Dakota Ambush Read online

  I am sending, by post, a copy of this newspaper to Governor Ordway in Bismarck, with the hope that he will see his way to right this wrong that is being perpetrated against us.

  “Look at this, Millie,” John said, showing the first printed page to his wife.

  “I read it when I set the type,” Millie replied. Millie was not only John’s wife. She was also a valued employee, for she could set type, operate the press, and even write a column that was aimed specifically at the ladies of Fullerton. She had come to work for John when he started the newspaper some two years earlier, and the work relationship grew to something more. That was when John Bryce, who had thought that he would never be married, took her as his bride.

  “Well, what do you think of it?” John asked.

  “I don’t know,” Millie said.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? You think it isn’t a good story?”

  “John, it is a wonderful story, and why shouldn’t it be? You are, after all, a wonderful writer. But I don’t want to see our place all messed up again. Or worse.”

  “What do you mean, worse?”

  “You know what I mean, John,” Millie said with a little shiver.

  John walked over to Millie, put his arms around her, then pulled her to him. “Denbigh is an evil man, Millie, but he isn’t dumb. And killing a public figure like me would be a dumb thing to do.”

  “I hope you are right,” Millie replied.

  “What I hope is that the effect of this article will be to galvanize the governor, the sheriff, the mayor, and the citizens of this town into action against the evil Mr. Denbigh.”

  “And I fear it will have just the opposite result,” Millie said. “Already, some of the people are concerned over what happened here the other night.”

  “Concern? Nonsense, why should they be concerned?”

  “They are afraid it might happen to them.”

  “That’s nonsense.”

  “John, sometimes I feel as if you are trapped in a soap bubble. It is a wonderful soap bubble, filled with all the noble ideas of honor, truth, and justice, but you see nothing beyond that bubble. The people of town are afraid that Denbigh will react to your stories by stopping all business dealings with Fullerton. And whether you like him or not—”

  “Not!” John interrupted, and stabbed his finger into the air. “Madam,” he said, speaking as dramatically as if he were on stage. “I like him not!”

  Millie laughed. “Whether you like him or not,” she continued, “you must admit that he does a great deal of business with the people of the town. They are afraid they will lose that business.”

  “They are being foolish,” John said, his voice returning to normal. “Don’t they understand that without his interference, they would do even more business?”

  “Nevertheless, the whole town is afraid, and I fear some may, out of their fear, stop doing business with us. I know you feel strongly about this, but we do have our own well-being to consider.”

  “Millie, you know yourself that if this town dies, we will as well. A newspaper can survive only as long at the public it serves survives. I am looking out for our own well-being.”

  “I suppose you are right,” Millie acquiesced. “But I beg of you, John, to please exercise some caution.”

  At that moment, Kenny Perkins came into the office. Kenny Perkins was the twelve-year-old who had come to help pick up the scattered type. It was no accident he was there because Kenny worked for John. He was the son of Ma Perkins, a widow who owned a boardinghouse as well as a couple of other businesses. Kenny’s father, Emil, had been killed three years earlier in a mining accident. Like his mother, Kenny had a nose for business, and he had convinced John that he needed a paperboy to deliver the Fullerton Defender. As it turned out, Kenny proved to be a very good paperboy, so the arrangement had a mutual benefit.

  “Did you get the Thursday paper out, Mr. Bryce?” Kenny asked.

  “Indeed I did, Kenny.”

  Kenny smiled broadly. “I knew you would. Are the papers ready to go yet?”

  “That they are, Kenny, that they are. Go, quickly now, and wearing the shoes of Hermes, attend to your appointed rounds.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about. I’m not wearin’ this fella Hermes’ shoes. Heck, warm as it is today, I’m not wearin’ any shoes a’tall. See?” Kenny held up one of his feet and wriggled his toes.

  “The young man speaks the truth, Millie. His feet are as bare as the feet of a newborn babe.”

  Kenny laughed. “You’re funny, Mr. Bryce.” He took the papers, then started up Monroe Avenue, which was the main street of town, with his delivery.

