Miss Phipps and the Cattle Baron (24 page)

Adam looked at her in alarm. "Don't be so
bloody pigheaded! Drop the story for your own safety. I know these
men. They intend to protect what's theirs, and the fact is,
homesteaders are building up herds by rustling cattle from
open-range stock. You have no proof that Ella Watson isn't doing
the same thing. If you take sides in this, you'll be coming up
against some powerful and potentially ruthless men."

"The fact that you refer to the men as
potentially ruthless leads me to believe that they are guilty of
everything Ella Watson claims," Priscilla said. "And I never
intended to take sides at all, but I can't stand by and let this
happen. Homesteaders need to know what's going on so they can
prepare to defend themselves. If I say nothing I'm no better than
the men making the threats."

"Who are the men?" Adam asked.

Priscilla shrugged. "Jeanette didn't
say."

"Then you can't be sure the women has the
story straight."

"That's precisely why I intend to ride out to
Ella Watson's cabin and talk to her. I'll decide then if her story
is true. If it is, it will appear in the next issue of
The Town
Tattler
."

Adam stared at her, the muscles in his jaw
flexing. "Then I'll go with you," he said, with resolve. "I don't
want you riding out there alone."

"You have no say in what I do, Adam,"
Priscilla said. "And the last thing I want is someone from the
stock grower's association with me when I'm trying to get the truth
from Ella Watson. Besides, I have no way of knowing if you might
not go back to your associates and warn them about a breaking story
aimed at them."

"If that's all the faith you have in me,"
Adam said, "then there really is nothing left between us." When he
turned to go, Priscilla stopped him with her hand on his arm.

He looked over his shoulder.

"All right. You can go with me," she said, "
but let me do the talking. I'll tell Ella Watson you're trying to
get to the bottom of things. Am I right about that?" She held his
gaze while waiting for his reply.

"I guess you'll find out in due course." Adam
shrugged off her hand and walked on.

"I plan to leave first thing tomorrow," she
called after him. He kept walking.

***

Adam arrived in a buggy the following
morning, driving it himself. He greeted Priscilla with a dour look
on his face, and made no attempt to kiss her or touch her, other
than to hold her elbow as he helped her up into the buggy.

He gave the command, and as they were making
their way out of town, Priscilla was the first to speak. "I know
you want to believe that the men you spend time with at the
Cheyenne Club are innocent of all wrong doing," she said, "but
they're not. They're spreading rumors that Ella Watson is a
prostitute just because she worked at the Rawlins House for a
couple of years as a cook and domestic. But the Rawlins House is
not a brothel. It's a boarding house. According to Miss Jamison,
Jim Averell was staying at the Rawlins House while filing his
homestead claim when he offered Ella a job as cook at his roadside
inn. She worked for him there before filing her own claim on the
tract of land adjacent to his."

"Everyone knows the woman's been living out
there with a man not her husband," Adam said. "And Averell's place
is a roadhouse where men stay. It's not too hard to figure out how
the Watson woman made the money to build a cabin and put up
fences."

"Just because she's living at a roadhouse
does not make her a prostitute," Priscilla clipped. "Besides, if
sharing a bed with a man makes a woman a prostitute, then my
sharing my bed with you would make me the same, except that at
least Ella Watson got paid as a cook. You, on the other hand, never
offered to pay for my services the night you sent everyone to the
theater so you could have me in your bed. But I suppose that's
because I was the one insisting you take my virginity, so perhaps I
should have offered to pay you for your services."

"There's no bloody way in hell you can
compare what's between us with what's going on with Ella Watson at
Jim Averell's roadhouse."

"Yes, I suppose you're right," Priscilla
said, "because Ella Watson told Miss Jamison that she and Jim
Averell were married. Another reason the rumors are false."

"Married!" Adam let out a short guffaw. "Then
I assume you checked the records to make sure that part of her
story is true?" he asked.

