Mr. Mahoney took this opportunity to add his own appraisal of the Pony Express system. “The boys riding this route need to look out for Mormons more than Indians. The firm of Magraw and Hockaday been handlin’ the mail from Independence to Salt Lake City until just recently. Now it’s the Brigham Young Express and Carrying Company that’s gettin’ all the work—the YX is what they call it. You know why they’re carryin’ all the mail now don’t you?” No one spoke and Mahoney carried on. “Anybody think it might have somethin’ to do with ol’ Bill Hickman and Orrin Porter Rockwell? Who do you think killed Mr. Babbitt? That wasn’t no Indian—that was Port Rockwell disguised as an Indian is what it really wuz. And Captain Gunnison and those seven other Pacific Railroad surveyin’ boys? Weren’t no Pahvant braves. Was Port Rockwell again, ‘cept that time he didn’t bother with no disguise.”
I asked Mahoney if we were getting near Mr. Rockwell’s headquarters.
“Last I heared he opened a place called Murder’s Bar over at Buckeye Flat. He was usin’ the name James B. Brown ‘cause when he had that halfway house on the American River him and Boyd Dixie got into to a shootin’ match which occasioned the wildest whiskey fest ever seen in the gold fields. That there wuz an ugly mess if there ever wuz one. Troopers should’ve been called in to end it but they wuz nowhere to be seen.”
We re-boarded the coach and pressed on toward the next station. Mahoney called into the passenger section and said that we were running past schedule and would be driving into the night and hoping to reach Dry Sandy Creek by midnight. That afternoon seemed to drag on longer than usual and the passengers’ attitudes were noticeably affected. A completely bored La Mash twisted and turned about inside the coach, forever shifting his person and in the process sometimes coming dangerously close to Mrs. Dana. She in turn sucked at her teeth whenever he came near, put a hankie up to cover her mouth and nose and clutched her husband’s arm very tightly. Lt. Dana felt his wife was too confining sometimes and when he wished for more freedom by changing positions, she felt insulted and abandoned and threw herself into a dyspeptic fit.
Relief came at sunset when we came upon a caravan of wagons that had left from St. Jo almost one month earlier. We stopped briefly to rest the mules and allowed them to feed on the tolerable grass available near the campsite. This also provided a few hours’ rest for our human party, but I must say the mules were much luckier in terms of nourishment.
These particular pioneers were from Indiana and had placed their fate in the hands of a wagon master by the name of Johnny Cotton. I should have instantly recognized Mr. Cotton for the scoundrel I later discovered him to be, for he sported that distinctive look in the transverse diameter between the parietal bones where destructiveness and secretiveness are placed. An additional bad sign was that he and Mahoney appeared to be old friends.
These forbidding twin indicators were soon matched by a discourse which may have led one to believe that a band of Gypsy wagons had been encountered and that their chief swindler had stepped forth to see what could be gained from the unsuspecting visitors. The Danas left the carriage and repaired to a locale as far from La Mash as possible while the great Lord Kill B’ar promptly cornered the first group of settlers he could find and began worrying them with his stories of frontier hardships and atrocities.
This left Mahoney and I to be entertained by Mr. Cotton. Almost immediately he admitted that he had taught his charges to play two card games known as “Old Sledge” and “Chihuahua Red Dog” and commented with a sly grin that Indianans weren’t much when it came to gambling. He boasted that he had already bled several of them into bankruptcy and forced them to turn back before the wagon train hit Wildcat Creek. Johnny Cotton thought this positively hilarious, and I am afraid that even the physical telling of this terrible story also produced some equally dreadful and very disgusting results. You see, Johnny Cotton’s mouth seemed to produce an overabundance of saliva and when he got too excited the excess fluid would either have to be periodically gulped down or else sprayed in the direction of his unfortunate audience. When he mentioned to Mahoney that he had mulcted the hat from a tag-along Indian called Ben Acts-Like-He-Knows-You he exploded in a mocking laughter that threatened to soak the front of my shirt.
