“The work of bringing the Osage from barbarism to civilization and thence to Christianity is a labor not of years but of centuries,” the stolid Dutch priest told Alexander von Angensperg when the Austrian arrived at St. Francis School in 1872. “Mere decades are too brief a time to yield significant effects.”
The younger priest did not argue with Father Schoenmakers, but neither did he accept what his superior said. Alexander von Angensperg was a man in his prime. Energetic and fit, his hair still cropped cavalry short, his bearing still military, he was an aristocrat accustomed to achievement, eager to serve Christ among the red Indians and prepared to charge through enemy lines when necessary. Father Schoenmakers was not the enemy, of course, but Alexander believed it was important to resist the older man’s weary pessimism. To do this work, it was imperative to keep a high heart and even to believe in miracles.
In that spirit, Alexander had allowed himself to imagine a glowing future for Johnnie Sanders. Finishing his secondary education with the Jesuits in St. Louis. Going on to university. Conversion to the True Faith. Perhaps, one day, even a call to the priesthood, for it was plain to Alexander that the young man would have made a good Jesuit. John Sanders is a natural teacher, Alexander wrote to the Missouri Provincial, outlining the boy’s potential and inquiring about the possibility of a scholarship. He is at home on the borderlands between races, languages, and religions.
The letter was posted just a day before Johnnie disappeared, last autumn.
They did that, Indian children. They disappeared. You had to be on guard all the time. Father Schoenmakers was usually able to detect the signs. “Keep a close eye on Paul Little Dog,” he’d say at breakfast. Or “Joseph Two Birds is going to turn rabbit soon.”
Sometimes, they’d find the runaway before he made it off the mission grounds. Sometimes, they would never see him again. They might hear that a boy had gone back to his tribe; a few days or months or years later, they’d learn that he had been shot dead by a frightened settler west of Wichita, or that he was killed in a skirmish with the cavalry, or that he’d died of alcoholism on the edges of Kansas City. Once boys left St. Francis, their chances of survival fell like stones dropped from a high tower.
Some Indian parents understood that grim fact. They insisted that the runaway return to the mission school, often with a younger brother in tow. Small, skinny children would arrive all but destitute of clothing, and what little they wore was fit only to be burned. The boys themselves had to be dosed for ringworm, bathed with yellow soap, their heads shaved and their bodies rinsed in kerosene to kill their fleas and lice. When that ordeal was over, they were shown how to put on the school uniform and escorted—stumbling in their unfamiliar shoes—to the classroom. Scrubbed, shorn, and shod, they sat on wooden benches, wary as deer. If they spoke English at all, it was a poor and ungrammatical pidgin. Most seemed almost mute.
When Alexander von Angensperg walked into the classroom his own first day, he was nearly as overwhelmed as the newest boy at St. Francis. All the children were dark-haired, dark-eyed, dark-skinned, and they seemed to him as indistinguishable as the dark little chokecherries that grew on bushes near the school. On any given day there might be fifty students in his class, though their numbers were often thinned by illness, for scarlet fever, colds, whooping cough, mumps, and chicken pox spread easily in the close quarters of the dormitories. Each had been given a short, plain Christian name—easy to spell and write, but not memorable, not individual. Daniel, Thomas, Paul, Joseph. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.
“Me, I’m not named for the Evangelist,” Johnnie Sanders told Alexander. “I’m named for John Horse. He was a Seminole general. My daddy fought at his side in Mexico and Texas.” The boy looked thoughtful for a moment and added, “Course, could be John Horse was named for the Evangelist.”
Everything set Johnnie Sanders apart. His fluency in English. His looks: the curling hair, the flaring nose, his pride in bearing. His responsiveness and immediacy in class. His curiosity and openness to learning. He was only twelve when he came to St. Francis, but he was calm, not wary. Self-possessed, not speechless. He had been orphaned in June of 1873, but told Alexander that he’d already gotten through the worst of his sadness while staying with Wyatt Earp, a Wichita policeman who’d brought the boy to the mission school that September.
