Centennial

by James A. Michener

  I would especially advise against dabbling in the Johnson County War, in which a Pullman train of Cheyenne Club types rode north with a massive arsenal to end, once and for all, the cattle rustling. Like an invading army, they shot up the countryside, checking off names from the list they had prepared in advance. There are some great photographs of the invasion, including one showing the entire army as its members awaited trial in Cheyenne. They were set free, of course, on the historic principle that the men who had been shot were probably better off dead. The cattlemen had a just grievance; local juries refused to find their neighbors guilty of rustling even when caught in the act, and vigilante action seemed the only recourse. Today, in ranching Wyoming, tempers are still high over the affair, with evidence being fabricated and suppressed on both sides, and it’s wisest to stand clear until the gunsmoke clears, which will probably not occur until sometime around 1995.

  Irrigation. When I last flew over the Platte east of Centennial, I could not believe my eyes. It was late August, at the end of the driest period of the year, and for miles at a stretch, the riverbed was dry. Not a drop of water. Then suddenly for ten or fifteen miles it would become a flowing river, after which it would go dry again. What was happening was Potato Brumbaugh’s dream in action. Indeed, the dream had been exceeded, because with improved conservation techniques, the Platte was recovering not the thirty-seven percent of diverted water that he had predicted, but almost fifty percent. Each drop, as he had foreseen, was being used six or seven times and in obedience to such a well-conceived plan, when the Platte finally reached the exit point, it was carrying exactly the 120 cusecs which the Supreme Court had directed Colorado to deliver to Nebraska. No other place in the world uses so wisely every drop of water to which it is entitled by law.

  Blizzard. In Montana the 1887 storms were even more devastating than in Wyoming, and if you want illustrative incidents or woodcut pictures of the disaster, they abound. Curiously, for Colorado south of the Platte the worst year was 1886, and you will find accounts which cite that as the bad year, but do not alter your text. For the area north of the Platte, things happened as I describe. In the winter of 1949 the worst blizzard in history struck the Wyoming ranches, exceeding even the one of 1887. This time government records and newspaper photographs documented events. (1) Cowboys had to lash themselves together with rope before attempting to negotiate the fifty feet separating bunkhouse from kitchen; (2) a helicopter flew 220 miles north from Cheyenne and saw no barns or houses, since all were submerged in snowdrifts; (3) the wind was so fierce and the snow so close to sleet that ice particles blown into the noses of cattle suffocated them; and (4) some ranchers could reach their horses only by digging tunnels from kitchen to barn.

  Chapter 11

  THE CRIME

  There was a dark side to western history, and many a family that later attained prominence did so only because some enterprising progenitor had known when to strike and how to keep his mouth shut.

  Two men, long-tested friends, would enter a valley together prospecting for gold; one would emerge with an ironclad claim to the mine they had discovered, leaving the other six feet deep with a bullet in his back.

  Or three men, trusted partners in numerous difficult deals, would ride into an arroyo, and one would be dry-gulched, with the desirable result that profits could be split two ways instead of three.

  Such things happened in towns, too. In the summer of 1889 Centennial witnessed a grisly affair which affected the way the town developed. It began in Minnesota when a Mr. Soren Sorenson went to his bank, withdrew his funds, placed them in a small black bag and told the banker, “It’s too cold here. Gonna try my luck in Colorado.”

  “The American cowboy is the dumbest man on earth and the rancher who employs him is even worse.”

  The speaker was a forty-eight-year-old sheriff named Axel Dumire, a small, lean man with a bulldog jaw. He wore twin holsters for the Colt .45s he wanted people to see when he stalked the town. He had Texas-style boots, filigreed with silver, and a Texas hat, even though he had never been in that state. He did not wear a jacket of any kind, preferring a heavy red-flannel shirt, whose sleeves were kept up by elastic arm bands, and a leather vest.

  He had reached Centennial after service in a long series of west Kansas towns, where his soft-spoken ways, good humor and flinty resolution made him respected if not feared. Only rarely had he found it necessary to draw his guns, and then he held them hip-high, walking steadily forward and relying upon his determination and obvious willingness to shoot it out to force his opponent to back down. So far he had succeeded.

  After the spate of killings in the range wars between cattlemen and sheepherders, the citizens of Centennial felt they should import a lawman to quieten things down, and Axel Dumire had done just that. His calm persuasion had encouraged the warring sides to make peace, and his reputation as a tough enforcer had kept killers out of town. The big job was done, but the little jobs were never done.

  “There’s always a circus comin’ to town,” Dumire said one June morning as he studied the handbill for Cartright’s Sensational Congress of Heroism and Courage ... Scores of Wild Animals ... Most Thrilling Act in the World ... Daring Dan and the Apache.

  “You ever seen Daring Dan?” he asked the loungers. on the porch of the Railway Arms. “He’s legitimate. Best shot I ever saw. Wait till you see what happens.”

  “Sounds as if you admire him,” one of the men said.

  “I do,” the sheriff confessed. “I admire any man who can do what he’s done.”

  “What’s he done?” the man asked.

