by Lou Cameron
“Let’s get started,” I told Rockwell.
At the jail we learned that the two fugitives had been seen riding west from the city. The horse I was to ride was a gray gelding, a five-year-old of docile disposition. My rifle was a .44 caliber Henry rifle, brass frame, lever action, fifteen-shot, rim-fire. It loaded through a tubular magazine under the barrel; with one round already in the chamber, you had a sixteen-shot rifle, a revolutionary weapon for a period in which single-shot muzzle loaders were still in favor.
Rockwell’s own long gun was a .50-90 Sharps Special, a monster of a buffalo rifle, and it looked heavy enough to kill a buffalo by just beating it over the head. It had been fitted with a tube sight, a forerunner of the telescopes that were to come later. It was a fearsome piece of hardware, and I wondered how many men it had killed. More than a few, I was sure.
The jail keeper handed Rockwell his usual sack of provisions and four canteens. “They must be trying to make it to California,” Rockwell said to me. “They can run like hell but they’ll get tired. We’ll just follow along till we find them.”
Rockwell’s confidence was amazing, especially to an Easterner like me. Accustomed as I was to territory of less size, it seemed as if the fugitives had half a continent to hide in, vast expanses of desert and mountain. But I thought that only because I didn’t know Rockwell and his extraordinary feel for the fugitive mind. Some was intuition but most was knowledge gained by long hard years in hostile surroundings. His boast that he knew every inch of Utah appeared extreme until I realized that it was simply a statement of fact. The man had been in Utah for no more than fourteen years; it might have been one hundred, so great was his understanding of the terrain. From the first he had been in the vanguard of Mormon expansion, guiding and protecting Saints sent to California, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, and other remote places. Even parts of Wyoming and New Mexico were to be part of a master plan to forge the greatest single state in the history of man. And in 1849, Brigham Young demanded that this vast state, named Deseret, which means Land of the Honey Bee to the Mormons, be admitted to the United States. Even forty years later I still wonder what the history of this continent would have been like if Young had managed to carry forward his grandiose design. It was his firm intention, he said, to become president of the United States and finally ruler of the entire world. But Congress refused and Utah became a territory, still vast in size but nothing like the original Mormon dream.
Rockwell told me all this while we rode beside the marshes of the Great Salt Lake, which teemed with white pelicans then. There was anger in his voice; he saw the years bringing betrayal and more betrayal.
“Think of the West now,” he said. “Lawless, plagued by outlaw bands, no order to anything. By God, William, we would have established the rule of law from the Rio Grande to the Canadian border. There would be real cities and towns instead of dirty little mining camps filled with the scum of the earth.”
Curiously, he saw nothing to conflict between this religious dictatorship and Mormon democracy. In Brigham Young’s model state there would be no poverty, no crime, none of the bickering and confusion that marked other countries. But at what a heavy price, I thought: Americans would not submit to it.
I liked it better when he talked about the mountains, the high valleys dotted with pinon, juniper and scrub cedar; and through his second-hand reading he knew all about the ancient glaciers which had shaped this immense land. It was as if he had been there at the dawn of creation, so vivid was his rough imagery. “The mountains rose up like islands from the sea,” was one thing he said.
All that day we traversed the shores of the salt lake, glittering under the rays of the summer sun. Far off were the mountains; they did look like islands thrust up by some titanic convulsion. Toward late afternoon we came upon a party of Mormons shoveling lake salt into wagons. Their faces and hands were caked with fine crystals of the wind-blown salt, giving them a sort of ghostly appearance in the sunlight. They knew Rockwell, feared him too, I suppose, but their greetings were affable, urging us to light down and share their food.
“You seen two big men on hard-run horses pass this way?” Rockwell asked one of them, an Englishman by his speech, which was North Country, very slow and deliberate.
“Yes we did, Port,” the Britisher answered. “A little while back was when it was. They wanted to know where they could buy horses to spell the ones they had. In an awful hurry they were, all sweaty and nervous. They done a crime in the city?”
