Education Of a Wandering Man (1990)

by L'amour, Louis

  In any jungle picture with a beautiful native girl, you can almost be sure that before long you will find her swimming naked or nearly so in a pool, usually with a waterfall, and there the leading man comes upon her. He is often in the pool himself, and it leads to what is expected to be a titillating scene. So it was in this case. The sincere young Rajah is largely forgotten, he doesn’t get his medicines, and his hopes and the picture go down the drain.

  As I delved deeper into the background of America, I became tantalized by the unwritten chapters, most of which we will never know because the information simply is not there. Of course, there is always the chance that in old records in England, France, or Spain we may turn up stories now unknown.

  The records we have are those of known explorations, but what of the many that were unknown? In doing research one stumbles upon tantalizing tidbits, mentions of white men living with Indians in areas where no white men were known to be, mentions of boatloads of Carolina adventurers at the mouth of the Ohio a hundred years before Daniel Boone was born, of that party of French people who went west from Illinois to Washington before Lewis and Clark’s trek over almost the same route. In almost every instance where somebody was supposed to be first, we find there was somebody already there.

  No doubt many a long hunter went west and never returned; no doubt other explorers did the same. We must always understand that what we have is only a small piece of history.

  Our forefathers were a restless, venturesome lot and that vast land to the westward, beyond the far blue mountains, was always a challenge.

  To understand what happened in our country it is enough to read the major histories, which follow the main lines of thought and of our affairs, but to get down to the nitty-gritty, one must go to the lesser-known books, the pamphlets, the individual memoirs.

  There are local histories also, histories of small towns, of counties, of areas important to the writers of the booklets or articles. Newspapers frequently ran the life stories of local pioneers, and they are often valuable additions to the larger pages of history. The story of Robert E.

  Lee as a young officer, facing the Indian Wildcat and his band, is one I have not seen in any biography of Lee.

  My reading continued with Byzantine Civilization by Steven Runciman, Sagebrush Dentist by Will Frackelton, History of the Nation of Archers by Grigor of Akanc, My Life as an Indian by J. W. Schultz, The Secret of the Hittites by C. W. Ceram, and Dodge City: The Cowboy Capital by Robert Wright. Bob Wright was mayor of Dodge in its wild days, and a hide-trader as well.

  Frackelton, the dentist mentioned above, once was asked by a lady gambler to set a diamond in one of her front teeth. As the tooth was healthy and solid he did not wish to, but she insisted. Finally he asked what the idea was, and she replied, “You’re a doctor and not supposed to talk about your patients, so I’ll tell you. When I’m playing poker I keep my mouth shut, but when I start to deal, I smile.” The idea was that, when they were looking at that diamond, they were not watching the cards she was dealing.

  Before going overseas to the war, I had met Chris Madsen, a Dane who had done a year in the Danish Army, then seven years in the French Foreign Legion when it was seeing some of its toughest service. Following that, he had come to America and joined the Fifth Cavalry, where, due to his experience, he was immediately made sergeant. I was fortunate enough to talk to him several times. He had been present when Buffalo Bill Cody killed Yellow Hand in a hand-to-hand fight. Cody was a scout for the Fifth at the time and had been challenged before a battle by Yellow Hand.

  Chris Madsen lived to be over ninety years old and was a salty, interesting man to the last. He, in company with Bill Tilghman and Heck Thomas, had been one of the Three Musketeers who helped to clean out the outlaw population of the Indian Territory and what became Oklahoma. He was a Deputy United States Marshal at that time.

  Bill Tilghman, a gentleman and an honorable man, was one of the best peace officers on the western frontier, respected by his peers. One way of judging how good a man was is by the respect others had for him.

  Bob Wright said that if the truth were known, Mysterious Dave Mathers had probably killed more men than any other, yet on one memorable night when he had slain another peace officer in a personal fight, Tilghman went out to arrest him.

  Mathers had holed up in an office on the second floor. Tilghman came to the foot of the steps and called up. “Dave? Are you coming down or am I going to have to come up after you?”

  Mathers came down.

  But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening center; corruption Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there are left the mountains.

  —Robinson Jeffers from “Shine, Perishing Republic”

  One evening when we were driving across west central Texas we stopped at a ranch house where my companion had once worked as a cowboy. He was now a moderately successful small-business man and interested in promoting some fights.

  We stopped to buy a meal, but of course our money was refused, and as the hour grew late we were invited to spend the night.

  It was my first experience with a feather bed, but an experience I fought all night long. The trouble was that on the bedside table was a battered copy of Olive R. Dixon’s book on her husband, The Life of Billy Dixon. At that time the book was scarce (it has since been reprinted) and it was doubtful I would ever see another copy.

  The basic facts of Billy Dixon’s life were known to me. He had been in the Adobe Walls fight, where twenty-eight buffalo hunters and one woman fought off seven hundred to one thousand Comanche and Kiowa warriors. At that time, Billy shot an Indian off his horse at a distance checked by an army engineer as seven-eighths of a mile.

