Legends and Tales of the American West

by Richard Erdoes

  There was a cowman named Kincaid, his wife, and their little boy, living on their modest spread somewhere west of Clovis. The boy accidentally dropped a kernel of corn on the ground and immediately a plant was shooting up. The boy grabbed it playfully, and before he knew what was happening, he was carried by it way up, so high that he was afraid to climb down but just clung tightly to the leaves, hollering for help. The father came running, but when he got to the cornstalk, his son was already more than a hundred feet up in the air. The frantic father hurried to get his ax and when he got back the kid was still up there, hanging on for dear life, but now he was at a height of two hundred feet. His father wielded the ax and made a cut in the stalk, but by then it had become as thick as the trunk of a big oak tree. The father was making another chop, but the first cut was already beyond reach way above him. His wife hurried to the scene to see what all the commotion was about, but by then the top of the stalk with the boy was above the clouds. The mother started weeping and wailing, but when a few teardrops fell to the ground near the stalk’s base, it shot up twice as fast as before.

  “He’ll starve to death up there,” lamented the woman, but for weeks and months corncobs fell down from the sky, piling up around the base of the stalk.

  “He has lots of corn to eat up there, and lots of dew to lick up from the leaves to quench his thirst,” said the father.

  “But we’ll never see him again,” wailed his wife, “For heaven’s sake, do something!”

  Now there was a holy hermit living in a cave on top of the Twin Peaks, near Las Vegas, not too far from Clovis. This hermit was so saintly, and so beloved by God that whenever he wanted he could float up into the sky, all the way to the pearly gates, and have a chat with Saint Peter, and then float down again to his cave, to go on fasting and praying and mortifying his flesh.

  The grieving parents went to see this holy one. On their knees they implored him to bring their little boy back.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” said the hermit. He soared up to heaven, rang the bell, and Peter came out to greet him.

  “Amigo,” said the hermit, “there is a certain little boy who rode up from earth on a rather tall cornstalk. They think he is up here with you. They want him back.”

  “I wish he were, compadre,” said the saint. “It’s true, he passed by here, but with such terrific speed that, before I could grab hold of him, that cornstalk had already whizzed by me, carrying the boy way beyond heaven into the darkness of outer space.”

  “Can’t you get the Boss to get him down to earth and his father’s ranch. After all, He’s almighty, isn’t He?”

  “Sure, sure, He’s almighty all right, but this is a special case where even He is helpless. Probably a little trick played upon Him by you know who. I’m sorry, my friend.”

  So the hermit came home empty-handed.

  Well, that’s the kind of corn we have around here, and that’s why we never try to raise any of it and stick to raising cattle.

  Better Move That Drat Thing!

  An old cowhand was sitting in the Seven Gables Hotel and Bar, Sheridan, Wyoming, his cheeks full of chawin’ ’baccer, spitting his ambeer with perfect aim at the cat, into the vase with the potted palm, on the carpet, or hitting the fly crawling up the wallpaper. The porter, averse to that kind of shooting exhibition, placed a spittoon where he thought it might do the most good. The cowpoke ignored him, directing his juice at the navel of the undraped lady whose painting adorned the back bar. The porter moved the cuspidor in front of the bar, the cowboy propelled his ambeer into a nearby ashtray. Desperate, the porter placed the spittoon directly at the chewer’s feet, who first stared at the porter, then at the brass cuspidor, and finally exclaimed: “Pardner, you better move that drat thing or, by God, I’m li’ble to spit in it!”

  Being Afoot in Roswell

  An old story tells of three young, rambunctious cowhands riding into a Roswell, New Mexico, saloon on their ponies, right up to the bar, downing their sneaky pete while remaining in the saddle. A traveling salesman from back East, imbibing his own phlegm cutter, complained of being crowded by all that horseflesh, saying that these goddam equines belonged in a stable and not in a barroom.

  The boniface, an rugged old smoothbore, eyed the man from the East with disdain.

  “Stranger,” he finally unburdened himself, “what the devil are you doin’ in here afoot, for chrissake?”

