Rawhide Robinson Rides a Dromedary

by Rod Miller

  The cowboy’s pronouncement prompted clamorous protests, culminating a collective challenge: “So tell us about a real wind!”

  As was his custom, Rawhide Robinson, the raconteur took his time, allowing anticipation to accumulate until it turned to tension. “Here’s how it happened,” he said when he got around to speaking.

  “I was between jobs at the time, ridin’ the grub line and looking for any work that could be done horseback. Seeing no prospects in the country I was in, I set off across this empty ol’ desert hopin’ for a shortcut to other ranges.

  “Well, it clouded over and I lost all sense of direction as you can do in empty country—or at sea, I might add. Somehow, I wandered into a part of that desert that was solid rock. Nothing but stone underfoot, and more of the same no matter where you looked. I’m telling you, boys, that place was so barren there was no sign of trees or bushes or brush or even a blade of grass. As dry and barren as Lot’s wife once she turned into a pillar of salt, it was.”

  The cowboy paused to locate a water barrel and sip a dipper full until it was empty.

  “C’mon!” the sailors chorused. “Tell the story!”

  “Sorry, boys. Just thinking about that place parches my gullet.” He squatted against the rail and carried on. “I wandered around out there for a few days, hardly knowing up from down, let alone compass directions. Ran out of water and soon my horse and me was sufferin’ from the lack. I don’t know about that horse, but my tongue swelled up and felt as dry and hard as an ax handle. Hot as an oven full of biscuits, it was, even though the sun didn’t show at all through them thick clouds that kept on building up and boiling around.

  “About the time we was on our last legs, both me and the horse, a little breeze kicked up. Felt mighty fine, I’ll tell you. But the novelty soon wore off and the breeze turned into a wind. A hot wind, that felt like it would scorch the skin right off a feller. Somehow that horse I was ridin’ had sense enough to turn his head into the tempest and back up ag’in’ one of the few boulders thereabouts that hadn’t blowed away already.

  “I’ll tell you, boys, it ain’t The Cowboy Way to pull leather when in fear of losin’ your seat in the saddle. But I ain’t ashamed to say that on that particular occasion I was grabbin’ the apple, squeezin’ the biscuit, chokin’ the nubbin, and what-ever other name you care to apply to hangin’ onto the saddle horn for all I was worth. Even at that, my feet lost the stirrups and my thighs lost the swells and my backside lost the seat. So there I was, both hands wrapped around that saddle horn and holding on tight while the rest of me whipped in the wind like a flag on a mast.”

  Again, Rawhide Robinson paused in the telling, squatting against the rail and examining his hands—front, back, and fingernails—as if they were strangers. Or, perhaps, he was marveling at them for saving his very life that day in the wind.

  Patience soon ran thin among members of the audience.

  “Get on with it!”

  “Say it!”

  “Tell the story!”

  “What happened?”

  Eventually, the cowboy raised his eyes to the crowd, cocked his thirteen-gallon hat, and re-commenced the telling of the tale.

  “At first, it weren’t nothin’ but wind. Then dust kicked up. And dirt. And rocks. I was pelted and pummeled and pounded and thumped and thrashed till there wasn’t a stitch on me. The only thing in the way of clothes I was still wearing was my hat, and that was on account of that wind kept driving it farther and farther down on my noggin till the brim was wedged ag’in’ my shoulders and couldn’t go no farther.

  “Then, it set into raining. Leastways I guess it was rain ’cause it was wet. But it fell sideways instead of down, so not much of it ever hit the ground. Good thing, too, or it would have made a river and washed me and that horse downstream to who knows where.

  “When that wind decided to let up some, my seat found the saddle again and my feet the stirrups. After that tempest died down to being but a breeze again, I ventured to work my hat back up to its accustomed place, on my head instead of my shoulders. Once I did, and the gift of sight was once again mine, what I saw was an amazement.”

  Again, the cowboy paused. And again, the sailors protested.

  “Take it easy, boys,” Rawhide Robinson said. “All in good time.”

  “Ain’t no time like the present,” a sailor said. “So get to it.”

  So he did.

  “Well, boys—and this is the honest truth—every inch of that rock was gone. See, that wind had filled that whole valley with dirt. Soil. Must have been feet, maybe rods, thick of it.”

