by John Boyne
To the Smith & Wesson gun and the manner in which Bill saved his father’s life, some more of Isaac’s stories can relate. A plot was hatched by the Pro-Slavery men to murder Bill’s father for his voice was becoming too strong in the state to be ignored. He was forced into exile from his home but it was rumoured that he himself was plotting to create a constitution for Kansas which would outlaw, if not the existence of slavery, then at least its promotion and expansion, a small step perhaps but part of a greater eventual plan.
Bill’s mother learned that a group of men had discovered her husband’s whereabouts and were riding out to murder him and she instantly despatched the child Bill on his pony to Grasshopper Falls, where his father was in hiding. A long ride ensued and, incredibly, in the middle of the night Bill came across these men as they rested and planned the attack they would make when they caught up with their prey.
‘Hold there,’ called the roughest of the three, an overweight and hirsute farmer whose horse no doubt bore a sorry weight. The man had seen the nine-year-old boy passing in their direction but had been unable to make him out in the distance. ‘What’s your business there, boy?’
Bill slowed down his pony and cautiously continued at a trot, forcing himself to pull the animal up calmly when he reached the men, immediately afraid that they would understand his purpose. ‘Going home, sir,’ said Bill quietly, pulling his peaked hat further down his youthful forehead, the long strands of straw-coloured hair flicking out beneath it in wisps.
‘And where’s your home then?’ asked another man, the thinner one, the one whose complexion made it clear that he felt more at home in a saloon with a bottle of whisky in front of him than he did sitting around a campfire in the dead of night with a couple of hired killers by his side and a task of murder lying ahead before his breakfast.
‘Not far now,’ replied Bill. ‘Another mile or two.’
‘You know what’s a mile or two from here?’ he asked suspiciously, looking into the distance as if he could see that very length from his standing point. ‘Nothing but what you see around you now, that’s what. This is just plains land. It’s six miles easy to the next town.’ The next town being the very one where Bill’s father was no doubt preparing for a night’s sleep, even as his son rode towards him. ‘You’re not lost, are you?’
‘No sir,’ continued Bill. ‘I’ll get there. I know where I’m—’
The small fire which the men had built to warm their evening chose that moment to spit out a hunk of red hot wood with a noisy crack and Bill’s pony, taken by surprise, reared up in surprise. ‘Calm down,’ he muttered in the nag’s ear. ‘Take it easy now, boy.’ Something in his attitude must have caused the men to become suspicious, for one reached over now to take the lead of the pony, causing the animal to take a cautious step backwards.
‘Why don’t you get down from that horse now,’ said the man, looking up at Bill and squinting in the darkness in order to get a better perspective on the boy’s face.
‘I think I ought to keep going till I—’
‘Get off the horse,’ he repeated sharply. ‘You’ve got too far to go tonight on your own. You can’t be headed home, that’s for certain sure.’
‘I know where I’m going,’ repeated Bill, ready to pull on the reins and dig his spurs into the unfortunate beast’s side if necessary, in order to continue them on their way. A full moon travelled slowly across the night sky and its progress lent a sudden brightness on to their night scene, causing the thin man to exclaim suddenly.
‘Here, Meadows,’ he said, pulling on the fat man’s sleeves as he squinted in the direction of their new arrival, attempting to make out the features of the face which still lay somewhat hidden beneath the cloth hat that his mother had forced him to wear before leaving. ‘You know what I think? I think this is the son of that black Abolitionist we’re chasing after. That’s it, ain’t it boy? That’s who you are, say it is.’
‘You’re wrong,’ said Bill firmly, his inexperience and youth betraying him for once. ‘I’m not his son.’
‘Whose son then?’ asked the thin man, coming towards him now and reaching up to pull him down. ‘Get down here anyway, boy, that we can take a good look at you.’
Sensible to danger, he had to make a quick decision. If he alighted from the horse he could be left stranded there, miles from either home or destination, while the killers rode on to complete their work. He could even find his own throat cut within a minute or two. He blinked, he looked from the face of one man to the other, and deciding that it was better to be foolhardy than trusting, he dug his ankles deep into the sides of the pony beneath him, pulling on the reins so hard that as the beast turned away from the men they were forced to jump back in fright. Meadows missed a step as he did so and fell back towards the fire, where he landed for a moment before scrambling back to his feet in fright, the confusion of the moment causing neither of them to notice as the boy rode off into the darkness.
‘I’m on fire!’ shouted Meadows, the white cotton material of his left sleeve suddenly darkening beneath a moving stream of flame. ‘Put me out, I’m on fire!’ he roared again, dancing on the spot before his companion pushed him to the dirt and rolled him over once quickly, smothering the flames immediately.
‘He’s escaping,’ shouted the thin man. ‘Get after him.’ They ran to their horses and untied them, ignoring the neighing protests of their tired charges and within moments were racing along the plains, following my great-grandfather, who was to prove too fast for them with his lighter weight, arriving in Grasshopper Falls a full thirty minutes before the intended killers. Just as the sun broke through the sight-lines on the corner of the town and before it had finished its ascent and announced the day, my two ancestors had fled and survived their certain murder.
