Haunted by a Deadly Shot – Extended Epilogue

Hank Plummer had learned how to live the life of a gentleman when it suited him. The night he had left Bannack, Montana, he had a hefty sum of stolen money. He took half from Alberta Meade’s hidden safe with the agreement that once they parted ways, it was the end of their relationship.

He learned how to change his appearance using hair dye to change his goatee’s color and his head hair from silvery brown to coal black. Plummer lost a considerable amount of weight over the following three years. He adapted to a comfortable life outside the law that suited his needs.

With Bannack in the past, he never crossed paths with anyone from the territory again. He’d meant to find a legitimate way to make a living, even found a woman who fancied him enough to settle down.

He had found his way into Washington, following the gold rush. While Plummer wasn’t a prospector, he knew enough of the business to understand people who dug gold and silver from the earth sometimes needed security to keep them safe from vandals.

Plummer had met a man named Jack Cleveland, who was a horse dealer out of California. He supplied most of the miners with their livestock for mining needs. The two men had common interests—one of which was greed. The other was an attraction to Plummer’s betrothed, Electa Bryan. Ten years Plummer’s junior, she was a reedy woman who liked to drink with the boys and laugh at their raunchy humor.

While Plummer felt he wasn’t a jealous man, his attraction to Electa turned deadly in the summer of ’76 when they lived in Washington Territory. Cleveland liked to drink and was a braggart. Plummer had never mentioned his association with Bannack. Somehow, Cleveland had learned of a lonely woman named Alberta Meade, who had died of a drug overdose in Bannack earlier that year. He had picked up a newspaper from a southern prospector during a transaction. The article explained the tragic turn of events that turned the once gold-rush town into a forgotten relic.

Plummer eventually read the article and understood Cleveland meant to capitalize on Plummer’s notoriety. The report mentioned Plummer as the sheriff who had absconded the night five men found their death in a failed mass robbery. Another three men were eventually hanged for attempted murder and theft. At the same time, Plummer had managed to change his appearance so someone might not recognize him on the street. But he had neglected to change his name. With the lack of lawmen in the area, Plummer had seen no reason to.

The secret Plummer wanted to keep turned into Cleveland’s weapon to use against the former sheriff. Cleveland offered to keep quiet if Plummer agreed to leave the territory, and Electa.

That night, Plummer got Cleveland drunk at the local saloon. Both men left together; only one survived the next morning. Plummer broke the news to Electa that Cleveland had fallen off his horse and broken his neck after drinking too much. The woman fell into despair and confessed to Plummer—she and Cleveland were in love.

It had happened under Plummer’s watchful eye, and somehow, he had never noticed the two of them had had a liaison. So, prompted by his inability to saddle love, Plummer left the territory and rode southeast alone.

A few weeks later, in a forgotten tavern, Plummer met a man named Milton Moody. He needed more men to pull a heist that would put more money in their pockets than Plummer had ever earned legitimately. Moody already had four men; with Plummer’s agreement, they could pull off the robbery without too many casualties.

Scorned by a woman he thought he’d loved and unwilling to face up to his crimes in Bannack, Plummer decided that the life of a road agent offered a lucrative future. He agreed to help organize the heist.

Moody had a plan to hold up a three-wagon security outfit. The wagons had left Virginia City heading to Salt Lake City with what they assumed were seven passengers, likely all armed. The wagons had a combined fortune of $80,000 in gold dust and $1,500 in treasury notes.

It was Plummer’s idea to pick the ambush point. The road agents were camped on Blacktail Deer Creek when the pack train arrived in the evening, five days after it left Virginia City.

Together with Moody and four other men, Plummer broke from cover to ambush the wagon train. Moody was first to shout at the coach drivers. He had a lever-action repeating rifle and used the copse of trees near the waterline as a perch. Plummer kept hidden in the roadside ditch, covered in leaf litter. They were the two men in their group with the most patience.

While Moody and Plummer wanted to keep the killing to a minimum, their partners were ambitious and foolhardy. Steve Marshland from Texas, ‘Dutch John’ Wagner from California, and George Ives from Kansas City, and the fourth man, Aleck Carter from Tennessee, all began shooting at the wagons. The three coachmen were soon gunned down.

The wagons proved too fortified to penetrate with gunfire.

Moody and Plummer let the others unload their guns on the wagons. They anticipated resistance and decided to keep back until the shooting subsided. When three wagons with spooked teams of horses appeared unmanned, without resistance, the road agents prematurely celebrated their good fortune.

The wagons had no windows, only heavy wooden doors. Two of the three wagons still had active lanterns; one of the wagons had lost its light to a stray bullet. The robbers agreed that shooting the horse teams was counterintuitive to their needs. They could sell the horses later once they claimed the booty.

“Are they empty?” Carter asked from behind a tree for cover.

“If they’re empty, we’re wasting our time.” Marshland was the first to break cover. He had a shotgun in his grip and used his left hand to run over the door. “There ain’t no handle.”

“Check one of the drivers for keys,” Ives shouted.