  The sailors protested (in alphabetical order):

  “Balderdash!”

  “Baloney!”

  “Bull!”

  “Bunkum!”

  “Claptrap!”

  “Folderol!”

  “Hogwash!”

  “Horsefeathers!”

  “Malarkey!”

  “Nonsense!”

  “Rubbish!”

  “Poppycock!”

  “Pshaw!”

  “Tommyrot!”

  “Twaddle!”

  The cowboy allowed the sequential dissent to run its course. Then, “I’m here to tell you, boys, it’s the truth. Happened just like I said. But that ain’t the best of it. Not only had that wind filled that valley right up with soil, it was already carpeted with grass!”

  Again, the sailors expressed dismay.

  And again, Rawhide Robinson held firm. “Absolute truth. Now, I can’t say what happened. I don’t know if that wind scattered seeds and that rain watered them enough to sprout, or if it blew in sod and unrolled it like a rug. Whatever happened, there I was, sittin’ horseback atop a hill in the middle of what looked to be the finest cow country ever invented. Grass belly-high to my horse as far as I could see, only interrupted now and then by a lake or stream of water that wind and rain must have dumped. Truth is, boys, I had to pinch myself to be sure I hadn’t died and gone to heaven.”

  “An unlikely place for a liar like yourself,” some skeptical sailor said.

  Rawhide Robinson grinned. “Be that as it may, there I was. I can see it as clear as if it was yesterday. And that, boys, is proof in the pudding that none of you knows what a real wind is like.”

  “That’s it? That’s all? That’s the end of the story?”

  “More or less. Oh, there’s a little more. With the sun out and the world back on its axis, I found my way out of that valley. Rode on back to Texas and worked a deal with a cowman I knew to pasture his herd on shares. Drove a bunch up there to that valley and started us up a ranch. I’ll tell you, the livin’ was so good for them cows in that country they all had had twin calves come spring. And them calves put on pounds like none you ever seen and was at market weight before they was even weaned. Like I said, that place was paradise.

  “But after a time, livin’ easy got to be a bit dull, so I settled up with my partner, saddled up and rode off into the sunset one day, never to return.”

  “What did ya do next?”

  “That, boys, is a story for another time,” Rawhide Robinson said as he leaned against the rail, spraddled his legs before him, tipped his thirteen-gallon hat over his eyes and set into a serious bout of snoring.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  * * *

  Rawhide Robinson stood in the center of the busy street turning in circles and sidestepping to avoid traffic. Coaches and carts and wagons and buggies of all kinds, hauled by ponies and burros and horses and oxen and men maneuvered for position and passage. People of all sizes stepped lively, some toting burdens bigger than themselves, others with baggage and rucksacks and satchels of every shape. Velocipedes added to the traffic, their riders contributing to the babel and bedlam of hundreds, thousands, of yawping, yelling, yammering voices.

  An occasional word reminiscent of the border Spanish familiar to the cowboy winged by now and then, but the language—languages—he heard were alien and exotic in his overworked ears. And what
he noticed most about all the talking was that flapping hands were as much a part of it as flapping lips. Given all the gestures and gesticulations, Rawhide Robinson was of the opinion that if he bound the hands of these people they would be rendered mute.

  Palermo.

  That’s where Ensign Ian Scott had informed him they were. And where they would be for a few days, offloading supplies from the USS Cordwood to help provision other naval ships that called at the busy port. According to the well-informed young officer, Palermo, on the island of Sicily, part of the Kingdom of Italy, had been an important seaport for more than 2,000 years—all of which was news to the Texas cowpuncher.

  Despite the confusion and commotion, Rawhide Robinson enjoyed exploring the cosmopolitan city. Topping his list was the chuck. While its spices and seasonings were unfamiliar to his Southwestern palate, he found the food toothsome—and a welcome break from the flavorless fare he had been fed aboard ship these many weeks. Accompanying every Palermo meal were wines of sundry flavors and shades—more kinds of wine, the cowboy calculated, than there were hairs in a horse’s tail.