  “Now there goes a good boy,” John said.

  “Yes, he is, and you shouldn’t tease him so,” Millie said.

  “He enjoys it,” John said. “Besides, without a father, he needs a man to joke with him now and then.”

  “I agree. But you can’t say his mother isn’t doing a good job with him. I’ve known Lucy for a long time. I just hope …” She stopped in mid-sentence.

  “You hope what?”

  “I hope the people who vandalized out newspaper office won’t ever take it out on Kenny.”

  “I’m sure they won’t,” John replied.

  “Yes,” Millie said pensively. “I’m sure they won’t either.”

  From out on the street, they could hear Kenny’s call. “Paper! Get your paper here!”

  John took a sheet of stationery from his desk.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to write a letter.”

  “To the governor?”

  “No, I wrote to the governor once, and it didn’t do any good. I’m writing this letter to Matt Jensen, but I’m going to send it to Smoke Jensen because he is the only one I know how to reach. If Smoke is still in contact with Matt Jensen, and I’m sure he is, I will ask him to forward the letter. I did a favor for Mr. Jensen once, and he said if there was ever anything he could do for me, to let him know. Well, there is something he can do for me now, and I’m about to let him know.”

  Chapter Five

  At that moment, five miles out of town, Ian McCann, his son Leo, and McCann’s two hands, Curly Dobbins and Slim Toomey, were moving thirty head of cattle along the Fullerton and Ellendale road when they approached a barrier—a gate that was stretched across the road. Leo, who was in front, stopped.

  “What is it, boy? What did you stop for?” Ian called up to his son.

  “Pa, the road is blocked!” Leo shouted back.

  “What do you mean, blocked?”

  “There’s a gate acrost it!”

  “Dobbins, Toomey, you two boys watch the animals,” Ian said to his two riders, then, slapping his legs against the side of his horse, Ian rode past the little group of cows until he reached the front and saw the gate. There were two men standing in front of the gate.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said. “What the hell is this, anyway?”

  “What does it look like? It is a tollgate,” one of the men said.

  “Who are you?” Ian asked.

  “The name is Bleeker. I’m in charge of the toll-gate. You want to pass this way, you are going to have to pay a toll.”

  “What are you talking about? This ain’t no toll road. I’ve done come this way dozens of times. It’s a public road.”

  “It passes through Denbigh land. That makes it a toll road,” Bleeker said.

  “All right. How much are you talking about?”

  “A dollar each for each one of you, and a dollar for each of the critters that pass through. Except your horses. We won’t charge you nothin’ for the horses,” Bleeker added with an unpleasant laugh. The other rider laughed with him.

  “Mister, are you out of your mind? I’ve got thirty cows and four men here. You’re saying you want thirty-four dollars. I don’t have that much money and I wouldn’t give it to you if I had it.”

  “We can work something out,” Bleeker said.

 
; “Like what?”

  “We’ll take three of your cows.”

  “I’m getting twenty dollars a head for these animals from the Indian agent in Fullerton. That would be sixty dollars.”

  “Yeah, well, you ain’t exactly in Fullerton now, are you? You are on Denbigh land. Here, your cows are worth ten dollars a head, and that means you are getting a bargain. You owe us thirty-four dollars, but I’m willin’ to take thirty.”

  Ian shook his head. “The hell you are. We’ll just find some other way.”

  “Too late,” Bleeker said.

  “What do you man, too late?”

  “You don’t understand. You’ve done come this far on Lord Denbigh’s road. That means you already owe thirty-four dollars whether you go through the gate or not.”

  “You’re crazy. I’m not going to pay you thirty-four dollars, and I’m not going to give you three cows.”

  Suddenly and unexpectedly, Bleeker drew his pistol.

  “What the hell, mister!” Ian shouted in fear. “We ain’t neither one of us armed!”

  Bleeker pointed his pistol at the head of one of the cows and pulled the trigger. The cow dropped, and the others began bawling and milling about in fright, and if it had not been for Dobbins and Toomey, they might have scattered.

