“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.”
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.