  Accompanying the city’s appeal were perils. More than once, the thirteen-gallon hat atop his head came in handy as a flail to fend off pickpockets attempting to pilfer the pelf from his pants’ pouches. Desperados lurking in dark alleys with their eyes on robbery hightailed it in the opposite direction upon encountering the cowboy’s un-holstered Samuel Colt six-shooter.

  But the greatest danger, Rawhide Robinson learned, was an organized gang of criminals whose very name struck fear into the heart of every innocent on the island—Cosa Nostra. Members of the malicious mob, the Mafiosi, controlled all crime and much commerce in the city, extorting businesses, smuggling, pandering, gambling, moneylending, and—as the cowboy was to learn—kidnapping.

  Warned by their officers to be ever alert, the allure of dimly lit bars in the wee hours and the influence of ever-present wine sometimes impeded the sailors’ attentiveness. And so it was that Rawhide Robinson, along with the ship’s officers, learned of the shanghaiing of a half-dozen sailors from the Cordwood’s ranks. While under the influence of spirits, it seems, six sailors were spirited away to an unidentified location for an unknown purpose.

  But all was soon revealed.

  As some suspected, the kidnapping was the work of the Cosa Nostra; its purpose, ransom for their release.

  “It is best you meet the demand if you desire to again see the men alive,” the ranking officer of the Carabinieri told Captain Howard Clemmons.

  “^%@*+$!” came the vociferous reply in a cloud of pipe smoke. “What kind of lawman are you, willing to knuckle under to a gang of criminals?”

  “My apologies, signore. But in Palermo, we learn to deal in realities. And the reality is, your marinai, your sailors, are in the hands of very evil men. Men whose power extends beyond this harbor, beyond this city, beyond this island.”

  “So?!”

  “So, there is nothing to be done, amico mio, but pay the ransom to La Cosa Nostra. Even then, I fear, the result may be less than satisfactory.”

  The captain exhaled a contemptuous cloud of smoke into the policeman’s face. “What you’re saying, then, is that you and your sorry excuse for a police force will not do anything to rescue my men. Need I remind you, sir, that these men are citizens of the United States of America and in service to their country?”

  “Of this I am well aware, signore. But, as I have said, there is nothing we can do. And, I declare most fervently, there is nothing you can do other than as I have advised. You are dealing here with forces beyond your reckoning,” the police officer said. With that, he stood, adjusted his cap, clapped his heels together, and offered the captain a salute. “And now, Capitano Clemmons, as I have work to do, I invite you to leave my office.”

  Clemmons and Major Benjamin Wayne departed and, on the street outside, met the waiting Rawhide Robinson.

  “What’s the word?”

  Clemmons’s tight-lipped reply barely contained the anger evident in his florid face. “Pay up.”

  The cowboy replied with wide eyes and a slack jaw.

  “No help at all,” Wayne said. “Says there’s nothing they can do. Claims this mob or gang or whatever you care to call it is too powerful. Wouldn’t be surprised if they were in league with one another.”

  Rawhide Robinson tipped back his thirteen-gallon hat and scratched his head, pursed his lips and furrowed his brow. “I got an idea.”

  “What’s that?” the officers chorused.

  “Don’t look too noticeable-like, but there’s a feller over the way leaned up ag’in’ a lamp post.”

  After some shuffling of feet and squirming around to disguise furtive glances, Clemmons and Wayne acknowledged seeing the suspicious character.

  “He showed up ’bout the same time we did,” said the cowboy. “I had the sneakin’ suspicion he was followin’ us. Let’s find out.”

  Clemmons said, “What you got in mind?”

  “You-all head back to the ship. Unless I miss my guess, he’ll follow. I’ll go t’other way and slip around behind him—he’ll be followin’ you and I’ll be followin’ him. Then we’ll see what happens.”

  With that, the cowboy crossed the street and ducked down an alley, rattled his hocks around another corner, then another and followed the narrow winding street, making his way back to the thoroughfare that led to the seaport. As he suspected, the furtive fellow formerly propped up by a lamp post lurked in the shadows and doorways, stealthily slipping along behind the captain and the major.

  Rawhide Robinson was anything but unobtrusive in his cowboy regalia, but he assumed—rightly so, as events will bear out—that the villain’s attention was riveted to the officers and he would not be watching his back trail.

