Bloodshed of the Mountain Man Read online

The broken sword was the last item to join the pile of uniform accoutrements that lay in the dirt alongside the disgraced officer.

  Prescott, his face burning in shame, glanced toward the post civilians who had gathered to watch his humiliation. He saw his wife in the front row, the black eye now gray green as it healed. He was sure that, secretly, she was enjoying this.

  Prescott had not spoken a word to her from the day he had been arrested, because he had been taken directly from the headquarters building of the Second Dragoons, to the Fort Laramie Post Stockade. She had not been present for his court-martial, and in the two weeks since he had been placed in custody she had not come to the stockade one time to see him

  “First Sergeant Waters, front!” Rector called.

  Waters, the First Sergeant of the company that Prescott had once commanded, marched up to Lieutenant Colonel Rector and saluted.

  “First Sergeant Waters, escort Private Prescott to the front gate; then remove him from this post and from the army.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sergeant Waters replied.

  “Regimental Band Director, have your drummers play the cadence,” Lieutenant Colonel Rector ordered.

  The drummers began playing a staccato cadence.

  “Guards, right shoulder, arms,” First Sergeant Waters ordered.

  In perfect synchronization, the two privates brought their Springfield carbines, caliber .45-.70, to their shoulders.

  “Prisoner and guard detail, forward march,” First Sergeant Waters ordered.

  As the small formation approached the gate, the gates were swung open.

  “Prisoner and detail, halt! Guards, post!”

  The two guards, with their carbines still across their shoulders, moved three steps to either side of Private Prescott, then turned to face him.

  “Port arms.”

  The guards brought their rifles down sharply, holding them diagonally across their chests.

  First Sergeant Waters then stepped up behind Prescott, and lifting his leg, put the sole of his boot on Prescott’s backside. He then pushed him so hard that Prescott was unable to keep his balance, and he fell into the dirt on the outside of the gate. Once he left the gate he was no longer Captain Prescott, or even Private Prescott. He was a dishonorably discharged civilian.

  “Dragoons, dismissed!” Colonel Twiggs shouted, and as the men were dismissed, they laughed and shouted catcalls at the disgraced former officer, who walked away from the front gate with his head down.

  “Oh, Enid,” his wife said.

  Looking up, Prescott saw her standing outside the post, her luggage on the ground beside her. There was no luggage for him, he had only army uniforms, and he was no longer authorized to wear the uniform.

  “I suppose you are happy now,” Prescott said.

  “No, of course not. I’m sorry for you, Enid. But you had to—”

  Prescott slapped her in the face, hitting her so hard that it knocked her down.

  “Get up,” he said. He looked back toward the soldiers who were still standing in the open gate to the fort. “Get up, we’re leaving this place.”

  She got up onto her hands and knees, but didn’t stand. “No, Enid. I’m not going with you.”

  Prescott kicked her. “I said get up!”

  “Prescott, you son of a bitch! If you touch that woman again I’ll kill you where you stand!” the guard at the gate said, pointing his rifle at him.

  “Go,” Prescott said, with a dismissive wave of his hand to his wife. “You’ve been nothing but a burden to me from the time we got married. I don’t care if I ever see you again.”

  “That’s not anything you’ll ever have to worry about,” she said, as she stood.

  “Disabuse yourself of any idea that I will ever give you a divorce, my dear.” Prescott smiled at her, but there was no humor in his smile. “No, madam, you are doomed to a lifetime of marriage. Marriage to a man who despises you. And as long as you are married to me, you’ll never be able to marry another.”

  She smiled at him. “Enid, if what I have been through with you is any indication of what marriage is like, I don’t ever want to be married again.”

  Prescott drew his hand back.

  “I mean it, Prescott,” the gate guard said. “You take one more step toward that lady and you are a dead man!”

  Prescott made a dismissive wave with his hand, then turned and walked away. He had no money and no clothes, other than the stripped-down uniform he was wearing, and no weapon. Behind him, he heard the jeers of troopers who had once been obedient to him, had saluted him, and had given him the respect an officer was due.

  Prescott, you son of a bitch! If you touch that woman again I’ll kill you where you stand!

  He had called him Prescott . . . not Captain Prescott, but Prescott. Never in the entire time he had been in the army, had an enlisted man addressed him so. And it was that—the shame of having an enlisted man refer to him simply as Prescott that bothered him more than the threat of being shot.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Millersburg, Wyoming

  Prescott walked from Fort Laramie to Millersburg, a distance of about ten miles. Night had fallen by the time he reached the town, and he was tired, hungry, and thirsty. As he walked by a saloon, he could hear the laughter and happy conversation coming from within, and he hated everyone there. He hated them because they had food, and he hated them because they had a beer, and he hated them because they had not gone through the humiliation he had just suffered.

  “Damn, I gotta pee,” someone said from within the saloon.

  “Well, pee in the toilet,” a woman’s voice said. “I don’t know why all you men think you have to pee on the back of the building.”

  “You want to come hold it for me, Betty Lou?”

  “Oh my, honey, do you mean you can’t even find it by yourself?” Betty Lou quipped.

  There was a loud guffaw of men’s laughter.

