Pure Sin
Page 39
To his astonishment, the diner was delighted and asked for more. Other customers ordered the crisp potato wafers and found them just as tasty.
The next day Crum’s potato chips, called Saratoga Chips by the Lake House’s tourist-conscious proprietor, were on every table in the restaurant. A few years later they were listed on menus throughout the country.
15. The incident with the regiment at Samarkand is true, but I have taken literary license with the date. The actual event happened in the cholera epidemic of 1892–93, although there were also worldwide epidemics of cholera in 1848–49, 1853–54, and 1865–66.
At the same time the disease was striking the Russian army at Samarkand, a devastating outbreak occurred at Askabad. The cholera had almost disappeared in the area when a banquet was given by the governor in honor of the czar’s name day. Of the guests one-half died within twenty-four hours; a military band, which was present, lost forty men out of fifty; and one regiment lost half its men and nine officers. Within forty-eight hours thirteen hundred persons died out of a total population of about thirteen thousand.
The water supply came from a small stream, and just before the banquet a heavy rainstorm had occurred, which swept into the stream all surface refuse from an infected village higher up and some distance from the banks.
16. With the discovery of gold, great wealth in negotiable material attracted many unsavory characters to Montana, and robbery and murder were prevalent.
The Vigilantes organized on December 23, 1863, to put an end to these outlaw elements. There was an executive committee consisting of Paris Pfouts, James Williams, and Wilbur F. Sanders. The remainder of the forty-five men who signed the original Vigilante Oath were organized into teams, each headed by a captain. During the winter of 1863, these groups ranged the mountain country from Virginia City to Fort Owen searching out the road agents. One of the early captives had confessed and given the names of his gang members.
By the spring of 1864, thirty-two men had been hanged. Many of the Vigilantes went on to become leaders in territorial and state affairs, and hanging as a means of swift vengeance (not necessarily justice, in many cases) continued through the nineteenth century.
17. Plenty-Coups relates a story to Frank Linderman about a pursuit of stolen horses. Blackfeet had stolen some Absarokee horses in the days after the tribes were on the reservation.
Where Park City now stands, we came to a few houses, and the white men who lived in them told us the Pecunies, or somebody, had taken most of their horses too. We talked to them as best we could with signs and a little English, and at last four white men who had lost good horses wanted to go along with us to get their stolen property. I believed them able to take care of themselves and agreed, which was one of the most foolish things I ever did.
They began to show me this soon after we started. Their horses had been eating hay and oats in a house, while ours had been pawing snow for grass in the windy hills. Naturally their horses could travel faster than ours, but because the trail was likely to be a long one, I tried to hold the white men back, telling them to save their animals for the trouble ahead. They would not listen but rode on, while we walked, until their animals grew tired. Then the white men camped. When I passed them by their fire, they wished me to stay with them, but I told them the Pecunies would not camp and that if we expected to catch them, we must keep going. I explained to them, as best I could, that the thieves were driving nearly one hundred horses and would be unable to go so far in a day as we could, if we kept at it. This did no good. They said their horses were tired out, and of course they were, having been ridden all day in the deep snow. So I left them, wishing with all my heart that I had not sent four of my men back to the Crow village when these white men joined me to go after the Pecunies.
They caught up with us late the next afternoon and at once began to talk about camping and eating, but this time I pretended not to hear them at all. I kept pushing on with my three men.
Then he goes on to relate how in the middle of the night he came upon the Pecunies and hurried back to tell the white men to stay where they were. He would try to steal the Pecunies’ guns before they attacked them.
But I could not hold my white friends. They were unmanageable, and got on their horses to charge the camp in that dim light.
I ran ahead, waving them back, but they followed on horseback and began to yell. Yes, I am telling you the truth; they began to yell, and I dodged behind a boulder, leaving them out there sitting on their horses and yelping like coyotes.
They did not shout long. The Pecunies were not fools. I soon saw rifles poking over the rim rock. Down went a white man with a bullet over his eyes.
“Go back!” I called, making the sign. But my words did no good. There they sat on their horses, wearing too many clothes and looking foolish, until another tumbled off his horse with a ball in his forehead. This time the two others moved a little.
Eventually Plenty-Coups and his men killed two of the Pecunies, and the others withdrew, leaving the stolen horses.
18. Two Leggings’s memoirs list the four important coups in this order: “Most praiseworthy was the striking of an enemy with a gun, bow, or riding quirt; then came the cutting of an enemy’s horse from a tipi door; next the recovery of an enemy’s weapon in battle; and finally the riding down of an enemy.”
According to Lowie’s interviews there were four types of deeds that were generally recognized as meritorious and counted for the title of chief: “the carrying of the pipe,” that is, the leadership of a successful war party; the striking of coup (riding up to an enemy and striking him); the taking of an enemy’s gun or bow; and the cutting of a horse picketed in the enemy’s camp. The order is slightly different from Two Leggings’s.
A chief was a man who had at least one deed of each type to his credit.
19. In Lowie’s interview Yellow-Brow describes the way clothing could depict various types of coup.
The taking of guns from an enemy was symbolized by wearing a shirt decorated with ermine skins. Leggings fringed with such skins or with scalps denoted that the wearer had led an expedition that returned with booty. The striking of coups was indicated by wolf tails at the heels of moccasins.
Two Leggings’s description of specific insignia denoting coups honors further adds to the explanation.
The winner of all four types of coup could decorate his deerskin war shirt with four beaded or porcupine-quill strips, one running from shoulder to wrist on each sleeve and one over each shoulder from front to back. Merely earning the first coup enabled a man to trail a coyote tail from one moccasin, or from both if he performed the feat twice. Eagle feathers tied to a man’s gun or coup-display stick revealed the number of scalps he had taken. A knotted rope hanging from his horse’s neck told of the cutting of an enemy’s picketed mount. And the number of horses captured could be read from the stripes of white clay painted under his horse’s eyes or on its flanks. From a white clay hand on those flanks one learned that the owner had ridden down an enemy.
Dear Reader,
Like so many of my stories, the initial idea for Pure Sin came to me from a visual image flashing through my mind. I saw a man and a woman standing very close; the atmosphere was palpably sensual. But eventually the man moved slightly away and softly said, “No.”
In writing Pure Sin I wanted to explore a variation on the seduction theme—in this case a man being seduced against his better judgment. The choreography of desire intrigued me, and ultimately, of course, it intrigued Adam Serre too.
My heroine, Flora, was inspired by any number of spirited, highly independent female travelers who’ve left accounts of their journeys around the world. So many wondrously brave women have explored cultures and environments far beyond the boundaries of their normal lives, I recommend reading on the subject. It makes some of our modern lives seem very tame.
Robert Lowie, who spent many years researching the Absarokee people, is the single best source on their culture. But Fra
nk Linder-man’s oral-history accounts have a wonderful first-hand immediacy as well as a poignant recall of a better, lost time.
I hope Adam and Flora’s story has given you pleasure.
Best wishes,
P.S. I enjoy hearing from readers.
13499 400th Street
North Branch, MN 55056
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Susan Johnson, award-wining author of nationally bestselling novels, lives in the country near North Branch, Minnesota. A former art historian, she considers the life of a writer the best of all possible worlds.
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