Rockwell smiled. “They tried to kill me, Henry. My friend William here killed one of them.”
Rockwell introduced me to the salt shovelers and they said any friend of Port’s was a friend of theirs.
“What did you tell them about the horses?” Rockwell asked the white-faced Henry.
“I told them there was none about,” Henry answered. “I take it that was the right answer?”
“Right as rain,” Rockwell said. “A stranger in a hurry is usually up to no good.”
Henry said, “Didn’t give them nothing to eat neither. They didn’t ask for grub but they looked at our provision box.”
Rockwell smiled at me. “I guess they had other plans for today. What’ve you got to eat, Henry?”
There was plenty of food but no meat of any kind. Bannock cakes with butter and honey made up some of it; the rest was fruit—apples, pears, dates, and berries I hadn’t seen before. No coffee or tea, of course, for these were Saints of the strictest kind. Milk in stone crocks wrapped in a blanket was cold even in the sun.
So we dined with the salt harvesters on the edge of the lake, watching the sun start to make its descent behind the mountains. It was a peaceful scene, a picture almost from the Bible, simple workmen enjoying the fruits of their labor, and only their rifles, which lay close by, brought me back to the violent reality of Mormon life. I wondered how much salt they had to shovel in a year to put gold plates on Brigham Young’s table. We moved on again as it was getting dark.
Chapter Six
We left the lake behind and it began to get cold as we climbed into the mountains. “Time to make camp,” Rockwell said after an hour had passed. “I don’t want them rounding on us in the dark, not that’s there much chance of that, the kind of men they are. They’re expecting to be chased by a big posse and not seeing any great commotion they’ll slow up to give their horses a chance. I’d say we’ll be on top of them sometime tomorrow.”
Rockwell made a small fire in a rocky place and we huddled close to it the way the Indians do. Not so strict as Henry and his friends, Rockwell brought out a big slab of lean bacon and cut slices into a skillet. The meat sizzled, a good smell in the cold night air. I was surprised when Rockwell brought out a battered coffee pot and said there was going to be coffee—for me.
“I don’t want you to become a Mormon all in one day,” he told me. “But I’ll join you in the bacon and biscuits. I know I’m doing the Lord’s work, so a little bacon won’t make Him too mad at me.”
But when the bacon was cooked he ate twice as much as I did. I tried to stifle a yawn and he said I should turn in for the night. “You’ll toughen up, but like the other thing, you don’t want to try it all in one day. Now wasn’t that a good supper? Bacon’s always been my second weakness, so I like to get out of the house so I can have a good feed without the wife laying down the law. She’s a fine woman, but a bit preachy at times. Keep your life simple, I always say.”
I rolled myself in my blankets and got close to the fire. “You never wanted to be rich, Port?”
Rockwell added a few sticks to the small blaze. “I’m rich enough, William. Got a nice family, a nice ranch.”
“No more than hundreds of other Mormons have,” I said. “When I say rich, I don’t mean that. I’m talking about ...”
“I know what you’re talking about and I don’t want it. If not for my family I could live over a stable. Anyway, I like the smell of horses. All those hundreds of men you talk about are no better than me.”<
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“They haven’t done as much as you have,” I stated, thinking I might draw him out a little. Here in the mountains, far from the political turmoil of the city and church, he was more like the simple frontiersman of his early days. “If you want to become wealthy, why should anyone begrudge it? And what’d to stop you?”
“Nothing,” Rockwell replied. “Nothing and no one if I wanted to do it. But then they’d say all my life’s work was just for money. It never was for money.”
I dared to say, “Your leader is very rich.” Rockwell said nothing for at least a minute. “You’re treading on dangerous ground, William, but we’re friends and I won’t take offense. Don’t you see that Brigham is different from the rest of us? There would be nothing here if not for him. We’d still be fighting off Gentile mobs back in the States at this very moment. All the work isn’t as important as the idea—Brigham’s idea. He picked us up when we faltered, he drove us with threats when there was no other way. But he got it done, and if he has great wealth he didn’t gather it for himself. When he passes to his reward, everything will go to the church.”
