Butchery of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  “They thought they were going to the Virginia Colony, where some Europeans had already settled, but in November, they reached Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

  “There were a hundred and two passengers on the ship,” John said. “And the ship remained at anchor while they built cabins where they could live.”

  “Like this,” Claire said, taking in their cabin with a proud smile.

  “That first winter was brutal, and more than one-half of them died the first year, from starvation and disease. The Pilgrims held secret burials for the ones who died, so that the Indians wouldn’t realize how few were remaining.”

  “Indians?” Claire asked. She pointed to herself.

  “These were Wampanoag Indians. And they eventually began helping the Pilgrims, because if they hadn’t, I believe every one of them would have died. And think how that would have changed history.”

  “And they ate turkey?” Claire asked, not making the connection between the Pilgrims, half of whom had died, and the turkey they were eating now.

  “Yes. You see, after almost dying of starvation, they had a good harvest, and to celebrate the harvest, and the fact that at least half of them were still alive, they held a feast. And the Indians came to join them,” John said. He smiled, and made a motion with his hand to take in the two of them.

  “It’s like us,” he added. “Indian and white man coming together to give thanks.”

  “The baby will be a Thanksgiving thing,” Claire said. “The baby will be Indian and white,” she added, touching John on the face, then putting her hand on her stomach.

  “Yes, it will indeed be a thing for thanksgiving,” John said.

  John ran his traps every day that winter, beaver traps in the water, and marten traps hanging from trees near the water. The reason the marten traps had to be hung from trees was to prevent rodents from chewing on the martens once they had been caught.

  The trapping was bountiful, much more even than he and Smoke had brought in the year before. He would skin the beaver, and hang the meat out so the wild animals couldn’t get to it. Claire would scrape and clean the hides, then stack them. She also cooked the beaver meat, sometimes frying it, sometimes baking it, sometimes grilling it over the open flames of the fireplace. She also boiled the beaver and made a soup, cooked with wild onions, mushrooms, cattail, and sun root tubers.

  John kept a close count of his furs and before winter was half over, had over a thousand dollars’ worth of pelts, based on the prices they paid the previous year. But he had also heard that the St. Louis market paid twice as much, and at that rate it would be worth his while to go there.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Boulder

  “The team in red is the University of Denver,” Professor Armbruster said. “So far this season, we haven’t lost a game. As a matter of fact, nobody has even scored on us this year and . . . oh, oh, this isn’t good.”

  On the field one of the players wearing red broke free from the rest and started a long run, with players wearing black chasing after him. There were loud cheers from the other side of the field, and groans from this side. “I spoke too soon,” Professor Armbruster said.

  “Why?” Sally asked.

  “Denver just made a touchdown.”

  Despite Denver’s score, Colorado won the game, twenty-one to seven, and there was much celebration on the campus that evening.

  Smoke and Sally had been invited by Professor Armbruster to dine with him and his wife, as well as Dr. and Mrs. George Norlin. Dr. Norlin was president of the University of Colorado.

  “I have been listening to recordings of your account each evening,” Dr. Norlin said. “And I must say that I am finding the story very fascinating. You will truly go down in history as one of our most valiant men.”

  “You are embarrassing me, Dr. Norlin,” Smoke said with a smile. “I just spent most of my life trying to stay alive.”

  “Dr. Norlin won’t say anything about it, but he has been in a fight as well, with the state legislature,” Professor Armbruster said. “They have been taken over by the KKK, and they are demanding that he fire every Catholic and Jew on the campus. And to his credit, he has refused to do so.”

  “Good for you, Doctor,” Smoke said.

  “It has been at some cost, I must say,” Dr. Norlin said. “The state has stopped all financial aid to the university. We are having to subsist on what income we can garner from tuitions, and such revenue-producing programs that we have, such as our football team.”

  “Sally, give me the . . .” Smoke started to say, but Sally had already gotten the checkbook from her purse and was handing it to him, with a smile.

