P. K. Pinkerton and the Pistol-Packing Widows

by Caroline Lawrence

  For as you have probably guessed, I was not sawed in half but, rather, I got rescued.

  And you will never guess who done it.

  I WAS STRUGGLING & squirming like a worm on a stick and I knew the toothed blade of the saw was about to bite into my nether bits to make my legs longer & my body shorter so I squinched closed my eyes and prayed as hard as I could.

  Instantly, everything ceased & a blessed Silence reigned. I wondered if I had been snatched away to Glory.

  I opened my eyes, half expecting to see my Redeemer standing there.

  It was not the Lord Jesus. It was Mrs. Violetta De Baskerville in her riding habit and ostrich-feathered riding hat.

  “D-mn you and your meddling,” she said. “If Jack finds out I doubled back to help you he will throttle me for sure.”

  She came closer and tried to bend to see my ankles tied beneath the log. But her corset would not allow her enough flexibility so she had to kneel to get a look. I felt her dainty gloved fingers fumbling with the knots. “You fool,” she said. “You tightened these knots by squirming. Have you got a knife?”

  “Mmmmph!” I nodded & grunted & made my eyes look down towards my neck where my medicine bag was.

  She saw that my mouth was stuffed with a balled-up handkerchief. For a moment she hesitated, then she removed that foul and soggy object with her gloved thumb & forefinger, and Expression No. 3—Disgust.

  “Flint knife,” I croaked. “Pouch around my neck.”

  She found my medicine bag & pulled it out & opened it & fished out my Indian ma’ s flint knife. She had to kneel again to get at my wrists and ankles but after a moment I was free. I tried to get up but she made no move to help me and as my arms and shoulders were numb, I tumbled off the half-sawed log & thumped onto the hard floor & lay there winded with my mouth full of sawdust.

  After a moment I sat up & spat out the sawdust & some blood where I had cut my lip.

  “Thank you,” I said, wiping my mouth with my hand. My voice was kind of croaky. “Why did you come back to help me?”

  “I am not a monster,” she said. “That would be a horrible way for anyone to die, even a misfit like you.”

  She was now standing as far away from me as her puffy velvet skirt would allow. She had lit one of her cigarritos and was regarding me through a cloud of smoke. Her pretty violet eyes were narrowed into Expression No. 5—mad or thinking or suspicious.

  Maybe all three.

  She sucked her cigarrito hard & I saw the fiery tip flare up. “Besides,” she said, “you saved me from a beating at the hand of that man. Maybe something worse. You did not have to do that.” She exhaled smoke. “Also, if people found the body of a sawed-in-half girl dressed as a boy they might make enquiries and that might lead them to me. I do not need that kind of impediment now.” She dropped the butt of her cigarrito & ground it into the sawdust. “That Jack Williams is an animal and should be put down.”

  I got unsteadily to my feet. “Then why were you sparking him?” I asked. I felt queasy & shaky from nearly being sawed in half. My shoulders ached and my knees trembled.

  Violetta gave a little shrug. “I like gamblers and desperados,” she said. “They excite me.” She opened her reticule and took out a fresh cigarrito & a Lucifer.

  I said, “You betrayed Jace. How could you do that?”

  She said, “So did you. By spying on him.”

  I had no reply.

  She struck the Lucifer on a raw plank of the wall & held the flame to the tip of her cigarrito. “I have known poverty all my life,” she said, “and when I was fourteen years old I vowed to make something of myself. The good Lord gave me three gifts: beauty, brains and bravery. My beauty will not last forever so I have got to use it while I got it. I married a dying old man and made him happy for a few months by mopping his forehead and speaking softly to him. He died and left me money. But not enough. So I had to marry a few others.”

  “Did you kill them?” I asked.

  “Not exactly,” she said. “But I did not object if my other gentlemen friends challenged them to duel. I have one last husband to divorce and then I will marry Jace.”

  “Jace will never marry you,” I said. “He once told me he would never go to a wedding, especially his own. He is entranced by you but he will soon come to his senses.”

  She blew out smoke, hard & down. “You claim to care for Jace but you only follow him around because he can give you something you want. You do not really like him. You only care about yourself. You are a cold and heartless misfit, whose face betrays no expression.”

  I pondered this.

  It was true that my face betrays no expression.

  It was true that Jace had something I wanted: a knowledge of how to read people.

  I thought about the first time I had met Jace, when he had caught me in his arms after I leapt from a balcony to escape gunfire. I remembered the time I had run into him and knocked gold pieces from his hands. I remembered how he had started to teach me about how to understand people, and how it had been like a ray of revelation from the Lord. I thought about the times he had let me dine with him and Stonewall and how he let me stay up late at night in the saloons of Virginia City to help him play cards.

  “I do like Jace,” I said. “I like him a lot.”

  “I suppose you think you can take the place of his children.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  She raised an eyebrow at me. “Do you know anything about Jace?” she asked. “Anything at all?”

