Centennial (103 page)

The younger ranchers allowed him to finish his speech, knowing that it meant nothing. When the difficult decision of what specifically to do had to be faced, Seccombe would board a train and head for business out of town. He was not much for difficult decisions, and sure enough, two days after this first planning session he found reasons for visiting bankers in Kansas City.

He was at work in that city on the afternoon that the five-thirteen Union Pacific pulled into Centennial from Denver. The usual inquisitive locals and wide-eyed children were at the station to watch the train arrive, and they remarked on the various local people who disembarked, making shrewd guesses as to what they had been up to in the capital. But as the last of the customary passengers had left the train, a man whispered, “Hey, look!” and everyone turned toward the rear car, where two slim men in black suits and broad-brimmed hats were alighting. The older stepped onto the platform, looked cautiously about him, beckoned to the other to follow. When they were free of the train, a porter handed down two valises and pointed to the Railway Arms, saying in a voice loud enough for the watchers to hear, “Over there, Mr. Pettis.”

“The Pettis boys!” someone cried in a hoarse whisper, and all other arrivals were ignored as men drew back while the two visitors walked solemnly through the station and across the road to the hotel. There they registered boldly as Frank and Orvid Pettis.

For the next two days Centennial buzzed with speculation as to what had brought these two aging gunmen to town. The Pettis boys! What a travesty of language! They had never been boys. At fourteen they were vicious killers, and now at fifty-seven Frank was a black-toothed, scrawny man with sharp, battle-worn eyes. Orvid, in his fifty-second year, was a hardened assassin living out his years with the small funds he received for one or another routine murder.

Yet they were known as the Pettis boys, and their arrival in any frontier town signified that someone with a grievance to settle had grown impatient with the law. They had never been apprehended in cold-blooded murder; they were too clever for that. Even when they were arrested, with every item of evidence pointing to their guilt, as in the Pueblo murders, where they were seen at the crime and where their footprints matched exactly those found at the site of the triple assassination, clever lawyers were brought in from Kansas and the jury exonerated them.

The pitiful aspect of their lives was that whereas they had done much work for men with money, they got little for themselves. They killed and threatened and evicted, but they never lived well. When they came to a town like Centennial they had funds for the purchase of horses and their hotel bills were taken care of, but when the job was done, whatever it was, they would move on to a similar town, buy a couple of horses, eat free at the hotel. But they did not prosper. From the cattle they stampeded on the Skimmerhorn Trail in the years from 1868 through 1880, they made barely enough dollars to subsist on, and thirteen of their equally underpaid men were shot. They now lived in a small town in western Kansas, always ready for a telegraphed invitation.

A few days later they rode out of town, two dark and silent men heading east. “They’re after Calendar,” boys whispered, and one gallant fellow only fifteen years old, who had grown to respect that somber sheepman, jumped on his horse and rode out to warn him. “Calendar! Calendar!” he was shouting long before he reined in his sweating horse, “Pettis boys are after you.”

But they were not headed in his direction. After a long detour to the east, they cut north, left Colorado and went deep into Wyoming to a draw leading into Horse Creek, where a sheepman was herding some two thousand woollies. They shot him from ambush, then stampeded the sheep into the quicksand river, where they floundered, bleating piteously, and perished.

They then rode far west, beyond the Laramie River, to a remote spot where a Mexican was tending twelve hundred sheep. Seeing that he was alone and unarmed, Frank Pettis said, “Let’s gunnysack him,” and they threw a bag over the shepherd’s head, tying it about his waist. They lashed him to a rock and he had to listen as they methodically clubbed his sheep to death. The sad cries of sheep beaten but not yet dead so affected the poor man that he began to whimper in sympathy, and Orvid said, “Let’s put him out of his misery,” and each of the brothers emptied his revolver into the sack.

The boys then swung south in a long loop which brought them finally to Fox Canyon, where they spent a day secretly observing Buford Coker’s new shack.

“There’s the whore,” Frank whispered to Orvid as Fat Laura appeared at the doorway.

