The Joshua Tree

by Robert Cabot

  bank

  Were your eyes like that, Jenny? Did you look at me straight like that?

  “I’ll pick up and take right out’a here, Willy boy, if’n I hear another word about that Jenny. Snotty from the East with her ways.”

  How’d you know then, Bucky O’Neill, what’d you know of Jenny? And what’d you know of Willy? Whatever, it’d not be long, you with a rope around your neck. Partners, you and Willy, but how much did you know him, could you even give his last name? Dan? you’d never heard it Jenny? just another college girl come out to get educated, high-class music at the Fashion Saloon.

  But Willy’d knowed you some, Bucky, kind of looked up to you, when the Indian doings wore like a girth sore, last name leastways. And best damn cowboy in Arizona Territory, working sometimes alone, sometimes with young Will, sometimes with your brother.

  Old Tales

  close out

  Volga mist

  Hero

  who

  How does it go, how does it fit together? The Parker brothers, Frank Parker and his brother Jim. Switched their names for the Rough Riders, ’ninety-eight, you all did. Willy Dan, on the roster you’re William Franklin Speare – Buffalo Bill, William F. Cody, what better name to take? Buffalo Bill the old gray hero. Neighbor of your uncle’s back at North Platte. Remember, Willy? El Centro where you went to see him with his show – the women had cut your hair and your beard by then, Will my boy – and he took you round to show you how he’d always get them glass balls that no one else could but once in a while. A bullet made of wood, looked like any other if you weren’t too careful, that sprayed out like a shotgun, couldn’t help but hit.

  escapes the

  Great

  Mother

  to the

  multiple

  Willy Dan, Jerry Dan, wasn’t that the last time? Eighteen and ninety-seven. You’d see them again – train from somewhere, Denver and on up to Nebraska – dusted as ever with the flour, cold silent about your hair.

  But Denver’ll wash it off and their holy crossings and mutterings and the brothers doing so good in school. Denver, all hazed in the whiskey smoke, tickling, such ticklings with the prostitutes. Shows and plays and the opera.

  womb

  escapes the

  Phallic

  Give in to it, Willy, the prostitutes, the liquor and tobacco too. Trespass against nature. Temptations, all around, for cowboys. Perhaps they’d jack off too, out on the range. Wrong, but there weren’t the females there and there was the need. Fool youngsters now, with their pushing the liquor and the cigarets on the girls, their automobiles with the corruptions, the raising hell; life’s wrong today.

  Orgy

  and the

  Rites of

  Castration

  The last time, eighteen and ninety-seven. Send them money ever’ so often, a letter, a Christmas card from San Quentin – no, must of been dead by then. They’d get you all tied up, like a steer, and you’d not be castrated and you’d not be branded, least not Dan or Danziger. Speare, William F. ’d do fine.

  All signed up. And then you bust your ankle, Willy boy, and they’d off without you. Jim Parker, he made it, off to Cuba and they’ll hero him, you’ll bet. Frank (though, “Bucky Boy” you’d like better), they got you. Smart fellow, the sheriff, George Ruffner, and he got you. Everyone’d knowed, Ruffner too, and to switch your brand wasn’t quite enough. Held up the Santa Fe, you and Jim and the others, just this side of Ash Forks, before Peach Springs. Some gets killed in the shooting.

  And now they’ll hang you for it. Your friend Willy’s here, your partner, whooping you on where you got to go, with the tears running like the spring thaw. Did he put you to it, fool hold-up? They stand you there before the crowd, up on the trap, with the bandana over your eyes and the green hemp loop around your neck. George Ruffner’s there, in charge, and you tell him, loud so’s we all can hear for sure, “Pull the string.” You’re twisting, Bucky, twitching, but you could hear the snap, loud like you’d yelled it out yourself.

  A good cowboy, the best. And Jim, never did see him again.

  (hang down

  your head

  Tom Doola)

  Wipe off the tears, young Willy;

  Tie back your hair and leave.

  Limp to your mare, the pinto;

  Not much a use to grieve.

  Back to the Walapais, boy;

  You’ll have your troubles too.

  Give her her head, she’ll know where;

  There’s nothing here for you.

  But troubles. Their law, reaching out for you; grabs you sometimes, how often? With the sheriffs and the deputies and the D.A.’s and the wardens and judges.

  D.A., the one without hands, how’d he lose them? Dixon. How’d he know, how’d he found you? How can you help the killings if they get in the way of the shooting? And how can you keep’m off your range if there isn’t shooting? And they couldn’t but agree, so’s they let you off, but only after a pile of words and legalizings.

  You’ll be on now, young Will, on till they hear your whoops in Boston and L.A. and they’re eating like burros out of your hand. The Walapais, but they’re kind of retreating now, and you’ve got an idea you’d kind of like to move on, get over the Colorado, on into the desert, the real desert they call Mohave.

