“This put my dander up, and sez I, ‘I’ve got nothing to say agin your wife, Mike, for it can’t be denied she’s a shocking handsome woman, and Mrs. Crockett’s in Tennessee, and I’ve got no horses, Mike, I don’t exactly like to tell you you lie about your rifle, but I’m damned if you speak the truth, and I’ll prove it. Do you see that are cat sitting on the top rail of your potato patch, about a hundred fifty yards off? If she hears again, I’ll be shot if it shan’t be without ears!’
“So I blazed away, and I bet you a horse, the ball cut off both the old tom cat’s ears close to his head, and shaved the hair clean off the skull, as slick as if’d done it with a razor, and the creatur never stirred, nor knew he’d lost his ears till he tried to scratch ’em.
“ ‘Talk about your rifle after that, Mike!’ sez I.
“ ‘Do you see that are sow off furder than the end of the world,’ sez Mike, ‘with a litter of pigs around her?’ And he lets fly.
“The old sow gave a grunt, but never stirred in her tracks, and Mike falls to loading and firing for dear life, til he hadn’t left one of them are pigs enough tail to make a toothpick on.
“ ‘Now,’ sez he, ‘Colonel Crockett, I’ll be pretticularly obleeged to you if you’ll put them are pigs’ tails on again,’ sez he.
“ ‘That’s impossible, Mike,’ sez I, ‘but you’ve left one of ’em about an inch to steer by, and if that had a-been my work, I wouldn’t have done it so wasteful. I’ll mend your shot.’ And I let fly, and cuts off the apology he’s left the poor creatur for decency. I wish I may drink the whole Mississip’, without a drop of the rale stuff in it, if you wouldn’t have thort the tail been drove in with a hammer.
“That made Mike sorter wrothy, and he sends a ball after his wife as she was going to the spring after a gourd full of water, and knocked half her comb out without stirring a hair, and calls out to her to stop for me to take a blizzard at what was left of on it. The angeliferous creatur stood still as a scarecrow in a cornfield, for she’d got used to Mike’s tricks by long practice.
“ ‘No, no, Mike,’ sez I. ‘Davy Crockett’s hand would be sure to shake, if his iron was pointed within a hundred miles of a shemale, and I give up beat, Mike.’ ”
Did Such a Helliferocious Man Ever Live?
One early writer asked: “Did such a man like Mike Fink ever live, and did such a man ever die? And if so, how and where did he go to the happy hunting grounds?” Well, here is one tale.
In 1822 Mike Fink and two friends—if there were human beings who could call themselves the Ohio Snapping Turtle’s friends—Carpenter and Talbot, hired on in St. Louis with Andrew Henry and William Ashley to go up the Missouri in search of beaver. Mike as the “admiral,” running one of the seventy-foot keelboats, “cordelling” his clumsy craft yard by yard upstream, Talbot and Carpenter as trapper and hunter. Mike, being the “William Tell of the Prairie,” also doubled as huntsman, supplying plenty of meat to the expedition with the help of Betsy, his never-failing rifle.
Together with some sixty other adventurous mountain men, the party reached the mouth of the Yellowstone and there built a fort and stockade as protection against the “Terrible Blackfeet.” From there Major Henry, Ashley’s second-in-command, sent out small parties of about a dozen men each to trap beaver along the many streams and ponds of the region. Fink and his two companions, together with nine others, were sent to the Musselshell River and there trapped all summer and fall until winter set in. When it got too cold and the snow was too deep, they returned to the fort. In its vicinity they built themselves a dugout, preferring their primitive abode to the crowded, evil-smelling quarters inside the stockade. Then they holed up like hibernating bears during the bleak winter months. There was nothing to do but gamble and get drunk. Idleness breeds mischief and in the background, always, lurks the devil, ever ready to cause trouble. The place attracted many “Hang-around-the-fort Indians,” spoiled by contact with the white traders and their kegs of “Injin whiskey,” a devastating mixture of raw alcohol, rattlesnake heads, and gunpowder, the latter ingredients added to give the hellish brew “a kick.” Among this crowd were many squaws who, either at the order of their men or on their own account, sold themselves to the trappers for rotgut or foofaraw—trifles such as vermilion paint, red trade cloth, tobacco, or glass beads. One of these girls, called either Moon Woman or Red Leaf, was comely and willing to share Mike’s blanket, but she got tired of her “Mississippi Roarer” and soon was found in the bed of Carpenter, who was said to be gentle and very handsome. Mike took it exceedingly ill.
