Piccadilly Doubles 2

by Lou Cameron

  Brigham Young remained where he was, dark and gloomy, wrapped in his thoughts. “There is no need for private consultation,” he said, ‘and so I will not sit with you. What I have to say can be said openly. You have invaded our country—yes, our country—with your army of foreigners. You have threatened to destroy our capital city with that great gun of yours if we do not submit.”

  “Obedience to the law is nothing more than that,” Connor said calmly. “But call it what you like, Mr. Young. I represent the government of the United States. There is no room for dictators within its borders.”

  The Prophet’s dark face grew darker, as if he were preparing to strike this infidel dead by the force of will. “You dare talk to me like that, sir?”

  “I do, sir,” Connor said, “and nothing you can say, nothing you can do, will sway me from my course. There can be no compromise, absolutely none. No doubt Mr. Wells has told you of the consequences you face if my men have to take this city by force of arms. Very well. It distresses me to have to say this, but you will be the first to hang. Insurrection is punishable by death, and I would remind you of the fate of John Brown. Therefore, I must have your answer here and now.”

  Brigham Young said nothing for what must have been at least sixty seconds; to me, it seemed like hours. His voice, when at last it came, was deliberate and completely without anger. “I will bow to the armed might of the United States, not because I am afraid to die, but because I do not want to see my people butchered by your rabble, their city destroyed by your hellish gun. But listen to me, sir. What you are forcing upon us is unjust and you and your government will be remembered for it.”

  Connor was not at all concerned by the judgment of history. “Is that all you have to say?”

  “No, it is not,” Brigham Young said. “I want to know what you propose to do with us. After your army marches in are we to be hung with chains and thrown into prison camps? Is that what you have planned for us?”

  “Calm yourself, Mr. Young,” Connor said soothingly. “I propose to do nothing of the kind. The city will not be occupied provided you live up to our agreement. Life here will go on as before, except that we will be watching you.” Connors tone became suave; the man was a natural politician. “It’s not that I doubt your word, sir, but there are hotheads in every camp.”

  “How long will this watching go on?”

  “For as long as it takes. For years, if necessary. Those are my orders.”

  “Then we have no more to talk about,” Brigham Young said, preparing to make a grand exit. It was then that Rockwell spoke for the first time. Up till now the Prophet had not so much as glanced at him.

  “Brigham,” Rockwell said quietly. ‘We can still fight if you lead us. You have always been our leader. You can lead us now.”

  The Prophet’s dark eyes moved to the man who had served him so long and so faithfully. “I have nothing to say to you,” he said with bleak finality, and having said that, he went out to his ornate coach and drove away.

  Connor looked puzzled by this odd exchange, but, getting no explanation, he swallowed the last of his beer and stood up. Dan Wells came in while he was putting on his hat.

  “Brigham says you will tell me what to do,” Dan Wells said.

  “Keep the peace, no more than that,” Connor said.

  They went out and we followed them as far as the sidewalk. There Rockwell stopped. “Aren’t you going along?” I asked him.

  His eyes were stricken, but then he smiled ruefully. “Didn’t you hear what Brigham said? I have been cast out. Maybe not from the body of the church, but never again will I be asked to do anything of the smallest importance. No one will ever seek my opinion. Men who fear Brigham, and most men do, will turn the other way when they see me. A few old comrades may stick, but even they will be careful how they do it. In that way I have been cast out.”

  “Can he do all that, Port? The Americans are here now. Connor says they’re going to stay.”

  Rockwell said, “The Americans will make Brigham even more powerful than he was.” He looked after Connor striding away surrounded by Dan Wells and his lieutenants. “Now Brigham’s power is complete. Who can topple him with the American soldiers behind him to protect his power? The Americans know they can deal with him, so they will protect him from the rebellious, now and in the future. His angry words to Connor meant nothing—a show. Before long everybody will be friends, and he will use the Americans as much as they use him. A deal was made today. Brigham will still rule Utah as long as he does nothing to disturb the Americans. He won’t. He had it all figured out long before he came here today.”

