Legends and Tales of the American West

by Richard Erdoes

  Perkin went down into the pit and there, sure enough, he heard Joe’s voice coming right out of the rock, whining, “I want my sawbuck.”

  Perkin even got a glimpse of Joe, or rather his ghost, looking exactly as in life, except that he had shrunk to the size of a little two-foot gnome—transparent to boot.

  Worse than Joe’s specter was another devilish imp, the ghost of one Pat O’Brien, a shovel stiff with whom Perkin had locked horns, “pattin’ him on the lip,” as the saying went, over a shanty queen named Lou. Pat had gone under when the timbering had caved in on him. Pat too had become a shriveled midget manikin, tripping over his beard and, like Joe Trelawney, was a “see-through” ghoul, though, sometimes, he appeared in a more solid form. He was Perkin’s special curse, leering at him from crevices, hissing, “I’ll teach ye to mess around with my Lou, begorra!”

  It did no good at all that Perkin tried to quiet this uncouth apparition, saying, “Lou ain’t any concern of yours or mine anymore. She’s messin’ with every Tom, Dick, an’ Harry nowadays. Why don’t ye stop yer cussed pranks?”

  But the mischief-making troll kept knocking ladders from under Perkin’s feet, tripped him up, plagued the poor miner with rock falls, and almost managed to have him crushed under the wheels of a heavy ore cart.

  On the other hand, there was the phantom woman, on foot or on her headless steed, floating before Perkin, her pale flesh glistening in the flickering beam of her “miner’s friend,” luring him on through endless galleries, enshrouded in her long, silver-blond hair. Perkin could make out her shapely form and sinuous limbs, but her face was veiled as by fog and mist. Perkin was consumed with longing, but whenever he stretched out his hands to touch her, the enticing ghost instantly dissolved into nothing, slipping through his fingers like a gust of cold air.

  One day Perkin was drilling into a vein of auriferous ore when, to his horror, water gushing from a seam turned to blood. He put this down to a case of jitters and wild imagination, caused by excessive tippling. He dismissed the frightful vision from his mind, convincing himself that what he thought had been blood was merely water discolored by an outcrop of iron ore.

  A few days later the phantom woman appeared again, motioning him to “come on.” Perkin followed her through gallery after gallery into parts of the mine he had never entered before—a labyrinth of natural caves where stalactites, gleaming like giant icicles, encircled him like prison bars. The phantom suddenly turned around and faced him. The veil of fog lifted from her face, and in the light of his miner’s lamp he recognized her as Sukey, a girl he had, a few years before, befriended and callously discarded. The hairs on his head stood up in terror and his legs turned to water as cold, ghostly hands caressed his cheeks and icy lips pressed themselves against his mouth. And then, in a flash, the specter vanished. In its stead appeared the dwarfish tommy-knocker that once had been the living Pat O’Brien, leering, mocking, and screeching, causing a hail of rocks and stalactites to hail down from the cave’s roof upon the hapless Cornishman. Perkin fled in mortal fear, and suddenly his lamp gave out, maliciously extinguished by the evil imp. Pursued by its hellish laughter, Perkin groped in utter darkness, blindly, trying to feel his way back along dripping rock walls. He came to a dead end. He was utterly lost. He cowered in a coyote hole, a little side gallery, not knowing where to turn. Then he noticed, with mounting dread, that the air around him was “dead,” that he was being enveloped by a gaseous “choke-damp.” As the venomous vapors rose from the ground, his breath gave out. He panted for air; he felt himself suffocating with the tommy-knockers’ mocking laughter ringing in his ears. “So this is the end,” he was thinking when someone took him by the hand, leading him away. Choking and on the point of death, he let himself be carried off with prodigious speed. The air began to clear and so did his head. A tiny, distant spot of daylight showed itself at the end of a long gallery, beckoning, opening a path to deliverance. Soon Perkin found himself at the mine’s entrance. He turned to thank his rescurer, a fellow miner, he thought, but it turned out to be Joe Trelawney’s ghost, saying gruffly, “Better make it a tenner.”

