Rawhide Robinson Rides a Dromedary

by Rod Miller

  “Well, I hesitate to say it, boys. But despite that man bein’ as drunk as a magpie peckin’ sour mash under a moonshine still, he was right.

  “There, standin’ upright in the water not ten feet from the boat was as beautiful a young woman as ever walked the earth. Only this one couldn’t walk the earth, you see, on account of her being a mermaid. That water being crystal clear and all, you could see her bottom parts was like those on a fish.

  “The boatman, he hustled his way up to the front of that boat and, despite his being round as a ball, and with a bellyful of alcohol, he pranced over and around that load of goods swift as a rat with a cat on his trail. He pulled the lid off a bulky barrel and set into tossing double handfuls of white stuff at that nautical nymph.

  “I asked what it was he was throwing into the water and he said, ‘Salt!’ Me being the curious sort, I inquired as to why and I don’t hardly believe to this day what he said. Seems where he come from, it was common knowledge that you could catch a bird if you shook salt on its tail. Him being three sheets to the wind—note the sailor palaver there, boys—he believed you could do the same with a mermaid—if you could shake salt on her tailfins, you could catch her.

  “He would not be dissuaded, boys. He kept tossing salt at her as fast as he could, first by hand then with a scoop and then with a shovel. When she would swim away, he would fire up the engine and follow, flinging salt every inch of the way. Now, it might not seem it would make much of a difference to throw salt in a big lake like that. But there was a bunch of barrels of salt on that boat, and when they was all empty and heaved over the side, he took to throwing salt blocks meant for the cattle at that mermaid. Fortunately, he was so sloshed and his aim was so bad, he never got near that fine-looking fish-woman.

  “The lake, however, did not fare so well,” Rawhide Robinson said as tears made tracks down his cheeks.

  “It’s a sad, sad thing to see a lake like that die, but that’s what I witnessed that day. It didn’t happen all at once, of course, but whilst I worked on that ranch I watched that salt spread through those waters, killing everything in sight as it went and turning that sweet, clear water into a turbid, briny, smelly mess that would choke you to death should you partake of it. Not only that, all that salt shriveled the trees and grass along the shore and rendered the sand slimy and stinky. Turned that lovely lake into a dead sea.”

  “Nonsense!” some anonymous sailor said with a measure of vehemence. Others agreed, and the disbelief spread like salt in water.

  Rawhide Robinson allowed his audience to vent for a time, then hollered, “Hold on a minute, boys!” he said. “Hasn’t any one of you-all ever been out to that Utah Territory?”

  The men exchanged blank looks and traded shakes of the head in the accustomed nonverbal signal for a negative response.

  “Well, then, is there a map on this here boat?”

  “Boats ain’t got maps. We got charts. And this ain’t no boat, besides. It’s a ship,” said a sailor.

  Another seaman said, “Wait! That army lubber, he’s got an atlas. Saw him studying it the other day. Looked to have enough pages to hold the whole world, it did.”

  The crowd dispatched a sailor to find the army officer and ask the borrow of his book of maps. Which request was answered in the form of Major Benjamin Wayne himself showing up, atlas in hand. He looked around the cramped crew quarters, unsure how to proceed.

  Eventually, after letting the uncomfortable silence grow for effect, Rawhide Robinson said, “Is there a map of North America in that there book?”

  Wayne nodded in the affirmative. “Several of them.”

  “Let’s take a look at the western part of the country—Utah Territory to be exact.”

  The major spread the oversized book open on the deck and leafed through the pages until locating a map of the interior Intermountain West. “Will this do you?”

  Rawhide Robinson tipped back his thirteen-gallon hat and studied the lines and squiggles on the page. “Sure thing,” he said. “Now, Major, help me out here. What’s this here splotch of blue?”

  “Why, that’s the Great Salt Lake. Says so right here,” he said, pointing out the words printed over the body of water.

  Sailors pushed and pressed for position, each hoping to get a glimpse.

  “Say that again, if you would, Major.”

  “It’s the Great Salt Lake. Plain as day.”

  The murmuring among the sailors grew louder, expressions of disbelief breaking through.

