Piccadilly Doubles 2

by Lou Cameron

  Issuing classic fiction from Yesterday and Today!

  They called him the Mormon Triggerite, and bestowed upon him the honored title of sheriff. He saw himself as a servant of the Lord, called to mete out justice to all those who opposed Him.

  He was Orrin Porter Rockwell—and he committed a hundred murders in the name of God. Although today there stands a stone monument in his honor, as hard and sturdy as the man himself, there are some who’d like to forget he ever lived.

  Also in this volume, THE BANDIT OF HELL’S BEND by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  PICCADILLY DOUBLES 2:

  ROCKWELL by Peter McCurtin

  THE BANDIT OF HELL’S BEND by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  ROCKWELL

  First published by Leisure Books in 1982

  Copyright © 1982 by Peter McCurtin

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate

  THE BANDIT OF HELL’S BEND

  First Appeared in Argosy All Action Weekly, September and October 1924

  PUBLIC DOMAIN

  Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: January 2015.

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Rockwell

  Peter McCurtin

  THE BALLAD

  OF

  PORTER ROCKWELL

  “Have you heard of Porter Rockwell?

  He’s the Mormon triggerite.

  They say he hunts for horse thieves

  When the moon is shining bright.

  So if you rustle cattle,

  I’ll tell you what to do.

  Get the drop on Porter Rockwell,

  Or he’ll get the drop on you.

  “They say that Porter Rockwell

  Is a scout for Brigham Young—

  He’s hunting up the suspects

  That haven’t yet been hung.

  So if you steal a Mormon girl

  I’ll tell you what to do.

  Get the drop on Porter Rockwell,

  Or he’ll get the drop on you.”

  “When it is necessary that blood should be shed, we should be as ready to do it as to eat an apple.”

  —Porter Rockwell

  Chapter One

  I wasn’t in the country when they buried Orrin Porter Rockwell, in 1878, but I would have gone to his funeral if I’d been anywhere close to Salt Lake City at the time. A lot of people claimed to have known him well; I think I knew him better than most. I knew him in his prime, in the wild days of the early Sixties when he stalked Utah like the giant he was. No Paul Bunyan, he always seemed bigger than he was; the impression he gave was one of enormous strength, implacable determination, and almost mindless animal courage. Like all such powerful personalities he was feared, loved, and hated. His tall stone monument still stands, a memorial to the bloody Mormon past, and over the years parts of it were chipped away by souvenir hunters before it was protected by a high iron fence. Yet for several decades after his death there were those among the Saints who wished it would disappear altogether, for Porter Rockwell (no one ever used his first name) was an embarrassment to their newfound respectability, their final acceptance as Americans rather than rebels. Stopping short of a denial that he ever existed, they claimed his bloody reputation was the creation of newspapermen like myself, and while it is true that some of his murderous exploits were concocted by drunken reporters in the back rooms of saloons, he was even more than people said he was, and he was what so many “heroes” of the Wild West were not. He was the genuine article, the real McCoy. He was many times a murderer; there can be little doubt that at least one hundred men died in front of his cut-down .45 Colt revolver. However, if we are to understand Porter Rockwell, we must see the times in which he lived as he saw them himself.

  Those were brutal times for the Mormons; times when nearly every man’s hand was turned against them. Hounded from pillar to post, first in Missouri, later in Illinois, they had their settlements burned, their men folk killed, their women abused. So, under the leadership of Brigham Young, they journeyed off the maps into the Great Salt Basin of Utah, a desolate place where few men had been, a place that no man wanted.

  “Let them go and good riddance,” was more or less the popular outcry, though it was phrased in many ways, some not so polite. There in the wilderness they created a civilization that was peculiarly their own. All that is history now and need not be repeated except as a means of stressing how much they wanted to be left alone. Porter Rockwell did his best to see that they were.

  I might never have met him if I hadn’t stepped in front of a minie ball at the first battle of Bull Run, a circumstance that ended my brief career as a war correspondent for the New York Sun. Now, I know war correspondents aren’t supposed to get shot, and most of them don’t because they stay well behind the lines and write their dispatches in well-appointed tents with wooden floors, sipping their brandy and water as they reconstruct the scenes of carnage in their mind’s eye. Unencumbered by truth, they write the stories the public wants to read, but since I was only twenty-three at the time I was not so sensible.

  Back in New York, recuperating from the injury to my left lung, I fretted in my lodgings in East 17th Street, counting the days until I could once again rejoin our gallant boys in blue. But my cough got worse instead of better, so my uncle, Silas Forbes, who had been with Mr. Greeley since the beginning, summoned me to his office and said there was to be no more nonsense about returning to the war.

  My uncle was a fussy man, but beneath his air of self-importance was a kind heart. “Your lung won’t heal properly unless you go out West,” he said. “That’s why you’re going upstairs to talk to Mr. Greeley.”

  “What are we going to talk about?” I inquired.

  “Horace Greeley will talk and you’ll listen,” my uncle answered, springing open the lid of his big old silver turnip watch. “You are expected in his office in exactly five minutes.”