Mahoney confronted Cotton and said that the last time he saw him he was working as a tent pole setter for Herr Driesbach’s Travelling Circus and was curious to learn how Cotton had come to be a trusted scout in the Territories.
“Well, this is America, ain’t it? I just went ahead an’ started me a business after conferin’ with Texas Jack.”
Even Mahoney seemed startled at this. “Texas Jack! That snake’s never been west of Yip Hop’s laundry in his whole life, an’ I don’t think he’s even been outside of Crystal’s Saloon and seen the daylight in three years.”
Johnny Cotton’s eyes widened. “It ain’t like that, Mahoney. Jack’s a good businessman and that’s what it takes. He taught me everything I needed to know from right inside Crystals.”
As might be expected, Cotton’s charges were in terrible shape. The lucky ones had been swindled early at parlour games and had been forced back to St. Jo. Those unfortunate souls who managed to hang-on wore the haunted look of shipwrecked sailors who had been adrift for weeks in leaking rafts. They were dreadfully unprepared, low on supplies, and their prairie ships were nothing more than rolling wrecks. Families who had lost poorly outfitted wagons to the road were forced to double up with those whose wagons were still up and running. As a consequence, the remaining oxen were straining to pull twice-loaded carts while the wretched humans were left to trudge alongside.
Everyone in the party seemed racked with disease or despair, except a robust and exuberant tyke identified to me as “Little Boy Cotton.” This lad was seated on a pail behind a crate that was being used as a gaming board. On the other side were a group of bewildered Indians who were examining and conferring over what appeared to be a poker hand. Little Boy Cotton could not have reached his tenth year, yet he manipulated the cards with an eclat that might have impressed a hardened veteran aboard the Sultana. He was sitting among a pile of pelts, jerk meat, and other aboriginal goods that had recently been forfeited to his talents, and he squealed, clapped, and rubbed his hands together when the Indians threw down their cards and realized that he had triumphed over them once again.
We watched as the lad scooped up another set of pelts and threw them on his winning pile. “He is an unnatural child,” Mahoney said while shaking his head. “He was just like that back in the circus days an’ he wasn’t but seven years old at the time. Trained by his father I suspect, an’ maybe Texas Jack.”
The Indians began to grumble. Some spoke Hunkpapa and others used sign language, but by any means it was clear that they believed they had been cheated. Little Boy Cotton was completely unfazed by this, then tied one of the Indian’s forfeited bonnets around his head and began to prance around the crate in a mock war dance.
One young brave became completely outraged by this. He was not that much older than Little Boy Cotton but his physique looked as if it were chipped out of granite. The young brave stepped forward and made a very threatening gesture. Little Boy defiantly imitated this gesture right back at the young brave, stuck his tongue out at the group and intensified his awful taunting. I am sure it was only through the intercession of an elderly chief that bloodshed was avoided.
The unhappy Indians gathered up the playing cards and disappeared into the darkness. The brat brought his loot over to show Cotton, Sr., and it was an unholy sight to behold, father and son gloating over such things. They were taeter ex colei28 if ever any existed, but it was all made much worse when Johnny instructed his son to store the goods in with the other things in their supply wagon.
The little demon went to the only wagon in the group that was in a state of good repair and deposited his winnings in various trunks that held ample food supplies and a great number of personal possessions that were no doubt once owned by both the India
ns and the Indianans.
Johnny smiled and shook his head from side to side in mock disbelief. “What a boy, I’ll tell you. He could charm a snake and make him pay for it. Can you believe his mother wanted to send him to a reform school back in St. Louis? Shows you how much she knows, that stupid bitch.” Then Johnny Cotton floated a tender note. “She hurt the little guy’s feelings too. Poor little guy naturally come to his daddy after that and now look how good it all turned out.”
I turned and saw Little Boy Cotton racing around the sick and dispirited pioneers with the oversized feather bonnet on his head. He paused to agitate an already rattled Mrs. Dana and then attempted to stir up a chase with some of the other children, but they were too weak to respond.
Mahoney asked if that little girl back in St. Jo ever fully recovered.
