On the Trail to Moonlight Gulch

by Shelter Somerset

  The conductor announced the next stop: Davenport. The two men finished their coffee and bid each other farewell.

  Back at his seat, Tory again gazed out the window. The industrial town along the Mississippi seemed similar to Chicago, only on a much smaller scale. There was even a five-story building, from what he could see. But soon after the train lurched westward from the train depot, cornfield after cornfield rushed by.

  His entire life, Tory had lived in the city. Such expanses of rural land filled him with awe, but also fear. Much of the world, far larger than his neighborhood of River North, lay untouched by his hands, unseen by his eyes. He had grown accustomed to the world coming to him—people from every continent moved to Chicago. To find himself carried into that world both delighted and troubled him.

  What really waited beyond the cultivated farmland of the vast heartland? Was Franklin Ausmus a mere figment of his imagination, nothing but a fantasy concocted in his head from letters written by an invisible hand?

  He was glad to see the lumber dealer approach him with a grin. Someone from his own world, a man grounded in the reality of day-to-day business. For a moment, uncertainty subsided.

  “Ah, my young friend.” The man, clutching his two satchels, greeted Tory with big yellow teeth. “Someone has taken my seat, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m sorry. Would you care to sit here?” Tory patted the empty seat next to him. “This seat is vacant.”

  “I think I will. Thank you.” Abel Hendricks secured his luggage in the bin above and settled next to Tory with a sigh. “There’s nothing like a comfortable train ride, is there?” he said, adjusting the legs of his breeches.

  “It’s my first real long one,” Tory said. “I’ve only traveled as far as Washington to visit my sister.”

  “Oh my, then this must be a real treat for you. Long train journeys are full of so much more, well… romance and adventure. Especially those heading west. The landscape is unmatched.”

  “Have you been far west?”

  “As far as Denver. You wouldn’t believe the mountains.” He shook his head. “So towering they cut the day’s length by two hours.”

  “Really?”

  “‘Behold the rocky wall, that down its sloping sides, pours the swift rain-drops, blending, as they fall, in rushing river-tides.’”

  Tory smiled at him. “Is that from a poem?” he asked.

  “Oliver Wendell Holmes,” Abel Hendricks said. “Are you an aficionado of poetry?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I am. My favorite is Walt Whitman.”

  The man lifted his eyes to the silk-lined ceiling and clasped his veiny, chubby hands in his lap. “Walt Whitman? Well, he is quite a poet. You have excellent taste. He’s rather transcendental, don’t you agree?”

  “Oh, yes. He uses the most interesting similes and metaphors.”

  “Some say for things most of us would rather not speak about.” Mr. Hendricks elbowed Tory lightly on his arm and chuckled.

  This last exchange left the two men silent. Tory stared out the window at the setting sun. He wondered if the train might never stop chasing the red orb. Finally, the sun fell beyond the western horizon and darkness oozed into the car, turning the window into a mirror. Tory could see from Abel Hendricks’s reflection that he’d fallen asleep. Soon Tory, too, nodded off to a jostling, dreamless sleep.

  He awoke to feel something on his lap. The conductors had lighted the lanterns while he’d slept, and the dim glow revealed the hand of Abel Hendricks, still in a slumber, on Tory’s right thigh. His heart somersaulted. Even more arresting, Tory had his usual middle-of-the-night arousal. No way had it come from the man’s touch. The aching throb had occurred almost nightly since he’d turned twelve. What if the man awoke and believed Tory’s erection was because of him? He slowly tried to ease himself from under Mr. Hendricks’s hand, but the salesman stirred, and his hand nudged closer to Tory’s swelling.

  The businessman’s lone visible eye opened. He was awake. But instead of removing his hand, he let it lay. To Tory’s horror, Mr. Hendricks moved his hand closer until he completely enveloped Tory’s bulge. No doubt the salesman was fully awake and wanted to fondle him right there on the train.

  Almost as a punishment for losing Joseph, Tory had given himself to the fabric salesman from Maryland back in Chicago. In many ways, he blamed himself and his city for Joseph’s death. Tory had fallen along with Joseph on that horrible afternoon. They had both landed in a dark hole, where despair and cold emptiness sealed their gloomy future. But now, hope beckoned. Each passing railroad tie pumped him with fresh optimism. Out there, Franklin Ausmus waited. Someone who unwittingly loved him.

