by Rod Miller
“Take in sail!”
“Ease the sheets!”
“Reef the gallant!”
“Batten down the hatches!”
The building wind blew orders apart until the cowboy, bracing himself to stay upright on the rolling deck, heard only fragments as they blustered by:
“—robands—”
“—jackstay—”
“—braces—”
“—clewlines—”
“—buntlines—”
“—tacklines—”
“—sheetlines—”
Then Hurry, who should have been below, tugged on his arm. He bent low to hear her holler, “Okyanus! Okyanus!”
“Okyanus? What about Okyanus?”
“I cannot find him! He is not with his mother!” she said as she tug, tug, tugged on his arm.
“Did you check the other stalls down there?”
“Yes! Everywhere!”
“You looked in all the corners and crannies?”
“Everywhere!”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes!”
Rawhide Robinson lifted his thirteen-gallon lid—which took a fair amount of tugging, snugged down as it was in the high wind—and scratched his head in contemplation.
“Hurry, I’ll find him. You best get below. This wind will likely blow you right away or a wave wash you overboard, small as you are.”
“No! I will not be concerned for my own safety while Okyanus is in danger!” she said before darting off through the spindrift.
“Hurry! Hurry!” the cowboy hollered helplessly, his shouts shattering in the wind and wafting away. He snatched up a coil of rope from a locker and tied a honda in the end, fashioning a makeshift lariat to catch the little camel if necessary—if he could find it in the confusion.
He stumbled and staggered and slipped and slid around the pitching deck, poking into every possible place the camel calf might be secreted. Every time the landlubber thought he had found his footing, the bow of the ship would plow into another wave, upsetting his balance. With the ship pointing into the wind as much as the captain and crew could accomplish, the impact of the waves striking the hull was somewhat diminished, but the blow was still significant enough to spill the cowboy onto the planks.
No sooner would he recover and regain his feet than the Cordwood would pitch upward to climb the swell and pause precariously on the crest before sliding steeply and swiftly into the coming trough. “*$*#)$*%!” he said to himself. “I would lots rather be chinnin’ the moon on the hump of a jack-knifin’ head-boggin’ end-swappin’ bronc!”
Rawhide Robinson no sooner got his pins back beneath him after yet another in a long line of nose-first visits to the wood when his prey plummeted past in a yawping panic with a howling Hurry hot on his heels.
He thrust out an arm and caught Hurry by the collar, lifted her off her feet and stuffed her into a locker and slammed the lid shut, then set off in pursuit of Okyanus.
The calf glanced off gunwales and bounced off bulwarks and caromed off coamings with the cowboy chasing after. He saw his shot and took it about the time a monster wave battered the ship, and Rawhide Robinson’s backside met the deck as he reeled in his slack. The catch slowed the stampeding camel calf only for a moment, and, with nothing to dally to, the cowboy could only hang on as Okyanus towed him across the slippery deck.
Then the camel ran past the mainmast and Rawhide Robinson managed to veer to the opposite side. He slowed. He stopped. He ducked around the mast, taking a rough-and-ready dally, then tied off to a cleat. He was reeling in the terror-stricken calf and having a time of it when the escaped Hurry arrived. (How she broke out of the locker, by the by, remains a mystery to this day.) She paused only to kick the cowboy—albeit lightly—on the shin, then ran to Okyanus, embracing the camel calf and calming it.
The pair of people kept the calf constrained while the cowboy, in sailor parlance, “took a bight in the line,” around the camel’s neck, passed it back through the honda and looped it over Okyanus’s nose, creating a temporary halter with his lariat. The camel handlers considered taking the calf below to the comfort and care of its mother, but the pitching deck and whipping wind and splashing waves and sloshing water forbade the preferred course of action, so they tucked the camel into the first stall on the main deck they could get to. Rawhide Robinson manhandled the door open against the wind and Hurry urged the baby inside.
Tulu, whose home they invaded, gave only a backward glance and continued chewing his cud as uncaring as if he were kneeling in soft sand on a calm desert day.