‘That was when he got his reward,’ Isaac told me. ‘There were no phones or messengers in those days. From the minute your great-grandfather was sent away on his horse with the warning, his mother had no idea whether either her husband or son were still alive.’
‘Did they go home?’ I asked, a boy of Bill’s age myself then, nestling against the pillows and my father as I drifted off to sleep. Around me the light threw shadows on the western memorabilia with which Isaac had decorated my room. The contradictions of both a confederate and a union flag, posters of cowboys riding across prairies, on my desk a model of Fort Laramie, where a treaty was once signed between the leaders of the Cheyenne and Comanche people and the government, moving the natives from the Great Plains and into Western Oklahoma in exchange for food, supplies and the possibility of a limited education.
‘Eventually, Bill did,’ he said. ‘Got home and he was the hero of the hour. When the whole family were reunited, his father gave him that gun, which until then he’d been wearing on his own holster, as a reward.’
‘I bet he let him use it too,’ I muttered in protest at my father’s insistence that I leave it alone. ‘I bet he didn’t just hang it on a wall for show.’ Isaac ignored the barb.
‘Those times were different,’ was all he said. ‘Stay there for a minute though.’ He left the room and I glanced at the clock. Almost eleven p.m. I was falling asleep but didn’t want to give in until he returned. This was the part of these stories that I enjoyed the most, the reason I always stayed awake to their end. This was the punch line, the reward which was mine for allowing Isaac to tell his history.
He returned in a few minutes and I saw his dark figure standing in the doorway, the light from the hall throwing his body into darkness for a moment before he came inside, a small, ageing man with a large gun by his side, a gun twice the size of his own hands, a gun that you could see even he had difficulty holding, let alone a nine-year-old child like his grandfather had been at the time. As he leaned over me, I caught a sudden wave of whisky breath and marvelled at how he could manage a swift drink in so short a time between leaving my room, collecting the gun and returning to me.
‘There you go,’ he said, sitting down on th
e bed beside me and massaging the gun fondly, the prized possession that it was, second only in his life to me. For while I was never allowed to touch the gun on my own, or take it down from the wall, he was permitted to finish his stories with some style, displaying for me at their conclusions the rewards which were given to boys who put their own lives at risk to save their fathers. ‘Take a look at the side,’ he said, flicking on the bedside lamp beside me and I blinked with the sudden brightness before peering down at the tight inscription which I had read there a hundred times before. My father’s own name: Isaac Cody.
‘My great-grandfather’s name, given to me,’ he said, he always said. ‘Just like you’re named for yours, William.’
I thought about it. For once I had a question to ask. ‘But why am I William?’ I asked, looking up at him now, my brow furrowed in that little-boy look of confusion. ‘Why can’t I be Bill too?’
He laughed. ‘Now that would be a blasphemy, my boy,’ he said, shaking his head as if the very idea was impossible. ‘It’s one thing to name you in the man’s honour. Another thing entirely to be using that same name on a daily basis. Bill Cody?’ he asked, thinking about it for a moment before dismissing the whole idea as impossible. ‘There’ll only ever be one Bill Cody and he’s dead and buried now. That’s a name you’d have to earn. For now you can stay a William.’
‘But Buffalo William doesn’t sound as good,’ I protested weakly.
‘Your great-grandfather’s name is his own name,’ he said firmly, switching off the lamp and walking slowly towards the door. ‘And he spent a lifetime building it. You let him have it and you make your own name. That’s what life is all about.’ He paused for a moment and stared at me as I pulled the blankets up to my shoulders and rolled over on to my side, exhausted now, ready to close my eyes. ‘Tomorrow night I’ll tell you another story,’ he said, closing the door behind him and leaving me to darkness and sleep. And I knew this was true, because in Isaac’s world there was always another story to tell.
Chapter Two
A Society of Men
Bill was only thirteen years old when he first joined a freight trail. Already though, he was hardly a child, having killed his first man – an Indian – earlier that summer, a murder which had lent the boy a certain amount of notoriety which he was known to have both enjoyed and encouraged. It’s hardly surprising that he became the showman that he did in later years, considering his earlier inclinations towards publicity and attention. Even faced with a murdered man bleeding at his feet he could see only newspaper headlines and dollar signs.
A freight trail consisted of twenty-five wagons, each of which steered about seven thousand pounds of oxen across the frontiers. Bill was the lowest of the low on these trails, a hired hand, a teamster, but he wore his official title – that of ‘bullwhacker’ – with pride. There was no private time and precious little sleep but the bullwhackers cared little for such indolent pleasures, content instead to value the freedom of the open plains and the constant potential for danger. They were a youthful bunch and it was not unusual to have a hardworking and eager child among their number.
