Ruffian Dick

by Kennedy, Joseph; Enright, John;

  After dining—if it can be called that—my coach mates set about attempting to find decent quarters for the evening. As it turned out, Carson’s House Station provided just a single, filthy room for such purposes, and that meant the Danas and Mahoney would be forced together into this close quarter piggery, along with La Mash and two other miscreants who happened to need lodging at the same time.

  As was my usual custom, I would set off for the evening and look after myself. There had been no prearrangements with Rifle Shot and my new “wife” regarding a time or a place to meet, so I carried on as usual and suspected that wherever in the Territory I might decide to settle for the evening, they would most likely find me in the first few minutes after dismounting.

  I was not disappointed. My squaw came to me and indicated in sign language that I follow her back to camp. As I might have guessed, there were now two tents erected and other indications that I would soon be performing le danse l’amour with my new mate on another night. Once settled I joined Rifle Shot at his fire. He was busy with the care of his breechloader, bow, and many arrows, and I was afraid he was making final war preparations as he drew nearer to Salt Lake City.

  I attempted to broach a few issues with him but he seemed preoccupied. When I mentioned passing the burned wagon and the four graves earlier on the trail, he stopped cleaning his rifle and looked into the fire. “Yes, I know about this. That is too bad for the wagon people—but not under this sky. The little white boy should not have acted as he did to the Shoshone. The brave was called Looking Bird. He had been killed the day before by another group of white men, for stealing one hearty-choke.”

  “You mean he was killed over the theft of an artichoke?”

  Rifle Shot formed his hands into a ball. “Small plant with sharp points on leaves? Look like green bird lodge?”

  “Yes, yes, that’s the one. But what exactly did this little white boy do?”

  “After he was killed for taking the plant, Looking Bird’s people placed him on his blanket for the death journey near the wagon trail. The boy from another wagon came to him and took a necklace from his body. It was a beautiful necklace with many coloured beads.”

  Rifle Shot looked at me plainly and commented, “White men angry when Indian just take scalp from dead enemy, then don’t care when boy take beautiful thing like necklace. There is no sense in this. Boy make Shoshone very angry, more angry than before. If Shoshone boy does wrong his mother pours water down his nose. Shoshone do that when child is bad, teaches good lesson. It is the way of this earth. If grown man had done same thing, they would have taken skin off while still alive. White men don’t see,” Rifle Shot searched for the right words, “don’t see clear to do this right thing.

  “White boy’s father comes and argues with Shoshone after they see boy with Looking Bird’s necklace. Boy’s father does not know how to speak with them. They show him necklace but he does not understand everything that has happened. Big fight happens, many arrows, many cartridges spent. Many people killed.”

  He turned from the fire and looked at me. “All that blood worth one hearty-choke? I do not think so. One hearty-choke not same as eleven people. More Shoshone dead, all white family rubbed-out … plenty more hearty-chokes.” He almost laughed but didn’t and shook his head instead.

  He concluded with some thoughts that left me wondering about a number of issues. Rifle Shot pointed his finger at nothing in particular and said, “When you are not part of this real earth, and you come here, you bring pain from somewhere else that cannot be understood. You bring trouble into a land not made for rolling tents or children who are allowed to take necklaces from dead warriors. People from this earth sometimes rub them out to make their land real once more. With the cleaning of death everything can begin again.” He returned to the care of his weapon.

  I asked if he still intended to carry out his plan of killing Brigham Young.

  “Mmmm.”

  I took this to mean yes, so I questioned if this wouldn’t just be more killing and this would only continue the cycle of violence.

  Rifle Shot held his weapon to the sky and looked through the barrel. “Mmmm. Yess, Mormons will hate Delaware after I use him up. Like I said, this is the path that is taken when different people meet in this way. We are in a land wet with the blood of many tribes. Like the wagon people, the Delaware and Mormons come from other places too, and bring their own pain and trouble to this real earth. I do not know what to say about it all. Maybe the spirits can understand.” He looked at me with a pensive and timeless expression. “But is it not the same in the land of the white man? Has it ever been any other way?”

