The Cassidy Posse (25 page)

Good
, thought Butch. Now to get this circus moving before all hell breaks loose. He whipped his horse around and quickly headed south, hoping everyone would spread out again. It sounded like there was enough confusion down the road to provide an opportunity to snag Sean Daugherty and finish the job. Then he could head back to jail until his trial in July. Right now a little solitude didn’t sound half bad.

When the morning of Tuesday, April 12, began, the besieged regulators in the T.A. Ranch south of Buffalo were beginning to see their situation in a different light. Their arrogant leaders, members of the prestigious Cheyenne Club, had leisurely plodded across the state of Wyoming with the mistaken notion that no one would dare oppose them. They knew their objective was the rustlers on the list and saw no need to inform any of the honest citizenry (if they even believed there were any in Johnson county) of their intentions. The honest citizenry, however, fired up by rumors and exaggerations, became very concerned about the regulators’ intentions. The previous morning, Sheriff Angus seized the regulators’ three huge Studebaker wagons. In addition to thousands of rounds of ammunition, they also found dynamite and poison. Word began to spread they were going to poison the wells and kill as many people as they could. Concerned citizens began arriving from all over the state to repulse “the invasion.” If the regulators could have seen Robert Foote, the town’s leading businessman, charging through the streets on his black horse, his white hair blowing in the wind, calling for all male citizens to take up arms for the sake of their manhood, they may have known how emotionally charged the situation had become. Folks had taken to calling them the “Whitecaps” after the infamous Klu Klux Klan. As forces unknown to them gathered, the regulators’ arrogance did not allow them any insight into the advantages the other side might possess. Gen. Custer had displayed the same sort of disregard for the enemy up the road aways a few years earlier.

As the morning light began to illuminate the snow-dusted landscape, the regulators saw a countryside bristling with rifles. Those among the elite of the Cheyenne Club who had questioned Major Walcott’s decision to fall back to the TA Ranch and fortify it were now silent. He had found timber on the ranch that he used to build a fort of sorts on the knoll by the ranch house. About twelve feet square and made of heavy timbers, it was complete with firing portholes and commanded a sweeping view in every direction.

Working all of Monday night, they had dug trenches from the house to the fort as well as to several other smaller triangular log redoubts. The major had placed them in such a way that would make a foot charge upon the ranch house a suicide mission. Although many were questioning his competency as a military campaign leader, the major was still one hell of an engineer.

Standing on a far ridge surveying the regulators’ fortifications was Elias Snyder and his popularly-elected field commander, Arapahoe “Rap” Brown. Rap was one of those strange individuals that hangs around the backwaters of humanity until a dangerous situation presents itself. Then they step forward to temporarily lead, feeling very much in their element. He was a huge, unwashed man with an unsavory reputation and a love of danger.

The consensus of the two men was that they would need a cannon to successfully attack the Major’s handiwork. Their request for one from the Commander of Fort McKinley some twenty miles away had been promptly and emphatically denied. He had just received a plea from the acting governor of Wyoming, a friend of the Cheyenne Club contingent, to ride out to help the regulators. Having no idea of what was going on, he wisely opted to wait for word from Washington before interfering on anyone’s behalf.

The Sheriff’s next idea was ingenious. They found some logs and began fashioning a fort of their own - a moveable one. They took the heavy running gear off the three Studebaker wagons they had captured and with two thicknesses of eight inch logs, created a portable breastworks that could be moved by fifteen men and could hide more than forty. If they could get the “Ark of Safety” close enough to the ranch house, they could lob in the dynamite they had found in the wagons and make short work of the invaders with a minimum of casualties.

This Tuesday morning the “rustlers and citizens,” as they had come to be known, would push the heavy wooden breastworks like Roman soldiers towards an ancient walled city. Rifle bullets by the score would gnaw away at the integrity of the Ark but inch-by-inch they would move it towards the fortified ranch house. To aid them, ever increasing numbers of sharpshooters would dig in throughout the surrounding hills and pepper the ranch house with lead until the mortar between the logs gave way and a few well-aimed shots would ricochet around inside the rooms. The great irony would be that there were not more people killed or wounded on this final day of a fiasco that began in the sanctified halls of the Cheyenne Club a month before. Thanks to fate and the good battle fortifications of Major Walcott, not one member of that arrogant and illustrious group was to have anything injured other than their considerable pride.

The whole slow-moving undertaking with its elegant, leisurely lunches and dinners had the air of an aristocratic big game hunt. The misjudgments were of such grand proportions that there was an air of a comic horse opera about the entire misguided operation. In comedies people usually don’t die and if they do, it must be in an ironic manner befitting the farce. Such would be the case here. The only death among the regulators that day was to be that of an ill-fated Texas gunman. He was dodging bullets crawling on his hands and knees with a cocked six-gun in his belt. The weapon accidentally discharged hitting him in the groin. He would die without his honor or his manhood a few days later.

As the posse neared the TA ranch on Tuesday afternoon, they could hear the constant crack of rifle fire as the battle escalated in intensity just over the next hill. Mike and Butch knew that time was running out. They had to have some plan to snatch Sean Daugherty before they crested the next rise and all hell broke loose. The confusion could be a good thing if they knew what they were doing. If they didn’t, it could be disastrous.