“Yes,” I said. “But he has the use of it now.” Rockwell picked up his Sharps and went to sit on a rock. “Go to sleep,” he warned. “You’ve said enough for one night.”
In the morning he was as friendly as he had been, cooking breakfast, then kicking sand on the fire. Nothing was said about Brigham Young, and I wasn’t about to bring it up again. It wasn’t my intention to turn him against his faith. I was simply interested in how an intelligent man of great abilities could be so taken in by the greedy prophet.
Now that it was light, Rockwell picked up the tracks of the fugitives without any difficulty. For my part, I saw nothing until he showed it to me. “Two horses,” he said. He dismounted and touched the hoofprints with his forefinger. “And not too far ahead. Our friends must have slept late. I hope they enjoy the time they have left because they’ll never see another sunrise. They can die any way they like—easy or hard.”
“Suppose they make a real fight of it? What then?”
“Let them,” Rockwell said. “They won’t provoke me into killing them till they tell me what I want to know. Now I don’t want you getting killed, William, so you’ll do as I tell you in this matter. They’re going deep into the mountains, thinking maybe they can hide there and shoot their meat. My guess is they don’t know what they’re doing.”
Traveling at a leisurely pace, we sighted the fugitives about one o’clock that day. There was no attempt at concealment, for I spotted them as quickly as Rockwell. They were at the bottom of a small canyon, drinking water and letting their horses graze on sun-yellowed grass. We caught our first glimpse of them from fairly high up on a brush-covered ridge, and there was no chance that we had been seen. I looked at Rockwell and he was smiling to himself; he might have been alone for all the attention he paid me. I find it hard to describe the way he smiled, but it wasn’t pleasant to watch. I suppose the only word for it is satanic, though perhaps that is too strong. There was murder in his eyes, a sort of unholy triumph, a silent gloating that made him seem like a different man from the chatty fellow he had been.
Finally, he turned to me; the smile was gone. “Get your watch out and give me ten minutes to sneak down there. Then right on the dot of ten you cut loose with that Henry. Use up half a magazine and then keep your head down. You’ll hear me yelling for you. Understood?”
I took out my watch and laid it on a rock and Rockwell, leaving his horse on the safe side of the slope, disappeared into the brush, making almost no movement as he descended; and in the silence that followed I could hear the ticking of my watch. I looked down through the brush, trying to see Rockwell; there was nothing.
The walls of the little canyon were studded with brush and rocks, and there were patches of shale. At the bottom the two men continued to sip from their canteens while the horses moved about munching on the grass.
The watch hand moved again and I opened fire with the Henry, sending a rain of bullets into the center of the canyon, taking care not to shoot too close to a man. Eight bullets exploded from the fast-levering repeater before I stopped and rolled back out of harm’s way. In the canyon there was yelling and they had opened fire. They kept on shooting though there was nothing to shoot at but a brushy ridge. I reached up to get my watch and a stray bullet nearly got me in the arm. Then there came the boom of the Sharps; after the echoes rolled away I heard Rockwell yelling for me to come down.
When I got there he had them covered with the big cut-down Colt. They were staring at him as if they couldn’t believe their eyes. I think Rockwell must have been a bit of an actor as well as everything else, for in his stern wrath he looked like the personification of an avenging angel. His voice, usually mild, now vibrated with anger, and his pale eyes bored into them like gimlets. No matter what they had done, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the two men, and now that there was time to study them, I saw they were brothers; big men and not too bright. They looked like the kind of men who do any kind of work they can get, none of it well. I could see them wandering from one village to another, loading wagons, shoveling ore in mines, and then moving on again. Now they sweated in the windless calm at the bottom of the canyon. It was so quiet that a bird flew into a tree and twittered.
Rockwell shouted, “What are your names, you mangy dogs? Answer up or I’ll shoot your eyes out.”