  What can I say about the land of white men and the paths they have taken? Shall I tell him that the Anglo-Saxons and Franks scalped each other, and everyone else they could lay hands on, until AD 900? That there have been feudal-clerical wars that have ruined whole countries or that illiterate and brutal baronages travelled thousands of miles for two centuries to kill neighbors of a different religion? Should I say the white man hacks away with swords designed to maim and invented lapidary machines to sever men’s heads? And that it continues to this day not only among the whites but everyone else, everywhere in this troubled world? Should I admonish Rifle Shot and say Indians are savages and that his proposed murder of Brigham Young will only promote a world of unending violence and tribal hostility? It is a headache just to think of these things.

  This hunting of Man is a tiring and confusing business, but I can see why Laibon Mbatiany chose this continent for the stalking. It would be too delicious if Rifle Shot and the laibon could sit together and help straighten things out for me, and it might not be a bad idea to ask Marie Laveau to come over and lend a hand. But at this relatively early stage in my new cycle I doubt if I could fully understand their wisdom on the matter, and besides it is my job to make some sense of mess, and in the end probably find myself squarely in the middle of it like everyone else.

  At this point I would not even be surprised if my three sage counselors got into a fistfight among themselves while trying to explain matters.

  The only sane and decent thing I can think of at the moment is to retreat to the tent with my handsome squaw and heartily embrace those dear moments of peace, romance, and harmless adventure. Fate can wait.

  XVII

  A MEMBER OF THE DANGEROUS DANITE BAND ENCOUNTERS RIFLE SHOT

  August 25, 1860

  Valley of the Great Salt Lake

  It was not an easy thing this morning to untangle myself from the delicious, dark olive limbs of my new wife. Our evening was so amusingly playful, and she so anxious to please, that I shrink from the thought of ever again engaging the waxy, cadaverous Englishwoman with her petted attitude and constitutional frigidity. I do believe I am suffering from squaw mania—a disease for which there may be no cure.

  Nevertheless, I was able to return to my compagnons de voyage by seven, and after a cup of tea and a hard biscuit we set off on the last leg before attaining Zion. The morning’s first chore was to follow the rocky course of Bauchmin’s Creek for several hours and then assault “Big Mountain.” This was no small task as the eastern ascent took every minute of five hours and, as evidenced by the many roadside burials, the grade was steep enough to end the lives of many a thousand-mile pilgrim here at the very doorstep to Eden.

  The crest of Big Mountain provided our first look at the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, a sight which cannot be viewed without considerable emotion after nineteen hard days in a mail ambulance. We were now just eighteen miles from the Holy City, and one cannot help but remark that Independence Rock bears a remarkable resemblance to Jiwe la Mkoa in Unyamwezi and the Devil’s Gate to the Breche de Roland in the Pyrenees.

  An equally difficult descent brought us to the gorge of Big Kanyon Creek and a mid-day rest at a small station situated between the trail and a narrow ribbon of water running next to it. The proprietor was none other than Mr. Ephe Hanks. I recognized the name from Lt. Dana who back
in St. Jo named Mr. Hanks as one of the triumvirate Mormon leaders of the Danite Band, along with Bill Hickman and O.P. Rockwell. Mahoney said he knew him and I begged an introduction.

  “How dee do, Captain,” were his first words. “Are ye almighty terrified to meet up with your first desperado Mormon?”

  I told him no indeed. “Danite or Damnite, it was pretty much the same to me.”

  “Well fine then. Will ye come in and have some victuals?”

  I thanked him and entered the station. There we sat and were served by his “Old Lady,” who turned out to be neither old nor a lady, but one of his four teenage wives, who from her mannerisms and speech had obviously not spent a single day in the schoolroom. Mr. Hanks himself was a decent enough looking fellow of average height and build, and appearance-wise not near the demon I imagined after hearing some of the terrible stories. Over dinner he told me of his seafaring days out of New England, and in his conversation he covered a variety of other quite ordinary topics.