During his four years at St. Francis, John Horse Sanders absorbed lessons as good soil takes in rain. “I’m here because my parents were killed,” Johnnie said when Alexander praised his hard work. “I don’t want to waste the tears.”
In addition to English, Johnnie spoke his mother’s tongue, not the Osage of his classmates, but he was good with new boys, patiently showing them how to work door latches and pump handles, how to button shirts and tie shoes. Before long, he could communicate with the others in their own language, and full-bloods would tell him things they’d not been willing or able to tell the Jesuits. It was Johnnie who explained why they resisted looking adults in the eye. (“They don’t want to be disrespectful, Father.”) And it was he who helped Alexander understand why cutting the boys’ long hair was so distressing to them. (“Indians cut their hair for mourning, Father. When you cut their hair, they think someone in their family died, but they don’t know who.”) Alexander came to rely on Johnnie as an interpreter and as an informal assistant teacher. Working together, they had many of the new boys reading reasonably well and writing a good hand by the end of each school year. And Johnnie invented ways to teach arithmetic with card games, an unorthodox but effective method that was enormously popular with the other students.
John Horse Sanders was the last one Alexander expected to turn rabbit. Even Father Schoenmakers was surprised.
For the children’s own good, punishment for running was severe. One winter, a boy attempted to walk back to his parents and froze to death in the snow. His body was found the next spring, and Father Schoenmakers took no chances after that. Those who were recaptured were made examples, to discourage further attempts at escape.
Just before he disappeared, Johnnie had been involved in a serious altercation with Brother Sheehan, the massively muscled Irishman who managed the mission farm and taught the boys to plow and plant. Brother Sheehan was generally indulgent with the Indians, except when their conduct deserved stern treatment. In Johnnie’s case, Alexander had counseled leniency, if the prodigal returned.
Brother Sheehan was not too awed by a priest’s authority to argue. “Father, you’ve led that kid to believe he’s as good as anybody. Well, he’s not, and he never will be, not while he’s living on God’s green earth! If a boy like that bucks me in here, he gets a beating. If he bucks men out there, they’ll kill him for it. That’s a lesson the little shite needs to learn, and when we catch him, by God, I’m going to teach it.”
Too late now, Alexander thought, the flimsy yellow paper of the telegram crackling softly in his hand.
REGRET TO INFORM YOU OF THE DEATH
OF JOHN HORSE SANDERS STOP
DETAILS TO COME STOP WILL YOU
CONDUCT SERVICES STOP REPLY PAID STOP
JH HOLLIDAY DODGE CITY STOP
Alexander took word of the tragedy to Father Schoenmakers, asking for and receiving permission to travel to Dodge. He exchanged additional telegrams with J. H. Holliday, who promised to make all the arrangements and to delay the interment until Friday. On Wednesday, an envelope arrived with a round-trip train ticket, first class, to Dodge. The note inside was on good rag paper, written in a precise copperplate hand. Johnnie had died in a barn fire. The promised details were conveyed with tact, but Alexander read the truth between the lines. J. H. Holliday suspected that the boy had been assaulted and robbed before the building burned down.
On Thursday at first light, Brother Sheehan drove Alexander through a soaking rain to the train station in Wichita. The Irishman hardly spoke a word, but there was no need. All the way to town, the mule’s hooves clopped out a rhythm. I told you so, I told you so, I told you so …
Hours later, still damp from his dawn drenching, Alexander von Angensperg stepped down onto the railway platform and learned a lesson of his own: you needn’t be a mixed-blood boy to experience mortal and moral danger upon leaving St. Francis and arriving in Dodge City.
The first shot passed closely enough for him to feel the breeze of it near his ear before the bullet went pinging off a brass train fitting. The second shot was high, but if Alexander had not jumped aside quickly, he’d have been run down by a panicky riderless horse a moment later. Before he could react to any of that, a glassy-eyed girl with a painted face roped her arms around his neck, planted a wet kiss on his lips, and declared with exuberant hospitality, “Welcome to Dodge, Father!”
