“You are the biggest disappointment of all, Morrison,” Matt said. “Frewen trusted you completely. The boy looked up to you. All of your men respected you. Benedict Arnold has nothing on you.”
Morrison looked down in shame.
“Don’t ever show your face at the ranch again. Leave, now.”
“I’ve got some things back at the ranch, I’ll have to go back ...”
“No. No going back. Leave now.”
“Come, Teasdale,” Matt said, motioning toward the front door with his pistol. When they stepped out onto the porch, Reed and the eight remaining men had gathered out front. Reed saw Morrison mounting his horse.
“Hey, Morrison, where are you going?” Reed called.
Morrison didn’t reply. Instead, he urged his horse into a rapid trot through the gate and up the road, riding quickly away from Thistledown.
“Men,” Matt said. “There is no job for you here. There is no money for you here. My advice to you is to leave.”
“Where are we supposed to go?” one of the men asked.
“I don’t care where you go,” Matt said. “But I’ll tell you this. If I ever see any of you again, I’ll shoot you on sight.”
The eight men looked at each for a moment, then they broke into a run toward the stable. Less than three minutes later, all of them were mounted, and leaving at a gallop.
“Those men are riding my horses,” Teasdale said.
“You don’t have any horses,” Matt said. “Reed, get the dead and the wounded onto a wagon and get them in town. What I told the men goes for you as well. I don’t ever want to see you around here again.”
With the business taken care of, Matt motioned for Teasdale to go back inside. Margaret was sitting on a chair in the corner of the room, weeping silently. Teasdale started toward her, but she turned away from him.
“No!” she said. “Stay away from me! You disgust me!”
Matt picked up the phone and called Marshal Drew.
“Marshal? Matt Jensen. Come out to Thistledown, I’ve got a prisoner for you. That’s right, Thistledown. Your prisoner is William Teasdale.”
Epilogue
“Mr. Prime Minister?” An RAF colonel said, sticking his head into the cabinet room where Winston Churchill and General Eisenhower were still in conversation. “We have the strike report on the American attack at Peenemunde.”
“Yes, yes, let us hear it,” Churchill said. “This is where the Boche are launching their bloody buzz-bombs,” he said to Eisenhower, even though Eisenhower had already been thoroughly briefed.
“Three hundred seventy-seven B-17s bombed the launch site at Peenemunde, the experimental headquarters at Zinnowitz, and the marshalling yards at Straslund. Three B-17s were lost and sixty-four badly damaged. There were two hundred ninety-seven escort fighters, consisting of P-38 Lightnings and p-51 Mustangs. Three of the Mustangs were shot down. The launch pad near
“Thank you, General,” Churchill said. “And my prayer for the American boys who carried out the raid,” he added to Eisenhower after the RAF colonel left.
Churchill refreshed his drink, then he held up the bottle of Tennessee mash for Eisenhower.
“Recharge your glass, General?”
“No, I’m fine, thank you,” Eisenhower said. “I would like to hear the rest of your story, though. What happened to Teasdale and Frewen?”
“Teasdale was tried and found guilty of receiving stolen property. He should have been tried for murder, but they didn’t think they could make the case. He didn’t serve one day in prison; instead he was deported back to England where he was disgraced and ostracized by his peers. Three years after he returned, his wife found him one morning, slumped over his desk with a bullet in his brain. He committed suicide. Margaret, I am glad to say, remarried, and lived comfortably until she died, about six years ago.
“Frewen drove all his cattle a thousand miles north to Alberta where he sold out. Then, for the next thirty years, he traveled the world, investing in inventions, disinfectants, forests, poets, artists, and gold, silver, and coal mines. He never succeeded at any venture he tried, though he never quite went bankrupt. Late in life, he actually became a member of Parliament, and I am happy to say that I was the first one to welcome him. I loved that old man, despite his faults and foibles.”
“And Morrison?”
“Believe it or not, Morrison and I corresponded for a while. And he and Uncle Moreton even reconciled. He was a sheriff’s deputy down in Texas the last time I heard from him.”
“Reed?”
“Less than six months later, Reed was killed in an aborted bank robbery.”
“You don’t have to tell me what happened to the boy,” Eisenhower said. “I know where he wound up.”
Churchill chuckled. “I never heard again from some of the cowboys I met—Jeff Singleton, for example, or Tibby Ware, or any of the others. I’m sure they never thought I would amount to anything—and indeed, whether I have or have not will be for history to decide. But I do wonder, sometimes, if they have ever made the connection between the Prime Minister of Great Britain and the boy who used to eat ‘grub’ with them.”
