"No," said Bill Jess, drily, "you fellows are a little too slow. My deliveries in this section are all made."
Cleaning up the Strip
DEPUTY BILL GETS "STOOD OFF," BUT MAKES GOOD. BILL COOK AND "SKEETER." "A HELL OF A COURT TO PLEAD GUILTY IN"
The Cherokee Strip campaign was not allowed to languish. An outlaw community about twenty-five miles north of Kingfisher, and seven miles west of Hennessey, on Turkey Creek, was raided next. In the course of his tree selling, McDonald had fallen in with a man who was peddling stolen beef. He had learned that this man was operating for the Turkey Creek gang, and that the beef he was selling was really the property of the Cherokee Strip Livestock Association, which, it may be mentioned, at that time had a lease on the Cherokee grazing lands for which they paid an annual rental of one hundred thousand dollars.
McDonald now went over to Kingfisher and established headquarters; took the beef peddler to Wichita, Kansas, put him in jail, and got on friendly terms with him. Then he gave his prisoner some good fatherly advice about bad company and the usual rewards of becoming the tool of lawless men. The result was a general confession and turning of State's evidence. The peddler of beef lodged information as to the identity of his employers; the exact nature of their business; the hiding place of their stolen cattle, and the locality of a deep water-hole where they had sunk the hides in order to get rid of the brands and ear-marks. McDonald returned to Kingfisher, next morning, swore out warrants for the men named, and with a deputy marshal, who declared himself willing to go, set out for Turkey Creek. They went in a hack as usual and arrived before daylight at the house of one Charlie Tex, where they thought it likely they might find most of the men wanted. When they entered, however, they found only a man in bed, who declared he had just arrived in that country; that there was nobody at home, and that he knew nothing of the owner's whereabouts. They took him along, however, and proceeded to another house not far away, but found it also empty. The officers now concluded that the men had in some manner got wind of their coming and were hiding in the bottoms. They followed a way down the creek, breaking through to the prairie again, not far from the Tex house. As they did so they noticed the man with them apparently trying to signal in that direction. Then they became aware that several men with Winchesters were walking leisurely along the top of the grassy hill, either unaware of the presence of the officers, or indifferent to it.
McDonald and his associate, satisfied that these were the men wanted, set out up the hill, briskly. Their companion discouraged this movement, insisting that they would all certainly be killed if they molested that crowd. They continued to advance, however, and presently the men with the Winchesters, without appearing to have noticed the deputies, dropped leisurely back behind the hill-top. McDonald now started running, straight up the hill, while his brother deputy set out in a sort of diagonal flank movement around it. In a moment or two he had apparently reached a place where he could see the retreating men, for he called out:
"Hey, Mack, they're right over the hill. They'll get you sure."