  Outstunk the Skunk

  Cattlemen, who hated the smell of sheep, were fond of ascribing a sheepy odor as well as a disreputable appearance to the men who tended sheep. The only legend that cowmen ever tell in mixed company has to do with a cowman, a farmer, and a sheepman who visited a carnival show. One tent bore the sign FIVE DOLLARS IF YOU CAN STAY IN THIS TENT FIVE MINUTES. The cowman swaggered in with assurance. In two seconds he was out, sputtering and coughing and urging the next man to try it. The farmer went in, and in half a minute he came hurrying out in discomfiture. Then the sheepman went in. The other two waited. One minute went by—two, three, four. Just as the cowboy and the farmer had made up their minds to go to the rescue, the tent’s exhibit, a large, virile, and highly disgusted skunk, ran out from under the tent flap and made for the creek.

  CHAPTER 9

  They Died with Their Boots On

  Sometimes they did, but not always. Bat Masterson died at his desk writing a column for the sports section of the New York Morning Telegraph. Doc Holliday cashed in his chips on his bed, a victim of galloping consumption. Clay Allison broke his neck falling from his buckboard. Wyatt Earp began pushing up daisies at the age of eighty-one.

  The Golden Age of the Gunfighter lasted from about 1850 to 1890. During this period of roughly forty years an estimated twenty thousand men died of “lead poisoning,” from the Canadian border down to the Rio Grande, which comes to about five hundred victims per year in all this vast territory, comparing very favorably with the much greater number of annual homicides in any one of our larger cities today.

  Shoot-outs occurred for two reasons: the snaillike westward march of the law and Mr. Colt’s invention of the six-shot revolver.

  God made some men big and some men small,

  But Sam Colt made them all equal.

  In the absence of law, certain men will take the law into their own hands. Some westerners did, but not nearly as many as legends would have us believe. Settling arguments by force of arms was an old, and generally accepted, American custom. Among our native heroes, Alexander Hamilton and Stephen Decatur died as the result of duels fought with pistols. These were stately affairs of honor, fought according to the strict code duello. The living bridge between the gentlemanly duelist and the unwashed western gunslinger was President Andrew Jackson, “Dean of Duelists,” who fought no less than fourteen duels, though he managed to kill only one of his antagonists. Jackson’s fights often degenerated into vicious brawls with knives and lead-headed canes, but then “Old Hickory” was a genuine frontier character from Tennessee.

  “I always carried a gun,” said Montana “Teddy Blue” Abbott, “because it was the only way I knew how to fight. If God Almighty’d wanted me to fight like a dog, He’d given me long teeth and claws.”

  The western shootist came in two varieties: the fellow who “fought fair” according to the gunslinger’s unwritten code—barbaric, but a code all the same—and the low-down killer, who often shot his quarry in the back or from ambush with as little compunction as stepping on a cockroach. The unwritten law specified that one should not shoot a fellow with whom one had just shared a meal. One should not shoot a gent who was “not heeled” —that is, carried no weapon—nor should one fire away without due warning. Even a rattler will give a warning before it strikes. Also, it was not cricket to smile while gunning a man down, as it might give him the notion that one was only joking. For a fair fight in accordance with such rules, there was no punishment.

  The unsavory, unstable killer type often belonged to the genus “Kid,” such as Billy the Kid, Kid Cu
rry, or the Texas Kid:

  The genus “KID” wore his hair long, and in curls upon his shoulders; had an incipient moustache, and sported a costume made of buckskin ornamented with fringe, tassels, and strings of the same material—the dirtier the better. His head was covered with a cowboy’s hat of phenomenal width of brim, having many metal stars, halfmoons, etc., around the crown. Upon his feet he wore either moccasins or very high-heeled, stub-toed boots, and an enormous pair of spurs, with little steel balls that jingled at each step. Buckled around his waist would be a cartridge belt holding two carefully sited revolvers, and a bone-handled bowie knife in his bootleg completed his dress.

  The “cayuse” was never far from his master, for when that gentleman wanted a horse he wanted him badly; either to escape from a worse man than himself, or to escape the consequences of having killed one.

  Mythology and the movies have made heroes of some very bad hombres, of the James boys, the Daltons, Cole Younger, Billy the Kid, King Fisher, and similar gentry. That can’t be helped.

