The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana)

by Robert Lewis Taylor

  And he consulted Kissel, too, in the idiotically sober respectful way he always did, and if the answers he got back were just as woolly-headed as usual, he paid no heed.

  “How do you feel about having female nurses in attendance during operations on the male genitalia?”

  Kissel thought it over, knocked out his pipe, and replied, “I wouldn’t let it bother me.”

  “You’re quite right!” my father cried, smacking one knee. “Once again, you’ve gone right to the heart of the thing. I’d been worried about it before, but I see it now. Go right ahead, and not be concerned. Many thanks.”

  Well, when they’d straightened out that knotty question, we got up and headed for Coulter’s meeting. But we went early, to have a look at the Englishmen with the mule train. The stories about them drifted in every day, and I’ll own up that they deserved it all. The main one’s name was Coe, but it was considerably more complicated than that, being, as they said, “the Honorable Henry T. Coe,” but what the Honorable was for, I hadn’t any idea, unless it was because he didn’t cheat anybody when he bought the mules. The fact was, everybody said, Colonel Ralston had gouged his eyes out, near about, and everything else this Coe did turned out just as hilarious, though sour financially, so I guess that was it.

  Anyway, we got up to his camp and sure enough he was sitting there in an overstuffed rocker, wearing white kid gloves, just like they said.

  “Doctor Sardius McPheeters, your servant, sir,” said my father in his grandest style, walking forward to introduce himself, with his hand stretched out.

  “A pleasure,” said Coe, without rising, and taking the hand as a king might accept a gift from some cannibals out of his provinces. That is, he grasped it limply, put it aside, and reached for a silken kerchief, as if to brush off any contamination. Besides the gloves, he was wearing a pair of gray striped trousers and a black coat.

  My father coughed, being taken down a little, and introduced Kissel, Brice and me; then he went on to state that he’d taken his medical degree at the University of Edinburgh, so that he thought he should pay a visit of “British solidarity.”

  At this, Coe thawed slightly and even called to a negro youth, who went by the name of Othello, and said to fetch some ginger beer.

  So it was true, then. They’d told it all around that this Coe was traveling to California with twenty-six cases of ginger beer, and he had it here stashed away in his wagon—I sidled over and peeped under the canvas. It tasted good, too; he wasn’t due to get much farther with it, but I’m jumping too far ahead.

  Sitting down, they had a talk about the exaggerated hardships of traveling to California, and this Coe said he was keeping a journal and meant to write a book, to be called, An Amble over the Rockies and a Stroll through the Diggings. When Brice remarked that the title might prove to be a little breezy, considering other accounts of the ride yet before us, Coe waved with disdain and said:

  “Oh, these fellows told me I was a bit of an ass to wear kid gloves and carry ginger beer, but it’s necessary to keep up appearances. I make no doubt they’ll have the desired effect upon the natives.”

  It seemed to me he was the greatest fool I’d ever met, and I go to this trouble to show him because we saw a good deal of him later. He had his mule skinner, Othello, standing at an iron pot cooking what he called a “leveret,” which was nothing more than a young jackass rabbit, and the Honorable Coe called him over to demonstrate him.

  “Othello, how do we discipline a balky mule?”

  He was a solid, shiny fellow with a head like a bullet, and he said, “Sah?”

  “How do you gentle a mule?”

  “I take and butts ’em, sah.”

  “Show these gentlemen. Pick out the worst one, say Gnasher. Pretend to pack-saddle Gnasher.”

  The negro took up one of the heavy wooden packs and approached the mule, which switched around suddenly and lashed out with both heels. But the boy was an artist for nimbleness. While we sucked in our breath, he backed off a few feet to charge in like a shot out of a cannon. What kept his neck from breaking, I have no idea, but his head hit the mule’s side with a thud like a bass drum. The animal just stood there and quivered. It wasn’t happy at all. And it didn’t make a move a moment afterward when Othello threw the saddle over its back.

  “That’ll do,” said the Honorable Coe. “See to the leveret. You know,” he went on, “that noisy villain, Coulter, gave me a foolish method of subduing these beasts, and I rather think he did it on purpose. He told me to throw Cayenne pepper in their eyes and push them into the river.”

