I arrest people for spitting. No supervisor was insisting that I ride out into the county to catch hideaway roadhouses serving up redeye. So all that was fine. A little money was trickling in. The county treasurer got some cash off to the Cleggs and began paying other overdue bills. Some people, including Eve Grosbeak and Manilla Twining, had proudly paid their property taxes within hours of the time they got their tax notices. And by the end of the next day, plenty of Doubtful's citizens had gone over to the courthouse and shelled out. So Puma County was back in business, and pretty soon it would get around to paying me a salary, too. In a week or two, the outlying ranches would pay up, mostly likely when they sent a spring wagon in for supplies. It was all going to work out just fine.
But then, when it looked like the trouble was over, that case of Hercules blew, and the butterfly never knew what hit it.
C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-SIX
A river of riders flowed into Doubtful, obscure men in dark hats wearing dark bandannas to cover dark intentions. They arrived after sundown, in the last after light of a summer's day, and divided themselves according to some plan not yet revealed. They rode good horses and rode them well, and were men familiar with saddles and livestock. Most were armed with revolvers, but there were some with scatterguns, and a few carried sheathed rifles, intended for special purposes. Some of the men led pack mules burdened with mysterious and bulky things carried in panniers. This invasion had the look and feel of an army, a dark cavalry, but its mission was known only to itself.
Sleepy Doubtful was mostly in bed, though a few family people were enjoying the last light while sitting in porch swings, while the women were rinsing lemonade glasses or turning down wicks in the kitchen. The citizens of Doubtful were scarcely aware of the horsemen, or the apocalypse settling silently over them, and would scarcely know that by morning they would find themselves in a new world.
The night riders were divided into contingents, each with a task, and each was led by a veteran Puma County rancher. Each platoon contained employees of several ranches, and none of these smaller groups consisted entirely of men from one outfit. That was considered unwise in a time when cooperation, not rivalry, would be crucial to the success of the mission.
King Glad, the young master of the Admiral Ranch, had one of the most critical tasks, and he rode quietly, at a determined walk, to Courthouse Square. He had the ever-reliable Big Nose George and Smiley Thistlethwaite with him, but also Weasel Jonas and others from the T-Bar. Andrew Cockleburr, who had one of the outlying spreads and raised nothing but shorthorns, was in charge of the south road and the telegraph line down to Laramie. He had Jesse Tilton and Wiley Wool with him, and a host of others. Rocco Benifice, the wily old mustanger over on the west side of the county, and his crew would guard the west road. Consuelo “Bully” Bowler, the bilingual operator of the vast Bowler holdings, and his crew, which included Carter Bell and Plug Parsons, were assigned to the main street and business district of Doubtful. Thaddeus Throckmorton, the irritable slaver who claimed the whole northern half of Puma County as his range, but had patented only a few thousand acres around watering holes, had been assigned the most important task of all, which would soon unfold at Countess Sally's boardinghouse and elsewhere among the residential areas of Doubtful. Alvin Ream, a small-time rancher to the east, was given the roadblocks to the east and north. Spitting Sam, a foreman now for the Blue Horizon Cattle Company, owned out of state, had the vital task of coordinating and communicating. His men, all skilled runners and as good on foot as in the saddle, were poised to deliver messages among the various platoons. There were, in all, nearly three hundred masked and armed men flowing like an inky river into Doubtful that summer night.
Act One was simple. Andrew Cockleburr's men climbed a telegraph pole south of Doubtful and clipped the wire. That would prevent information from leaving or reaching Doubtful's two terminals, one of them in the
Advertiser
and the other in the office of County Attorney Stokes. Cockleburr's men then set up a roadblock, a log and brush barrier across a narrow stretch of canyon, and stationed themselves on both sides of it. At that point Spitting Sam's messenger raced into town with the news, which would begin Act Two, which was to be directed by King Glad. Swiftly his men broke into the locked and darkened sheriff office, lit a lamp, commandeered all keys, including one of the jail sets and a courthouse set. They secured all arms and ammunition in the jail, examined desk drawers for hidden weapons, and then stationed an armed contingent in the sheriff office while the rest headed for the courthouse. There they entered easily, occupied the various offices, including those of the judge, the clerk and recorder, the treasurer, and registrar of deeds. They quickly found the official seal of the County of Puma and confiscated it. Then they posted armed men at the doors of the courthouse, and in the various chambers, and thus occupied the seat of government.
So far, all of this had happened in deep silence, as Doubtful drowsed into a summer night. Spitting Sam's messengers then headed for mustachioed Thaddeus Throckmorton, the most formidable leader and the one who had the most critical task. He and his crew of rebels were quietly surrounding Sally's boardinghouse, where I, as well and the entire Puma County Board of Supervisors, resided. But there were also men fanning out into the dark residential streets, where parties of four or five riders gathered patiently at the homes of county officials, who would be quietly awakened and herded into the jail cells for a while.
It was a peaceful summer night. At least so far. Whether it remained that way would depend more on the conduct of a certain Cotton Pickens, namely me, and the supervisors than anything else. There was an agreed-on scenario carefully worked out in a barbecue beef-and-beans meeting a few days earlier at the Admiral Ranch. If the supervisors followed it, the tax revolt would end peacefully. If not, there might be revolution, bodies strung from nooses, and death by gunshot. And there might not even be a Puma County, or a county seat named Doubtful.
Throckmorton nodded to his picked men. They paused at the stairs outside of Sally's.
“You know what room Pickens is in?” he asked softly.
“The Argentine Bombshell one,” some cowboy whispered.
“I'd rather have my gun ready for her,” another said.
“She sure was a lot prettier,” someone muttered.
“And where Rusty Irons is?”
“Yeah. He's got French Splendour's old bed.”
