I went back to the functionary at the counter, and asked the time of departure of the Misty Mountain coach, and learned that a coach left the same afternoon, and that there was one place vacant. I engaged the seat at once, glad to escape the horrors of a night in the American House and Devil’s Landing. My fellow-passengers wished me to wait for the next day’s coach, but I declined. When we agreed to stick together, I knew nothing of the American House.
We had dinner. It consisted of very fat and very rusty bacon, putty biscuits, and mud coffee without milk.
“The cows have not come in,” said one of the greasy waiters, when I asked for milk.
“The cows never do come home here,” whispered a neighbor, evidently an habitué.
It was toward the close of August, and the heat was excessive. The sun shone mercilessly on us through the partially glazed and wholly uncurtained windows. Yet we ate and perspired, and perspired and drank mud coffee, with a persistency which astonished me when after thinking on these matters.
The flies were terrible. They swept around the room in buzzing clouds. Some of them were nearly large enough to offer a fair mark for a shot-gun; the smaller ones insinuated themselves everywhere—into your nose, ears, eyes—aye, even into your mouth. They immolated themselves in the frowzy, oily butter; and their remains studded the reeking mass like currants in a pudding.
Such a wonderful effect has the pure prairie air—it doth so whet the edge of appetite—that, though our eyes were shocked, we ate and ate, and our sense of taste was not offended. The meal only cost us two dollars apiece.
After dinner, I lit a fifty-cent Devil’s Landing cigar, and walked (literally) around town—a perambulation which did not quite occupy five minutes. As I finished my walk, a shot was fired at the other end of town—that is, within fifteen or twenty rods. Other shots followed. A long-haired, slouched-hatted, and red-legginged individual dashed past on a pretty good horse. Evidently he was the mark at which the firing was directed. As he passed, an armed man or two rushed out of every house and shot at him. The proprietor of the Oriental Saloon came forth, armed with a Henry rifle, and deliberately blazed away at the long-haired fugitive. The latter, finding bullets in front of him, bullets to left of him, bullets behind him, after several miraculous escapes from close shots, had no course open but to turn to right of him, around the corner of the American House, which would afford him some cover. But just as he turned, his horse was hit in the off fore-leg and brought to in a moment. Immediately he was hemmed in by the muzzles of twenty repeating-rifles. He had emptied his six-shooter. Flight was impossible. There was no course but surrender—not even suicide—left. He jumped from his horse, and sat down cross-legged on the ground. He was quickly seized and pinioned. His horse was taken in charge by a citizen. No words were wasted on either side. His lariat of horse-hair furnished a deadly loop, which was placed around his neck. He was marched about a mile to the only tree in sight—an old cottonwood.
While the crowd was going to the tree, the clerk of the American House told me in a few words the history of the long-haired victim. He was a half-breed Choctaw, frequently employed as a scout by the government. There were several of these scouts in the region. They called themselves “wolves,” and prided themselves on their destruction of human life. When any of them came into town citizens were sure to be shot at. Their favorite way of leaving town was, having first filled themselves with “fighting whiskey,” to dash through at full speed, discharging their revolvers at anything human that chanced to appear in their path. The citizens had determined not to stand this sort of thing any longer. “Johnny Henshaw”—so our “wolf” was called—had been drinking rather freely of late. He had declared his intention of shooting three prominent men of the town, mentioning them by name. Hence the measures about to be taken.