the Sackett Companion (1992)

by L'amour, Louis

  It was the first time in my life that I had leisure and I made the most of it. I doubt if I was ever more than seven or eight miles from camp but it was mostly up, choosing my way with care.

  In my years of wandering about in wild places, often alone, I have never taken unnecessary chances, and anyone who does is a fool. Recklessness is not bravery. I am inclined to agree with the explorer Roald Amundsen that what we call adventure is simply bad planning.

  WILLIAM TELL SACKETT: The eldest of the five Sackett brothers of his family, he grew up in the Tennessee-North Carolina Mountains, joined the Union Army in the Civil War and rode most of the time with the Sixth Cavalry. He fought Indians in Dakota and Montana and rode on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana. The great love of his life was in his Civil War period, a tale yet to be told. He also appears in THE SACKETT BRAND, MOJAVE CROSSING, THE LONELY MEN, TREASURE MOUNTAIN, LONELY ON THE MOUNTAIN, and as just another working cowboy in DARK CANYON.

  ANGE KERRY: An Irish-Spanish mixture; Tell found her in a cave high in the mountains above Vallecito Canyon. Discovered her, almost lost her, but eventually married her. It just goes to show you a man's not safe anywhere, even at the end of a ghost trail past a ghost lake in a place where no one is likely to be.

  CAP ROUNTREE: Mountain man, cowpuncher, stage driver, he's done it all and carries the scars to prove it. Nobody knows how old he is and he isn't talking. Some say that Pikes Peak was a mere hole in the ground when he first came west. He also appears in THE DAYBREAKERS, THE SACKETT BRAND, and LONELY ON THE MOUNTAIN.

  MORA, NEW MEXICO: On the Mora River, in Mora County. The name's origin has been credited to several sources. Some say it was named for the mulberry, some for a dead man found by Ceran St. Vrain, but it was probably a surname.

  ELIZABETHTOWN: A onetime copper and gold mining town, about 5 miles east of Eagle Nest, in Colfax County. First settled about 1865. Prospectors found gold on Willow Creek. Town named for a daughter of John W. Moore. Now almost a ghost town.

  WILL BOYD: Gambler, gunman; he loses a mustache under peculiar circumstances not altogether related to cosmetics.

  JOHN TUTHILL: A banker whose interests ran beyond interest. He knew that gold was where you found it and he didn't mind one bit if the gold belonged to somebody else. John Tuthill knew a lot about gold and even where gold was likely to be found. What he didn't know was a lot about mountains when the weather has been nice in the late fall. He didn't know much about weather in a country where if you don't like the weather you just wait five minutes.

  JOE RUGGER: A good man in bad company; he knew when to throw in his hand and draw fresh cards.

  THE BIGELOWS: A group of very rough brothers with plenty of nerve but very poor judgment. One of them had no more sense than to try a bottom deal on a man whose father began teaching him about cards and crooked gamblers when he was five.

  KID NEWTON: A would-be badman traveling in the wrong company.

  BEN HOBES: Wanted in Texas and a few other places but not wanted in many more. A wise man in the ways of the wilderness, he gambled on the weather and came up the loser. Or did he? A tough man might make it, particularly if he had some Al Packer in him.

  BENSON BIGELOW: The old he-coon of the Bigelow tribe; he had it made and could have walked away, only at the last he couldn't leave it at that.

  No Boot Hill graves are in sight, and those who lie there were buried deep and the ground smoothed out and the grass grows green where they lie.

  There were no foundations laid for the buildings there, only timbers laid on the bare ground, and time and decay have done for them. Where they stood, wind blows through the grass and a few aspen have come up, and here and there a spruce among them. Only sometimes when hiking in the high-up mountains above Vallecito Canyon, up where the gray rock is splashed with leftover winter snow, sometimes, if you listen, you can hear a sound like a woman crying in the night.

  She did not die there but her ghost came back to the place where she lost a grandfather, almost died alone, and then found for her own brief while happiness with a man she loved.