The Colt came up, the hammer was back, and for an instant I thought Rockwell had changed his mind about making them talk. But it was just a performance; much of what he did was a performance.
“I’m Dick Murdock.”
“I’m his brother Fergus.”
Rockwell shouted, “Can you prove that?”
They shook their heads. Fergus said, “We ain’t got no papers, nothing like that. We wasn’t trying to kill you, Mr. Rockwell, just give you a good beating, then run off. We figured you wouldn’t follow us far for just a beating.”
“Just a good beating,” Rockwell repeated in a softer tone. “What was the beating to be for, boys? Or was it the other fellow’s idea? He jumped out with a cocked pistol when you hit me with the club.”
Dick said, almost whining for all his size, “Nothing was said about shooting you. We didn’t even know he was there when we started in on you. We thought we’d trick you close enough so you couldn’t use your gun.”
“Who was the man that hired you?” Rockwell asked. “There’s no real harm done except for a bump on the head. But I’m interested in who he was, you see. Now think hard and tell me all of it, how you met him, what he said. You begin, Dick.”
Dick licked his lips, a stupid man involved in something he didn’t understand. “It started when we arrived in town. That was early yesterday morning. We was spending the last of our funds on beer when this feller you shot”—he pointed at me—“came into the saloon and got talking to us. I don’t know how he sounded, maybe from back East. He drank three whiskies and beat his fist on the bar, saying there was no justice in the world. Well, seeing as how he was free with his money, we said that was so, but what was ailing him in particular, was he said Mr. Rockwell—that’s you—had murdered his brother, a newspaper feller, early that morning. Real early, I guess. Well, we didn’t know any Mr. Rockwell, so the name didn’t mean beans to us. Why don’t you shoot this Mr. Rockwell? we said, and he said he didn’t believe in killing but he’d like to get him a beating he’d never forget. Chew him up good. Then we said to him why didn’t he beat this Mr. Rockwell any way he fancied, and he said he wasn’t in good health and wasn’t up to it. By this time we’d had a fair gutful of whiskey—his whiskey—and we said we’d do the job for a price. But, we asked, what did the man look like? How would we know who to beat? Then he said there was no way we could mistake this Mr. Rockwell— the long hair, light eyes, stocky build. After hearing this we said we wouldn’t do the work for less than fifty dollars and he said all right without so much as blinking an eye. He gave us half the mone
y and said he’d meet us in the same place after we got finished. But how are we to find the man? we asked, and he said we’d be likely to see you walking in the street back from where there’s a sawmill. So we waited and started in fighting when you came along. We’re terrible sorry about what happened, Mr. Rockwell. If we hadn’t been mostly drunk we would of never done such a dumb thing.”
Rockwell nodded. “It was surely dumb, Dick. What about you, Fergus? You look like you want to say something.”
Fergus shuffled his feet, with no idea how close to death he was. I knew Rockwell was going to kill them, though I was sure he believed their story, which was too thick-headed to be made up. It didn’t matter what he believed: they were going to die, and there was nothing to be done about it. But there was some justice in it; even when men blunder into trouble they have to be ready to take the consequences.
“Spit it out, Fergus,” Rockwell prompted. “It’s hot standing here in the sun. You got some notion that your brother hasn’t touched on?”
Fergus took a breath. “I don’t believe that man was anybody’s brother. A man murdered your brother, would you be ready to settle for a beating? I don’t know. He just wasn’t mad enough.”
“He gave you no name?”
“Sure he did—Davenport.”
“If you didn’t think he was the dead man’s brother, why did you take his money?”
“Because we were short on money, Mr. Rockwell.”
Rockwell smiled. “You boys should have gone to work. Plenty of it in Salt Lake.” Then, barely moving the short-barreled Colt, he shot them in the hearts and when they fell he placed the muzzle to their foreheads and blew their brains out. He had done the same thing to the halfwit shot in the jail yard, but here there was no flicker of pity in his eyes.