"Well, actually I did," Priscilla said, "and
they did apply for a marriage license, though I found no record of
them actually marrying yet, which might be because the Homestead
Act allows only one claim per family. But it should not be long
before Ella Watson will have fulfilled the requirements of her
claim and they can get married, which will give them
three-hundred-and-twenty acres together. According to Miss Jamison,
in addition to the cabin, Ella Watson's dug irrigation ditches and
built corrals and fenced in for cattle. But when she tried to get a
registered brand for her cattle, she was denied."

"That's because she was putting her brand on
mavericks she found on open range which, because of the Maverick
Law, belong to the stock growers association," Adam said.

"Which is another matter," Priscilla snapped,
feeling her temper rise at the scope of the law favoring the
cattlemen. "With your stock growers association making the laws and
also being the official law enforcement agency for the Wyoming
cattle industry, they fixed it so mavericks can only be auctioned
by representatives of the association, then added the provision
that the only people who could bid on the mavericks were those
receiving brands from the state, which is almost impossible for
homesteaders like Ella Watson to get, which also puts the
homesteader's unbranded calves at risk if they stray because the
association then claims them and sells them as mavericks."

"Whether you like the law or not," Adam said,
in a gruff voice, "it's the law."

"Well your so call law does not apply in
Ella's case because she has papers for all of her cattle,"
Priscilla fired back. "She told Jeanette she bought the animals
from a man driving them from Nebraska and has papers for every
animal, but that the men who've been intimidating her refuse to
look at the papers. They threaten her and ride off." Having said
that, Priscilla clamped her jaws shut, determined to say nothing
more until they arrived at Ella Watson's place.

As they drove up to the log cabin, a boy,
about eleven or twelve, who appeared to be patching a hole in a
fence, stopped what he was doing and started walking toward
them.

Realizing who the boy must be, from what
Jeanette had told her, Priscilla said to Adam, "That must be Ella's
adopted son, Gene. Jeanette said she got him from a drifter who was
a heavy drinker who said he had other children and couldn't take
care of him, so Ella took the boy in. He's been helping with the
ranch."

When the boy stepped up to the buggy, with a
worried look on his face, Priscilla said, "We're friends of
Jeanette Jamison and we're looking for Miss Watson. Is she
here?"

"No," the boy said. "Me Ma's gone to fetch a
heifer that got out through the fence when the fence was cut."

Adam climbed down from the buggy and faced
the boy. "Who cut the fence?" he asked, his tone probing.

The boy shrugged. "I 'spose it were one of
Mr. Bothwell's men. Them's the ones sittin' over yonder on them
horses." The boy pointed to a rise, where two men sat watching
them. "They come and do nuthin' but jes sit 'n watch. But when our
backs are turned, things happen."

"What kind of things?" Adam asked.

"Cuttin fences. Stealin' our calves. Puttin'
bones on our doorstep," the boy said, pointing.

Priscilla climbed out of the buggy and walked
over to where a human skull and a couple of femurs lay in the dirt.
As she stood staring at them, the boy said, "Me ma kicked them
aside after she found them on our doorstep."

"How do you know those are Mr. Bothwell's men
over there?" Adam asked, pointing at the men on the horses.

The boy looked in the distance. "They came
here with Mr. Bothwell when he tried to get me ma to sell our
place, but she wouldn't do it. Mr. Bothwell was real mad. Said he'd
be back."

"I'll find out what they're up to," Adam
said. He started walking toward the men, but before he could get
close enough to see who they were, the men turned their horses and
rode off. When Adam started back, Priscilla caught a look on his
face that she'd never seen before, and she wondered if he was
beginning to have his first qualms about his associates.

"Is there anyone else around here who we can
talk to," Priscilla said to the boy. "We're trying to find out
what's going on."

"Just me and Ralph Cole are here right now,"
the boy said. "Ralph's Mr. Averell's nephew and he sometimes works
for me ma. Mr. Averell sent him over here to help around the place
and do the brandin'." The boy put his fingers to his lips and blew
hard, sending a shrill whistle echoing. A moment later, a tall,
gangly man, around twenty or twenty-one, stepped out of a shed,
holding a shotgun, and started toward them.

