Tuck Morgan, Plainsman (The Gun of Joseph Smith)

by Katherine R. Chandler

  They rolled the meat in sacking brought for the purpose, and Tucker propped the bundle on his saddle horn. The triple-burdened horse clomped heavily back to the wagons, and Tucker did not hurry it.

  June was handsome on the Great Plains. Days were long with bright sun beating warmly but softening to brisk evenings when buffalo chip fires were welcome. Winter hungers were again behind, and animals shown in their best short summer coats. Grass grew swiftly with wild strawberries often found. Pigeon eggs lay in grass nests and were a substitute for chicken eggs. When they were thick, Tucker gathered dozens and hard boiled them. Two of the small eggs made a fair mouthful. During a ride, he could crack them on his saddle horn and add a dusting of salt carried loose in a pocket.

  Unlike emigrants, who covered ground as rapidly as possible, the Payne-Weston hunters took it slowly. Camp was held for days while Holloway and Payne-Weston scouted. Then the wagons might roll only a dozen miles before again settling in. They never traveled in bad weather. When rain threatened, large tarpaulins were stretched between wagons, and camp chores were carried on.

  James Payne-Weston hunted each year. A man who could afford comforts, the Englishman saw no reason to leave them behind. Holloway swore that Weston's most thoughtful and appreciated furnishing was a portable toilet over which a small tent was erected.

  At most camps, Tucker drew the job of digging the toilet pit. He chopped away a block of foot thick sod and laboriously scraped out another two feet of virgin soil. It was not a prideful assignment, but Tuck agreed with Holloway that avoiding squatting over a briar, with rain beating holes in your hat, was worth a lot of hard digging.

  Except when moving camp or when animals were taken in numbers, there were more hands than needed. Holloway called them lazy camps because no one was hurried or worked overly hard.

  To the south, whole families fought the trails west. All had difficult crossings. Most suffered sickness, and some buried dead and kept moving. There the paths were rutted and strewn with the broken and abandoned. Accidental fires swept miles empty of grazing. Springs and streams became fouled by earlier passages, and decent forage was quickly over-grazed, requiring trains to swing wide to find feed for their stock.

  Holloway had guided such trains, and Tucker remembered the strains of the Morgan's crossing. Men did it because there was no other way, but the road was hard, and for most, the rewards uncertain.

  When the camp gathered at evening fires, buffalo was often the subject. Grant Holloway was the accepted authority, although Tucker Morgan was able to nod agreement, and on occasion he could add a point or two.

  "Now buffler ain't much for hunting." Holloway said. "Buffs are the dumbest animals on the plains. A man might compare 'em with a cow herd. About all you've got to do is ride up and pick your animal.

  "Indians take buffalo with arrows and lances. They shoot 'em solid in the front half of the body and after a while the animal will keel over.

  "Buffler are big, though. A herd bull will likely weigh three thousand pounds. Fact is, we chopped up a big one at the rendezvous one year and weighed it on a scale. Took about forever, and we lost some in the butchering. Still weighed out at more'n a ton. Big animal, the buffalo.

  "Best eating is hump and tongue. One day I'll cook up my own hump fixin'. Learned it from old Tom Wadson, who really knew how to do up buffler."

  "Wasn't he the one who mixed the special gunpowder, Grant?"

  "Why so he was, and now that I think on it, I recall a time old Tom had with a fair sized buffalo herd only a few hundred miles south of here."

  Smiles of expectation were kept hidden because Holloway rarely hinted that his Tom Wadson stories were not dead serious. If he didn't, they wouldn't.

  The guide started in. "Well, as I said, this was a midsized herd, maybe five or six miles square, and it was moving slow, the way buffalo do, not more'n seven or so miles a day."

  A few eyebrows raised, and Holloway diverted for a moment. "Oh, that ain't a big herd, truly it isn't. I've seen 'em stretching horizon to horizon. From horseback a man can see about five miles a'fore the earth curves under. Looking all around, that makes nearly solid buffalo for a ten mile circle.