  But Western life ain’t wild and woolly now;

  There is no daily gunpowder powwow;

  There are bunco games galore

  And the tourist dude holds the floor.

  But Western life ain’t wild and woolly now!

  No-Head Joaquín and Three-Fingered Jack

  Joaquín Murieta and “Three-Fingered Jack” García were the legendary bad hombres of the California Gold Rush days. They stood head and shoulders above all the other bandidos—after all, there are not many men who can boast of having their heads and hands exhibited in pickle jars of alcohol, for the price of two bits.

  Leaving behind them a crimson trail of blood and death, the famous outlaws soon furnished gringo journalists the stuff for lurid legends that kept them busy for years. Every outrage, murder, and robbery was automatically laid at the door of the celebrated Joaquín Murieta and his band of desperadoes. To confuse the historians, there was a whole multitude of other cutthroats named Joaquín to make the life of gringo miners and prospectors miserable, such as Joaquín Bottilier, Joaquín Carillo, Joaquín Ocomorena, Joaquín Romero, and Joaquín Valenzuela. As a matter of course, the misdeeds of these Joaquíns, lumped together as one, were all blamed on Murieta, the top Joaquín of them all.

  Legend made Murieta either into the most bloodthirsty and cruel pistolero ever to haunt the mother lode, or into a Mexican Robin Hood, the protector of his people, the widows’ and orphans’ friend.

  No such ambivalence was involved in the Saga of Three-Fingered Jack, Murieta’s chief lieutenant. All agreed that he was the ultimate throat slicer, doing his job so deftly that his victims were hardly aware of what had happened to them until after they were dead. One of Jack’s chief amusements was to form a group of Chinese coolies into an outward-facing circle, tying all their queues together in the center, and then solemnly walking around the circle, methodically cutting their throats, one after the other. Jack was said to sometimes cut out and devour his victims’ hearts. He boasted that he ate his meals with the same knife he used to slit throats and that it lapped up blood like a man dying of thirst laps up water.

  This then is the Ballad of Joaquín Murieta. There lived in the verdant Valley of Sonora a gentle, handsome lad—our Joaquín. The valley was brightened by the presence of an angelic and most beautiful girl—Rosita Carmel Feliz. Joaquín and Rosita had been inseparable from earliest childhood. They were instructed together in the holy faith by the same padre, were confirmed together, danced the fandango at the same baile, and sang sweet songs to each other under the ancient cottonwood tree. Inevitably, like Romeo and Juliet, they fell deeply in love with each other while still in their early teens—the pure, chaste love of innocence.

  There also lived in that peaceful valley a very important and powerful gouty, aged caballero, a hacendado and rico hombre, Don José Gonzáles. Don José’s hacienda was so big that when people asked him, “Señor, does your hacienda lie in the state of Sonora?” he answered, “No, the state of Sonora lies within my hacienda.” What Don José wanted, he usually got, and what he wanted was the lovely Rosita in her first bloom of budding womanhood. Only instant flight could save Rosita from the old lecher’s clutches. Joaquín stole two blooded horses from among more than five thousand in Don José’s remuda. The young lovers rode away as fast as their mounts would carry them. They did not stop until they had put a hundred miles behind them. Then they found a kindly priest who joined them in marriage. They did not feel safe, however, until they had crossed the border into California, recently annexed by the United States.

  In California, Joaquín and his Rosita lived happily together. Joaquín, a superb horseman, earned good money as a horse breeder and bronc buster. He searched for—and found—his older brother, Jesús Carlos, who had come to America a few years before him. Carlos had staked a claim in a gold camp called Hangtown, but the norteamericanos did not want “greasers” in the goldfields. They considered mining for precious ores a privilege of “the superior race.” A bully called Lang jumped the claim. Carlos had the title and a friend, Flores, who had been a witness to the title registration. Joaquín, Carlos, and Flores set out to reclaim the property. Upon arrival at the gold camp, they found themselves confronted by an angry mob of gringo miners, egged on by Lang: “We don’t want any goddam greasers here,” they shouted. “Go back to Mexico where you belong! Git!”

