by Gene Curry
He walked to the telephone on the wall and began to crank the handle. Then he changed his mind. I think God must have stayed his hand.”
“God—or something else,” I said, still trying to place this man’s face.
Claggett ignored my remark. Outside, the wagon train was coming to life, the way a train always does when the long journey is about to start. Women called back and forth, and the penned cattle bawled restlessly.
“Hanrahan asked me what I planned to do with the girl’s statement,” the preacher said, “give it to a rival newspaper? No, I said. New York newspapers are filthy rags. What I was going to do, I said, was; to print up tens of thousands of copies of the girl’s statement and throw them from the top of the highest building in the city. The wind would do the rest.”
I stared at him. “You’ve got plenty of nerve, Reverend.”
“You don’t need nerve if you’re not afraid to die. Oh, yes, he offered me money. Said the statement was a lie, but he was a businessman and had to protect himself. No money, I said. Just get Maggie O’Hara out of jail. How on earth could he do that? Find a way, I told him. Try hard, I said. That’s where we left it. I was to come back the next day at the same time and he’d let me know what could be done.”
All I could say was, “I’m surprised you’re still alive.”
“I came close enough to not being,” Claggett said. “It was getting dark when I left Hanrahan’s office. That’s a business district down there, and the streets are quiet when offices and stores close for the night. Instead of going back to my hotel, I went for a walk over toward the Brooklyn Bridge. By the time I got down to the streets below the bridge, three men were following me. The street was empty, and they walked down the middle of it. I stopped, and so did they. Then one of them said I was under arrest for the murder of a prostitute the night before. As the man spoke, he began to draw a revolver from a shoulder holster.”
The man of God paused to drink water. Then he looked at me. “I killed him first. God forgive me, I killed all three of them. Nobody saw me do it, but it convinced Hanrahan. He got the girl out.”
The man seated across the table from me was at least sixty-five years old, gray-bearded and stooped, his long narrow face seamed and burnt by the sun. I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed his hands before: long and supple in spite of his age. I’m not easily surprised, but now I was.
“You can’t be Josiah Claggett,” I said. “It’s been thirty years since—”
“No need to feel awkward about it, Saddler. Most people don’t even remember the name. Most people think I’ve been in my grave for many a year, and that’s all to the good. You weren’t even born when they put me in jail. I did eighteen years before they let me out. What makes you remember me?”
“Maybe because you were the first of the fast guns.” Josiah Claggett’s career as a gunman had started before the Civil War, at a time when handguns used percussion loads instead of cased shells. They said he always carried a couple of extra loaded cylinders to give him an edge. In his time, he had been the most feared outlaw on the old Santa Fe Trail. I never did hear how he got started on the wrong road. Most badmen have somebody to blame, but then most badmen are liars. More than likely, Josiah Claggett had never felt the need to cook up some woeful tale of injustice. Not that it mattered much: he had been as bad a man as ever had lived.
“I did what I did,” Claggett said simply. “I did it because I wanted to do it. Satan had a firm hold on me in those years. I was possessed by the arrogance of the devil himself. No man could kill me, no prison could hold me, and even when they shot me full of holes and threw me in a cell, the fires of rebellion still burned bright. No matter how long it took, I vowed to break out and kill the men who had betrayed me for the reward money. It took them three years to break me. I raised a sledgehammer to brain a guard, the worst of the lot, when suddenly I felt my arms grow weak and a great peace come over me. I dropped the hammer and fell to my knees and began to pray.”
“What did the guard do?” I asked.
“He fired at me—fired twice and missed. I tore open my shirt and told him to fire again. He didn’t. Instead, he yelled that I had gone crazy, so they locked me up with the crazy men.”
“But you got out.”