  Billy had also survived the Buffalo Wallow fight, and was famous as a buffalo hunter and as one of the best rifle shots on the frontier, so I very much wanted to know his story.

  The result was that, despite the feather bed, I managed to stay awake most of the night to finish the story before leaving. As I was very tired, it was something of a struggle, but I completed the book just before sunrise, which was getting-up time.

  (recently I reread the book and found it every bit as good as I had remembered.)

  Dixon was a man born for the frontier.

  He came west at fourteen, worked as a teamster, a scout for the Army, and did a lot of hunting and guiding. He survived some incredible storms and took it all without complaint. It was part of the day’s work. Going west was a romantic adventure and so it always remained for him.

  Whenever I could, I sought out the stories of those who had lived the western adventure, and by comparison could judge the quality and the truth of what I was reading. Times were often very rough for me but I can honestly say I never felt abused or put-upon. I never felt, as some have, that I deserved special treatment from life, and I do not recall ever complaining that things were not better.

  Often I wished they were, and often found myself wishing for some sudden windfall that would enable me to stop wandering and working and settle down to simply writing. Yet it was necessary to be realistic.

  Nothing of the kind was likely to happen, and of course, nothing did.

  I never found any money; I never won any prizes; I was never helped by anyone, aside from an occasional encouraging word—and those I valued. No fellowships or grants came my way, because I was not eligible for any and in no position to get anything of the sort. I never expected it to be easy.

  There was one thing, and one man whom I have not forgotten. At one time, trying desperately to write something that would sell, I rented a typewriter. For several months I paid the rent. Then a time came when I could not, so I wrote him a note and explained. I never heard from him again. No bill, nothing. That typewriter meant more to me than anything else that happened. I was able to go on working.

  About that time I first read Clowning Through Life by Eddie Foy, who was performing onstage in Dodge City when a d
runken cowboy fired some shots through the wall. Foy hit the deck and was narrowly missed. Wyatt Earp and another officer fired at the cowboy, killing him. It was the only Dodge City killing in which Earp figured.

  Foy’s book is a good one and presents a view of what was happening from another angle.

  Western men loved theater of any kind, and Foy was very well liked on the frontier.

  Nearly every town had something resembling a theater, and usually performances were highly successful. There were a number of barnstorming companies touring the West in wagons, performing wherever opportunity offered. Shakespeare was enormously popular, and it was not unusual to hear him quoted at length. John Ringo, that much-overrated gunfighter, would often quote him when drinking.

  Another popular form of entertainment in the West was boxing. Prizefighting has gone through many changes in this country, as elsewhere, and there were several years when no decision was permitted.

  Boxing was legal, but a decision was not. What effect that was supposed to have I never knew, but unless there was a knockout or a win so decisive it could not be questioned, fighters and others waited until the newspapers came out with their decision on who won.

  Going through the record books of the 1920-1930 period, one will find “ND” after many of the fights.

  Boxing was illegal in several states, including Texas for a time. That is not to say there were no fights. However, because they were illegal, they were held in warehouses, barns, farmyards, anywhere a ring could be set up and a crowd gathered.

  In California in the 1920’s a bout was limited to four rounds. Hence, the fans expected sheer mayhem in those short fights.

  Several extra fighters waited, and if you did not throw leather from bell to bell, you were taken out and another fight substituted.

  As times changed, so did the fighters. In the beginning, when the Irish were newly arrived or second generation, most of the good fighters were Irish. It was their way out of the streets. Next came the Jews and the Italians, many of them using Irish names, and always there were blacks, and some excellent fighters among them.

  Fighters came from everywhere, but the best ones always came out of the ghettos or the mean streets. Many of the boys in the lighter divisions had served their apprenticeship as newsboys fighting to keep a corner where papers sold well. Money was hard to come by and jobs paid little, yet if a boy could fight, he often had a ticket to the top, or hoped he did. Nearly every small town had someone who believed he was a fighter, and some of them were good.

  Most had never had instruction from anyone who really knew the game, and their reputations had been built on victories over other local fighters.

  Many of my fights were in tank towns such as these, where I was a stranger or a new arrival facing a local boy who was often popular.

  To win at all, one had to win decisively.

  Boxing is not what it used to be, and whenever a fighter appears with a long string of knockouts, you may be sure he was fighting bums or men sadly out of condition. It is not easy to knock out a well-conditioned fighter who knows anything about the business. Good fighters can be knocked out, of course, but when one finds twenty or thirty knockouts in a row, you may be sure most of the opponents were not ready for a fight.

  At least half of the fighters in the twenties and thirties were fighting under pseudonyms. Many were called “Kid,” “Kayo,” “Battling,” or “Young”—for example: Louis “Kid”

  Kaplan, Young Stribling, Battling Nelson, among others. Johnny Dundee, a great featherweight who held the title for a while, was actually an Italian who had been given the Scottish name by his manager, Scotty Monteith. Later, several other Italian fighters, such as Mike and Joe Dundee, used the name.

  It was often the way to take a name with a reputation for winning. Most of those who read this book will remember the former heavyweight champion Jersey Joe Walcott, but few realize he took his name from Joe Walcott, a former welterweight champion who was one of the great black fighters of earlier times.

