SWEEPING ORDERS
The burning of Smoky Creek Bridge was hardly off the minds of the
mountain men when a disaster of a different sort befell the division.
In the Rat Valley east of Sleepy Cat the main line springs between two
ranges of hills with a dip and a long supported grade in each
direction. At the point of the dip there is a switch from which a spur
runs to a granite quarry. The track for two miles is straight and the
switch-target and lights are seen easily from either direction save at
one particular moment of the day--a moment which is in the valley
neither quite day nor quite night. Even this disadvantage occurs to
trains east-bound only, because due to unusual circumstances. When the
sun in a burst of dawning glory shows itself above the crest of the
eastern range an engineman, east-bound, may be so blinded by the rays
streaming from the rising sun that he cannot see the switch at the
foot of the grade. For these few moments he is helpless should
anything be wrong with the quarry switch. Down this grade, a few
weeks after the Smoky Creek fire, came a double-headed stock train
from the Short Line with forty cars of steers. The switch stood open;
this much was afterward abundantly proved. The train came down the
grade very fast to gain speed for the hill ahead of it. The head
engineman, too late, saw the open target. He applied the emergency
air, threw his engine over, and whistled the alarm. The mightiest
efforts of a dozen engines would have been powerless to check the
heavy train. On the quarry track stood three flat cars loaded with
granite blocks for the abutment of the new Smoky Creek Bridge. On a
sanded track, rolling at thirty miles an hour and screaming in the
clutches of the burning brakes, the heavy engines struck the switch
like an avalanche, reared upon the granite-laden flats, and with forty
loads of cattle plunged into the canyon below; not a car remained on
the rails. The head brakeman, riding in the second cab, was instantly
killed, and the engine crews, who jumped, were badly hurt.
The whole operating department of the road was stirred. What made the
affair more dreadful was that it had occurred on the time of Number
Six, the east-bound passenger train, held that morning at Sleepy Cat
by an engine failure. Glover came to look into the matter. The
testimony of all tended to one conclusion--that the quarry switch had
been thrown at some time between four-thirty and five o'clock that
morning. Inferences were many: tramps during the early summer had been
unusually troublesome and many of them had been rigorously handled by
trainmen; robbery might have been a motive, as the express cars on
train Number Six carried heavy specie shipments from the coast.
Yet a means so horrible as well as so awkward and ineffective
seemed unlike mountain outlaws. Strange men from headquarters were on
the ground as soon as they could reach the wreck, men from the
special-service department, and a stock inspector who greatly
resembled Whispering Smith was on the ground looking into the brands
of the wrecked cattle. Glover was much in consultation with him,
and there were two or three of the division men, such as Anderson,
Young, McCloud, and Lee, who knew him but could answer no inquiries
concerning his long stay at the wreck.
A third and more exciting event soon put the quarry wreck into the
background. Ten days afterward an east-bound passenger train was
flagged in the night at Sugar Buttes, twelve miles west of Sleepy Cat.
When the heavy train slowed up, two men boarded the engine and with
pistols compelled the engineman to cut off the express cars and pull
them to the water-tank a mile east of the station. Three men there in
waiting forced the express car, blew open the safe, and the gang rode
away half an hour later loaded with gold coin and currency.
Had a stick of dynamite been exploded under the Wickiup there could
not have been more excitement at Medicine Bend. Within three hours
after the news reached the town a posse under Sheriff Van Horn, with a
carload of horseflesh and fourteen guns, was started for Sugar Buttes.
The trail led north and the pursuers rode until nearly nightfall. They
crossed Dutch Flat and rode single file into a wooded canyon, where
they came upon traces of a camp-fire. Van Horn, leading, jumped from
his horse and thrust his hand into the ashes; they were still warm,
and he shouted to his men to ride up. As he called out, a rifle
cracked from the box-elder trees ahead of him. The sheriff fell, shot
through the head, and a deputy springing from his saddle to pick him
up was shot in precisely the same way, through the head. The riderless
horses bolted; the posse, thrown into a panic, did not fire a shot,
and for an hour dared not ride back for the bodies. After dark they
got the two dead men and at midnight rode with them into Sleepy Cat.
When the news reached McCloud he was talking with Bucks over the
wires. Bucks had got into headquarters at the river late that night,
and was getting details from McCloud of the Sugar Buttes robbery
when the superintendent sent him the news of the killing of Van Horn
and the deputy. In the answer that Bucks sent came a name new to the
wires of the mountain division and rarely seen even in special
correspondence, but Hughie Morrison, who took the message, never
forgot that name; indeed, it was soon to be thrown sharply into the
spotlight of the mountain railroad stage. Hughie repeated the
message to get it letter-perfect; to handle stuff at the Wickiup
signed "J. S. B." was like handling diamonds on a jeweller's tongs
or arteries on a surgeon's hook; and, in truth, Bucks's words were
the arteries and pulse-beat of the mountain division. Hughie handed
the message to McCloud and stood by while the superintendent read:
Whispering Smith is due in Cheyenne to-morrow. Meet him at the
Wickiup Sunday morning; he has full authority. I have told him
to get these fellows, if it takes all the money in the
treasury, and not to stop till he cleans them out of the Rocky
Mountains. J. S. B.