  “I know his name is Jason Francis Montgomery,” I said. “I know he fought in the Mexican War and that he did not like killing men and that is why he did not enlist in the southern rebellion against the north.”

  “Anything else?”

  “He has a friend called Stonewall.”

  Once again, Violetta opened her beaded reticule. She took out a piece of paper and held it out so I could take it. It was a CDV, a Carte de Visite. It showed Jace sitting next to a woman with symmetrical features & dark hair parted in the middle. There were also two boys and a little girl in the picture. The oldest boy looked to be about eight. They all had dark hair. The little girl was sitting on Jace’s lap. She had ringlets.

  “Who are these people with Jace?” I said. But my sinking stomach already knew.

  “His wife and children,” she said.

  I looked up at Violetta.

  “Jace is married?” I said. “With children?” My voice sounded strange in my own ears.

  “Was,” she said, and sucked her cigarrito. She turned her head & blew the smoke to one side. “Jace was married with kids. They are all dead now. I thought he would have told you that, you being such good friends.”

  “They are all dead?” I repeated stupidly. “Who killed them?”

  She took another deep drag. “God killed them,” she said. “Took them all with a fever two Christmases ago.” She blew the smoke down.

  It felt like all the air had left the room.

  “You might care about Jace,” she said, “but he don’t care about you. If he did, then he would have told you about his dead family. But he is using you just like you are using him. He told me how you sometimes help him win at poker. That is the only reason he tolerates you.”

  I could not breathe.

  I thought, “This danged pinching biting corset!”

  Then I remembered I was not wearing a corset.

  Violetta said, “You probably saved my life just now. I certainly saved yours. So now we’re even. Jace does not care about you. He told me you were as bothersome to him as a deer tick. Why don’t you just go away and never come back?”

  I never cry, but everything was blurry & my throat was so tight I could hardly swallow & that invisible corset around my middle made it hard to breathe.

  I thought, “Violetta is right. I am a Misfit and a
Freak. Jace does not care about me. Nobody cares about me.”

  Then I thought, “Dang Jace and the rest of them. Dang them all to the fiery place!”

  And finally, “I will get on Cheeya and ride away and we will live in the desert like Blue Supper the hermit and never have anything to do with People ever again.”

  AS YOU HAVE GUESSED by the fact that you are reading my Last Will & Testament and this account of my short & wretched life, my career as a hermit ended in failure.

  When Violetta said all those cruel things it hurt almost as much as being sawed in half might have done.

  So I got angry. I discovered long ago that there is not enough space in my heart for anger and hurt both.

  Being angry made my vision clear and the knot melt away from my throat.

  Being angry made me feel strong.

  Being angry almost made me happy.

  When I got out of that mill house I ran through the woods & over the stream & across the meadow to where Cheeya stood tugging mouthfuls of cold, sweet grass with a loud crunching noise.

  He looked up at me as I came near. I threw my arms around his neck. He felt strong & warm & calm. He snorted down the back of my neck as if to say, “Where were you?”

  “I hate people,” I said in Lakota. “I hate them all. Let’s get out of here.”

  I swung up onto his back & looked around. Clouds were coming from the west and they smelt full of snow, so I pointed Cheeya east & we went back the way we had come: down the trail called Johnson’s Cutoff & through King’s Canyon towards Carson City.

  But we were not going to Carson.

  We were heading towards the desert, which is where hermits like Blue Supper live.

  Soon we had left King’s Canyon behind and were fairly flying across flat, scrubby ground. Cheeya & I avoided the Toll Roads and kept to the places where sagebrush grew. Nobody saw us, and nobody knew where we were.

  We had only been riding a few hours when the clouds caught up with us & the temperature dropped like a brick in a bucket. By and by, the first flurries of flakes began to swirl around me and Cheeya. It was fast becoming a blizzard.

  I know from my childhood in the Black Hills that blizzards can keep you trapped for months. Sometimes all winter. That was why my Indian ma and I would shelter in towns from November to May. Like it or not, I had to swallow my desire to be a hermit and head back for Carson. But I had barely turned Cheeya south when the flakes began to fall, so fast and thick that I could hardly see.

  I slowed Cheeya to a walk, fearful of a combined threat of quicksand and snow.

  This blizzard would kill me as surely as being buzzed in half.

  We rode for a while longer, going slower and slower.

  Suddenly a small house loomed up out of the whiteness.

  Praise God! We were saved!

  Then my heart sank. Coming closer, I could see it was only a roofed wagon partly sunk into the sand & leaning over. On the side were letters that read: HABERSHAM’S ELIXIR.

  I guessed Mr. Habersham or one of his drummers had decided to avoid the Toll Roads like me and got stuck in the sand and his axle broke so he unhitched his mule or horse and rode for help. That must have been a while ago, for the writing on the side was peeling and faded.

  There were no wheels on that wagon and as I dismounted and peered inside, I saw that someone had pulled up the boards at the bottom so that big box rested right on the sand. They had probably chopped up the floorboards and wheels for firewood.