  “But why did he speak to you like that? The killing of Hickman couldn’t be the entire reason.”

  “I disobeyed him by killing Hickman, but you’re right. The real reason is that he no longer has need of me. He has the Americans to protect him now. Soon this country will be filled with Americans from everywhere, and when questions are asked about our bloody past, Brigham and his bishops and his businessmen will point at me arid they will say, That is the man. Rockwell was the cause of it all. He is a dangerous man and we could not control him. His crimes have nothing to do with us. I am to take the blame, William. It is as simple as that. I think that now I will go out to my ranch and see how things are. I will be back in a day or two.”

  After he left I went to my room to write the dispatch I was to send to the Sun. Mr. Greeley wanted a story and now he had the biggest story ever to come out of Utah. I was working on it when Cassie knocked and came in. “You look depressed,” she said. “Why is that? You got your peace and your big story. It would seem to me that everything turned out just fine for you.”

  “Everything didn’t turn out fine for Rockwell.”

  “So I gathered. McSorley explained some of it to me. But, my God, who understand these Mormons—and who gives a damn?”

  Suddenly I gave way to anger and tore up the paper I had been writing on. “It makes me sick to think that Young will go on as before! Rockwell was ready to die for his country while all the time that son of a bitch was planning to sell him out.”

  “The fortunes of peace, young man. Oh, for Christ’s sake, don’t be such a romantic. Connor doesn’t like the holy man any more than you do, but as long as he controls the holy man, he controls the Mormons. The holy man will take advantage of that, naturally. That’s how it works, Forbes. You’ll learn that as you get older.”

  I looked at her, so calm and poised. “You’re only a few years older than I am.”

  “That’s gallant of you, sir. All right, I may not be so much older, but I’m in a different business. Don’t be so noble. You’ll live longer. Now don’t get sulky about it. I was just teasing. Actually, I came to say goodbye.”

  “You mean you’re leaving right now?”

  “Tonight, if I get a reply to my telegraph to General Shepperton. There’s nothing for me to do here once I make my report to Connor, and that’s just a formality. Connor has no need of spies, especially spies that are known. So I want to get back where my work can be of some use.”

  “You said you can’t go back to the Confederacy.”

  “I was thinking more of England. The Rebels are up to all kinds of tricks over there. Organizing blockade runners, persuading prominent politicians to speak out for their side, no end of mischief. I’m going to ask General Shepperton to send me there to see what they’re up to. Sure you wouldn’t like to change jobs? You’d make a fine spy—such a nice, open face.”

  “I stay out of politics,” I said, “but thanks for the offer. Maybe I’ll see you again when the war is over.”

  “Why not?” Cassie said. “The war can’t last forever.”

  She kissed me long and hard and went out. Neither of us had any way of knowing that for her the war would end before the year was out. In November of that year she was stabbed by a Confederate agent and her body thrown into the harbor at Liverpool.

  Calmer now, I started to rewrite my dispatch. The sun was g
oing down by the time I took it over to the telegraph office. It was dark when I walked back to the hotel. I noticed how deserted the streets were.

  So quiet.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I did not see Rockwell for a week and when someone knocked on my door one night I thought it must surely be my friend. Instead, it was General Connor. “Am I disturbing you?” he asked. “If not, I thought we might have a talk. I’ve talked to federal agents and Mormons. Now I’d like to talk to someone who is neither.”

  “All right,” I said. “You want to go to McSorley’s for a drink?”

  ‘“McSorley’s gone,” Connor said. “Sold the place to some Dutchman and went back East. What about if we take a stroll down by the lake? I’ve been so busy. I’d like to go where it’s quiet. I have a buggy. I can be less martial now that peace is upon the land. Mr. Young is being most cooperative.” Connor lowered his voice. “He’s a wily son of a bitch, that fellow.”

  I smiled. “You’re pretty wily yourself, General.”

  “I take that as a compliment, Mr. Forbes. Have you seen your friend Rockwell?”

