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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part Two

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Part Three

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Epilogue

  Novels by Matt Braun

  Praise for Matt Braun and Outlaw Kingdom

  Copyright

  To Kim and Tracey Jesseca and Eric Who give the world special meaning and, as always, to Bettiane

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Outlaw Kingdom is based on a true story. Bill Tilghman was the prototype for the mythical gunfighter-marshal of Old West legend. Yet there was nothing mythical about Tilghman, or his exploits as a lawman on the frontier. He was the real thing.

  Bill Tilghman’s life on the plains spanned a time from the buffalo hunters to the oil boomtowns. His career as a lawman encompassed fifty years, ending in 1924 when he was the age of seventy. During successive eras, he served as deputy sheriff, town marshal, deputy U.S. marshal, sheriff, and chief of police. None of the lawmen fabled in Western myth—including Wild Bill Hickok, Bat Masterson, and Wyatt Earp—came close to matching his record. He was without equal among men who wore a badge.

  Outlaw Kingdom deals with one era in the lifetime of Bill Tilghman. The great Land Rush of 1889 opened parts of Indian Territory to settlement, and resulted in the creation of Oklahoma Territory. Those early days of settlement gave rise to outlaw gangs who robbed and pillaged on a scale unmatched in the annals of crime. Oklahoma Territory became a battleground where deputy U.S. marshals fought a bloody and vicious war against marauding gangs. In a literal sense, the land became a killing ground.

  During the era of the outlaw gangs, Bill Tilghman performed valiant service as a deputy U.S. marshal. In telling his story, fact is presented in the form of fiction, and certain license is taken with time, dates, and events. Yet there is underlying truth to the daring and courage of a man whose exploits were the stuff of legend. His record as a lawman needs no exaggeration, and his dedication to taming a raw frontier stands in a class all its own. His days on the killing ground of Oklahoma Territory were, in a very real sense, larger than life.

  William Matthew Tilghman was the last of a breed. To friend and foe alike, he was known simply as Bill Tilghman, and the name alone struck fear in those who lived by the gun. Determined and deadly, sworn to uphold the law, he was a man of valor.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  A sea of campfires spread endlessly across the plains. Forty thousand people camping under a star-studded sky waited for the Oklahoma Land Rush.

  Tilghman stood with his hands jammed in the pockets of his mackinaw. Though a brisk wind drifted down from the north, his coat was unbuttoned, and his gaze swept an inky darkness dotted with tongues of flame. His camp was located near the train tracks, and as far as the eye could see, the shadows of men were cast against the glow from thousands of campfires. Like him, they stared southward, awaiting the break of dawn.

  “What’re you thinking about, Bill?”

  Tilghman turned to face Fred Sutton. Old friends, they were partners in certain ventures revolving around the land rush. Sutton had operated a saloon and gambling establishment in Dodge City, where Tilghman had served as town marshal.

  “Way it appears,” Tilghman said, “lots of folks are gonna get the short end. I calculate more people”—he motioned toward the blinking campfires—“than there are homesteads.”

  Sutton nodded, looking out over the mass of humanity. He was a man of medium height, square-faced and clean-shaven, a greatcoat thrown over his shoulders. He held his hands out to the warmth of the fire.

  “Same old story,” he said with a wry smile. “Offer something for nothing and the world beats a path to your door. Simple human nature.”

  “No argument there,” Tilghman agreed. “Everybody and his dog turned out for this one.”

  Their camp was on the line separating the Cherokee Outlet from the Unassigned Lands. Tomorrow, for the first time, land would be opened to settlement in Indian Territory. By government decree, a man could claim one hundred sixty acres for a nominal filing fee. The lodestone of free land had drawn eager homesteaders from coast to coast.

  Tilghman wagged his head. “Figures to be devil take the hindmost. Ought to be a helluva race.”

  At root was the scarcity of good farmland. The flood of settlers pouring west had already claimed the choice homestead lands; the clamor to open Indian Territory to settlement had swelled to a public outcry as western migration intensified. The primary goal of this land-hungry horde was known as the Unassigned Lands.

  Embracing some two million acres of well-watered, fertile plains, it was land that had been ceded by the Creeks and Seminoles, as a home for tribes yet to be resettled. But the government eventually announced that it had no intention of locating Indians on these lands. The howls of white settlers then rose to a fever pitch, and their demands now included the Cherokee Outlet, which abutted the northern border of the Unassigned Lands.

  The settlers were backed by several influential factions, all of whom had a vested interest in the western expansion. Already the Santa Fe and other railroads had crossed through Indian Territory, and competing lines had no intention of being left behind. Pressure mounted in Washington for a solution, equitable or otherwise, to the problem.

  Opposed to settlement were the Five Civilized Tribes, who occupied the eastern half of Indian Territory, and a diverse group of religious organizations. The churches and missionary societies asserted that government dealings with Indians formed a chain of broken pledges and unfulfilled treaties. In that, the Five Civilized Tribes agreed vehemently. They had ceded the western part of their domain to provide other tribes with a home—not for the enrichment of white farmers and greedy politicians.

