Ole Devil and the Mule Train (An Ole Devil Western Book 3)

by J. T. Edson

  Then it was over.

  Lowering his bloodstained knife, Ole Devil looked around. Not a single living enemy remained in the basin. Apart from a couple of minor wounds, the defenders had come through the fighting unscathed. Giving a sigh of relief, he walked to meet the men who were coming off the Yellow Stone and wondered how they had managed to arrive so fortuitously. lxxviii

  Di Brindley was galloping towards the opposite bank, waving her hat and yelling in delight. Returning her salutation, Ole Devil felt sure that the consignment of caplocks and ammunition were safe. With the help of her mule train, he could complete the delivery and give Major General Samuel Houston a powerful aid in the struggle to gain independence for Texas.

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  i Another and even more serious example of the effect of inclement weather conditions on firearms using the flintlock system is given in Ole Devil at San Jacinto.

  ii Texian: an Anglo-U.S.-born citizen of Mexico, the ‘i’ being dropped from general usage after annexation by the United States of America and the conclusion of the 1846-48 war with Mexico.

  iii Chicano: a Mexican-born citizen of Texas.

  iv Hessian boots: originally designed for use by light cavalry such as Hussars, having legs which extend to just below the knee and with a ‘V’-shaped notch at the front.

  v The reasons why the colonists of both races had been driven to rebel are given in Young Ole Devil.

  vi The circumstances are explained in Ole Devil and the Caplocks.

  vii Presidente Santa Anna’s repeated refusals to make Texas a separate State with full representation in the Mexican Government had been a major cause of the rebellion.

  viii Although it would not be until March 2nd, 1836, that a Convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos declared Texas a free and independent Republic under the Lone Star flag, many Texians had been referring to it in such a manner since the previous year’s conflict with the Mexican authorities had ended all hopes of a peaceful settlement.

  ix Knowing many prominent Texians believed their only secure future lay in annexation of the Republic by the United States of America, the liberal anti-slavery factions were afraid that doing so would increase the power of the pro-slavery lobby. The Texians had suggested that, in view of the vast area of land which was involved, Texas could be divided into three or four separate States. The Abolitionists claimed that these would join the others which already supported the continuance of slavery.

  x A mule packer never used the word ‘tied’, but always said he was ‘throwing’ a diamond-hitch on his animal’s load.

  xi Joseph ‘Old Joe’ Manton, a gunsmith of London, England, who was an early maker of fine quality percussion fired rifles and pistols.

  xii What happened to James Bowie’s knife after he was killed at the conclusion of the Siege of the Alamo Mission - at San Antonio de Bexar, Texas - on March 6th, 1836, is told in The Quest for Bowie’s Blade. Some authorities have claimed that Bowie’s eldest brother, Rezin Pleasant, was the actual designer of the knife, which was made by the Arkansas blacksmith and master cutler, James

  Black.

  xiii Traditionally a Japanese samurai warrior’s daisho - a matched pair of swords comprised of the tachi, with a thirty-inch blade and the wakizashi, about half the former’s blade length - were carried thrust through the girdle. As Tommy Okasi had had to spend long hours on horseback since arriving in the United States and accompanying Ole Devil Hardin to Texas, he had found it more convenient to equip the sheaths with slings and carry them on either side of his belt.

  xiv To permit men of such small stature to wield bows of that length, the handle was positioned two thirds of the way down the stave instead of, as is the case with the majority of Occidental bows, centrally. One Japanese system of drawing, aiming and loosing an arrow is given in Young Ole Devil and, for comparison, descriptions of two Occidental archery techniques are to be found in Bunduki.

  xv Another cause of Jackson Baines Hardin’s nickname was his well-deserved reputation for being a ‘lil ole devil for a fight’.

  xvi Because of its Mexican derivation, from the word ‘cincha’, Texians tended to use the term ‘girth’ rather than ‘cinch’.

  xvii The member in question was Dustine Edward Marsden ‘Dusty’ Fog, whose history and fighting abilities are recorded in the author’s ‘Civil War’ and ‘floating outfit’ series of biographies.

  xviii Just how competent the present day combat shooting experts can be is described in The ¼-Second Draw and the rest of the author’s Rockabye County biographies.

  xix First produced on the Green River, at Greenfield, Massachusetts, in 1834, a very popular type of knife had the following inscription on its blade just below the hilt, ‘J. Russell & Co.,’Green River Works’. Any knife thrust into an enemy ‘up to the “Green River”’ - whether it bore the inscription or not - would be fatal.

  xx Fly-slicers: derogatory name for members of the cavalry as opposed to Dragoons, who although mounted for the purpose of traveling, usually fought on foot.

  xxi The capital was transferred to Austin - named in honor of Stephen Fuller Austin, 1793-1836, one of the first of the Anglo-U.S. colonizers - after the Texians had won their independence.

