by Bruce Graham
I used the telephone at my home to arrange the physicians’ visits, although my letters to Judith were vague as to my exact time of arrival. I departed Trinidad in early August prepared for the worst but hoping for at least the good.
The Kansas City doctor was very young, so young appearing, in fact, that he was bearded, probably on the theory that it made him appear older and exuded an appearance of gravitas. The examination was long and tedious, the questions probing, and the verdict not to my liking: “The damage is done and an operation would likely only worsen the condition and hasten the onset of whatever adverse consequences are likely. Rather than risk an operation I recommend that the condition be left alone. It may stabilize in time and normal life will follow.” When the doctor heard that I earned my living as a gunfighter he was not any more sympathetic; “Fast and precise pistol use, at a clearly visible target, is out of the question and, if tried, may quickly be fatal. Perhaps alternatives, such as a detective, a bank guard, a security guard, will work. If I learn about any sort of more hopeful treatment, I’ll let you know.”
I advised the young Doctor that I’d be seeking a second opinion from a Doctor Rogers in Chicago.
In Chicago Doctor Rogers was a somewhat older, but still youthful man who eschewed facial hair, but was hardly more encouraging: “Surgery is not what I would recommend, because the science is not advanced enough to hold out high hope of a recovery. At this stage the most that could be hoped for would be some stabilization, but the risk is also substantial that when we got in there---.” He waved toward a wall chart of the head and brain. “---it would worsen your condition beyond remedy. I urge you to follow a program of less demanding work than that of a gunfighter, in hopes that you might enjoy many years of normal life. I will keep your name on file and if some advances in medicine cause me to reconsider, I’ll contact you.”
I spent two days in Chicago coming to terms with my condition. I then left to journey to Vermont. At the Bellows Falls train station I met for the first time Judith and her husband Richard Ackley, and two of their offspring, now in their thirties, one a merchant, the other the wife of a surveyor, and their children. When someone mentioned that I had lived for forty years in the West, one of the pre-adolescent children asked if I’d ever seen a gunfight like they’ve read about.
I wasn’t sure what to say.
“Perhaps your granduncle would rather not speak of it,” my niece said.
“You were in the Civil War, right?” exclaimed the other child holding his arms as if grasping a mythical rifle. “Did you kill any Johnny Rebs?”
I was silent for a few moments. Then: “Killing is something we don’t talk about. And it’s not like you read about or see in theaters.”
Judith, Ackley, my niece and her husband and I went to the cemetery at the Rockingham Union Church and set flowers on my father and mother’s graves. We then went into what was left of Lower Bartonsville. I saw what I had heard of decades earlier, the humbled condition of the hamlet, only a remnant of the bustling community of my youth, bereft of businesses and with a covered bridge over the “new” Williams River. Children and grownups frolicked in the water upstream from the bridge. “This was once a flourishing community,” I said. I pointed out the massive ruins of the mills and the hummocks that marked where the hotel and store had stood, and gazed at the house and grounds where Judith and I had grown up, ramshackle and overgrown. At a tiny store and Post Office in a brick house, a mere shadow of the emporium that in my youth was the focal point of community activity, whose shelves were half empty, the proprietress brightened slightly when I asked about John Bates.
“John is with the town highway crew,” the woman said. “He and his wife live on the Wilkey place toward Chester.”
“Which one is that,” I asked.
“Second one on the left past the Town Farm.”
“Oh, in La Grange.”
The woman’s blank stare told me that the long ago name meant nothing to her. “It’s in Upper Bartonsville.”
“As I remember it was the Morris place. They had three beautiful daughters.”
The woman shrugged. “Before my time. The wife and two sons run the farm.”
I persuaded my niece’s husband to drive over the rough road to the Wilkey place. It had run down some in forty years. I found a weary looking woman moving manure in a wheelbarrow from the cow barn along an elevated walkway and to a dung pile.
She stopped on a return to the barn and grunted a response to my salutation.
“I was in the Army with John during the Civil War.”
“Oh. You both came through it all right.”
