Beneath the Burning Timber: The Wanted Outlaw Who Died to Save His Blood

Mounted on a rough pine shelf beneath a small square window was a small brass telegraph key, connected by two insulated copper wires to a row of blue glass gravity-batteries sitting in a wooden trough. Beside the key lay a grease-stained notebook and a pair of brass brass-headed earphones.

Eleanor threw the oilcloth packet onto the table. Her hands were shaking violently as she pulled out the land grant, the Supreme Court injunction, and Daniel's small notebook of telegraph codes.

She sat on the stool, picked up the headset, and pressed it against her ear.

The wire was alive. A steady, rhythmic hum—the faint, crackling pulse of the continent’s commerce—sang through the copper line from Omaha to Sacramento.

She reached out with her dirt-caked right forefinger, touching the oval ebony knob of the key.

Click. Clack.

"What do you send?" Tom asked, standing in the doorway with Ross’s recovered shotgun in his hands, his eyes scanning the road toward the square.

"Daniel told me the emergency override for the territorial district," Eleanor said, her teeth set so hard they ached. "It takes precedence over all commercial traffic. It goes straight to the Federal Marshal's office at Fort Sanders."

Her finger began to move.

Dot. Dash. Dot. Dot.

Dash. Dash. Dash.

Dot. Dash. Dot.

The little brass bar chattered in the silence of the shed, spitting tiny blue sparks against the copper contacts:

TO: U.S. MARSHAL JOHN BENTON — DISTRICT OF WYOMING — FORT SANDERS.

FROM: ELEANOR HAYES & DEPUTY THOMAS VALE JR. — PINE HOLLOW.

MESSAGE: SHERIFF SILAS DANNER IN ARMED REBELLION. FIVE CASUALTIES. FRAUDULENT PATENTS ON BLACK TOOTH BASIN CONFIRMED BY RECOVERED COURT INJUNCTION AND ORIGINAL VALE DEED. HOLDING EVIDENCE IN TOWN CHAPEL UNDER ARMED SIEGE. NEED FEDERAL TROOPS OR MARSHAL'S POSSE IMMEDIATELY. SIGNED: THOMAS VALE, DEPUTY U.S. MARSHAL.

She held her breath.

For thirty seconds that felt like thirty lifetimes, the headset remained silent, save for the dry hum of the copper wire stretching across three hundred miles of empty sagebrush.

Then, from far across the frozen plains of the Laramie basin, came the sharp, rapid response of a government operator:

Click-click-clack. Clack. Click.

MESSAGE RECEIVED FORT SANDERS. SPECIAL TRAIN DEPARTING WITH TWO COMPANIES THIRD CAVALRY. ESTIMATED ARRIVAL PINE HOLLOW THREE HOURS. HOLD YOUR GROUND.

Before Eleanor could lower the headset, a dull, earth-shaking BOOM rolled across the valley from the direction of the town square.

A column of thick black smoke and splintered cedar erupted into the gray sky above the pines.

The church belfry had fallen.

The explosion had not completely destroyed the chapel, but it had torn out the entire northeast corner where the sacristy joined the nave.

When Eleanor and Tom reached the crest of the cemetery hill, crawling through the tangled chokecherry brush to avoid the open road, their hearts sank into their boots.

The white tamarack belfry had collapsed inward, crushing the wooden porch and blocking the front double doors with a mountain of splintered beams and shattered shingles. The bronze church bell lay half-submerged in the mud of the road, cracked from crown to lip, resting like a dead iron skull in the freezing slush.

Around the perimeter of the graveyard stood seven men.

Three were Danner’s surviving regulators, their long dusters black with soot from the blast. The other four were town teamsters, armed with heavy double-barreled shotguns and pick-handles, looking nervous, shifting their weight from boot to boot as they watched the smoking ruin.

Silas Danner stood beside the shattered bell, holding a smoking five-foot pine torch in his left hand and his ivory-handled Colt in his right.

"Elias!" Danner’s voice boomed through the clearing, carrying across the silent mounds of the cemetery. "The roof is coming down within ten minutes! Throw out the dispatch box and the children, and I’ll let Mae Jensen walk to the county line!"

Silence was the only reply from inside the smoke-filled shell of the logs.

Then, from the jagged hole where the sacristy had stood, a rifle cracked.

A lead slug from Mae’s Sharps tore through the crown of Danner’s hat, spinning the beaver felt into the ditch and leaving a red furrow along the side of the sheriff’s scalp.

Danner cursed, stumbling back behind the iron bell, wiping the blood from his cheek with the back of his sleeve.

"Burn it!" Danner screamed, his veneer of gentlemanly restraint finally shattering into raw, homicidal mania. "Throw the kerosene through the windows! Burn the whole damn thing to the waterline!"

Two regulators lunged forward, carrying five-gallon iron cans of coal oil taken from the mercantile.

"Stop right there!" Tom shouted, stepping out of the chokecherry thicket into the open cemetery path.

The boy stood on the low stone wall, Ross's ten-gauge shotgun pressed against his hip, both hammers cocked. His black coat was torn, his face smeared with soot and coal dust, but the silver badge over his heart caught the dull glare of the midday sky like a beacon.

"Danner!" Tom shouted. "The wire is sent! The federal cavalry is on the train from Fort Sanders! If you light that timber, every man here will hang from the courthouse elm before sundown!"