Red Men and White

by Wister, Owen

  “I beg you will not allow my valise to incommode you,” was one of his first remarks; and I liked this consideration better than any Mr. Mowry had shown me. “I fear you will detect much initial primitiveness in our methods of transportation,” he said.

  This again called for gracious assurances on my part, and for a while our polite phrases balanced to corners until I was mentally winded keeping up such a pace of manners. The train had just brought him from Tucson, he told me, and would I indulge? On this we shared and complimented each other’s whiskey.

  “From your flask I take it that you are a Gentile,” said he, smiling.

  “If you mean tenderfoot,” said I, “let me confess at once that flask and owner are from the East, and brand-new in Arizona.”

  “I mean you’re not a Mormon. Most strangers to me up this way are. But they carry their liquor in a plain flat bottle like this.”

  “Are you a—a—” Embarrassment took me as it would were I to check myself on the verge of asking a courteously disposed stranger if he had ever embezzled.

  “Oh, I’m no Mormon,” my new friend said, with a chuckle, and I was glad to hear him come down to reasonable English. “But Gentiles are in the minority in this valley.”

  “I didn’t know we’d got to the valleys yet,” said I, eagerly, connecting Mormons with fertility and jasmine. And I lifted the flaps of the stage, first one side and then the other, and saw the desert everywhere flat, treeless, and staring like an eye without a lid.

  “This is the San Simon Valley we’ve been in all the time,” he replied. “It goes from Mexico to the Gila, about a hundred and fifty miles.”

  “Like this?”

  “South it’s rockier. Better put the flap down.”

  “I don’t see where people live,” I said, as two smoky spouts of sand jetted from the tires and strewed over our shoes and pervaded our nostrils. “There’s nothing—yes, there’s one bush coming.” I fastened the flaps.

  “That’s Seven-Mile Mesquite. They held up the stage at this point last October. But they made a mistake in the day. The money had gone down the afternoon before, and they only got about a hundred.”

  “I suppose it was Mormons who robbed the stage?”

  “Don’t talk quite so loud,” the stranger said, laughing. “The driver’s one of them.”

  “A Mormon or a robber?”

  “Well, we only know he’s a Mormon.”

  “He doesn’t look twenty. Has he many wives yet?”

  “Oh, they keep that thing very quiet in these days, if they do it at all. The government made things too hot altogether. The Bishop here knows what hiding for polygamy means.”

  “Bishop who?”

  “Meakum,” I thought he answered me, but was not sure in the rattle of the stage, and twice made him repeat it, putting my hand to my ear at last. “Meakum! Meakum!” he shouted.

  “Yes, sir,” said the driver.

  “Have some whiskey?” said my friend, promptly; and when that was over and the flat bottle passed back, he explained in a lower voice, “A son of the Bishop’s.”

  “Indeed!” I exclaimed.

  “So was the young fellow who put in the mail-bags, and that yellow-headed duck in the store this morning.” My companion, in the pleasure of teaching new things to a stranger, stretched his legs on the front seat, lifted my coat out of his way, and left all formality of speech and deportment. “And so’s the driver you’ll have to-morrow if you’re going beyond Thomas, and the stock-tender at the sub-agency where you’ll breakfast. He’s a yellow-head too. The old man’s postmaster, and owns this stage-line. One of his boys has the mail contract. The old man runs the hotel at Solomonsville and two stores at Bowie and Globe, and the store and mill at Thacher. He supplies the military posts in this district with hay and wood, and a lot of things on and off through the year. Can’t write his own name. Signs government contracts with his mark. He’s sixty-four, and he’s had eight wives. Last summer he married number nine—rest all dead, he says, and I guess that’s so. He has fifty-seven recorded children, not counting the twins born last week. Any yellow-heads you’ll see in the valley’ll answer to the name of Meakum as a rule, and the other type’s curly black like this little driver specimen.”

  “How interesting there should be only two varieties of Meakum!” said I.

