Legends and Tales of the American West

by Richard Erdoes

  Stranger, Is This a Free Fight?

  The story is familiar of the man who took passage in a flatboat from Pittsburgh bound for New Orleans. He passed many dreary, listless days down the Ohio and Mississippi, and seemed to be desponding for want of excitement. In course of time the raft upon which he was a passenger put into Napoleon, in the State of Arkansas, “for groceries.” At the moment there was a general fight extending all along the “front of the town,” which at that time consisted of a single house. The unhappy passenger, after fidgeting about, and jerking his feet up and down, as if he were walking on hot bricks, turned to a used-up spectator and observed:

  “Stranger, is this a free fight?”

  The reply was prompt and to the point:

  “It ar’; and if you wish to go in, don’t stand on ceremony.”

  The wayfarer did go in, and in less time than we can relate the circumstance was literally “chawed up.” Groping his way down to the flat, his hair gone, his eye closed, his lips swollen, and his face generally “mapped out,” he sat himself down on a chicken coop and soliloquized thus:

  “So, this is Na-po-le-on, is it?—upon my word it’s a lively place, and the only one at which I’ve had any fun since I left home!”

  The Screaming Head

  Emigrants who traveled by boat faced many dangers other than snags in the river, water moccasins, drowning, or swamp fever. The greatest danger came from murderous river pirates, and the spot most feared by rivermen and passengers alike was the ill-famed Cave in the Rock near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. This was the dreaded “Cavern of Death,” which for some generations served as the lair for several gangs of robbers and murderers.

  Many were the ways by which these human fiends lured the unwary wayfarers to their death. One of these cutthroats took up his station at a short distance upstream from the cave, calling out for help to passing rivercrafts, pretending to be shipwrecked and marooned on the rocky shore. When the would-be Good Samaritans came ashore to rescue the “poor castaway,” the members of the gang emerged from their hiding places and fell upon their victims, plundering the boat and murdering the passengers, showing mercy neither to man, woman, or child.

  Another bandit put up a crude tavern on the riverbank whose lights were a welcome sight to many a tired and hungry crew seeking food, drink and a real bed to sleep in. Once the “guests” slumbered, the murderer and his gang set upon them with club, ax, and bowie knife amid scenes of horror.

  Then there was Billy Potts, the demon ferryman who, once in midstream, pounced upon those who had entrusted their lives and goods to him, beating them to death with an iron cudgel.

  The worst of all these fiends were the Harpe Brothers, enemies to humankind, surpassing all other river pirates in cruelty and the lust for blood. They had remade the Cave in the Rock into a satanic castle, decorated with wine-red velvet curtains, French gilt-framed mirrors, chandeliers, and other booty from their robberies. Murder alone did not satisfy these human hyenas unless it was accompanied by torture—mental and corporeal. Even the worst of the other bandits gave the Harpes a wide berth, afraid to fall into the clutches of the murdering siblings. It was whispered that if the Harpes found themselves short of meat they were not above devouring human flesh, cutting out lights and livers, even boasting of their “own, special kidney pie, and guess from what kind of critter this side meat came from.”

  If a comely woman fell into their hands, they sometimes spared her life—for a time only. Keeping her as their slave, they treated their captive cruelly until, having become tired of her, they tossed the unfortunate into the river to drown. Legend had it that they fashioned the skulls of some victims into drinking cups, toasting each other with infernal laughter. Outlaws such as they could not come to a good end. It was fated that their reign of terror should come to its fitting climax.