  Mr. Greeley’s office was on the top floor of the Sun building on Park Row, then and for years to come the most famous newspaper street in America. There in the outer office sat a male secretary (the Women’s Movement was still in its infancy) with a black frock coat and a disapproving face. This man ushered me in after satisfying himself that I was not an assassin or some lunatic with plans for a new flying machine.

  The great publisher’s office was darkly paneled, the furniture as formidable as the man himself. Throat whiskers and all, he hunched over his desk writing furiously with a long steel pen that got as much ink on him as it did on the paper. He didn’t look up at me until the scratching nib reached the bottom of the page. In the two years I had worked for the Sun there hadn’t been as much as the briefest conversation between us. Now and then he would nod to me; that was all.

  His voice was high-pitched and I was surprised, for being young I expected all forceful men to possess resonant voices.

  I was told to sit down.

  “How is your chest?” he asked, fixing on me his strange colorless eyes.

  “Not so good, sir,” I answered, knowing better than to lie to him. How could I doubt that he had been given a full report by my uncle?

  “We’ll have to see about getting you well,” he stated, as if I had nothing to say in the matter. “What do you know about a man named Orrin Por
ter Rockwell?”

  “Almost nothing, sir. I know he’s a Mormon and has a very bad reputation.”

  “Then you can’t have read the article about him in Harpers? You must read more, Forbes. Always know what the competition is publishing, what the public is reading. What else do you know about Rockwell and the Saints, as they call themselves?”

  “I know they believe in plural marriage, sir.”

  It would have been better to say nothing; Mr. Greeley was not amused. “I take it you share the popular prejudice against these people?”

  “Not really, sir. What I know of their religion seems outlandish.”

  “Yes. Yes,” Mr. Greeley said impatiently. “But have you considered that from the rationalist’s point of view all religions are outlandish? Simply because the first Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith, lived in the Age of Steam instead of at the dawn of history is not enough to disqualify him. Certainly not to his followers. Antiquity gives religion validity especially if little is known about it. If Smith’s followers believe that an angel came down from heaven and handed him some golden plates, no one will ever be able to make them think otherwise. Do you follow me?”

  “Yes, sir,” was all I said.

  Mr. Greeley leaned forward, wielding his long pen like a schoolmaster’s pointer. I remained silent.

  “Mormonism is a force,” he continued. “It won’t go away much as some people would like it to. Like it or not, the Mormons must accept the reality that Utah is American territory. That territory is rich in gold and other minerals. What Washington wants is its fair share of the wealth.” Mr. Greeley smiled bleakly. “Perhaps more than a fair share. The Mormons are disinclined to give it. They may be prepared to fight to keep what they regard as rightfully theirs.”

  “Secession, sir?”

  Mr. Greeley smiled again. “They think they have seceded.”

  I dared a question. “You mentioned Porter Rockwell, sir?”

  Mr. Greeley said, “Porter Rockwell is the strong right arm of militant Mormonism. He has killed in the past and will kill again. Our country is threatened in the South, and now we have the Mormons in the West. If Utah goes there is a good chance that California will go too. But California is well garrisoned with federal troops and Utah is not. That is where the danger lies. If Utah is permitted to secede, the Rebel sympathizers in California will take that as a sign of our government’s weakness.”

  I dared another question, one that I knew he wouldn’t like. “Is there any chance that this threat of secession has been exaggerated?”

  “I don’t deal in exaggerations, Forbes.”

  This itself was a bit of exaggeration, for Mr. Greeley had been known to manufacture news when it suited his purposes. However, he seemed to be perfectly serious about what he was saying.

  “The Mormons can put five thousand men in the field at any time,” he said. “They can double that number if they have to. And these men—these irregulars—aren’t farm boys plucked from behind the plow, clerks and mechanics conscripted in the cities. They are hard men because they have had to be. They know their mountains and deserts as other men do not. That, above all, is their advantage. Hard men, yes. And Porter Rockwell is the hardest, most ruthless of all. If war comes in Utah, Rockwell will be one of their ablest leaders.”

  “But surely they can’t win, sir?”

  “If the war goes against us in the South, and it would seem to be doing just that at the moment, who is to say what will happen? The Mormons and Rockwell will be news. That is why I want you to go to Utah, to the Great Salt Lake City, and see what is happening there. It will be good for your chest—the climate is said to be salubrious—and it will be good for the Sun. If it suits you there, you may stay as long as you like. Become our permanent correspondent in the Far West. If you can handle this well, it will be the making of your career. Perhaps you are wondering why I have chosen you for the job?”

  I had been thinking just that. As a newspaperman I was all but unknown, so it couldn’t be fame or a loyal readership that had recommended me.

  “Yes, sir, I was wondering a little. Why did you choose me?”

  “Because you got shot, Forbes. Because you weren’t afraid to risk getting shot. You may get shot again in Utah. The Mormons don’t like reporters of any stripe. The ones from the East they like least of all. It will take some effort to gain Rockwell’s confidence, if indeed you can do it at all. But you haven’t said you want to go.”

