“It’ll have to do.”
“Son of a bitch! Here they come!”
The countryside exploded with the sound of gunfire when the Yellow Kerchief riders opened up on the two Frewen cowboys. The first several bullets whizzed harmlessly over their heads or raised sparks as they hit the rocky ground, then careened off into empty space, echoing and reechoing in a cacophony of whines and shrieks.
At first, Coleman and Snead entertained a hope that the rustlers, who had missed so far, would become frustrated and ride away, leaving them unharmed. Then, three more men wearing yellow scarves rode up to join the other seven. A furious gunfight broke out between the rustlers and the cowboys, but the rustlers were expending bullets at a ratio of twenty to one over the two cowboys. The odds, not only in terms of men, but of available bullets were just too great. Within a matter of minutes, the two cowboys had been killed and the rustlers returned to their task of stealing cattle.
Frewen had two dozen cowboys working for him, living in two bunkhouses behind the big house. Called Frewen Castle, it was a huge, two-story edifice constructed of logs. The cowboys ate in the cookhouse and when everyone gathered for the supper meal that evening, they noticed Coleman and Snead had not returned.
“They weren’t plannin’ on stayin’ out there all night, were they?” Jeff Singleton asked.
“No, they were comin’ back,” Burt Rawlings said. “Me ’n’ Snead was goin’ to ride into town tonight after supper.”
“Well, where are they?”
“I think something must have happened to ’em,” Burt said.
Burt and Jeff went to see Myron Morrison to tell him of their concern. The foreman agreed to send several cowboys out to look for Coleman and Snead.
When the cowboys reached the range the first thing they noticed was that there were no cattle.
“Whoa, this ain’t right,” Burt said. “There’s supposed to cattle here. I know, ’cause we moved at least fifteen hundred head up here last week. Where are they?”
“You don’t think—” One of the other cowboys paused in midsentence.
“Don’t think what?” Burt asked.
“You don’t think Coleman and Snead run off with the cows, do you?”
“Maybe you could tell me just where in the hell they would go with them?”
“To Logan and the Yellow Kerchief Gang, maybe?”
“No,” Burt insisted. “They wouldn’t do that.”
“Well somethin’ has happened to the cattle.”
“Right now I’m more concerned about what happened to Coleman and Snead than I am about what happened to the cows. I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
“Look! Ain’t that Snead’s horse?”
The four cowboys hurried over to the horse, which made no attempt to run from them. When they got closer they saw that the horse had been shot.
“Damn! Look at this,” Jeff said.
“Looks like he come from that way, from the crick.” Burt pointed toward the creek.
Jeff took the wounded horse’s reins and led it as they rode toward Williams Creek. They saw Coleman’s horse standing on the island in the middle of the creek. Hurrying to it, they saw what all were beginning to suspect, but no one wanted to see.
Coleman and Snead were lying dead on the island. Both men were holding pistols. Burt picked up Snead’s weapon and checked it, announcing what he found. “Empty.”
One of the other cowboys picked up Coleman’s gun. “This one is empty, too.”
“Looks like they were in one hell of a gun battle,” Burt said.
“Injuns? They ain’t come this far north, have they?” Jeff asked.
“It wasn’t Injuns, ” one of the other cowboys said.
“How do you know?”
“Look over there.” The cowboy called attention to a stake in the ground, to which was tied a yellow scarf.
“Son of a bitch, the bastards is braggin’ about it,” Burt said. “They left us a sign just so’s we’d know who done it.”
“Wasn’t no doubt about who done it, was there?” another asked. “Who the hell else could it be, if it wasn’t the Yellow Kerchief Gang?”
At a small cabin located at the head of a long, deep ravine carved into a butte at the end of Nine Mile Creek, the ten men who had killed Coleman and Snead and stolen the cattle were celebrating their success. The men ranged in age from twenty-one to forty-five years old. Every one of them had a record from burglary to murder. They had been operating in Larimer County for the last six months, and had been quite successful in rustling cattle, but it was, by far, the biggest job they had ever done.
“I make it at least a thousand head, maybe more,” a man named Poindexter said.
“Hey, think maybe we could butcher one, have us some fresh beef?” Clayton had not been on the raid with the others. He was a good enough cook the rest of the men didn’t mind that he never joined them on any raids.
“What about it, Logan?” Greer asked. “Some fresh beef would be pretty good.”
“All right,” Logan agreed. “I guess we got enough this time that we ain’t goin’ to miss one cow.”
The Yellow Kerchief Gang was led by Sam Logan. He had started his outlaw career in New Mexico, riding with two desperadoes, Kid Barton and Coal Oil Johnny. Johnny may have had a last name, but if so, nobody ever learned what it was. The three men terrorized anyone who happened to be on the Santa Fe Trail, whether it be stagecoach, freight wagon, or a single rider on horseback. If they were attacking a stagecoach or freight wagon, all three of them would participate. If it was a single horseman, then only one would approach, slowly, quietly, and without giving any hint of danger. He would ride alongside their mark for a few minutes, carrying on a friendly conversation, then turn to him and suddenly shoot him dead.
Kid Barton and Coal Oil Johnny were the most notorious of the group. They tended to revel in their notoriety, whereas Sam Logan purposely kept a low profile. As rewards were posted, the offers for Kid Barton and Coal Oil Johnny grew, while no reward at all was offered for Sam Logan. Kid Barton and Coal Oil Johnny sometimes took great delight in teasing him for not being worth anything, while the reward on each of them reached one thousand dollars.
Logan, who had not established a name, killed them both as they were waiting beside the road to hold up a stagecoach. When the coach arrived, Logan waved it down, and pointed to the two men, claiming he had overheard them plotting to rob the coach. He not only got the bounty money, a total of two thousand dollars, he also became a hero for stopping a robbery. He used that publicity to get himself hired as city marshal for the town of Salcedo.
Logan’s stint as a lawman didn’t work out very well for him. When he killed a personal envoy from Governor Lew Wallace, he wound up in his own jail. Tried and convicted for murder, Logan was sentenced to hang. But on the night before the execution was to take place, Logan killed the deputy who was the acting city marshal, a deputy he had personally hired and befriended, and broke jail.
He left New Mexico and went north, all the way to Wyoming where he organized a group of cutthroats and thieves into the Yellow Kerchief Gang. He resumed his earlier career of robbery, entering a new phase when he started rustling cattle.
Copyright © 2012 J. A. Johnstone