  “Would ten thousand dollars help?” Smoke asked, as he started writing the check.

  “What? Why, yes, of course. But please, Mr. Jensen, I hope you don’t think this was a request for a donation.”

  “It doesn’t matter whether it was a request or not,” Smoke said. “It’s something I want to do.”

  “I’m serious,” Wes said over Monday morning breakfast at the TKE house. He was talking to Philip McGrath, the Grand Prytanis of Tau Kappa Epsilon. “You come up with any name in the history of the American West, and this guy knew them. Wild Bill Hickok, Falcon MacCallister, Buffalo Bill, Monte Carson, Calamity Jane, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday. He knew them all! Not only that, he’s lived the kind of life that you read about in novels. You need to meet him just so that someday, fifty or sixty years from now, you can tell your grandchildren that you met Smoke Jensen.”

  “I heard about what he did at the speakeasy, an old man like that,” McGrath said.

  “I tell you what, Phil. It might be that he’s been around for a long time, but I wouldn’t exactly call him an old man,” Wes said. “No, sir, not by a long shot. And certainly, not to his face,” he added with a laugh.

  “I remember reading books about him when I was a kid,” Phil said. “But they were all novels. I didn’t know there really was such a person.”

  “When Professor Armbruster asked me if I would make the recordings, I tried to get out of it,” Wes said. “I mean, who wants to sit around and listen to some old man mumble on with his stories. But I wouldn’t trade what I’m doing for the world. Sixty, seventy years from now, if I’m still alive, I’m going to tell everyone I know that I met Smoke Jensen. Why . . . it’s like meeting Abraham Lincoln, or Davy Crockett, or Andrew Jackson. I mean, you name someone from our history . . . anyone, and I wouldn’t get any bigger a thrill meeting them than I have gotten by meeting Smoke Jensen.”

  “I can tell he’s made quite an impression on you.”

  “Yes, he has,” Wes admitted. “I’m telling you, Phil, you need to meet this man.”

  “Do you suppose he would come to dinner at the fraternity house and give us a little talk?” Phil asked.

  “I don’t know. That’s all he’s doin’ all day long now, is just talking into the microphone. I wouldn’t want to ask him to come give us a talk. But we might ask him to come have dinner with us.”

  “Good idea,” Phil said. “All right, I will.”

  “Mr. Jensen,” Wes said, greeting Smoke as he stepped out his car in front of the Old Main building. “I would like for you to meet Phil McGrath. He is the Grand Prytanis of the fraternity I belong to.”

  “He’s the what?” Smoke asked with a chuckle.

  “He’s the president.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so? Hello, Mr. McGrath,” Smoke said, extending his hand.

  “Mr. Jensen, it is a great pleasure meeting you,” McGrath said, taking Smoke’s hand and pumping it enthusiastically.

  “You are also on the football team, I believe,” Smoke said. “I watched you play, Saturday. You played very well.”

  “Thank you,” McGrath said, smiling in obvious pleasure at the accolade. “Oh, uh, I wanted to ask . . . that is, uh, I was wondering if you would have dinner with us tonight at the fraternity house?”

  “Oh, I’d better not. My wife is here and I’m gone from her
all day long. I don’t know how she would take it if I left her alone in the evening as well.”

  “What about lunch?” Wes asked quickly. “You have to eat lunch somewhere, don’t you?”

  “I suppose I could. But today is Monday, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir, it is. Does that matter?” Wes replied, confused as to what difference it would make what day it was.

  “Well, I always eat beaver on Monday, so if you would tell your cook to fry me up some beaver tail in a little bear grease, I’d be glad to join you for lunch.”

  Wes and McGrath looked at each other with a rather desolate expression on their faces.

  Smoke laughed. “Well, I suppose I can make an exception. I’ll be there and I’ll eat whatever you have.”

  Wes and McGrath weren’t the only ones who greeted Smoke that morning. There were even more students in front of the Old Main building today than there had been the morning after the speakeasy episode the night before. Several went out of their way to shake hands with him.

