Rawhide Robinson Rides a Dromedary

by Rod Miller

  “Cargo, you say? We carry nothing of value—only the ship’s stores.”

  The pirate captain laughed. “You underestimate me, sir. Although a humble Levantine, I am not such a fool as to believe a United States Navy supply ship would sail around the Mediterranean empty.”

  “And yet it is so.”

  Triggered by some unseen signal, grappling hooks sailed from the pirate ship, seeking purchase aboard the Cordwood. No sooner had they taken hold than the rail of the navy ship bristled with rifles, handguns, and swords as nearly all forty of her officers and enlisted men—and Rawhide Robinson and Harry—stood ready to repel any attempt at boarding.

  “Aren’t you going to cut those lines?” Major Wayne asked Clemmons.

  “Not yet. For the time being, I want to keep them close. They are unlikely to fire their guns while alongside. And, as you see, we have the high ground, and likely a more lethal complement of small arms. If they storm us, we will repel them, cast off, and unleash the guns or ram them. I assure you, Major, despite appearances there is little danger in our present situation. It’s treasure they want, not a fight.”

  “I wish I shared your confidence, Captain. But since the cargo on this ship is my responsibility, I am concerned.”

  Clemmons laughed, prompting the turning of heads all along the rail—and aboard the pirate ship—to see who found humor amid the tension.

  The pirate captain again demanded to board and again Clemmons turned aside the demand. “I assure you, there is nothing aboard this ship that would interest you. We are on a specialized mission and carry no cargo of any value to you.”

  “I do not believe it! I will see for myself. Throw down a ladder at this instant!”

  “Not on your life. If you so much as attempt to set foot on my ship you are a dead man.”

  “And if you do not allow it, my friend, you are a dead man. As a matter of fact, you are already a dead man and do not know it.” The brigand gave orders to his seamen in a language no one aboard the Cordwood understood and the pirates brandished their weapons. The sound of ratcheting hammers rolled along the Cordwood’s rail in response.

  But as the men shouldered their rifles and readied their revolvers, several of them felt themselves crowded from behind—nudged and shoved, jostled and jolted, bumped and butted.

  Surprise rippled through the pirate ranks as, all along the naval ship’s rail, sailors were shunted aside and the heads and necks of dromedaries stretched over the bulwark to stare down placidly at the attackers. The shock and awe the camels caused soon turned to laughter. For while the pirates were not unfamiliar with camels, seeing the animals on the high seas was an unfamiliar and unexpected eventuality.

  The surprise and laughter retreated briefly before returning as the giant tulu shouldered his way between Captain Clemmons and Major Wayne. The camel, so tall he loomed over all but the sails, bent over the rail and let loose a rich, resounding, rumbling, resonating, reverberating burp.

  Hilarity erupted on both ships and continued through at least three strident demands for “Silence!” from the pirate captain.

  The laughter died down after a bit and the buccaneer boss demanded, “What is the meaning of this?!”

  Captain Clemmons smiled. “This, my friend, is our cargo.”

  “Camels! Camels are your cargo?”

  The navy officer nodded.

  “What kind of fool would put these smelly, stinking animals aboard a ship? Are you crazy?”

  Captain Clemmons did not respond.

  Major Wayne did not respond.

  Rawhide Robinson did not respond.

  Hurry, however, did. She scrambled from her place on deck into the rigging and, dangling there, presented the pirate a piece of her mind.

  “Quiet! Do not speak so of these noble beasts! You!—You!—you, who are lower than a steaming heap of camel dung have no cause to speak ill of useful animals. You are nothing more than a common thief. Less than an animal yourself!”

  The pirate captain reddened and with the ring of steel, drew his cutlass from the jeweled scabbard at his waist and stepped onto the rail of his ship.

  “I shall have that lass’s tongue for such impertinence!”

  Rawhide Robinson extended his arm to its full length, centered the bore of his Colt revolver on a spot an inch above and between the buccaneer’s eyes. “Stand right there,” he hissed. “You twitch a single hair of that scraggly mustache of yours and I will put smoke in your face and a window in your skull as sure as we’re both a-standing here.”