“Give her back, you cussed, landlubbery, yellow-livered varmint! Give her back, you double-soaked whiskey pipe, or you can hang me up for bar meat if I don’t cut you down to size like a Massassip alligator chaws up a puppy!”
With that, Mike seized one arm of his erstwhile girlfriend while Carpenter got hold of the other, and they proceeded to have a good old-fashioned tug-o’-war, the squaw hollering and howling like a wolf cub caught in a trap. “Come along, you infernal, two-timin’ possum,” shouted Mike, while Carpenter yelled back that he would cut out Mike’s liver and lights and eat them raw for breakfast. Both then let go of the girl and had a go at each other, Carpenter, being younger and faster, getting the better of Fink.
After having been knocked down several times Mike began to holler for mercy: “Avast, you kankariferous ripscallion, I never bar a grudge agin a feller who whupped me in a fair fight. Thar’s no use fur old friends killin’ each over a louisferous she-catamount!”
With that he gave the girl a clout on the head, saying, “There, that’ll larn you to be makin’ eyes at that feller when you could ’ave been stayin’ with your Mike, still the top man when it comes to makin’ love to the wimmin. Now, let’s have a drink!”
This seemed to settle the matter in an amiable way, but Mike was not a man to forget a slight. With the coming of spring, as both Mike and Carpenter were drawing their rations of hardtack and whiskey, getting in a new store of powder and lead before going on another trapping expedition, Carpenter remarked to Fink, “Old hoss, I sure hope you don’t bear me a grudge on account of that injin hussy. She left me long ago for another feller.”
Mike patted her erstwhile companion on the back, shouting to the bystanders: “I’ll tell you boys, the fort’s a skunk-hole, and I’d rather live with the bars than stay in it. Some of ye’s been trying to part me and my friend, that I love like my own cub, and tried to pizen me against him, but we remain the best o’friends as afore and no mere she-injin can come between us! There, to show you how I trust this ’ere boy, we’ll sky a copper, play the game as we used to.” With these words Mike walked off some sixty paces, placed a glass of whiskey on his head, and challenged Carpenter to shoot at it. “There, that’s how I trust this here boy. Come on, old hoss, shoot it off like you used to do!” Carpenter raised his rifle, let fly, and missed. “Carpenter, my boy,” exclaimed Mike, “I taught you to shoot differently from that last shot. Your hand trimbled, but never mind. Waal, it’s my turn now.”
“Hold it, Mike,” cried Carpenter. “There’s somethin’ I jest got to do first.”
He went aside and asked someone who could write to put it on paper that he bequeathed his rifle, pistol, powder horn and shot pouch to Talbot in case he should be killed. Carpenter had seen a certain glint in Mike’s eyes that made him do this. In the meantime, Mike loaded his Betsy, primed it, and picked his flint. Without further ado, Carpenter took his position at sixty yards opposite Fink and, with a brave smile, put the cup of whiskey, filled to the brim, on his head as a target for Mike to shoot at. Mike leveled his rifle and drew a bead, but at once lowered his Betsy and, laughing loudly, shouted at Carpenter, “Hold yer noddle steady, old hoss, and don’t spill the whiskey, as I shall want some presently!”
With that, Mike cocked his rifle, aimed, and fired. Without a sound Carpenter slumped down to the ground, the ball having smashed into the center of his forehead, killing him instantly.
; “Carpenter, you cussed critter,” yelled Mike. “you’ve spilt the good whiskey. Get up!”
“He’ll never get up agin, Mike.” shouted a bystander. “You’ve gone and killed him!”
“The devil I have,” said Mike, coolly putting down his piece, blowing the smoke from Betsy’s muzzle. “T’war an accident, for I took as fair a bead on the cup as I ever took on a squirrel’s eye. Maybe I’ve lost the tech, or maybe he moved. Waal, no use to cry over spilt whiskey!”
There was many a boatman and trapper who thought it was cold-blooded murder, that Mike had used the shooting contest to pay off his old grudge over the Indian woman who had left him for the sake of Carpenter, but nothing could be proved.
But talk would not stop, because Mike had never been known to miss his aim. It was Talbot who most vehemently denounced Fink as the murderer of their mutual friend, and Mike, in turn, called Talbot a cussed, lying varmint. Some months later Mike went to the fort and made a bee-line for the gunsmith’s shop where Talbot had a job repairing the trappers’ rifles. Talbot saw Mike approaching, his Betsy, as always, cradled in his arms.