  Tilghman took the pragmatic view. While serving as marshal of Dodge City, he had watched the Indians fight what was clearly a losing battle. At the forefront of the struggle was Captain David Payne. A drifter and ne’er-do-well, Payne had served briefly in the Kansas militia and the territorial legislature. Yet he was a zealot of sorts, and in the settlement of Indian lands he had at last found his cause.

  Advertising widely, Payne made fiery speeches exhorting the people to action, and gradually organized a colony of settlers. Eve
ry six months or so he’d led his scruffy band of fanatics into the Unassigned Lands, and just as regularly, the army ejected them. After several such invasions, each of which was a spectacular failure, Payne’s followers had become known as the Boomers. They were said to be booming the settlement of Indian Territory.

  Though saner men deplored his tactics, Payne wasn’t alone in the fight. Railroads and politicians and merchant princes, all with their own axes to grind, had rallied to the cause. That they were using the Boomers to their own ends was patently obvious. But Payne and his rabble scarcely seemed to care. Frustrated martyrs in a holy quest, they would have joined hands with the devil himself to break the deadlock.

  Tilghman’s woolgathering was broken by the sound of curses and shouts. Several camps down, where a fire blazed beside an overloaded wagon, two men squared off with knives. A crowd had formed a circle around them, goading the men on with guttural murmurs. Fights were common, fueled by liquor and building tension as the day for the land rush approached. But thus far no one had resorted to weapons.

  No longer a lawman, Tilghman nonetheless reacted out of ingrained instinct. He hurried forward, Sutton only a step behind, as the two men slashed at one another, the steel of their knives glinting in the firelight. Shoving through the crowd, he swept his coat aside, drew a Colt Peacemaker from the holster on his hip, and thunked the nearest man over the head. The man went down as though struck by a sledgehammer.

  The crowd was stunned into silence. But the other man instantly turned on Tilghman with his knife. His eyes were bloodshot from too much whiskey, his face contorted in an expression of rage. He advanced, flicking the blade with a drunken leer.

  “C’mon ahead,” he said in a surly voice. “Just as soon cut you as him.”

  Tilghman was tall, broad through the shoulders, hard as spring-steel. The firelight reflected off his cold blue eyes, showering his chestnut hair and brushy mustache with a touch of orange. He thumbed the hammer on his Colt, the metallic sound somehow deadlier in the stillness.

  “Drop the knife,” he said quietly. “Otherwise you won’t be making the run tomorrow.”

  “Kiss my rusty ass!” the drunk snarled. “You got no call buttin’ in on a private fight.”

  Tilghman stared at him. “Let’s just say I made it my business. Do yourself a favor—don’t push it.”

  “Gawddammit to hell anyway!”

  The man tossed his knife on the ground. He whirled around, bulling his way through the crowd, and stormed off into the night. Tilghman slowly lowered the hammer and holstered his pistol. He turned, nodding to Sutton, and walked back toward their camp. Sutton whistled softly under his breath.

  “Jumpin’ Jesus, Bill! You could’ve got yourself killed.”

  “Not much chance of that, Fred. Those boys were blind drunk.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not wearin’ a badge anymore—remember?”

  “I reckon old habits die hard. No sense letting them carve on one another.”

  Tilghman’s tone ended the discussion. At the campsite, he poured coffee into a galvanized cup and resumed staring into the night. Sutton, who understood the solitary nature of his friend, squatted down by the fire. He idly wondered if Tilghman had done the right thing by resigning as a lawman.

  For his part, Tilghman dismissed from mind the knife fight. During his years in Dodge City, he had buffaloed countless drunken cowhands, whacking them upside the head with a pistol barrel. In the overall scheme of things, one more troublemaker hardly seemed to matter. His thoughts returned to tomorrow, the land rush, a new life. Oklahoma Territory.

  Never had there been anything like it. President Benjamin Harrison’s proclamation opening the Unassigned Lands to settlement had created a sensation. Newspapers across the nation carried stories of the “great run” and what was described as the “Garden Spot of the World.” America turned its eye to Oklahoma Territory, drawn by the prospect of free land. The scintillating prose of journalists brought them hurrying westward by the tens of thousands.

  Unstated in these news stories was the tale of intrigue and political skulduggery which lay behind the opening of Indian Lands. The Boomers’ squalling demands, though loud and impressive, were merely window dressing. Instead, it was the railroads—and their free-spending lobbyists—who brought unremitting pressure to bear on Congress. The first step had been to declare the right of eminent domain in Indian Territory.

  By 1888 four railroads had laid track through the Nations, the lands of the Five Civilized Tribes. This cleared the way for settlement, and shortly after his inauguration, President Harrison decreed that the Unassigned Lands would be opened to homesteading at high noon on April 22, 1889. But it would be on a first-come-first-served basis, a race of sorts with millions of acres of virgin prairie as the prize.

  The land-hungry multitudes cared little for whose ultimate benefit it had been organized. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants were pouring into America each year, and they were concerned not so much with the land of the free as with free land. Here was something for nothing, and they flooded westward to share in the spoils.

