Centennial

by James A. Michener

  And so, as the year 1864 draws to its bloody close with the massacre at Rattlesnake Buttes, even reasonable men are concluding that the Indian will have to be exterminated, for coexistence of any kind has been proved impossible. Blood will flow across the prairies within six months, and in the end the Indians will be either wiped out or chased from Colorado soil, and the fault will be theirs, because they obstinately refuse to live the way the white man lives, and this cannot be tolerated.

  The press. You may want to pay some attention to Peter Held, the editor of the Zendt’s Farm Clarion. Son of a German printer and an English schoolteacher, he was born in Connecticut, and hauled a Columbian printing press from there to Pittsburgh, to Cincinnati, to Franklin, to St. Joseph, publishing newspapers at each stop. An ardent abolitionist, for economic rather than sentimental reasons, being convinced that slavery was not profitable, he watched through a haze of tar and feathers as his press was thrown into the Missouri by St. Joseph slaveholders, fished it out and hauled it along the Platte to Zendt’s Farm, where he published one of the most vigorous dailies in Colorado Territory. His violent animosity to the Indian stemmed from the fact that during his painful hike along the Platte his party was attacked by Kiowas and his younger son killed.

  He was a manifest-destiny man and proposed that the United States go to war with Great Britain over Oregon, with Mexico over the lands west of Texas, with France over islands in the Caribbean, with Russia over Alaska, and with Spain over almost any pretext. He saw clearly that irresistible forces of nationalism were in movement which must ultimately throw American settlers into all corners of the continent, and he preached that the sooner this occurred, the better.

  In the agonizing sheep wars of his later years he naturally favored extermination of the sheepmen, but in the battle for free coinage of silver he sided with the little man, for he better than most understood how the west was being strangled by eastern bankers and railroad men who held the nation to the gold standard. He was an unlovely, cantankerous, vengeful man, never loath to distort the news to serve his own preconceived ends. You may not care to exhibit him as a prime example of the western editor, but there were many like him.

  Chapter 8

  THE COWBOYS

  It became a legend of the west, and to this day men swear that it happened just so. An old-time cowboy will belly up to the bar and assert:

  “After General Lee surrendered at Appomattox one of his colonels, an of boy named R. J. Poteet, returned to his family home in southern Virginia to find it burned out. Plumb loco, he headed southwest, windin’ up in Palo Pinto County, Texas, in the fall of 18 and 65.

  “That winter he checked out the situation, which was damn near hopeless, and found that the only hand worth a nickel bet was those goddamn Texas longhorns, which had been runnin’ wild and unbranded durin’ the War. They were common as jackrabbits and could be bought for two bits a head, if you bothered to pay anybody for ’em. More’n likely, you just went out and slapped an iron on whatever you found. But those same critters, if you could deliver ’em to the army way north at Fort Laramie in Wyoming, would bring you four silver dollars each. All you had to do was gather ’em, head ’em out, and collect your fortune at the end of the trail.

  “So the colonel, he did just that. In the spring of 18 and 66 Poteet throwed a mixed bunch of three thousand head onto the trail and went through livin’ hell gettin’ them acrost the rivers, through Comanche country and past the Kansas Confederate outlaws who’d kill you quicker’n look at you just to steal your stock.

  “In the fall of 18 and 66—and that was one hell of a dry year, partner—Poteet got his three thousand cattle as far as Zendt’s Farm in Colorado, and there ol’ man winter took over. It stormed so bad, with so much snow, he couldn’t do nothin’ with his cattle. Caught short only two hundred lousy miles shy of Fort Laramie and not a goddamn thing he could do ... drifts higher’n a tall squaw’s ass and the mercury lower’n a skunk in a hole.

  “So with tears streamin’ down his cheeks, Poteet pushed his shiverin’ longhorns to them slopes north of Rattlesnake Buttes, and there left ’em to hustle for theirselves, God help ’em.

  “Sayin’ a sad goodbye to his poor critters, he beat his way back to Zendt’s Farm and spent that cold winter working for Levi at the new store Levi built after the stockade was burned to the ground durin’ the Indian troubles, and when spring come the colonel, just to satisfy hisself, left the store and rode out to look for the remains of his poor dead cattle. Still sore as hell at his loss, he rode over a ridge at the Buttes, and what did he see? Down in the draws he saw hunerds and hunerds of his dead longhorns—only they wasn’t dead at all, just feedin’ and peaceful-like on the new spring grass, the cows droppin’ perky new calves and the whole bunch in better shape than when he’d left ’em.

  “True as I’m standin’, friend, that’s how stockmen discovered that the useless, brown, scrawny buffalo grass and the blue grama was solid feed, mebbe the best there is, because when winter threatens, this grass sucks back into its stem all the minerals and such that cattle need, and if they can only find enough open country where the snows have blowed off, they’ll winter okay. So help me, the whole Colorado cattle industry was started by Colonel Poteet when he turned them Texas cattle out to die that day at Rattlesnake Buttes.”