  “Did you try it?” asked my father.

  “Tried it on Parliament—that’s the slow one.”

  “With good results, I trust?”

  “The bounder bit a hole through the third finger of my right hand.”

  Everybody sympathized with him and said how ornery a mule could be, no matter how well you treated him, and then we went on over to Coulter’s, because it was time for the meeting to start. The Honorable Coe tagged along, after telling Othello to look in once in a while on Vilmer, which was his valet, he said, but had taken down sick owing to the wretchedness of the food.

  “I’ll be happy to attend him, as a courtesy,” said my father, brightening up at the prospect of occupying the limelight for a while.

  “Why, that’s good of you,” said Coe, “but a Doctor Merton had a look at him only this morning. He reported that all hepatic action had ceased and gave him some morphine and senna leaves. He said if he didn’t rally in a couple of days, not to count too much on having a valet for the trip.”

  “Singular diagnosis,” muttered my father, and we made our way through the oval of wagons. Coulter and most of the men were grouped around his campfire, with Coulter standing up and his side-kick, McBride, not far away. Coulter was a big fellow, about the size of Shep but not red-faced that way. He was dark tan and black-haired and always looked blue around the chin, as though he needed a shave, though mostly he didn’t—he shaved every day. He had on a buckskin shirt with a fringe, and a pair of coarse linsey-woolsey pants that narrowed down into boots, and a very beat-up hat with a broad brim and a thong underneath, so as to keep the sarcastic look on his face from being blocked off, I reckon.

  “To get things started,” he said, looking around, amused, “I understand there’s been some beefing about my orders to hole up Sundays.”

  A nice-looking elderly man in very decent clothing, a Mr. Kennedy, with a party from Missouri, spoke up to say in a polite tone, “Not beefing, Mr. Coulter. More properly, you might say a difference of opinion.”

  “What’s yourn based on?” inquired Coulter. “You made the trip often?”

  Kennedy reddened up and stammered something about common sense and ordinary judgment, but Coulter paid him no attention. “When I signed on as nursemaid to this bunch of milksops, I did it with the understanding that I was to be boss. But if you insist on committing suicide, you’re entirely free to do so. However, I ain’t planning to be in on it. I resign, and you can keep my salary—a hundred dollars and found. Dick and I’ll be riding back in the morning. You’re on your own.”

  I noticed the Honorable Coe sort of looking down his nose, as if somebody had hauled some garbage into camp; now he said, “Your judgment may be sound, but your manners could stand improvement, Coulter. In England, impertinence like yours would be answered with a day or two in stocks.”

  There was a general gasp of shock, and some tittering from one or two men in the rear, hidden in the shadows. I couldn’t believe my ears—here was this Honorable Coe, dressed up like a dandy, with a sprig of artemisia in his buttonhole and usually giving out the sissiest kind of speech—and he spoke up to this roughneck as if he was dressing down a groom.

  But the biggest effect it had was on McBride, who wheeled around, white-faced, and demanded in a gritty kind of tone, “What did you say?”

  “You can call off your whippersnapper, too, Coulter,” said Coe, taking no notice. “
I don’t recall ever seeing an upstart so badly in need of a birching.”

  Stripping off one of his gloves, which he wore like a gunfighter, McBride moved forward two quick paces and slapped at Coe’s face, but my father stepped between them and took the blow on his shoulder.

  “Go on! Draw!” McBride half screamed, adding a few choice curses. “I’m going to make you sorry you opened your dirty mouth.”

  My father and one or two other gentlemen said some soothing things, and held him off, for he would have shot Coe sure, and then Coulter came over and jerked the boy away, saying, “Get in your tent.”

  With a good deal of boldness, I thought, Kennedy spoke up to complain, “In addition to the Sunday delay, Mr. Coulter, not a few of us are sick and tired of being bulldozed by that bad-tempered young ruffian. We refuse to put up with it much longer.”