  “What is all this about, Wes?” Smoke asked when, finally, they had run the gauntlet and were safely inside the building.

  “It’s you, Mr. Jensen. Everyone wants an opportunity to see history, firsthand.”

  “Boy, are you saying I’m history?” Smoke asked with a snarl.

  “Oh, uh, no, I mean, uh, it’s just . . .”

  Smoke laughed. “I’m teasing you, Wes. At my age, I have seen a lot of history, so I guess, in a way, that does make me history.”

  “Uh, yes, sir,” Wes said, somewhat awkwardly. “I’ll, uh, just get everything set up for the recording session today.”

  “Good morning, Smoke,” Professor Armbruster said when Smoke arrived, going directly to the recording studio.

  “Good morning, Professor. Wes and a young man named McGrath have invited me for lunch at their fraternity house. Am I taking a risk by eating there?”

  “Smoke, after everything you’ve been through, they could be serving bugs and I don’t think it would bother you.”

  “Depends on the bug,” Smoke said. “Grub worms can be quite tasty.”

  Professor Armbruster laughed. “I figured you would say something like that. When we left off, I believe you said that John was considering a trip to St. Louis to sell his furs. Did he go to St. Louis?”

  “Yes,” Smoke said. “And it proved to be quite profitable for him.”

  [After the Civil War, steamboat traffic on the Missouri River became a common sight. The boats were considerably different in design from the Mississippi River boats, with few of the fancy fittings. The most important feature of a Missouri River boat was that it be of light weight. From 140 to 170 feet long and 30 feet wide they had a shallow hull, and spoonbill-shaped bow. With this design they could carry two hundred tons of cargo through waist-deep water, safely navigating over anything from sandbars to whitewater rapids. In addition, this type of vessel was less expensive to fuel and much easier to steer.

  Steamboat captains in the late 1870s could charge as much as $1,200 every month for their services, an enormous sum, compared to the average income of $40 per month for the rest of America. They had to be extremely skilled captains and a good hand at striking a deal with merchants. The payoff was huge, however, since a steamboat could carry cargo worth a profit of up to $40,000.

  A few words about the history of the city of St. Louis might enlighten the reader, and thus help in understanding the significant role the city played in the lives of not only the mountaineers and the fur trappers, but all of the western frontier.

  The first steamboat arrived in St. Louis on July 27, 1817, which proved to be only the beginning of St. Louis as an important river city. By 1859, river traffic had increased to such an extent that St. Louis took its position as the second-largest port in the country, with only New York exceeding St. Louis in total commercial tonnage moved. Often as many as 170 steamboats could be counted on the levee.

  Because of the junction of the Missouri River, St. Louis was uniquely positioned to truly become the gateway city to the West. It was fed by boats from the east, traversing the Ohio River, then entering the Mississippi River at Cairo, Illinois, to beat their way upstream to St. Louis. There was also a very busy schedule of boats that plied the Mississippi between St. Louis, Memphis, Vicksburg, and the seaport at New Orleans.

  By the time the construction of the railroads began in the early 1850s, St. Louis had a population of almost eighty thousand people. The first westbound train left St. Louis in 1855. It was the railroads that eventually led to the diminution of the importance of the riverboats in the city’s economy.—ED.]

  Upper Missouri—1872

  John built a raft, onto which he loaded his winter catch of furs, then he, Claire, and their son, Kirby, rafted downriver to Yankton. There, they boarded a Missouri riverboat, the Nellie Peck, for passage to St. Louis.

  When John purchased the tickets, he was given a sheet of paper with the title, “Helpful Hints for Steamboat Passengers.”

  Welcome Aboard the Missouri River Steamboat, NELLIE PECK.

  This guide is published as a service for the traveling public. Careful attention to its information and suggestions will insure the riverboat patron a memorable journey. This guide describes the many accommodations found on the boat, and gives warnings about possible unpleasant situations.

