the Sackett Companion (1992)

by L'amour, Louis

  It is difficult to say at just what moment a story comes into being, or what it is that triggers the imagination. Often it can be a place or a situation, perhaps a bit of history that needs to be enlarged upon. The story of Treasure Mountain was a natural, but every time I walked into Cumberland Basin it demanded a story. A rider coming down the trail from the Notch was vulnerable, and the bench where Pa Sackett was killed was secluded and lovely.

  All that high country fascinates me, and the High-Line Trail that is often called the Ute Trail I believe to be much, much older. In each area of the Rockies such trails are found, and always with simply local names, but I believe it is all one trail, perhaps a migration route, or more likely an ancient trade route for Indians.

  When you are above where the canyons begin, the traveling is much easier. No climbing in and out of canyons or continually crossing streams is required. Also, you can see for greater distances. Of course, the route could only be traveled in the warm months, but Indians never traveled in the snow if it could be avoided. Winter was a time for staying in the lodge, and it was storytelling time, too.

  Actually, if one wished he could travel from Alaska to Mexico following high-line trails, dipping down only between mountain ranges.

  I feel those trails are thousands of years old. A government man was making a survey of the population of elk and found a Folsom point on the Ute Trail, and another found a broken Folsom point. And that takes us back a few thousand years, perhaps eight to ten thousand.

  CUMBERLAND BASIN: It's where the La Plata River begins, high up in the mountains, most of it around 10,500 feet, in a waving sea of wildflowers most times of the year. In the winter, early spring, and late fall it is many feet deep in snow. As it is right about timberline, there are patches of trees here and there, but the higher peaks are all smooth and green except for outcroppings of rock or old mines. The sky is usually a deep blue tufted with white clouds, but in the afternoon the clouds turn dark and there are rain showers, sometimes serious thunder storms. There's a lake up there, some marshy spots, a few beginning springs, and a trail leading to the high-line trail along the ridges.

  Don't look for the crack from which Tell Sackett took Pa's daybook. It's gone. Souvenir hunters have carried rocks away until the place can no longer be recognized. Most of the old four-wheel-drive roads have been closed and if you want to go anywhere you walk. You walk slowly. At that altitude heart attacks come quickly if you hurry. Anyway, who wants to hurry when there's so much beauty just to stand and see?

  There are scattered clumps of spruce trees. The aspen don't grow quite that high. The earth you walk on is tundra because at that altitude you are in an arctic region. The flowers you see will be those found in the Arctic Circle, in northernmost Siberia, Alaska, or Canada. It is not generally understood that as you climb a mountain the growth changes as if you were going north.

  Be careful of the turf underfoot. Because of the short growing season, it takes the land a long time to recover from injury. Those riding motorcycles or jeeps should remember this.

  COLBORN (PA) SACKETT: Father of William Tell, Orrin, Jim, Bob, and Tyrel Sackett, a mountain man, trapper, and hunter who had several times gone to the western mountains as a free trapper. And then he went once again and did not return. Ma wished to be sure he lay in a proper grave, if dead, and in any event wished to know what became of him. Traveling at the time was dangerous. Many men disappeared traveling eastern highways and byways, for there were long stretches of lonely road where anything might happen, but the sons of Ma Sackett also wished to know. Orrin Sackett traveled to New Orleans to make inquiries, to be followed shortly by William Tell Sackett.

  New Orleans is not a strange city. Men from the mountains of Tennessee often rafted their goods down the river to sell or trade at the port. They had friends there and a few enemies.

  The arrival of the Sacketts would bring them new enemies, people who had no wish to have old mysteries examined nor questions asked that might arouse further questions.

  ANDRE BASTON: One of those men who for personal reasons preferred to let sleeping dogs lie. He was a skilled swordsman, and an excellent shot, and his skills had resulted in the deaths of a dozen men. Never simply content to draw blood or for simple victory, he preferred to kill, and did so.