  Coulter amazed us all by breaking into a grin and saying, “To tell you the truth, I’m a little sick of him myself. Now I propose that we keep our heads and talk this out. My reasons for the Sunday rest are perfectly simple. I’ve never been over this route, as I acknowledged candid and frank when I hired out, but I’ve done trail riding in other directions, including the Santa Fe, and I’ve yet to see a wagon train that didn’t profit by a day-a-week layover. The oxen are refreshed, the equipment can be patched up, and folks just seem to get back their strength generally. Several of you set such a store by Ware and his guidebook, I’m surprised you haven’t taken his word. He says, and I think I remember it right, ‘Never travel on the Sabbath; we will guarantee that if you lay by on the Sabbath, and rest yourselves and teams, that you will get to California 20 days sooner than those who travel seven days a week.’ ”

  Well, this seemed to impress most of them; they shook their heads and said maybe they’d been a little hasty, that they must have read Ware’s comment but had likely forgot it.

  “That’s all fine and good,” said one man, “but what about this squirt, McBride? He’s pining to gun somebody. We’re about wore out on it; speaking for myself, I’ve got saddle sores.”

  “I’ll make you a promise. If he hasn’t changed his tune in a week, I’ll ship him out. He’s the son of an old friend, and I vowed to take care of him.”

  “That sounds fair enough,” said my father, and a few joined in to agree, but I noticed that some still looked unconvinced. They looked worse when Coulter said, in his old raspy voice, “If you’ve had your say, I suggest you drift back to camp. The dew’s coming up and you may catch a cold.”

  He was hard to figure out. Sometimes he seemed sensible and almost human; other times he was as irritating as sand in your porridge. Neither did it make him more popular, as we left, when he took a swig from a bottle he carried on his hip and cried out, like a mother putting some half-witted children to bed, “Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.” We heard his hoarse laugh back in the darkness as we made our way to the wagons.

  Chapter XIII

  We rolled out of bed at 3 A.M., caught up the oxen, hitched, and had breakfast, squatting around the fire, still in the deep dark. We always had firewood laid out from the night before, and the women made breakfast in silence, feeling a little poorly and not quite up to snuff, the way women do in the mornings. It was best to leave them alone. Jennie was apt to snap your head off, and even Mrs. Kissel took on a kind of mournful note, which was aimed at the general misery of being a woman, I judged, and not centered on any one person like her husband. So the smartest thing was to let them pitch in and work; it’s my observation that nothing’s as handy for taking the kinks out of a woman as work.

  Shivering a little, for these early mornings on the prairie were cold even in June, we had bacon, left-over biscuits, and several cups of black coffee, and I noticed that Brice, the pale, thin-haired young widower, still wasn’t eating much. But Jennie would fill his plate and shove it in his hand whether he wanted it or not. There’s no telling what might have happened otherwise, because Brice couldn’t seem to bounce back from the loss of his wife. Mostly he said little, answered questions pleasantly, and always was willing to help, but it was as if he didn’t have any push of his own. That is, he would half kill himself if somebody told him what to do, but he couldn’t start anything. I believe he would have sat over a dead campfire till the buzzards got him. I’d heard him in the night, too, whimpering—dreaming, or lying awake thinking of home.

  It was a fresh, clear morning with the stars out in smears and clusters. Off in the distance you could hear animals barking, coyotes or wolves, and the oxen stamped around, lowing, ready to move. It felt good to be a boy and off adventuring. I remember eating an uncommon lot that morning, and I’m glad I did, for it turned out to be an unusual day, and required strength. As my father finished his one-man conversation—he was always bubbling over at 3 A.M., in the gabbiest of spirits, but since nobody else cared to talk, he just rattled on alone—Coulter rode by on his Indian pony to see that we squashed our fire. “Get it out—every last ember,” he called from the saddle. “Rain’s been scarce and you’ve never lived till you’ve seen a prairie fire on the roar.”

  “Confound that detestable bore,” my father fumed when he was gone. “I don’t know how much longer I can swallow those pompous advices.”

  I think Coulter, to my father, represented all the spoil-sports in the world rolled into one. At exactly the wrong times he kept sounding warning notes that pricked my father’s happiest dreams. For instance, on the second day out, we bought a white horse from the mule party that was dropping back, and paid only a few dollars for it. He was so blown up with pride at turning a bargain that he talked it all over camp, referring to the animal, for some reason, as “horseflesh,” a professional word he’d got out of the Turf Register, I judged. And then Coulter exploded this bubble, too. As they passed, Coulter riding his mean-looking pinto and my father, as he said, “superbly mounted” on “Cream,” which was the name this white horse went by, Coulter held up a hand to stop him and remarked:

  “You’ll probably have to shoot that horse when it gets a little hotter.”