  That was when Prescott knew what he was going to do. Picking up a rock that was about the size of his fist, he ran into the gap between the saloon and the building next door. Shaded from the moon and with no ambient light, it was so dark here that he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.

  He moved to the back of the saloon and, from here, could see the toilet because there was a lantern hanging just outside. He saw the man go inside; then he moved up to the toilet and waited. As soon as the man came out, Prescott bashed in the side of his head with a rock. When the man went down, Prescott dragged him into the dark between the two buildings. There, he stripped him; then, getting out of the remnants of his uniform, he put on the clothes of the man he had just killed. He also took the man’s gun and holster. He found two dollars in the pocket of the denim trousers he had just put on.

  Stepping back into the toilet, he dropped his uniform down through the hole.

  Now wearing nondistinctive clothes and with a little money in his pocket, he went to the other saloon in town, where he bought a supper of ham and fried potatoes, washed down with a beer.

  “They’re making a ton of money,” he heard someone say. The conversation was taking place at the next table over. “I mean, who would have thought that a general store, out in the country like that, would make so much money? You’d think they would have to be in town, wouldn’t you?”

  “No. I mean it’s out there on the Hartville Road, halfway between Millersburg and Hartville, so it serves all the people who don’t want to go into town.”

  After his supper, Prescott stole a horse and rode toward Hartville. When he saw the store, he camped out near it; then, the next morning, right after the store opened but before they had any customers, he went inside, his entry announced by the jingle of a bell that was attached to the front door.

  “My,” the store owner said. “Aren’t you the early riser though?”

  Prescott pointed his pistol at the man.

  “They say the early bird gets the worm,” he said. “Or in this case, the money. Hand it over. All of it.
”

  With shaking hands, the man opened his cash drawer and pulled out a stack of money. He started to scoop out the coins.

  “You can keep the coins,” Prescott said.

  “Jack, what is it? What’s going on here?” a woman said, coming over to the counter.

  When Prescott turned to look at the woman, Jack grabbed a gun that he kept under the counter. Whirling back toward him, Prescott fired. Then, when the woman screamed, he shot her too.

  When he left the store a moment later, he had eighty-seven dollars in his pocket, two new pair of jeans and two new shirts, bacon, beans, sugar, and coffee. Jack and Mary Henderson lay dead on the floor in the store behind him. Prescott had killed for the first time in his life, and he felt not the slightest contrition.

  Within a month, Prescott, who was now calling himself Hannibal, had put together a gang of some five men, using the principles of leadership he had learned at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Within another two months he had a gang of ten men, including Bo Rexwell, a former sergeant who had deserted the army. It was then that he came up with the idea of calling his command the Ghost Riders and having his men wear red armbands. It fostered a degree of camaraderie among the men, and it also subconsciously inculcated in them a degree of obedience to their leader.

  Prescott discovered that the leadership skills he had learned at the academy, as well as his practical experience, proved to be very beneficial in his newly chosen profession. He commanded the Ghost Riders as if it were an army company in combat, and he became very successful. The Ghost Riders raised havoc all over Wyoming, and as the head of the outfit, Hannibal accumulated more money in less than six months than the sum total of every dollar he had drawn in his entire army career.

  He worked Wyoming until he was sure that there were no more targets of opportunity remaining. Then, and with his command now numbering over twenty riders, he moved to Colorado.

  “Damn! Another ringer! You got to be cheatin’! There can’t nobody throw six ringers in a row!”

  “How can you cheat at horseshoes?”

  “I don’t know, I ain’t figured it out yet.”

  The noise of the horseshoe tossing game outside his window brought Hannibal back from his memories, and he knew it was time to start working on his plan for robbing the bank in Brimstone.

  Sugarloaf Ranch

  As Cal and Julia were sitting out on the porch swing, a meteor zipped across the night sky.

  “Oh, a falling star!” Julia said. “I would like to see one when it landed. They must be as beautiful as a diamond.”

  “They’re not pretty at all,” Cal said. “They just look like a rock that’s been in a fire is all. Pearlie and I found one, once. We saw it fall, and it was still smoking when we got to it. It’s out in the bunkhouse, if you would like for me to go get it and show it to you.”

  “No, if it isn’t as beautiful as a diamond, I don’t think I would want to see it. I prefer to keep thinking of them as beautiful. And they are beautiful when you see them falling.”

  “I suppose they are,” Cal said.

  They were quiet for another long moment; then Cal reached over and took Julia’s hand in his.

  “Do you want to tell me about it?” he asked.

  “You mean, me being married?”

  “Yes.”

  “I fell in love with a West Point cadet. He was so handsome, so dashing.”

  Julia told the story in halting words and troubled sighs. But despite the difficulty of telling it, she put into it so much feeling and such intensity that Cal was transported from the front porch of the Jensen house and was now reliving the experience with the beautiful and troubled young woman who was sitting beside him.

  And, as she had gripped his hand to keep him grounded in reality when he was having his dreams, so too did he hold her hand now to let her know that no matter how painful the memories might be, he was here for her.

