Cutter's Business

Among the hard cases of Rocky Ridge the takeover of Tipton's conferred positions of prominence on Henry Cutter and Theodore Cole. Within days all had taken note of Cutter's ruthless efficiency: Here was a man to be watched. Feared. More astounding was the outlaw's ability to manage his affairs in the Ridge without the effusion of blood, although his alliance with the Dennisons conveyed no doubt as to inclination. Lethality perfused Henry Cutter; it was an augury revealed in the eyes of all Ridge malefactors as they watched him pass.

Teddy took over the faro operation, while Henry worked on expanding the facility to include a bathhouse, a new latrine and an enlarged gaming area and bar. The Dennison brothers served briefly as spotters and evening bouncers, but Cutter saw other opportunities for their talents and as soon as circumstance permitted he met privately with them in his lean-to office.

Raised in an Irish tenement on the lower west side of the island of Manhattan, Donál and Cormac Dennison had learned the blade and cudgel trade in the alleys and thoroughfares of the notorious Five Points slum. By the time they reached adolescence the boys had affiliated themselves with a couple of local gangs - the Daybreak Boys and the Slaughterhousers -which preyed upon pilgrims who wandered accidentally into the Points.

It was not these commonplace citizen assaults, but the murder of a sixth ward policeman that forced the boys’ hasty, permanent departure from the boroughs. The officer had pushed his skim of the thieves’ purse too far; his headless corpse was found hanging like a slaughtered hog from an Orange Street lamppost, his skull spiked on top. Too heinous for even the Tammany purlieu, the butchery shook the city and the resulting shakedown drove many sandbaggers and rowdies from the Points. So the Dennisons drifted west, taking their time on the Memphis wharves and in St. Louis, where, before hiring on as freighters, they polished their bloody craft, stalking unsuspecting emigrants in saloons and riverfront brothels, like wolves among the herds.

We’ve no limits here for them’s got the sand to earn, said Cutter as he poured cups of whiskey for the brothers.

He sat back on a creaking wooden chair, raised his cup and drained it. Question is, he said, how ready are ye to jump?

The brothers looked at each other. Donál was the first to speak.

Ain’t our first dance.

Me brother and me, we’re high steppers, said Cormac.

Cutter poured another round and leaned forward to rest his elbows on a worn table, looking at each of the brothers.
Well then, he whispered, here’s the way I see it…

They talked for an hour or more, and when the meeting finished the Dennison brothers left by the back door, walked to their camp and packed their belongings. That night they slept on the floor at Tipton’s and in the early morning hours they rose and pulled the loads from their weapons and recharged them. Then they saddled two unshod ponies, laded a pack mule and rode west out of Rocky Ridge into a driving rain that obscured their silhouettes before they reached the edge of the settlement.

It was a month before the Dennisons returned, driving several head of oxen and mules. The brothers would open a stock station next to Tipton’s, where emigrants could replace footsore teams. The trading resulted in the growth of their herd, with trail-worn animals fed and watered until they returned to good condition and could be traded again for spent animals and cash, at whatever prices the traffic would bear. A very profitable business along the Overland Trail.

Every so often the brothers would leave the Ridge to travel west again, always returning with more stock. Sometimes a wagonload of goods as well, sold or bartered through Tipton’s.

Their comings and goings seemed random, but they were not. In the cool evenings during their absences Cutter would emerge from the smoky bar to seat himself on an old ladderback chair in front of the shop. He'd lean against the log wall, clay pipe in hand, his legs stretched out, boots resting upon a small rock. On his lap would lay a Walker Colt, and behind his right ear nestled the stub of a pencil, which he would remove periodically to jot notes on a scrap of paper he kept in the pocket of his waistcoat.

From his vantage point Henry observed trail traffic as it wound its way up into the Ridge. Daytime travelers aside, he saw a good percentage of the small trains, would-be prospectors and tyro pilgrims arriving for much needed rest and refit. Occasional stagecoaches too, on the run from Julesburg to Salt Lake.

The paper in his pocket bore descriptions of some of these: the cripple, the tenderfoot, the solitary, the weak. Arrivals and departures. Every few days the notes were couriered to the Dennisons at some secret camp by a young, dark-skinned vaquero, or one of two Utes retained for that purpose.

Large, well-armed freighting outfits were never rostered; sent instead were details of the hapless and vulnerable - chronicles of the lost in a hostile country.