“I don’t want to kill no woman,” Orvid replied.

“She ain’t no woman,” Frank said, and as they watched they saw, coming from the north, Wyoming way, a man riding full blast toward the cabin, shouting, “Coker! The Pettis boys is on the loose! They’re killin’ sheepmen!”

“Son-of-a-bitch!” Frank mumbled. “Just when things was goin’ good.”

They continued to watch as the man galloped up to the cabin, dismounted and began talking agitatedly with Fat Laura.

“We better knock them off,” Frank said with professional judgment. “We don’t want three guns against us.”

“Three?” Orvid asked.

“I bet that whore can fight like a cornered badger,” Frank said, indicating with his right shoulder the fact that she was already going for her rifle.

“Here goes,” Frank said. “I’ll get the man. You get the whore.”

With no more talk, the two killers edged themselves closer to the cabin, and at a signal from Frank, they fired. The man dropped with a bullet through his head, but Orvid had less luck with Fat Laura. He merely shot her through the left shoulder. He saw blood spurt out, so he knew he had winged her well, but she was not dead, for she succeeded in crawling back into the shack.

“You missed!” Frank said with disgust. “And look!”

There, edging his way down the draw behind the cabin, was Bufe Coker, shouting encouragement to his woman: “Hold on, Laura. I’m comin’.”

Dodging bullets, he made his way to the back door of the cabin and in to where Laura leaned against the wall, blood dripping from her shoulder. Ignoring the bullets that zinged through the shack, he tended the fat woman, binding her wound and giving her assurance that it could not be fatal.

“We’ll hold ’em off till help comes,” he said. “Who are they?”

“Kellerman said they was the Pettis boys.”

“Where’s Kellerman now?”

“Out there, dead.”

“Hell. We could’ve used him.”

“Will they kill us?”

“They got to come in here to do it.” He gathered his guns, giving one to his woman, and began shoring up the front door with furniture. He was preoccupied with this task when he heard Fat Laura scream, “No! No!” and he looked out in time to see his dog Bravo run toward the house.

“Back! Back!” he shouted, and if the dog had been working sheep he would have obeyed, but he sensed that Laura was in danger and continued running toward her.

With one shot Orvid Pettis killed the dog. Fat Laura looked at Coker with a dumb, animal-like emptiness in her eyes, and tears rolled down her ravaged face. “They mean to kill us all,” she said.

Coker consoled her, “We’ve lots of ammunition. And lots of guns. If Kellerman knew about this, so do others, and they’ll be along to help.”

So they dug in, returning fire only when one of the Pettis boys moved his position, and for that whole day gunfire blasted spasmodically, with no apparent effect.

Then, in late afternoon, sheep began wandering into the area, and as each one appeared, inquisitive and shy, Orvid Pettis shot it. The noise would cause other sheep to investigate, and whenever one came into range, Orvid shot it through the head. His marksmanship was uncanny and caused Fat Laura to whisper, “He can kill anything he puts his mind to.”

“Not you or me,” Coker said grimly, and with well-aimed shots he kept the killers at bay.

But shortly before sunset Frank Pettis worked his way around to a rock from which he commanded the front of the shack, and while Orvid blasted away at the back, he drew a perfect bead on the window, then waited with extraordinary patience for thirty minutes until someone inside the house moved accidentally into view.

It was Fat Laura. Pettis pulled his trigger and a bullet ripped through the window and into her head, killing her instantly.

“Oh, my God!” Coker groaned. “Laura! Laura!” He crawled along the floor to where she lay in blood and cradled her head in his arms. At the House of Mirrors she had been the girl who tended the other girls when they were sick. She had taken care of cowboys down on their luck and had given Coker three hundred dollars to help build this cabin. She had loved the place and had planted a few hopeless trees to shield it from the wind, and if she was not a good cook, she was enthusiastic, and now she was dead.

“Better come out, Coker, or we’ll burn you out,” Frank Pettis cried.