“There is so little room,” Hurry worried. “Will not the large camel crush Okyanus?”
“I don’t believe so,” Rawhide Robinson said. “It’s going to take more than this storm to move Tulu. Besides, with less room to rattle around in, I think the little feller will be safer here. We might as well ride it out right here ourselves. I don’t fancy goin’ back out there if we don’t have to.”
The USS Cordwood sailed through the storm for hours, which seemed to Rawhide Robinson like days. He feared every wave would smash the ship to splinters the size of cactus thorns and every wind gust roll her over like a tripped steer and every cloudburst flood her like foam filling a beer mug. But when the seas calmed somewhat and the wind died down to a gale and waves subsided to the size of hills rather than mountains, he dozed off, exhausted, in the cozy confines of Tulu’s stall. Hurry and Okyanus likewise snoozed, serenaded by the lullaby of Tulu chewing his cud as rhythmically as the tick-tock of a clock.
Sunlight filled the stall when Ibrahim opened the door. Rawhide Robinson jumped to his feet as if on springs. Hurry sat up, rubbing her eyes and gathering her wits. Okyanus slept on and Tulu chewed his cud, giving his keeper but a bored backward glance.
Ibrahim started shouting. He screamed and shrieked and squawked and screeched. He bellowed and blustered and barked and bawled. By the time his tirade reached the level of howling and hueing and hooting and hollering, every member of company and crew not otherwise occupied had gathered around.
During the rare occurrence of a lull in the tongue-lashing, Rawhide Robinson said, “Happy Harry, what the heck is he haranguing me about?”
“He is most unhappy with your presence in the quarters of his camel—the camel he thinks is his, I should say.”
“I gathered as much as that. But why?”
“He believes the presence of an infidel—which is you—exposes his charge to evil. He says Tulu, who is of royal blood and lineage, is dishonored by association with the calf, which is of lowly breeding and thus unclean. He expresses the opinion that Huri, being but a female and a child, is inferior and her proximity may corrupt Tulu.”
Ibrahim’s uproar eventually wound down, but not before Major Benjamin Wayne and Captain Howard Clemmons were called to the scene to restore order. The infuriated Turk would listen to no one else:
He had resisted Rawhide Robinson’s requests to pipe down.
He had ignored Happy Harry’s appeals for calm.
He had brushed aside Ensign Ian Scott’s demands to desist.
He had disregarded Hurry’s calls for quiet to avoid upsetting Okyanus.
He had pooh-poohed the pleadings of several sailors to shut up.
When Ibrahim refused to even acknowledge the military officers’ orders to put a cork in it, Rawhide Robinson drew his trusty six-gun from its holster, pointed it skyward, and dropped the hammer. The unexpected explosion surprised all to silence, including Ibrahim.
Once the officers had a grasp on the situation at hand, they lit into Ibrahim like hogs on a slop trough.
“Ibrahim, these camels are the property of the United States Army. Tulu is not your property, and your responsibility for his care is neither more nor less than that of the others. You will stop pretending he is your personal charge or you will be put ashore at first opportunity,” Major Wayne said.
“Ibrahim, this ship is under my command and you have upset order and harmony for t
he last time. One more rumpus, one more uproar on your part and I will have you in chains!” Captain Clemmons said.
“Ibrahim, Mister Robinson and the girl were doing no more than their part to protect the lives of the camels. Which is more than you did, I am told, cowering in your quarters while others secured the animals. Another such dereliction of duty, and I shall request Captain Clemmons and his crew keelhaul you!” Major Wayne said.
“Ibrahim, while you are not a sailor and thus somewhat shielded from military discipline, you are, nevertheless, required by laws, statutes, rules, regulations, protocols, practices, procedures, edicts, decrees, conventions, concords, and any and every other such ruling to do your part to contribute to, and do nothing to hinder, the orderly operation of this ship. I may well take under advisement Major Wayne’s suggestion to have you keelhauled! Or, perhaps, I shall seat you in the bosun’s chair and let you dangle for a spell between the devil and the deep blue sea!” Captain Clemmons said.
