Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen (32 page)

Several times he had squeezed careful shots, gauging distance or just plain taking advantage of a too-good-to-miss shot, and had scored hard return fire, evidenced by the shrieks of the men who'd felt his rifle's sting. He'd fired nearly two dozen times and felt sure he'd hit a half-dozen men. Whether any died, he had little way of knowing. Nor did he care. A wounded man was less likely to charge the cabin.

As the morning aged, Champion also did his best to tend to Nick. It had been obvious from the first that the man would likely die of his wounds. It seemed that the man no longer heard him, but Nate kept up his low patter, mostly for himself, to somehow reassure himself all would end better than he suspected. It was a fruitless course of thinking, and he was not a man prone to flights of fancy, but it helped pass the time and keep him from dwelling on the inevitable.

He also recalled the notebook and pencil in his pocket and commenced to detail the events of the day in hopes his notes would help defeat the besieging bastards, the WSGA, should he not survive. He wrote down the names of the men he was certain he'd recognized in fleeting glimpses when he spied them through cracks and bullet holes in the walls.

Without warning a new round of shots volleyed at the cabin. At him, the only occupant left alive. As he low-walked past, he stole a quick glance at Nick Ray. The man's glassed eyes and slack mouth told Nate his friend was dead.

Random shots stippled the day's near-silence. Save for the soughing wind and the stomping of hurried boots across gravel—always it seemed, coming to him from beyond the wall he was not peeking through—there was precious little other sound. And with full darkness would come his only chance at escape—the cover of dark or not at all. It was going to be risky, but no less risky than sitting still in this little shack while they jammed it full of lead pills and then set it alight.

Nate scooched lower and dragged himself backward along the floor. Wouldn't be long now, he thought as he squinted to see through a sliver of late-day light needling between rough wallboards. There were two of the rascals—looked like Mike Shonsey and another man. Nate gritted his teeth, rose up fast on his right knee, and stuffed the rifle snout through the low right corner of the long-since shot-out window.

He knew there was precious little time to sight, but he made himself take the time. He would have a couple of seconds at best before they saw him in the window. He sighted, squeezed, and in the span of time it takes to snap a finger—between squeezed trigger and stifled shriek—Nate watched one man convulse, fling his arms upward, and whip backward, his long gun clattering off a rock.

Shouts and a volley of shots laced the air, pounded the poor cabin's puckered boards. Nate flattened himself to the floor as splintered wood and icicles of glass rained in. He saw a bullet plow up a furrow along the underside of the table, smelled raw smoke from gunfire, and shook his face quickly to dispel the muddiness of his hearing from the latest fusillade. He heard shouting, angry barks of men. A grim smile pulled his mouth tight. They were angry with him—all because he called them on their thieving, killing ways. Now that was truly something.

He retreated to the one corner he knew might provide a few more minutes of safety, such as it was, and thumbed in his last four shells. Then he pulled out his journal. He licked the nub of pencil and set down the rest of the names of the men he believed he'd seen stalking the perimeter of the yard around the cabin. Out of habit he glanced to each side, moving his head back and forth, one eye squinted, trying to see what he might through the gaps in the boards. He turned his attention back to the journal and wrote hurriedly:

Well, they have just got through shelling the house like hail. I heard them splitting wood. I guess they are going to fire the house tonight. I think I will make a break when night comes, if alive. Shooting again. I think they will fire the house this time. It's not night yet. The house is all fire. Goodbye, boys, if I never see you again.

—Nathan D. Champion

He looked through the gap again, and that's when he saw it—the unmistakable wavering raw light of living torches. His eyes widened. They were pushing a burning wagon toward the cabin, damn them!

It shouldn't shock him—he'd known all along this was his likely end. And they were going to do it before full dark too. Smart of them—it's what he would do were he them.
But then again, Nate
, he told himself.
You could never be like them
.

He stuffed the journal back into his coat pocket and looked about the room. There was nothing else here he'd need. Where I'm going there's no need for much of anything, he thought. And even less need for such thinking, he told himself as he pulled in a deep draught of air. It was bitter and warm and not likely to get much better any time soon.

“Oh,” said Nate Champion as he retreated back to the corner and got up on one knee. He levered in a shell, patted his pocket where the journal resided, and said, “Oh, God, please be with me.” And then he low-walked across the room to the door. Outside it was near dark, good as it was going to get.

Smoke crept in through the gappy, shot-to-pieces little cabin, and the pungent sting of burning wood began its slow, winning war with the dry old shack.

A single torch whipped at the window, hit the frame, and still managed to flop inside, rattling against the upended table and landing, flaming bright, despite its quick journey, on the floor close to Nick Ray's lifeless form.

“Sorry, old friend,” said Nate and reached for the door handle, while shoving away the crates and firewood he'd jammed against it earlier. They'd know he might leave through the door. Heck, they'd be watching all the windows too. Was there no other way to get out? No. The door it would be, then.

With a grunt and a muttered oath for his life, Nate Champion edged the door open just enough to snake through. He peered out. No one in sight, not that he could see far in the smoky gloom.