“It took nearly a year before they put me back with the rest of the prisoners. For a whole year I lived with the scum of the earth, with men so vile that the other prisoners would have killed them if they’d gotten the chance—child-killers, madmen who craved the taste of human flesh, rapists, defilers of animals. But to me all were children of God. I swore that if I ever got out, I would devote the rest of my life to doing good. And—miraculously—I did get out after another fifteen years in that place. The world had forgotten me. I became a preacher and married a good woman and began my new life’s work. You’ve seen my daughter Hannah, my only daughter.”
Something warned me not to ask about Claggett’s wife. All I knew was that she had been a good woman. I wondered where she was now.
Outside, it was dark, and the cook fires were going. Looking at Reverend Claggett, I began to wish I’d gone to Kansas.
Chapter Four
The women were gathered for supper when Claggett and I climbed down from the wagon. In the circle of fires they were something to see: women of all shapes and sizes, ranging from plain to pretty, and all young. Yankee twangs mingled with Southern drawls. I heard women speaking in French, German and Italian; the other languages I had to guess at. The whispering and giggling stopped as soon as Claggett appeared, and they waited for the old reformed killer to say grace.
Mercifully, he didn’t thank the Lord too long or too hard. Then, while the women ate, he told them about me. I was to be the new hunter, guide and man of all work. If it came to wrongdoing, I was to be the constable, and Claggett the judge.
Then it was my turn to talk. Now, I like women and I wanted to tell them nice things, but that wasn’t part of my job. The men I had seen earlier were there, but the only name I knew was Culligan’s.
I told the women what they had to expect out there on the Plains. Rules would be laid down, and they would have to abide by them. Once a wagon was assigned to a place in the line, that position could not be changed, no matter how much dust they had to eat. The wagons were to travel in two lines instead of one. That way the cattle would have more grass to graze on. “Other trains have gone ahead of us, so there won’t always be that much grass. We’ll maintain an even pace, so that one line of wagons doesn’t fall behind the other. When it starts to get dark, the two lines of wagons are to draw in close. If an attack comes, we’ll be able to form a defense much more easily.”
One of the men stood up, and some of the women turned to look at him. He was about my age. I wondered what a sailor was doing in a wagon train. His heavy coat was double-breasted and made of rough blue cloth with brass buttons. Instead of a peaked cap he wore a gray, uncreased farmer’s hat, new-looking despite the dust on it. Somebody had given his face a few lumps not too long before, but it must have been one very tough man, or two or three smaller ones, who had done the beating. This sailor had the look of a man used to giving orders without the easy air of command that comes from being an officer. First or second mate, I figured.
Before he could say anything, Claggett held up his hand. “About time you men were introduced.” He nodded at the whiskey-swilling Irishman. “You already met Rix Culligan, our wheelwright and carpenter. His job is to keep us rolling, and there’s few that can do it as well. Rix will tell you so himself.”
The preacher’s humor was feeble, and it didn’t do a thing to clear the tension from the air. Some of the hostility came from Culligan, and an uncharitable view of his fellow man seemed to come easy to him. I guessed he liked nothing but his work and his whiskey, and a very occasional cheap whore. There might be trouble with Culligan because of his drinking, but he’d, have to push it hard before I killed him. First rule on a long cattle drive is never kill the cook, but in a wagon
train a wheelwright is even more important. Culligan grunted at me in his eloquent way.
Claggett indicated the seaman. “This is Thomas Iversen, late of the good ship Savannah. He was waylaid by harbor thugs in Baltimore and missed his sailing. His ship is going around the Cape, then to San Francisco, where he’ll join her again.”
“Glad to know you, Iversen,” I lied.
“You too, Saddler,” the sailor said, knowing that I wasn’t buying his story. A fast ship—I had heard of the Savannah—would reach California long before we did. He could have signed on another vessel or gone overland by way of Panama. But what he was up to was none of my business, as long as he kept it to himself.