  “Yes, it’s interesting. Of course the whole fifty-seven don’t class up yellow or black curly, but if you could take account of stock you’d find the big half of ’em do. Mothers don’t seem to have influenced the type appreciably. His eight families, successive and simultaneous, cover a period of forty-three years, and yellow and black keeps turning up right along. Scientifically, the suppression of Mormonism is a loss to the student of heredity. Some of the children are dead. Get killed now and then, and die too—die from sickness. But you’ll easily notice Meakums as you go up the valley. Old man sees all get good jobs as soon as they’re old enough. Places ’em on the railroad, places ’em in town, all over the lot. Some don’t stay; you couldn’t expect the whole fifty-seven to be steady; but he starts ’em all fair. We have six in Tucson now, or five, maybe. Old man’s a good father.”

  “They’re not all boys?”

  “Certainly not; but more than half are.”

  “And you say he can’t write?”

  “Or read, except print, and he has to spell out that.”

  “But, my goodness, he’s postmaster!”

  “What’s that got to do with it? Young Meakums all read like anything. He don’t do any drudgery.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t catch me signing any contracts I couldn’t read.”

  “Do you think you’d catch anybody reading a contract wrong to old Meakum? Oh, momma! Why, he’s king round here. Fixes the county elections and the price of tomatoes. Do you suppose any Tucson jury’ll convict any of his Mormons if he says nay? No, sir! It’s been tried. Why, that man ought to be in Congress.”

  “If he’s like that I don’t consider him desirable,” said I.

  “Yes, he is desirable,” said my friend, roughly. “Smart, can’t be fooled, and looks after his people’s interests. I’d like to know if that don’t fill the bill?”

  “If he defeats justice—”

  “Oh, rats!” This interruption made me regret his earlier manner, and I was sorry the polish had rubbed through so quickly and brought us to a too precipitate familiarity. “We’re Western out here,” he continued, “and we’re practical. When we want a thing, we go after it. Bishop Meakum worked his way down here from Utah through desert and starvation, mostly afoot, for a thousand miles, and his flock to-day is about the only class in the Territory that knows what prosperity feels like, and his laws are about the only laws folks don’t care to break. He’s got a brain. If he weren’t against Arizona’s being admitted—”

  “He should know better than that,” said I, wishing to be friendly. “With your fruit exports and high grade of citizens you’ll soon be another California.”

  He gave me an odd look.

  “I am surprised,” I proceeded, amiably, “to hear you speak of Mormons only as prosperous. They think better of you in Washington.”

  “Now, see here,” said he, “I’ve been pleasant to you and I’ve enjoyed this ride. But I like plain talk.”

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “And I don’t care for Eastern sarcasm.”

  “There was no intention—”

  “I don’t take offence where offence is not intended. As for high-grade citizens, we don’t claim to know as much as—I suppose it’s New York you come from? Gold-bugs and mugwumps—”

  “If you can spare the time,” said I, “and kindly explain what has disturbed you in my remarks, we’ll each be likely to find the rest of these forty miles more supportable.”

  “I guess I can stand it,” said he, swallowing a drink. He folded his arms and resettled his legs; and the noisome hatefulness of his laugh filled me with regret for the wet-eyed Mowry. I would no
w gladly have taken any amount of Mowry in exchange for this; and it struck me afresh how uncertainly one always reckons with those who suspect their own standing.

  “Till Solomonsville,” said I, “let us veil our estimation of each other. Once out of this stage and the world will be large enough for both of us.” I was wrong there; but presentiments do not come to me often. So I, too, drank some of my own whiskey, lighted a cigar, and observed with pleasure that my words had enraged him.

  Before either of us had devised our next remark, the stage pulled up to change horses at the first and last water in forty miles. This station was kept by Mr. Adams, and I jumped out to see the man Mr. Mowry had warned me was not an inexperienced juniper. His appearance would have drawn few but missionaries to him, and I should think would have been warning enough to any but an over-trustful child of six.

  “Are you the geologist?” he said at once, coughing heavily; and when I told him I was simply enjoying a holiday, he looked at me sharply and spat against the corner of the stable. “There’s one of them fellers expected,” he continued, in a tone as if I need not attempt to deny that, and I felt his eye watching for signs of geology about me. I told him that I imagined the geologist must do an active business in Arizona.

