William Johnstone - Snake River Slaughter

To the chagrin of everyone, Poke returned the next day. This time the man who was sitting at his table got up and moved without being asked. By the third day, Poke had clearly established a proprietary right to the table, and nobody sat at it, even when Poke wasn’t present.

On the third day Marshal Sparks came to see him.

“I’ve done some checking up on you, Terrell,” Marshal Sparks said. “That’s who you are, isn’t it? Poke Terrell?”

“That’s me,” Poke replied. He continued to play solitaire all the time the marshal was talking to him.

“What I want to know is, what is a member of the Idaho Auxiliary Peace Officers’ Posse doing in Medbury?”

“I ain’t a member no more,” Poke replied.

Marshal Sparks nodded. “Yes, that’s what I found out. At least you are honest about it.”

“Marshal, I have not violated any of your laws since I arrived, and I’m not wanted. So what do you want?”

“Nothing, I’m just curious as to why you are here, that’s all.”

“I think you have a nice little town here,” Poke said. “I just thought I’d visit here for a while. Like I said, I have not broke none of your laws, and I am not wanted.”

“I hope things stay like that,” Marshal Sparks said.

For the first few days, Poke Terrell was the talk of the town.

“He used to be a member of the Peace Officers’ Posse. Did you know that? Leastwise, that’s what the marshal says.”

“Yeah, but the marshal also says he ain’t a member no more.”

“You know why he ain’t a member no more? Because he was too violent, that’s why. I mean, can you imagine someone who is too violent for the Peace Officers’ Posse? The Posse makes Quantrill’s Bushwhackers seem like Sunday School boys.”

By the end of two weeks, though, Poke was no longer the center of conversation or even attention. Because he sat at “his” table playing solitaire he became as ubiquitous as the heating stove. He wasn’t always alone, though. Gradually Poke began to make a few friends, or at least acquaintances. Sam Logan was the first to come sit at the table with him. Al Madison and Ken Jernigan came as well, and sometimes all three would come.

The telegraph office was located in one end of the railroad depot, so located because Union Pacific Railroad provided the Western Union office in Medbury with at least ninety percent of its business.

When Poke stepped up to the telegraph window, he could hear the instrument clacking, and he saw the telegrapher writing on a tablet. A sign on the telegrapher’s desk identified him as William S. Tate and, though Poke had no way of knowing, Tate was recording all the latest changes in train departures and arrivals. This was absolutely necessary in order to schedule the use of the track to avoid wrecks.

Poke waited until the clacking stopped, then saw Tate send a message. Finally Tate turned to him.

“I need to send a message.”

Tate gave the man a tablet and pencil, and Poke wrote the message, then handed it back.

Found three men to work for me. Will pay from profits.

“Where does this message go?” Tate asked.

“To Colonel Clay Sherman, Idaho Auxiliary Peace Officers’ Posse in Boise,” Poke said.

“That will be one dollar and twenty cents,” Tate said.

“Damn, that’s kind of high, ain’t it? Only cost three cents to send it by mail.”

“A letter will get to Boise sometime tomorrow. This will get there in thirty seconds,” Tate said.

Grumbling, Poke paid for the telegram, then went back to his table at the Sand Spur.

That night when Poke’s three new friends were at the table with him, speaking animatedly but too quietly for anyone to hear what they were saying, Prew was standing at the end of the bar, nursing a beer and looking toward the table. Jenny, one of the young women who worked the bar, was with him.

“Logan, Madison, and Jernigan,” Prew said contemptuously. “Those are three of the biggest polecats in the entire county. There can’t any of them hold a job anywhere. It stands to reason they would become friends with someone like Poke Terrell.”

“You’re just mad because Terrell ran you away from the table the first night he was here,” Jenny said.

“He didn’t run me away,” Prew insisted. “You did. I would have fought him for it.”

“I know you would have,” Jenny said. She smiled at him. “But I didn’t want to see you get your face bruised.” She put her hand up to his face and rubbed her fingers, lightly, across his cheek. “It’s such a handsome face.”

Prew, who’s real name was Jason Prewitt, was a ranch hand at Coventry on the Snake, a huge, 20,000-acre horse ranch that belonged to Kitty Wellington. The ranch was approximately five miles south of Medbury, and it was nearly midnight by the time Prew arrived back at the ranch. Most of the others ranch hands were already asleep when he sat down on his bunk to pull off his boots, and the cacophony of their snores filled the room.

When he first came to work at the ranch, the snoring sometimes kept him awake. Now it was just a part of the background, a part of his life on the range.

“Prew?” Tyrone called, quietly from his private room at the end of the bunk house. Tyrone Canfield was the ranch foreman.

“Yeah?”

“I just wanted to make sure it was you. Better get to sleep as early as you can. The field where the Arabians are being kept is getting grazed out and first thing tomorrow we are going to move them to fresh grass.”

“How’m I goin’ to get to sleep with you yapping at me?” Prew teased.

By any means of measurement, Kitty Wellington was a beautiful woman. Tall and statuesque, she had blond hair and blue eyes, naturally long lashes, high cheekbones and full lips. She was a widow, still young, because when she married, she had been thirty years younger than her husband.

After her husband died, Kitty inherited the ranch, a parcel of land that was bordered on the north by the Snake River and Castle Creek, on the east by the Bruneau, and on the west and south by a network of interconnecting creeks; the Blue, the Bottle, and the Mill. It was this ready availability of water as well as a plentiful supply of good grass that made Coventry on the Snake so valuable.

It was not by mere coincidence that the name of the ranch, Coventry on the Snake, had an Old World flavor. Kitty’s husband, Sir Thomas Denbigh Wellington, the Seventh Earl of Buckinghamshire, had named it after his ancestral home, Coventry on the Wye, in Buckinghamshire, England.

But Kitty was not just a beautiful woman who happened to inherit a lot of land. She had turned Coventry on the Snake into one of the finest horse ranches in the country, and she had done it all since the death of her husband.

This morning Kitty was sitting in her study working on the books when someone knocked lightly on the door frame. The door to her study being open, when Kitty turned in her chair, she saw Tyrone Canfield standing there, holding his hat in his hand.

“Yes, Tyrone,” Kitty said, greeting her foreman with a smile. “Did you want to see me?”

Tyrone rolled his hat in his hand and cleared his throat, obviously not wanting to say what he had to say. The expression of concern on Tyrone’s face caused Kitty to give up her smile.

“What is it, Tyrone?” she asked. “What is wrong?”

“I hate to tell you this, Mrs. Wellington, but we’re missin’ seventy-five head of Arabians,” he said.

“What? Are you sure?”

“Yes, ma’am, I’m positive. We’ve been keepin’ a real good count of the Arabians, especially since they are the ones you are sellin’ to the army. Last count we had eight hundred and eighty-five. This mornin’ we only had eight hundred and ten. And we counted them twice, just to make sure.”