  Lang suddenly pointed at the mules on which Carlos and Flores were riding: “Them mules is stolen. I’d know ’em anywhar. Let’s string them hoss thieves up!”

  Instantly, Carlos and Flores were torn from their saddles, dragged to the nearest tree, and hanged. Joaquín was forced to watch his brother and friend dance the Dance of Death. He himself was tied to the hanging tree. The shirt was ripped from his back as the brutish Lang began to lash him cruelly with a huge bullwhip until the bones were laid bare.

  “That’s jest a lesson to teach you that greasers ain’t welcome here,” Lang said with an evil grin. “Ef you ever come back, you’ll die of hemp fever like yer two amigos. Now git lost, you son of a bitch!”

  Joaquín had endured his agony in silence, without uttering a sound. During his ordeal he kept his eyes fastened upon the faces of his tormentors until their features had been burned indelibly into his memory, swearing a silent oath to himself that they should pay with their lives for what they had done. Consumed with hatred, and determined not to be cheated of his rights to search for gold as the gringos did, he staked out a claim at a place called Saw Mill Flat, and there put up a small adobe house for himself and Rosita. He was savagely punished for his presumption. Six miners, occupying the claims next to his, burst into his humble home, yelling: “You bastard greaser, tryin’ to horn in on white men’s diggin’s. You’ve asked for it!” Joaquín went for his bowie knife, but was knocked down from behind with the blunt end of an ax. When he came to, he found his Rosita naked, her clothes ripped from her body, tied to their bed, battered beyond recognition, victim of a fate worse than death. She was but barely alive. Joaquín cut her ties, covering her with kisses. She opened her eyes for a last time, whispered “Mi corazón,” and with a deep sigh expired in his arms. He sat there for many hours as if turned into stone, clutching her body. In the morning he buried Rosita, who had not lived to bear his child. Then he spoke, though there were none to hear him: “By the blood of Christ, I will avenge you!”

  Some time later the bodies of six prospectors were discovered lying in a ravine, their throats cut. They had been mutilated and their ears had been sliced off. They were the men who had violated and killed Rosita.

  A dour, hollow-cheeked man opened a gambling saloon in Hangtown. Long black hair fell to his shoulders. Much of his face was hidden by huge mustaches and a bushy beard. His eyes glowed like coals with the ice-cold fire of hate. He was dressed like a typical gringo saloonkeeper. Nobody recognized in this disguise a formerly gentle, clean-shaven lad named Joaquín Murieta.

  Soon uneasiness spread among th
e miners of Hangtown, nearby Saw Mill Flat, and Murphy’s Diggings. Fear gripped the boozers in the saloons, the gamblers at their faro tables. Men were disappearing as if swallowed up by the earth. Later, their bodies, half-devoured by wild beasts, would be found in ravines and forest glens, sometimes floating facedown in mountain streams. All of them had their ears cut off.

  A jolly drunk was seen staggering from a saloon to his nearby cabin. His friends heard him singing:

  Hangtown whores are curious creatures,

  They wind up by marryin’ preachers,

  Hitch up their skirts and show their features.

  Hooraw, Hangtown gals!

  He was found next morning at his cabin’s door, his ears gone, his head nearly severed from his body, his teeth bared in a horrid grin.

  A mule stumbled into Murphy’s Diggings. Tied to its back was a miner’s corpse, the ears sliced off close to the skull. This one did not have its throat cut. Looking at what remained of him, he appeared to have been lassoed and dragged, at full gallop, through thorns and brambles until his clothes and most of his skin was gone.

  The denizens of mining camps within a radius of fifty miles took to staying home at nights, hardly daring to visit their privies after dark. If they had to venture from camp, they did so in the company of friends. Still, men kept disappearing as if by witchcraft. A party of miners were sitting in on a game of poker inside their favorite watering hole when one of them slammed down his cards on the table and exclaimed: “Boys, something jest occurred to me. Remember the necktie party Old Bill Lang organized fer two Mex hoss thieves, An’ a third greaser got a whippin’? Waal, thar war thirty-one fellers in that party, an every man jack of them gents found murdered an’ without his ears war one of ’em. So far, fourteen lost thar jug handles. That makes seventeen still to go.” There ensued a long silence. The card game was not resumed.