  A reward of a thousand dollars in gold for the capture of either of the Harpes, dead or alive, had been posted up and down the river, but none, not even the boastful ring-tailed roarers who ran the keelboats, were tempted to claim the reward. The two outlaws had a gang of four other cutthroats to abet them in their bloody work. One night, by the flickering light of their crystal chandelier, the six bandits sat around the fire, swearing and drinking raw whiskey. All of a sudden, the younger of the Harpe brothers grinned wolfishly, exclaiming, “If none of those lily-livered sons of bitches has the guts to try to collect those thousand dollars, why, I’ll claim it myself!” Having uttered these words, he fixed his eyes upon one of the four gang members, sprang upon him and knocked him to the ground with a tremendous blow from the butt of one of his pistols. Laughing, as if this had been merely a boyish prank, the younger Harpe severed his erstwhile companion’s head from its shoulders and wrapped the ghastly, dripping trophy in some rags, shouting, “Here are my thousand dollars! Will his noggin not do for a Harpe’s head? Now for the reward!” With these words he took up his bloody bundle and sauntered off, leaving the four others behind in the cave. As soon as the older Harpe was asleep, the three remaining companions in crime crept silently away, no longer having the stomach to stay.

  As soon as the younger Harpe reached the next town, he sought out the sheriff and the local judge, exhibiting his trophy, telling everybody present: “This here is the head of one of the Harpe Brothers. I cut it off myself. I’ve come to get the reward!”

  Some months before, a man had fallen into the clutches of the murdering brothers, had been struck down and left for dead. Having only been beaten into unconsciousness, he had come to and, once the Harpes were gone, had effected his escape. He had come to see what the commotion was all about and realized that his moment of revenge had come. He spoke up loudly, telling the crowd: “That fellow here is one of the Harpes. I could pick him out from among thousands. It’s a Harpe, all right, with a face hard to forget. As to the head, I’m sure it belongs to someone they have murdered.”

  Another bystander then spoke: “Yes, it’s one of them, one of the Harpes. I’ve seen them only from afar, but it’s true enough, their faces you don’t forget. They were after me, but I got away.”

  The younger Harpe began to stutter and tried to lose himself in the crowd that had quickly gathered around him, but they got hold of him and he could not escape. He was tried on the spot, found guilty, and strung up on the nearest tree. The cutoff head was buried in a potter’s field.

  The older Harpe now lived alone in his gloomy hideout, but justice was now on his trail. One sole survivor of a large family the Harpes had murdered sought and found the monster’s lair and near it lay in wait until Harpe emerged to prey on some unlucky traveler who might chance his way. As the outlaw stood in front of his cave, scanning the horizon, his form silhouetted against the sunlight, the avenger shot him dead. As Harpe had done to many of his victims, so it was done to him. His killer severed his head and wedged it into the fork of a huge, dead nearby tree. He hurled the rest of the body into the river. But that is not the end of the story.

  For some years after, emigrants who passed the Cave in the Rock in their boats could hear a loud, piercing, bansheelike wailing that seemed to come out of nowhere. Shuddering, they hurried on, not caring to stop and find out what, or who, caused this frightful eerie screeching. But one traveler, more daring than the others, determined to discover the source of all that wailing. He rowed ashore, saw the tree and, in its fork, the dreadful, shriveled, eyeless head. Its pale flaxen hair was stirring in the wind, its lips were moving. Shocked beyond words, the traveler could, in between the unnerving screams, hear words escaping from the gaping mouth:

  Listen well,

  In hell I must dwell.

  Do not do as I have done,

  Or to the devil you’ll be gone!

  The curious traveler was curious no longer. He plied his oars as fast as he could to get away from that accursed spot. He told his tale, and others traveling by boat shunned the Cave in the Rock, making a wide detour around it. Those who were driven by wind and w
aves to the shore averted their eyes and stopped up their ears to avoid hearing the ghostly wailings. The screaming head kept other would-be river pirates from occupying the Cavern of Death. Not even outlaws could stand to be within the sound of the lamenting head. As the years went by, flesh and hair fell from the head, which became a naked skull gleaming in the moonlight. It ceased its wailing and at last grew silent. Maybe it is still there.

  Stopping Drinking for Good

  Boys, I’ll tell you a tale. It happened a long time ago. I was floatin’ down the Big Muddy in my broadhorn, the Cougar Kate. I was quite a hell-raiser in those days and had taken aboard a big load of blue ruin. I was as drunk as a skunk, but not too drunk to steer. The mist was all over the river and it was like driftin’ through buttermilk. Now and agin’ I was floatin’ by some old dead cottonwoods and, as I passed them by, they all looked like ghosts wavin’ their arms at me. The fog threw a blanket over everything. It was so quiet you could hear a mosquito hiccup. The wind and the river were barely whisperin’. The silence made me skittish, though I couldn’t say why.