  “Is that what you want to talk about?” I asked.

  “Among other things,” Connor replied. “Come on now, there ought to be a nice breeze this time of night,”

  We walked by the great salt lake where the nights are brighter than anywhere else because of the soft white glare thrown upward from the shallow water. The great lake shimmered before us and I felt vaguely sad as if I were a witness to the end of something I was not a part of, and never could be, because I hadn’t been a part of it in the beginning; had not shared the waking, sunlit dreams of the people whose land it was, truly, and never mind governments and laws and all the legalistic claptrap of this time and all time. All my life I have found it difficult to belong, and there is nothing prideful in that—perhaps there is something lacking in me.

  I could see the bare treeless islands in the lake. Far out there were men in a boat of graceless shape, and I wondered what they were doing at that time of night. Their voices came across the water. Pelicans, only mildly disturbed by the noise, rose up heavily to flap their wings and then, after a short, clumsy flight, settled down again. Behind us lay the city of thirty thousand souls, but here, so close, there was a peace so fragile that I held my breath.

  Connor’s cigar was fragrant on the still night air. “Oh, I forgot,” he said, and offered me his pigskin cigar case. “They’re good. A man in Tampa makes them to my order.”

  I shook my head. “Would you have destroyed them?” I asked. “The Mormons.”

  Connor’s casual pace remained the same; he didn’t look at me. “I would,” he answered. “But not from any ill will. God knows I wouldn’t want to, but there’s my honest answer—I would.”

  “But why?”

  “Orders. I was sent here to subdue the Mormons by any means. And ‘by any means’ is exactly what Washington meant. Washington may be disappointed that my work wasn’t done in a welter of blood. With the Mormons in open rebellion their lands could be seized and their citizenship revoked. That’s what will happen in the South after the war. I’m pleased it won’t happen here. Yes, Mr. Forbes, I’ve done my work but I won’t get much thanks for it, at least not from Washington. Lincoln is not the saint he pretends to be. He would have liked me to use the terrible swift sword on the Mormons. Then he could preach about the terrible necessity.”

  “Then the naval gun was all your idea?” I said.

  “Yes,” Connor answered. “It took me a while to figure out a way to break the Mormons without slaughtering them. I didn’t want to be remembered as the man who brought the peace of death to Utah. I knew the Mormons would fight—why wouldn’t they? Then I asked myself what they prized most in all the world besides their religion. Their sacred city was the answer, of course. But how was I to capture it without long hard fighting? The idea of the Dahlgren gun came to me after I visited the Jackson in the San Francisco bay.”

  I knew the big gun was still aimed at the city; out there in the darkness, high on its rocky perch, it would be well-guarded—a sinister force for peace.

  “It was a daring plan,” I said. “Rockwell knew those hundred men had gone somewhere.”

  “I’m glad he didn’t figure it out,” Connor said. “But how could he? How could anyone? The hundred men Rockwell wondered about sailed north on the Jackson, got the gun off and dragged it here on rollers. Men and mules. Anyway, the gun got here.”

  Connor stopped to take off his boots and socks. I sat on a rock while he was doing it, and while I watched he walked into the shallow water that lapped up on the sandy shore. He was an unusual man—for a general.

  “Nothing like salt water for tired feet,” he remarked. “Mr. Forbes, I’d like you to write about what you saw here.”

  “I’ll write it,” I said. “I guess that means Miss MacKay told you I wasn’t working for the Mormons and against the United States.”

  “That she did,” Connor agreed. “But you must admit that your friendship with this fellow Rockwell is very peculiar. Or it looks that way. I came here prepared to hang that man. Of all the Mormon gunmen he’s said to be the worst. Is he?”

  I didn’t answer.

  Connor said, “Your answer won’t go down in any report. You have my word on that. I’d just like to know what the man is like. There’s no shooting right now, but who’s to say what will happen a week, a month, a year from now?”