“You mean the one that was burned?” Johnny seemed a bit defensive. “Yeah, she’s OK. She’s fine, just fine. All the bandages came off before we even left town. She’s like new, brand new.”
He looked over at me and grinned. “Little Boy kind a got wild with a box of Lucifer Matches. His mother hid that sort of thing from him, an’ the poor little guy didn’t know what they wuz all about. Wasn’t none of his fault, and besides the stupid little bitch deserved bein’ lit-up. Nobody tells my boy he’s got a bad breath problem. Poor little guy, it hurt his feelings. Don’t they know it ain’t right to be hurtful like that?”
Mahoney thought that the mules had sufficient rest and food, so he said good-bye to Johnny Cotton and called for the rest of us to get back to the coach. For the first time since the trip began, I was able to assume a positive attitude towards our driver for I sensed that he despised Little Boy Cotton and his father as much as I did. Before we left, the Danas and I distributed some buffalo meat pemmican to the worst off of the Indianans and even La Mash parted with a few of his hardened corn dodgers to a group of hungry children who began to queue up in front of him.
The grizzled trapper almost couldn’t believe his eyes when Little Boy Cotton appeared in the line with his hand out. La Mash looked around to see where the child’s father was, and after confirming he was nowhere about, he took the hellion’s legs out from under him, knocked him to the ground and kicked some dirt into his face. Little Boy fell with a thud and almost began to cry—although I doubt if he has any of those fluids in him.
But instead, the diminutive tyrant got to his hands and knees, spat at La Mash and then administered a long and vicious bite to the side of his calf. It took two hard leg kicks to make the beast let go. Undaunted, he chased after our coach as we pulled away and hurled rocks at Mahoney. He finally caught up with us and pulled some Lucifer matches from his pocket with an eye on the mules. His father appeared and yelled after us, “What did you do to the poor little guy, Mahoney? I’ll square up with you later, you stupid son-of-a-bitch.”
It was near a full moon and we followed a silver ribbon of trail for an additional five hours on our way here to Simpson’s Hollow. The station keepers were already down for the night when we arrived, so the three other passengers and Mahoney sought shelter in the adjoining stable and fell asleep on a mat of wild sage.
I made a small fire and began to set all this down on paper before it was forgotten. I am exhausted and will not last another ten minutes, but I will go to sleep thinking that my laibon may vomit after learning of the Cotton family, and sometimes I wonder what the worth of their exposition may be.
28 From Latin one can only translate this as “a disgusting pair of testicles.” —Ed.
XV
TROUBLE ON THE TRAIL
August 23, 1860
Fort Bridger
Wyoming Territory
Mahoney forced an unusually early departure from Simpson’s Hollow because he did not want to be charged for sleeping in the stable. It was still quite dark when we re-hitched the team and started back on the trail.
Dawn displayed to us the valley of Green River which boasts good grass and fresh water one hundred yards across. It was an unusually crisp and clear morning featuring an ideal temperature and our first interesting landscape in two weeks. Cottonwood trees and yellow currants shone in the sun and I can’t recall a better start to any day so far. The climate inside the coach was also much improved on this day as I think a night’s sleep and the memory of a common revulsion to last evening’s events went a ways toward easing some of our internal hostilities.
La Mash was in an exceptional mood and offered to grace us with a song he learned in a bar in St. Jo.
Have you heard of Porter Rockwell, the Mormon Triggerite
They say he hunts down outlaws when the moon is shining bright
So if you rustle cattle, I’ll tell you what to do,
Get the drop on Porter Rockwell,
Or he’ll get the drop on you.
Lt. Dana burst into applause after the last word and I thought I noticed that even his wife was holding back a smile.
“Wal, if’n ya liked that one, general, I’ll go right ahead and sing you another.” La Mash cleared his throat and began:
Old Port Rockwell looks like a man
With a beard on his face and his hair in a braid
But there’s none in the West but Brigham who can
Look in his eyes and not be afraid.
For Port is a devil in human shape
Though he calls himself Angel say
vengeance is sweet.