“I’m a-warnin’ you, Mike,” cried Talbot, “don’t come any closer!” Mike came on.
Talbot went for his double-barreled pistol, the same that Carpenter had bequeathed to him. “Fink, ef you come any nearer, I’ll fire, by God!” Mike came on. “One more step,” warned Talbot, “and you’re a dead man!”
Mike came on. He stepped through the door and Talbot let him have both barrels. Mike’s last words were “I didn’t mean to kill the boy!” Thus died “the last of the keelboatmen.”
Talbot died a year later, drowned when trying to cross the Missouri in a bullboat.
Like Father, Like Daughter
Mike Fink’s daughter Sal became a legend in her own right. She was known as “Sal, the Mississippi Screamer.”
Idar say you’ve all of you, if not more, frequently heerd this great she human crittur boasted of, an pointed out as “one o’ the gals,”—but I tell you what, stranger, you have never really set your eyes on one o’ the gals, till you have seen Sal Fink, the Mississippi Screamer, whose miniature pictur I here give, about as nat’ral as life, but not half as handsome—an’ if that ever was a gal that desarved to be christened “one o’ the gals,” then this gal was that gal—and no mistake.
She fought a duel once with a thunderbolt, an’ came off without a scratch, while at the fust fire she split the thunderbolt all to flinders, an’ gave the pieces to Uncle Sam’s artillery men, to touch off their cannon with. When a gal about six years old, she used to play see-saw on the Mississippi snags, and arter she was done she would snap ’em off, an’ so cleared a large district of the river. She used to ride down the river on an alligator’s back, standen upright, an’ dancin’ the Yankee Doodle, an’ could leave all the steamers behind. But the greatest feat she ever did, positively outdid anything that was ever did.
One day she war out in the forest, making a collection o’ wildcat skins for her family’s winter beddin’, she war captured in the most all-sneaken manner by about fifty Injuns, and carried by ’em to Roast Flesh Hollow, whar the blood-drinkin’ wild varmints detarmined to skin her alive, sprinkle a little salt over her, an’ devour her before her own eyes; so they took an’ tied her to a tree, to keep till mornin’ should bring the rest o’ that ring-nosed sarpints to enjoy the fun. Arter that, they lit a large fire in the Holler, turned the bottom o’ thar feet towards the blaze, Injun fashion, and went to sleep to dream o’ thar mornin’s feast; well, arter the critturs got into a somniferous snore, Sal got into an all-lightnin’ of a temper, and burst all the ropes about her like an apron-string! She then found a pile o’ ropes, too, and tied all the Injuns’ heels together all round the fire—then, fixin’ a cord to the shins of every two couple, she, with a suddenachous jerk, that made the intire woods tremble, pulled the intire lot o’ sleepin’ red-skins into that ar great fire, fast together, an’ then sloped like a panther out of her pen, in the midst o’ the tallest yellin’, howlin’, scramblin’, and singin’, that war ever seen or heerd on, since the burnin’ o’ the Buffalo Prairie!
She Fought Her Weight in She-B’ars
Sal Fink once got into a helliferocious scrimmage with the biggest of all she-b’ars that ever was, and her two outlandishly large cubs. Sal was out in the woods gatherin’ acorns for her pet pig when she heerd a loud buzzin’ an’ hummin’. She followed the sound and came to a large hollow tree with about a bushel full of obstreperous bees. “Sal,” she sez to herself, “whar thar are bees, thar must be honey,” an’ with that she stuck her arm into this thar hollow tree to get some of that sweet stuff. But there waren’t only bees inside. There was a mighty loud growl that made the whole tree trimble, an’ out o’ that durned tree shot the she-b’ar with her maw wide open and them huge teeth a-glitterin’ in the sunshine, already mighty displeased on account of them buzzin’, stingin’ insects havin’ a go at Sal. Behind her came the cubs like so many wildcats, growlin’ an’ grumblin’. All three critters were detarmined to have themselves a bite out of Sal’s delishious shoulders and appetizin’ hinder cheeks, but Sal greeted the varmints with a kick worthy of the Great Stallion of the West, an’ arter that she kicked ’em into turnin’ somersaults, rollin’ all over each other. But the cussed she-b’ar reared herself up on her hind legs a-goin’ to embrace Sal in one of them speshial hugs for which Bruin is famous. Not at all intimidated, Sal got into a stance like a champeen boxer, givin’ the huge pestiferocious critter a hail of blows between wind an’ weather, which knocked the breath out of the she-b’ar so that she had to sit down. But the beast got her wind back fast enuff, getting her paws with those big claws, an’ her teeth, into Sal’s hair, holding on tenashiously, like burrs stickin’ to a horse’s tail, but our brave girl, unfazed, got ahold of the varmint’s jaws and turned the hull critter clean inside out, an’ when the cubs saw their poor ma treated that way, they took to their heels mighty fast so that they wouldn’t get a sim’lar treatment. Sal dragged the she-b’ar home whar her family made a big delishiferous meal o’ that b’ar meat, Sal gettin’ the paws which, as everybody knows, are the best parts.
