Showdown at Iron Springs

      ------------------------------------------------------          

                           A Durango Kid Tale  

      --------------------------------------------------------------------------            

                                       By Michael Traylor

  Stinson woke with a start, threw off his blankets, and leapt for the fire place.  Soon he had the fire going, and the chill was leaving the cabin.  A winter in Colorado was not pleasant.  He had a breakfast of coffee, beef, and eggs from his own chickens.

  After breakfast he shouldered into his big cowhide coat, and under that he strapped on black, crossed gun belts and holsters decorated with silver conchos. Next, he dropped a pair of magnificent silver inlaid ivory-handled Colts into the holsters. Those he used if he had to. He reached for his flat-crowned black Stetson and pushed it down on his head. 

  Then he went to saddle Rio, his black horse. The bright sunshine was melting the snow, but it was still a cold day. As Stinson walked to Rio’s stall the horse nickered a good morning welcome.

  He strapped the saddle on and slowly got up into it. The morning was stiff, nothing stirred.  In the spring he needed men to help him drive his mixed Herefords and Longhorns to the stock yards in Dodge City.  He was going to find help.

  Among most people he could be recognized as The Durango Kid, but his real name was Stinson Reynolds.  It was known that he could draw fast and shoot well. Long ago he had come to this cabin… that was before his Pa died.

  Stinson had a strong jaw and hard, but handsome features. His brown eyes were fully alive and most of the time he wore a smile. He had a no-nonsense attitude and good character.      

  When he rode into Durango, Stinson he saw that almost everyone was inside huddled near fires. He put Rio in the livery stable with a bait of oats. He went to the hotel first.  When he stepped in, Mr. Shaw, his good friend, said,

  “Howdy, Stinson!”

  Stinson nodded and smiled,

  “I am looking for help.  Anybody want to help me drive five hundred head of cattle to the stock yards in Dodge City?”  

Matt, Stinson’s friend, spoke up, “I’ll go.”

  A few others volunteered.  Among them were Abe McLain, Ben Love, and Dan King.  All were good, tough men.  He needed still more hands though, so he went to the dry goods store. 

  There he picked up two more, Lee Card and Jesse Rells.  He needed three more, so he started making the rounds of homes in town.  When he got to the Braden house, he saw the oldest boy and remembered his father, who was killed in a bank hold-up. 

  When Stinson told the boy about the drive, young Joseph Braden volunteered. 

 “I’ll go.  I can rope and ride. Can I go?”

 “Yeah, get your things together and meet me at the livery stable tomorrow morning at dawn.”

  Two more… How about the two boys he used to play with when he was younger, Ambrose Murray, that is A.M. Rivers and his brother, Sven Rivers. Sure enough, they would go.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  In the morning all the men he had hired met at the livery stable.  Then he needed a cook.  What about Sam over at the café? 

 When he asked Sam, Sam said, “Uh-huh, I’ll go.  Been itching to get out of this café anyway.”

  The crew rode out to the Kid’s ranch and started searching for strays away from the herd. It was the end of winter. Soon it would be warm enough to start the herd. They hunted strays and branded them for a week and finally started the cattle east for Dodge City.

 Once, when Stinson was riding tail, Ben Love met up with some Piute Indians.  It was just a small hunting party, but they wanted to trade things. Stinson traded some of their flour and hunting knives for horses.

  Stinson had two horses, Rio, a black stallion, and Buck, a Buckskin gelding.  Buck, who he got from Piutes, was a hunting horse.  Stinson taught him to cut cows.

One night near Monte Vista, Lee Card, who was staying with the herd, came running his horse up to them and swung down.

  “I was with the herd and someone came up and slugged me.  When I came to, I counted the herd and someone had rustled twenty head of our beef critters!”

  Stinson slung the California saddle on Buck and rode for the rustlers with Card, Love, King, and the Rivers.  They came upon their tracks about two miles from camp. Then they tracked them for six more miles and they lost them in the rocks near Alamosa. 

  They crossed the Rio Grande and came upon the foothills of the Rockies.  It was hard, but they passed the Rockies in a week and lost only seven head.  The rustlers came again at night and got about ten to fifteen more head. 

   This was hard for the Kid. Cattle brought eleven dollars a head in Dodge City or Abilene.  Stinson knew this had to be an organized, dangerous gang.  Their raids were fast and simple.