  He expressed a child’s interest in my air rifle, but this was simply an excuse to clear the way for him to make an ostentatious display of his collection of high-caliber weapons.

  “Yes siree, these come in handy if’n ye meet-up with ol’ Ephraim when yer out on the trail. Griz with a cub like to claw yer guts out, ‘less’n ye git to her first. Gotta have yer killb’ars ready for business, there’s no gittin’ round that. I’ve fixed mine many a time and have done deadly damage.” Hanks heaved a laboured sigh. “There’s no countin’ the number or the ways. A man of the west just gotta do what he’s got to do, and have the right means to do it.”

  When I gave a knowing nod, he looked at me and burst out in a derisive laugh. Perhaps it is because I am British and have the look of newness about me, but I also suspect he thought the air gun my sole means of defense, or worse, the only shooting tool I could command. I could not bear to let this mockery go unanswered, for I had already seen too much in these forty years to allow such an event to take place. Why, if the man were at Berbera five years ago, it would have been naked sword against native lance, by god, and no quarter given. Something had to be done.

  “Mr. Hanks, it is one thing to face an unarmed bear in the wild, and I am sure it takes a marksman’s nerve to get the job done. However, it is something altogether different to engage the true king of beasts at equal strength and come out on top.”

  This surely caught his attention, for he interrupted his chewing, and with a mouthful of food garbled out, “What the hell ye mean by that, Captain? Is it another man ye are speakin’ of?”

  “Well, yes, actually. Where I come from, the true measure of a person’s mettle is always gauged against his success in manly combat, and nothing short of that is worthy of a boast.”

  “Izzat so? And a boast is it?” He abruptly scraped his chair across the floor and stood over me. I had apparently touched a nerve for he snatched away his bib, glowered down and shouted, “We can gauge between the two of us on this very afternoon if it’s a boast that’s stuck in your craw, Captain. An’ if you’re feelin’ the manly need to act as ye would where ye came from … well, we can settle that today too.”

  “Now, now, Mr. Hanks, I do not think it is necessary to have an American style shoot-up between us. Might not a better idea be to tangle with the Indians? We could go out together and try and settle with some trouble makers. You do have Indian troublemakers in these parts, don’t you?”

  He paused for a moment before telling me that there were some Gosiutes who had become “a bother.” There had been some raids and some horses missing, and as he thought about it, I could see Hanks smiling and warming to the idea of taking care of several matters at the same time. “You gots yourself a deal, Captain, although I’d recommend bringing something more manly than your air gun over there. The Gosiutes may be a lowly, half-naked race, but they’ll have your scalp if’n you go in unprepared. ‘Sides, how’d we sort out who’s got boastin’ rights if you went and got yourself killed?”

  He suggested that at sundown we should make a camp some distance away from the station and that a few extra ponies be brought along as bait. As a further enticement, Hanks asked that I make myself conspicuous by the fire. He, on the other hand, would wait in ambuscade close by until the renegades came, and at that point he would rush from hiding and we would together engage the savage Gosiutes to see who the best of us was.

  I had difficulty keeping from a derisive laugh of my own, for I could guess what might happen if Mr. Hanks followed me to a separate camp.

  We made arrangements to leave the station at five that afternoon and the self-confident Hanks casually hummed a sailor’s tune as he prepared himself and the horses. He would occasionally look over at me and it seemed all he could do to keep from laughing. Once on the trail he intensified his campaign. “Ever seen a Gosiute, Captain? They be small devils and ragged, but what they can do to a man is horrible … less’n ye knows how to handle them. Any Gosiutes over there in England, Captain? I suspect not. Ye know, they can come up on a man sudden-like, take ye by surprise if’n ye don’t know the things to look and listen for.”

  Hanks was relentless. “When the shootin’ starts, lad, best lay ye flat on the ground so’s not to be hit by one of my balls, for they’ll be a-commin’ fast and furious. An’ take care that a dead Gosiute don’t fall on ye and break one of yer bones. I’d hate to have to leave a man in the wild, but in these parts, a man that can’t ride gots to be left. Course then they is prey for the wolves and the other Gosiutes that’ll come at night for their dead.”

