Butchery of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  “He ran away from a slave owner? See here, was Preacher black? None of my research has indicated that.”

  “No. But in those days, if a slave owner claimed you had a touch of the brush, and in that same claim said that he owned you, it was hard to prove otherwise if you were no more than a fourteen-year-old boy and had no kin anywhere about to vouch for you. That’s what happened to Preacher.”

  “I never knew that.”

  “Bet you never knew that Preacher was in love once, either, did you? Her name was Jenny, and she was a slave. She was mostly Creole, but her grandma was black, and that was all that was needed then. He said she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.”

  “Why didn’t he marry her?”

  “She got killed. Preacher killed the ones who killed her.”

  “I imagine he would.”

  “Gregory,” Smoke said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Gregory. That was Preacher’s last name. Or at least that was the name he used. But to be honest about it, he once confided to me that he had just taken that name. I never did learn his birth name, and I figure I knew him better than any other human being ever knew him. He seldom even shared his taken name with anyone. Art Gregory. I don’t see any reason why the name has to be kept secret any longer. With Preacher dead, there’s nothing anyone can do to him now.”

  Professor Armbruster chuckled. “No, I suppose not.”

  “Mind if I have another one?” Smoke asked, reaching toward the plate of glazed pastries.

  “No, of course not,” Professor Armbruster replied. “Speaking of names, let’s consider John Jackson. He is often referred to, and I’m sure you know this, as Liver-Eating Jackson. Though the concept of him eating the livers of the Indians he killed has never been verified.”

  “Would you like me to verify it?” Smoke asked, as he bit into his second bear sign.

  “You mean, you can verify it?” Professor Armbruster asked in surprise.

  “Don’t tell my wife, but these bear claws are very nearly as good as hers.”

  “You have actually seen John Jackson eat a liver. That’s what you are telling me.”

  “The Crow had a belief that they couldn’t get into the Happy Hunting Grounds if they didn’t have the liver with them.” Smoke licked some of the frosting off the end of his finger.

  Professor Armbruster chuckled and shook his head. “You will forgive me, Mr. Jensen, but how can you sit there calmly eating a bear claw while talking about having watched John Jackson eat a liver.”

  “You are the one who brought it up, Professor. And there have been many times in my life when I’ve been in a position to where I had to eat things that would gag a maggot on the gut wagon.”

  Professor Armbruster looked a little pale. “Yes, I . . . can imagine so,” he said.

  “Now, Professor, what is it that you want with me?” Smoke asked, wiping his hands and fingers with a damp cloth that was on the table.

  “I want you to come to the recording room with me. I intend to make a voice recording of our discussion. That is, if you don’t mind.”

  Smoke smiled. “Well, I’ve been speaking into telephones for a lot of years now, but I’ve never spoken into a recording machine. How long after I speak into it will it be before it is developed and I can hear my voice played back?”

  “Oh, it isn’t like photograph film,” the professor said with a laugh. “We can have an instantaneous playback if you wish.”

  “I guess I would sort of like to hear my voice played back to me.”

  “Then come with me, if you would, please.”

  Smoke followed Professor Armbruster out of his office, down the hall, and into another room in the building. The walls of this room were lined with thick padding.

  “This room is soundproofed, so that no outside sound will interfere. That way, the machine will only record our voices, and nothing else.”

  There was a table in the room and on the table were two microphones. Smoke looked up at a big glass window and saw the same young man who had met him when he arrived. He was standing by some sort of shelf putting a black disc into position. Behind him there was a panel with dials.

  Professor Armbruster indicated that Smoke should sit behind one of the microphones, then the professor sat behind the other one.

  “Should I?” Smoke started, but the professor held his finger vertically across his lips, then looked through the glass at the young man on the other side.

  The professor moved a toggle switch, and spoke into a little box. “Wes, are we about ready?” the professor asked.

  “One moment, Professor,” Wes’s voice came back through the box. A moment later Wes held one finger up for a second as it appeared he was doing something with his other hand, then he brought the finger down and pointed directly at Professor Armbruster. The professor began talking into the microphone that was before him.

  “I am sitting here with Mr. Kirby ‘Smoke’ Jensen, a genuine pioneer of the West, and particularly our state . . . that is, the state of Colorado. During my research on another fascinating figure from the West, John ‘Liver-Eating’ Jackson, I learned that the paths of these two men had crossed, many years ago. John Jackson is no longer with us, having died on the twenty-first of December, 1900, in a hospital in Pennsylvania. But Smoke Jensen is still with us, and today I consider interviewing him about John Jackson to be as close to the actual source as it is possible to get.

  “Mr. Jensen, would you state in your own voice, your name, please?”

  “My name is Kirby Jensen, although I have been called Smoke for most of my life.”

  “I suppose we could start with how you came to get the name Smoke.”

  “Preacher gave me that name, on the first day we ever met. I had just been firing a Henry .44, and there was a little wisp of smoke curling up from the end of the rifle barrel. I don’t know why Preacher made the connection, but he called me Smoke, and that’s how I’ve been known ever since.”

  “You say you had just been firing your rifle. What were you shooting at?”