  With fire still smoldering in his eyes, the pirate sheathed his short sword and addressed Captain Clemmons. “Do I have your word as a gentleman that these—these—these camels are your only cargo?”

  Rawhide Robinson responded. “He don’t owe you his word on that nor any other subject. He done told you once already. Now you had best put aside any notions you have of causin’ us any more ruckus and get that boat of yours out of here before I ventilate you.”

  Tulu put a period (or exclamation point if you prefer) at the end of the cowboy’s soliloquy with a repeat performance of his exemplary eruction.

  With the alacrity of obeying an implied command, sword-wielding sailors aboard the Cordwood sliced through the pirate ship’s mooring lines and watched the xebec slowly drift away, then watched the oarsmen maneuver the ship into a running wind as other hands furled the lateen sails and the sleek ship fairly slid across the sea.

  As the Cordwood’s officers and sailors scurried about getting the ship underway again, Harry and Rawhide Robinson helped Hurry stow the camels in their stalls under the shed on the main deck.

  “Hurry!” Captain Clemmons shouted after issuing his orders.

  The girl sidled over to where the captain and Major Wayne waited. Harry and Rawhide Robinson hustled over in case Hurry required defense of her actions, or support of same.

  “Young lady,” the captain said with a wrinkled brow. “What on earth prompted you to turn out the camels like that?”

  She shrugged. “I thought an impasse was near and sought to avoid it. It was my belief that a display of something as surprising as ships of the desert on the deck of a ship at sea would astonish the pirates and convince them to leave us be.”

  Hurry studied the furrowed foreheads of the military leaders but could read nothing there. (Had they been camels, on the other hand, their every emotion, intention, determination, resolution, reflection, rumination, cogitation, and contemplation would be as clear as crystal.)

  “Young lady, you listen to me and you listen good—”

  “—Now you hold on a minute there, Cap’n!”

  “Robinson, hear me out! As I was saying, Hurry, your actions during our recent imbroglio were—how to put it? Inspired, to say the least. Inventive. And, most of all, effective. Were you a sailor or officer under my command I would recommend you for honors—a medal for meritorious service, at the least.”

  Major Wayne said, “I concur completely. Despite my years of military service, I saw no way out of those difficulties short of bloodshed. Your performance was bold, and as the captain says, inspired.”

  Hurry hardly had time to blush before Ibrahim clawed his way out from under a pile of coiled lines—his hiding place, as it happens, during the pirate attack—shouting and hollering and engaging in all manner of histrionics, most of which were directed at Hurry.

  “What’s he saying?” Rawhide Robinson said to Harry.

  “He is angry that Huri handled his camel. He says she has no business doing so, as the tulu is his responsibility. He says she is not capable of controlling his animal. He says she is not worthy to lay hands on it. He says—”

  Rawhide Robinson had heard enough, albeit second-hand. He clomped across the deck in his high-topped, high-heeled cowboy boots on a beeline for Ibrahim with his forefinger shaking with every step.

  “Now you listen here, you cowardly cur! You ain’t got enough sand in your craw to make a camel close his nose! Why, there’s a yello
w streak down your spine so wide it wraps all the way around to your brisket! There you was, hidin’ in the shade of the wagon whilst Hurry was savin’ the day!” he said, all the while backing Ibrahim up step-by-step with his pointer finger stopping near enough his nose with every shake he could feel the breeze.

  And he continued. “Compared to this here girl, you ain’t fit to muck out these camel’s stalls. She’ll do to ride the river with, but I wouldn’t spit on your sorry hide if it was afire. Why, if it was up to me, I’d drop you over the side just to see if your swimming is as pitiful as your pluck.”

  And he continued. “If I hear tell of you uttering one cross word at Hurry or raising your voice or even so much as lookin’ at her cross-eyed, you’ll have me to deal with. I ain’t a violent man by nature, but I swear on my dear departed mother’s grave that I will stomp a mudhole in you then walk it dry,” he said with a final wag of his now-weary index finger at the cowering Turk.

  “Translate that!” he said to Harry.