  Now it was my turn to smile at the cold-eyed old man. Actually, he was only fifty at the time, but he looked old to me. Everyone looks old to you at twenty-three.

  “What would you say if I said no, Mr. Greeley?”

  He smiled back at me. “I would say, ‘Go back to covering the police courts. The pickpockets, the prostitutes, the opium fiends.’ That’s what I would say, Forbes.”

  “Then the answer is yes,” I said.

  “Good,” Mr. Greeley said. “Your uncle will give you what files we have on Rockwell and the Mormons. There are a few books, but they are filled with rubbish. Write your own book when the time comes. Now I’ll say goodbye to you. I want news. Don’t let me down.”

  Mr. Greeley didn’t offer to shake hands and I didn’t make any move in that direction. I didn’t think I had done too badly, yet I was glad to be gone from his slightly sinister presence. He might have been a great publisher; he was not a likable man.

  I found my Uncle Silas waiting for me in his office; the file on the Mormons was on his desk. There were three “factual” books on The Bloody Crimes of the Mormons, as one book was called. I took them in spite of Mr. Greeley’s advice and found a quiet corner where I read for more than an hour, making notes as I went along.

  The books were rubbish, so Mr. Greeley had been right after all. It seemed there was no hideous crime the Saints hadn’t committed since they started out for Missouri more than two decades before. If the books were to be believed, and of course they were not, the Mormons practiced ritual murder, cannibalism, and highway robbery. Other crimes referred to only as “unspeakable” must have been incest and sodomy. Porter Rockwell was mentioned quite often, sometimes as a “human devil,” more frequently as “a cold-blooded murderer.” I pushed the books aside.

  There was more information on Rockwell in the newspaper clippings; also a number of crude drawings of the man. The best account—at least the best written—was in Harper’s Magazine, although it did seem rather fanciful in places, as if the writer had decided to pad his facts. The best drawing was also in Harper’s, and it showed a burly man with a beard and shoulder-length hair worn in the fashion of the buffalo hunters. The picture had him holding a heavy Colt revolver across his chest in a sort of heroic pose. The barrel had been cut down and the loading lever removed, a quite accurate rendering as I was later to discover. In its way the drawing of the man was accurate, too, but the artist made him more fierce-looking than he was in real life. It was the portrait of an ogre rather than of a human being with emotions, opinions, and people he loved. The article said he was a habitual drunkard, a swinish sot. That he was a drunkard could not be denied, and I have no wish to deny it, but from my dealings with him I can’t say I ever found him swinish. Brutal, perhaps, but hardly swinish. As I read on, I wondered if somehow the article had found its way to Rockwell and if he had read it.

  As I gathered them, the bare facts seemed to be that he had been born in Belcher, Massachusetts, in 1813. One of the earliest followers of the mad prophet Joseph Smith, Rockwell accompanied him to Missouri and later to the second Mormon settlement in Illinois. In both states the Saints fought small civil wars with their Gentile (non Mormon) neighbors. In Missouri, Rockwell murdered the governor of the state in an ambush in the rainy darkness. (At least that was the charge in Harpers, and Rockwell freely admitted it to me when I came to know him. The murdered man had been a rabid Mormon-hater and deserved to die, Rockwell said.)

  After Joseph Smith was killed by a mob in 1844, the Mormons made the great trip, the inc
redible trip, west into the deserts and mountains. Now chief bodyguard to Brigham Young, the new prophet, Rockwell served as scout, hunter, and irregular cavalryman. The article said he was the best rider, the best marksman in Utah. In 1858 the Nauvoo Legion, a force of five thousand well-armed, well-trained horsemen led by Rockwell, had successfully resisted an “invasion” by American troops under the command of Colonel Albert Sidney Johnson. During the three years since then Rockwell had been county sheriff and many other things.

  Yet for all I read about him the man remained a mystery to me. What made him do the things he did? Was it a sincere belief in the tenets of the Mormon religion, or was he really a madman with no regard for human life? Then, reading on, I came across something that Rockwell was supposed to have said:

  “Woe to the United States. I see them going to death and destruction. God Almighty will give the United States a pill that will puke them to death.”

  If true, it was a most astonishing statement; enough to get him lynched in the political climate prevailing in the Northern states. There was something almost Biblical in the furious denunciation: the raging of an angry prophet. Was he destined to become the John Brown of the Mormons, leading them to destruction as Brown led his band of fanatics? Of course, I realized that it could be a quotation of the writer’s own invention. But somehow I didn’t think so. The idea that a remote sect could cause the United States “to puke up their guts” caused me to smile briefly. At the same time I felt some apprehension. After all, Mr. Greeley expected me to write about this man, not from the safety of New York, but in his own backyard, so to speak. I knew he could murder me in Utah and not much, if anything, would be done about it. I had some experience with guns, but I was far from being a shootist. In Utah, facing Rockwell, it wouldn’t make much difference what I was.