He Crowed and Flapped His Wings
Mike Fink was not the only keelboatman who loved a knockdown-and-drag-out fight. A goodly number of his fellows likewise were always willing and eager to engage in an old-fashioned free for all. Roaring Ralph Stackpole was also known as Tom Dowdle, the Rag-man.
“Cunnel,” said he, “you’re a man in authority, and my superior officer; warfo’ thar’ can be no scalping between us. But my name’s Tom Dowdle, the rag-man!” he screamed, suddenly skipping into the thickest of the throng, and sounding a note of “My name’s Tom Dowdle, the rag-man, and I’m for any man that insults me! log-leg or leather-breeches, green-shirt or blanket-coat, land-trotter or river-roller—I’m the man for a massacre!” Then giving himself a twirl upon his foot that would have done credit to a dancing master, he proceeded to other antic demonstrations of hostility, which when performed in after years on the banks of the Lower Mississippi, by himself and his worthy imitators, were, we suspect, the cause of their receiving the name of the mighty alligator. It is said, by naturalists, of this monstrous reptile, that he delights, when the returning warmth of spring has brought his fellows from their holes, and placed them basking along the banks of the swampy lagoon, to dart into the center of the expanse, and challenge the whole field to combat. He roars, he blows the water from his nostrils, he lashes out with his tail, he whirls round and round, churning the water into foam; until, having worked himself into a proper fury, he darts back again to the shore to seek an antagonist. Had the gallant captain of horse-thieves boasted the blood, as afterwards he did the name, of an “alligator half-breed,” he could scarce have conducted himself in a way more worthy of his parentage. He leaped into the center of the throng, where, having found elbow-room for his purpose, he performed the gyration mentioned before, following it up by other feats expressi
ve of his hostile humor. He flapped his wings and crowed, until every chanticleer in the settlement replied to the note of battle; he snorted and neighed like a horse; he bellowed like a bull; he barked like a dog; he yelled like an Indian; he whined like a panther; he howled like a wolf; until one would have thought he was a living menagerie, comprising within his single body the spirit of every animal noted for its love of conflict. Then, not content with such a display of readiness to fight the field, he darted from the center of the area allowed him for his exercise, and invited the lookers-on individually to battle. “Whar’s your buffalo-bull,” he cried, “to cross horns with the roarer of the Salt River? Whar’s your full-blood colt that can shake a saddle off? H’yar’s an old nag can kick off the top of a buck-eye! Whar’s your cat of the Knobs, your wolf of the Rolling Prairies? H’yar’s the old brown b’ar can claw the bark off a gum tree! H’yar’s a man for you, Tom Bruce! Same to you, Sim Roberts! to you, Jimmy Big-nose! to you, and to you, and to you! Ar’n’t I a ring-tailed squealer? Can go down the Salt on my back, and swim up the Ohio! Whar’s the man to fight Roaring Ralph Stackpole?”
A Fight Between Keelboatmen Averted
Well, boys, there I wuz, at the bar of my favorite waterin’ hole, when a gennelman next to me made a remark I didn’t like. So I made a remark he didn’t like. He spat in my face. I spat in his face. He knocked me down. I got up and knocked him down. He knocked out three of my teeth. I knocked out four of his teeth. He kneed me in the groin. I kneed him in the groin. He bit off my right earlobe. I bit off half of his left ear. He invited me to step outside and we war jest a-goin’ to have a nice fight when some cussed pussy-footin’ Yankees pulled us apart. Friends, that would’ve been a grand old scrimmage ef only they would’ve let us!
Legends and Tales of the American West Page 10