  Tory no longer sought to sacrifice himself upon the liturgical hill, like he had with Calvin McGregor in the hotel room on the South Side. He must save himself for Franklin, and Franklin alone, even if his surrender was merely symbolic.

  Tory wanted nothing intimate from Abel Hendricks. Sharing a meal, a seat, polite conversation—he fancied nothing more. Allowing no other thought, Tory jumped from his seat and darted for the water closet.

  When Tory returned, Abel Hendricks had gone, along with his two satchels. The next morning, when they encountered each other in the dining car, the lumber salesman refrained from speaking to him or making any kind of eye contact. Just as well. Who needed a masher like him for a travel companion?

  By midmorning, the train had rolled across the swift Missouri River into Omaha’s West Lawn Station. Luckily, that was Mr. Abel Hendricks’s last stop. Tory watched the middle-aged lumber dealer fumble with his luggage on the platform and, with only a cursory glance back at Tory, amble for his waiting stagecoach.

  Another stage transported Tory and eight others to the Union Pacific Railroad depot four miles east of downtown, where he paid fifty-five dollars for a one-way fare to Cheyenne City, including stagecoach passage into Deadwood. Exhausted, he stretched supine across a bench with his head resting against his satchel. Two hours later, the conductor’s call for all aboard roused him from his nap. Stepping onto the platform, he could see the engine’s firebox, red-hot with coals. He shuddered, handed his ticket to the porter, and hurried aboard.

  He found an empty row of seats and dropped himself into it. The Union Pacific carried a completely different group of passengers: authentic-looking frontiersmen, some wearing funny hats made out of animal skins with the tails still attached. The women dressed spicier, with ruby-red lips and long eyelashes batting at every man. The more decent folk—women traveling with children, families, men on business—huddled together in the middle car, although after his experience with Abel Hendricks, a salesman from the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, Tory wondered if perhaps the grungy prospectors and prostitutes might not make for better company.

  Once the train got underway, Tory purchased a small lunch from the dining car (coffee, a ham and cheese sandwich, and pickle slices) and carried it back to his seat. The gruff patter of men’s voices and chortling women entertained him while he ate. Worn out, he pushed aside the empty wrappers, laid his head against the seat, and gazed at the passing scenery of endless cornfields.

  About one hundred miles west of Omaha, the landscape underwent an alien transformation. Tory had never seen anything like it. Gone were the verdant cornfields of the heartland. The earth lay arid, like a desert, and odd, isolated grassy uplifts appeared like forlorn goblins. Sagebrush rolled alongside the tracks. The Wild West erupted into his view, an authentic place outside of his imagination. He pressed his palms against the window and peered out.

  Vast land stretched mile after mile, with few trees other than a narrow wind-blown strip abutting the Platte River, which paralleled the train tracks. No indication of human habitation other than far-reaching ranches where cattle grazed over tawny fields. A cowboy rode horseback while overseeing the cattle hoarded in a massive mud-covered pen, which Tory guessed were waiting to be corralled onto trains heading to the Chicago Stock Yards.

  The train increased sp
eed. Yellow and blue wildflowers carpeting the narrow strip of tawny grass along the river blurred into a haze of green. Afternoon came slowly heading west.

  Nighttime eventually caught up with the train. After supper, Tory returned to his seat. He caught his reflection in the darkened window. He looked like a mere boy in ways, a boy rumbling off to meet a man who, in reality, knew nothing about him. The second night brought a nebulous comprehension of his journey, yet the darkness allowed his mind to settle. He drew the curtain and let his eyelids droop shut.

  He dreamed of cowboys, Indians, bandits, carnivals. A one-armed homesteader waved to him along the tracks as the train passed. Tory hollered for the train to stop, pleading through the window for the man to wait for him. The engineer drove faster and faster. Black smoke concealed the sun. Wind rushed into his face as the train transformed into a mine car. He was sitting next to Joseph van Werckhoven. They were laughing and clutching each other’s arms. A sense of lightness and gaiety replaced his fear. Then the car vanished from under him, and he was in a freefall. The wrenching fear returned. Below him, the street loomed closer and closer….