  All of a sudden, out of that buttermilk, I spied a flatboat comin’ ward me. Up on the box I could make out some men, wimmin, and children, all huddlin’ together as if they war freezin’. Among them was a catgut scraper. He had his fiddle tucked ’neath his chin and his bow on the strings, but there was no sound and his hands didn’t move. He was like bein’ petrified. And when that boat came so close I could almost tech it, I noticed that I could see through these folks as if they had been made of glass.

  In the stern was sittin’ a man havin’ ahold of the big steerin’ oar. He was dressed all in black, gaunt and skinny, and I didn’t specially like the looks of him. He looked infernally unhuman and witchlike. His cloak, his broad-brimmed slouch hat, and his boots were all black. Even blacker were his hair and beard coming all the way down to his waist, and one of his eyes, lookin’ straight at me, glowed like a hot coal. But where his other eye ought to have been there war jest a hole with a baby cottonmouth peekin’ out o’ it. It gave me the trembles jist to see him like that. And in the feller’s lap sat a big black tomcat, and by his side crouched an oversize black hounddog. I don’t mind tellin’ you that I was skeered. My hands were tremblin’, my legs shakin’, and my teeth chatterin’ and clickin’ like them castanets the Mex wimmin use when they’re dancin’. And I could look through that stranger and his pets too because they were jist like made out of gossamer, and when I teched the boat I teched nothin’ but air.

  All of a sudden the scary silence was shattered as the dog reared up on his hind legs and started barkin’ and howlin’, and the cat started caterwaulin’ and meowin’, and the man in the stern stood up. He was wavin’ his arms at me, and I saw that his fingers were jist bones, bleached bones picked clean. He was wavin’ his arms so viggerously that it made his head fall clean off, but he caught it and put it on his shoulders. I’m tellin’ you, boys, my hairs were standin’ up like cornstalks and my lights and liver turned to jelly. Then this critter started to talk while the little snake kept slitherin’ in and out o’ his empty eye socket, which was mighty discombobulatin’. The feller’s voice was hollow and helliferous, turnin’ my veins to ice. Here’s what he said to me:

  “Hulloe, stranger, look at me, full of worm holes and half-eaten by crawfish. I used to be a real land screamer and rib staver, all porcupine quills and aquafortis. One time I got wolfish and went on a tear. I got as drunk as a skunk, as drunk as you are today,” and here he took to cacklin’ and guffawin’ horrible-like. “I was so drunk I opened my shirt collar to piss, and I didn’t take keer of this boat, and run her on a snag, and she sank. And all these innocent folks here, who had put their trust in me, drownded. And I drownded too. Stranger, I’m a-warning you, if you don’t stop drinkin’, you’ll wind up like me afore the year is over!”

  Boys, I was so ramsquaddled that I stopped drinkin’ for good right then and there, teetotaciously—leastwise for a whole week.

  CHAPTER 5

  Mountain Men

  The mountain man, who chose to spend his days in the western wilds trapping beaver, has been called “the free-est human who ever was,” free from the straightjacket of civilization, free from the constraints of law, convention, domesticity, religion, or authority. For his freedom he paid a price that to the “normal” citizen seemed exorbitant—the ever-present danger of being killed by an enraged grizzly, or gored by a wounded buffalo, of having his hair lifted by an Indian brave, of being “rubbed out” by a fellow trapper during a drunken free-for-all, of dying of hunger, or of freezing to death amid the snows of savage winters. If the mountain man, “being exceedingly tenacious of life,” survived all of these perils, he was apt to end his days crippled by rheumatism, a result of constantly wading in icy streams to set his traps. But no matter what hardships he had to endure, the trapper looked upon them as a cheap price to pay for what mattered to him most—his absolute freedom. In a way, “mountain man” is a misnomer. One could with equal justification call him a plainsman, or a riverman, as he plied his trade wherever the pickings were rich. He made his living, if it can be called that, by trapping beaver, swapping the skins for the few things he needed to exist. His possessions were few—whatever he could carry on his person and his packhorse: seven traps, a Plains rifle, preferably a Hawken, whose heavy ball would drop a charging buffalo in its tracks, two pounds of gun-powder, four pounds of lead, a bullet mold, a spare pair of moccasins, a strike-a-light with tinderbox, an awl, and a good supply of “chawin’ ’baccer,” most of which he carried in his “possible sack.” He also had a blanket or buffalo robe, a hatchet, a camp kettle, and his indispensable Green River knife. Sometimes he also toted a bag of foofaraw—trinkets such as beads, bells, small mirrors, and vermilion paint, to induce a good-looking squaw to share his blanket.

