Nathan Gould- Gunfighter from Green Mountain
Page 24
Prichard was not above bounty hunting. In Kearney, Nebraska, in 1878 he located Bob Caswell, wanted for bank robbery. Before Prichard could arrest him, Caswell joined Pritchard in a shootout with marauding Indians, in which Caswell was killed. Prichard delivered the robber’s corpse and the bank’s money to the authorities and collected the posted reward. Prichard’s notes comment: “There was no reason to make a gift of $500 to a bank when they had gotten what they wanted.” The Kearney Sheriff commented that Caswell’s now widow lived in a small house on the edge of town and had been mistreated by Caswell since they’d been married. Prichard visited the widow Caswell and paid her one-half of Prichard's reward. The journal is short on details. but says simply that within seven months they were married, but his absences were too many and they separated and divorced in 1883, after the birth of two children. They continued to communicate and remained on good terms, even exchanging letters after she married Stanislaus Sobeleski. The journal notes that Prichard contributed money for the support of the children, including tuition in college for one. Their correspondence became more frequent after Sobeleski’s death in 1903.
The journal ends with a letter a month before the earthquake from Rebecca Pritchard, asking whether he would want to travel to Omaha to visit her and the children. The journal contains no note after that.
A few weeks later I received a note from Rebecca Prichard that she was in failing health and wondered if I had sold Tom’s story. I wrote back that I hadn’t gotten around to it. A few weeks later I received a note from the care facility that Rebecca Prichard had died, and been buried with Prichard in the county Potter’s Field.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
My experience with the late Paladin brought home to me how the West had moved out of the gunfighter era into a degree of civilization. In my late 60s I had become an anachronism, a holdover from a long bygone era. Wagons and horses were giving way in Trinidad to horseless carriages, even horseless trucks. A modern school had been built. The Anti-Saloon League and opponents of legal gambling were taking the fun out of the public houses, even though I was almost a teetotaler and rarely wagered and therefore had no feelings about them. Central heating, electricity, gaslights, paved streets and even sidewalks were the hallmarks of advancing progress. Trinidad and indeed most other communities of any size had established professionally trained police departments, which both contributed to and was caused by, the passage of the vagabond gunfighter as the basis for law enforcement. Many communities required surrender of firearms by persons entering the city, although even this was becoming obsolete since farmers, professional people, business men and merchants not only did not display guns but in many cases did not own them.
I ended my advertisement in the Rocky Mountain News, which prompted a call from someone with the newspaper asking if I was dissatisfied with their service.
“No,” I said. “But I’ve decided to get out of the business.”
“Oh,” said the pleasant voice out of the ether, “and what is your business?”
I laughed. “You don’t see it?”
“No, I simply am told that you’ve dropped the ad and should speak to you.”
“Well, if you read the ad you’ll see why I’m out of business.”
Since my visit to Vermont I had even less interest in returning to the East. In any event, since I had received no offer from Judith to endure me as a permanent guest I inferred that they were not interested.
The approach of my seventieth birthday coincided with a worsening of my vision and feeble physical condition, although my overall health seemed good. My right eye vision was blurry, I felt unsteady, but not weak, when I walked. And chronic, low intensity, headaches on the right side of my head had set in.
The News carried informative notes and advertising by what were called “Senior Living Centers,” where aged, folks could spend their “declining years,” among like people in benign circumstances. One such place was the Carey Home, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I arranged for a place for me, which would open in about a year. In the mean time I received a letter from Doctor Rogers, in Chicago, that he felt that a procedure had been developed which might work for my condition. I thought about the choices, and asked the Doctor for details and about the cost. I was shocked to learn that the procedure would absorb almost all of my savings, and would involve potential for adverse consequences. I was also intimidated with the description of the surgery and its aesthetic aspects. Since the time seemed past when correction of the problem would do me any good in earning income I chose to forego the procedure. Doctor Rogers was sympathetic and stated that he would keep me in mind if further improvements in the field provided any better hope for remediation.
Over the next two years I terminated my relationship with Trinidad, sold my house and moved into the Carey Home. I will confess, however, with some chagrin, that the cost of living there was a severe drain on my finances. In addition, because of my debilitation I fell and hurt my leg and required costly medical treatment. By the end of the Great War I was forced to give up my situation at the Carey Home and, with a rapidly diminishing drain on my savings, searched for an alternative. I found it with my present place, in Reno, Nevada, a publicly supported home for the warehousing of people while they wait for death.
Just about the final word I learned of the passing of the Old West was a comment in the Rocky Mountain News that William Kane had died in Liberal, Kansas, a victim of the worldwide flu epidemic, in October, 1918, at seventy-one years of age. When I mentioned this to a gathering of loungers on the porch of the Carey Home I was greeted with a chorus of questions of who he was.
“He was marshal of a town in New Mexico,” I said. “He cleaned it up, of the Miller gang, then a few years later had to fight off the gang again. He planned to leave the business, but was called back to face them down, and nobody would help except his Quaker wife. It was all over the news back then.”
The others shrugged and resumed gossiping and whining about the War.
Yes, I was resigned to the end of an era. And perhaps for the better.
I’m almost blind in my right eye and feeble to the extent that walking is a strain and fraught with potential for injury. And so, in my seventy-ninth year, I’m reduced to penning these reminiscences and swapping stories with other denizens of this place. Few of their yarns are as interesting as mine, however, and I’m called upon once in a while by the local library and historical society to speak to citizens, adolescents and even students at the University, for which I receive a few dollars, that they call a stipend.
One of the University students, who aspires to become a writer, has offered to help me to edit these stories. I may accept her help.
Appended to the last page of the journal was the following:
APPENDIX
My name is Abigail Krewson, of Reno, Nevada. I was beginning to work with Mr. Gould on his manuscript when one day on arriving at the Perkins Home I was told that he had died the night before. I had, in my short time with him, gotten to like the old man and was sad.
I asked if the people at the Home had found the manuscript upon which he had worked for about four years. The manager said that it was among his property that would be held for any relative who asks for them. I asked to leave this note for them, with the book.
I would be glad to work with anyone who might want to edit Mr. Gould’s writings in order to make them publishable. I may be reached at the University of Nevada in Reno.
Abigail Krewson
February 3, 1924
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