“I’m Nathan Gould, from Lower Bartonsville.”
“I ain’t seen you around. You been away?”
“Out West.”
“Oh, yes, John mentioned you a couple of times. Wondered what became of you. He’ll be back from patrolling the roads about dark. No, he’ll be in town for the Selectmens’ meeting, telling them why they should get a motor truck. Probably won’t be back till eight or nine.”
My niece pulled on my sleeve. “We have to be getting back to the Falls.”
“Give John my regards,” I said to the woman. I began to say something more, but realized that it wouldn’t mean anything to the woman, and her mere mention of me to John would bring to his mind whatever I might say. “Good-bye.”
“Goodbye,” she grunted, and turned back to her manure shovel.
When we were on our way back toward Bellows Falls my niece’s husband shook his head. “It’s been like this all my life, the country mouse and the city mouse.” He was obviously in a hurry to return to the present and to what passed in Vermont as urban life, as he knew it. I spent an uneasy two more days before I departed on the train at Bellows Falls, exchanging addresses with Judith and my niece and telling each other what was well meant, but certainly understood all around, to be illusory promises to meet again soon.
The Green Mountains and then the Berkshires whirred by the train quickly enough, beautiful, but full of recollections of the reasons of why I had refused to return when my Army service ended forty and more years earlier.
And I knew why, when we’ve left home for another place, and made the other place our place, we can’t go home again, because it isn’t home anymore.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
While I was recuperating from what turned out to be my career ending injury the San Francisco earthquake and fire took place. I followed the stories about that catastrophe in the Rocky Mountain News and other newspapers that were available. One item struck a chord with me, beginning with an item under the byline of Oscar Quast in the News of April 27, 1906:
In the early digging out from the instant San Francisco earthquake and fire, searchers among the wreckage of a collapsed small rooming house discovered the body of a middle-aged man, whom the survivors identified as Thomas J. Prichard, who had lived there for nearly ten years. Due to his reclusive conduct during those ten years, details on him were lacking. His remains were prepared for the hasty burial demanded in those days and his possessions set aside for examination.
Among the man’s possessions were several suits of black denim garb, of the sort associated with cow towns and mining camps, gunfighters and shootouts on the dusty streets of the vanishing Wild West, an ornate black Stetson hat, black boots and a fancy black gun belt with matching Colt model 1873 .45 caliber pistols and ammunition. Also among his possessions was a metal box, secured by a padlock, which the authorities had no time to examine during the chaos following the disaster.
Before the deceased could be interred, however, a woman appeared who claimed the body, and the right to his possessions, as the former wife of Thomas Prichard. She established her identity as Rebecca Prichard, of Omaha, Nebraska. She referred the authorities to the deceased's effects for confirmation of her rights. The issue was confused by the man's habit--determined from a few of his acquaintances of years past--of using various aliases: David Kearn; Charles Algren; Willi
am Durkin; Robert Williams, and perhaps others.
A couple of pistol rounds served to open the deceased’s metal box, which yielded a marriage certificate between Thomas John Prichard and Rebecca Prichard, both then of Omaha, Nebraska, dated June 2, 1879, and bank records and voter identification and hospital treatment papers which confirmed his identity as Thomas Prichard. Also found in the box was a copy of a Nebraska divorce decree of 1883, a package of old business cards that bore the embossed outline of a chess set knight and the caption “HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL. WIRE PALLADIN, SAN FRANCISCO” and a scrapbook, wrapped in canvas and securely bound. Also enclosed was a will, with signatures of a San Francisco lawyer, that left all of his property to his former wife, Rebecca Prichard.
The authorities were glad to see that the man's body and his possessions left by rail with Rebecca Prichard, for interment in a Nebraska cemetery.
The odd business cards reminded me that I had encountered them on several occasions during the heyday of my career, and that once I had arrived at Belmont, Nevada, in response to a call for help to find that Prichard had preceded me and moved on. I discovered that my deceased client had procured my services under false representations and was on the morally wrong side of the dispute. His more moral adversary had had the prescience to hire Prichard. This produced a favorable outcome for him and spared me the dilemma of facing Prichard in service to the wrong side of the dispute, or backing down with some harm to my reputation.