Decidedly cognito in a Roman collar and black soutane, Alexander tried to preserve some crumb of dignity while peeling the intoxicated prostitute off his chest. To the amusement of the station crowd, the task proved impossible, and the best Alexander could do was to feign serene indifference and address the assemblage more generally.
“Can anyone tell me, please, where is J. H. Holliday?” he asked.
A familiar-looking young man wearing a deputy’s badge pushed toward Alexander through the crowd, though his eyes were on the whore. “Clear off, Verelda,” he ordered. “Show a little respect, will you?”
“He ain’t here to pray, honey. Nobody comes to Dodge to pray, f’crissakes!”
“He’s here for Johnnie’s funeral.”
“Oh.” Verelda stepped back and dropped a simpering little curtsy. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” she said piously, adding with a boozy laugh, “and sinned and sinned and sinned!” Enjoying the laughter around her, the grinning girl spotted a prosperous-looking salesman and moved with blurry enterprise toward her next target.
Of his single meeting with Wyatt Earp, Alexander retained a clear recollection of a natural horseman who’d have done well in the imperial cavalry. Lean. Fair, with a heavy chevron mustache. An overall impression of calm command. The lawman before him matched that memory, and Alexander offered his hand.
“Deputy Earp, it is good to see you again, though in sad circumstances.”
“You know my brother, not me, Father. I’m Morgan,” the young man said. “Wyatt ain’t back from Texas yet.”
“My apologies! I met your brother once only, when he brought Johnnie Sanders to St. Francis.”
“Folks mix me and Wyatt up all the time. All us Earps look alike,” Morgan told the priest genially. “Here, lemme take your bag.”
Alexander hesitated. “I was supposed to meet a J. H. Holliday at the station—”
“I know. Doc sends his regrets. He’s with a patient and couldn’t get away.”
There was another volley of gunshots and the sound of breaking glass nearby. With an indifference worthy of a hussar, Morgan ignored a pack of cowboys thundering by on horseback, their leader holding high a pair of lacy pantaloons in a drunken game of capture the flag.
“We put you up at Dodge House,” he said, striding across a muddy street toward a large two-story hotel. “I hope that’s all right with you.”
“Usually I stay with a Catholic family,” Alexander said, trying not to sound ungrateful. “We must be careful about expense.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that none. Doc’s taking care of everything—Watch your step, Father.” The deputy grabbed Alexander’s arm, pulling him back before he could put his foot into a pile of horse dung. “Your English is real good. You German?”
“Austrian, but I have lived in America since five years already.”
A few doors down, three boys tumbled out of a bar, singing with an enthusiasm undiminished by rare agreement regarding melody and lyrics. Suddenly, one of them bent double and vomited into a puddle. The other two leaned against each other, laughing so hard that they fell to their knees in the mire, helpless with Schadenfreude. None of them looked older than sixteen. In Wichita, Alexander was the youngest priest at forty-five. In Dodge, he was a good deal more than twice the average age of those around him.
“Sorry about all this,” Morgan said. “We got three herds coming in all at once. Town’s been wide open since Ed Masterson was killed. The office is pretty shorthanded.” He reached past Alexander and pulled the hotel door open. “Deacon?” he called. “Guest for you!”
The hotel seemed hushed, Front Street’s cacophony effectively damped by heavy window curtains in sun-faded maroon velvet. The wooden floor was carpeted in mud-stained bilious green, the lobby furnished with a suite of dusty furniture upholstered in blue plush with yellow floral figuring. Several vivid chromolithographs decorated walls papered in a red-flocked geometric pattern.
Morgan whispered, “Doc says temperance ladies decorated the place to punish hungover guests.”
Alexander stared.
“Joke, Father!” Morgan said, with a remarkably sweet and open smile. “Deacon Cox just has bad taste.”
The hotelier appeared a moment later, dressed as soberly as his decor was flamboyant. There was a flurry of welcome, and an explanation of his title (“George Cox, Father. Folks call me Deacon, but it’s just a nickname.”). This was followed by assurance that Dodge House was the best hotel in town, confirmation that all of the priest’s expenses were covered, information about a Chinese laundry and the possibility of getting a bath, and the location of the privies.