Wagner jumped from the treeline and ran to a nearby body. He searched the pockets and came up with a bag of chewing tobacco and no keys. “He ain’t got them.”

“I’ll check the other ones,” Carter said as he stepped from behind the pine.

It was a coordinated retaliatory attack from inside the wagons. It started with the center wagon when the road agents broke cover. Carter was the first to die. The bullet cracked his skull and sent him spinning sideways when he walked by the gun ports in the wagon. As soon as he died, the other gun ports opened with rifles sticking through them.

The others didn’t have a chance. When it was over, ‘Dutch John,’ Carter, and Marshland had died in the dirt beside the wagons. Ives was hit in the guts and lay on his back in the tall grass screaming in pain, unable to move.

Plummer stayed still and quiet. He couldn’t see Moody from his vantage point, but the men inside the wagons remained secured and patiently waited until Ives’ wailing subsided and the man perished from the stomach wound. Still, Plummer kept quiet and low under the leaf litter in the ditch.

“The rest of you out there need to understand, you’ve fired on wagons belonging to the United States. You will be arrested and stand trial for attempted robbery of federal property.”

The voice came out clear and echoed across the nighttime valley. Plummer suspected the person addressing them called from a hatch in the roof of one carriage.

“You have a right to a trial by jury. But I got to tell you, ain’t no one that held up a security wagon ever convinced a judge they were innocent.”

Plummer heard laughing from inside the wagons following the statement. It was insulting. Still, he kept quiet and still.

“We’re coming out. If you know what’s good for you, you will put down your guns and give up. If we see one gun, we will not hesitate to shoot you dead with your friends.”

The hatchway at the top of the carriage banged when it opened. No one appeared, not from what Plummer saw through the dead leaves. When a bowler hat appeared, Moody broke from cover on the other side of the trail and shot up the hat. Plummer knew immediately it was a ruse. The hat was on the barrel of a long gun. Moody screamed and went dead quiet.

After several minutes, the voice shouted again.

“We’re coming out. If you try to run, we will shoot you. If you try to shoot us, we will kill you. If you give up right now, we promise to present you in front of a judge free of bullet holes.” There was another collection of laughs following the announcement.

Plummer felt the stinging sweat in his eyes. His back itched from lying still under the leaves for so long. He felt something crawling across his arm.

Two other hatchways opened on the tops of the remaining wagons. He saw a small-brimmed hat poke out of another wagon. It bobbed up and down and withdrew again. Plummer saw the top of someone’s head and their eyes scanning the entire area from a separate carriage. Two other heads poked out of the other wagons.

When the doors opened and several men in black trousers, vests, and jackets began to step from the wagons, he knew there was no safe way out. Plummer counted eight men, and more stepped out to search the surrounding area. He had no other choice but to wait and hope they missed him. But it took little time for someone walking through the ditch to discover him prone under the leaf pile.

“Get up,” the man said. He kicked Plummer in the shoulder.

Slowly, keeping his hands clear of his holsters and the shotgun still on the ground, Plummer stood up and faced the men staring at him with guns drawn.

“What’s your name?” the agent asked.

“His name is Henry Plummer,” a familiar voice said from his left. When Plummer faced the young man, he saw Adam Meade watching him closely. The young man had a rifle cradled in his arms and a gun on his hip. “He was once the sheriff of Bannack, Montana. And he happens to be my father.”

***

When Adam returned to Salt Lake City three days after the incident at Blacktail Deer Creek, he found a warm meal waiting for him. It was well after nine at night, but somehow Hilde always knew just how to greet him. She sat with Adam in the kitchen at the butcher block table until Jessie Conner arrived in the kitchen to greet him.

Adam smiled at his new wife and stood to greet her when she arrived.

“I’ll leave you to welcome your husband,” Hilde said.

“Goodnight, Hilde, thank you,” Adam said.

Adam sipped at the tea Hilde had warmed for him. Jessie held his free hand and watched him. After a few minutes, he grinned at her, unable to resist her beautiful and hungry eyes.

“I missed you,” she said.

“I missed you, too.”

“Did you do anything exciting?” she asked.

Adam sighed and shrugged.

Jessie’s eyebrows knitted quizzically. “Did you do anything dangerous?” she asked.

His shrug deepened.

Jessie pressed the relaxed palms of her hands against Adam’s stubbly cheeks and drew him over his soup bowl. She kissed him tenderly on the lips.

“I worry about you working for the marshal service,” she said. “I sometimes think there are more bad men out there than good men.”

“I could almost agree with you,” he said.

They shared a quiet moment. Adam sipped from his teacup. Jessie rested her elbow on the table and leaned close to him.

“When you do that, it makes it hard for me to eat my dinner,” he said.

Jessie scoffed at him and poked his nose with her index finger. She poured a mug of tea from the kettle and sat down again. This time, she gave Adam space to eat his soup.

“Rachel wants you to meet someone,” she said.

“Oh?” He almost coughed from the ladled soup. “Is this like before? Does she need my approval?”

Jessie pursed her lips and rolled her eyes. “Well, you know Rachel looks up to you. She knows you have a sense about people.”