  “If there is trouble it won’t come from Rockwell,” I said. “As for being dangerous, I think he’s the most dangerous man I ever met. I’m sure you’ve been told that he has committed many senseless murders. It’s true about the killings, but they were never senseless from his point of view, and never cowardly. You have to understand this country to understand Rockwell. It’s hard to explain.”

  “Just as hard for me to understand,” Connor said, coming out of the water to sit on another rock. He put on his socks without drying his feet. “What you write will be of great importance, Mr. Forbes. Now that this Mormon rebellion seems to have fizzled out, the Eastern press will charge that the Mormons have been too lightly handled. The Mormons are much to blame for the rancor of the East, but that is not my concern at the moment. No matter that the rebellion has been settled in a bloodless manner, in the East there will be an outcry for stern measures: the arrest and trial of the leaders, the confiscation of land, the disarming of the populace. In the East they will want to know what I have done to suppress polygamy, female slavery, anything else they can think of. When they learn that I have done nothing but put down an insurrection, they will clamor for my recall. You, Mr. Forbes, must see what you can do to prevent all that.”

  We started walking again. “I’ll do what I can, General,” I told him. “The telegraph lines . . .”

  “Are under my control,” Connor cut in, “and are yours to use any time of day or night. I am told you are the only Eastern correspondent in the city. Use that advantage to the fullest, Mr. Forbes. I would say all this will make you kind of famous. Well, what’s wrong with that? When I was a young man I longed for fame. Instead, I just got rich.”

  “You’re famous now,” I said.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Connor said. “Maybe I’ll be famous for a few weeks. Lasting fame never comes to the peacemaker. It’s the warrior who gets the cheers. But never mind all that. You do your work and I’ll do mine. In this situation I fear the preachers more than the politicians, even more than the newspapers. Preachers and pious or unhappy ladies are the deadliest enemies of the Mormons. They’ll be after my scalp, too, for not bringing fire and brimstone to this place. I often think this polygamy business is the real reason for all the hate. Mr. Forbes, can you imagine how a purse-lipped maiden lady must feel when tossing and turning in her manless bed she thinks of all the carnality going on in Utah? All those naked people rolling about in one big bed?”

  I smiled. “I’m told it isn’t like that, General.”

  Conno
r smiled too. “That’s not the point. It’s what the maiden ladies think is going on. And the men are surely just as angry. There you have some fellow back East with a wife he hates or is tired of. He listens to her snoring beside him in the dead of night and has visions of some Saint—a man his own age—with thirty wives to choose from when it’s time to go to bed. No wonder he hates the Mormons and wants them punished. The polygamy business, it has to be that. Human nature, I suppose, but it’s such things that cause wars. There may be great issues lurking in the background, but all great issues have a way of growing up around envy and spite.”

  “You have a sour view of mankind,” I said.

  Connor shook his head. “No, I just read a lot; have seen a lot of life. I have gone from immigrant boy to millionaire; from private soldier to general. In between I have worked at more jobs than you can think of. I’ve been preached at in soup kitchens and wined and dined by senators in Washington. But it hasn’t made me sour, just mistrustful of men’s motives. So when everybody told me how vicious the Mormons were, I took it with my usual grain of salt. It’s a good rule and we can all do with a little extra salt in hot country.”

  “The Mormons are fortunate to have you here,” I said. No flattery was intended.

  “Just so long as they behave themselves,” Connor said. “If there is just one outbreak, and I don’t care how minor, I will hang the men who lead it and send the rest of them to work in their own mines. I would like you to put that in your dispatches to the Sun, It will look good back East; give me a reputation for firmness without having to do any drastic to prove it. But prove it I will, if I have to.”

  “I don’t think you’ll have to do anything, General. So long as Young remains in power, and he will, there will be no trouble. He is a corrupt, venal man, but the Mormons obey him. If Hickman were still alive it might be very different. He would have rallied the diehard Mormons, raised the Indians, fought you to the end—and never mind the destruction of the city. Rockwell did you a big favor by killing that villain.”