  *

  *

  LANDO

  First publication: Bantam Books paperback, December 1962

  Narrator: Orlando Sackett Time Period: c. 187 3-187 5

  This is the story of Orlando Sackett and his racing mule-it is also the story of the Tinker, who was a tinker but also a pack peddler, once a pirate, and whatever else it took to pick up the loose chips.

  When Orlando leaves the mountains on a quest for something better than he has, he does not know that he is also embarking on a quest for hidden treasure on which several relatives are also engaged, a trek that takes him south as well as west and eventually into Mexico and behind the walls of a Mexican prison.

  He becomes a bare-knuckle prizefighter and meets an old enemy inside the squared circle, but along the way he encounters several very lovely ladies, and at the end has a six-shooter arbitration with some enemies of his own and some he inherited.

  THE TINKER: A gypsy, of mysterious background; a pack peddler ,n the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains who came from--who knows? Real name: Cosmo Lengro. His origin a mystery, his reasons for becoming a pack peddler even more so, except ... a pack peddler, sooner or later, hears everything' People like to talk to a friendly stranger who is gone tomorrow and often they tell him things in their quiet talk over a jug of shine or over a cup of coffee, things they would not tell their next door neighbor.

  A wily young man with a gift for making things work, a man who makes knives of a quality unknown elsewhere and of a kind of steel possessed by no one, a steel that will cut through anything. His knives are sought by everyone but made for a chosen few. Even Lando, his friend, does not have one.

  Mountain people eagerly await his coming. He has dress goods, needles, and all sorts of necessities, but he also has little gimcracks of gifty things that arouse eager interest. He also has news, the most precious of items, and gossip about what is happening elsewhere in the mountains and what women are wearing in the Settlements.

  THE KURBISHAWS: Lando's mothet's family; Aleyne Kurbi-shaw married his father contrary to her family's wishes and there was hatred on the Kurbishaw side for Falcon, Lando's father.

  The Kurbishaws had a dark side of anger and bitterness. They thought much of themselves, and believed by rights they should have wealth except they considered themselves above the need to work for it. Work was for peasants, for common men, not for those of their presence, their family, their importance. And then to have one of the family marry a Sackett when she could have married money! It was too much.

  WILL CAFFREY: Falcon Sackett left his son to be cared for by Will Caffrey, and a considerable sum of money to pay for it, and provide for his schooling. Caffrey used the money for his own purposes and to educate his own son, Duncan. Lando was forced to work, but when they tried to beat him, he ran away and went back to the deeper woods and the cabin in which they had lived when he was born. Lando left with Will Caffrey hating him both for the injury Will had done him in appropriating his money and for the beating Lando had given his son.

  DUNCAN CAFFREY: Gambler, prizefighter, and boyhood enemy of Lando, but a fighter of brawn and skill.

  HIGHLAND BAY: A noted racehorse with many victories behind him. Owned by Will Caffrey.

  JEM MACE: An English prizefighter, said to have been a gypsy, and once bare-knuckle champion of the world. One of the very first scientific boxers. That he was an able and successful fighter, there is no doubt, although he boxed at a time when the gentry was less involved and the gamblers more so. His fistic career covered the years from 1855--1864, with most of his fights taking place in England before he came to America. Mace was born in 1831 at Beeston in Norfolk. There were no weight divisions in his period and his best fighting weight seems to have been one hundred and fifty pounds, although he often weighed less. Today he would be classed as a welterweight.

  Jem Mace often fought men we would classify as heavyweights or li
ght-heavyweights today. He fought under the London Prize-Ring rules which meant a knockdown was the end of a round. The term "knockdown" was loosely interpreted and meant any time a man went to the ground. It was perfectly permissible to throw a man down or trip him. A round might be ten minutes or it might be ten seconds, ending whenever a fighter went down.

  Present-day fights are fought, as they have been for many years, under the Marquis of Queensbury Rules, and a round is three minutes, the rest between rounds one minute.

