CHAPTER ELEVEN
Bismarck
As Ebersole had suspected, Billy Taylor
had overheard the conversation that told him that Falcon
MacCallister and Buffalo Bill were going to the Standing Rock
Agency to talk to Sitting Bull.
“Talk to Sitting Bull? What the hell do
they want to talk to that Redskin for?” Ebersole
asked.
“I don’t know,” Taylor replied. “I
never heard the why of it, just the doin’ of it.”
“Then we need to get there,” Ebersole
said.
“How we goin’ to do that?” Dewey asked.
“We didn’t get no money at all from the train holdup.”
“We was holdin’ up the wrong thing,”
Ebersole said. “What we need to do is hold us up a
bank.”
“A bank? Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I’m serious,” Ebersole said.
“Banks have more money, and they don’t move.”
“Have you took a good look at the bank
here?” Hawkins asked. “It’s damn near like a fort.”
“We ain’t goin’ to hold up the bank
here,” Ebersole said. “We’re goin’ to hold up the bank in
Tyson.”
“Tyson? Where the hell is that? I ain’t
never even heard of it.”
“It’s a little town ’bout thirty miles
south of the railroad track.”
Ebersole and the others rode into Tyson
just after dark. The town consisted of a single street lined on
both sides by squat, unpainted small houses. High above the little
town stars winked brightly, while over a distant mesa the waxing
moon hung like a large, silver wheel.
“What do you say we get a drink?”
Ebersole suggested.
Tying off their horses, the five men
went into the only building in town that was showing any light.
There were two small windows and a door that was open onto the
night. There was no sign suggesting that it was a saloon, but
because of the light and the sound and the smell of whiskey and
beer, they knew what it was.
There were only two tables in the
saloon, and the bar. Four men were sitting at one of the tables,
playing a game of cards. Nobody was at the other table, nor was
anyone at the bar except for the bartender. Everyone looked up as
the five men came in, because they more than doubled the number of
customers in the place.
The barkeep slid down the bar toward
them.
“What can I get you
gents?”
“Whiskey,” Ebersole said. “Leave the
bottle.”
“What kind?”
“The cheapest. We want to get drunk,
not give a party.”
The bartender took a bottle from
beneath the counter. There was no label on the bottle and the color
was dingy and cloudy. He put five glasses alongside the bottle,
then pulled the cork for them.
“There it is,” he said.
Ebersole poured himself a glass, then
took a swallow. He immediately had a coughing fit, and almost
gagged. He spit it out and frowned at his glass.
“Damn!” he said. “This tastes like
horse piss.”
“We just put in a little for flavor,”
the bartender said with a smile.
“What?” Ebersole shouted
angrily.
“Take it easy, friend, I was just
foolin’ with you. You said you wanted the cheapest whiskey, and
that’s what you got. There ain’t no horse piss in it. That’s pure
stuff. I don’t even use a rusty nail for color and
flavor.”
Taylor took a smaller swallow. He
grimaced, but he got it down. Dewey had no problem with it at
all.
“How the hell can you drink that?”
Ebersole asked.
“It’s all in the way you drink it,”
Dewey explained. “This here whiskey can’t be drunk down real fast.
You got to sort of sip it.”
Ebersole tried again, and this time he,
too, managed to keep it down.
“You boys just passin’ through?” the
bartender asked.
“Ain’t none of your business what we’re
doin’,” Ebersole said. “Only thing you got to do is serve us
whiskey when we ask.”
“I was just tryin’ to be friendly,” the
bartender replied.
Ebersole took in the other four men
with him, with a gesture of his hand. “I got all the friends I
need,” he said.
“I see that you do,” the bartender
said, somewhat chagrined by the surly response.
After a few more drinks—they were
limited by the amount of money they had—Ebersole and the others
left the saloon. Without being too obvious, they checked out the
bank, then rode on out of town to find a place to camp out for the
night.
It was nearly noon of the next day when
the five men rode back into town. Even though it was mid-day, the
town was quiet, and festering under the sun. A few people were
sitting or standing in the shade of the porch overhangs. A game of
checkers was being played by two old men, and half a dozen
onlookers were following the game intently. One or two looked up as
Ebersole and the others rode by, their horses’ hooves clumping
hollowly on the hard-packed earth of the street.
A shopkeeper came through the front
door of his shop and began sweeping vigorously with a straw broom.
The broom raised a lot of dust and pushed a sleeping dog off the
porch, but even before the man went back inside, the dog had
reclaimed its position in the shade, curled comfortably around
itself, and was asleep again.
Peters and Taylor stayed outside the
bank, holding the reins of the horses, as Ebersole, Hawkins, and
Dewey went inside. There were no customers in the bank; just one
teller. He looked up at them with a smile as they came in, then,
realizing that he didn’t know any of them, instinctively knew that
this wasn’t going to be good.
“You know what we are here for, don’t
you, Mister?” Ebersole asked.
The bank teller nodded.
“Let’s have all the money you’ve
got.”
“We don’t have much,” the teller said.
“This is a very small town and a very small bank.”
“How much do you have?”
“One thousand, seven hundred and
twenty-six dollars,” the teller said.
Ebersole smiled. “Well ain’t that just
fine, now, because that’s just exactly how much money we wanted,”
he said.
As the bank teller was handing the
money over to Ebersole, two men came into the bank.
“I told Joe, ‘son, you’ve just learned
a lesson. Never kick a horse apple on a hot day,’” one of them was
saying.
The other man laughed, then both of
them stopped, realizing what they had walked in on.
“What the hell is going on here?” the
first man asked.