  A few dollars, Will, and you’ll be freer. And that’s what George Briggs offers you, at his saloon in Needles after you’ve swum the Colorado on your mare – save ferry money. Herding cattle. Suits fine. End to the Rough Riders, and to the Indians, though their pine mountains are still black to the east’ard. Cowboyin’. And come the Fourth you’ll be up at Chloride again, steer-tying, and maybe then you’ll be yelled out as “The Half-Breed!”

  Hero

  who

  escapes

  to

  That’ll be the last one, Willy, the last time before all them hooting chittering spectators. The rush out from the chute, lariat onto him, the mare skidding to hold him tight, you’re in the dust and follow down the rope, throw him with the trick you learned in Nebraska, whip your piggin’ string around his legs, your heart stopped to leave room to breathe, your thigh throbbing like a one-stamp mill for the kick he gave you.

  the

  Treasure

  The last time you’ll be cowboyin’ for another. The gold and the big time, they’ll find you, and you’ll be strutting like Gardner’s peacock on Boston Common and learning how to do hypnos’ from a Harvard professor feller. Cows sure, plenty more, twelve hundred head, but they’ll be your own, here on the high desert where the Joshua trees do for tie posts. You’ll be the one who’ll be hiring for the herding.

  O Indian

  friends

  of earth

  You’ll be glad to be getting on, to show ’em back in Boston, and perhaps in Nebraska too. But you’ll keep a hankering too. For the soft swing of the saddle when you lope through the sage. For the wild fool look in a steer’s eye, the feel that your rope is as sure as your forearm let loose to loop round a hind leg. For often as not a night up on the rise under the circling stars that they don’t have back in Boston, with the coyotes to sing to you when they’ve done feeding on mice and rabbits and are feeling harmonious, with your horse tethered and your saddle to keep you ’wake enough under the back of your neck, stretched on your Angora goat chaps, and a serape, for your cougar’s long since worn to nothing, to keep off the dew. For knowing the Walapais are racing bareback for the wild horses off across the Colorado, and for maybe seeing their smoke from the top of Pine Peak where the old ones’d be telling the Spider Woman tale. There’s the greasewood smoke and the bacon and the being ’round with the others for the company now and then. And there’s the desert range sliding off into the horizon, its pockets to learn where the cattle can hide for a year, the washes with the mesquite and the cat’s claw and the white flowers in the early morning like bottles on the Elbe.

  The hankerings, got’m still, old Will, always, one way or other.


  the

  Hero’s

  voyage

  begins

  search for

  Sun Father

  Hero

  with

  But Willy boy, you’re a kid no more, and maybe you don’t know where you want to get to, but cowboying ain’t likely to get you there. So’s you’ve met this Ike Crabapple fellow and he wants you along, for there’s gold up in Death Valley he says. Better pick up, what there is to pick up, and go. Crabapple, that’s him with the white goat’s beard, fifty years later it’d be, dolled up with the dude buckle and choker and professor spectacles. Serrano Palms, and who took the photo couldn’t say. The Missis between us with her bonnet tied on with that scarf, looking like she’d got a roast ’bout ready to please old Will. Weren’t like that back in Manvel where he’d tired of swamping on the borax mule teams and he and Scotty wanted you with them to get yourselves some mines. Swamper, who got all the work and none of the glory – but you’re not so bad grubstaked now, Ike, down there with the fancy folk in Serrano Palms, some photo, and the Missis passed on not long after. Swamper, who rode the rear wagon brake, and got in the firewood every night, and the rocks for the skinner – lording with his whip which you could work better – to throw at the mules, and squirted castor oil from the long-spout cans into the hubs and corked them up. Swamper’s life a short one ’cause the skinner carried the gun and wouldn’t take much to get heated up.

  his

  Hero Twin

  Scotty. Was he rascaling even then? Still, Willy, you got yourselves some mines all right, you and he, Crabapple just kind of disappeared. The Golden Girl, the Red Cliff and the Two Leg and the Old Whistler, others. Scotty mostly drunk, parlaying himself into this and that till you kind of parted company, least for the time. He and his Mystery Mine, his railroad race from L.A. to Chicago on the Coyote Special, his big thing in L.A. which he had you talk up all over Rhyolite, his castle, and his Wingate Pass, and his riding in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. (Most he ever saw of that show was a wintering with them on Long Island, so Tate, the show’s gunner, told you, whatever for his cigars from the King of Spain and Buffalo Bill turning jealous and ordering him to keep his place.)

  Spider

  Woman

  smoke

  rising

  from your

  cave in the

  ground

  Gold kind of got you, Willy, in those first years, you’ll say it now. So did Scotty. Locating there on Silver Lake and Soda, couple of days south of Death Valley. Horning for gold in secret, though wasn’t really horning – the old fellers who’d, for lack of better, use a sliced cow horn as a sort of spoon for washing a bit of ore. But then there was that bonanza in Goldfield in Nevada, so you just gave your claims to Adam Crow, and Abel. And wished you hadn’t after when Goldfield you’d found all used up.