  “Pay your money and see.” He resumed his conversation with the other men. “It’s the rabble that follow the circus that gives me trouble. The cheats, the three-card monte experts and that damned thimble game. Our cowboys just throw their money away, with never a chance of winning.”

  “Don’t you always say ranchers are just as dumb?”

  “They are. A man with a good education accepts responsibility for rennin’ a ranch worth a million dollars and then comes to the circus and allows some fast-talkin’ con artist to sell him one-third of Yellowstone Park—and you know what clinches the sale? The crook offers him the middle third, where the hot water is, so’s his cows can graze through the winter without danger of the place freezin’ up.”

  “Nobody’s that dumb!”

  “I could name one right here,” the sheriff said, staring at a tall, thin cattleman who was listening from the edge of the group. “He went into one of the girlie tents. Saw this pretty octoroon with nothin’ on. For twenty-five cents he was allowed to pat her on the ass and for seventy-five more he could pluck a hair out of her front.” The men turned toward the tall man and began laughing. “Yes,” Dumire said, “we’re speakin’ of you, Joe.” The tall man blushed and offered no defense.

  “So this year I intend to keep the circus reasonably clean, and if I have to deputize some of you men for the next two days, I want your help. First man I’m goin’ to call on, since he’s had experience, is you, Joe.”

  The Cartright Circus traveled by train, and on Saturday morning the six o’clock freight that hauled milk to Denver brought the five brightly colored cars to Centennial, where they were cheered by most of the town’s children and a good many of their elders.

  The big tent occupied one car, and from it the roustabouts piled out briskly, enlisting the help of local young men to raise the canvas on the vacant lot north of Zendt’s old store. A manager of sorts also appeared, moving among the crowd and warning them, “Please stay clear of the other cars. The most ferocious animals in the world are sleeping there, and were you to arouse them ...” He allowed the townspeople to imagine what might follow.

  At a quarter to eight exciting things began to happen. A lion in one of the cars roared, and people standing near could feel the air vibrate, and then from the first car a charming woman in her early thirties appeared, with a professional savior-faire that captivated the local men. Nodding
in various directions, she walked along the cars, entering the one with the animals. Her arrival occasioned much bellowing and snorting within the car, and after some moments of this she appeared at the door, asking in a soft voice, “Is there, perhaps, some young man on the platform who would like to help me with the lions?”

  The question caused an explosion of shouts and encouragings, and finally a gawky youth who worked on Potato Brumbaugh’s sugar-beet farm stepped forward. Hesitantly he moved toward where the woman waited, and when he reached her she held out both hands and helped him onto the step.

  “What is your name?” she asked.

  “Milton.”

  “Milton is a very brave young man,” she said to the crowd. She led him inside, and shortly after he had disappeared a horse or a zebra started kicking the wall of the car furiously and the lion roared, and after a while Milton appeared at the door, his face radiant.

  “Thank you, Milton,” the woman said in a delightful, low voice, and as he was about to leave, she kissed him.

  Axel Dumire, watching these proceedings with a practiced eye, told his tall deputy, “The bad actors ain’t appeared yet,” but then he saw emerging from the second sleeping car a pair of men whose very appearance bespoke craftiness. They came into the bright summer sunlight like slugs from beneath a rock, and what they saw reassured them: a lot of cowboys, a lot of local boobs waiting for games, and especially a group of businessmen on the lookout for something good.

  One of the men was thin, hawk-eyed. The other was comfortably fat, bulging from a coat two sizes too small. Harry and Meurice, they called themselves, and with the blandness of rattlesnakes leaving hibernation, too torpid to do damage, they surveyed the crowd, spotted the sheriff and walked up to him.

  “Mornin’, Sheriff,” Meurice, the fat man said. “What’s the rules?”

  “No monte, no shell game, no sellin’ ideas.”

  The thin man smiled benignly. “You make it rather difficult, my good man.”

  “I’m not your good man,” Dumire said quietly. “And I’ll be watching you every moment.”

  The fat man did not alter his attitude. With a smile dripping with duplicity, he said, “With the amount of murder goin’ on around here, I’d think you’d haul your fancy boots off to where the criminals are, but I suppose they’re buyin’ you off.”

  Dumire did not change his expression. “They are, Meurice, they are. But this weekend they promised to do no killin’, so’s I could watch you.” The two men bowed formally, then Meurice took Harry by the arm and began to circulate among the crowd.

  That Saturday Dumire and his deputies kept the circus reasonably clean. There were the usual complaints from cowboys who had bought things that didn’t exist, and the sheriff tried to force restitution, but usually the complaining cowboy could not find the man who had swindled him. A couple of side shows operated, to no one’s serious disadvantage and to the total amazement of the younger cowboys. There was an acceptable amount of pick-pocketing, and some rather incandescent sales opportunities were offered to gullible ranchers, but by and large Axel Dumire kept the thing in bounds.

  “It’s a pretty fair circus,” he conceded as he found the free seat provided by the management. Across the way sat John Skimmerhorn, too cautious to be taken in by the grifters, and not far away Jim Lloyd. In the cheap seats he saw Amos Calendar, who rarely appeared in town, sitting alone, of course.