  With a jolt, he awoke. For an instant, he grasped onto the armrest, fearful he was still falling. But it was the train that had jerked to a slow crawl. The train whistled. A conductor moving from car to car announced, “Cheyenne City.” A robust man in his fifties stirred next to him. He must’ve gotten on while Tory had fallen into a deep sleep. Peering outside the curtain, Tory noticed the large town nearing, like a wooden cavalry under the mask of evening twilight. He checked his pocket watch. Six thirty. He’d slept on and off for the past eight hours.

  Excitement and fear lurched in Tory’s throat. He had never stepped foot outside the thirty-eight states. Although Wyoming Territory was poised to become a state, he still considered it a remote outpost, a rugged reminder of how the country stood before the growth of massive cities like Chicago and the western expansion of the railroads.

  The western sky implied an earlier hour. He needed to set his watch back an hour to match Wyoming time. Out here, the sun worked differently from what his watch indicated. Everything seemed divergent and strange.

  At the depot, Tory grabbed his satchel and debarked from the train with the flow of passengers. He lavished extra time on himself by washing in the depot’s lavatory. He brushed his teeth, scrubbed his face, splashed limewater on his neck, and fixed his unruly hair.

  Stepping outside, where the sun nudged above the flat highlands in the east, he peered up at the depot’s lofty sandstone clock tower. That was when he noticed the time. The ticket agent in Omaha had said the stage for Deadwood would leave straight from the Cheyenne depot at six thirty sharp “without fail.” It was twenty-five after.

  He adjusted his eyes from the dust stirred by the carriages picking up and dropping off passengers, and peered around. The Cheyenne-Deadwood Stage, hitched to a six-horse team, was waiting by the western entrance. The final leg of his journey, and it was preparing to leave without him.

  Chapter 11

  WITH his satchel bouncing against his side, Tory circumvented a jail wagon loaded with convicts and raced over to the stagecoach. Breathless, he approached a man who appeared to be the stage agent. “Is this the stage to Deadwood?”

  The agent peered at him. “We… we… we almost l-l-l-left you behind. Y-y-you’re late.”

  Tory was puzzled by the man’s manner of speech. He had never come across anyone like him in Chicago. “I’m sorry, sir. I got held up inside the depot.”

  “N-n-no talking about getting held… held up around this stage. People riding s-s-stages don’t like to hear such things. That’s… that’s number one on the list. Let m-m-me see your ticket.”

  Tory obliged him. Satisfied, the agent grabbed Tory’s satchel and handed it to another worker, who was securing luggage on the back of the Concord. About six passengers sat on the roof of the stage. None of the workers seemed disturbed by their presence, so Tory assumed it was protocol.

  The agent turned to another man, who Tory assumed was the driver. “This h-h-here’s your l-l-last passenger.”

  The driver wide eyed Tory. “You’re fairly late,” he said. “I’ll have to run down all the rules for riding the Concord. I just got done telling everyone else.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Now listen good. Whatever you do,” the driver said, “don’t go mentioning stagecoach robberies or Indian uprisings while riding, even for laughs. If you do, I’ll toss your little rump out the coach so fast you’d think you was a hawk flying through the sky. You understand, don’t you?”

  Swallowing hard, Tory nodded. So that was why the other agent had chastised him when Tory had mentioned being “held up.” Boyhood stories of Cowboys and Indians sprouted into reality. They materialized as bona fide as the inhabitants of his neighborhood of River North.

  “No cussing,” the driver went on. “We got a lady and child passenger. No smoking cigars or pipes. You can chew tobacco, but use a spittoon—but only if no one inside the coach minds. There’ll be no consumption of liquor whatsoever, no matter what. I’ll know you’re sipping even from my post outside, so don’t even try. And if you’re gonna sleep, which I reckon you got to for such a long journey, don’t snore or lean on no one. It ain’t none too polite.”

  “You don’t need to worry about all that, sir,” Tory said, his mouth dry. “I don’t do any of those things.”

