Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen (29 page)

They stepped out, down the steps, and Henry saw a cluster of men surrounding his two deputies, Ned Ray and Buck Stinson. Ned's face was red and his eyes were glassy, as if he'd been crying, and Buck's jaw was set tight in defiance. Plummer knew the look. Their eyes met, then Plummer looked away. Buck Stinson shook his head.

The group walked down the snowy street through town. The closer they drew, the more people were gathered on the boardwalks and standing beside the lane. Most were talking among themselves, staring at them and shaking their heads in disbelief. As they drew closer to the lot at the end of the street, full understanding hit Plummer like a fist, and he stiffened and stopped walking.

“Now wait a minute! This thing you think you're going to do—it isn't right. I tell you this isn't right! I'm your sheriff. I was chosen by the people to uphold the law here, and what you're doing is against the law—”

Shouts of “Liar!” “Murderer!” and “Thieves!” rose all about them and they were urged forward. Plummer spun and tried to bolt, but there were too many men around him. He stiffened once more and shouted, “No, no no—this isn't right. I beg mercy of you! I am an innocent man! Innocent, I tell you! I've not done what you say!”

The men shoved him forward and Buck Stinson said, “That's enough, Henry! Die like a man, dammit.”

The sheriff continued sobbing but let himself be pushed along, the stark new lumber of the gallows looming taller with each step. The gallows he had ordered to be built just days before.

Dutch John Wagner swallowed and straightened his bent back—long, hard days stooped over, chipping at rock, had made him feel twice his age in a matter of months. But that was the price you paid for the chance to strike it rich. Only it hadn't happened that way. He'd been at it for nearly six months and all he had to show for it was a sore back and worn-out tools and boots. And then Plummer and his gang had come calling.

Dutch John hadn't wanted to get involved with what he'd heard was going on, but then Greaser Joe Pizanthia, another rock hound on a nearby claim, had visited him late one night and told him that if he joined Plummer's gang—they called themselves the Innocents—he'd be set for life. Sure they'd be road agents, said Greaser Joe, but wouldn't he rather be a well-off road agent than a poor and crippled gold digger? Besides, Joe had said, as sheriff, Plummer was all but untouchable. It was a foolproof scheme.

It so happened that was either the best or the worst day Greaser Joe could have asked him to join the outlaw faction, as Dutch John had just that day nearly been killed by a cave-in on his claim. He hadn't had a proper meal in a week. The clincher, he knew, was exactly what Joe had said: Henry Plummer was also the recently elected sheriff of Bannack, and nearby Virginia City as well. His reach was long and his word was law.

But on that cold morning, in the small hours of January 11, 1864, Dutch John found himself outside the shack of his friend, Greaser Joe Pizanthia. He knocked lightly on the wood door and heard the throaty clicks of Joe's shotgun. “Joe, it's me, Dutch John!” he hissed. “Don't shoot me, for God's sake, Joe!”

The door opened a crack and Dutch John felt the cabin's heat waft over him.

“Get in here, then.” Greaser Joe ushered his friend into his one-room shack and peered into the snow-bright night. He shut the door and turned on his friend. “What are you doing here? You'll draw attention to us and we don't need that right now.”

“It's too late,” said Dutch John.

“What do you mean?”

“You ain't heard then. . . .”

“Heard what?”

“They got Ned Ray and Buck Stinson. And Plummer.”

That got Greaser's attention. He spun on Dutch John. “It ain't so! Not Plummer! And Ned and Buck too?”

Dutch John nodded but said nothing. They were quiet a few moments, then Greaser Joe said, “I ain't goin', I tell ya. I own these diggings and I ain't goin'. ” Greaser Joe folded his arms.

Dutch John Wagner recognized the action as Greaser's final say on the matter. But he had to keep trying to convince his friend anyway. “But they know what we done!”

Greaser Joe turned away from him, just like a kid, to face the cabin's little woodstove.

Dutch John sighed and clunked to the door. He turned in the doorway. “They wrote their warning on your cabin wall too, Joe. They'll kill you.”

Instead of Joe continuing to ignore him, Dutch John was surprised to see

Joe turn to him. “I saw it earlier. Just what does that mean, anyway? ‘3-7-77'?”

The two men went outside and regarded the large, scrawled numbers on the cabin's siding.

“I heard it's the dimensions of a grave. You know, three feet wide, seven feet long, and seventy-seven inches deep. But all it really means is ‘Get gone or get hung.'”

Greaser Joe folded his arms again. “Let them come, then. I got nothing to hide.”

Dutch John snorted. “Is everyone in your family as crazy as you? 'Cause you're as guilty as Plummer and Ned Ray and Buck Stinson, and they're deader'n hell right now.”

The next morning, before he had time to finish packing his one satchel, Dutch John heard boots crunching the snow outside, then a hard rapping on the door. Greaser Joe, he thought. Has to be. He's seen reason and he wants to travel together away from this forsaken place. He opened the door wide and there stood a man he recognized, though the name was not coming to him.

The man held a cocked rifle and sported a pistol in a holster on his waist. Someone from town? A saloon, maybe? In the early light, over the man's shoulder, he saw a dozen more lined up at the edge of his trail, their breath pluming into the lightening sky. Far behind them were more men, most on horseback, some leading the other men's horses.