The preacher pointed to a third man, a soft-looking man in his late forties. He looked more out of place than any of the others, and it wasn’t just the well-tailored city clothes rumpled and dirtied by camp life. More than anything, it was his air of unease—-and the twitch in his face that he tried to quiet by touching with a forefinger that betrayed his nervousness. The prairie wind and sun had blistered his face; his fair, freckled skin was the kind that never takes a tan. His upper lip had that slight bulge that comes from wearing a heavy mustache for many years. Now the mustache was gone. Beside him sat a very young girl, slightly built, wearing a wool shirt, canvas trousers and soft, mid-calf boots.
“We’re lucky to have a real doctor with us,” Reverend Claggett said. “Say hello to Dr. Culkin Ames of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.” Claggett touched his hat brim with his finger. “I’m forgetting my manners. The young lady with the doctor is Miss Isabel Ames, his daughter.”
We did some nodding and bowing. Ames was fidgety but friendly—almost too friendly, too eager to please someone he didn’t know. Isabel murmured something I couldn’t hear. I suppose it was a polite howdy-do. She was young, but there was a coolness about her that didn’t go with her years. And even in the firelight she bore no resemblance to her father. That was just as well for her.
“Where are the other men?” the reverend asked Culligan.
“Seeing to the cattle. You want me to go get them?” Claggett said no. He turned to look at Iversen, who was still standing. “Just don’t forget who’s captain of this ship,” the preacher reminded him. For an instant I got a glimpse of the mean man he had been so many years before. How much of the meanness was hidden behind the mild, carefully-phrased words, and the relentless determination to do good?
Iversen backed down under the hard eye of God’s agent on earth. “Nobody’s questioning your judgment, Mr. Claggett. All I want to know is what this man Saddler is going to be. No denying we need a scout and meat-provider, but what’s all this about giving orders? Saying how this and that is to be done? These two lines of wagons, for one thing—lots of wagon trains leave here the way I always seen wagon trains move. Answer me that, Saddler.”
“You don’t listen, commodore,” I said.
Now it was my turn to get a hard eye from the preacher. “Let’s have none of that. I told you the man’s name. It’s Thomas Iversen.”
I saw no reason to back down. “How’s this for an idea, parson. Why don’t you let Thomas Iversen take you across?”
“I could do it,” Iversen said. “It could be done with a compass. They do it in the North African desert all the time.”
I turned back to Reverend Claggett. “Why don’t you rig up some sails while you’re at it? Good luck, friends and neighbors. I’m going to Kansas.”
I was surprised when Culligan spoke up. “The compass idea is bullshit. It would work well enough on the Plains, but once you hit mountains you’d never get a true reading.”
“I’m still going to Kansas,” I said.
“You gave your word,” Claggett said, getting in my way. When our eyes locked for a moment, I knew the meanness in him was far from gone. “You signed on, you have to go.”
I knew he was packing the short gun with which he had killed the three city detectives. I was sure I could beat him, but you never know about these things. “Nobody makes me do anything, not even you,” I said.
Claggett said quietly, “I could.”
“What happens if you’re wrong?” I didn’t want to kill this strange. God-fearing man. Still, if I let him back me down, nothing would go right after that. It’s too bad the world has to be ruled by force, but that’s how it works.
I don’t know what changed his mind, whether it was God or good sense. “What is it you want?” he said. “Say it now, because there isn’t that much time left.”
My hand had been close to my gun, and I kept it where it was. “I want to run this train my own way. You can question my judgment, but no one else can. If I don’t like what you say, I’ll tell you. I can’t see that it’s going to work any other way. Besides Culligan I’m the only one who’s been across. I can’t do Culligan’s work, and he can’t do mine. So there’s nothing to argue about there.” I stared at the sullen Irishman. “You think we’re going to have trouble?” I asked.
“Only if you make it.”
“That takes care of that,” I said. “The rest of the men will take orders from me. You’re part of that, Iversen. I don’t know what you did at sea. On this voyage I give the orders.”
Dr. Ames’s crop-headed daughter spoke up in a cool, flat voice. “What about my father? Will you give him orders, too?”
The doctor looked away, as if he wanted to hide. He had a high, prissy voice. “It doesn’t matter, dear. I’m sure Mr. Saddler knows what he’s doing.”
