Piccadilly Doubles 2

by Lou Cameron

  I marveled aloud. “Four hundred miles in five days!”

  “I’ve done better than that. No matter. Back I went with the photograph of the dead man, showing it and asking questions of everybody I happened on. Nobody had seen him. Then at the end of the first day the agent’s wife in a stage relay station said he had been through there late one night. He knocked them up to buy grain for his horse, food for himself. The woman came to the door because her man was asleep or maybe drunk. She didn’t explain that part. Anyway, he paid for his supplies, but didn’t ask to stay the night.”

  “She was sure?”

  “I showed her the picture by good light and she said there was no doubt that was the man. I told her who I was and she said she knew by my looks. So she knew better than to lie, though she wasn’t a Mormon.”

  I could see how anyone, man or woman, would be frightened at the sight of Porter Rockwell, arriving just as darkness was setting in. My question had been foolish; she hadn’t been lying.

  Rockwell said, “Early the next day—after riding all night—I came on three men with a busted wagon. A busted wheel they were trying to fix and making a poor job of it. A scurvy-looking bunch. Army deserters or city men trying to escape being conscripted for the war. They’d seen Jarman all right and they were doubly sure after I uncorked a bottle and passed it around. But there was something shifty about them that made me wonder what in the hell they were hiding. I had to hold my Colt on them before I got the truth.”

  Poor bastards, I thought. Dead, like the Murdocks.

  “It seemed like Jarman accepted their offer of a bite to eat,” Rockwell continued. “And when he took off his coat one of them stole his wallet. They didn’t have the nerve to steal the rest of his goods, so he rode out never noticing that his wallet was gone. After that I got the full truth from these scavengers. All three were deserters from Fort Dodge, Kansas, but one of them had seen Jarman there no more than three months ago. This man said he’d seen Jarman just twice, in a sergeant’s uniform, walking with a major and a civilian. Shortly after that they deserted when their regiment got orders to move to Pennsylvania.”

  “Jarman joined up again as an enlisted man, is that it?”

  Rockwell nodded. “Cashiered officers have been known to do that. The man who knew Jarman read his papers to me. I have them here. Now I’d like you to read them too.”

  Rockwell handed the dead man’s creased leather wallet to me and I opened it. One official looking document older than the rest told of Lieutenant Bernard Edgar Jarman’s court martial for gross dereliction of duty. It was dated Camp Floyd, Utah Territory; the date was November 1857. Another paper certified that Bernard Edgar Jarman had enlisted as a private soldier nearly two years later; this time the date was September 1859.

  “That fits,” Rockwell said. “He didn’t try to hide his identity because sooner or later he would have been recognized. Now read the last one.”

  It was a letter from the War Department to Sergeant Bernard E. Jarman and was addressed to him at Fort Hays, Kansas. It was dated one week after the Confederates fired on Fort Sumpter. Dear Mr. Jarman (it read),

  Your application for restoration of your rank of commissioned officer is hereby acknowledged; if it is given favorable consideration, you will be summoned before the Military Review Board in due time. Your statement that Colonel Johnson, who presided at your court-martial, is a traitor to his country because of his present service with the Army of the Confederate States is not entirely proper in a letter of this kind. However, in view of the present emergency and Colonel Johnson’s resignation from the Army of the United States, every consideration will be given your request. That you also have volunteered “for any duty, however hazardous” has been noted.

  The letter was signed by some colonel in the War Department; there could be no doubt of its authenticity. I wondered what the dead man had been like before Rockwell’s raid on his horses shattered his career. Had he cursed Rockwell in the four years that had passed? Or did he blame Colonel Johnson, the martinet who refused to show mercy? Only one thing was certain and that was that Bernard Edgar Jarman had come a long way to kill a man.

  “They gave him hazardous duty,” Rockwell said “flatly. “But he wasn’t up to it after all. Kill Porter Rockwell, they said, and we’ll let you be an officer again.”