  “You ever seen it?” the cowboy asked.

  “As a matter of fact, I have. Led a mapping excursion through the deserts west of there years ago.”

  “So what’s that there lake like?” Rawhide Robinson said as he tapped the map with an extended index finger.

  “Foul. Stinks to high heaven all summer long. Nothing lives in it, so far as we could discover, except pesky little flies that hatch and die and wash up on the shore in fetid waves.”

  Rawhide Robinson’s smile spread from ear to ear. Then, the ultimate question: “Is it salty?”

  “Absolutely,” the major said. “According to our measurements, the salt concentration was around ten percent. More than twice the salinity of the oceans we are sailing.”

  The major wondered at the sailors’ dumbfounded expressions. And at the mischievous grin plastered across Rawhide Robinson’s physiognomy.

  He didn’t ask.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  * * *

  Day after day, Rawhide Robinson wandered the decks of the USS Cordwood. Sailors scrambling through the rigging, oblivious to the law of gravity. Men swabbing already clean decks, then starting again. Endless shifting of cargo below decks, as officers ordered sailors to seek a more economical arrangement of crates and barrels, boxes and bins, bales and bags, containers and cartons. Others acted as carpenters, modifying and altering the hold to accommodate livestock in anticipation of a cargo of critters with hair and four legs.

  Oh, there were days when the winds were stiff and the seas were rough when the bowlegged cowboy couldn’t find his sea legs, and spent long hours and days and nights miserable in his hammock, upchucking into a bucket until he thought he would turn inside out. Seasickness was an unfamiliar malady to the landlubber, not to mention unpleasant. But as storms came and went, his acquaintance with and tolerance of the roll and pitch and yaw and heave and sway and surge of the ship improved.

  When feeling chipper and on the prowl and observing shipboard activity, Rawhide Robinson was incessantly intrigued with all the ropes on board and their many uses. Having been recognized for years as a cowboy so adept with a lariat it was said he could write poetry with his rope, he appreciated skilled handling of twine in any circumstance. And there were plenty of circumstances aboard ship, as there were ropes everywhere, doing everything.

  “Them boys sure know how to handle them ropes,” he observed one afternoon to Ensign Ian Scott, who ofttimes served as tour guide and author of all information related to the ship and the sea.

  “Lines.”

  “Lines?”

  “Lines. Once a length of rope is put to work aboard ship it is no longer referred to as a rope, but as a line,” the ensign explained.

  “Hmmm,” Rawhide Robinson muttered as he mulled that idea over. “You only got but the one name? They’re all lines, from them up there holding them sails, to that one over there lashing down that box?”

  “That’s right, Mister Robinson. Lines, one and all.”

  “It’s Rawhide, I done told you. But, lines. Cowboys, now, they wouldn’t never be satisfied with but one or two names for ropes. Why, we’re as apt to call it a reata as rope. And there’s cable and catgut, clothesline and coil. Or gutline and fling line and twine. Lariat, lasso, lass rope. Ketch rope and hemp. Maguey, manila, mecate. It might be a string, a skin string, or a seago. And, naturally, a line. But no matter what you call it, I don’t reckon I’ve ever seen a cowboy any handier with a rope than these sailor boys,” Rawhide Robinson
said. “ ’Specially when it comes to tyin’ knots.”

  The officer laughed.

  “What’s so funny, Ensign Ian?”

  “Well, Mister Robinson, there are knots, as you presume. You’ll find them at the end of a line. But, other than that, it’s not a knot.”

  “A knot’s not a knot?”

  “No, it’s not, sir. When we tie two lines together, we don’t call it a knot, but a ‘bend.’ Which means, I have been told, to ‘join.’ If we are securing, or tying off a line we use not a knot, but a hitch.”

  “Well I’ll be hornswoggled. You got all them names for knots, but only one name for a rope. Don’t make no sense at all, to my way of thinking.”

  “Give it time, Mister Robinson, you will—”

  “I told you enough times already not to call me that. No more of this ‘Mister Robinson’ nonsense. It’s Rawhide.”

  “Yes, sir, Mister Rawhide. As I was saying, you will grow accustomed to nautical nomenclature in the course of time.”

