by Lou Cameron
The rifles crashed and suddenly the idiot’s chest was covered with blood. But somehow the heavy bullets hadn’t killed him and he hung forward on the straps with blood coming from his mouth.
“You want to give him three more, Port?” the chief executioner asked. “He’ll be gone in a minute.”
Rockwell’s face turned dark with fury. “He’s not gone yet, you stupid son of a bitch. Get the hell away from here and don’t expect to get paid for this. Scat!”
Without looking at them, Rockwell walked over the dying boy, took the Colt from his pocket and shot him through the head. Looking dismayed, the doctor ran forward to inspect the damage Rockwell’s bullet had done.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Port,” he complained. “You ruined the brain. I wanted to see what size his brain was.”
Rockwell had to take the cylinder out of the Colt in order to eject the spent cartridge; the loading lever was missing. Calmly he replaced the heavy pistol in his pocket.
“You want to see what an idiot’s brain looks like, Doc? Then saw open your own head.”
He smiled at me, but I was unable to smile back.
Chapter Four
That night I wrote in my journal:
This will not be published in Porter Rockwell’s lifetime, if ever, but I feel that I must put my thoughts down concerning this strange man. Otherwise, I may lose the feeling—the flavor—of what it’s like to be here in this remote city, late at night in a hotel owned by Mormons. The hotel is quiet and it may be that I am the only one still awake, for it’s early to bed here, early to rise, a far cry from my usual domestic habits.
This morning, at eight o’clock, I witnessed the murder of an imbecile boy, his death decreed by a man who may yet kill me. Anything is possible with Orrin Porter Rockwell, the man I have come here to “dissect.” I find it odd that I choose that word, for the body of the murdered boy was sold, in advance, by him, for one pound of hard candy, the cheapest kind of confection.
Even when they carried out the body, its shattered head wrapped in a torn blanket, I could smell that candy. I may have imagined this, but I don’t think so.
The bloody execution over, Rockwell—who administered the coup de grace—behaved as if nothing much had happened. If he thought my silence peculiar, I hope he dismissed it as squeamishness and not disapproval. I have no wish to incur his enmity, for I am convinced now that he is the most dangerous man alive. The killing of the imbecile seems to bear out all the terrible things I have heard about Porter Rockwell, and yet there was a sort of hideous pity in the way he dispatched the mutilated boy, whose execution had been bungled by the three riflemen. There was not a trace of guilt in his actions, no attempt at justification.
This is how he feels about all his murders, I’m sure. He kills for the Glory of God.
Before we left the jail I asked him for a drink of the cheap rye whiskey he favors: Mountain Fog. I must write the name down here; I’m sure I’ll never hear it again once I leave Utah. That is, if I ever leave.
Perhaps I should leave now. If he shows me too many things, he may change his mind about letting the outside world hear about them. It would be wise to leave, to go anywhere east or west, yet I feel I must stay. There is something going on here that will never happen again in America.
Oddly, we spent the entire day together, strolling around the city in which he takes great pride. He pointed out the places of interest: especially the “foreign”-looking multi-spired temple begun eight years ago, its completion date set sometime in the 1890s, at least thirty years in the future. Atop the temple is a golden statue representing the Angel Moroni of the Book of Mormon—one of their scriptural works. Only members of good standing are allowed into this temple, so I was forced to view it from the outside. Later, he took me to the Assembly Hall, which, he informed me, was built of the leftover stone from the temple. I was weary of seeing the sights by the time we finished our tour in front of the mammoth memorial to the seagull, most beloved of all birds in Utah.
Rockwell appears to like me, but after all our association is of such short life that it guarantees me nothing. I’m sure the real test will come when he hears my first dispatch to be sent on its long journey to my newspaper. Will he believe what I read to him, since he cannot read himself, or will he request another reader such as his wife, a pleasant woman in appearance but openly suspicious of me when I visited the Rockwell ranch today?
We drove to Skull Valley in a spring wagon that Rockwell procured at a livery stable. I insisted that I was well enough to ride a horse; Rockwell insisted that I was not. I asked him if he had ever been wounded during the forty-nine years of his life and he said no, which is remarkable if you consider the violence of that life. Then, seeing my puzzled look, he told me that the first Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith, long ago assured him that he would not be killed, or even wounded, so long as he wore his hair long, like Samson. An unlikely idea, to be sure, yet he didn’t seem to doubt it for a moment.