  The trapper’s way of life was made possible by a rage for beaver hats among fashionable city dwellers, both in America and Europe. The beaver plew was the standard medium of exchange where ordinary money was scarce. In the halcyon days of the fur trade, a prime skin fetched from four to six dollars a pound in the mountains. Once every year, the trappers gathered at the “rendezvous,” a sort of wilderness fair and carnival, held at a previously agreed-upon place, such as Pierre’s Hole, the Popo Agie, or the Green River–Siskeedee. At the rendezvous as many as a thousand mountain men, traders, and Indians with their squaws came together to swap pelts for coffee, whiskey, powder, blankets, and tobacco a man needed to last through the next trapping season. As the mountaineer skinned the beaver, so he was fleeced by the trader who sold him his basic necessities at an exorbitant 2,000 percent profit.

  An equally powerful inducement to attend the rendezvous was the opportunity to “cut one’s wolf loose” during one glorious, long-lasting orgy to make up for many months of loneliness and danger, a time for “uncouth frolics of semi-savages,” riotous, picturesque, alcoholic, and splendiferously barbaric. According to George Ruxton, who witnessed it.

  The rendezvous is one continued scene of drunkenness, gambling, and brawling and fighting, as long as the money and credit of the trappers last. Seated, Indian fashion, round the fires, with a blanket spread before them, groups are seen with their “decks” of cards, playing at euker, poker, and seven-up, the regular mountain games. The stakes are “beaver,” which here is current coin; and when the fur is gone, their horses, mules, rifles, and shirts, hunting packs, and breeches, are staked. Daring gamblers make the rounds of the camp, challenging each other to play for the trapper’s highest stake—his horse, his squaw (if he has one), and, as once happened, his scalp. “There goes hos and beaver!” is the mountain expression when a great loss is sustained; and, sooner or later, “hos and beaver” invariably find their way into the insatiable pockets of the traders. A trapper often squanders the produce of his hunt, amounting to hundreds of dollars, in a couple of hours; and, supplied on credit with another equipment, leaves the rendezvous for another expedition, which has the s
ame result time after time, although one tolerably successful hunt would enable him to return to the settlements and civilised life, with an ample sum to purchase and stock a farm, and enjoy himself in ease and comfort the remainder of his days.…

  But of course, to become a farmer was not something a mountain man took a shine to.

  The first rendezvous was held in 1825, the last in 1842. The glorious age of the free trapper lasted barely thirty years. By 1846 beaver hats were out of fashion, displaced by tall headgear made of silk and felt. As for the beaver, it had been trapped into virtual extinction. But the legends of the mountain men endure.

  The fur trader, trapper, beaver-hunter, or mountain man was a peculiar product of the American frontier. He belonged to a calling that had no counterpart. He started from frontiers at which more cautious pioneers were glad to stop. He was an adventurer for whom danger became a daily commonplace, an explorer who took tribute of the wilderness and wandered through the reaches of the outer West with all the freedom of the lonely wind. He was the predecessor of the missionary, the gold-seeker, the cattleman, the settler, and all kindred pioneers. The feet of a nation walked his half-obliterated trails, the course of empire followed his solitary pathways to the western sea.

  Little Big Man