“Does he?” she said.
The dark-eyed girl I had seen earlier at the washtub was still showing more of her legs than she needed to, now that the laundry was done. She had a devilish look about her that I liked. A trouble-maker to be sure, but for her I could forgive just about anything. “I’ll bet Mr. Saddler is a fine doctor,” she said in a Southern voice. Maybe she was from New Orleans. “In point of fact, he can doctor me any time he has a mind to.”
I guess Isabel Ames had to stand up for the medical profession. “I’d expect that kind of talk from you, Flaxie Cole. That kind of talk and nothing else.”
Flaxie Cole smiled sweetly. “Is that a fact, now?” she said. “Why don’t you take your middle finger in the bushes for a while. It’ll relax your nerves no end.”
Dr. Ames had to use all his flabby strength to keep his daughter from springing to her feet. “Please, ladies,” he said. “Why must there be all this fighting?”
It didn’t do any good. “Because Flaxie Cole is a dirty slut,” the doctor’s daughter yelled.
Maggie O’Hara took the Southern girl’s side. “Don’t you call my friend a slut, you finger-fucker!”
The two tough girls, the New York killer and the New Orleans whore, threw their arms around each other. The Reverend Claggett looked stricken, as if God had forsaken him in his hour of need. I glanced over at Hannah Claggett, sitting by herself. Though her eyes were hooded in modesty, there was an unmistakable glitter of excitement behind the gold-rimmed glasses.
Reverend Claggett came out of his shock. “Stop it!” he roared. “Get down on your knees this very minute and beg the Almighty’s forgiveness!”
Rebellion still flared; it took the threat of expulsion to get all the women in the praying position. I don’t pray much, so I stayed on my feet, doing my best to fit in by bowing my head. Many other heads were bowed, but not Flaxie Cole’s. She looked straight at me, and her thoughts were not on the hereafter. Neither were mine.
My thoughts, God forgive me, and I’m sure He will because they say He ain’t such a bad feller, were all on Flaxie Cole. She was offering it to me on a plate, and I was hungry. I think there was a touch of the Creole in her. She was dark enough for that. The French girls of New Orleans know why nature put that sweet little beaver between their legs, and they treat it with tender loving care. So do I. Of course, all women know what they have it for, though it seems to come as a surprise to certain young ladies. But not in New Orleans.
Reverend Claggett droned
on, imploring the Lord not to be too hard on the ladies. Yes, they had sinned in the past, he admitted, but all that was over. Their wanton ways and wicked lives were behind them. The trouble was that the devil was trying to make backsliders out of them. But, declared Reverend Claggett, the Devil didn’t have a chance. They had him on the run and would drive him back to the fiery pit, where he belonged.
We all said “Amen” when the preacher got through with his speech. Flaxie Cole said it too, but she smiled all the while.
After that the meeting broke up and quiet descended on the wagon train. It had been a lively session, but I was glad it was over. Reverend Claggett looked tired and somewhat confused, as if he couldn’t understand why he had failed to get a stranglehold on the devil.
Claggett and his daughter traveled in their own wagon, one of the biggest in the train. Its sides were built higher than usual, and Hannah’s bunk was set off behind a wall of thin pine boards. Hannah was a grown woman but the preacher snapped his fingers at her as if she were a wayward child. “Get to your bed, girl,” he ordered.
The firelight glinted on the gold rims of her glasses. I felt sorry for her in her shyness and loneliness. Life had dealt her a poor hand when it gave her Claggett for a father.
“I’m not sleepy yet, Father,” she said. “I’ll go in a while.”
The preacher’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. I think he detected a faint hint of rebellion in her gentle voice. I know I did.
“Do what I tell you,” Claggett said. “We have a long, hard journey ahead of us.”
The look in her eyes seemed to say that her whole life had been one long, hard journey. But then she smiled, as if she had decided something of great importance.
“Good night, Mr. Saddler,” she said.