Bill’s first experience of the problems which the freight trails could encounter, however, took place in the summer of 1859, when he joined the crew of a wagon trail destined for the plains near Salt Lake City, where the armies of General Albert Johnston were preparing for an offensive against the Mormons. The practice of polygamy was one which the government of the new United States was firmly opposed to and as the nation spread further west, expanding the reaches of its executive branch into new territories, it became vital that her people followed one law of a unified land. The Mormons had already been driven from both Missouri and Illinois but had finally established a home and settlement in Salt Lake City. Despite the aggressive tendencies of the government, this time they were not going to give up their homes or way of life without a fight.
Bill was stationed at Fort Leavenworth and had made, two friends in Albert Rogers and David Yountam, boys slightly older than he was but who envied him the brief celebrity which he had enjoyed after killing the Indian. Their duties at the fort were varied and ill-defined; for themselves, they were simply happy to be part of a society of men who could be called upon at any time to undertake an exercise of danger. They had been at the fort longer than Bill and upon his arrival had been torn between their liking for him and their natural inclination to bully a younger boy; almost despite themselves a friendship had formed. Rogers was a Missourian who had not seen his home since the age of seven; now, at fourteen, he was preparing to sign up as a bullwhacker once the next trail was announced. Yountam was a year older again but had lost his left arm when he was thirteen after an unsuccessful argument with a buffalo which had seen the limb ripped off at the elbow. To prevent a potentially fatal spread of disease around his body, the local doctor had simply carved off the ravaged appendage at the shoulder, eventually sealing the hole with fire, an action which had left a misshapen memory at the boy’s side, devoid of nerve endings, insouciant to pain. It was Yountam who first broached the idea of their joining the trail towards the camp of General Johnston.
‘When does it start?’ asked Bill as they lay in their bunks in a small, white-sheeted tent just inside the limits of the fort, where non-commissioned lads such as they made their home while waiting for chance or opportunity to come their way.
‘Not soon enough for me,’ replied Yountam, scrambling up in bed to look at his two friends; any glimmer of escape from the monotonous, dreary lifestyle of Leavenworth was enough to fill him with excitement, so bored was he with his daily tasks of shining officers’ boots and cleaning up after the horses. ‘They say that General Johnston is planning an attack on the Mormons late this summer but that supplies have to be brought in so that when they are routed, the army will be able to settle the land. Otherwise the Mormons will just wait for them to leave and go back again.’
‘I don’t know why they’re bothering,’ muttered Albert Rogers, a louche lad who questioned all authority just as much as he desired to be a part of it. He had a reputation for insubordination but could think of no life outside the army which would suit him as well. ‘What harm have these Mormons done anyway that’s so wrong, can you tell me that?’ He didn’t look at the two boys as he asked his question, merely lay back in his cot, one arm slung across his eyes, blocking out the light from the candle which Bill had lit earlier.
‘They’re Mormons!’ replied Yountam immediately. ‘Ain’t that enough?’
‘Enough for what? Just ’cause you give them a name, that’s enough to say they should be driven away from wherever they choose to live? That’s a reason, is it?’
Bill sat back and looked from one boy to the other cautiously. Ethical debates were frequent between these two, who had known each other for three years before Bill’s own arrival into their lives. He was often torn between feelings of frustration with them – for they argued constantly and over the most ridiculous things – and a sense of hero worship which he found difficult to contain. They had assumed the roles of older brothers to the thirteen-year-old boy and as none of them had any family nearby, their relationships were close. Bill was still new to this centre of military activity; he was a child capable of losing himself in his desire to be part of this dream world. And yet for him, the friendship between Rogers and Yountam seemed not one based on actual affection, but rather on their familiarity. Yountam searched continually for adventure, never questioned anything he was told to do, and wanted nothing more than to be given a direction in which to travel and a hot meal when he got there. Rogers, for all his commitment to remaining part of the daily life of Leavenworth, appeared to see it as little more than a place to eat and sleep. His belief system questioned everything and on more than one occasion, Bill feared that the conversations between his two friends would end in a fight, even bloodshed.
‘Mormons go against our way of life,’ proposed Yountam, a comment which made Rogers merely snort.
‘
Way of life,’ he muttered disparagingly, spitting out the words like rotten food. ‘What’s that then, Davy? Sleeping on a cot in the middle of a field with a quarter loaf of bread inside us, that’s a way of life is it? One to be defended and preserved at all costs? God save us if it is.’
‘You know what they do,’ insisted Yountam. ‘All them wives they have. Ain’t natural for a man to have so many.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Rogers after a pause, sitting up now and looking at his two companions with a dry smile on his face. ‘I wouldn’t object to a bunch of women running around after me, ready to satisfy my every need and desire. How about you, Billy? Would you say no to a little bit of pampering?’ He looked across at his friend and gave him a large, conspiratorial wink. Bill, thinking of his own growing interest in some of the officers’ daughters who passed him by every day without so much as a smile or a nod, sat back nervously and looked away, pleased that the candlelight spared him revealing his blushes. ‘Of course, maybe that’s not what you’re after though, Davy,’ he added sarcastically, spoiling for a fight. ‘Maybe that’s not the kind of thing you go for at all.’