  “If you had been reasonable about it, you could have given us three cows and gone on. Now it’s still going to cost you three cows, plus the one you just lost.”

  “You’re crazy!”

  “Shall we cut out the three cows? Or do you want to choose?” Bleeker asked.

  “I told you, I’m not giving you three cows!”

  Bleeker shot a second cow and once again, Dobbins and Toomey had to move quickly to control the remaining cows.

  “Stop it!” Ian shouted. “For the love of God, man, what are you doing?”

  “By your reckoning, you have just lost forty dollars, all because you would not pay the thirty-four dollars toll. Now, do I shoot another one? Or do you give up three cows?” Bleeker asked.

  “Yes, yes, take them! Take them and be damned!” Ian said.

  “Twenty-five head?” the Indian agent said when McCann brought in his herd. “I thought we agreed upon thirty head.”

  “I had thirty head when we left home,” Ian said. He explained the run-in with Bleeker.

  “Ah, yes, he works for Nigel Denbigh,” the Indian agent said. “That explains everything.”

  “It explains nothing,” Ian replied in frustration. “Who the hell is this Denbigh anyway? And what gives him the right to collect tolls on a public road?”

  “You could say, I suppose, that might gives him the right,” the Indian agent said. “Right now, he is not only the biggest and wealthiest rancher in this part of Dakota, but he also has the biggest army.”

  “Biggest army?”

  “Yes. You would have to go all the way back to Fort Lincoln to find more men under arms than Lord Denbigh has on his ranch.”

  “Lord Denbigh?”

  The Indian agent chuckled. “He’s from England,” he said. “I take it that over there he’s a lord or some such thing.”

  “Yeah, well I don’t like it,” McCann said. “I don’t like it one little bit. That son of a bitch cost me one hundred dollars today.”

  Prestonshire on Elm, the Denbigh Ranch, Dickey County, Dakota Territory

  The bane of Elm Valley, in fact the curse of all of Dickey County, was Lord Nigel Cordell Denbigh, 6th Marquess of Prestonshire. Denbigh was a tall, slender man who was always fastidiously dressed. He kept his hair, which was brown and graying at the temples, perfectly coiffed, and his pencil-thin mustache well trimmed. The women of his social set back in England all agreed that he was handsome, though they also added that he was flawed in some way, rather like a stem of fine crystal, with a small imperfection that at first glance couldn’t be seen. The more one saw of Denbigh, though, the more the imperfection, not of physical form, but of personal character, became evident.

  It was because of that imperfection that Denbigh had been asked by his family to leave England. Having been challenged to a duel by a jealous husband, Denbigh exercised his right to choose weapons, selecting a dueling pistol. Most duels fought among gentlemen used the rapier, the reason being that the duels were rarely, if ever, fatal. It was understood among members of the peerage that the application of a dueling scar would be enough to satisfy the honor of the aggrieved. Using a dueling pistol turned the duel from a gentlemen’s event to an act of murder by code.

  Because of that, few gentlemen were skilled in the use of the dueling pistol. Denbigh, however, practiced constantly with the pistol, and on the day of the duel, killed his adversary, Lord Cedric Belford, with one well-placed shot. Denbigh was ostracized, not only for compromising Belford’s wife, but also for taking unfair advantage of his prowess with a particular weapon when he was rightfully called to account. Wanting to avoid further embarrassment to the family, not only from the untidy effects of the duel, but from his other scandals as well, involving seduction, slander, betrayal, and personal greed, Denbigh was asked to leave England.

  The pain of his departure was eased, however, by the provision of several thousand acres of land on the Elm River in the Dakota Territory, U.S.A., as well as a very generous yearly stipend. He had arrived in New York approximately two years earlier, accompanied by his manservant Tolliver and carrying a grip with thirty-five thousand pounds sterling. He was pleasantly surprised when he discovered that after the monetary exchange, he wound up with over a half million U.S. dollars.