  As they neared the waterfront, the pursuer closed the distance between himself and his prey, and Rawhide Robinson did likewise, slipping up behind the mobster, prodding him in the small of the back with the barrel of his pistol.

  “You hold it right there, you sniveling coyote!”

  Clemmons and Wayne turned on their heels to close off any avenue of escape.

  “What is it you want?” Clemmons said.

  The man said nothing.

  “Speak up, man!” Wayne said.

  The man said nothing.

  Rawhide Robinson pressed the barrel of the revolver into the man’s back hard enough to cause his belly button to bulge. With that, with eyes agog and beads of sweat popping out on his forehead, he launched into a tirade of indecipherable prattle accompanied by frantic gesticulation.

  “Let’s take him aboard ship,” Clemmons said. “We’ll find someone to make sense of what he’s saying.”

  Once they cleared the gangplank, Rawhide Robinson grabbed a fistful of the man’s collar and hefted him onto a hogshead. “Now you sit there till I say you can move,” he said.

  Within minutes, Ensign Ian Scott appeared with a deckhand in tow, having fulfilled with his usual alacrity the assignment to find a translator.

  “See what this vermin has to say,” the captain said.

  The multi-lingual sailor spoke.

  The captured man responded with a torrent and tirade in the Italian language, again accompanied by wild waving of arms and hands. The sailor followed up with other questions, answered with more babbling and flapping.

  The multi-lingual sailor spoke. “He says, Cap’n, that they got our six men locked up where we won’t never find ’em, and that if we wants to see ’em ag’in, we got to pony up 6,000 lira—a thousand apiece.”

  “#&%^@*!” Clemmons said. “What’s that in real money?”

  The ever-well-informed Ensign Ian Scott stepped forward. “Exchange rates vary somewhat, sir, depending. But 6,000 lira would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 240 pounds sterling, which would amount to about eleven hundred dollars.”

  “Hmmmph,” the captain said. With furrowed brow, he signaled Wayne and Scott and the other officers nearby to gather
’round. A steady murmur arose from the huddle as ideas were exchanged, thoughts conveyed, scenarios explored, and possibilities bandied about. Circling the circle stood a round of sailors attempting to listen in.

  Meanwhile, the Mafioso atop the hogshead observed the officers, studied the sailors, and saw in the concentrated attention the opportunity to escape. He hopped off the hogshead and headed for the gangplank.

  But what he did not see among the inattentive seafarers was Rawhide Robinson, leaning against the starboard rail and watching the detainee’s every move. As soon as the captive’s shoes hit the deck the cowboy snatched a lariat hanging on a nearby belaying pin, (Note: Ever since Rawhide Robinson’s heroic display of reata expertise with the roping of the humpback whale’s tail to free the ship from the doldrums, the sailors had taken up cowboy-style roping en masse, practicing the craft as time and circumstance permitted; therefore, reasonable facsimiles of lariats were widely available aboard the USS Cordwood.) shook out a loop and after a triplet of spins to build momentum, accomplished a perfect heel catch.

  As he jerked his slack, the tripped-up hostage tripped and hit the deck with a resounding thump that shivered the ship’s very timbers. Before the collapsed captive caught his breath, Rawhide Robinson cast his coils over a yard arm and elevated the malefactor until he dangled, head down, above the deck, shifting in the wind. Once the would-be-escapee caught his breath, invective poured forth in a torrent. Even in his upside-down position, wild gesticulations accompanied his vociferations.

  “Nice catch, Robinson,” Captain Clemmons said. “Now what?”

  “Well, now, Captain, I don’t know what you-all have figured out with all your palavering. But I reckon if we let that feller hang there for a while, he’ll calm right down and assume a more cooperative mood. Then, I’ll bet you spur rowels against silver dollars we can convince him to guide us to where they got them sailors hid up.”

  And so it happened.

  The parade, led by the bound bandit, wound through streets and alleys and walkways and lanes. The assemblage of United States Navy officers and sailors, a United States Army officer, and a Texas cowboy attracted no small amount of attention as they wended their way. Long guns bristled like porcupine quills, pistols protruded from belts and holsters, and saps and belaying pins slapped palms, counting cadence as the men marched informally into the seamy side of Palermo.