  The circus acts went off handsomely, with the lions roaring at the right time. The tightrope walkers were exceptional, threatening to fall and calling forth screams of horrified delight from the women and children, but Sheriff Dumire told the men around him, “If you appreciate guns, wait’ll you see Daring Dan.”

  Intermission came, and the sheriff caught sight of Harry and Meurice working a swift thimble game, with gape-mouthed cowboys refusing to believe that the pea was not under the thimble they had bet on. The sheriff smiled and walked the other way. “To this day I cannot understand how those men shift that damned pea. You ever played the game?” he asked one of his deputies.

  “Nope.”

  “Give it a hand.”

  The man took off his badge, and while Dumire stayed in the shadows, walked up to the table where Meurice talked like a Gatling gun while Harry shifted the three thimbles, depositing the pea very obviously under one of them. Dumire chuckled as his man put down fifty cents and indicated which thimble held the pea—it had to be there, because the deputy had seen it go under. To Dumire’s discomfort, Harry lifted the thimble and there the pea was. Handing over the money which Dumire’s man had won, Meurice smiled generously and said in a loud voice, “You beat us that time, Deputy,” and the crowd laughed as the officer withdrew.

  The second half of the performance contained the best acts, and excitement rose as the time for Daring Dan and the Apache approached. The gaslights were turned down and the ringmaster appeared with his megaphone. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said in deep, dulcet tones, “we bring you now the greatest act in the history of the circus. Not Rome nor Babylonia nor the crowned heads of Europe ...” He delivered an introduction that rose in hyperbole, and at the end he was shouting at the top of his powerful voice, “Daring Dan and his tribe of wild Apache ...”

  Into the center of the arena, riding a large white horse, came a man in his fifties dressed in an exaggerated cowboy uniform, with woolly chaps, brocaded vest and silver-tassled hat. He was a good rider and wore, like Sheriff Dumire, two guns.

  Now an assistant rode out and started throwing large glass balls in the air, which Daring Dan, using the gun in his right hand, shot down. It was a fine exhibition and the crowd cheered.

  From the band carne an ominous roll of drums. The assistant scurried off, and into the arena came “the thundering horde” of six Apache, making up in noise and horsemanship what they lacked in numbers. They circled Daring Dan, discharging both arrows and gunfire at him. Gallantly he stood them off, but they overpowered him, and women screamed in real terror as one Apache drew back his tomahawk and actually chopped off the white man’s right arm. Blood, in the form of red liquid carried in a sack, spurted down the arm and across the Indian’s face, and to a wild cascade of trumpets and drums, the six Apache rode off, bearing the severed arm in the air.

  A hush fell over the tent as two army doctors in white rushed in to operate on Daring Dan, while the ringmaster said in churchlike tones, “Ever on guard to protect brave men, the good surgeons of our devoted army come to the aid of the dying man—they halt the bleeding, they mend the wound Oh, glory be, they effect a miraculous cure!” HHis voice rose to a tremendous crescendo as he shouted, “Daring Dan walks again!”

  The doctors disappeared and the ringmaster’s voice lowered as he explained, “Driven by a courage that few men have known, Daring Dan refused to admit defeat. He dedicates himself to the task of learning to fire with his left arm, which he had never previously used. Watch, watch as this courageous man ...”

  “Jesus Christ!” came a voice from the cheap seats. “It’s Canby?” And from the more expensive seats across from the sheriff, Jim Lloyd shouted, “It is Canby!”

  It was Mule Canby, who had done pretty much what the ringmaster was saying. Deposited at Fort Union in the spring of 1868 by Poteet, he had found himself with no right arm and no profession. He had trained himself to fire with his left hand, and was now one of the top marksmen of the world, a fact which he proceeded to prove with a display that was remarkable.

  Again the six Apache attacked him as the ringmaster intoned, “But this time Daring Dan is more than a match for them,” and as they kept their pintos galloping in a circle around him, he stood undaunted and picked the Indians off, one by one, the braves falling skillfully from their ponies and sliding in the dust.

  “Yeah, Canby!” Calendar shouted from the darkness, with Jim Lloyd taking up the cry as the entire audience rose to cheer their resurrected hero.

  It was traditional, when a circus played Centennial on a Saturday, for it to lay ov
er on Sunday and cooperate with the local churches in the holding of a joint community service on Sunday night. The circus band played hymns. A choir made up of men and women sang, and the local women served a dinner to which the circus people were invited.

  Early Sunday morning Sheriff Dumire appeared at the circus train to announce that he was putting Harry and Meurice in jail until the train pulled out that night, and they went off peacefully with him. Dumire had given them a fairly free run on Saturday and they understood that he did not want them cluttering up things on Sunday.

  Jim invited Calendar and Mule Canby to ride out into the country with him; John Skimmerhorn wanted to come along, so the four old trail hands lit out for Rattlesnake Buttes, and as they rode slowly through the blazing heat, Canby told them snatches of his life following the loss of his arm.

  “It’s like the fellow said with the megaphone.” He started to give details, but stopped. “You’ll hear it tonight. I deliver an inspirational message. What I say isn’t all true. The fellow wrote it for me, but mostly it’s true.”