  “I suppose so. Come to that, tyin’ a hitch in a line ain’t a whole lot different than takin’ a dally with a reata.”

  They strolled some more over the deck as the young navy man pointed out this and that to the curious cowboy.

  “Everybody seems to keep plenty busy around here.”

  “True enough. Shipboard life can become mundane without work.”

  “That why you keep havin’ men do jobs that don’t need doin’?”

  Ensign Scott laughed. “I can assure you, sir, every task needs doing. Perhaps not as often as they are done, but even routine work is better than idleness. Keeping men at sea occupied maintains morale and allows less time for mischief.”

  “I reckon that’s so,” the cowboy said as the pair descended a ladder down a hatch so the officer could keep tabs on the retrofitting of the ship’s hold.

  “The work is coming along fine,” Ensign Ian Scott observed as they watched sailors measuring and marking, sawing and shimming, fitting and hammering as they worked their way around crates and barrels, containers and kegs, boxes and hogsheads. “Of course there will be much to do once the military supplies are offloaded, freeing up the remainder of the hold. But we are off to a good start with the construction of stalls.”

  “They’re roomy, that’s for sure,” Rawhide Robinson said, tipping back his thirteen-gallon hat and squatting in the sawdust to lean against a bulkhead. “Them horses will have plenty of room to move around. Too much, maybe.”

  “Horses? What horses?”

  The question prompted a perplexed look from the cowboy.

  “Why, them horses we’re going after in Arabia and where all. Arabian horses bred for desert life, for use by the army in Texas and the Southwest.”

  The answer prompted a perplexed look from Ensign Ian.

  “But Mister Robinson—”

  “—Rawhide—”

  “—Mister Rawhide. It’s not horses these stalls are meant to hold. Nor is it horses we shall be acquiring at eastern Mediterranean ports of call.”

  The pronouncement prompted a perplexed look from the cowboy.

  “Whatever can you mean? Of course we’re goin’ after horses.”

  “Oh, no, sir. You are misinformed.”

  “Then what in blazes am I doing on this here boat?”

  “Ship, sir.”

  “Ship, then. If we ain’t goin’ after horses what are we goin’ after?”

  The question prompted a pained look on the young officer’s face. An expression, in fact, bordering on panic.

  One by one, sailors let their tools fall idle. Hammering stopped. Sawing ceased. Augers stilled. Conversation came to a halt. It became so quiet in the hold you could hear motes of sawdust fall to the floor. Had not every man present been holding his breath, it is likely inhalation and exhalation would have roared like hurricane-force winds in the silence.

  Unable to endure the pain, the agony, the anguish any longer, Ensign Ian Scott uttered a sound. A single word. Two simple syllables that squeaked out of his larynx, up his throat, and through his lips with a softness so soft the sound was lost in the pent-up breath that accompanied it.

  “What?” Rawhide Robinson asked.

  “Camels,” came the reply, but still so soft as to be unintelligible.

  “What?”

  The officer cleared his throat. “Camels,” he said, barely above a whisper.

  “Camels?”

  “Camels.”

  “Camels!”

  “Camels.”

  “Camels,” Rawhide Robinson uttered under his breath as realization arrived. Slowly, ever so slowly, his boot heels scraped across the deck as the pointed toes plowed furrows through the sawdust. Slowly, ever so slowly, his back slid down the bulkhead until his backside landed and his legs splayed outward.

  “Camels,” he said again.

  CHAPTER SIX

  * * *

  “Shiver me timbers!” is a well-worn phrase in seafaring lore. In sum, it expresses fear, awe, astonishment, surprise, shock, bewilderment, wonder. But it is an expression born of the actual trembling and quaking of the frame of a wooden sailing ship in angry seas as waves pound the timbers and threaten the very breakup of the vessel.

  It is a vociferation ill-suited, owing to its weakness, to describing the ruction, the ruckus, the hubbub, the turmoil, the perturbation emanating from the captain’s quarters on the USS Cordwood once Rawhide Robinson came to himself and regained his senses following the disclosure of the nature of the cargo to come, with which he would have association.

  “Camels!”