  Unfortunately, almost every statement in this version of the legend was false. The story of abandoned cattle that survived a blizzard winter first surfaced around 1822 and involved trappers at the rendezvous. It was repeated as gospel in 1844, but this time dealt with cattle left to die along the Oregon Trail. In 1846 it was Mormons who deserted them, and in 1849 the California gold-seekers. Almost every ranch in Colorado, Wyoming or Montana claimed that this climactic event occurred within its boundaries, and one popular version says it happened as late as 1879.

  In the version just cited, the cowboy got the year wrong, the price of the cattle wrong and the homesite of his hero wrong. The only thing he had right was Poteet’s name and the fact that he was an extraordinary man. What really happened was this:

  In the late autumn of 1867 Levi Zendt was working at the new store with his wife. After the Indian raids, they had moved their location from the old site at the confluence of Beaver Creek and the Platte to higher ground some distance to the north, selling off at a good profit much of the land now occupied by the growing town of Zendt’s Farm.

  As Levi worked he saw a stranger approaching, and from the man’s manner of walking he felt that he had known him somewhere before. It was Lucinda who recognized their visitor, for she remembered him as her dancing partner at Fort John in the summer of 1844.

  “It’s Oliver Seccombe! After all these years!” she cried, and she wanted to run from the store to greet him, but she was restrained by her recollection of what Levi had once told her: “When the Conestoga broke in half, and we were alone on the prairie, he went off whistlin’ without a care in the world, and his man stole my Michael Fordney rifle.” So she held back.

  It was indeed Oliver Seccombe, come back from Oregon, where he had spent the last twenty-three years, barring two trips to England. It was during the latter of these trips that he had entertained the brainstorm that was to make him rich.

  “Levi,” he said with excitement as soon as he was seated in the kitchen, “in England there are men with so much money ... they make it in India, Australia ... barrels of it ... and they’re looking for somewhere to invest it. When I was in Bristol, I kept remembering those empty lands you and I crossed together.”

  Sipping a cup of the lapsang souchong old Alexander McKeag had loved, he recalled the vast plains he and Levi had known in the old days. “I saw them as an ocean of grass, dark and brown, supporting those herds of buffalo ... Remember?”

  Levi did remember—Seccombe’s flashy manner when first they met in Missouri, his basic irresponsibility—and he was disposed to have nothing further to do with him. But he also remembered that when Elly was drowning in the Big Blue, it had be
en Seccombe who leaped into the flood to save her, so he listened as the Englishman said, “It came to me in a flash. If those plains that Captain Mercy claimed were desert could sustain all those buffalo, they couldn’t be desert at all. They had to be some of the best grazing land in the world, only different.”

  Lucinda asked, “What’s your plan?”

  Seccombe tapped papers in his left pocket. “I have powers here, and the money to back them up, to acquire a couple of million acres of this land right here—the kind we passed through, Levi.”

  “And what will you do with it?” Lucinda asked.

  “I have heard,” he said, “that in Texas, because of the late war, you can buy longhorns—those cattle with horns on their heads like rocking chairs—for twenty-five cents apiece. I want to bring a great herd of them north across the open range, and when I get them here, fatten them up and breed them, and pretty soon I’ll have a herd of a hundred thousand feeding on the rich grass, and each year I’ll sell off the steers to the army for five and six dollars a head.” He paused dramatically and said, “That’s what you and I are going to do, Levi. You help me get the land, I’ll get the cattle and we’ll use the money of Englishmen sitting on their fancy bottoms in Bristol.”

  He asked for another cup of tea, and as he sipped it he became more relaxed. “Don’t expect you’ve ever heard of Earl Venneford of Wye? Very powerful man in Bristol and London and a very sporting one. I put the proposition to him and he recognized its possibilities immediately. The Venneford Ranch, we’re going to call it, and both Lord Venneford and I are thinking in a big way. Levi, we want to control all the land from the Rockies on the west clear to Nebraska and as far north of the Platte as we can reach.”

  “He has enough money to buy all that land?” Zendt asked.

  “Well, there’s where you come in.”

  “Lucinda and I have some savings—in St. Louis—but not ...”

  Seccombe looked toward the doorway to assure himself that no customer had entered. “It won’t cost you anything,” he confided, and from his right pocket he produced a rough map of northeastern Colorado Territory, with the Platte River drawn conspicuously and showing numerous small streams running into it from the north. “Under the new Homestead Act—” he began pontifically.

  “I know,” Levi interrupted. “I got title to some of my land under that act.”

  Ignoring the interruption, Seccombe continued: “Under this act the trick is to get title only to those parcels of land that control water. Get a hundred and sixty acres of such land, and you control ten thousand acres of range land that has no water,” and here he directed the Zendts’ attention to markings on his map. Darting his forefinger quickly from spot to spot, he said, “I’ve worked out that there are seventeen crucial spots we’ve got to have. This stream bank, this junction, this spring up in the hills. When we get them—those few little spots—we’ll own the rest of the range without putting down one cent.”

  “I don’t see what you mean,” Levi said.

  “Look! Take this spot where Skunk Hollow joins Beaver Creek. Give me that and I’ll give you a hundred thousand acres north of it, because without my water, there isn’t a damned thing anyone can do with those acres. Those hundred thousand don’t belong to me, but if I control the water, they’re useless to anyone else.”