  There was not much money to be made fighting in small towns, but any money was good money to me in those rough years.

  Somewhere in those months I read for the first time A Frontier Doctor by Henry F.

  Hoyt, a man who knew Billy the Kid and a number of the wild ones from the Texas-New Mexico border country. Another excellent book is The Look of the West in 1860 by Sir Richard Burton, the Englishman who explored the upper reaches of the Nile and translated the Arabian Nights. I valued his work because he was an outsider who had traveled much on frontiers and was a keen observer.

  A very valuable collection, which I did not come upon until much later, is Pioneers of the San Juan, the stories of people from the southwest corner of Colorado as collected by the D. A. R. (daughters of the American Revolution). These are on-the-spot recollections of pioneers, and an important piece of work for which they must be much commended.

  Six Years with the Texas Rangers by James Gillette and the Reminiscences of a Ranchman by Edgar Beecher Bronson were also valuable books I read during this time.

  To list all the books that contributed to my education would be impossible, but the few mentioned will illustrate some of the trends. Yet I had no desire to be confined, and my interests led in all directions. My problem was that, having no home as such, I could not accumulate books, and many of those I most wanted simply were not to be found in public libraries (which must bend to the wishes of the greatest number). It was not until I married that I began to gather the working library I now possess.

  My library is not simply an accumulation of books. Each book has its reason for being there, and there is no deadwood on those shelves.

  Those I have are what I believe to be the best in their field, and if not that, they at least have something of value to offer. I have no book I could not read again with profit, and most of them require rereading. Occasionally, when not too pressed to get on with a story, I will go along the shelves, take down a half-dozen books, and just browse through them.

  In my books, men long dead, such as Aristotle, Maimonides, Josephus, and Ibn Khaldun, offer their thoughts freely; one can visit India with Megasthenes or al-Biruni, China with Ibn Batuta, and the Holy Land with Ibn Jubayour. I can study the architecture of castles, cathedrals, mosques, and pyramids.

  When very young, I attended a Bible school conducted by a man who knew his subject well. Later, I read the Bible several times, as well as the writings of Josephus, who lived shortly after the time of Jesus. It is a period on which we have many books aside from the Bible, and much on the Roman history of the time. I have read the Koran as well and find it has much to offer.

  Shortly before World War II, I was invited to attend a lecture at the University of Oklahoma. Two quite gifted speakers were each to talk for a few minutes, and the feature of the evening was to be an address by George Milburn.

  An Oklahoman who had made a name for himself in the short story field, Milburn had had stories published by H. L. Mencken’s American Mercury, Harper’s, and others. He was a gifted writer. But George was a writer, not a speaker, and this was his first time as the latter. Obviously he had written a good speech, but he just could not put it together. He stumbled and floundered and we all suffered with him. Finally, he seemed to get started, and then a train whistle blew somewhere outside and it might as well have cut his throat.

  All present were in sympathy with him, but sitting there I suffered as much as he did, I believe, for I could see myself in the same position. At the time I did not have the courage to stand up and say my name in public. What I had seen happen to George Milburn could happen to me, and because I was confident that I was going to “make it,” I knew it would happen.

  What to do? I knew I would never attend a class, as I would avoid even trying to speak, so I decided the thing to do was to take the bull by the horns and just start speaking. I let the word get around that I was open for speaking engagements, knowing that sooner or later I would be challenged and ha
ve to make good. I was hoping it would happen in a small town where nobody knew me. It came about in just that way.

  The night before the speech I did not sleep.

  The day of the lecture I decided I could not go through with it. A lady was driving some distance to pick me up and I called her to beg off.

  It was too late. She was already on her way.

  All I wanted now was to get out of it, any way I could. I was sure I would make an unholy fool of myself trying to speak to any sort of a crowd, yet I could think of no way out. And then she arrived. With a dreadful sinking feeling, as of a man going to his execution, I got in the car and we turned to leave. I thought of jumping out. I thought of everything. We were rolling down the highway then and I was making small talk, trying to think of some way out.

  There was no way. I had gotten myself into this fix and must see it through. On stage I reached into my pocket for my notes and they were not there.

  As surely as I began to search my pockets for them, somebody would snicker and I would have had it. So I began to talk without them, and somehow the evening passed and everybody seemed pleased.

  Especially me, as I was off the hook.

  That was a beginning, and many years ago, but I firmly believe that if I could become a speaker, anybody can do anything if he or she wants to enough. Since that time I have appeared on the platform with a former President of the United States, a Supreme Court Justice, and many others. Education takes many forms and this was an important part of my education. Of course, if one is to speak, one must have something worth saying, and say it intelligently. The important lesson to be learned is that one’s principal enemy in such cases is oneself.

  A thing to remember is that the audience wants you to be good. No matter whether they know you or not, they do not want to be bored, so whether you realize it or not, they are pulling for you.

  This is an age of communication. At one time or another, nearly everyone will have to stand up and sell his bill of goods, whatever it may be.