Perhaps I should have let my hair grow out before I went to the war.
Rockwell’s ranch is a fine place, a hive of industry; domestic, well tended, with many flowers the names of which I do not know. There is a large herd of spirited horses of many breeds. As I say, it is a fine place but a far cry from the splendor in which Prophet Young lives. Young was a New England carpenter before he became a seer; I suspect that he is crafty rather than intelligent.
Rockwell introduced me to his wife and to his daughter Mary; we must have been expected because the table was set and the generous country meal all but ready. Mrs. Rockwell was polite enough; the daughter, seeing few strangers, I suppose, was inclined to be friendly.
There was no coffee, not even for a Gentile visitor. But there was sweet milk, buttermilk, apple cider without the alcohol, some sort of fruit drink I could not identify—and good cold spring water.
If the Rockwells have servants or hired hands, I didn’t see them. The meal itself was enough to feed eight people instead of four; ten people would not have gone away hungry. Rockwell could not have been more husbandly or fatherly, and it was hard to believe that he had killed an imbecile not many hours before. These people were white, like me, but I suddenly realized that I would have to regard them in a different way than previously. If you journey to Lapland you must not expect the Lapps to behave—to think—like Americans. In remote parts of the world the old are killed or left to die; it is a fact of life and nothing more.
It was at that moment that I found myself thinking of Porter in different fashion. He is an important sub-chief of his tribe; he is, in fact, the tribe’s chief executioner; and when he is not engaged in his grim duties he is like any other man. I may be mistaken about this — am I just trying to be rational?—and it remains to be seen how our “friendship” will develop.
I was surprised and somewhat dismayed when Mrs. Rockwell raised the matter of the murdered boy. “Did you shoot him, Port?” she asked matter-of-factly. Rockwell said yes while helping himself to more creamed corn. “Poor boy,” Mrs. Rockwell said, and no more was said about it. Ignoring her mother’s frown, Mary Rockwell asked me what it was like in New York. I said it was just a big city where people did the things they did everywhere else. “I’ve never been anywhere,” she said wistfully. Taking exception to this remark, Rockwell said in fond reproach, “You’re in the best place there is, my girl.” I’m not sure the girl agreed with him completely.
Later, Rockwell showed me his collection of guns, mostly revolvers, all kept in a tall glass case. He urged me to look at the engraved names of the gift-givers. Rockwell said, “That five-shot English Webley was sent to me by Sir Richard Burton, the famous traveler.” Other, lesser names were there; I knew some of them. “Sir Richard traveled all the way to Utah to see how we lived,” Rockwell told me. “We got along famously as why should we not? I took him to all the settlements, showed him how we do things. I even took him to see the Indians we have converted to our faith. We parted the best of friends and four
months later the Webley arrived.”
I knew I was seeing a new side of Rockwell, the vain side. Somehow I had missed it when he spoke of his friendship with Brigham Young. Yes, he is a vain man and such men can be touchy, so I must do nothing to disturb his self-esteem. Is he treating me so well because he thinks I am someone of importance? Someone who is on intimate terms with the great Horace Greeley? Someone who can make him famous rather than notorious? I think there is some truth in this, so I must be careful.
By late afternoon I reminded him that I should be getting back to the city. I said there were pressing letters to be written to Mr. Greeley and to my Uncle Silas announcing my safe arrival in the West. Rockwell urged me to spend the night, saying his house contained all the paper and pens I needed, but I lied and said there was medicine I had to take every day, and it was in my bags.
He offered to drive me back to Salt Lake, but I insisted that I could handle the spring wagon quite well by myself. “Well, that horse is a gentle animal,” Rockwell said, and that’s how it was left. I did not urge another meeting upon him; he is not a man to be crowded, as they say in the West.
Earlier tonight I had a visit from a stranger who disturbed me greatly. I had just returned from my bath, fatigued but clean, when I found him sitting in my room with a woebegone expression on his face. He reeked of whiskey and I assumed that he had stumbled into the wrong room, but this idea was dispelled when he jerked nervously and asked, “Are you Mr. Forbes?”
