The Gallows at Green Butte

A man don’t end up at the gallows ‘cause he stole a horse or looked at somebody’s wife too long. Not out in Green Butte. No, sir. Out there, the law was more of a suggestion—a whispered maybe that traveled slower than a bullet and meant even less.

His full name was Silas Ulysses Boone. Folks called him “Sy” if he liked you, “Mister Boone” if he didn’t. And nobody ever had any doubt which was which.

I called him “Sy.” Very few of us did.

He was the kind of man who never raised his voice but still made the room quieter just by walkin’ into it. No one really knew how he made his money, but it was clear he had a lot of it—so much that he never really had much use or concern for it—the sort of fella for whom money was a concept more than a daily reality.

Some folks said he stole all his money—Confederate gold that went missing in the war. Others said it was the Union he robbed from. Some said he was a bank robber, and other, kinder souls, said he’d inherited it from a rich uncle—who he had killed with his bare hands.

But nobody ever thought he got it honest.

I might be the only one who knew the truth: He was an outfitter. Every time men went gold-crazy in the territories because some wayward youngster found a few gold nuggets, Sy had been the guy to sell them wagon wheels, and shovels, picks, and pans. And once he had already made a few small fortunes, it hadn’t taken very long for Sy to figure out the art of seeding a hill and creating a fresh demand. He would seed a hill or canyon with $1000 in gold nuggets, tip off some unsuspecting soul who would then “discover” gold. A swarm of men looking for instant wealth would descend on the area and then Sy would sell them $25,000 in “mining essentials” within a month. Smart business. Corrupt as all hell, but smart.

Sy had a way of lookin’ at you that would make any man wonder what part of his soul Sy had already weighed and found wantin’.

I come to know him in the spring of ’83. Snow still clung to the hills like a drunk to a bar rail, and I’d just rode in from Cheyenne with the last of my pension folded into my boot. Name’s August Reddin—Gus for short. I’d fought in the war, seen too much of what men become when they think God ain’t watchin’. Thought I’d seen it all.

Thought wrong.

Green Butte wasn’t on any map that mattered. Railroad skipped over it. Telegraph line veered east like it was avoidin’ somethin’. Dust hung in the air like a memory nobody wanted to forget. One saloon, two brothels, half a jail, and more ambition than sense.

After everything I had seen in the war, Green Butte was my kind of town: Small. Simple. Away from the stresses of the bigger cities I had both lived in and visited—and best of all: The town was almost completely void of any reminders of the war. Hard to come by in those days.

I didn’t know who Sy was. Not then. Not yet.

I was bunkin’ above Miss Annie’s dry goods when I first heard his name whispered between sips of whiskey. Already the whispers had started. Gossip flows through small towns like Green Butte the way syphilis spreads through a whore house.

He threw lavish parties at his house most weekends—invited the whole town. I was skeptical about why a man would do such a thing, but there was good hot food and booze so I went. For several weeks, I went.

I would grab a plate of food and find my way to a quiet place outside on the large, wrap around porch. I’m not much of a party person. I’d sit out on that expansive porch, alone, mindful that instead of holding court, Sy was, himself occupying a seat of his own there in the dark—sharing the porch but always alone.

He never had a plate of food. Never with other people. Always with a bottle of whiskey that started the night full and ended the night half empty.

I kept my distance until at last, after a few months of this dance, Sy invited me further back—to pull up a seat.

I did.

We didn’t speak. Not that night. Not any night for the next half dozen parties. We sat. We ate, we drank, and we stared out into the night.

One night, sittin’ on that porch, he asked me what I saw when I looked out over his land.

“Torchlight,” I said. “And ghosts.”

He nodded once. “That’s about right.”

Then he was silent again. So was I.

And so it was for quite some time to come.

Silas Boone was a riddle carved into stone. Didn’t say much, but when he did, I listened. Like the wind had stopped just to hear him talk.

He never danced, never laughed, never left the porch. Just watched the night. Just like me.

I had my reasons. And I s’posed he had his too.

Something was different with him though. I started to think maybe he was waiting on someone.

The fact that Sy threw lavish parties at his house and invited all the town folks without explanation, did little to ease his reputation.

One night, he confided in me his reasons for throwing parties so frequently. “Amy was such a social butterfly,” he said. “She was the one who started with the tradition of the parties. They were her thing. They made her happy. So they made me happy. Amy loved to see and be seen.”

“Amy was your wife?” I asked.

He nodded. Clearly a man in grief who didn’t want to expand on that. He paused before continuing.

“She used to get such a kick” out of playing hostess for large crowds of admirers,” he’d said, with reverence, as if I were not even there on the porch with him. “God, she was a beauty!”

He went quiet. I figured he was done talking for the night. So I took another bite of my steak.

While folks inside dined on his china and drank from crystal stemware, Sy and I sat in a quiet corner of the back porch. He took a generous gulp from his whiskey—straight from the bottle—completely unfazed by the party happening inside.

You could have knocked me over with a feather when he spoke again. I nearly choked on a forkful of mashed potatoes.

“I guess I throw these parties to try to remember her,” he said. “It never works.”

A tear formed in his eye and disappeared as quickly as it appeared when he broke his thousand yard stare and looked me straight in the eyes with a smirk.

He gestured toward the house. The clinking of glasses and the sounds of conversation assaulted our ears. He leaned in “And this is how you create power when you’re new in town but want to run the place.”