  I voiced my thoughts. “Why would they want to kill you, Port?”

  “Because I think they’re going to invade us. That’s why they want me dead. You can’t know what it was like during the War of ’57-58. They sent an American army against us and we ran them ragged. We raided their supply trains and ran off their livestock. The whole Nauvoo Legion was ordered into the field and they came without being prodded by bayonets like the conscripts back in the States. The Americans came from the east, starting out in Fort Leavenworth, making a brave show of it all the way. On they came with their drums and bugles, but we were ready for them. At first they hoped to take us by surprise, but how in hell do you keep an army secret? Echo Canyon is the only way to get into the Great Salt Basin from the east, so we built breastworks on the cliffs and planted mines so we could bring the whole thing down on them if they attacked in force. We even built a dam so the canyon could be flooded.”

  Caught up in the excitement of Rockwell’s words, I found myself forgetting that the enemy soldiers he spoke of belonged to my country. It was like the minutemen hurrying to Lexington from their villages and farms: Englishmen preparing to fight Englishmen, fellow citizens all.

  It was the first time I had seen Rockwell so agitated, as if reliving the glories of the past, the time when he had been one of the ablest irregular commanders in the field, riding at the head of the Nauvoo Legion.

  “Brigham declared martial law in Utah,” he said. “He warned the Americans that they weren’t wanted in our country. And he didn’t just say that to the Americans, he said it to the world. Our commander in chief was Dan Wells and he put Brigham’s words into action. I still recall the order he sent out: ‘Harass them in every possible way. Stampede their animals and set fire to their trains. Burn the whole country before them and on their flanks. Keep them from sleeping by night surprise. Blockade the roads by felling trees or destroying fords when you can. Watch for opportunities to set fire to the grass on their windward. Leave no grass before them that can be burned. Keep scouts out at all times.’ What do you think of that, William?”

  “Sounds warlike enough,” I answered.

  “Damn right it was. The Americans were used to fighting half-starved Indians and badly armed Mexicans. Now they were up against something else—men who tamed the roughest country in the world and made a garden of it. We were the eyes and ears of the Mormon army, and there wasn’t a thing that Johnson did that we didn’t know about. Anything we needed we just took from the Americans—horses, mules, supplies, rifles, ammunition. It went on for weeks and months till they didn’t know which way was up.”

  “Then how did they get to Salt Lake?” I asked.

  Instead of being annoyed by my question Rockwell laughed and waved his hand in an expansive gesture. “Because Brigham told us to let them through. There wasn’t a lot to be worried about by then. They had seen—felt—our strength, and what we did once we could do again at any time. I’m not saying the Americans couldn’t have made a better show if they had a better commander. They tell me Johnson knows his soldiering, but he didn’t prove it then. To this day people here have no respect for him. Anyway, when Brigham gave the order to let them through, they came ahead all right, but when they started for the city Brigham told Johnson that wouldn’t do. Make camp far outside was the order. You can stay there as long as we decide you can stay. It was a strange thing to see the invading army marching in like defeated men. A lot of them didn’t know that they weren’t going to be massacred. There was no need for that—they were beaten. They made their camp—Camp Floyd, they called it—and every time Johnson sent Brigham some order it was thrown right back at him. We printed our own
money, we did anything we liked. Johnson couldn’t do a thing about it. Then one day he marched his army out again and we’ve had our own way ever since. You should have been here, William.”

  I said, “You’re sure another army will come and that’s why they want you out of the way? Because you fought them so hard the last time?”

  “That’s what I’m sure of,” Rockwell stated. “I’m no braggart, but I fought them harder than any man in the Mormon army. I was the one who built the fortifications in Echo Canyon, smashed their supply trains. Always thinking the Americans might try to conquer us, I scouted the mountains for places where we could make a stand, and it’s no secret that we have food and weapons—anything we need—stored up in there in good dry caves. The Americans know my name all right. They had their spies here even then, but I found them out and did away with them. I did the same to Mormons who wanted to make peace. There were a few, always a few—and they’ll try their treachery again if it comes to another war.”