  CULLEN BAKER: My novel THE FIRST FAST DRAW deals with him. To some he was a hero, to others an outlaw and a killer. What you believe often depends on your source of information. His activities were largely confined to the area around Jefferson, Texarkana, the Sulphur River area, and Caddo Lake, yet there are stories that he went west as far as Salt Lake and even that he was associated for a time with Brigham Young's so-called Destroying Angels.

  He was, as in this story, associated for a time with Bill Longley and Bob Lee. Longley was only briefly associated with Baker and was later hanged. Bob Lee was a Southerner who continued to wage war after the surrender to Grant. A man of good family, he was also a good man with a gun. The title of his story comes from the fact that until the 1850s the pistols generally available were too cumbersome for a fast draw and were seldom carried on the person.

  GOVERNOR EDMUND JACKSON DAVIS: A Reconstruction governor in a state needing no reconstruction, as the war had done no damage there. An honest, decent man in a very unpopular job, a Republican governor in Texas, a largely Democratic state. His black police force was extremely unpopular. Most of the better class of black men would have nothing to do with the police force and those recruited often invited trouble in a situation that demanded the utmost in tact and consideration. During the last days of the Civil War and for at least ten years after there was much feuding and fighting among the white population as the various factions tried to settle their difficulties by direct action.

  The Davis police got very little cooperation, and in any event were incapable of coping with it. Davis was defeated in his bid for re-election but refused to give up the office until assured he would get no support from President Grant.

  FRANKLYN DECKROW: A man of pride but in all the wrong things. A planner and a conniver, but a man of whom to beware. He would destroy a man, not with a gun but with ink, usually red ink.

  MARSHA DECKROW: His daughter, and a niece of Jonas Locklear. Very pretty, but pretty is as pretty does, as they used to say in the mountains and elsewhere.

  JONAS LOCKLEAR: A former ship's captain who came up the hard way; a tough man but a just one. Franklyn Deckrow believed him gone for good, which left Deckrow in charge, but Jonas returned. For how long?

  LILY ANNE DECKROW: Sister to Jonas, wife to Franklyn Deckrow; a lovely but unhappy woman.

  VIRGINIA LOCKLEAR: Called Gin; a woman of intelligence and courage with much of her brother's strength and vitality. A beautiful, seductive woman who could ride as well as any vaquero. A very cool lady, indeed.

  JEAN LAFITTE: A pirate, smuggler, slave dealer and patriot, owner with his brother, Pierre, of a blacksmith shop (where the work was done by slaves) in New Orleans. This shop became a center for plotting and piratical activities. The brothers LaFitte seemed to have a hand in much that was taking place and owned shares in several privateers operating out of New Orleans or their bases at Galveston or Barataria. At one time they were engaged in a plot to seize Texas.

  Believed born in 1781 in Bayonne, France, Jean later moved to an island in the Caribbean. After revolts there, the family moved on to New Orleans.

  There is a story that a British agent tried to bribe him to show them the secret route through the bayous from the Gulf to New Orleans used by the smugglers. The offer was said to have been made in the Old Absinthe House (which still exists) and that Jean LaFitte was offered a handful of gold. His reply was to pin the hand to the bar with a dagger. True or not, the story is typical of many told about LaFitte. During the Battle of New Orleans, when the city was attacked by the British, LaFitte supplied artillery and gunners for the defense, and thus was a major factor in the United States winning the Battle of New Orleans.

  ERIC STOUTEN: Killed by the Kurbishaws; he knew the location of the treasure. A seaman and fisherman in the past, Stouten came to Mexico as a cavalryman in the command of Captain Elam Kurbishaw, but he had visited Mexico before.

  JEFFERSON: In Marion County, Texas. Built along Big Cypress Bayou. It was for a time the principal port of Texas and a prosperous city. A number of the old homes and other buildings still exist from those earlier years when Jefferson was a booming town with what seemed a glowing future. The destruction of the Red River Raft lowered the water and killed the town as a major seaport. The construction of the railroad to Texarkana was the final blow. Jefferson remains a pleasant town, well worth a visit.