  “I don’t hire ’em!” he exclaimed. “They can’t tell me nothing about mineral.”

  “I suppose you have been here a long while, Mr. Adams?”

  “There’s just three living that come in ahead of—” The cough split his last word in pieces.

  “Mr. Mowry was saying last night—”

  “You’ve seen that old scamp, have you? Buy his mine behind Helen’s Dome?”

  My mirth at this turned him instantly confidential, and rooted his conviction that I was a geologist. “That’s right!” said he, tapping my arm. “Don’t you let ’em fool you. I guess you know your business. Now, if you want to look at good paying rock, thousands in sight, in sight, mind you—”

  “Are you coming along with us?” called the little Meakum driver, and I turned and saw the new team was harnessed and he ready on his box, with the reins in his hands. So I was obliged to hasten from the disappointed Adams and climb back in my seat. The last I saw of him he was standing quite still in the welter of stable muck, stooping to his cough, the desert sun beating on his old body, and the desert wind slowly turning the windmill above the shadeless mud hovel in which he lived alone.

  “Poor old devil!” said I to my enemy, half forgetting our terms in my contemplation of Adams. “Is he a Mormon?”

  My enemy’s temper seemed a little improved. “He’s tried most everything except jail,” he answered, his voice still harsh. “You needn’t invest your sentiment there. He used to hang out at Twenty Mile in Old Camp Grant days, and he’d slit your throat for fifty cents.”

  But my sentiment was invested somehow. The years of the old-timers were ending so gray. Their heyday, and carousals, and happy-go-luckiness all gone, and in the remaining hours—what? Empty youth is such a grand easy thing, and empty age so grim!

  “Has Mowry tried everything, too?” I asked.

  “Including jail,” said my companion; and gave me many entertaining incidents of Mowry’s career with an ill-smelling saloon cleverness that put him once more into favorable humor with me, while I retained my opinion of him. “And that uneducated sot,” he concluded, “that hobo with his record of cattle-stealing and claim-jumping, and his acquittal from jail through railroad influence, actually undertook to run against me last elections. My name is Jenks; Luke Jenks, Territorial Delegate from Arizona.” He handed me his card.

  “I’m just from Washington,” said I.

  “Well, I’ve not been there this session. Important law business has detained me here. Yes, they backed Mowry in that election. The old spittoon had quite a following, but he hadn’t the cash. That gives you some idea of the low standards I have to combat. But I hadn’t to spend much. This Territory’s so poor they come cheap. Seventy-five cents a head for all the votes I wanted in Bisbee, Nogales, and Yuma; and up here the Bishop was my good friend. Holding office booms my business some, and that’s why I took it, of course. But I’ve had low standards to fight.”

  The Territorial Delegate now talked freely of Arizona’s frontier life. “It’s all dead,” he said, forgetting in his fluency what he had told me about Seven-Mile Mesquite and last October. “We have a community as high toned as any in the land. Our monumental activity—” And here he went off like a cuckoo clock, or the Boy Orator, reciting the glories of Phœnix and Salt River, and the future of silver, in that special dialect of platitudes which is spoken by our more talkative statesmen, and is not quite Latin, quite grammar, or quite falsehood. “We’re not all Mowrys and Adamses,” said he, landing from his flight.

  “In a population of fifty-nine thousand,” said I, heartily, “a stranger is bound to meet decent people if he keeps on.”

  Again he misinterpreted me, but this time the other way, bowing like one who acknowledges a compliment; and we came to Solomonsville in such peace that he would have been astonished at my private thoughts. For I had met no undisguised vagabond nor out-and-out tramp whom I did not prefer to Luke Jenks, vote-buyer and politician. With his catch-penny plausibility, his thin-spread good-fellowship, and his New York clothes, he mistook himself for a respectable man, and I was glad to be done with him.