“Good. And the count and countess are in the downstairs suite, right?”
“You betcha.”
“All right, men, do your duty,” Throckmorton said.
The parties fanned through the boardinghouse. The ones about to plunge into Sally and Cernix's boudoir waited for the rest to get into place. Throckmorton heard soft footfall for a while, and then quiet. He and Shorty and Smart Will stood at the door of the Argentine Bombshell, the wildest and wickedest lady in old Doubtful. It was a new Doubtful now, and everything had changed.
Throckmorton nodded. The men tried the door, found it unlocked, and slid in. Moments later I discovered a cold steel barrel pressed into my mouth and another pressed against my chest. Shorty lit a lamp.
“Pickens, why are you wearing a union suit on a summer night?” Throckmorton said.
Coming out of deep early sleep, I eyed the three.
“It needs to be washed, Pickens. It's yellow around the fly,” the rancher said. “Your ma didn't raise you proper.”
I wasn't concentrating on that. The steel pressed into me occupied all my thoughts. I eyed my own gun belt on the ladder-back chair, but Shorty lifted it away. Smart Will slid a hand under the pillow, looking for artillery that wasn't there. I eased back and waited.
There were thumps and voices elsewhere in the building. The revolution had begun.
In a few minutes me and the three supervisors had been gathered in the kitchen, where a single kerosene lamp cast yellow light into the shadows. The glint of blue steel surrounded the officials of Puma County, steel that wagged and waved in the lamplight, steel in the hands of masked men.
The count and countess wore robes and were looking huffy. Rusty Irons sat in his underdrawers, nothing else, his hairless chest bronze in the low light. I wore a union suit head to toe, once white but now a pastiche of gray shades.
“Guess you're treeing the town,” I said.
“No, Sheriff. This is not about wild cowboys having some sport. Times have changed. The county is settled. This could be a revolutionâdepending on what happens,” Throckmorton said.
“You mean it ain't a dime novel,” I said.
“It's as far from western fiction as it gets,” the ringleader said.
“Well, in a dime novel I'd whip out a hidden gun and blast you all to hell,” I said. “My ma, she always saidâ”
“We're tired of hearing about your ma, Cotton,” Rusty said.
“What is the meaning of this? I wish to return to my bed,” Sally said.
“It's a tax revolution. You will repeal your new Puma County taxesâor be overthrown.”
“Overthrown is it? You get out of here, all of you, starting with you, Throckmorton.”
“I think you should know, madam, and gentlemen, that certain things have happened. There are three hundred men gathered here. Several of these groups guard the roads. No traffic arrives or leaves. One of those groups has cut the telegraph line connecting the town to Laramie. Other groups have occupied the sheriff's office and jail, and every room of the courthouse. The weapons in the jail have been secured, along with keys. Still other groups patrol the business district, and still other groups are poised at the homes of all county officials, clerks, the treasurer, and so on, ready to capture them. There are others who are preparing a hanging tree. Too bad we have no guillotines, but nooses will do. You will find your necks in the nooses unless you do exactly as instructed. And I wish to remind you, as your sheriff is fond of saying, this is not a dime novel, and these are not cowboys treeing a town. This is a revolution, and it may overthrow the government of this county.”
“I guess you got to tell me what a revolution is,” I said.
Throckmorton ignored me.
“It'll last about two days,” Cernix declared. “About the time it takes for the militia or federal troops to arrive.”
“Meanwhile, your body will be swinging from a noose, along with the bodies of the rest of you,” Throckmorton said.
“What good will that do you? Legislation done under duress has no weight; it'd last a few days. Man up, fellow, and take your little boys home.”
“Count, I'm afraid you don't quite get what's happening here. It's not just duress; it's much more. And I'm done with your whining. Here's what you will do. You will dress and we will escort you to the courthouse, you, too, sheriff. You will call an emergency meeting of the supervisors, and you will repeal the tax law. Our men have the county seal; we will make it official. We will tear up the assessments and you will be set free.”
“I absolutely refuse to abide by this coercion, and I will not vote for any law while night riders are a threat,” Cernix declared.
I thought that was real brave.
“I won't vote; I absolutely refuse to take part in your charade,” Sally said.
Rusty was keeping his mouth shut.
“You may wish to save lives, then,” Throckmorton said. “The nooses are not just for you; they are for every official in the county: Stokes, all the rest. We've got ten nooses ready for your necks. It's up to you whether the rest of the government hangs. You can save their lives. They're not even responsible, just people fulfilling the laws you make. But they're about to die, leave behind widows and orphans, thanks to you. Unless you stop it.”
“What the hell are you doing this for?” Rusty asked. “It's just taxes.”
“It's our life blood, and you will not bleed us. We settled this county. We fought hard to keep it. We beat off nesters and Indians. We fought for water. This is our land, and this is our livelihood, and no heavy-handed government on earth is going to bleed us. There are three hundred good men ready to defend our rights. We are the masters of our destiny, we embrace liberty, we will operate as we choose, and we will not pay one red cent.”
“There's hardly twenty of you actually have a ranch. The rest are just in it for fun.”
“Enough. You'll find out what they're in it for. Take your choice. Get dressed and we will take you to the courthouse and you'll legislateâor not. If not, we'll take you to the hanging tree and we won't be dithering, either. You will live for less than one hour from this moment.”
Cernix stood, formidable in a blue robe. “Take me to the noose. I will not abide this.”
Sally, trembling, stood also. “Wherever he goes, I go. Whatever he believes, I call my own.”
Rusty, he just smiled.
I sure didn't know what to do. I felt about as helpless as a titmouse. This sure was no dime novel. So I just kept my mouth shut.
There was a long pause, deep silence in that kitchen, and then Throckmorton himself broke it. “Take them, and if they resist, drag them. We'll get on with it,” he said.