  "Doubt we'll see any herds that size, even though we're in prime buffalo country. The mating season is gettin' close, and with the bulls fightin' each other the bigger herds scatter."

  The guide got back to his story. "Anyway, old Tom had business on the other side of the herd so he just rode on through, easin' along, letting buffler step aside.

  "Somewhere near the middle things turned sour. A cantankerous bull charged out of nowhere and knocked old Tom's horse out from under him. All of a sudden, Tom's sittin' on his rump in the midst of a half million skittery buffaloes."

  The guide paused, as though lost in thought and visualizing how it must have been. "Now in all this world there can't be anything more dangerous than being afoot in the middle of buffalo. Why I'd rather sleep in a rattlesnake den or curl up between a grizzly and her cubs.

  "A buffalo can be six feet tall at the hump so old Tom couldn't see across the herd, but a buffler's head is low, and he had all them horns threatening him about halfway up. A lesser man would have tried layin' in a ball, but every buff passing would have hooked a horn or two into the strange looking lump close under its feet.

  "So, thinking fast, Tom did the only sensible thing. He hopped up and stood straight as a soldier. He bent his elbows and pointed both hands up. Then he froze like that, scarcely daring to breathe."

  Tucker choked on his chewing straw, but the others seemed puzzled. Holloway had paused, so Tucker explained. "Old Tom was making out like he was a cactus. There's big ones grow in the southwestern deserts that can look like that."

  The guide nodded. "You're right, Tucker. I forgot these boys never seen a saguaro cactus. Fact is, they've mean spikes and are to be avoided.

  "Anyhow, old Tom said he stood rock still for most of the day while buffalo wandered past unnoticing. Got off unharmed, he did. Except for his pants, of course."

  Holloway had to chew his straw before adding the last details. "Durned buffalo calves didn't know about saguaros. All they saw was a convenient rubbing post.

  By day's end, old Tom was standing there, naked as a jaybird from his waist down, where them little critters had rubbed his leather pants clean away."

  It was hard to tell if Holloway's Tom Wadson had ever existed. Despite the outlandish adventures Holloway laid at Wadson's feet, every once in a while a Tom Wadson claim proved true. The buffalo hump, cooked Tom Wadson style, was one of them.

  Holloway chose a great roast of a hump. It was rich looking meat streaked with veins of yellow fat.

  The guide opened the roast and stuffed it with turnips, wild carrot, and boiled pigeon eggs. Holloway slit the outside in parallel cuts and inserted long bacon strips from Payne-Weston's supplies. The guide claimed a hump roast should be held together by strands of a Sioux maiden's hair, but he settled for lengths of green and tough buffalo grass.

  Spitted above their best wood coals, the roast was turned and regularly basted with a mix of honey, salt, wild mustard, onion, and lard. Holloway decried the absence of scented hardwoods whose burning would add flavor. At least they had willow instead of the customary buffalo chips, which Holloway assured would downright insult any good buffalo hump held over them.

  That campfire proved memorable. Old Tom Wadson's recipe made them believers. The meat barely needed chewing and was sweet with blended juices and flavors. Holloway claimed that Old Tom told him that just the smell of broiling hump was known to have raised an old mountain man expiring with four Arapaho war arrows in his vitals. Wadson said that after eating his fill, the oldster had picked up his Hawken rifle and taken the trail of the Indians who had shot him full and run off with his horses.

  When talk was serious, Payne-Weston often asked Tucker to speak some about Mormons and what they believed. The subject had become about as popular as buffalo. But, unless they were asked, neith
er Tucker nor Holloway brought up their religion.

  When they were alone, Holloway had said, "Two ways we might look at all this Mormon talk, Tuck. We might decide we're dealing with men only wanting to argue and are just wasting our time. Sometimes we embarrass ourselves because of answers we don't have, and we spend most of the time trying to explain things we only half understand.

  "The other way of thinking is to consider that these listeners are learning a lot about Mormons. They're also discovering that most of what they've heard about Mormons wasn't even close to being right.