  PAUL AND FANNY BASTON: They were cut from the same pattern, and all three hoped to inherit from Uncle Philip, as all three presently lived on what he provided.

  PIERRE BONTEMPS: Brother-in-law to Andre, liked by Uncle Philip. He recruited Colborn Sackett and led the expedition west to find the French gold. Murdered by Andre and Pettigrew in the western mountains, he was a good man, daring and adventurous but not as careful of his company as he should have been. Yet, when dealing with relatives, what can you do?

  HIPPO SWAN: A waterfront thug in New Orleans, recruited by Andre Baston. A big man, a very tough man, a man known around the riverfront dives in New Orleans and Mobile.

  BRICK-TOP JACKSON: A notorious New Orleans character well known to the police of the time. The account of her life as told in my story is true. Her criminal record would cover a dozen pages of such a book.

  THE CANTON HOUSE, MOTHER BURKE'S DEN, THE AMSTERDAM, THE BLUE ANCHOR AND THE BALTIMORE: All were infamous places at the time, as was MURPHY'S DANCE HOUSE. Whenever I mention such a place by name in any of my books you may be sure it is not a made-up or imagined place, but the genuine article.

  SAINT CHARLES HOTEL: A famous place then and now. In those days it served the most fashionable clientele.

  THE OLD ABSINTHE HOUSE: In New Orleans, a place visited by most tourists and famous for many years. The pirate Jean LaFitte used to spend time there, and it is home to a thousand stories.

  THE TINKER: He reappears in this story. A pack peddler in the mountains, he has been a seaman, a trader, and many other things. A gypsy, he seems to have been everywhere, moves like a young man and might be young, but who knows his age or his background?

  DIXIE LAND: As explained in TREASURE MOUNTAIN, the name is purported to have come from some ten-dollar notes issued at the time which had a ten on one side, a dix--French for ten--on the other side. People called them Dixies so the term came to mean the area where the notes came from: Dixie Land.

  There are other explanations for the term. This, I believe, makes the most sense.

  DOC HALLORAN: Who bought and sold cattle and horses, often racing the latter. He also appeared in the story of LANDO in that capacity.

  WEBBER'S FALLS: In what is now Oklahoma, on the Arkansas River. There was once a nice little fall here, several feet high. Named for Walter Webber, a Cherokee of mixed blood, and a wealthy man for his time, it was a well-known stopping place on the river, visited by Washington Irving, among others. Webber was an important man, well-known on the plains. When Arrow-Going-Home, the Osage chief, wished to bring a halt to hit-and-run warfare and horse stealing with the Chero-kees, it was to Webber he sent his messenger. During the Civil War, Colonel Stand Watie, a Cherokee chief, captured a Yankee wagon train at the Falls, and later Watie called a meeting of the Cherokee Legislature there.

  FORT GIBSON: A military post in eastern Oklahoma, situated on the left bank of the Neosho above its meeting with the Arkansas. Built to bring an end to the fighting between the Osage and the Cherokee, the log-palisaded fort was finished in 1824 and became a famous place on the frontier. During a part of his western period Sam Houston lived here with Tiana. It was here also that Hatrack, a lady given to entertaining her passing lovers in the local cemetery, plied her trade. According to Herbert Asbury, who wrote an account of her, she is reported to have replied to one of her visitors, who offered her a dollar: "You know darned well I ain't got any change!"

  JUDAS PRIEST: A black man of some education and considerable skill with weapons who had more than one reason for befriending the Sacketts, and who went west with them. His brother Angus had been a slave to Pierre Bontemps, but more than a slave, he had been a friend as well.

  McCLELL
AN CREEK: Named for the Civil War general. Many of the officers who later became famed for their operations in the Civil War had previously served on the Indian-fighting frontier, and McClellan had been a part of the small force with Marcy when he was exploring in the western states.