After hearing Happy Harry’s none-too-happy translation of the officers’ harangues, Ibrahim seethed. He stewed. He sweltered. He smoldered. He frothed. He fumed. He foamed. He bristled and boiled and burned. Roiled and rankled, flamed and fizzled, chafed and—well, suffice it to say that while he remained angry he uttered not another word.
And so, yet another storm had passed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
* * *
After the big blow blew itself away and the huge waves wore themselves out, the voyage across the Atlantic was uneventful. Beyond uneventful, it was tedious and tiresome. Monotonous and mundane. Boring and banal. Dull and dreary. And downright wearisome.
One afternoon as the USS Cordwood sliced through the sea in winds so favorable the ship all but sailed itself, Rawhide Robinson, as was his wont, determined to lift the spirits of the sailors with another tale of bravery and daring in the Wild West.
“Say, boys, how many of you-all have ever been to San Francisco?” he asked by way of introduction. Many of the seamen responded in the affirmative, as San Francisco Bay was a common port of call for military and commercial vessels plying the waters of the Pacific Ocean.
“Years ago,” he said, “I was working on a ranch on the west slope of the Sierras some ways east of there. I was out hunting stray cattle one day and followed the Merced River up into the mountains. After riding a while upriver, the hills started closing in and I found myself in a narrow canyon. The sides were some steep, but not so much a cow couldn’t graze them—and there was good grass everywhere. I spied cattle on the hills here and there and rode up and pushed them down, but left them along the river as I figured to collect them on the way back down the canyon, like you do on a gather.
“The farther upstream I rode the prettier that place got. Grass and wildflowers carpeted the slopes, with clumps of trees here and there, and that clear cold stream clattering across the rocks in the riverbed. Would have been a nice place to start a spread, if only that canyon had any spread to it—but, for those who know your letters, it looked like a vast letter ‘V’ with no room in the bottom but for the river.”
“Is this story about anything?” some impatient sailor asked.
“As the disciple James says in the Good Book, sailor, ‘Be patient therefore, brethren.’ So you reel in your tongue and mind your manners. I’ll get to it in my own good time.”
“#*%&%,” the antsy seaman whispered.
“Now, then, where was I?” the cowboy inquired. But it was a rhetorical question as the raconteur well knew the status of his story. “A little ways farther up that canyon, I caught a whiff of woodsmoke so I knowed I was not alone. After a while I encountered the source of the smoke, which was, as I assumed, a campfire.
“But it was not your ordinary campfire. Fact is, it was bigger than your average bonfire. It was mostly down to coals, as the day was well advanced, but you could still see the logs was the size of trees. And a nearby stack of firewood—stack of timber, more like—bore that out. The ax sticking out of a stump had a handle nearly as long and broad as that mizzen-mast over there—”
“Piffle!”
“Hooey!”
“Tommyrot!”
“Twaddle!”
—came a chorus of reactions from suspicious sailors.
“I tell you it’s true, boys, and that ain’t the half of it. The boot tracks around that camp was the size of a buffalo wallow. Layin’ there was a frying pan of a size you couldn’t wrap a lariat around and a coffee cup you could bathe an elephant in. Boys, there was a stack of bones there that looked to be the remains of entire elk and deer, gnawed on like you would a roast chicken. And there beside them bones was a toothpick you could use for a wagon tongue.
“Once I’d took it all in, I rode on up the canyon. I wasn’t sure I wanted to run across whoever made that camp, but when you’re a-huntin’ cows you cover the country no matter what. It’s The Cowboy Way.”
Rawhide Robinson took to his feet and ambled over to a water keg and dipped himself out a dollop of refreshment. “I declare, fellers, the salt in these sea breezes does give a man a mighty thirst.”
“C’mon, cowboy! Get on with it!” someone said. Other irked listeners agreed, offering similar encouragements.