  Soon they were in Trinidad, then Springfield.  Another raid but, again, they lost the tracks. It was like chasing ghosts! One day in the middle of March, Stinson saw a dust cloud and knew the Piutes were attacking.

 “Head for the chuck wagon,” Stinson called out to the cowboys.

  The cowhands knew that this meant trouble and lit a shuck for the wagon.  Stinson drew his Henry from the scabbard, sighted on the Piute who had just fired at him, let out a breath, and squeezed off the slack of the trigger.

  The Henry leaped in his hands, and the Indian fell from his pony and hit the ground, raising little puffs of dust and staining the dry ground red.

At the end of the bloody battle, five Piutes were dead.

  None of the trail herders were hurt but A.M. Rivers. He was shot though lower leg.  The Piutes came and buried their own, and the camp moved on with the wounded man in the chuck wagon. 

  They were in Kansas and Stinson was riding front when a group of riders came up to the herd. The leader was about forty-five with dark curly hair. The man was wearing two Smith and Wesson .38 calibers. 

  “We’re cutting your herd. Jenkins, here”, the jerked his thumb back toward a younger man, “lost 50 head to rustlers this year. We’re searchin’ your herd.”

  The one they called “Jenkins” didn’t look like a rancher. Stinson looked at his hands, but saw no calluses from rope. His boots were highly polished. His hat was not sweat-stained. His gun butt was shiny, like it was used a lot.

  Suddenly Stinson was holding two guns and his men were aiming their weapons at the gang.

“I have a different opinion. I think you are gonna ride out of here and not come back. We never know; you might be the ones rustling our herd.”

One by one they turned around and rode off. Stinson told the others to be on guard.

  Finally they got the cattle to the stockyards in Dodge City. Stinson went to see his old friend, Wyatt Earp.  Earp had taught him to shoot.

  The Kid stepped in Earp’s office and called.

  “I’ll be there in a moment,” Wyatt said.

  When Earp came in he recognized Reynolds immediately. The sheriff was a medium-sized man with a drooping mustache. He wore a starched white shirt, pin-striped pants tucked into boots, and the Buntline Special that Ned Buntline, dime novelist, had given him. It was a Colt with a ten inch barrel. He held a coffee cup in his left hand. Earp thrust his hand across the desk and said,

  “Stinson!  Well, when did you get here?”

  “Just blew in. I was takin’ a herd over here to the stock yards.  I had a little trouble. I think it was Curly Bill. Didn’t see him in town. I think he has taken my stock to Abilene.”

  Wyatt frowned, “I’ll get a posse together. We need to work fast!”

   Earp got Bat Masterson, Neal Brown, Joe Mason, Bill Tilghman, and Charlie Basset for the posse, and Stinson brought all his men.  Masterson, a tall, cool gentleman, wore a suit and string tie with a cross draw holster on his left side.  The rest wore the usual trail attire. 

  They came upon them at the Iron Springs waterhole. They were pushing over fifty head.  Reynolds’s cattle and others too, probably. Curly Bill saw them and he set up his men.

Curly Bill sighted on Earp with a sawed-off shotgun. There was an explosion and Wyatt felt his coat jerk as the shot struck it. Then Curly Bill let out a yell and hurled the gun at him, which fell at the feet of Earp’s rearing horse.  In the next instant Wyatt let go with a double load of his Wells-Fargo gun. There was a scream and Curly Bill died. The rest surrendered and Reynolds drove his cattle back to Dodge. 

                                                       THE END

                                                    Author’s Note:

  This story is historical fiction. The Durango Kid, Matt Shaw, Abe McLain, Ben Love, and Dan King are all fictional characters. However, Bill Brocius, Old Man Clanton and his three sons, Indian Charlie, Ed Sloan, and John Ringo were all real characters and outlaws in the old west, and they did all form a group of rustlers and bandits of which Clanton was the leader. Also real characters were Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Neal Brown, Joe Mason, Bill Tilghman, and Charles Basset, who were all part of the police force in the 1880s in Dodge City, Kansas.

  Durango was and is a real town. Monte Vista, Trinidad, Alamosa, Springfield, Dodge City and Abilene, Kansas, are also actual towns.

  Although Earp did go after Curly Bill and the others in his gang, and this was how Bill was killed, this happened in Arizona during Wyatt’s sheriff term in Tombstone instead of in Kansas during his term in Dodge City.

  Thanks for reading,

                    Michael Traylor

http://www.royrogers.com/roy_rogers_bio.htmlHappy birthday, Roy Rogers!