  VALLECITOS: Mentioned in TREASURE MOUNTAIN and featured in SACKETT. This was where Tell Sackett and Cap Rountree located some mining claims, and up on the ridge beyond was where Tell found Ange. If you've a notion for some hiking in the high country, and are prepared to camp out, you can get off the Durango to Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad at Needleton and follow Needle Creek up to Chicago Basin. You will be hiking up where the eagles soar and where a trail dips down into Vallecitos. Don't try it unless you're used to hiking and like high altitude, but it's beautiful country and you'll see some of the finest mountains in creation. When I first hiked up through Chicago Basin and over the pass into Vallecitos, Pearl Harbor was something off in a future nobody would have believed. We topped out in a thick cloud and when we came out of it the Vallecitos Basin lay before us. We'd seen a few men working claims back in Chicago Basin but there were no hikers in those days, and we were alone on top of the world. A half mile away as the eagle flies we could see a bear digging into the slide rock after a marmot. Across the Basin we could see the mountains where, in a story that would be written twenty years or so later, Tell Sackett would find Ange.

  In those years I was just somebody who wanted to be a writer but the extent of my writing had been a few items in newspapers for which I did not get paid. Still, I was gathering impressions, absorbing information and preparing for what was to come. Nothing one learns is ever discarded.

  During those early years I taught myself to observe and remember, and from where I stood that day I had before me an unbelievable panorama of mountains, of sharp peaks, jagged ridges, and the impossible green of meadow grass and forest. Here and there were spots of snow, some of which would last the summer through. We went on down the trail into the Vallecitos, but I did not forget, could not forget what I had seen and was seeing.

  One does not need to see mountains to observe. Having traveled much, I am often asked if such travel is essential for a writer. My answer would be no. A writer must learn to see and to understand, and some of the greatest writers have restricted themselves to an area or a period and have done well. Stories are about people and how they live their lives. Each generation is inclined to believe theirs is the worst, and we Americans like to view things with alarm. We like to tell ourselves how bad things are, but no people on earth ever had it so good.

  BRANDS: A good rewrite man working with a running iron, some wire or a cinch-ring could alter any brand into the one he wished, and here and there it was done often, as in the case where Charley McCaire altered Tyrel Sackett's brand. It was a hanging offense, if a man was caught, and ranchers in the earliest days seldom waited for a trial. The rustler received a suspended sentence--at the end of a rope from a branch of the nearest tree. The nearest court house and jail might be a hundred miles away and a busy rancher had little time for traipsing back and forth to deliver a prisoner and then testifying in court. If a man was caught with a tied-down calf and an iron in the fire, that was enough. In fact, one rustler was found hanging from a tree with a sign on his chest: Too many irons in the fire.

  TRELAWNEYS: In the Sackett stories they were people who lived in the mountains nearby. They seem to have run as long on girls as the Sacketts did on boys, which seems to present a most pleasant situation. The Trelawney girls were as strongly individual as the Sacketts, however, and they might show up anywhere. Whenever they did, they knew how to take care of themselves.

  JACK BEN TRELAWNEY: A good man with a gun, especially a shotgun loaded with rock salt and bacon rinds. It wouldn't kill a man but could leave him with some anguished days and nights. Jack Ben was a man with several courtin'-age daughters, so he didn't get much sleep, which no doubt had much to do with the shortness of his temper.

  TALLY-BOOK: Also, DAYBOOK. You will see them referred to in several of my stories and elsewhere in western literature. A rancher usually kept, and a cowboy often did, a small notebook in his pocket for keeping a count of cattle on the range, brands he saw, or anything he might need to remember. Often these books were used beside a branding fire to keep a count of the brands on cattle. When a tally-book wasn't available, many methods were used, such as tying knots in string, cutting notches, and anything else an inventive mind could think of.

  Fur trappers and traders often used them to keep track of the numbers of skins of various kinds. It was about the only system of bookkeeping known to most of the early westerners.