After Priscilla introduced herself and Adam,
she said to the young man, "We're trying to find out what's going
on out here. We've heard that Miss Watson has been threatened by
some men, and we'd like to hear exactly what happened."

Hands gripping the shotgun, Ralph said,
"Albert Bothwell's what happened. He lives about a mile from here
and before Miss Watson and my uncle moved onto this land, he
considered it his, used it and other large pieces of open range as
his pastureland. Bothwell runs cattle through the entire Sweetwater
Valley, spreading out twenty miles. He doesn't own any of the land
but he acts like he does. He's approached Miss Watson several
times, trying to buy her property, and each time she's refused. My
uncle gave Bothwell a right of way through his land so Bothwell
could irrigate his pastureland, but my uncle also threatened to cut
off Bothwell's water if Bothwell didn't stop harassing them.
Shortly after that, The
Cheyenne Daily Leader
started
writing false stories about Miss Watson, claiming she's Cattle
Kate, a woman in Bossomer by the name of Kate Maxwell who's known
for rustling cattle, and who does favors for the Army stationed
there. The newspaper purposely mixed up the two women so people
wouldn't know which was which. There's no question. Bothwell's
determined get my uncle and Miss Watson's land, no matter what it
takes."

Adam, who'd been listening intently, said to
the young man, "Miss Watson claims she's been threatened. Have you
been present at any of those times?"

"No," Ralph admitted, "but Miss Watson has no
reason to lie. There's more to it though. My uncle's a surveyor,
and he learned that some of the members of the stock grower's
association have been illegally filing claims by putting movable
cabins on land and stating the land's been improved. After filing a
claim, they jack up the cabins, put them on logs, and roll them to
another property, doing it over and over. My uncle started writing
letters to The Casper Weekly Mail and that's when Mr. Bothwell's
men started threatening him and Miss Watson. The skull and cross
bones are the latest," Ralph said, pointing.

Adam looked down at the bones, then in the
direction where the men had been sitting on horses, and said to
Ralph, "I know A.J. Bothwell. I'll see what I can find out."

Ralph looked at Adam, eyes narrowed, and
said, "How do you know Bothwell?"

"Through the stockmen's association," Adam
replied.

"Then I suggest you leave here before Miss
Watson returns," Ralph said in a caustic voice, raising the shotgun
to waist height.

"Please lower your gun, Mr. Cole," Priscilla
said. "Lord Whittington and I are not here to make trouble, only to
learn the truth about what's happening. Lord Whittington could have
ridden in with Bothwell's men as well if he was looking for
trouble.

Ralph Cole lowered his gun, and said, "Well,
I told it the way it is. But you won't get the truth out of
Bothwell or any of the other members of the association. They're
sticking by the rumors because that's the only way they'll have the
people behind them when they make their final move to get rid of my
uncle and Miss Watson."

"What final move?" Adam asked.

"Hanging them for cattle rustling," Ralph
replied. "Bothwell threatened to do it if my uncle and Miss Watson
don't sell."

Adam eyed the man with uncertainty. "There
are laws here and they can't just ride in and hang a man without
going through proper procedures. If Miss Watson has papers for her
cattle, she can show them in court and that will end it. Even if
she doesn't, no one's going to hang a woman. As for your uncle, I
suggest he assure Bothwell that he won't cut off his
irrigation."

"I tell you what," Ralph said to Adam. "You
go back to your friends in the association and tell them that no
one's leaving their land out here, and if we need to, we'll get a
federal marshal out here to make sure Bothwell and the rest of you
understand."

Adam shoved his hat on his head, and said, "I
think you got your point across." He climbed into the buggy and
waited for Priscilla to join him.

Priscilla said to Ralph, "Do you object to my
printing what you've told me today?"

"No," Ralph said, "as long as you get it
straight."

"I will," Priscilla assured him. "And tell
Miss Watson that she can come to
The Town Tattler
and tell
her side of the story. I'm willing to listen." She climbed into the
buggy and took her place beside Adam. She saw the dark look on his
face and knew that trouble was brewing.

Eyes straight ahead, he said, "Don't print
the story."