I hoped he wasn’t dangerous or about to beg for money; he did neither.
“Are you Mr. Forbes of the New York Sun?”
“I am William Forbes,” I replied. “What is your business here, may I ask?”
Before he answered he got up and opened the door I had just closed and looked up and down the hallway. Then he closed it again and came back to his chair. I wondered if I should shout for help.
“My name is Robert Davenport and I work for the Deseret News,” he informed me, still twitching. His black suit was stained and worn in places. His face, thin and unhealthy, was that of a man in some kind of private torment, but I knew alcohol often has that effect on men of neurasthenic mentality.
“That is the Mormon newspaper,” he went on. “The official newspaper of the church. Do you know it?”
“I know what it is,” I said patiently. “Now tell me what is it you want. As you can see, I am preparing for bed.”
“It must be good to sleep without bad dreams, Mr. Forbes.”
“Yes, it is.”
“You don’t know what it is to have dreams like that or no sleep at all.”
I decided he was harmless and my yawn was heartfelt. If he had come to interview me for his newspaper, he had chosen an odd hour to do it; he had come in an odd condition. But I sensed it was more than that.
“Did your newspaper send you?” I inquired, still patient.
He began to laugh in an extremely bitter way, then he checked it for fear of being heard. But the bitterness in his smile remained. “No, my so-called newspaper didn’t send me, Mr. Forbes. I came to tell you something.”
“About what?”
“About your new friend Porter Rockwell. The two of you are the talk of the city. You were with him—got drunk with him—last night in McSorley’s. This morning he invited you for breakfast, then you went with him to the jail to witness one more of his murders. How did it feel to be a witness to that?”
I sighed, humoring him. “It wasn’t very pleasant, if that’s what you want me to say. You Mormons have your laws and I’m not a Mormon. I must say you’re talking strangely for a Saint.”
Davenport ‘s indecisive eyes grew hard. “Spare me your sarcasm, Mr. Forbes. You’ve come here to write about Porter Rockwell, but will you write the truth or just what Rockwell feeds you? That’s what he’s been doing, you know.”
“Indeed?”
“Of course it is. I’m surprised he talked to you at all, but after all you are from the New York Sun. Did he show you his gun collection and tell you about all the famous men he knows? Did he tell you of the wonders of Zion and how a Garden of Eden was made to bloom in the wilderness? He must have since he took you on the grand tour of the city. Did he tell you of the infallibility of the Prophet?”
“This is tiresome,” I said.
“Porter Rockwell is a liar, a thief, and a murderer,” Davenport said, his voice rising almost in hysteria. “You’re being taken in as I was three years ago. I came here from a Boston newspaper to write the truth about the Saints. There is no Danite Band, no secret society of killers led by Porter Rockwell, I was told. Lies! Lies! But I didn’t know that then. I believed—came to believe—that all they wanted to do was to live in peace. They painted such a rosy, pastoral picture for me. Honest farmers tolling in the fields, shepherds tending their flocks on the hillsides. They showed me their heavenly city. Zion, the promised land. I came a skeptic and remained a fool.”
“You became a Mormon,” I said. “Was there a girl?”
“Yes, there was a girl, a Mormon girl. I might have become a Mormon even if I hadn’t met her. They gave me a job on their damned lying newspaper. It paid much less than my job in Boston. I didn’t care. My wife and I were happy. Then one evening she left the house to visit her sister and was never seen again. I searched for weeks, months. There was no trace of her. Finally I became convinced that she had been kidnapped and taken to some Mormon settlement in the mountains, or even the settlements in California. I was sure of it.”
“Surely not,” I said gently. “There are so many Mormon women in this city.”
Ignoring my sensible comment, he went on with his lurid tale. Sweat glistened on his face although the night was cool. If there were Mormons listening at the door, I hope they found all my statements impartial.
“I began to drink,” Davenport said. “And in the Gentile saloons I began to hear things. They didn’t know who I was. How would they know? I’m the sort of man no one notices. I began to go out late at night to saloons far from the newspaper offices. I bought drinks for men with stories to tell.”
“That’s not the best way to get at the truth.” I reminded him.
