Among them was Bill Tilghman. Like thousands of others, he had come seeking opportunity, and in no small sense, a place to start over. The old life was gone, withered to nothing, and his gaze had turned toward the last frontier. A land where men of purpose might scatter the ashes of the past and look instead to the future.
A westering man, Tilghman had moved with his family in 1856 to a farm near Atchison, Kansas. At sixteen, he became a buffalo hunter, and later, operating out of Fort Dodge, he’d scouted for the army. In 1877, serving under Bat Masterson, he had been appointed a deputy sheriff of Ford County. Over the next several years he had worked closely with fellow peace officers such as Jim and Ed Masterson, brothers of Bat Masterson. During the same period, he’d developed a friendship with Wyatt Earp, assistant town marshal of Dodge City.
In 1884, Tilghman himself had been appointed town marshal, where he served for four years. Though Wyatt Earp later captured national headlines after the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Tilghman’s fame was far greater among outlaws and in western boomtowns. He was considered the deadliest lawman of all the frontier marshals, having killed four men in gunfights. Earp and Masterson and Wild Bill Hickok got the headlines. Tilghman got the reputation as a man to avoid at all costs.
Yet, unlike many peace officers, he was a family man. He’d married a Kansas girl, and together with another old friend, Neal Brown, they had built a ranch outside Dodge City. Their principal business was raising horses, providing saddlestock for the Army as well as other ranches. Then, not quite six months past, Tilghman’s wife had suddenly taken ill with influenza and died.
To Tilghman, her death somehow represented an end to that part of his life. Shortly afterward he’d sold the ranch except for the finest breeding stock, and resigned as marshal of Dodge City. The Oklahoma Land Rush was forthcoming, and he had seen that as a new beginning, a place without raw memories. Once he was settled, he planned to send for Neal Brown and the horses. His attention was now fixed on Oklahoma Territory. A new life.
Tilghman and Sutton had arrived early that afternoon aboard the lead train in a caravan of eleven trains organized by the Santa Fe. Their immediate goal was the townsite of Guthrie, some twenty miles south, situated along the railroad tracks just below the Cimarron River. Tilghman had chosen Guthrie over the other major townsite, Oklahoma City, based on his assessment of the economic future of the territory. Before nightfall tomorrow he meant to have a sizable stake in that future.
Behind him in Kansas, Tilghman had left fame. Somehow, once he’d buried his wife, his reputation as a lawman had ceased to matter. The new life he envisioned was that of a businessman, a man of property and substance. Others would come along to take up the badge, enforce the law, and put the lawless behind bars. He was content to leave the past in the past.
Fred Sutton moved to stand beside him. For a moment, they stared out over the campfires, into the darkness beyond. Then, with a bemused smile, Sutton motioned southward.
“What do you see out there, Bill?”
“Nothing,” Tilghman said slowly. “And everything.”
What he saw was a land where a man of thirty-five could start fresh. A world newborn.
CHAPTER 2
The noonday sun was almost directly overhead. A cavalry officer, followed by a trooper with a bugle, rode slowly to a high point of ground. Below, a thin line of mounted troopers, extending east and west out of sight, held their carbines pointed skyward.
Silence enveloped the land. The quiet was eerie, an unnatural stillness, broken only by the stamping hooves of horses and the chuffing hiss of locomotives. On the small knoll the army officer stared at his pocket watch, and in the distance, hushed and waiting, over fifty thousand homesteaders stared at the knoll. The Oklahoma Land Rush was about to begin.
Tilghman and Sutton were seated in the first passenger coach on the lead train. They watched through the windows as men on swift ponies and those aboard wagons struggled to hold their horses in check. Tilghman knew that the horseback riders, at the beginning of the race, would outdistance the train. But the Guthrie townsite was twenty miles south, and no horse could outrun a train over that distance. He was confident of winning the race.
Overnight the news circulated that added trains had been laid on at the southern boundary of the Unassigned Lands. Yet Tilghman was unconcerned, for the jump-off point was the South Canadian River, closer to the Oklahoma City townsite than to Guthrie. That news, along with thousands more arriving at the northern boundary during the night, widely increased the air of tension and excitement. There were now over one hundred thousand poised for the land rush.
The troublesome thing to Tilghman was not the number of people. Instead, he was bothered by those who refused to play by the rules. These men were being called Sooners, since they crossed the line too soon. Despite the soldiers’ vigilance, they had sneaked over the border under cover of darkness, planning to hide until the run started and then lay claim to the choice lands. Cavalry patrols had flushed hundreds of them out of hiding, but word spread that there were several times that number who had escaped detection. This left the law-abiding homesteaders in an ugly mood.
All along the line people were gripped by the fear that there wouldn’t be enough good land to go around. As noon approached, and the tension became pervasive, their mood turned to one of near hysteria. Since early morning the Santa Fe had moved