He backed up to the far wall of the cabin and said, “But the warning. I'm heading out. I'll leave right now. I swear it. Let me go, just let me go.”

“You had your chance, John Wagner. Now it's up to the Vigilance Committee.”

“No, no! I don't want to die. I killed nobody. . . .”

Three more men pushed by the first toting the rifle. They burst into the little cabin, its door slamming inward and spasming against the wall. All four men muckled onto Dutch John, dragged him down the path to the pole barn. He fought them, bucking and growling, thrashing in desperation. Dutch John saw the rope with the loop waiting for him and he knew then that he should have left in the night instead of trying to warn Greaser Joe. That man was no friend, it turned out. And now all was lost. Dutch John Wagner's last thought was of the pretty woman in the picture in the satchel he'd left on his bunk. The pretty young thing back East.

She would never know, never know. . . .

A group of Vigilantes two dozen strong marched across the rough, rutted ground, muddied and caked with brown snow, toward Greaser Joe Pizanthia's cabin. When they were within twenty yards, one of them shouted, “Greaser Joe? Greaser Joe Pizanthia . . . come out empty handed and you'll get a trial.”

“Like hell I will!”

Shotgun blasts boomed and chased the cornered miner's words straight at the mass of men. One pitched over and lay still, another dropped to his knees, moaning. The mass of men erupted in noise, volleying vile threats at the cabin.

Through the gap where the leather strap hinges had sagged against the doorframe, Pizanthia saw the group of men part, and between this group and the cluster of horses and riders far behind sat a Howitzer cannon, its mud-caked wheels pivoting as it was spun around to face the cabin. He gritted his teeth and ran to the side wall. Through a crack he saw more men, and the same through the other wall. The cabin was built into the hill—there was no escape. He raised his shotgun and cocked both barrels, but before he could pull the triggers he heard a whooshing sound and the cabin shook as if it was blasted with nitro.

Pizanthia came around as four of the Vigilantes dragged him down the muddy path toward the rank old tree that had been in his way since he started digging a year before. He knew he should have cut it down for firewood. He also knew what they were going to do with him. Dutch John had been right.

Joe lashed out with a leg, caught one man on the side of the head and at the same time turned to bite the arm closest to his face. He'd just sunk in his teeth when a fist slammed his face. He stayed conscious but stunned, just aware enough to notice the ragged, frayed hempen rope the Vigilantes had slung up and over the tangle of branches barely eight feet off the ground.

Upward of a dozen men clamped his flailing arms and legs to his side and as he shouted, another hand clamped over his mouth. They slipped the noose, a flimsy, poorly knotted affair, over his head and snugged it tight just under his right ear. He gritted his teeth as they all backed away and, without hesitation, let him drop. Flashes of heat ran up the back of his head and the thin rope felt like forge-fired wire. He gasped, hot breath gushing from his mouth. He bit at the air, popping his teeth like a riled bear, but no sounds passed his trembling lips.

Joe smelled sweat and bitter copper in his nose.

As his vision blurred he heard cracking and snapping sounds and could just see the two dozen men standing all around him, unloading their guns into him. He felt the bullets like stings. At first they blazed and bloomed deep inside him, sudden agonizing fists. Soon, though, he felt them less and less. And then they didn't hurt at all. Nothing could hurt him now.

After the Vigilance Committee hanged Greaser Joe Pizanthia, they pumped more than one hundred rounds into him while he kicked and struggled, then they set his shack alight. He had, after all, shot at them and killed one of them when they arrived. As a parting gesture the Vigilance Committee cut him down and tossed his body on the fire.

The Vigilantes were brooking no excuses and taking no prisoners, at least not for long. Three days after they hanged Dutch John and Greaser Joe, the breaking dawn found them already en route to Virginia City, their forces bolstered by dozens of armed miners who were tired of living in fear of the road agents. They arrested six men, among them Frank Parish, George Lane, Jack Gallagher, Haze Lyons, and Boone Helm. The sixth was let go due to lack of evidence.

After the Vigilantes' customary hasty trial, the remaining five were marched, hands tied behind their backs, up the street, where they were prodded along, then herded into a half-built structure. Inside, they were strung up and a small crowd watched their legs kick, spasm, and tremble. Long minutes passed before the bodies of the five men hung unmoving, slowly spinning on their ropes.

On the same day, another faction of the Vigilantes headed to Hellgate. There they hanged eight men, among them Cy Skinner. And a few days later a suspected road agent, Bill Hunter, had his neck stretched somewhere along the Gallatin River. His death brought the total of known Vigilante victims to twenty-two.

Filled to the brim with months of blatant thievery caused by rampant road agents pillaging gold from freight wagons and stage coaches, the citizens of Virginia City, Montana, did the only thing they felt they could do—they took the law into their own hands by forming the Committee of Vigilance. And in less than three months, from December 21, 1863, through February 4, 1864, they hanged no fewer than twenty-two men. These men were suspected (that's the key word here) of being the road agents causing their towns' woes. For good measure, some were shot before they were hanged.