“You wouldn’t be giving it to me, you would be selling it to me for fifteen hundred dollars. And I will even let you keep the ninety-one dollars that was your share from the sale of the cattle.”
“No, I can’t do that.”
“I’m afraid, Mr. Peters, that you have no choice,” Gilmore said.
“What about the others?”
“Baker and Gillespie? Unfortunately, they found themselves in the same boat as you,” Gilmore said. “They have already sold their interest back to Mr. Quentin. I suggest you do the same.”
“This isn’t right,” Peters said.
“It’s business, Mr. Peters. Business is a risk. Sign here.”
Peters stared at the piece of paper Gilmore pushed in front of him, then, after a long moment, affixed his signature.
“I will get your ninety-one dollars,” Gilmore said.
“No,” Quentin said, holding up his hand. “Mr. Peters has been a good neighbor. I hate it that this has happened to him. Give him one hundred dollars.”
“That’s a very generous offer, Mr. Quentin,” Gilmore said.
“I just wish it could be more,” Quentin replied.
Peters took the one hundred dollars, then left the house without saying another word.
Quentin stepped out onto the front porch to see Peters off. When he went back inside, Gilmore was putting all his papers away. “How do you think it went?” Quentin asked.
“That was the last of them. All the land they pledged to the corporation has now accrued to you, and that means that you own everything but Colby’s land. And, with the redirection of the water that has left him only one small creek, Colby won’t be able to hang on to that much longer.”
Quentin laughed. “I have to hand it to you, Gilmore. Only a lawyer could make stealin’ legal.”
“Oh, but it isn’t stealing, Mr. Quentin,” Gilmore replied. “It is all quite legal. That’s how I earn my fifteen percent.”
Quentin stood at the front window and watched as Gilmore drove away in his surrey. Turning away from the window, Quentin walked back over to the table where Gilmore had left the papers that turned all the other ranches in the valley over to the Tumbling Q Ranch and Cattle Company.
Gilmore had made a point to tell him that it wasn’t stealing. Quentin chuckled at the lawyer’s insistence upon legality. Quentin didn’t mind stealing if that was the only way he could get something. That’s how he got enough money to buy this ranch in the first place.
Ten years earlier, down in Texas, Pogue Quentin and three other men, Emil, Jason, and Stu Sinclair, had robbed a train. They waited alongside a water tower until the train stopped, then got the drop on the engineer and fireman. After that, they decoupled the express car from the passenger cars, and forced the engineer to take the express car a mile up the track before they let him stop. When the express agent tried to resist them, Pogue shot and killed him.
Killing the express agent wasn’t that hard to do. Pogue had ridden with Doc Jennison and the Kansas Jayhawkers during the Civil War. There were some who said that Jennison made Quantrill and his Bushwhackers look like Sunday school teachers. When the war ended, Quentin continued his raids, only now they were for personal gain. The train robbery in Texas was an example.
The train robbery netted five hundred dollars in cash. But because Quentin had set up the plan, he kept two hundred for himself, and gave one hundred to each of the other three.
The other three understood that the money would be divided that way and made no protest over the allocation of the proceeds. What they did not know, however, was the real reason Quentin had held up this particular train. Quentin knew that this train was carrying a bank draft worth fifteen thousand dollars, and that the draft could be negotiated by the bearer.
The Sinclair brothers also did not know Quentin’s name, since he identified himself only as “Joe.”
When Quentin went to Colorado, he cashed the draft, bought a ranch, then sent back to Wichita for his wife and eleven-year-old son. His wife died in the first year, leaving him with the responsibility of raising his son. It was not a responsibility he handled well. Billy Ray Quentin grew up almost like one of the feral cats on the ranch. Without the ameliorating influence of a mother or the concerned discipline of a father, Billy Ray was, as Quentin’s ranch foreman, Cole Mathers, once said, “as wild as an unbroken colt.”
Chapter Four
Emil got ten dollars for the saddle and thirty-five dollars for the horse. Both were worth more, but he had no proof that he was the actual owner, and he wasn’t in any position to answer questions. Besides, forty-five dollars in his pocket was better than no money at all. And if he had kept the horse, it would just be an extra horse to keep up with.
He waited until nightfall before he returned to Big Rock; then he didn’t go into town. Instead, he stopped at a little copse of trees on a small hill about a quarter of a mile from the western edge of town. Dismounting, he pulled a stem of grass from the ground, then stuck the root in his mouth and sucked on it as he stood there. From there, he could see the entire town, from the railroad depot on the east side of town to the white church with the high steeple on the west, and from the blacksmith shop at the north end of town, to the cluster of private houses at the south end. He decided to wait outside the town and not go back in until all the nighttime activity had grown quiet.
Although Emil had no watch, he knew that it had to be somewhere around ten o’clock, because by now, except for one of the saloons, there were no public buildings open at all. In addition, only a few lights showed in the residential district.