“Come get me, you bastards,” the South Carolina man shouted back.

“We’re gonna burn you out,” Frank warned.

“I ain’t no woman. You can’t kill me.”

“Is the whore dead?”

It was an ill-matched fight. Never once did Bufe Coker get a clean shot at either of the Pettis boys. With practiced skill they hid behind rocks, shooting only when they had a good chance of hitting him, and he was powerless to punish them in return.

Night fell, a dark and moonless night, and he could not check on what they were up to. He had to stay awake to protect the cabin, and he spent the hours moving from front to back, firing at unexpected moments to assure them that he was on guard. They could take turns sleeping, but not he.

About three in the morning he decided that Orvid was asleep, for he recognized the different sounds made by their guns, and he made a desperate move. Firing twice from the front window, he ran quickly to the back and out into the night, blazing away at the spot where he thought Orvid might be resting. No luck. Orvid was not there, and Coker barely made it back to the cabin. He fired madly at the shapes closing in on him but apparently hit nothing.

“Coker,” came the warning voice. “You got till dawn to come out. Then we burn the place.”

The next two hours were quiet. And as dawn brightened, Coker could see the prostrate body of Fat Laura sprawled in her own blood. It made him sick to see her hair matting in the gore that surrounded her, but she was too heavy for him to lug onto their bed. “Jesus, Laura,” he whispered.

With the first ray of sun Frank Pettis sent a fusillade at the front of the house, moving constantly closer, and while Coker was occupied shooting back, Orvid succeeded in sneaking to the rear and setting the shack ablaze.

For thirty minutes Coker fought the fire, stopping at intervals to shoot at shadows, but he was powerless to halt the flames. And all the time Frank Pettis was shouting, “Come on out, Coker, or you’ll cook.”

So in the end the South Calinky man grabbed his LeMat, checked the chambers of the sawed-off shotgun and waited till the flames crept about his legs. Then, instead of coming out the front door, he burst through the window, firing at the spot where he supposed them to be, but they were not there.

In the moment before Coker leaped, Frank had cautioned his younger brother, “He’ll try to jump us from the window,” so when Coker came out, he sprang right into the fire of two deadly rifles. He took seven shots in the face and chest and collapsed before the chambers of the LeMat were exhausted.

“Better throw them damned sheepmen in the fire,” Frank said, and they picked up the stiff body of the man who had brought the warning, swung him back and forth a couple of times and lofted him easily into the flames. Then they lifted Coker high in the morning air and with a powerful toss sent him arching into the embers of his cabin.

“That’ll learn ’em,” Frank said.

When the various murders were discovered, sheep owners appealed to the governors of both Wyoming and Colorado for protection, but were told that no evidence was at hand that these crimes had been directed against sheepmen as such. As for the Pettis boys’ having been employed by cattlemen to settle range differences, that suggestion was abhorrent to any right-thinking man. As a matter of fact, there was not a shred of proof connecting the Pettis boys with the killings, and it seemed more probable that the crimes had been committed by itinerant Mexican sheepmen. The
Clarion
summarized local opinion when it editorialized:

It is offensive to the decent citizens of this city when malicious and ill-founded rumors are circulated to the effect that two law-abiding visitors from Kansas are accused of the most heinous crimes. No substantial charge of any kind has been leveled against them, and none can be proved. We would remind our readers who the five victims were. A Mexican,
a
Confederate who took arms against the Union, a woman of bad character and worse performance, a troublemaker who ran about the countryside spreading rumors, and a miserable outcast charged with having committed abominations with sheep he was supposed to guard. While we do not condone murder, we cannot but feel that the area is the better off for the departure of these unfortunates, and the sooner others like them leave, the happier decent citizens will be.

Messmore Garrett, having a clearer understanding of what had happened and what might happen, armed himself and rode out to Amos Calendar’s sheep station, where he said, “They’ll get you next ... or me. You any idea where they might be holing up?”

“I do.”

“Tell me and I’ll get them.”

“That’s my job. You watch the sheep.”