  I could have reached Thomas that evening, but after our noon dinner let the stage go on, and delayed a night for the sake of seeing the Bishop hold service next day, which was Sunday, some few miles down the valley. I was curious to learn the Mormon ritual and what might be the doctrines that such a man as the Bishop would expound. It dashed me a little to find this would cost me forty-eight hours of Solomonsville, no Sunday stage running. But one friendly English-speaking family—the town was chiefly Mexican—made some of my hours pleasant, and others I spent in walking. Though I went early to bed I slept so late that the ritual was well advanced when I reached the Mormon gathering. From where I was obliged to stand I could only hear the preacher, already in the middle of his discourse.

  “Don’t empty your swill in the door-yard, but feed it to your hogs,” he was saying; and any one who knows how plainly a man is revealed in his voice could have felt instantly, as I did, that here was undoubtedly a leader of men. “Rotten meat, rotten corn, spoiled milk, the truck that thoughtless folks throw away, should be used. Their usefulness has not ceased because they’re rotten. That’s the error of the ignorant, who know not that nothing is meant to be wasted in this world. The ignorant stay poor because they break the law of the Lord. Waste not, want not. The children of the Gentiles play in the door-yard and grow sickly and die. The mother working in the house has a pale face and poison in her blood. She cannot be a strong wife. She cannot bear strong sons to the man. He stays healthy because he toils in the field. He does not breathe the tainted air rising from the swill in the door-yard. Swill is bad for us, but it is good for swine. Waste it by the threshold it becomes deadly, and a curse falls upon the house. The mother and children are sick because she has broken a law of the Lord. Do not let me see this sin when I come among you in the valley. Fifty yards behind each house, with clean air between, let me see the well-fed swine receiving each day, as was intended, the garbage left by man. And let me see flowers in the door-yard, and stout, blooming children. We will sing the twenty-ninth hymn.”

  The scales had many hours ago dropped from my eyes, and I saw Arizona clear, and felt no repining for roses and jasmine. They had been a politician’s way of foisting one more silver State upon our Senate, and I willingly renounced them for the real thing I was getting; for my holiday already far outspangled the motliest dream that ever visited me, and I settled down to it as we settle down in our theatre chairs, well pleased with the flying pantomime. And when, after the hymn and a blessing—the hymn was poor stuff about wanting to be a Mormon and with the Mormons stand—I saw the Bishop get into a wagon, put on a yellow duster, and drive quickly away, n
o surprise struck me at all. I merely said to myself: Certainly. How dull not to have foreseen that! And I knew that we should speak together soon, and he would tell me why California only held the record on stoves.

  But oh, my friends, what a country we live in, and what an age, that the same stars and stripes should simultaneously wave over this and over Delmonico’s! This too I kept thinking as I killed more hours in walking the neighborhood of Solomonsville, an object of more false hope to natives whom I did not then observe. I avoided Jenks, who had business clients in the town. I went among the ditches and the fields thus turned green by the channelled Gila; and though it was scarce a paradise surpassing the Nile, it was grassy and full of sweet smells until after a few miles each way, when the desert suddenly met the pleasant verdure full in the face and corroded it to death like vitriol. The sermon came back to me as I passed the little Mormon homes, and the bishop rose and rose in my esteem, though not as one of the children of light. That sagacious patriarch told his flock the things of week-day wisdom down to their level, the cleanly things next to godliness, to keep them from the million squalors that stain our Gentile poor; and if he did not sound much like the Gospel, he and Deuteronomy were alike as two peas. With him and Moses thus in my thoughts, I came back after sunset, and was gratified to be late for supper. Jenks had left the dining-room, and I ate in my own company, which had become lively and full of intelligent impressions. These I sat recording later in my journal, when a hesitating knock came at my bedroom, and two young men in cowboy costume entered like shy children, endeavoring to step without creaking.

  “Meakums!” my delighted mind exclaimed, inwardly; but the yellow one introduced the black curly one as Mr. Follet, who, in turn, made his friend Mr. Cunningham known to me, and at my cordial suggestion they sat down with increasing awkwardness, first leaving their hats outside the door.