“I believe they’re robbin’ the bank,”
the second said.
“You ain’t gettin’ my money!” the first
man said, going for his gun.
Dewey, Taylor, and Hawkins turned their
pistols on the two men and began shooting. Both of the customers
went down before they could even clear leather.
“You shot Mr. Simmons!” the bank teller
shouted.
“And we’re goin’ to shoot you if you
don’t hurry up,” Ebersole said with a growl.
With his hands shaking so that he could
barely control them, the teller dropped the rest of the money into
the sack Ebersole was holding.
“That’s it,” he said. “That’s all the
money we’ve got.”
Peters was holding the horses for them
out front when the robbers left the bank.
“What happened? What was the
shootin’?”
“Don’t worry about it, let’s just get
out of here,” Ebersole said.
As they started down the street at a
full gallop, the bank teller came out the front door.
“Bank holdup!” he shouted. He pointed
at the galloping riders. “They kilt Mr. Abbott and Mr.
Nash!”
A storekeeper ran out onto the front
porch of his store and fired a shotgun at them, but missed.
Ebersole returned fire and also missed, but his bullet crashed
through a window and killed a young girl who was inside the
store.
They made it out of town without any
further incident, and because the town was too small for a marshal,
there was no posse formed to pursue them. Also, because the town
was not serviced by telegraph wires, they knew that they would be
able to be well in the clear before any news of the robbery got
out.
At Fort Yates they learned that Falcon
MacCallister and Buffalo Bill Cody had gone on to Miles City,
Montana Territory. Now, with enough money to buy train tickets,
they put their horses on a special stock car, and went on to Miles
City.
“And who did you say you was?” the
sergeant at the gate of Fort Keogh asked when Ebersole and the four
men with him showed up.
“The name is Brown,” Ebersole lied.
“Jim Brown. And we have a message for Falcon MacCallister. It’s
real important we get it to him.”
“Mr. MacCallister and the party with
him have already left,” the gate sergeant said. “They took the
Queen of the West south on the Tongue River.
I expect they’re near ’bout to Sheridan by now.”
“Sheridan? Where is that?”
“That’s a settlement in the north part
of Wyoming. Fact is, it is damn near the only settlement in north
Wyoming.”
“How do we get there?” Ebersole
asked.
“Same way MacCallister got there, I
reckon,” the sergeant said. “You are goin’ to have to take a
boat.”
“Yes, sir, we have two boats plying the
river,” the agent at the Montana and Wyoming Steamboat Navigation
Company said. “They are fast, light-draft boats, especially built
for operating on the Tongue River.”
“You got ’ny idea when the next boat
will go?”
“We got two boats makin’ the run, takes
two weeks to make the run so they’re leavin’ about a week apart.
The Queen of the West is headin’ south now,
and I reckon tomorrow or the next day it will meet up with the
North Mist that’ll be comin’
back.”
“So when can we get on that
North Mist goin’ south?” Ebersole
asked.
“I expect it’ll be here around Monday,
so it’ll probably leave on Tuesday,” the agent said.
“What about our horses? Can it take our
horses?”
The agent shook his head. “Afraid not.
It’ll take your saddles and tack, but not the horses.”
“What good will our saddles be without
horses?” Ebersole asked.
“You can board your horses here for
twenty-five cents a day. Or, you can sell ’em to the army back at
the fort.”
“The army will buy
horses?”
“Oh, yes sir, as long as they are
sound. The army always needs horses. They pay top dollar for them,
too.”
“I don’t want to sell my horse,” Dewey
said.
“You got two choices, Dewey,” Ebersole
said. “You can sell your horse and come with us, or you can keep
your horse and stay here.”
“We brought our horses here on the
train,” Dewey said. “How come we can’t take ’em with us on the
boat?”
“Because there are no facilities for
horses on the boat,” the ticket agent said.
“What will it be, Dewey?” Hawkins
asked.
“I’ll sell my horse,” Dewey
agreed.
Renegade camp of Mean to His Horses
“You are Crow,” Mean to His Horses
said, the expression in his voice showing his utter contempt for
anyone of the Crow nation. “You were with Custer in the fight at
Greasy Grass.”
“We weren’t with Custer. We were too
young,” Running Elk said.
“And now we want to join our brothers,
the Cheyenne, to fight against the white man,” White Bull
said.
“Why do you turn now against your
masters?” Mean to His Horses asked.
“They are not my masters,” White Bull
said emphatically.
“Nor are they mine,” Running Elk said.
“They have killed our people, for no reason.”
“And now your blood runs hot and you
want to kill them,” Mean to His Horses responded. It wasn’t a
question, it was a statement.
“Yes,” White Bull said.
“Why should I trust the
Crow?”
“Have you not talked with the spirits?”
Running Elk asked. “Have they not told you that we are all
brothers? Have they not told you that the white man will be driven
away, and the land that they took will be ours?”
Mean to His Horses stared at the two
young Crow Indians before him for a long moment, then he
nodded.
“You may stay,” he said.
“Eiiiee yah, yah, yah!” White Bull
shouted in excitement.
Although Mean to His Horses had
accepted Running Elk and White Bull into his camp, when he went out
on his first raid after their arrival, he ordered them to stay
behind.
White Bull and Running Elk watched the
raiding party ride off, angry that they had not been
included.
“Why should we be left behind?” White
Bull asked.
“Perhaps we must earn his trust,”
Running Elk said.
“Or perhaps we should prove ourselves
to him.”
“How can we prove ourselves if we are
not allowed to go with him?”
“I will find a way. You will
see.”