“Should we take them out to dinner?”

“I think he wants to try to impress us. He suggested the same thing,” Jessie said.

Adam winced at the idea. “He’s not some spoiled, wealthy young man, is he?” he asked. “The last one kept trying to measure himself to me intellectually.”

“You have nothing to worry about in that department, Adam. Among other things about you, Rachel wants to find someone who is as well-rounded as you are,” she said.

“She could do better.”

“Aw, how dare you,” Jessie said with a playful light slap.

Adam took the soup bowl to the sink with his teacup. He poured out the contents and turned to look at Jessie, still seated at the small table. The light caught her eyes in a way that made them look gold, and her hair spilled over her shoulders in soft waves. Her generous lips turned upward, smiling at Adam when she noticed him staring at her.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“I am grateful I met you. You mean more to me than I ever thought possible,” Adam said. He rolled his shoulders out of the frock jacket and grimaced when it came to his left shoulder.

Jessie stood and went to him. She took his jacket and put it over her arm. She pulled at the necktie ends to loosen it before removing it from his neck. She undid the first three buttons on his shirt, exposing his collarbones and the undershirt. Her fingers traced a line along his collar to the left shoulder.

“Ugh, please,” Rachel said, emerging from the swinging doorway to the kitchen. Her approach was as abrupt as discovering a mouse in a flour bag.

“Why are you down here?” Jessie asked.

Rachel grinned at Adam. “I heard Adam come home. I got thirsty, so I put two ideas together and thought I’d find him in the kitchen with you pawing him.”

Adam laughed, and Jessie bumped him with her hip. “Don’t encourage her.”

“Did you kill anyone?” Rachel asked with some morbid glee. She tested the kettle with her fingers and poured tea into a cup, then sat at the table, waiting for Adam to give details.

“I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Oh, well, I guess that’s good.”

“It is good,” Jessie said.

Adam stood facing Rachel. His bride leaned against him. Her hair smelled like rosewater and lavender.

“I assisted in the arrest of Hank Plummer.”

Jessie whirled to face him.

“He got involved with some highwaymen who tried to rob the wagon train from Virginia City.”

“Are you all right?” Jessie asked. Adam understood she was asking more about his emotional injuries than any physical afflictions.

He nodded.

“What will happen to him?” Rachel asked.

“He’ll get convicted of attempted robbery and murder and he’ll go before a judge. They’ll hang him.”

“That sounds terrible,” Rachel said. “Can we see the hanging?”

“Rachel Elizabeth Conner, what a dreadful thing to say,” Jessie scolded.

“Well, I think it would help close some of our wounds.”

Adam pressed his lips together in consideration. It was a valid reason to want an end to what they had lost in Bannack. If seeing the former sheriff hanged for his crimes helped them heal, Adam would stand with them.

“I don’t want to see it,” Jessie said.

“What about you, Adam? He’s your father, isn’t he?”

“I never saw the man as a father figure. He never guided me or claimed to be my kin. If I hadn’t had confronted him and Alberta, I know they wouldn’t have told me.”

Adam felt more comfortable calling the woman by her Christian name than Mother. But people created a lot of problems for him. He wanted to put it in the past.

Jessie knew how to redirect the topic. “We received a telegram from Dr. Leavitt in Boston yesterday. He wants us to come visit him over the summer. He wants to introduce us to his wife.”

“Can I go, too?” Rachel asked.

“I think if we left you here, Salt Lake wouldn’t be safe,” Adam said. “And I think Hilde would enjoy a visit to the east coast, if she wanted to go.”

Adam put on his jacket again. He collected four carrots from the drawer under the counter and carried them to the side door.

“Where are you going?” Jessie asked.

“Ethel’s lonely in the stables, she talked my ear off when I got home. I thought I’d appease her with a carrot.” The donkey preferred the company of people over horses.

“I’m coming with you,” Rachel said. She wore a nightgown and robe, but she ran to fetch her shoes before going outside.

Adam reached his hand out to Jessie. She crossed the tiled floor and took it. He embraced her and breathed in her hair before kissing her head.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he said.

Jessie put her arms around his middle and pressed her head to his chest. It was easier for Jessie to hug him like that without standing on her tiptoes, trying her arms around his neck. Adam loved feeling her against him.

“Oh, you’d probably languish mournfully; maybe learn how to cry like a donkey.”

“See, I wondered where Rachel got that cruel streak. Now I know.”

Jessie had to stand on her tiptoe to kiss him. Her lips were soft and warm. “Are you troubled by the business with Hank?” she asked.

Adam shook his head. “I had some time to think about it, and I had time to talk to him on the ride to the prison. He seems to accept his fate.” Adam waited a moment before adding, “He’s out of my life. I don’t need to say ‘goodbye.’ You and Rachel are all that matter to me—and Hilde, of course.”

“We’re lucky to have someone as wonderful as you to watch over us.”

“We should go to Boston as soon as it’s warm enough.”

“Is that what you want?”

“I want you, Jessie. I don’t care where we are or where we go, as long as we’re together.”

THE END 

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