  xxii Measured at the withers, the highest part of the back between the shoulder blades, a ‘hand’ being equivalent to four inches.

  xxiii Roach-backed: slightly arched.

  xxiv Cow-hocked: where the legs are curved inwards at the hocks - the joints which correspond with the human ankle - so that they are closer together at the pasterns - the part of the leg between hock and hoof - and the stifles, the upper joints of the limbs.

  xxv Mule packers in the United States’ Army called the sobre-jalma a ‘hammer cloth’.

  xxvi ‘Gone to Texas’: at odds with the law, usually in the United States of America. Many fugitives from justice and wanted men had entered Texas during the colonization period - which had commenced in the early 1820s - and would continue to do so until annexation on February 16th, 1846. Until the latter became a fact, they had known there was little danger of being arrested and extradited by the local authorities. In fact, like Kenya from the 1920s until the outbreak of World War II, Texas had gained a reputation for being ‘a place in the sun for shady people’.

  xxvii Mozo: a man servant, particularly one employed in a menial capacity.

  xxviii A detailed description of the later technique for performing the high cavalry-twist draw, the major difference being that the hammer was cocked by the thumb of the hand holding the weapon, is given in Slip Gun.

  xxix A classic example of the effect of slow communications occurred during the final stages of the American Civil War. The last engagement, ironically won by a unit of the Confederate States’ Army under the command of Colonel John Salmon ‘Rip’ Ford, took place at Palmitto Hill, about fifteen miles east of Brownsville, Cameron County, Texas, on May 13th, 1865; more than a month after the surrender of General Robert E. Lee at the Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia - on April the 9th - should have brought an end to military hostilities.

  xxx After failing to persuade Colonel Fannin to reinforce the Alamo Mission and, penetrating the surrounding Mexican lines, delivering a warning that no help would be forthcoming, Captain James Butler Bonham (1807-1836) elected to remain and perished with the other defenders on March 6th.

  xxxi The result of a cross between a horse stallion and a female donkey is called a ‘hinny’. Always smaller than a mule, the hinny bears an even closer resemblance to its dam. Inheriting the donkey’s obstinate disposition to an even greater degree, which combines with its smaller size to make it a less useful beast of burden, the h
inny has never been bred to the same extent as have mules.

  xxxii The events referred to are related in Ole Devil and the Caplocks.

  xxxiii Remuda: the Spanish word meaning ‘replacement’ which was adopted by the Texians to describe a collection of spare mounts herded together and not at the time under saddle. Also occasionally called a ‘remotha’, pronounced ‘remootha’, a corruption of the Spanish word for remounts, remonta. In later years, cowhands in the Northwest used the terms ‘cavvy’ or ‘saddle band’.

  xxxiv How this came about is told in Goodnight’s Dream and From Hide and Horn.

  xxxv American hornbeam: carpinus caroliniana, a small tree with birchlike leaves, also known as the ‘blue-’ or ‘water-beech’.

  xxxvi Tapadero: in speech usually shortened to ‘taps’, a wedge-shaped piece of leather covering the stirrup at the front and sides, but open at the rear. Made from heavy cowhide, often carved decoratively, it is used to protect the rider’s feet.

  xxxvii The majority of what have come to be known as ‘Kentucky’ rifles were manufactured in Pennsylvania.

  xxxviii For the benefit of those who have not read Young Ole Devil, Ole Devil and the Caplocks or Get Urrea!, the Browning Slide Repeating rifle was one of the earliest successful American designed

  multiple-firing weapons. The ‘Slide’ magazine - generally with a capacity of five shoots, although greater numbers could be had if requested - was a rectangular iron bar, drilled to take percussion caps

  and the main firing charge, which passed through an aperture at the rifle’s breech. When operated by the thumb, a lever at the right side of the frame moved each successive chamber into position and cammed the Slide forward to form a gas-tight connection against the bore. Because of its proximity to the front of the triggerguard, the under-hammer could easily be cocked by the right forefinger without taking the rifle’s butt from the shoulder. Despite the difficulty of transporting it for any length of time with the magazine in position, the rifle was simple in operation and capable of a continuous fire unequalled by any other firearm available in 1836. However, during the period of its manufacture, between 1834 and ’42, Browning lacked the facilities for large-scale manufacture. He would have been able to do so in later years, but the development of self-contained metal-cased cartridges and more compact, if less simple, weapons had rendered it obsolete.

  xxxix Whilst engaged in manufacturing the Slide Repeating rifle, Jonathan Browning, q.v., also developed a rifle which could be fired six times in succession. The charges were held in a cylinder, but there was no mechanism and it had to be rotated manually after each shot. While the same caliber - roughly .45 - and almost ten inches shorter, it was more bulky and weighed twelve pounds, two ounces as opposed to the Slide Repeating rifle’s nine pounds, fourteen ounces. It was not offered for sale until Browning had settled at Council Bluffs, Utah, in 1852. However, by that time, it too had become redundant due to the ever-increasing availability of Samuel Colt’s mechanically superior rifles and revolvers.