  And a short while later, “Do ye have next of kin, Captain? Someone who we could write with the bad news? Ye know there was a tenderfoot Englishman through here some months ago, boasted that he knew what it took to live in the territories. Some little-bitty Gosiute tore him up real bad and we didn’t even know where to send the pieces. It was a pitiful shame.”

  After an hour or so of almost uninterrupted harassment we came upon a well-known clearing near a creek and made a rough camp. The courageous Hanks bid me sit next to the fire while he settled into some knee-high brush not twenty feet from my post. All the while he chatted away through the bushes.

  “Ye gots to know the sights and sounds if’n you expect to be top dog in these parts, Captain. The filthy beggars fancy themselves expert stalkers, but Mr. Ephie Hanks has taught them a trick or two I’ll tell ye and made ’em pay dearly for it as well.”

  I turned to look at Hanks as he prattled on and saw Rifle Shot begin to slowly and silently rise up from a bush located not three feet behind him. When he straightened to full height, he simply listened with a taciturn face as Hanks worsened the situation.

  “Sometimes a scroungy little Indian near the animal stage can overtake a fully armed white man that’s lackin’ the necessary skills, so ye have to watch close for that and always be prepared. I’ll tell ye lad, I can smell the dirty mutts a mile away.”

  Just then my squaw came into the clearing at the far side of the camp. Hanks finally spotted her after she took a few steps into the light and he let out a loud yelp, “There’s one of the dirty curs right now! The primitive bitch is tryin’ to sneak up on us whilst we weren’t lookin.” He began fumbling with his rifle. “Clear the way boy an’ I’ll drop her like a sack of shit.”

  At this point Rifle Shot reached down and wrapped his massive hand around the barrel of Hank’s weapon. He lifted it over his head while turning it, and then brought down the flat side of the butt hard against the top of Hanks head. Rifle Shot then took the gun and snapped it in half over his knee. The big Indian stared down at the unconscious Hanks then looked over at me with a quizzical expression on his face.

  “Was he your friend?” He shook his head. “Why he sit in bushes when so much better by fire?” Then the squaw came over and took a look at the crumpled body. She said something about how deranged white people were and how typical it was of them to be doing something strange like that and reached for her scalping knife.
r />   While still looking at the motionless Hanks, Rifle Shot addressed this issue with his former wife. “Wah, hold-on, hold-on. I do not think they are the only ones who are crazy. My mother’s sister’s son, Lazy Horse, he used to sit in bushes too. No one knew the reason.”

  Did I understand him correctly? Could my ears have failed me? I asked Rifle Shot if he meant “Crazy Horse” (in Standard Lakota Orthography Tašúŋke Witkó) literally, His-Horse-Is-Crazy” or His-Horse-Is-Spirited. Could my formidable friend also be the cousin of the fierce warrior, Crazy Horse?

  “No. Lazy Horse. Crazy Horse is Oglala Sioux, name Tashunca-Uitco. Lazy Horse is Delaware, part of my own clan.” Rifle Shot grimaced. “Sometimes he put fish on top of head and dance tout nu32, very strange.”

  August 28, 1860

  Salt Lake City

  We have at last descended into Immigration Canyon, and now the entire Holy Valley of the West and the Great Salt Lake lay before our view. It is a magnificent sight. After a short time the city itself was revealed, all laid out before us in the distance as if upon a map. The Metropolis of God was arranged in neat rectangular blocks each containing dull, gray adobe dwellings. Only the Prophet’s house was whitewashed. Next to Mr. Young’s residence and the courthouse, I am afraid that the most prominent structure in the entire town was the arsenal.

  The agricultural fruits of Mormon industry were apparent in well-tended fields surrounding the city. Rows of corn and sweet sorghum accompanied orchards of apple and peach. There was nothing to compare with this west of the Mississippi, and I can easily see why pilgrims consider this God’s own land.