  Harry smiled. “There are no words for what you say. But I think he gets the point.”

  “Ensign Scott!” Captain Clemmons hollered. As he waited for the junior officer, he said to Harry, “You may not be able to translate that cowboy vernacular, but make this clear to Ibrahim: his cowardice, laziness, and all-around contemptuousness have earned him a day in chains.” Then, “Ensign Scott, escort Ibrahim to the brig. He is to be confined for twenty-four hours on a diet of bread and water.”

  Ensign Scott saluted the captain.

  Harry deciphered the captain’s words for the fuming Ibrahim.

  Ibrahim erupted in angry protest, but bit off his objection with the mere rise of Rawhide Robinson’s digit.

  Before the young officer carried out his assignment, he inched up to Rawhide Robinson and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “What is it, Ensign Ian?”

  “Rawhide, when you were talking to that pirate, you told him to ‘get his boat out of here,’ or words to that effect. I am obliged to tell you that a xebec is a ship, not a boat.”

  The cowboy contemplated—if only for an instant—employing his powerful pointer in Ensign Ian Scott’s direction.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  * * *

  As the sun sank slowly in the west, Rawhide Robinson hunkered down on the deck of the USS Cordwood, savoring a cup of coffee and contemplating the day’s events. Several sailors and some officers likewise sat, stood, settled, squatted, spraddled, and scrooched around. Conversation, naturally, chewed over the confrontation with the pirates.

  “Say, cowboy,” one said. “You ever before found yourself in a standoff like that?”

  “Oh, sure. That little tiff didn’t amount to much compared to some I’ve seen.”

  “Pshaw!” another sailor said. “That weren’t no ‘little tiff.’ I was afeared the shootin’ would start anytime!”

  “He’s right,” said another. “That was a pretty dicey business.”

  “Yeah. Had it been any worse, some of us wouldn’t have survived.”

  Rawhide Robinson smiled. “Sure. But the shootin’ didn’t start. The time I’m a-thinkin’ of, the lead was flying like a swarm of mosquitoes. The fact that I wasn’t perforated like a screen door was downright lucky.”

  “Well, tell us!”

  “What happened?”

  “Where?”

  “When?”

  “Why?”

  “How?”

  Wiggling down into a more comfortable crouch, Rawhide Robinson tipped back his thirteen-gallon hat, swallowed the last sip of his stimulating liquid refreshment, and heaved a long sigh. “It’s like this,” he said.

  “One time I and a crew of Texas drovers took a mixed herd up into the west end of Colorado to stock a ranch there. The place was owned by some nob from Scotland who had more money than he knew how to spend. Thing was, he had a brother down in Texas who had even more money. And it was that Texas brother’s ranch that supplied the stock. Anyway, we got the cattle to Colorado without incident and I was fixin’ to mosey on back to Texas with the herd money in my saddlebags—gold coins, it was, along with some bank notes and drafts and other such items of legal tender—when that Scotchman asked me for a favor.

  “He had this shotgun, see, that was a family heirloom he wanted me to carry back to his brother. Oh, it was quite the piece of weaponry—double-barreled eight-gauge goose gun, it was. Weighed about as much as a yearling steer, it did, and the bores in those barrels looked wide enough to drive that same steer through. Darn near the size of those in the cannons on this here boat, they was. The metal on that gun was engraved with these real pretty swirly curlicue designs and polished all shiny, the wood carved and crosshatched and buffed to a glossy gleam. It had twin triggers and—”

  “Enough with the gun, already!” an impatient sailor interrupted.

  “Tell the story!” another said.

  “Get to the shootin’!” said another.

  “Boys! Boys!” Rawhide Robinson said. “In the immortal words of the great Bard of Avon—I believe it was in his play Hamlet—‘Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper sprinkle cool patience.’ I’ll get to it in due time, so you-all just relax and enjoy the ride. Now, where was I?”

  “Nowhere, yet!” a still-impatient sailor complained.

  “You was gettin’ ready to go back to Texas,” one, more helpful, offered.

  “Right. So I was. Well, then, here’s what happened. I stowed that shotgun in my saddle boot and headed for the high country, wanting to see what had become of Pike’s Peak and all the mining camps and such since I was there last.