  Echoing the anti-Mormon editorials in the Tribune, I asked, “But what if they send a bigger army, a better commander?”

  “That’s what they’ll try to do,” Rockwell said, completely unruffled by the idea. “They will try to find a man who knows this country, or country like it, and they’ll read all the reports from Johnson and try to learn from all the things he did wrong. That may not be enough, or they may not do it at all. But they will try to find a smart man and a ruthless one. And they will try to use our growing prosperity against us—they will try to break us up into factions, with the fat businessmen against the farmers.”

  Listening to this man who couldn’t read, I was impressed by his grasp of intrigue; that had to derive from the suspicion that surrounded him. In the end, it all stemmed from Brigham Young himself, the arch plotter, the master schemer.

  Unlike Rockwell, I wasn’t completely convinced that someone high up in the American military had sent Jarman to murder him; the assassination had been attempted in such a haphazard way. Even then there were men in the West, expert killers like Rockwell himself, who could have been hired to kill him at long distance with a heavy rifle. Yet the evidence was there; it could hardly be ignored.

  I said, “If the Army did try to kill you, isn’t there a chance that someone here invited them—made the suggestion? A Mormon with plans of his own?”

  Rockwell stared at me with pale eyes, but said nothing.

  A little uneasy, I went on with, “It’s as if Jarman didn’t expect to be followed after he killed you.”

  “You keep coming back to that, William, and maybe you’re right. I do stand between Brigham and danger, not that I bodyguard him night and day. I have trusted men who guard his house, go with him wherever he goes. If anything happened to Brigham—and it won’t—the men who did it— tried it—would know they would have me to deal with. There isn’t a place on this earth I wouldn’t find them, and when I did their lives would end with a bullet. So maybe you’re right in what you say.”

  “You have any ideas?”

  “One or two. Nothing I can talk about yet.”

  I knew better than to press him, so I asked him about something that was of some concern to me. “You really want me to send that last dispatch? You’ll be admitting that you killed three men outside the borders of Utah. Men who did nothing but steal a wallet.”

  “Let the government arrest me if they think they can do it. They’ve talked about it before.”

  “Just the same, if war comes and you lose, they could hang you.”

  “They won’t hang me. Send the dispatch and tell your newspaper to print in great big letters: Porter Rockwell Tells the United States to Go to Hell. Invade Us at Your Peril.”

  This was treasonable talk, yet I was forced to smile. Rockwell was dirty and sweaty smelling, sorely in need of cleaning up; still, there was something heroic in his defiance of the mighty men of Washington. I hoped I wouldn’t see him on the gallows some day. No doubt Mr. Greeley’s Yankee jaw would jut out when he read Rockwell’s salutation to Uncle Sam, but he’d print it just the same.

  “I’m going to send everything by telegraph,” I told Rockwell. “What I sent by Pony Express doesn’t mean much—impressions of the city, how Mormon life looks to an outsider. But now you’re talking war, and that will get Mr. Greeley hopping even if there is a bigger war going on.”

  I hesitated before I asked, “You don’t have to get any advice about what I’m going to send?”

  “You mean, do I have to get permission before I speak my mind?”

  “Just asking, Port. You live by your own rules. I don’t question what I’ve seen you do.”

  There was a sudden glint of anger — or something—in Rockwell’s eyes. “Which means you question what you haven’t seen?”

  A steady drinker but not a wild one, Rockwell suddenly upended the bottle and drank until it was empty; no man can hold that much whiskey and stay sober, and he didn’t. For a moment I thought he was about to smash the bottle against the wall, and I braced myself for flying glass and possibly worse. But all he did was put the bottle on the floor. I stared at him in amazement as he began to sing:

  “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 hell get the drop on you.”