I paid little more attention to the matter of Thomas and Rebecca Prichard for about two years, during which time I devoted my time to detective work, often undercover, at other times by conducting inquiries in order to ferret out the facts. I had abandoned quick gun play in favor of the use of my acquired skills, with only backup reliance upon my derringers. At length I was retained to perform undercover work for the stockyard concerns in Sioux City, Iowa. My job was to discover what the business group feared was to be an effort by the Industrial Workers of the World to work its will in the area. The “Wobblies” were still in their nascent stage and my work was fruitless. Although some workers at the stockyards were sympathetic to the movement, I could find no subversive apparatus in the Sioux City area. I spent two weeks snooping around, collected my pay and left. When the I W W did foment trouble several years later I was retired and in any event would have been hardly of any help in the resulting chaos.
On leaving Sioux City, however, I resolved to stop in Omaha to seek out Rebecca Pritchard. It was not easy, as my first inquiries told me that she had remarried a man name
Sobeleski, who was dead, and after another day of snooping, learned that she was in an elder care facility operated by the local Lutherans. On arrival at the hospice I worked to persuade the managers that although not a relative, and did not know Mrs. Sobeleski, I was not trying to learn the source of her income. I was finally led into a ward-like area, where a healthy looking woman of somewhat my age reposed on a bed where she stared out of a window.
I perched on a rickety chair next to her. “Mrs. Sobeleski?” I began.
The woman turned and frowned. “Who wants to know?”
“My name is Nathan Gould. I live in Trinidad, Colorado.”
“You’re far from home. What brings you to this warehouse of the dying?”
“I hope you don’t think that it’s idle curiosity, but I’d like to know something about your first husband.”
She coughed for several seconds, mingled with a mocking laugh. Then: “Bob Caswell? Why would you want to know about him?”
I was taken aback. “No, I was referring to Thomas Prichard.”
The woman’s features relaxed. “Well, why would you be interested in him?”
“Because he and I were in the same line of work and I wager that he had a story to tell.”
“I can’t tell much of it. He left a journal. He listed every job he was involved in. Some of them were wild. I have the record in my foot locker.” She frowned. “You planning to sell the story to one of them magazines? Is there any money in it for me?”
“No,” I said. “Not if you don’t want me to.”
“Everybody around here thinks I have money. Even the home here figures that Stanislaus left me a bundle. He was well off, but when he died, his kids ran to the Probate Court with his will and took it all, except for a thousand dollars that my lawyer said I better take or I’d get nothing. Bob Caswell left me nothing. And Tom’s strong box had only a couple of hundred in cash. His bank had gone bust in the nineties and he lost almost everything he’d earned. So I bet he wouldn’t hold it against me if his story was published and it made me a few dollars. If you got a pen and paper, write up an agreement.”
I paused for a few moments. Then I pawed around and found a pen and paper and wrote out a simple agreement that I signed that said that I was being given Prichard’s career story and if I sold it and made any money that Rebecca Pritchard would get one-half.
“Generous, aren’t you?” she said. “Maybe because you know you won’t pay and I’ll have no way to force you. “ She signed the paper with a shaking hand. “Now, what about you. You ever run up against Tom?”
“No. I almost did when I was hired for one side of a mining dispute and he was on the other side. But he got there first and cleared it up before I arrived. I discovered that his side was in the right and I was glad to have avoided being against him.”
“You traveled, like Tom?”
“All over. I just finished a job in Sioux City. I’ve been from border to border, the Mississippi River to the Pacific. Except Texas. I’ve avoided Texas since I shot a man there in the ‘60s.”
“You sound like an Easterner.”
“I was born in Vermont, served in the Union Army.”
She leaned back, head on a heap of pillows. She untangled a chain from her neck and handed it to me. A small key dangled from the chain. “Go into my foot locker.”