  “I was rambling along through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains when I came across this high mountain valley. Oh, it was right pretty—tall trees all around, a nice little lake, grassy meadows—well you get the picture, I guess. What I didn’t know until I broke out into an open place was that there was a road agent convention goin’ on at the same time. One whole end of that valley was chockablock with criminals—”

  “Baloney!”

  “Bunk!”

  “Balderdash!”

  “Blarney!”

  “Bull!”

  “It’s true, boys, sure as I’m sittin’ here. Call it what you will—desperado rendezvous, confab of crooks, highwayman assemblage, outlaw powwow, robber rally, bandit clambake—it don’t much matter what handle you attach to it. The fact is, most every man—and more than a few females—in all of the West with larcenous leanings had showed up there to do what folks do at such gatherings. I’m tellin’ you, it was a regular congress of corruption.

  “What I didn’t know when I rode into that nest of vipers was that they knew I was coming. Somehow, the holdup hotline had put out word that I was afield with saddlebags full of abundance. So, they were laying for me.

  “Before I knew it, I was seeing spots before my eyes—and every spot was the hole in the muzzle of a firearm aimed right at me. Now, I ain’t one to shun a fight when fighting is called for. Nor am I a man who’ll take a hand in a rigged game. So I ain’t ashamed to say I turned tail and told that horse with the rowels of my spurs that it was time to run.

  “And run we did, down that mountain valley with bullets buzzin’ around us like a horde of hornets. Just when I thought we had the hundreds of them outlaws on my tail outrun, others started angling down out of the timber on every side, throwing lead as thick as the others.

  “With them hemming us in thataway, there wasn’t nowhere to go but into that little lake I told you about. So me and that horse splashed into that oversized puddle so fast we didn’t have time to sink or swim before shoring up on this little island out in the middle.

  “I thought to keep going right on across the island and into the water and exit the lake on the opposite shore. But, wouldn’t you know it, them outlaws had the place surrounded. Every time that horse poked his snout out of the timber, a solid wall of slugs, balls, bullets, shot, and shrapnel would drive us back.

  “Well, boys, it was as plai
n as the brand on a barbered beef that I was in a bad jackpot. And I couldn’t see no way out of it short of cashin’ in my chips and meetin’ my Maker. Which I wasn’t of a mind to do at the time.

  “So, I set in to thinking. I contemplated and cogitated. Ruminated and reflected. Deliberated and speculated. Studied and scrutinized. Mulled and mused. Considered and concentrated.

  “By and by, I had an idea,” Rawhide Robinson said.

  The cowboy chronicler then lapsed into a silence as pensive as that of a man pondering the expanse of eternity. Eventually, the sailors’ impatience heated up to the temperature of annoyance, emitted a steam of irritation, then boiled over into exasperation. In answer to their irate pleas, he proceeded.

  “I could see there was no way I was getting off that island and onto the shore. Neither that horse nor I was likely to sprout wings, so we couldn’t fly off that island. We couldn’t go over and we couldn’t go across and we couldn’t go around and we couldn’t go up. That left down.”

  “Down?”

  “Down!?”

  “Down,” Rawhide Robinson said. “Here’s how. I loaded up both barrels of that eight-gauge shotgun—each chamber took a cartridge about the size of a can of peaches . . .

  “I mounted up and took a firm grip on that firearm . . .

  “I spurred up my horse and set off across that island quick as we could caper . . .

  “I jumped that horse off a ledge and into the lake . . .

  “It all happened so fast them bandits on the beach didn’t have time to do anything about it. ’Course they figured they didn’t have to do anything about it, as I would soon be swimming to shore where they would waste no time relieving me of the small fortune in my saddlebags. But, instead, as I said, we went down.”

  “Down!”

  “Down?”

  “Down. Soon as we hit the water we started sinking, and we kept sinking and swimming and swimming and sinking until we hit bottom. So there we were, me and that horse, sittin’ in the basement of said lake. And there, in that aqueous cellar, the genius of my plan was revealed.”