  "Way I see it, the talking is worthwhile, 'cause even if we're poor missionaries, we're better than none. When a man's in the dark, one match makes a heap of difference. Our talk is like that. We ain't lighting up the forest, but who knows when someone else will come along and add another light, and then another? No telling where it could lead, Tuck."

  The night of the hump roast, Tuck believed Grant Holloway lighted a whole fistful of matches. The night of the buffalo hump, one of the men had laid a trap.

  "Can't say as I've read in the Mormon book, Grant. Knew a preacher who did, though. He said, 'Anytime a Mormon starts a'telling, just ask him to explain about cureloms and cumoms.' Seems like now's a good time to ask."

  Tucker felt his hackles rise. Across the fire the man was smirking as though he had Holloway trapped, tied, and just about spitted.

  The same worn-out old provokers, Tucker thought.

  They came up whenever argument became important. Explanations rarely satisfied. Tucker expected the askers sought only disagreement.

  Holloway appeared undismayed. He took his time, the way he usually did, and enjoyed a suck or two on his straw.

  "For you that don't know about cureloms and cumoms, they're a pair of animals mentioned in the Book of Mormon. According to Ether, both of these animals were particularly useful to the people of that time. Of course, none of us living around here ever heard of any such creatures.

  "Now, somehow, our lack of recognizing the names curelom and cumom is supposed to prove the Book of Mormon wrong. The question is usually raised by people hoping to embarrass Mormons who haven't got a handy answer."

  The questioner had the sensitivity to look uncomfortable.

  "Well, it happens I've got a number of thoughts that ought to lay the matter to rest.

  "Take Weston here, for example. My guess is he can name herds of animals that exist today but that the rest of us never heard of. How about that, Weston?"

  Payne-Weston thought a moment. "Well, I might try the llama of South America." The men looked blank. "Or, the okapi or dik-dik in Africa. There is the gaur of Siam and ..." Holloway raised a hand.

  "Ought to be enough to make the point. Which is that we don't know about animals that aren't right under our feet.

  "Next is the moose. Everyone knows a plain old moose, don't they?" Men nodded. "Well, almost everywhere but in these United States, a moose is called an elk. Which shows, plain enough for the thickest head, that even now, animals get called different names in different places."

  A voice asked, "Well then, what do they call our elk in the old country?"

  Payne-Weston answered. "We call the elk a red deer or a stag, and in Germany the animal is a hirsch. It has other names in other countries, which further demonstrates Grant's point."

  While Payne-Weston spoke, Holloway stepped to their wagon. He was quickly back with a heavy object that he dropped in the firelight.

  "Now what'd you guess that to be?"

  A man said, "Why it's a bone off some animal, maybe a hip or shoulder joint." Others were quick to agree.

  Holloway asked, "Anybody prepared to name the animal?"

  Men shook their heads. One said, "Sure was a monster, whatever he was."

  Another knocked on the bone. "Petrified into stone almost. Got to be older'n sin."

  The guide nodded agreement. "I found it in a sink back a'ways. Lots of old bones out here. Came from animals we've got no record of."

  The original asker spoke up. "You claiming that bone's from a curelom or a cumom, Grant?"

  Holloway looked disgusted. "Of course not. What I'm showin' is that there were animals from way back that aren't around anymore. Cureloms and cumoms might be among 'em.

  "Now men that were living alongside the animal this bone came from had a name for him. If we found that name scratched on a cave wall somewhere, we'd have trouble identifying the animals, wouldn't we?" There were no disagreements. "Same with cureloms and cumoms."

  Holloway, however, was still not finished, and he pounded home his final point.

  "Whether you've accepted the Book of Mormon or not, the book exists, and it's proved powerful enough to convince wise and educated people. With that intent in mind, does it seem reasonable that the recorder of such a book would—just for no reason—make up two animals and stuff 'em into the writing? Why bother?

  "Nope, those animals existed. Maybe they were common animals that needed caring. When the old people in the book went under, their stock could have been eaten or died out, like sheep or hogs would if abandoned out here. More likely they just passed on, same as this big critter did." Holloway poked at the fossilized bone.

  "Now we don't even know what he was, but judging by size, he must have been one of the herd bulls of these parts, and any men living then knew him.