  “Indians,” Smoke said calmly.

  “Were you actually engaged in battle?”

  “I suppose you could call it that,” Smoke said. “The Indians were trying to kill us, we were killing them. Yes, you could say that was battle.”

  “When and how did you meet John Jackson?”

  “Preacher and I happened to come across him one day. It was in the middle of summer in 1869, and I was eighteen years old. But that’s getting a little ahead of the story.”

  “Ahead of the story? What do you mean?”

  “First, you need to know a little about John Jackson’s background. I mean, before he came West.”

  “All right, please, go on,” Professor Armbruster said. “I would love to hear about Mr. Jackson’s background.”

  Smoke continued with the story, talking in a deep, resonant voice that painted word pictures of the mountains, the streams, the cold of the winters, and the heat of the summers, the smell of smoke, drifting through the woods, the sound of woodpeckers and coyote and babbling brooks.

  Armbruster asked no more questions; he didn’t have to. He had been transported back in time to visit with the man John Jackson before he had become known to history as, John “Liver-Eating” Jackson.

  [This was the first time the actual discussion of “liver eating” was introduced in our discussion of John Jackson. Tales around the campfire say he’d cut out and eat the liver of every Crow he killed. He became known as “Liver-Eating” Jackson and “Dapiek Absaroka,” meaning “Crow Killer.” Throughout the Northern Rockies and the plains of Wyoming and Montana, Crow warriors who had come for him were found with their liver cut out, presumably eaten by Jackson.

  I was most anxious to find out if this was true, but rather than press the issue at this point, I decided to let Smoke Jensen continue with the story at his own pace. And indeed, had I rushed him at this point, the story might have lost some cohesion,
and that would not be fair to the eventual readers of this tale.—ED.]

  CHAPTER THREE

  Gettysburg, Pennsylvania—July 3, 1863

  There had been fierce fighting for the two previous days and if Captain John Jackson, of the 151st Pennsylvania, had to give an honest account of who was winning the battle he would be unable to do so. So far John had seen nearly one-half of his company killed, or so badly wounded as to be taken from the field.

  “Captain, would you like to take your lunch with me?” Lieutenant Sanderson asked. “We’ve got a quiet moment; I don’t know when we’ll get a better opportunity.”

  “What are you offering for lunch, Bobby?” John asked his second in command. “Baked ham? Roast beef? Fried chicken, perhaps?”

  “Ahh, you can have that anytime,” Sanderson said. “How about some nice hardtack, fried in bacon grease?”

  “Absolutely,” John teased. “Who would want roast beef when we can have that?”

  “I can also throw in a fresh peach that I took from a peach orchard,” Sanderson added.

  “I thought the orchard had been picked clean.”

  “It has,” Sanderson said. He smiled. “It just so happens that I’m one of the ones who picked it clean.”

  “Cap’n, I believe them rebs is gettin’ ready to come at us,” one of his men said.

  “I believe you are right, Sergeant Dunn,” John replied.

  “It’s goin’ to get pretty hot,” Dunn suggested.

  “Yes, but consider this. Would you rather be here, behind a stone fence, waiting for them? Or would you rather be one of those poor souls who are going to have to cross that field toward us?”

  “Yes, sir, I see what you mean,” Dunn said. “I’d rather be here.”

  “Here” was Cemetery Ridge.

  At one o’clock two Confederate artillery pieces fired. John was sure that was a signal, because almost immediately afterward, a mile-long line of Confederate cannons began firing, keeping up a steady bombardment. John hunkered down against the stone fence as the missiles whistled and whizzed by overhead. Amazingly, the Confederates were, for the most part, overshooting their target, with the cannonballs bursting on the ridgeline behind the Union positions. The Federal artillery returned fire. The cannonading continued for one solid hour, with enough of the shells falling onto the waiting Union soldiers to do some physical damage, but causing considerably more fear and unease.

  Then first the Confederate, then the Union artillery ceased fire and the loud thunder that had been washing across the field for nearly an hour grew silent.

  As John listened, he could actually hear the sound of mockingbirds, and he marveled that nature could so turn off the folly of human warfare. Then he heard the faint notes of a bugle call as it rolled across the thousand yards that separated the two armies. That was followed by the long roll of drums.

  “Here they come!” someone shouted.

  “The rebs is attackin’!”

  “They’re a-fixin’ to come at us!”

  None of the proclamations were necessary, as every Union soldier in position could see the long gray line stretching out all the way across the field.

  John stood up behind what was left of his company in order to be able to exercise command and control over his men. This also had the effect of inspiring his men, because while they could hunker down behind the stone wall, their commander was exposing himself to enemy fire.

  For the moment all was quiet, save for chirping of the mockingbirds and the steady, rhythmic tat of the drums, urging the soldiers on. They were still too far away to separate the individual soldiers from the mass of gray. But he could see the flags . . . bits of red fluttering in the breeze, and the flag bearers who were taking the lead position of each of the committed units.

  Slowly, steadily, inexorably, the Confederate soldiers, fifteen thousand in all, and under the command of General Pickett, moved across the field.

  “Steady, men, hold your fire, hold your position,” John ordered.