“I know some of the stories were true,” Davenport insisted. ‘When you sift many lies you always find some truth. When you put the little truths together you get something like a complete truth. My truth is that the Mormon church is a sham, a fake, a heartless despotism. Its leaders are money-hungry hypocrites who are kept in power by Rockwell and Hickman.”
“Who is Hickman?”
“William A. Hickman. A sheriff like Rockwell, the other leader of the Danite Band. The Avenging Angels. They’re killers, both of them, but while Rockwell hides behind a facade of good nature, Hickman shows himself as he really is. But Rockwell is worse. I know he is. He has robbed and murdered travelers, killed anyone who dared to openly attack his master, Young. You were at his ranch today. Those fine horses of his, most of them were stolen from Gentile ranches in the territory or from emigrants passing through.”
“Why do you stay here?” I asked. I thought I knew the answer: he was a man obsessed.
Again, he gave that bitter, self-hating laugh. “Because I hope to find a way to destroy them. There must be some way to tear them down, to wipe them off the face of the earth. For nearly three years I have thought of nothing else. I dream of seeing Brigham Young’s great mansion burning against the night sky. I hope to see this cursed city gutted and empty, given back to the desert. I want to see the weeds growing in their fields.”
“That is very dangerous talk,” I said.
“I don’t care,” Davenport said. “If I thought they’d believe me I’d go back East and tell everything I know. But how could they believe a double turncoat? They’d say I’m just a drunken liar, a man who doesn’t know which side he’s on.”
I didn’t say that would be the reaction of most of the editors I knew, especially my uncle. Davenport is finished, as a man and as a reporter. If he found his way back to
Boston, his old friends might buy him a few drinks and lend him a few dollars; that would be all. He was right: who would believe him?
“You can help me, Mr. Forbes,” this poor ruin of a man pleaded. “You are with the Sun, the most powerful newspaper in the country. I can tell you all there is to know about Rockwell, not the rubbish in the dime novels but facts. Facts! Facts related to me by men who know the truth.”
“Stories told in saloons,” I said.
“No, facts. They’re not stories. If you write them they’ll be facts. Your articles in the Sun will rouse the government to action. How can they not take action?”
“I can’t help you,” I told him. “I came here not to get the news twice-removed. I must find the truth for myself, and that’s what I am doing.”
“By eating breakfast with a bloody-handed murderer?”
“Those are your words. I will eat breakfast and all the other meals with Porter Rockwell if it will show me the truth. My advice to you—take it or not—is to clear out of here and keep your wild talk to yourself. If these men are as dangerous as they are, what is to prevent them from finding you anywhere? Clear out of here and try to forget the past.”
“Sweet reason,” Davenport sneered. “I should have known you wouldn’t have the courage to help me. What will you do now? Run to your friend Rockwell and tell him everything I’ve said? No, I don’t suppose you’ll do that. You keep talking about truth. Well, sir”—he took a bulky envelope from his inside pocket and waved it aloft—“this is the truth about Porter Rockwell. The man who made this statement—written down by me and witnessed—has been dead for more than a year. It’s in the nature of a dying declaration, the man had no reason to meet his Maker with a lie on his soul. Read it, Forbes. Perhaps it will open your eyes.”
Davenport tossed the envelope on my bed and went out quickly before I could give it back to him. I picked up the envelope, stained and worn, and went to the door. I heard his footsteps on the stairs, and then a door banged. I locked my own door and sat down to think. All thoughts of sleep were gone. I knew Davenport’s visit would be reported to Rockwell as a matter of course; indeed, it was altogether likely that all my actions were being carefully noted. Rockwell might bring up the matter of Davenport’s visit, or he might wait for me to do it. I would have to tell him; how could I get out of it? I cursed the miserable Davenport for having forced his problems upon me, for the drunkard had placed me in a position where, by attempting to protect him, I might be risking my own life. I wanted to follow him, to fling his envelope at his feet, but I knew that would be all but impossible. I didn’t know where the fellow lived, and I certainly didn’t want to confront him at the offices of the Deseret News, So I was between a rock and a hard place, as the country people say. If I repeated all of Davenport ‘s accusations to Rockwell, it would mean his death; nothing less than that. As is the habit of all drunkards, he thought only of himself; never for a moment had he considered what his ravings would mean to me. There was a slight chance that Davenport would return to claim his envelope when he had sobered up; that is, if he ever did.