  So the Zendts went over the map with him, checking each critical spot: “Those two parcels along the Platte were taken up by Otto Kraenzel, and I doubt he’d sell. Those two along the creek were taken up by a man named Troxell, and I know you could buy them cheap. Now you’re lookin’ at Brumbaugh’s farm, and I’m certain he won’t sell. That next parcel—no one has filed on it, so far’s I know.”

  “Get Lucinda to file on it tomorrow,” said Seccombe eagerly. “And how about this section at Skunk Hollow? They’ve overlooked that, haven’t they?”

  “I’ve never been there.”

  “That one I’ll file on,” Seccombe said, “and with it I’ll control a hundred thousand acres of grass.”

  And so they laid their plans. A farm hand would be persuaded to file on this section; his sweetheart, on that; a man out of work, on the one where the creek leaves the canyon, for that would be crucial, because the man who could block the canyon mouth would control the entire canyon of forty thousand acres. By such judicious ownership, Oliver Seccombe and his London backers would spend a relatively small amount of money and gain for it a kingdom larger than many in Europe.

  This manipulation had been made possible by one of the finest laws ever passed in the American Congress, the Homestead Act of 1862, whereby the western lands once owned by Indians but now owned by the United States government, were given away in one-hundred-and-sixty-acre parcels to anyone who seriously intended living on the land and cultivating it. Proof of this intention was simple: a man had to build a habitation on his land, live in it for certain months each year, and farm forty of his acres for a period of five years. At the end of that time he got title, and the land was his in perpetuity. In the years following the Civil War, when rootless families threatened to menace stabilized society, they were adroitly converted into self-respecting citizens by the Homestead Act, and much of the greatness of states like Kansas and Minnesota and Colorado stemmed from the application of this wise law.

  The land that was not taken up by homesteaders, and much of it was not suitable for farming, remained the property of the government, free for the casual use of whoever could get to it, so that if Oliver Seccombe did succeed in gaining title to his seventeen crucial areas, he had the government’s blessing and encouragement to use several million additional acres.

  On the morning after his arrival at Zendt’s Farm, Seccombe filed for the ultra-critical section at Skunk Hollow, directed Lucinda to file on another good watershed and started to buy up the remaining creeks which had already passed into private ownership. Seven different friends filed for various pieces under his supervision, with the understanding that they would be sold to Seccombe as soon as title was assured.

  In one hectic week Seccombe put together a land holding of less than three thousand acres but dominating an area of 5,760,000, larger than Massachusetts and all to be controlled by gentlemen in Bristol, most of whom would never see it.

  Now came the problem of how to get the cattle north to stock it, and Seccombe had a plan. “Levi,” he said one night as they finished supper, “I’ve made up my mind. I want you to go down to Texas and bring up the cattle.”

  “I don’t know anything about drivin’ cattle,” the Dutchman protested.

  “You don’t need to know. You go down there, find an experienced cattleman and allow him to hire his help. You go along to protect our investment.”

  “I’m forty-seven,” Zendt said. “I’m stayin’ here,” and to this Lucinda agreed.

  “Well, if you won’t go, who can we get?”

  “By the way, it’s a little late to ask,” Zendt said, “but do you know anything about raisin’ cattle?”

  “If you live in Oregon long enough, you learn everything,” Seccombe replied with a satisfied smile.

  “Speakin’ of Oregon, whatever happened to Sam Purchas?”

  “Sam!” the Englishman said, recalling his difficulties with that valiant frontiersman. “The night after he delivered me safely at Willamette, as he was obliged to do by our contract, he treated me the way he did you—stole most of my gear and vanished.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Three months later he was hanged as a horse thief.”

  “Whatever did he do with my gun?” Levi asked.

  “That handsome one he stole from you?”

  “Yes. The curly-maple stock.”

  “He used it to club a bear over the head. Broke it in twenty pieces.”

  An overwhelming sadness came over Levi Zendt. He seldom thought of the past; there had been too much sorrow, too much death. But now he recalled that rifle made so lovingly by a man who had been so brutally murdered; Sam Purchas tr
ying to rape Elly in the dunes; the six beautiful gray horses long since dead in Missouri; the rattlesnake marks on Elly’s neck; the terrible pain of digging those graves for the Pasquinels. He propped his elbows on the kitchen table and lowered his forehead onto his fingertips—and for a long moment no one spoke.

  Finally Levi said, “The man you want is John Skimmerhorn. Lives in that house by the river.”

  “Skimmerhorn? Isn’t he the man who butchered those Indians?”

  “His son.”

  “The Skimmerhorn I’m thinking about moved to California after the troubles, and wherever he went some newspaper would find out about him and write articles that repeated the testimony given at the army hearings. He left California.” Seccombe tried to recall where he had gone—the papers had reported it, but the name of the town escaped him. “Would you trust young Skimmerhorn?”

  “Very dependable,” Levi said, and they walked down to the river toward the small house in which John Skimmerhorn lived. On the way Levi explained, “This town supported Colonel Skimmerhorn. To these people he was a great hero. That is, up to the moment he shot Mike Pasquinel in the back—right over there beyond the Clarion offices.”