  The drumbeat cadence grew louder, and as the advancing army moved closer, John could hear the clank and rattle of their equipment, and the fall of their footsteps on the open ground.

  “Stay in line, men, stay in line!” a Confederate officer called to his men, his words drifting across the distance between them. He was in front, holding a saber upon which he had placed his hat, and John couldn’t help but think of the courage it took to be exposed like this young Confederate officer was.

  John did not believe he had ever seen a more magnificent sight, nor a more foolish one. What officer in his right mind would commit his men in such a way?

  Suddenly one of the Confederate soldiers gave out a yell that John had heard before. It was what the others referred to as a rebel yell. The other Confederate soldiers joined in, and with that yell, the advancing soldiers stopped their measured march, and broke into a run. Thousands of throats roared their defiance, their shouts answered by many more thousand Union soldiers.

  Union artillery opened up then, and John saw the awful effect of the grape and canister as it tore into the Confederate lines.

  “Fire!” John shouted, and not only his men, but Union men all up and down Cemetery Ridge began shooting.

  For a moment John forgot that he was standing in the open, then he heard the angry buzz of minié balls flying by him, and he moved quickly to the stone fence. That was when he saw the dashing young saber-brandishing young Confederate officer go down.

  The deadly musket fire, to say nothing of the sustained grape and canister artillery fire, so devastated the Confederate advance that within moments the fifteen-thousand-man massed front was broken into several smaller units. Finally the front row of the Confederate soldiers actually managed to cross the stone wall, where they engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the Federals as the two bodies of men slashed at each other with sabers, thrust with bayonets, clubbed with rifle butts, and shot from point-blank range with pistols. But quickly the Confederate ranks, which had been so decimated by cannon and rifle fire during their long approach toward Cemetery Ridge, began to be overwhelmed by the superior numbers of the Union troops. Realizing they could not sustain the attack, those who could manage it broke off the engagement and retreated back across the broad field, leaving the dead and dying behind them.

  Gradually the constant bang and pop of gunfire died out, and all that could be heard were the moans and cries of the wounded, and the shouts of soldiers in blue and gray, calling for assistance from hospital corpsmen.

  John, who miraculously had not been wounded, walked over to sit on the stone fence and look back across the field, covered now with a low-lying fog of gun smoke. The smoke was so thick that the retreating Confederate soldiers were quickly enveloped by the cloud. What he could see, though, were the bodies of the dead, strewn across the field, many of which had been nearly cut in two.

  The sounds on the battlefield which, but moments earlier had been the thunder of artillery fire, the rattle of musketry, and the challenging screams of men locked in deadly combat, had changed. Now the only sounds were the low moans and whimpers of the wounded. Many of the wounded were from John’s company, and he stopped by to see each one.

  One of the wounded was Lieutenant Sanderson.

  “How badly are you wounded, Bobby?” John asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sanderson replied. He chuckled. “It hurt like hell when I was first hit, but the truth is, I don’t feel anything now.”

  “I’ll get you to the aid station,” John offered.

  “No, sir. Not before the men,” Sanderson replied.

  John smiled, and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “That was a collective ‘you,’ Lieutenant. I intend to get all of you to the aid station.”

  John mustered the rest of his company, and organized them to move the wounded, including Lieutenant Sanderson, to the aid station.

  “Cap’n, do you reckon we’re goin’ to counterattack?” Sergeant Dunn asked.

  “Do
you want to leave as many blue-clad bodies out there as there are gray now?” John replied.

  “No, sir.”

  “I’m pretty sure General Hancock doesn’t want to either.”

  Old Main Building, University of Colorado—

  October 1923

  “John’s prediction was correct,” Smoke said as he continued to tell the story. “The next day, July Fourth, General Lee started back to Virginia, leading a twenty-seven-mile-long train of hospital wagons. He halted his army at the flooded Potomac River and had his men dig in to fight another battle, but General Meade’s army was too battered and too exhausted to counterattack. Also his troops had used up almost all of their ammunition and would have to be resupplied before they could fight again.”

  “What happened to all the dead the dying?” Professor Armbruster asked.

  “The citizens of Gettysburg, the civilians, were left to deal with the thousands of wounded. They turned private homes, businesses, schools, and public buildings into hospitals. For some time afterward, infection and unsanitary conditions caused disease to spread through the town. But they didn’t have to handle it alone; volunteers came from the North and the South. Northerner and Southerner worked together to care for the wounded and bury the dead, regardless the color of the soldier’s uniform. They also piled up, and burned the carcasses of horses and mules killed in the fighting.”

  [It had been a grand plan with Lee proposing to take the offensive, invade Pennsylvania, and defeat the Union army in its own territory. Such a victory would have moved the fighting out of Virginia, bringing some relief to that beleaguered state, as well as strengthen the hand of those politicians in the North who wanted peace at any price. It was also believed that it would undermine Lincoln’s chances for reelection. It would reopen the possibility for European support that was closed at Antietam. The result of this vision was the largest battle ever fought on the North American continent. This was Gettysburg, where more than 170, 000 fought and over 40,000 were casualties.