  West Point, New York

  Julia’s father was a doctor at West Point, not the military academy, but the town of West Point. She had grown up around the academy and from the time she was a young girl had thrilled to the sight of the cadets marching so sharply in long rows of gray.

  Then, when she was seventeen, she was invited to attend a dance, called a hop by the cadets, and to her surprise, her father let her attend. There, she was assigned to a handsome young first classman who showed her about the grounds.

  “I’ve lived here all my life,” she said. “But this is the first time I’ve ever actually been here, to the academy.”

  “Well, as you can see, this is a most historic place,” her date said.

  “These plaques,” she said. “They all have names of generals on them. But I know they aren’t all buried here.”

  “No. Well, some are buried here, General Anderson, General Buford, Custer, of course. But most of these are just names of generals who graduated from here, and they represent all the wars from the Revolutionary War up to the Civil War. My name will be here, some day,” he said confidently.

  “You mean you think you will make general?”

  “I know I will.”

  “Oh, here’s one that doesn’t have a name. It just says MAJOR GENERAL, BORN 1740. That’s rather odd.”

  “That would be Benedict Arnold.”

  “But he was a traitor,” Julia said.

  “He was a traitor, yes. But despite that, he is regarded as a brilliant tactician.”

  “Was he the most brilliant of all the generals?”

  “No.”

  “Who was?”

  “The most brilliant general’s name won’t be here, because he lived long before there was a West Point, long before there was an America, even. That would be Hannibal Barca. He was a Punic Carthaginian military commander and the greatest military commander in history.”

  “I know, you think he’s very handsome,” Dr. McKnight said to his daughter two months later. “But cadet or not, there is something about him that bothers me.”

  “Papa, he has asked me to marry him in the West Point Chapel as soon as he graduates and receives his commission,” Julia said. “That’s just two weeks from now, and I have said yes.”

  “Well if you have said yes, what are you coming to me for?” Dr. McKnight asked. “Apparently you have already made up your mind, with no input from me. No, I take that back. You have had plenty of input from me, and all of it negative. But it didn’t seem to matter.”

  “Oh, Papa, it does matter,” Julia said. “But you don’t know him as I do. I think the reason you are against the marriage is because he is going to be posted out West and you don’t want to see me go.”

  “I don’t want to see you go, that is true. But that isn’t the reason. Sweetheart, I just don’t see him as the man for you. I wish I had set up my practice in Philadelphia or Boston or Chicago . . . anywhere but here and that blasted military academy. I know that all the young women in town are enamored of the West Point cadets. And no doubt, there have been some wonderful gentlemen who have graduated from that academy. I just wish I felt better about the man you have chosen.”

  “Papa, please say that you will come to my wedding.”

  “I will come,” Dr. McKnight said. “I will come, because you are my daughter and I love you. And I hope I’m wrong. I hope the marriage works out well for you.”

  Dr. McKnight wasn’t wrong. From Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, to Fort Ripley, Minnesota, to Fort Riley, Kansas, to Fort Halleck, Nevada, it was always the same. Her husband was a martinet, hated by his men and distrusted by his superiors. It was only because he was an academy graduate that he was tolerated at all, and he was tolerated best by being passed from one command to the other.

  “It’s your fault,” he yelled at her on the night he learned that there would be still another transfer ahead, but with no promotion.

  “How is it my fault?”

  “I know that Colonel McDermott likes you. He finds you attractive. You could have been a little nicer to
him.”

  “I told you what he wanted,” Julia said.

  “If you knew what he wanted, why didn’t you give it to him? You are married to an army officer; it is your duty to do everything you can to advance my career.”

  “Even if it means sleeping with a fat, ugly colonel?”

  “Oh, don’t be so sanctimonious. You could hardly wait to lift your skirts when we first met, and you know it.”

  “I’ll not sleep with anyone for you. If you are going to get promoted, you are going to have to earn it. Why don’t you sleep with the colonel’s wife?”

  “I’ll not have you talk to me like that. You will obey, do you understand?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I said do you understand?” He slapped her hard.

  As Julia told about being slapped in the face by her husband, she put her hand to her cheek and grew silent for a long moment. Cal, who was still holding her other hand, lifted it to his lips and kissed it. He said nothing, understanding that when she was ready to talk again, she would.

  “I should have listened to Papa,” Julia continued. “He turned out to be a brutal officer, brutal to his men, and brutal to me.

  “He was also a thief, and when he got caught stealing from the army, he was broken down to private, then drummed out of the service. I was going to leave with him, after all he was my husband and I had taken an oath to stay with him in good times and bad. But I couldn’t, I just couldn’t do it. I had had enough, so after he left the army, he went one way and I went the other. I had no idea what I was going to do. I no longer had a sponsor, and that meant that I had lost my quarters on the post. I knew I couldn’t go back to New York and face my father. After all, he had advised me against marrying him in the first place. I don’t know how it was that he was able to see something in Enid that I didn’t see. But, oh, I wish I had listened to him.”

  “Enid?” Cal asked.

  “Yes, Enid Prescott. That is my husband’s name. He comes from a fine old Virginia family, and I have no idea how he turned out the way he did. He wasn’t like this when he was a cadet, but then of course, I was only able to see him at very formal events.