  xl One method of stringing a modern recurved hunting bow is given in Sacrifice for the Quagga God.

  xliThe traditional Japanese arrow was made from mashino-dake, a very straight, hard and thin species of bamboo. After being cut in the winter, the bamboo was left to dry out of doors until spring. Having

  been further dried and hardened by being placed close to a fire, the joints were carefully smoothed down. When the shaft had been polished with emery powder and water, it was once more exposed to the fire. Finally, it was fletched with three feathers from a hawk, falcon or eagle and had its metal arrowhead and nock affixed.

  xlii The throwing-stick of the Hopi and related tribes of North American Indians is a similar device to the war and hunting boomerangs of the Australian aborigines, but is neither designed nor expected to return to the thrower if it should miss its target. This does not make it any less lethal as a weapon. American author, Daniel Mannix described in Chapter 7, ‘The Boomerang, the Stick that Kills’, of his book, A Sporting Chance - which covers the subject thoroughly, along with other unusual methods of hunting - how he has thrown one a distance of five hundred and forty feet and it still retained sufficient momentum to crack an inch thick branch of a tree.

  xliii Unlike the Comanches, who allowed only the first arrival to count the coup - which was done by touching preferably a living enemy, or a corpse, and saying, ‘Ahe!’ meaning ‘I claim it!’ - the Hopis and some other tribes permitted the second and third warrior to take lesser shares in the credit.

  xliv ‘Et tu, Brute?’, ‘And you also, Brutus?’: said to have been Gaius Julius Caeser’s reproachful dying comment on discovering that his friend Marcus Junius Brutus, was one of the assassins who had attacked him at the foot of Pompey’s statue in the Senate Building, Rome, on the 15th ‘The Ides’ of March, 44 B.C., and quoted by the British playwright, William Shakespeare (1564-1616) in Act Three, Scene One of Julius Caesar.

  xlv Mason-Dixon line, sometimes called the ‘Mason-Dixie’ line; the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland, as surveyed in 1763-67 by the Englishmen Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, which came to be regarded as the dividing line between the Southern ‘Slave’ and the Northern ‘Free’ States of America.

  xlvi The actual figure proved to have been sixteen killed and twenty-one - who were subsequently executed by a firing squad - taken prisoner. Colonel Johnson was among those who made good their escape, arriving at Fort Defiance, Goliad, q.v. on February 29th, 1836.

  xlvii While attending the 21st Annual Convention of Western Writers of America at Fort Worth, Texas, in 1974 and during a second visit the following year, the author tried to discover what had caused Tommy Okasi - this was not his real name, but an Americanized corruption of the one he gave when picked up by Captain Jeremiah Hardin’s ship - to leave his native land. The members of the Hardin, Fog and Blaze clan to whom I spoke were adamant that, because of the circumstances and the high social standing of the families involved - all of whom have descendants holding positions of influence and importance in Japan at the time of writing - it is inadvisable even at this late date to make the facts public.

  xlviii Samurai: a member of the lower nobility’s elite warrior class, usually acting as a retainer of the Daimyos, the hereditary Japanese feudal barons.

  xlix During the mid-nineteenth century, an increasing contact with the Western World was bringing an ever growing realization that the retention of an hereditary and privileged warrior class was incompatible with the formation of a modern and industrialized society. Various edicts issued by the Emperor between 1873 and ’76 abolished the special rights of the samurai and, although some of their traditions and concepts were retained, they ceased to exist as such.

  l Although primitive kinds of firearms had been known in Japan since the arrival of Portuguese explorers in 1543, the samurai had small regard for them and little time was devoted to learning how to use them.

  li Blue-roan: a horse with a more or less uniform mixture of white and black, or deep mahogany bay colored hairs over the entire body. If the darker hairs are sorrel - yellowish to red-golden - it is a strawberry roan, if an ordinary bay, a red-roan.

  lii Yabusame: translated literally, ‘shooting from a running horse’. In competition, the mounted kyudoka rides at a gallop over a course two cho - roughly two hundred and thirty-eight yards - in length, along which are placed at approximately thirty-eight, one hundred and eighteen, and one hundred and ninety-three yards, two foot square wooden targets on posts between thirty-six and forty-eight inches high. Traditionally, the kyudoka discharges - from a distance of around thirty feet - an arrow with a forked head that shatters under the impact of a hit.

  liii Quetzal: Pharomachrus Mocino, one of the Trogoniformes group of birds, found in the mountain forests of Central and South America and regarded as sacred by various Indian nations in those regions. Two of the cock’s fringed tail covert feathers may attain a length of over three feet each, making them much sought after for
decorative purposes.