Kid Barton and Coal Oil Johnny were the most notorious of the group. They tended to revel in their notoriety, whereas Sam Logan purposely kept a low profile. As rewards were posted, the offers for Kid Barton and Coal Oil Johnny grew, while no reward at all was offered for Sam Logan. Kid Barton and Coal Oil Johnny sometimes took great delight in teasing him for not being worth anything, while the reward on each of them reached one thousand dollars.
Logan, who had not established a name, killed them both as they were waiting beside the road to hold up a stagecoach. When the coach arrived, Logan waved it down, and pointed to the two men, claiming he had overheard them plotting to rob the coach. He not only got the bounty money, a total of two thousand dollars, he also became a hero for stopping a robbery. He used that publicity to get himself hired as city marshal for the town of Salcedo.
Logan’s stint as a lawman didn’t work out very well for him. When he killed a personal envoy from Governor Lew Wallace, he wound up in his own jail. Tried and convicted for murder, Logan was sentenced to hang. But on the night before the execution was to take place, Logan killed the deputy who was the acting city marshal, a deputy he had personally hired and befriended, and broke jail.
He left New Mexico and went north, all the way to Wyoming, where he organized a group of cutthroats and thieves into the Yellow Kerchief Gang. He resumed his earlier career of robbery, entering a new phase when he started rustling cattle.
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.”