  "Was he a curelom or a cumom? Doubtful, but he had a name, and that we can't identify a couple of animals from a lot of generations back isn't astonishing at all."

  Chapter 13

  Except for a few words from Holloway, Tucker Morgan's eighteenth birthday went unremarked.

  "Wasn't your birthday in June, Tuck?"

  "Yep, went past a few weeks ago."

  "Can't believe how time trots by. Seems only a season or two gone that you were about the same height as your Joseph Smith gun and didn't hardly know which end of it the ball came out."

  Tucker grinned, "Doubt I was that bad, Mister Holloway."

  "Well, maybe not, but I guess I'm thinking about how quick things change, even out here on the plains.

  "Let's see now, I came out in 1833 or 34, can't recall exactly. Seeing it for the first time everything looked as bright as a new coin. I couldn't imagine better.

  "Back then, the buffalo were thicker and Indians were everywhere. A man could still take some beaver, even along these miserable dry country creeks, but the old trappers and mountain men were already claiming the best years were past.

  "I reckon the big difference was mystery. Old timers had tramped it over and places like the Popo-agi, the Miniconju, or the Tongue and the Yellowstone had become as familiar to them as the old Mississippi. To a young pilgrim like I was, the mention of the Powder River or the Gunnison sent my imaginings soaring like leaves in a whirlwind." Holloway glanced at Tucker. "Same as they do you even now, I guess."

  Tucker could feel it, place names that rolled like honey across the tongues of men like Holloway, Jim Bridger, and Tucker smiled to himself, maybe even old Tom Wadson. Just thinking about the sights and smells of such places made him hungry to start out.

  Holloway went on. "Looking back, I was right to be fired up to leave my tracks on those places and a thousand others. As a man grows older, he discovers that his memories of things done and places seen gain importance. Must be discouraging to get old and realize you've missed most of what was offered.

  Tucker saw the good sense in the guide's thoughts. Seeing and doing had big places in his future. At the rate they were moving, he and Holloway would get a second season hunting with James Payne-Weston. After that? Well, Grant Holloway would be off for somewhere and there might be room for a familiar companion.

  The guide wasn't finished. "Only trouble with my way of doing was that I missed an important trail fork. After the first ten or so years, I was just retracing old trails. The truth is, a man can go on too long at a thing, Tuck. Can't say I'm not enjoying this riding kind of life, but that don't make it the best or the most right
."

  Tucker couldn't make out Holloway's direction. He guessed the guide was just letting his thoughts run on. Tuck enjoyed Holloway's drifting kind of reasoning. They entertained, and he learned often without knowing he was being taught.

  Holloway too realized he was not nailing down his points. "What I'm saying is that it's a mistake to accept that roaming and hunting is all there is to life. A man needs roots, Tuck. He needs a wife at his side and a permanent roof over his head. He ought to have a garden, raise a few hens, and put up against bad times.

  "We don't live right out here. There's plenty of examples, take our Word of Wisdom. It says don't eat too much meat, but out here meat's our main food."

  Tucker saw a chance to lighten the guide's mood. "Well, it'd be hard to fault that hump roast you did up, Mister Holloway."

  The older man wasn't having it. "Darn it, Tucker, listen to what I'm saying. Way we're living is comforting and at times it's exciting. It's also footloose and irresponsible. All we're doing is enjoying. We owe our creator meaningful living, and if we can arrange it, a loving family.

  "So, what I've been beating toward is that once Weston is finished hunting, I'm riding for Salt Lake. When I get close I'm going to start looking over good Mormon women. When I find the right one, I'm intending to settle. Might be I'll have to ride out now and then, but I'll have a place to come home to and someone waitin' to greet me." Holloway shifted in his saddle. "Might even end up with children, though I'm not sure how good an example I'd be to 'em."

  Tucker couldn't find words. Of course Holloway was right. A man should have a family, but what they were doing seemed worthwhile. He glanced across at the guide, whose gelding had pulled a little ahead. He took the time to think about Grant Holloway and see him as a stranger might.