  “One other thing.” The driver narrowed his brown eyes at Tory. “Keep your firearms on your person at all times. No drawing them out unless called for. I got a double-barrel shotgun and a .44 Smith & Wesson, and my partner riding shotgun got two sidearms and a state-of-the-art Winchester that can take down a buffalo if need be.”

  “But I don’t have any guns,” Tory said.

  The driver’s forehead corrugated with harsh wrinkles, his eyebrows raised near to the underside of his suede cowboy hat. “You don’t got no firearms?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You going into the Black Hills unarmed?”

  Tory shrugged and flushed.

  The driver shook his head and pulled on the end of his bushy mustache. “I’ll be darned. You city folk sure do live dangerously, that’s for sure. Now get a wiggle on so we can get this party rolling.”

  Climbing into the stage, Tory noticed what he feared were two gunshot holes on the side of the door. He worried he would never make it into Spiketrout alive. One good thing about arriving late—he secured a window seat. Fresh air from the open window would be welcome while squeezed in with seven other passengers.

  Only two passengers, the woman with the child and a gentleman wearing a navy frock, returned his smile and nod. The others, greasy-faced, with razor stubble and soiled clothes, focused their bloodshot eyes on their battered boots.

  For the first several miles, his fellow passengers rode solemn and quiet, and as deadpan as the eastern Wyoming landscape. No one read, for it would most likely have made them sick, as Tory discovered. The modern Concord stagecoach minimized the impact of the rough three-hundred-mile Cheyenne-Deadwood Trail; even so, the trail’s unexpected jolts dropped Tory’s stomach to his gaiters. He worried about the safety of the six men riding on top. Everyone else seemed to take it in stride. On the frontier, people seemed more hearty and individualistic. He did not want to appear too fresh out of the city.

  He tucked his novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, back inside his coat pocket, wishing to establish some connection with his fellow passengers. He was drawn to the one woman sitting across from him with the snoozing toddler in her lap. He cleared his throat and smiled at her. “How old is your child?” he asked, unsure if the child was a boy or a girl.

  “He’ll be three in December.” The woman held the child tighter to her blouse.

  “What’s his name?”

  “James Jr.”

  “He’s a cute fellow. Where are you traveling?”

  The woman studied Tory a moment with her blue eyes, appar
ently assessing whether his kindness preceded ill will. Then she grinned and gave a gentle tilt to her head. “We live in Ft. Laramie,” she said. “I was visiting relatives in Cheyenne with my son.”

  “Have you traveled on this stage before?”

  “Yes, many times. My husband works for a supply contractor in Ft. Laramie, and I travel frequently to visit family back home. Hopefully by this time next year we’ll have train service in most of eastern Wyoming and we can leave these rickety stages behind.”

  Tory wanted to ask her if she’d ever encountered wild bandits or marauding Indians during her stage journeys, but he remembered the driver’s dire warning. “They’re building train routes all over, it seems,” he said instead.

  “Yes, I think they’ll have them going clear up to Alaska one of these days. Where are you heading?”

  “Spiketrout is my final destination.”

  “Are you a prospector?”

  “No, ma’am.” Tory tittered with laughter.

  The woman shifted her dozing child on her lap. “Every time I take this coach it’s full of prospectors heading to the Black Hills,” she said, lowering her voice and nodding toward some of the other passengers. “It’s the whole reason why the stage line is here. Started after the gold strike in ’74. But the gold’s running low, I hear.”

  One of the older scraggly prospectors lifted his head. His grizzled beard brushed against his lap when he fired gray eyes at Tory. “You going for gold?”

  “No, sir,” Tory said. “I have other business there.”

  “Most the placer gold is played out,” the old man said. “There’s some gold in the mountain rock if you willing to dig for it. I got a small mine near Lead I bought off some hard case for one thousand dollars. You ain’t thinking of staking a claim near Lead, are you?”

  “Like I said, I have other business in the Black Hills.”

  The old gentleman glanced out the window. “Everyone wants gold,” he said, flashing Tory his sparkling eyes. His bushy silver eyebrows looked like caterpillars crawling across his forehead.