The main obstacle was the continued presence of Harry Longabaugh, the Sundance Kid. He was too dangerous to leave hanging in the wind if they got into a gunfight with Red Alvins’ bunch when they made their move to arrest Sean. Although Sundance wasn’t any friend of Red’s, when Mike was identified as a lawman in their midst, who knows how he might react. They decided that the Sundance Kid must be told of the situation and, if not recruited into the posse, at least be convinced to be a neutral party. Butch had reluctantly given Elzy the task of keeping the Sundance Kid’s attention diverted while he and Mike had time to come up with a strategy. Elzy and Sundance still had an edgy rivalry going back to the days when they all spent Sundays at the Bassett’s ranch.

“Yah know Elzy, everybody always thought you were the smart one,” Sundance was saying as Butch and Mike rode up beside them. “You carried a book in your saddlebag. Hell, that was all show. Did you know when I was a kid in Pennsylvania, I belonged to a book club?”

“Yep,” said Elzy, “and every time you mention it when you’re drinking, you admit your mother made you go.”

“Would you two knock it off,” said Butch. “You know this ain’t got nothin’ to do with books. It’s about the Bassett girls and yah both know neither one of them would give you two a second look if I was around.”

“Butch, they only invited you so you could play the harmonica,” insisted Sundance. “Otherwise you would have had tah stay in the barn with the other critters that weren’t house broke.”

They all had a laugh at Butch’s expense, which gave him a perfect moment to reveal his situation to Sundance and see how he would react. Having entrusted Jack and Luke to watch the unwanted Texan, this would be his last obstacle.

“Those were good days,” said Butch. “Nowadays things are little more complicated.”

“How’s that?”

“Me and Al Hanier got arrested on this trumped-up horse thievin’ charge, and I’m supposed to be in the Evanston jail right now waitin’ for the trial in July.”

“Congratulations,” said Sundance. “Now we both can say we broke out of a jail.”

“I didn’t exactly break out. That’s why things are so complicated right now.”

“Well, how did you get out?”

“I’m out on loan,” Butch winced when he said it. “You see that fella right behind us that I said was Mike Cassidy, the guy that taught me ridin’ and rustlin’?”

Sundance shook his head affirmatively.

“That’s not really him,” he confessed.

“No shit,” said Sundance. “I figured that out right off. He ain’t no cowboy. Who is he?”

“He’s a police officer from Chicago.”

Sundance was taken back for a moment by this news. He turned around and looked at Mike who was still wearing Butch’s hat low over his face and avoiding eye contact.

“Police officer,” he laughed. “Butch, I knew there would be some kind of a story to tell, but you got me good. I been ridin’ along trying to figure what you’re up to, but I never woulda come up with this.”

“Yep, don’t this beat all,” said Butch sarcastically. “I’m glad I amuse you, Sundance.”

“Before I get too amused,” said Sundance touching his gun. “Who did you lead him here to arrest?”

“Not you.”

“Red?”

“No, they don’t give a damn about Red in Chicago.”

“Well, that’s just the same way we feel about him around here.”

“The kid with the sandy-colored hair,” said Butch pointing nonchalantly with his head. “The one ridin’ a little behind the rest.”

“Him,” said Sundance. “What did that lad do to deserve this much fuss?”

“Well, Mike there is after him cause he threw the wife of the next governor of Illinois off a balcony.”

“Him,” said Sundance again. “He don’t look like he’d kill a bug if it were bitin’ him.”

“I don’t know if he did or not. All’s I know is Marshal Parker says doing this will be a public service and help me square things with the law. I figured, what the hell. This kid ain’t nothing to anyone in these parts, so there wouldn’t be any hard feelings.”

“Fine by me,” said Sundance, “but knowing Red, I don’t think he’s gonna go along with this.”

“Yep, you’re probably right,” Butch agreed. “They all escaped out of the Cook County jail. As soon as Mike is identified as a Chicago police officer, all hell might break loose. That’s why I wanted to have this little parley with you.”

“Well, I’ll just stay the hell out of the whole mess,” said Sundance leaning back in his saddle. “I got no fight with these fellas, and I don’t want to sully my reputation helpin’ a law man.”

“That’s all I’m askin’ of yah to do is to sit on the fence.”

“I might shoot Red if it comes down to it,” Sundance said almost as an afterthought.

As the swelling in his fevered brain subsided, Billy began to struggle with the disorientation that clouded his mind. He knew he had a job to do. This job had to be done by his deadly alias Kid Del Rio. He fought to bring the Kid back. He tried to reach down to touch the saddlebags for reassurance, but his hands were tied around the saddle horn. Someone had also run a rope through his bootstraps and tied them to the stirrup fenders. It was sufficient to keep him stable in the saddle, but hardly enough to hold him. Billy worked his right hand loose after a few minutes and reached down to pat his saddlebags. The hard, round twenty dollar gold pieces were still there. Now it was time to kill the man in the Derby hat and collect the rest. He didn’t want to go back to Texas with half the pot. He was going to dump the whole thing on that whore Rosita’s bed and watch her greedy eyes dance. Fifty pieces of gold. Then he would scoop them up again and leave her wanting and penniless.