  That’s when you took up with Panamint Tom, Indian Tom, who knew every spring in Death Valley, though not so much about minerals – comfortable feeling in that country for a young feller who didn’t know his way about much.

  Prospecting.

  Quiet too at the first. The borax boys had gone off to Calico and Daggett. A few hopefuls passing by, heading for Tonopah still and Goldfield. Just that caretaker up at Furnace Creek Ranch, Greenland the old-timers called it – say you can buy your nuggets air-conditioned, read up on the great Scotty at the swim pool.

  O Spider

  of Gold!

  give

  to your sons

  Protecting

  Charm

  feather of

  alien gods

  and

  Then the discoveries, Skidoo, The Bullfrog, Harrisburg, Furnace, Greenwater. And they swarm up the hills and the canyons. Most of’m prospecting the outcroppings, but then there’s the claim jumpers. Not too healthy, out alone. Tom, and later Indian Bob Black, they keep you more than company and refreshed.

  Bob Black, with for a brother-in-law Jack Longstreet who had a ranch beyond Ash Meadows at the mouth of Forty Mile Canyon. Kind of helped each other out. Jack, who’d had the law after him about always for his fast draw and his good eye and the few folk that got in the way. Kept guns strapped on even when haying and would disappear up Forty Mile Canyon when called for and no one would be just about to head in after him with the ambushing so good. Bob, a bit wild too, but he’d come in handy. Time comes when you’ve been out for supplies and you’re packing back in to the One-Man camp. Five fellers sitting there, taken over, armed and nervous with their right hands. Kind of suggest you just move along, and there’s not much to argue on. Get set to move off, slow-like though. And they’d like to know if there’s anything in particular, any special reason for not getting started right quick. So you let on that you’d thought to wait for Jack Longstreet and Indian Bob who’d be along in a piece. Such magic. Just kind of faded away.

  Magic

  eagle’s wing

  Bob, the same though, who’s drunk at Wingate, year or two later, who shoots up Scotty’s brother and a mess of trouble.

  Maybe he’d find a few mines, that Scotty, but it was not finding them that makes him his name. Never got further up One-Man Canyon than the spring at the foot where he might have pitched camp once or so, the canyon where you’ve your Golden Girl, Willy, best mine thereabouts. Yet they’ll call it Scotty’s Canyon, and how long’ll Willy last?

  Still, you were never much for competing, ’specially with one like Scotty, his shenanigans. And maybe you’ll have yourself a museum, kind of a national monument, yet, old Will, if you’ll wait it out. Not so bad, even though Scotty got himself that castle in Death Valley and the rest of it.

  to face

  the Dangers

  of the Way:

  Nineteen oh two it was, Willy, when you rode down from Nevada, town called Bonnie Claire it was with the saloon closed, up over the Grapevines, and down the narrow valley which leads out to the north end of Death Valley below Ubehebe Crater. Coming down to prospect, you’ll be picking up Panamint Tom in a piece. Camp high up at Jake Stenigan’s ranch with the water bubbling and the willows all green and the vegetables fresh and the grapevines tended nice. Would you dream of a castle going to be there and Scotty as fat as his burro telling stories to the tourists?

  Boiling

  Sands

  that

  overwhelm

  Always moving, Willy, moving on. Sometimes grubstaked, sometimes not; Cranton from Worcester, Massachusetts. Good claims and you’ll give’m away, or just let’m sit. Got yourself a name too, several names, what with the Cave Man, and the Cherokee, and the Choctaw, and the Wild Man of Death Valley. A burro and a blanket and you’ll be knowing every spring in the six hundred square miles, maybe better than Tom. With your brown hair down your shoulder blades and your beard over your breast and your Levis and your ten-galloner. And like as not you’ll be moving with Scotty, least till the Under the Box Car contract is ended at Lone Willow. Fifty fifty it is at first, you and him. Though there isn’t much to fifty. Johnson’s his real mine, Johnson from Chicago who came out for his health. Going to die, they said, for all his millions, and took to staking Scotty as a hobby, never finished till he really did die. Staked him to the Coyote Special train race, and maybe even that’s how he’s salting his Mystery Mine, buying high grade to mix in with the gravel and show to the dudes. And he’ll stake him to the castle.

  Still, you whoop around more than a little, and you’re young fellows and you don’t do much harm, least not at first.

  Like how, to keep the mystery good and stirred up, Scotty would kind of keep out of sight for long periods, sitting easy up on Tin Mountain, or over by Ballarat, or up in the Bullfrogs, and he’d send you in to Rhyolite with a big roll or some salted high grade for assaying.

  Waters

  that

  poison

  Yuh, Scotty’s digging hard now, up on the east slope, and when he digs he’s got to have plenty of whiskey – be packing it in soon now – get some assays
made too – buy from you folks cause you’re honester than over at Montana Station – big thing will probably be pulled off next spring, should be L.A. – and the women’s juicier here.