  SAN AUGUSTINE: Site of a mission found in 1716. Philip Nolan held horses there when making a gather for the Louisiana troops. At that time corrals and a cabin were constructed. The town of San Augustine developed on the site and some fine old mansions remain. These towns in northeast Texas are more "southern" in nature than what is usually considered western.

  JUAN CORTINA: Born in Mexico on May 16, 1824. Owner of considerable property on both sides of the border, Cortina was a natural leader and a champion of the rights of his people. On the Texas side of the Rio Grande, his main ranch was at Santa Rita near Brownsville. Considered a bandit by some, he acquired stock where he found it, driving cattle across the Rio Grande on many occasions. He was indicted on at least one occasion but never brought to trial. On another occasion he captured the town of Brownsville after the local marshal had beaten a Mexican prisoner, and took the prisoner from the marshal.

  Several forces were sent against him, some including Mexicans of Texas ancestry, but he defeated these attempts until he was himself defeated in a battle fought near Rio Grande City. His activities continued on both sides of the border where he had friends among the Anglos as well as the Mexicans. On another occasion his troops were routed by Major John S. Ford of the Texas Rangers. Finally, Colonel Robert E. Lee was appointed commandant of the district with instructions to pursue into Mexico if necessary.

  Cortina remained a power in the area south of the border for many years and was acting governor of Tamaulipas under Benito Juarez. He continued some of his extra-legal activities until his own government intervened and he was removed to Mexico City. He died there in 1894, certainly one of the most interesting and exciting personalities along the border. Although he was never known to hesitate in appropriating any loose cattle, horses or mules, there was little he would not do for a friend, an abused Mexican, or anyone who appealed to his sense of justice or gallantry. Known to his intimates as Cheno.

  MAJOR L.H. McNELLY: Captain of the Texas Rangers, soldier in the Civil War, and farmer. He was a quiet man, slender of build, and soft-voiced. He served with the hated Davis police for a time but seems to have emerged from that experience a man respected and trusted insofar as his own activities were concerned. Later, with the Texas Rangers, he proved to be one of their most able commanders, although weakened by tuberculosis.

  BEEVILLE: Settled by Irish immigrants in the 1830s, it was for a time a wild town with many gamblers, much footracing, horseracing, and such. Ed Singleton, a notorious outlaw, was hanged there in 1877. It is said he left his skin to the local law officers to be stretched over a drumhead, the drum to be beaten on each anniversary of his death as a warning to others who might wish to follow in his footsteps.

  OAKVILLE: For a number of years this quiet little town was the hang-out for a number of outlaws and would-be outlaws, and the scene of several gun battles, a place where law officers were unwelcome. Capt. L.H. McNelly finally moved in and cleaned the place up in 1876. There, as elsewhere in the West, the outlaws and their women usually kept to their own side of town and their own places of resort, interfering very little with the schools and churches ar
ound which the town's social life revolved.

  MANUEL: A boy who loved a mule, and who went away to ride it in races.

  DOC HALLORAN: Occasional horse trader; a long, thin man with thin reddish hair. His kind was to be found in every western town, and that is still the case.

  BALD KNOBBERS: A group of vigilantes around Forsyth, Missouri, they were originally organized to cope with a growing crime problem, but at the request of state authorities, the responsible citizens withdrew. The group was then taken over by a bunch of ruffians who were responsible for attacks upon squatters, tie-cutters, and various others until, in 1887, the citizens arose, hanged three of them, and arrested two dozen others. Some escaped to carry on their criminal activities in a more comfortable climate. The name "Bald Knobbers" was given them because of their meetings on Bald Jess, a summit overlooking Forsyth. Several former members of the group became well-known further west, but the term was often applied to others from Missouri or Arkansas who had no connection with the original group.