I met his gaze but I did not speak. Instinctively I knew if I did, like a fourteen point buck realizing it was being observed, he’d disappear.

“It’s true,” he continued. “I’ve lived a lot of places. And one thing Amy taught me was that the man who pays the band, the cooks, and the service staff is the man in charge—and that translates beyond the party.”

“Is that why you never go inside?” I asked softly.

He looked startled. I’d broken the trance. Then, a genuine, but controlled smile spread across his face as he patted me on the knee and stood. He reached for his hat and said “No. I stay out here because I hate these people.”

He paused and nodded toward the house. “Every fucking last one of them.”

He placed a thick, heavy hand on my shoulder and squeezed. With the other, he handed me his half drunk whiskey bottle and patted me on the shoulder.

“You’re my only friend, Gus,” he said matter of factly. It was neither a compliment nor a confession. Just a statement—like he was telling me the porch needed painting—which it never did.

“Then, why?” I asked

He laughed aloud and pointed out toward the nearby foothills. “There’s gold in those hills—or at least there will be.”

He winked and walked out into the night.

And so it went.

---

Then one evening, she came.

She rode in beside a man named Nathaniel Coyle—a man I’d seen in the papers before—a big railroad man with a banker’s sneer and a spine made of ash. Their buggy gleamed like a coffin on wheels. She stepped down in a green dress that didn’t belong to this world. Hair up, eyes sharp, lips set in that way women do when they’re tryin’ not to tremble.

Sy didn’t move at first. Then he let out a deep sigh.

“Amy,” he whispered.

I looked at his nearly half-drunk whiskey bottle and figured he’d maybe outdone himself.

“Sy,” I whispered. “That’s not Amy. Amy’s dead.”

He turned. For a moment, I thought he might hit me. Instead he growled.

“I never said that!”

Then he turned, picked up his hat and strode toward the arriving couple.

They spoke angrily in hushed tones.

Coyle stood beside them. He glared, but said nothin’.

I held my breath.

Finally the woman waved her companion on. I stood and ushered the man inside. Even I knew the porch was off limits tonight. I also kept an eye on Coyle.

Outside, Sy and Amy talked. Just the two of them. Low, private.

I didn’t like the party atmosphere, so I found my way back outside— to the side of the house where I could still be of use if the situation called for it.

I caught pieces of their sometimes heated conversation—mentions of St. Louis, of trains missed and letters burned. Years passed between ‘em in every word.

Then through a window, I watched as Coyle started drinkin’.

Hard.

By the time the fiddle hit its third reel, he was pacing, ranting. I walked in the back door Just as Sy made his way in the front.

Coyle called Sy a bastard, a bootlegger, a mongrel livin’ in a fantasy. Amy stepped in and tried to hush him—put a hand on his chest.

He slapped it away.

That did it.

He raised his voice. Called her a whore. Called Sy a coward in front of thirty witnesses.

Sy just looked at him.

Didn’t raise a hand. Didn’t say a word.

The way one witness described what happened next was like this:

“Then came the crack. No one knew where it came from. The shooter was too fast.”

As I recall it, the sound of the pistol was sharp. Clean. Echoed like judgment.

Coyle hit the ground with a bloom of red on his chest.

That was followed by screaming.

A stampede of boots.

Panic.

The sheriff found Sy sittin’ on the porch, same chair, same whiskey bottle, empty for the first time since I’d met him. Hands empty.

No gun.

Just silence.

The sheriff arrested him anyway. Didn’t matter if he did it or not. The dead man was a railroad man. Sy was his mortal enemy. The railroad had money. Coyle had wanted Sy dead so now the railroad wanted him dead too—and money talks louder than justice out here.

Trial was theater. No one saw the shot. No weapon ever turned up. But the jury didn’t need proof. They needed closure. And a man like Sy—quiet, rich, different—made an easy villain.

He didn’t defend himself. Not once.

They gave him a week. Built the gallows on Boone Ridge, just past the west pasture.

I visited him once. Jail behind the church smelled like piss and rot. He looked older. Like he’d already buried himself.

“Wasn’t me,” he said.

I nodded.

“I know.”

He handed me a letter. Said it was for a man named Harmon, out near St. Joseph—his lawyer.

The seal was waxed with a signet. I knew instinctively what it was. I tucked it into my hat for safe keeping.

The day of the hanging came cold. The sky was iron. Wind was full of dust and regret.

Sy walked without chains. Black coat. No hat. No priest.

No last words.

The trap dropped. The rope cracked, muffling the sound of his neck snapping.

He twitched a bit and then just like that, Sy was gone.

---

Coyle’s grave got a marble headstone he didn’t earn.

Folks stopped talkin’. Parties ended. House went quiet for a time.

The lawyer said Sy had left it all to me. I expected that. After all—I was his only friend.

So I got the House.

I got the money.

I got the business.

I got the town.

I got it all.

And it turns out that even without seeding them, there was gold in those foothills after all.

And I’m selling the hell out of shovels.

The house came back to life.

So did the parties.

I live here now.

As to Amy—well, she’s inside.

She just put the baby down.

And now she’s holding court in the parlor.

Like Sy said:

She loves to see and be seen.

What a beauty.

Do I feel bad about what I did?

Sometimes.

But only for brief moments.

Sy was a swindler. He had it coming.

I was more than happy to kill for the man.

But why the hell would I die for him?