I opened the foot locker at the bottom of her bed. I pawed around in the bundled clothes until I found a small, tightly bound volume. I held it up.
She nodded her head. “I sold his guns and clothes on the way back from Frisco. They brought a good amount of money. He kept them in good condition. That’s the book. Take it and go in peace. I won’t hold my breath waiting for a check from you. I need some rest.”
I locked the foot locker and dropped the chain on her chest. I lingered for a few moments, trying to make conversation, but she was close to asleep. I bid her good-bye, but whether she heard me, I couldn’t say. On the way out I found the manager and told her that Mrs. Sobeleski had given me the book. I wrote out my name and address on a paper. “Please have her keep in touch.”
“I’ll do that every few months,” said the manager. “She has very few visitors. Even the Sobeleski children ignore her. Probably guilty over how they treated her.”
On the train ride back to Trinidad I went through the book and found the life story of Palladin, the knight of the Wild West. Thomas John Prichard was born in Hampton Roads, Virginia, on September 6, 1848, the son of naval commander Edward and Mary Prichard. He attended Yale University, graduating in 1870, cum laude, notwithstanding a penchant for gambling. He attended Yale Law School, and accrued decent grades in his first year. He spent the summer of 1871 traveling in the west.
In July, 1871, in Cripple Creek, Colorado, Prichard joined a poker game, one of whose participants was the soon to be infamous gun hand John (Jack) Wilson. Wilson challenged another participant, Kady, as a card sharp. A shootout ensued, in which Wilson wounded Kady and two bystanders. When Wilson turned the gun on Prichard, Prichard grabbed Wilson's second revolver from its holster, and blazed away, wounding Wilson in the arm. Wilson fled in the ruckus, and Prichard, Wilson's .36 Navy in hand, was acclaimed a hero.
Prichard’s diary records his feelings about the event:
For the first time in my life I experienced an exhilaration that took away my fears. From the classroom and playing field I had graduated to the world of action and accompl
ishment.
All previous achievements paled into insignificance.
The young law student practiced gun handling. This soon was put to good use, for within a week one Bob Shawson, a roughneck with a local reputation for speed, misjudging his ability while afflicted with a hangover, drew on Prichard outside of a Cripple Creek gaming house. Shawson mishandled his weapon, and Prichard's two nervous shots merely winged Shawson. Almost immediately, Prichard acquired a reputation for not only bravery, and speed, but gallantry and fairness.
Prichard's comments in his diary reflect his feelings about this second event:
I found the outcome very satisfactory: I am alive, and defended the right, and the other man is not only alive, but has, perhaps, learned a valuable lesson.
Prichard was soon approached by mining executive James La Claire, with a request to escort his wife to California. During the discussion La Claire referred to Prichard as a "gallant knight," which set Prichard to thinking. The trip was uneventful, and Prichard's compensation of $300 struck him as comparable to what he would earn practicing law. Prichard placed the following advertisement in newspapers in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Nevada, as follows:
HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL
Wire Paladin,
San Francisco.
According to Prichard his first job was in September, 1871, "settling" a dispute in the Nevada gold fields between a gang of roughnecks and the widow of a miner. Her title to a very good mine was confirmed, legally and practically, by the slaying of two of the claim jumpers, the arrest of two others, and the running off of the rest. Prichard's reward was a 25 percent interest in the mine, for ten years, which, according to his notes, yielded him close to $2,000 each year, and supported him in comfort, if not luxury.
Other work followed, requiring not simply speed and skill with a six gun, but tenacity, intelligence and resourcefulness. The scrapbook lists 53 such occurrences, the last in May, 1895, in Phoenix, Arizona. Prichard, acting undercover, unmasked the cashier of a bank as an embezzler, who planned to cover up his malefactions by staging a burglary of the bank. Prichard surprised the would-be "burglars," and drove them off, but in the process was thrown to the ground when his horse was shot down by the fleeing men. His injuries were extensive and included his gun arm, which ended his gun toting career and his life of pursuing justice.