In the midst of it all, another deputy stuck his head in the door and called, “Morg? Some idiot just rode a horse onto the second story of your brother’s cat house. We can’t get the damn thing to come back down.”
Morgan excused himself to deal with the emergency, leaving Deacon Cox to show Alexander up a steep staircase.
“We expanded last year. Fifty rooms now,” Deacon told the priest. “Best billiard parlor in the city. Restaurant, bar—no charge to you, sir. Doc says everything’s on him. That’s Doc Holliday for you! First class, all the way! You can come down to eat or I can send your meals up. Just ring the bell. We got room service, same as St. Louis. Oh, and the preacher says you can use the Union Church tomorrow for the funeral. Ten in the morning, we told people. Drovers’ll be sleeping it off that time of day—more peaceful for the burial, follow? Some of the Germans are coming in from the farms for your service. Mass, it’s called, right? Mostly Methodists here in the city, although the majority of the populace is as heathen as China Joe. Still, you should have a pretty good crowd. Folks thought well of Johnnie.”
Deacon opened the door to a room at the end of the corridor, then stepped back with a sweep of his hand. Alexander entered and crossed to the window, pulling a coarse lace curtain aside, hardly listening as the hotelier pointed out amenities. The room was on the far side of the building, away from the street and the railroad and the stockyards, overlooking an expanse of buffalo grass that stretched northward into Canada. It was quiet, apart from the occasional report of a pistol shot and Deacon Cox’s chatter.
“We told people you’d be hearing confession this afternoon. That’s how you say it, right? Hearing confession? Four o’clock, we told them. That’s when the dago priest always does it. Father Poncy—? Damn, I can never say that fella’s name! Something Eye-talian—”
“Ponziglione.” The room was generously sized, with an ornate woven wicker screen to divide a sitting area from a bedroom with a washstand and a dresser. He could use the screen to shield penitents. “Thank you. This will do very well. Four o’clock will be fine.”
There was more talk, including a promise to knock on the door at three forty-five, but at long last, the hotelier bid him a good afternoon and left.
Staring dumbly at the door, Alexander listened as Deacon Cox’s footsteps retreated down the corridor. Belatedly it came to him that he should have asked about Dr. Holliday and why he was being so generous.
Too late, too late, too late …
With a long, shuddering sigh, Alexander von Angensperg stretched flat on the bed, exhausted and empty. Since Tuesday morning, when he’d stood in the mission
doorway and read that awful telegram, each passing hour had required all the self-discipline he could muster.
Placing one foot before the other.
Going through the motions.
Getting himself to this moment: when he could be alone at last, cover his face with his hands, and cry.
As promised, the knock came at a quarter to four. “I hope you got some rest,” Deacon Cox said through the door. “You got quite a line out here.”
Alexander straightened the bed linens and left the room to use the privy, keeping his eyes down so he would not recognize anyone waiting in the hallway. When he returned, he rolled up a blanket, put it on the floor as a kneeler, placed a purple stole over his shoulders, and settled himself in the chair behind the dressing screen.
“We may begin now, if you please,” he called out quietly.
For the rest of his long and eventful life, Alexander von Angensperg might have topped just about any war story told in a Jesuit residence. He could have listened, and nodded, and acknowledged each man’s most colorful adventure, and then achieved an awed, respectful silence with just six words: “I heard confessions in Dodge City.”
The seal of confession imposed silence, so he never told a soul. Had others tried to imagine the litany of violence, greed, deceit, and debauchery, they could not have come close. The average priest would rarely hear in all his days what Alexander did in a single memorable afternoon.
Everything but sloth, he realized afterward. Dodge was diligent in sin.
Nearly all the women were whores, most of them Irish girls hardly more than children. “A hooker’s never worth more than she is on her first night,” a tired young voice began. “I told my pimp I’m thirteen. Sure, if he finds out the truth, I’ll be working the cribs that much sooner, then, won’t I. So I lie.”
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