  Perkin stumbled into the open, deeply inhaling the air imbued with the exhilarating scent of pine needles and wild flowers. He holed up for many weeks in his lone cabin, not going down to his diggings, deep in thought, drinking soda water instead of his usual forty-rod. He emerged, as if from hibernating, went to the mine, and stuffed ten silver dollars into the crack where Joe’s spirit had first appeared to him. Next he went into town, looking for the girl named Lou, finding her at her favorite man-catching watering hole. He persuaded Lou to let him have a tintype of her still-pretty mug in return for a small bag of gold dust. He made tracks to the boneyard and placed the tintype on Pat O’Brien’s grave with a heartfelt: “Ther, you old bastard, thet’s the best I can do for ye. Our lovely Lou is now a bride of the multitude, n’ you wouldn’t want to hev anythin’ to do with her, ‘specially as she’d be makin’ you a present in the form of a powerful dose of the pox. Well, pal, enjoy yerself wherever ye are.”

  After that he wrote a letter to Washoe, to a friend of Sukey’s, whose name and address he remembered:

  Miss Molly Ludlow,

  at the Long horn Saloon,

  Washoe, Nevada

  Dear Miss Ludlow:

  Ye mite recall me. I’m Perkin Basset, the feller usta go with Sukey. I’d deeply appreshiate it ef ye would let me know what happent to her. Pleese rite to me, care of the Silver Doler, Park City, Utah.

  Yer obeedent sarvant,

  Perkin Basset

  After six weeks he received an answer to the effect that Sukey had died in childbirth while bringing into the world a child—namely his daughter—now five years old and called Jenny. The girl lived in Washoe’s poor imitation of an orphanage.

  Perkin cleaned out his cabin, put up curtains at his single window, got a second bed, bought a new pair of pants, and took the stage to Washoe. He returned to Park City with an overjoyed Jenny, adopted her legally, and found a lady, neither young nor beautiful, to move in with him, taking care of the little girl while he tried to hit pay dirt in his diggings.

  Single-jacking, clicking, and hammering no longer disturbed Perkin’s slumber. Tommy-knockers henceforth shunned his company. The unclad lady on her headless horse was never seen again.

  It Had a Light Where Its Heart Ought to Have Been

  Somewhere in the Superstition Mountains the Lost Phantom Mine is still waiting for its discoverer. The exact location is known, and detailed maps exist, but the darn thing is—you just can’t find it. Plenty of fellows have tried, drawn by stories of millions of dollars’ worth of gold in that mine, but they all had to go home empty-handed. And there’s another thing: the mine comes with a ghost. Actually, the ghost does not really come with the mine, but seems to be looking for it, just like everybody else.

  The first one to come across it was Arizona Charlie, an old hand at prospecting. He was out camping when his mule got frightened by something and started to scream and kick and shiver. Charlie thought that maybe a bear or cougar was spooking his old mule, but there was no sign of any such critters. Charlie spent the day looking for some evidence of ore or mining, but found nothing. When it got dark, the mule started carrying on again, but this time Charlie found out what was spooking it—it was a flickering light circling around the campsite. Charlie remembered that he couldn’t figure out what kind of light it was, except that it was a mighty queer one. When the light came nearer, Charlie saw that it belonged to an eight-foot-tall skeleton. The light was inside the rib cage where the heart ought to have been. The skeleton sat down for a while by the campfire, opposite Charlie, which made him feel very peculiar. It just sat there in a sort of palsy-walsy way, and then got up, waved one bony hand jauntily, and left. Charlie was hanging around for a few days more, looking for the Lost Phantom. He met the skeleton again, always at night, always with the strange light inside its rib cage. It too seemed to be looking for something, like a
she-bear looking for her wayward cubs. Some nights the spook kept Charlie awake by rattling its bones, but Charlie got used to that, as the skeleton was very peaceful, meaning no harm. Whenever the rattling grew too loud, Charlie would yell at the skeleton to stop it, saying, “Hombre, you’re making too much of a racket for a man to get a good night’s sleep. Go and do your rattling someplace else.” Then the skeleton would scamper off meekly to where Charlie could not hear it. After a while Charlie gave up on the Lost Phantom Mine and never went back to the Superstition Mountains. So that was the end of what one could call a sort of friendship with the skeleton.