  Nearly one hundred thousand strong, they gathered north and south along the borders of the Unassigned Lands. They came in covered wagons and buckboards, on horseback and aboard trains, straining for a glimpse of what would soon become Oklahoma Territory. And of a single mind, they came to stay.

  Among them was Bill Tilghman. Like thousands of others, he had come seeking opportunity, and in no small sense, a place to start over. The old life was gone, withered to nothing, and his gaze had turned toward the last frontier. A land where men of purpose might scatter the ashes of the past and look instead to the future.

  A westering man, Tilghman had moved with his family in 1856 to a farm near Atchison, Kansas. At sixteen, he became a buffalo hunter, and later, operating out of Fort Dodge, he’d scouted for the army. In 1877, serving under Bat Masterson, he had been appointed a deputy sheriff of Ford County. Over the next several years he had worked closely with fellow peace officers such as Jim and Ed Masterson, brothers of Bat Masterson. During the same period, he’d developed a friendship with Wyatt Earp, assistant town marshal of Dodge City.

  In 1884, Tilghman himself had been appointed town marshal, where he served for four years. Though Wyatt Earp later captured national headlines after the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Tilghman’s fame was far greater among outlaws and in western boomtowns. He was considered the deadliest lawman of all the frontier marshals, having killed four men in gunfights. Earp and Masterson and Wild Bill Hickok got the headlines. Tilghman got the reputation as a man to avoid at all costs.

  Yet, unlike many peace officers, he was a family man. He’d married a Kansas girl, and together with another old friend, Neal Brown, they had built a ranch outside Dodge City. Their principal business was raising horses, providing saddlestock for the Army as well as other ranches. Then, not quite six months past, Tilghman’s wife had suddenly taken ill with influenza and died.

  To Tilghman, her death somehow represented an end to that part of his life. Shortly afterward he’d sold the ranch except for the finest breeding stock, and resigned as marshal of Dodge City. The Oklahoma Land Rush was forthcoming, and he had seen that as a new beginning, a place without raw memories. Once he was settled, he planned to send for Neal Brown and the horses. His attention was now fixed on Oklahoma Territory. A new life.

  Tilghman and Sutton had arrived early that afternoon aboard the lead train in a caravan of eleven trains organized by the Santa Fe. Their immediate goal was the townsite of Guthrie, some twenty miles south, situated along the railroad tracks just below the Cimarron River. Tilghman had chosen Guthrie over the other major townsite, Oklahoma City, based on his assessment of the economic future of the territory. Before nightfall tomorrow he meant to have a sizable stake in that future.

  Behind him in Kansas, Tilghman had left fame. Somehow, once he’d buried his wife, his reputation as a lawman had ceased to matter. The new life he envisioned was
that of a businessman, a man of property and substance. Others would come along to take up the badge, enforce the law, and put the lawless behind bars. He was content to leave the past in the past.

  Fred Sutton moved to stand beside him. For a moment, they stared out over the campfires, into the darkness beyond. Then, with a bemused smile, Sutton motioned southward.

  “What do you see out there, Bill?”

  “Nothing,” Tilghman said slowly. “And everything.”

  What he saw was a land where a man of thirty-five could start fresh. A world newborn.

  CHAPTER 2

  The noonday sun was almost directly overhead. A cavalry officer, followed by a trooper with a bugle, rode slowly to a high point of ground. Below, a thin line of mounted troopers, extending east and west out of sight, held their carbines pointed skyward.

  Silence enveloped the land. The quiet was eerie, an unnatural stillness, broken only by the stamping hooves of horses and the chuffing hiss of locomotives. On the small knoll the army officer stared at his pocket watch, and in the distance, hushed and waiting, over fifty thousand homesteaders stared at the knoll. The Oklahoma Land Rush was about to begin.

  Tilghman and Sutton were seated in the first passenger coach on the lead train. They watched through the windows as men on swift ponies and those aboard wagons struggled to hold their horses in check. Tilghman knew that the horseback riders, at the beginning of the race, would outdistance the train. But the Guthrie townsite was twenty miles south, and no horse could outrun a train over that distance. He was confident of winning the race.

  Overnight the news circulated that added trains had been laid on at the southern boundary of the Unassigned Lands. Yet Tilghman was unconcerned, for the jump-off point was the South Canadian River, closer to the Oklahoma City townsite than to Guthrie. That news, along with thousands more arriving at the northern boundary during the night, widely increased the air of tension and excitement. There were now over one hundred thousand poised for the land rush.

  The troublesome thing to Tilghman was not the number of people. Instead, he was bothered by those who refused to play by the rules. These men were being called Sooners, since they crossed the line too soon. Despite the soldiers’ vigilance, they had sneaked over the border under cover of darkness, planning to hide until the run started and then lay claim to the choice lands. Cavalry patrols had flushed hundreds of them out of hiding, but word spread that there were several times that number who had escaped detection. This left the law-abiding homesteaders in an ugly mood.