  Departure Time

  The NELLIE PECK will leave terminal ports on scheduled times. The arrival and departure times change at ports along the river. Your steamboat captain, Captain Milton Saddler, prefers early morning departures. This will provide the NELLIE PECK with as many daylight hours as possible. It is not feasible to operate at night unless the moon is very bright. There is too much danger in navigating in the dark, especially in low water.

  Cabin Passengers

  Enjoy the best of steamboat travel. Staterooms for the NELLIE PECK are on the cabin deck. They are ten feet square with doors at each end, one to the interior passage and the other to the deck. The NELLIE PECK also provides clean mattresses and sheets on the berths. Curtains at cabin windows provide privacy to the passenger while dressing.

  Toilet

  Toilet facilities are vastly improved on the NELLIE PECK with a washstand and basin in each of the staterooms. For the deck passengers there are two washrooms, one each for ladies and gentlemen, located near the wheelhouse. Each deck washroom is equipped with a washbasin, one hair brush, a comb, a community toothbrush, and a roller-type towel. The crew keeps the pitchers filled with river water. The toilets are like the outdoor variety and placed next to the wheel.

  Warning

  Thieves, con agents, and gamblers ride the steamboats. Many of these undesirable citizens hang around levees, wharves, hotels, and taverns in the river towns. Travelers are advised to buy bank drafts. Some prefer letters of credit from their own bank. If you need to carry a large sum of money, wear a money belt. Avoid games of chance on the riverboats.

  Wooding

  A passenger can reduce his fare by wooding on a trip. However, the job of cutting and carrying wood is a hard one, and should only be attempted by those used to hard work.

  St. Louis

  The Nellie Peck approached the riverbank, then just before it got there, reversed the paddle, causing the water to froth at the stern. The boat glided in, until the bow bumped against the cobblestone levee. A crewman on the front of the boat tossed out a thick hawser, and someone on the bank made the boat fast.

  The riverfront was alive with activity, not only the scores of other boats that were tied up, but the amount of traffic ashore: carriages, buggies, surreys, buckboards, coaches, and wagons of all sizes. There was noise from the steam relief valves of the boats, some of the venting sounding almost like cannon fire. Men were shouting back and forth to each other, and the air was rent with the clops of steel-shoed horses and mules on the paved streets.

  Claire had never seen anything like this in her life, and she stood at the railing of the boat with her hand to
her chest.

  “Are you all right?” John asked.

  “I . . . I have never seen so many people,” Claire said.

  “I should think not. If you put every person you had ever seen in your whole life, together, they wouldn’t make but a fraction of what you are seeing right here, right now, just on the riverfront.”

  “How can so many people live so close together? Don’t they step on each other’s feet?”

  John laughed. “I imagine they do,” he said.

  Claire reached out to grab John’s arm. “John, do not leave the baby and me alone here. I am frightened by so many.”

  “Don’t worry, Claire. I have no intention of leaving you alone.”

  “Mr. Jackson,” the boat’s purser said, approaching them then. “I have secured a wagon for your cargo.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Adams,” John said.

  John and Claire stood by, watching as bale after bale of beaver and marten pelts were loaded onto the wagon. Then, leaving the boat, John secured a cab, and they followed the wagonload of furs as it made its way through the city to the St. Louis Fur Exchange, on Lafayette Street.

  Claire was in awe of the huge buildings, many of them five and six stories high. They passed by the Christian Staehlin’s Phoenix Brewery, a huge building with towering smokestacks.

  “Why don’t I just let you and Kirby out here?” John suggested. “I’ll come back for you later.”

  “No!” Claire said, grabbing his arm even tighter.

  John laughed quietly, then kissed her on the forehead. “Don’t worry, my sweet,” he said. “I’m just teasing you. I have no intention of letting you go.”

  When they reached the fur exchange, John let the cab go, then he, Claire, and Kirby went inside to make arrangements to sell the pelts.