“Well, I rode on up the canyon and soon could see disturbances in the stream bed. There were piles of boulders here and there along the river and dug-out places along the bank. Then I spied there in a clump of trees the worn-out head of a miner’s pick the size of a railroad engine. It all told me that whatever else this man was, he was a prospector lookin’ to strike gold—of which there has been a mighty amount found in them mountains, I don’t have to remind you.
“After a while I could hear digging—a shovel biting into the riverbank—then what sounded like water sloshing in a trough. Then I rounded a bend and I seen him.”
Again, Rawhide Robinson paused for effect, and again the audience urged him on.
“There he was. There wasn’t no mistaking it. You couldn’t miss that man if you was blindfolded. I tell you, he was so big he’d make that feller Balaban back in Smyrna seem small. He was panning out what I’d heard him digging, and that gold pan was the size of—well, I’ve seen lakes that was smaller. When he’d slosh that water around in that pan, it’d make waves near the size of them in that storm we had a while back.
“Then he saw me. I don’t know if he figured I was a claim jumper or what, but he came roarin’ out of that river like a grizzly bear with an angry boil on its backside. Grabbed up that giant-size shovel and came after me with real intent and malice aforethought. I spun that horse around and switched directions like a bank shot on a billiard ball. That immense miner was on my heels and chopping down at me with that spade every step of the way. And every time he stabbed at me with that shovel he’d peel a slice off the side of that canyon. It went on that way a fair piece down that ravine till he must have decided I wasn’t no threat to his claim and not likely to pay a return visit. And he was right, I’m here to tell you.”
Again, the cowboy chronicler suspended his story.
“That’s it?” one sailor asked.
“That’s the end?” another wondered.
“That’s all there is?” still another inquired.
“Well, that’s the most of it,” Rawhide Robinson resumed. “When that gargantuan gold digger started back to his claim I reined up on a ridge to rest my horse. Like me, he was wound as tight as a dally around a saddle horn so we stopped for a blow and to regain our equilibrium.
“I sneaked a peek back up the canyon to make sure that monstrous mucker was still making his way back to his placer place and laid eyes on a sight so sublime my brain thought my eyes was playin’ tricks on me.”
“What?”
“What was it?”
“What did you see?”
“I’m telling you boys, where once there was nothin’ but a steep-sided canyon—which are as plentiful as prospectors in all them mountain ranges out west—I was lookin’ at a valley the
like of which you’ve never seen. Or, far as that goes, nobody had ever seen, until that very minute.
“That rock washer’s shovel had sheared off the sides of them mountains until they was, well, sheer. Lining that new little valley on both side was cliffs reaching straight up to the sky. They looked so smooth and slick a spider couldn’t get a foothold with any one of his eight feet. Little creeks and streams that used to run down them side hills to meet the river was now waterfalls that looked to be a mile high. Plumb precipitous, them parapets was.”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” a skeptical sailor said.
“That can’t possibly be so,” a cynical seaman said.
“You’d have to show me before I’d believe it,” said a sailor who happened to hail from Missouri.
“Ensign Ian!” Rawhide Robinson hollered, hailing the young officer who happened to be nearby. “I was a-tellin’ these doubting Thomases about a place I seen out in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. Being such an educated and well-read feller, maybe they’ll believe you. You ever hear tell of a place called Yosemite?”
The young ensign did not hesitate even a moment. “Why certainly,” he said. “Yosemite is well known for its spectacular scenery and geological formations. It is named for a band of Indians who once lived in the area—those Indians, by the way, called the place ‘Ahwahnee.’ While I have not visited Yosemite myself, I have read several accounts by travelers who marvel at its giant cliffs and magnificent waterfalls.”
“See,” Rawhide Robinson said with a sly smile. “Just like I said.”
The speechless sailors, of course, offered no reply.
With a wink, the cowboy spraddled his legs, leaned back against a bulkhead and tipped his thirteen-gallon hat down over his eyes for an afternoon nap, rocked to sleep by the gentle rolling of the USS Cordwood.