  At first, Denbigh had been bitter and angry about the expulsion, but as he grew more acclimated to the situation, he came to the belief that his being sent to the United States was the best thing that could possibly happen to him. He soon realized that he could have much more power, influence, and wealth here than he ever could back in England. Giving his ranch the grandiose name of Preston-shire on Elm, he began to expand his holdings, buying out land adjacent to his own until his ranch surrounded the only road into the town of Fuller-ton. Then, realizing it would take a veritable army to run his fiefdom, he began hiring men, not only workers for his ranch, but men with whom he could form his own militia.

  For the moment, his rather large army was a drain on his resources, though he had so much money that he was in no danger of running out anytime soon. But despite the fact his private militia was costing him money, they paid their way by virtue of not only establishing but extending his personal power. And he also knew that they would, when all his plans were put into operation, pay for themselves.

  It was Denbigh’s dream—though it was a dream that so far he had shared with no one—to carve out a large, feudal estate, encompassing all the farms and ranches in the entire valley into his sphere of control, assimilating the land as his own, and employing the small landowners as serfs, beholden only to him. At the moment, he was examining a map of the valley with certain areas marked off, land that he owned, and land that he planned to acquire by whatever means possible.

  He heard a discreet cough from behind him.

  “Yes, Mr. Tolliver, what is it?”

  Henry Tolliver, a short and rather rotund man with a bald head and protruding lips, was Denbigh’s personal valet, the son, grandson, and great-grandson of maids and valets who had served the Denbigh family for nearly one hundred years. Tolliver had come to America with Denbigh.

  “M’lord, Mr. Butrum wishes an audience,” Tolliver said.

  Butrum was one of the latest men to join his militia, Denbigh hiring him after reading an article in the San Francisco newspaper describing him as: “With a pistol, faster than thought, and in disposition, a man who can kill without compunction.” As of now, Butrum was Denbigh’s highest-paid employee.

  Denbigh chuckled at the distaste Tolliver had for Butrum, most clearly demonstrated by the tone in his voice.

  “Mr. Tolliver, why do I get the impression that you don’t much like Mr. Butrum?”

  “Perhaps, sir, it is beca
use I do not like the man,” Tolliver said.

  “Why not?

  “I find his demeanor most unpleasant.”

  “He kills people for a living, Mr. Tolliver,” Denbigh said. “Someone who kills for a living can hardly be expected to have a very pleasant disposition now, can he?”

  “No, sir,” Tolliver replied.

  “Henry, I find our Mr. Butrum unpleasant as well,” Denbigh said, softening his words. “Not only Butrum, but every one of these cowboys, those who work for me and those who don’t. You have to understand that they are not like you and me. Whereas we have generations of culture bred into us, these men are wild and uncouth, little more than animals really. But for now, I need them. I find myself in the unusual position of being dependent upon those who are far inferior. Now, if you would, please show Mr. Butrum into the study.”

  “Yes, m’lord,” Tolliver replied.

  Tolliver left the room and as he did so, Denbigh rolled up the map that he had been examining so that Butrum could not see it. He did not believe that Butrum was intelligent enough to discern the meaning of a map marked out with crosshatches, but he had no wish to discuss the matter with him.

  Ollie Butrum had buck teeth, eyes so pale a blue that they were almost colorless, pale skin, and yellow hair. In a world of gentlemen, he would be marginalized, not only for his innate ugliness, but also because of his intelligence, which was minimal, and his demeanor, the antitheses of the proper etiquette and decorum that so occupied the world in which Denbigh was raised.

  But the Dakota Territory was not a world of gentlemen, and if a gentleman wanted to survive in this world, he needed an ally like Butrum, either as a friend, or better in this case, as a loyal and subservient employee.

  “Mr. Denbigh,” Butrum started.

  Denbigh said nothing, but held up his finger.

  “I mean Lord Denbigh,” Butrum corrected.

  “Yes, Mr. Butrum, what is it?”

  “The paper come out again.”

  “I expected that it would,” Denbigh said. “Though he is a thorn in my side, one must confess that John Bryce has more courage than the rest of the town combined. He wrote another scathing article about me, I suppose.”