  The word was heard to echo in the holds and bilges, ricochet off the masts and rigging, reflect off the sheets and sails, bounce off the bulkheads and hull, and, as it were, shiver the very timbers of the ship.

  It was uncomfortably close in the captain’s quarters as Rawhide Robinson filled the air with a torrent of language, a flood of words, an inundation of vituperation. Captain Clemmons withered before the storm, sitting in shocked silence as he watched his army counterpart, Major Benjamin Wayne, wilt in the onslaught.

  Rawhide Robinson said, “I’m mad, I tell you! I’m on the prod! I’m ringey and riled and ornery enough to eat the devil with his horns on! Why, I’m just in the mood to toss my own horns and paw up the sod!”

  Major Wayne attempted to wedge his way into the conversation with, “Calm down and let’s discuss this like reasonable men—”

  “Men! You ain’t no man! You ain’t nothin’ but a dirty rotten lowdown skunk!

  “You ain’t worth a barrel of shucks!

  “You’re lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon track!

  “You’re so low you’d have to climb a ladder to kick a gnat on the ankle!

  “You’ve got no more conscience than a cow in a stampede!

  “Why, I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw a post hole!

  “A man might as well try to find hair on a frog as an honest bone in your body!

  “You’re soft as butter on a summer day and weak as water in a whiskey glass!

  “If I was of a violent nature, why, I’d knock you plumb into next week! I’d kick your britches up around your neck so high you could wear them for a collar! I’d stomp a mud puddle in your middle then walk it dry!”

  And so it continued until Rawhide Robinson had overdrawn his account of exclamation points. He rounded the final turn with, “Major Benjamin Wayne, you ain’t no better than a sodbuster!” and topped off his tirade with the ultimate insult:

  “You!—you!—you!—! You ain’t fit to herd sheep!”

  Once the smoke cleared and the stink of sulfur dissipated, Captain Clemmons made a meek attempt at moderation.

  “Robinson,” he said to the cowboy, “there is no doubt you are upset. Am I to understand you have embarked on this expedition and spent these many days at sea unaware that our mission is to secure camels for use by the Army?”

  “Durn right. That’s the story.”

  “Major
Wayne, how did this happen?”

  “I cannot say.”

  “Sure you can say,” Rawhide Robinson said. “That’s the whole trouble. You didn’t say. Nary a word. The word ‘camel’ never once passed your lips. Not yours, nor the officer at that fort I got dragged into, nor that florid-faced sergeant who prodded me out of my dreams to drag me there. Camels! No one ever said camels was what we was after until Ensign Ian let it slip!”

  “That so, Wayne?” the captain asked.

  The major hemmed and hawed, stuttered and stammered, whiffled and waffled, and suffered through fits and starts before spitting out, “I was just following orders.”

  “Hmmph!” said Clemmons.

  “Hmmph!” said Rawhide Robinson. “You knowed, then, that if I knowed it was camels we was after, that instead of bein’ here I would be horseback on the plains, punching cows and living the good life and lounging ’round a campfire instead of puking up my guts into a bucket and swinging in that infernal sling I’m supposed to sleep in, and slipping and sliding all over floors that won’t never stand still.”

  “That was the fear, yes. Those up the chain of command overseeing this project believed you would not consent to accompany the expedition if fully informed of its nature. So, I was ordered to dispense information only on a need-to-know basis. It was the intention of the army that before you were fully briefed that you be beyond the point of no return, as it were.”

  “So you, and all them others, decided to lie to me.”

  Major Wayne’s face colored like port wine, his jaw tightened, and sparks shot from between squinted eyelids.

  “I resent that implication, you two-bit saddle tramp! Not once, not ever, did anyone in the uniform of the United States Army utter one untrue word concerning this expedition!”

  “Bull pucky. You never said nothing about no camels.”

  “That is true.”

  “I was led the whole time to believe it was fine and fleet Arab horses we was after.”

  Major Wayne laughed without humor. “That is not so. While we never mentioned camels, we certainly did not mention horses. Not once. Not ever. Not a word. If you chose to believe we were going after horses, that is purely your own invention, a product of your own imagination, a fantasy formed all on your own.”