  Some years later two other old-timers were prospecting for the lost mine. They were sitting by the fire, washing down their frijoles with some hot, black java, when one of them saw an eerie light flitting about like a butterfly. “What the hell is that?” he said to his partner, who told him, “It’s just our fire reflected on that rock wall.” But then they both saw that it was a monstrously tall skeleton with something like a miner’s lamp shining through its ribs.

  “Holy Moses!” said one prospector. “Let’s vamoose. That thing scares the shit out of me!”

  “It doesn’t seem to be mad at us,” said the other. “Maybe it owns the mine. Let’s stick around. It may lead us to it.”

  “Seems to me just the opposite. I think he wants us to find it for him,” said the first.

  “How do you know it’s a ‘he’?”

  “Stands to reason. What would a female skeleton be doing wandering around in this godforsaken place?” He turned to the skeleton: “Hey, you old bag of bones, let’s agree, whether we find the Lost Phantom, or you do, we split half and half, though I don’t know what you’d spend your share on. What do you say? Is it a deal?” The skeleton nodded, but they didn’t find a trace of the mine.

  Some years later a fellow from Dallas came riding along on a horse. He had a map and was sure he’d find the Lost Phantom. The moon was shining and he had just stretched out in his bedroll when his animal started neighing and trampling as if a whole wolf pack had been after it. Then the Dallas fellow heard a loud rattling, too loud for a snake. He thought it was a log of dry wood crackling in the fire, but saw that it was a huge skeleton rattling its bones with light shining out of its empty eye sockets. The Texan screamed, jumped on his horse, and lit out at a dead run, leaving all his stuff behind. Later he went to all the bars in the nearest towns, drowning his horrors in whiskey, telling everybody who would listen about the dreadful ghost skeleton.

  Among these listeners were three bold men who were out for treasure, and hearing about the tall skeleton, they concluded that it had something to do with the Lost Phantom Mine. Maybe, they said, part of the mine had caved in on the ghost and it tried to get its body back to have it properly buried. For the sake of gold the three were ready to tackle any old skeleton.

  “We only have to stick around that old dry-bones and he will lead us to the treasure,” they told each other. So they went up into the Superstitions, and the skeleton was there all right.

  “How do you do, sir?” one of them addressed the ghost. “Fine weather we’ve had lately.”

  The skeleton nodded.

  “Seen anything of an ancient mine around here lately?” The skeleton shook its skull. “Well, sit down by the fire, old fellow, and warm your bones.”

  The skeleton did. It stuck to them, and they stuck to it. They became right friendly. The skeleton used to come and sit by the fire, listening to them swapping stories. When the men told jokes, the skeleton slapped its thighbones while its skull grinned horribly. Sometimes it let its light shine upon a dated copy of Playboy magazine, leafing with rattling fingers through the dog-eared pages.

  “We brought it specially for you,” the men told the ghost. The skeleton started to collect firewood for the men to show his appreciation. One of the fellows, just for the heck of it, handed the specter a tin cup full of hot coffee, and he took it and dropped it as if it had burned his finger bones. The men named their strange compadre “Boney.” “Hey, Boney, what do you say?” one of them shouted, “why don’t you show us where your gold is buried, seeing as you don’t have any use for it. Why, not even a broken-down old whore would do it with you, no matter how much money you’d give her. But we could use some of that yellow stuff all right, couldn’t we?”

  But Boney only shrugged his shoulders, putting up his skeleton hands as if to say, “No can do.”

  So they finally gave up on each other. The skeleton’s still there, and so is the Lost Phantom, some place. But what good is that? I ask you.

  He Ate All the Democrats of Hinsdale County

  Some years ago a new cafeteria was opened at the Department of Interior in Washington. A wag gave it the name of “Packer Hall.” Some people wondered who the exalted personage might be after whom the cafeteria was named. It turned out that it was Packer the Cannibal, a treasure-seeker who in 1873 had gone into the mountains with five fellow prospectors in search of gold and who had killed and eaten his companions when their food gave out. The higher-ups in the department were not amused and the cafeteria’s name was quietly changed.