  INDIANS: Contrary to what many might believe, the relationship between whites and Indians was often friendly. Troublemakers were often new men out from the East with preconceived notions about Indians. Some tribes were always friendly, others were friendly only at times, and certain ranchers and western men won friends from among the Indians that lasted down the years. Very few Indians fought for their land. The idea that they might lose it was beyond their conception, until it was much too late. Indians fought for scalps, for loot, for any one of a dozen reasons, just as white men did. A wagon train or ranch house represented a treasure trove to an Indian, just as Sir Francis Drake looked to the Spanish galleons he attacked for profit. Personally, I resent the impression that the Indian was a poor creature of whom the white man took advantage. The American Indian was a fine, fierce fighting man of great personal pride and reasons for it. His trouble was that while he had to breed his future generations of warriors, which took time, there seemed to be, for some distant source of which he knew nothing, an endless supply of white men.

  From my personal study, reading of reports, diaries, and early newspapers, my impression is that for every Indian who died in the settling of the West at least ten white people died. Not necessarily in fighting, though by one means or another.

  But I object to the picture of the Indian as portrayed by some of those who profess to love him. No finer figure of a man ever lived than an Indian mounted and ready for battle. Among the Indians, also, were some of the finest orators, men whose speeches stand comparison with the best of Demosthenes or Winston Churchill, orators with a gift for picturesque language. The Indian was a Stone Age man, yet in his speeches and stories he often revealed a sensitivity, and sense of beauty and judgment far beyond what has usually been accorded such people. If the American Indian was an example of what Stone Age man could be, I believe that all our ideas on such peoples are subject to drastic revision.

  NATIVITY PETTIGREW: A man who wanted it all; a deceptive, conniving man who seemed bland and simple, an appearance that served to conceal what he really was, a man ready for murder if it served his purposes. His first name is not unusual for that time. Many names were taken from the Bible, not only because most people were closer to religion than now but because the Bible was often the only source of names available. Birth control was rarely a factor in the thinking of early Americans, and large families were the norm. Moreover, on a farm or ranch, children, particularly boys, could be an economic asset. If family names were used, the parents soon ran out of Johns, Henrys, and so on, and sought recourse in the Bible, if they had not begun that way.

  The gold on Treasure Mountain is probably still there, but as I've said, it's a big mountain and whoever finds it will probably do so by accident. You can be sure it was buried deep and well because it was an engineer who did it, and he and his men expected to return for it with a larger force. Anybody who buries gold does not expect to leave it in the ground for long, but the French army officer who is said to have supervised the burying also expected to have a good-sized force with him, and he didn't plan on doing any of the digging.

  There is gold in the San Juans, and silver also, but the real treasure is in the air, the trees, the wildflowers, and the big, wide, open wonderful country. If you don't have it, all the money in the world won't buy it. And it is there for anybody who
will use it kindly.

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  LONELY ON THE MOUNTAIN

  First publication: Bantam Books paperback,

  November 1980 Narrator: William Tell Sackett Time Period: c. 1875-1879

  When Logan sent word that he was in trouble in the far north and needed a herd of cattle to get him out of it, the other Sacketts never gave it a second thought. They would find the cattle, and drive them north even if there were Higginses involved.

  The Sackett-Higgins feud now seemed to have played itself out, but for years the name Higgins had meant trouble for a Sackett. Hence, when the Sacketts needed a code word for trouble they used the Higgins name.

  The Dakota country in those days was Sioux country, as the name itself implies. The Sioux were a proud, often arrogant people who, starting from the Wisconsin-Minnesota border country had, after acquiring horses, become a conquering people. Sweeping westward they conquered much of Minnesota, all of the Dakotas, and well into Wyoming and Montana as well as southward into Nebraska, before conflict with the white man brought their conquests to a halt.

  The Sacketts had to make their drive through the heart of Sioux country, and the valley referred to where the James River and the Pipestem meet is the valley where I was born. It was a green and lovely place then and as good a place to hold cattle as any I know, with plenty of grass, water, and shade.