  “How’d you like that for a song?” Rockwell shouted, yanking out his cut-down Colt revolver and waving it in the air; even in his big hand it looked like a large gun. The shortened barrel and the missing loading lever gave it a more dangerous appearance than a weapon that hadn’t been altered. He thumped the stubby barrel against his chest, and yelled, “This is me! Porter Rockwell, the Mormon triggerite! The man is the gun, the gun is the man. Any man that wants to kill Porter Rockwell has to get the drop on him. That can’t be done, William. You want to hear more of the song?” I wondered what I had said to set him off. “Do you, William? It’s a good song and it’s all about me. Now listen to this:

  “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.

  “Don’t look so white around the gills,” Rockwell bellowed, still wild eyed. “You’re a friend of mine and won’t come to any harm by my hand or any other man’s.” He held up the huge revolver. “See this old hunk of iron? There are newer guns but I wouldn’t part with this ugly child for the world. How many men has this thing killed? I don’t know because I don’t keep count. But I never killed a man because I was feeling mean or had something personal against him. Duty, William—for no other reason did I ever kill a man. I never made money from it. A ranch, I have a fine ranch, but I built it myself and it took years. I think I am an honest man. If money came my way and it wasn’t mine, it went to the church. No decent man need be afraid of me and if people are scared of me because ... of the other thing ... I can’t help that, can I? Can I, William?”

  “What are you so mad about, Port?”

  “You said you didn’t question the things you saw me do. The things you didn’t . . . why don’t you ask me straight out? Did I have anything to do with Mountain Meadows?”

  Saying that, he put the Colt away and I felt the blood returning to my face. Even when he first drew the pistol I hadn’t feared for my life, but the movement made me realize how unpredictable he was, and that what I had seen of him was not all, for beneath the rough-and-ready soldier-for-a-cause was a much more complex character than I had imagined.

  “You said I’d hear about it when you were ready to tell me,” I reminded him.

  “I
t might as well be now,” Rockwell said. “Yes, it happened and it was done by Mormons. It’s preyed on my mind for a long time and not just because my own reputation was at stake.” Rockwell’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. “I can say nothing about the men whose names you have in that paper. Some of the men on Davenport’s list were— are—capable of such a thing. At first, when the story began to be whispered about, I thought like most people—another Gentile lie, this one bigger and bloodier than all the others. Would you believe? I even laughed about it, saying they’ve made this lie so big that no one in his right mind will believe it. One hundred and twenty men, women, and children—children no more than a few years old. I thought it would die out from being laughed at, but I kept hearing it, bits and starts of it. Of course when the Gentiles told it, the massacre got bigger. Two hundred, three hundred. Then my name got linked to it, and maybe the men who spread the story weren’t all Gentiles. What better way to shift the blame than to lay the guilt on Porter Rockwell’s shoulders? Rockwell, the bloody-handed murderer.”

  The whiskey was starting to die in Rockwell and his eyes were sad. My room was warm with sunshine, but it had the chill of death in it. I thought, Why didn’t I tell old Greeley to go to blazes? There were other newspapers, other jobs. But I was here, and New York so far away.

  Rockwell said, “At night I’d lie awake beside my wife and think of what people were saying about me. Then early one morning, before it was light, I saddled my horse and rode south. Along with my supplies I carried a shovel and a pick. At Mountain Meadows I found what I was looking for. The Meadows were all flowers. I looked for the places where the flowers were brightest, and that’s where I found the bodies. They hadn’t buried all of them in one pit: there were four or five, and they weren’t deep. The wolves had got to some of the bodies. The ones the wolves hadn’t torn up had bullet wounds that I could see. Some of the men had bullet holes in their heads, bullets fired up close. I knew then that it wasn’t the work of the Indians. No Indian wastes ammunition killing the wounded. Most of the children had their throats cut. Indians don’t usually kill girl children. If they don’t keep them, they sell them into the southern territories or Mexico. So it wasn’t Indians, William. My own people did it.”