  It was November, and late in the season to go into the San Juans looking for the shiny yellow metal men dream of, but the six men at Chief Ouray’s camp on the Uncompahgre River were consumed with gold fever. They partook of the chief’s food and smoked the pipe with him. Ouray consulted his wise old men who had the gift of foretelling the future. The chief told his visitors: “Your medicine is bad. If you go into the mountains, winter and hunger will claim you. You will not come back. Instead of gold you will find death waiting for you. This medicine man here has had a vision—in it he saw five skeletons and one live fat man. It is a very bad vision. Wait until spring before you go.”

  Among the prospectors was Alfred Packer, a tall man, with long, dark curling hair, a dark mustache and goatee, and deep-set, shifty eyes. “We ain’t a bunch of goddam red savages,” said Packer. “We don’t believe in sech drivel. I know these mountains. I say we can do it. The woods ’re full of game an’ the weather is mild. We ain’t goin’ to sit here on our butts, waitin’ like a passel of durn fools for spring. We’re a-goin’ now. We aim to git rich!”

  They took a vote among themselves and decided in favor of going on. They picked Packer for their guide. The names of his companions were Swan, Miller, Humphreys, Noon, and Bell. With the exception of Packer, not one of them was ever seen alive again.

  It snowed and snowed. The winter was the worst in men’s remembrance. Elk and deer came down from the mountains into the valleys where it was warmer and where they could find things to feed on. In January, Mrs. Charles Adams, the wife of the Indian agent, was plagued by nightmares and premonitions. Clouds of icy white fog enveloped the agency, filling the valley from end to end. For days the clouds would not lift, so people could not see the hand before their eyes. Mrs. Adams was obsessed with the thought that some place out there in the snow and mist a poor soul was lost. She imagined hearing piteous cries for help. She put up a light high up on a pole to serve as a beacon that might guide a freezing, famished wanderer to safety.

  One day a wild-eyed, almost incoherent man with matted hair and beard staggered into Chief Ouray’s camp. It was Packer. When asked what had become of his five companions, he cursed. He said that he had sprained an ankle and gone lame, and that his partners had gone on without him, leaving him helpless and alone in the snowbound wilderness to starve. During the following weeks it was noticed that Packer was drinking heavily, throwing a great deal of money around, and betting recklessly on games of chance. People wondered where all that money came from and how Packer had acquired a watch that one miner recognized as having belonged to Swan. Of his five companions nothing was heard. They seemed to have simply vanished. People whispered of terrible things that had happened in the mountains and began feeling uncomfortable in Packer’s presence.

  In 1874 the thaw came late to the high country of Colorado, but when it finally arrived,
three prospectors ventured up into the mountains in their perennial search for the elusive glittering gold. They made camp near Slumgullion Pass. Their dog chased a rabbit, but instead of returning with a bunny, it came back with a human arm between its teeth. The three men investigated and, at the spot where the dog had dug up the arm, came upon the grisly remains of four men, killed and butchered, most of the flesh stripped from their bones. Nearby they found a fifth, headless corpse. They quickly determined that these were the bodies, or what was left of them, of Packer’s missing companions.

  Faced with the evidence, Packer confessed, though he tried to make it appear that the killing was either done by others or in self-defense. A week after leaving Ouray, Packer said, the party had run out of food. No game could be found. They dug up roots but, as Packer explained, they were not very nutritious. After one more week the members of the party became restless, looking upon each other with a certain longing, “like castaways on a drifting boat offering up a shipmate as a sacrifice to the others.” Packer, so he said, went from their camp to gather firewood and when he came back found that his partners had poleaxed Swan, because he was the eldest of the group and could not put up much resistance. The remaining four were busy cutting up the body, slicing off strips of flesh from the chest, thighs, and calves. Roasted, these were quite palatable. Packer admitted that he soon developed a fondness for chest meat, which he thought was better than breast of chicken. The killers divided among themselves Swan’s belongings, including several thousand dollars.