Emboldened, he made for it, not daring to waste what little time this play might have brought him. He ran as fast as he could, keeping low and not daring to look too far left or right.

He made it ten, twelve feet from the door when the first gunshot caught him in the backside, then another in his left leg, low down. He spun, shouting, “No!” and even before he slammed to the ground, he knew he would not make it, knew they'd been lying in wait for him to do just this. But he'd had no choice.

All this he thought as he fell, spinning to the hard-packed dusty earth, rocks gouging him, bullets driving into his guts, his chest, his arms, so many, as if it would never end. As if it would never end. . . .

The killers stared down at the dead man, shoeless and shot to pieces. Sticking out of his coat pocket was a book of some sort. Canton bent, retrieved the bloodied little book, and thumbed it through.

“Kept a diary,” he said out loud. Then, as he came to his own name written among the hurried entries, he scratched it out. Amazingly, he tossed the book back onto Champion's body.

Before the killers left, they pinned a sign on Champion's shirt front that read: “Rustlers Beware.”

Hours later the Invaders, as the killing force was called, making their way north, learned that a large group of hostile citizens and lawmen had heard of the events at the KC cabin. The Invaders rode hard for the TA Ranch, where they soon found themselves pinned down by that force, made up of local law, small ranchers, and citizens from Buffalo, numbering in the hundreds.

For three days the enraged force, tipped off to the savage attack at the KC cabin by Jack Flagg and his stepson, Alonzo Taylor, rained lead on the dug-in Invaders. The killers were getting desperate, running out of ammunition, low on food, and unsure what they were going to do next. The irate citizenry were ready to fire the barn and house when once again money and power won out.

The US Cavalry from nearby Fort McKinney, on orders of Wyoming Governor Amos Barber, senators, and ultimately President Benjamin Harrison, rode in. The contingent, it seems, was dispatched just in time, taking the besieged group of hired killers, the Invaders, into custody and to jail in Cheyenne. If their attackers, the small ranchers, few honest lawmen, and citizens of Buffalo had any illusions that those captured killers would soon be brought to swift justice, they were to be disappointed.

The men were so well connected that judicial and political strings were pulled. The governor, a puppet for the WSGA ranchers, refused to allow the Invaders to be questioned by investigating officers, and did everything he could to prevent the prosecution of the hired gunmen.

With the truth obfuscated, the mess dragged on for eight months until the trial, where a suitable jury could not be seated. And so, the charges against the hired killers and the men who hired them were dropped, and they were never charged for their crimes.

They had invaded Johnson County, had caused untold levels of strife and damage, and got away with it. The bloated cattle barons continued to ply their vile trade, though they did keep a lid on their hired killings. But their shameful acts, now recalled as the Johnson County War, were anything but admirable.

Champion was slandered, misrepresented, tormented, hounded to ground, set upon by lecherous slinking dogs, and finally murdered, but history has nonetheless shown that Champion and his comrades were on the side of right while the big cattlemen were little more than that which they purported to abhor—killers and thieves.

In an interesting side note, shortly after the killings at the KC cabin, the coroner ventured out there and loaded up the bodies of Champion and Ray. He found Champion's body had twenty-eight bullet wounds. Sadly, on his way back to Buffalo, the coroner himself died—of apoplexy.

B
orn in New Hampshire on the first day of the year of 1791, Samuel Bennett was not cut out to be a lifelong New Englander. By adulthood, Bennett had tried on a number of occupations as he traveled westward, including shopkeeper, saloon owner, and fur trader. And the entire time he carried with him a simple setup of three sewing thimbles and a tiny ball of paper, basic items he had used from an early age as a source of amusement. Before long, however, his skill with them allowed him to make money—as a thimblerigger.

Unlike many other folks who played at this variation on the more common shell game (three walnut shells and a dried pea), Bennett developed such a high degree of skill, most notably in palming the ball of paper, then placing it under whichever thimble he wished, that he ensured he would never lose. And it is said that he never did.

Much of Bennett's success lay in his passive approach to the game. He would sit quietly whisking the thimbles and ball around in a crazy-eight pattern. Eventually this would attract the attention of curious passersby, and though they would ask for further demonstration of this skill, he would quietly try to abstain. Only with seeming great reluctance would he launch a demonstration.

Despite his obvious skill, and the fact that he likely cheated, people would become mesmerized by his adroitness. As if they could not help themselves, they would lay their money down and point to the thimble they felt sure hid the ball of paper. And when they invariably guessed incorrectly, the strangers would feel as if they instigated the entire affair, so they had little reason to complain when he took their money.

For years, Bennett worked his craft up and down the Mississippi River aboard riverboats—a likely place for swindlers to congregate since games of chance were what drew high-roller gamblers aboard in the first place. The wealthy would take trips onboard the huge steamers just to gamble, and they liked nothing better than to indulge in quick games of chance such as the thimbles. But when they tangled with Dr. Bennett, they lost their wad.

Until his death in Shreveport, Louisiana, on September 21, 1853, Dr. Samuel Bennett continued to ply his trade as a cunning master con man, known as “the Napoleon of the Thimble Riggers,” despite the fact that he was the reason a handful of states made thimblerigging illegal by the early 1840s.