  It wouldn’t take much imagination to see the look on my father’s face. “Things must be well in hand if you can take time from your duties to play the clown,” he said.

  “No joke. White horses aren’t worth a dried lizard skin on the plains. They attract bugs. Bugs will pester him out of his wits.”

  “In that case,” said my father, so angry he was ready to swap insults like a child, “Cream and your mongrel can start off even.”

  “Color aside, Indian ponies are the only ones can stand the strain.”

  “I’m obliged for your counsel,” my father said stiffly, and rode off.

  Well, when we got scraped up after breakfast, with both wagons ready to move, he said I could ride Cream for a while, and we waited for “Gee-whoa-haw!” It came at last, and the wagon at that end wheeled out of formation and took the trail, behind Coulter, and, after him, McBride, who rode a range stud about as savage and low-down as the owner.

  The wagons at night were driven into an oval, like this:

  It made a good barricade against Indians, Coulter said, and could be defended against a large force. The cooking was done outside the enclosure, and the cattle turned out to graze until dark, then brought back inside. Later on, in the bad Indian country, the cattle had to be staked to feed outside, but we weren’t there yet. So far, all we’d seen were Shawnees and Pottawattomies, with a few Otoes and Kaws, a poverty-struck bunch that wanted to come up and beg, but Coulter wouldn’t let them. “Never let an Indian in camp,” he said. “Never under any conditions.” Even at that, he was easier about them than his “protégé,” who was itching to kill a few and notch up his guns.

  “A man orta put the smelly devils in their place, once he gets the chance,” McBride told us.

  Twice Coulter had to haul him off when he tried to ride down little traveling groups within a few yards of us. Coulter also made a speech in which he cautioned about strayin
g off from camp. He told Jennie she was playing “ring-toss” with her life by going out to hunt. “Indians along here are mainly harmless but they’ll swallow up a straggler and leave nothing but his bones. And in your case,” he went on, looking her impudently in the eye, “they’ll breed you to half of the tribe. If that’s what you’re after, go ahead.”

  She shook her head in disgust, but I noticed she stayed within shouting distance of the train for several days.

  While my father walked along beside Kissel, I rode Cream on up ahead, past the train, almost to Coulter, who had taken what he called the “point,” a word he’d got in Texas—say two hundred yards in front. McBride was nowhere to be seen. It was about four-thirty now, and a few pale streaks, the false dawn, showed in the East where the real dawn was about to break. Looking back, I could see one or two wagons with lanterns out, where people were sick, maybe; but mostly it was dark.

  We’d left the Vermilion (our crossing had been made Saturday afternoon) and were headed for the Big Blue, a jump of twenty-four miles without water or wood. To save Cream, I slid off and walked for half an hour or so, until it really began to get dawn. Suddenly, out of the mist up ahead, far beyond Coulter, a number of shots rang out, noisy and jarring in all that silence. Two nearly together and then, a moment later, a third.

  “Whoa-haw!” Coulter yelled back, waving. “Hold up the train!”

  I leaped up on Cream, not wanting to miss anything, and streaked forward at a gallop, and behind me I could hear others coming a-horseback. Through the mist that hung in the hollows over the prairie I saw Coulter fanning his horse with his heels, his body not rising an inch from the saddle; he could ride and no mistake.

  We whipped over a rise, down an incline, and out onto a barish spot, where I could see something on the ground. Coulter was off and running before his horse stopped. Then I saw the trouble; it was McBride, standing with a revolver in each hand, and before him, on the patchy grass, a terrible sight. An Indian woman sprawled there, both hands clutching her breast, which was rising and falling in gasps, and worse, at her feet lay a little boy of about seven, black-haired and handsome, holding a toy deer made out of deerskin-shot dead through the neck—and a girl one or two years younger with her head blown apart so bad I couldn’t to say honestly look at it.