But he’s black, bitter death, and there’s no escape,
When he wails through the night his dread war cry
Wheat, Wheat.
Somewhere a wife with her babes kneels to pray
For she knows she’s a widow and orphans
are they.
Lt. Dana laughed and began clapping again but this time his wife spoiled the mood by reminding him that there was nothing funny about widows and orphans.
“Of course not, dear. Now, Mr. La Mash, what’s all this about his war cry, Wheat, wheat?”
La Mash explained that Mr. Rockwell was given over to using this term on a number of occasions and that it had become his signature. “Wheat” when he toasts a drink. “Wheat” when he gets angry. “All wheat” when he means it is good.
“You know, ol’ Port’s not an educated man. Kaint even read or write a word nor sign his own name. Might be that he’s at a loss for fancy words an’ says wheat to mean a lot of different things.”
Just then Mrs. Dana let loose a blood-curdling scream. “Oh my God, my God. Look over there!” She burst into tears and buried her head in her husband’s jacket.
It was the young Pony Express rider. He was tied to a tree, shot through with arrows and was a bloody mess from having been horribly scalped. He was already dead but his eyes were still half open and his mouth no longer wore that innocent smile. These empty features combined into an expression suggesting that his last act was to try and let his murderers know that they had made some sort of terrible mistake or that he was embarrassed such a fate had befallen him. La Mash and Mahoney went up to the young man and released him from the tree. They identified the arrows as belonging to the Hunkpapa and when they began cleaning away the blood they discovered one of the arrows pierced a handful of playing cards that had been placed on the boy’s chest.
“This is for what happened last night.” Mahoney rubbed the top of his hand back and forth across his mouth as he looked down at the young rider. “The Hunkpapa’s a people what won’t kill a child or the sick or defenseless no matter what they done to them. But they’re a proud folk who won’t sit still for being taken advantage of neither. This poor young boy here got chosen to deliver the message.” Mahoney took a flask from his pocket and retreated to the coach. Lt. Dana and I helped La Mash scrape a shallow grave on the side of the road and we lifted the rider into it and covered this likable lad with a goodly number of silently sad rocks.
We each sat by ourselves for a while, lost in thoughts of the unfairness of what had taken place. The evil child who caused all this,
who at age ten can only be considered a rotten product of his time, place, and equally repulsive father; and the Hunkpapa who butchered an innocent man because they are too noble to exact such measures on those who they consider feeble. And the dead orphan in a lonely grave at seventeen. It is a discomforting and unsatisfying thing to have no villain, or all villains. To be in a land at a time when survival takes on such grotesque shapes and where the notions of justice blow the mind apart with storms of contradictions.
Johnny Cotton and his putrid child are bloated ticks, alive right now and living off the blood of those who pay them for protection. An innocent boy lies dead on account of these two, and his hair hangs on a pole above some wikeap that belongs to some pitiable savage who had to do something to help assuage his indignation. Something that made perfect sense to him, but which seems utterly cruel and senseless to the foreigner who has invaded his land and was taking everything he ever had.
Lt. Dana placed a reassuring hand on his wife’s shoulder and La Mash and Mahoney shuffled around the coach acting as if they did not know whether to stay and try to do something or else get away from the scene as soon as possible. After a short time, everyone realized that there was nothing that could be done save more brooding, so we rejoined the trail and pressed on to the next station.
Ham’s Fork, if not the most dangerous station along the route, is certainly staffed with the surliest and most treacherous attendants of all the rest stops encountered to date. Our first act upon arrival was to inform the station master that a man was murdered ten miles back and buried along the side of the trail.
“So what you want me to do? Say a fuckin’ prayer?” He said this with cruel indifference and then spit an evil-looking mess of tobacco juice on the floor. “Somebody’s gettin’ killed all the time around here. I just hope he was an Injun or a Mormon. Neither of them is worth a goddamn and one less of either is reason for a drink.” His crusty friends laughed at this, but when their little joke was over, a pervasive air of hostility hung in the room. They sat in grim silence and followed our every move with suspicious and antagonistic eyes.
Ruffian Dick Page 20