  Cheeya is not tall, so there was just about room for both of us to squeeze inside. I made Cheeya back in so he could look out at the snowy blizzard.

  There had once been a padded seat at the front for the driver. Someone had pulled this off & put it inside to make a sort of couch or short bed. That same someone—or maybe someone else—had also dug a fire pit near the open front under a kind of wooden overhang. I saw traces of burnt sagebrush in it. Someone had sheltered here before: maybe a hermit, like Blue Supper.

  I was thinking these things as I took off Cheeya’s saddle & vigorously brushed the snow off him with my gloved hands. (I was glad of Mrs. Murphy’s black gloves and the woolen scarf I had borrowed.) When we were both a little warmed by my stroking him, I unfolded his saddle blanket & shook it out & spread it over his back.

  Next I went outside in the silently swirling snow & used the sharp end of my Indian ma’ s flint knife to cut some sagebrush. Then I used that same knife to clear out the fire pit at the entrance of the shelter. I filled that square pit with sagebrush. I made tinder by taking some fluff from Cheeya’s blanket & mixing it with some of the tender parts of the tops of sage. I put it in a curved piece of sagebrush bark & used a Lucifer in my pocket to light it. When the flame was burning steadily in the bark, I put this kindling in with the sage until I had a nice fire going. I kept adding sagebrush. After about an hour I had that pit filled to the brim with glowing coals. That fire would keep me and Cheeya warm all night.

  Also, I could make water by putting snow in my slouch hat and holding it over that fire until the snow melted. You have to warm water made of melted snow or it will chill you.

  I gave Cheeya a good drink of lukewarm water from my hat. I also gave him my last pieces of maple sugar but I kept the three pieces of jerky for my own supper. Then I sat by the fire and when I was warm enough I began to write this account.

  The good thing about sagebrush is that it makes hot coals with hardly any smoke so it did not vex Cheeya, who had been badly spooked by a fire two months before.

  The bad thing about this fire is that it is a futile attempt to extend my sad & sorry life by another few days.

  MY INDIAN MA TAUGHT ME never to dwell on the past, nor to contemplate the future. She always said “There is no Day but This Day.” (Only she said it in Lakota.)

  When I told this to my foster ma, she said, “I do not think your Indian ma taught you that. I reckon that is the way you are made. I would even venture to guess that was the way she was made.”

  Then Ma Evangeline added, “Mind you, that is a good way to view this world. Life does not hurt too much if you are just living in the present.”

  Pa Emmet, my preacher pa, said that went along fine with what our Savior said about not worrying in Matthew chapter 6 and verse 27.

  But sitting here in my ELIXIR coffin-to-be, I cannot help thinking about what led me here.

  I do not mean just the events of the past month or two, or even the past two years.

  I mean before that.

  I mean the Indian Massacre that has been a Blank in my Memory since it happened.

  Maybe because I have been here a few days now with nothing but wind and white snow, I have started to remember what happened.

  My Indian ma, Squats on a Stump, used to say, “You will never be a Brave but you can be brave. Shut your Mind and Harden your Heart.”

  I have been shutting my mind for a long time. Hardening my heart, too. But now it seems there is something hiding in the forest at the back of my mind, waiting to come out. Can I shut it out forever? Can you shut up a beast in a forest?

  I am going to keep writing and let that memory beast come out. I am going to write what happened when I was ten years old and the Shoshone attacked our wagon and massacred our party.

  I remember it was a fine day with a sky as high as Heaven. Ma and Tommy Three had been singing songs about finding gold and being rich. Ma & Tommy & Hang Sung & I were walking beside the wagon, for the prairie was smooth and green from all the winter rains, with grass as high as my knee.

  Three days before, we had seen about a million buffalo to the north. The rest of the wagon train kept going but Ma said we could hang back & kill a couple & smoke the meat & also skin a few hides to sell. She hated skinning hides, but she liked money.

  So we stopped. Tommy Three shot and killed two big ones within the hour. For the nex
t two days, all four of us were skinning & chopping & smoking strips of buffalo meat. We worked by the side of a stream and the water ran pink as strawberries with all the blood we washed off ourselves.

  The day after we finished butchering those beasts, we saw traces of a Shoshone hunting party. I found an arrow with their markings in the carcass of a buffalo and Ma said she had seen the prints of five unshod ponies. We were not too worried for there was enough buffalo for all. Great herds of them covered the plain that spring.

  On what was to be the last day of our sojourn there, my Indian ma got mad at me and cuffed my ear. She was in a bad temper as she hated scraping buffalo hides.

  So while they were not looking, I took an old flour sack & my Indian ma’ s Baby Dragoon revolver & went off without asking permission on the pretext of gathering buffalo chips for fuel.

  I stayed away all day enjoying the wind in my ears & the smell of the prairie & being on my own. I did not start back with my bag load of chips until the sun was a handbreadth from the horizon. As soon as I got over the next-to-last hump in the prairie, I heard something like whooping or screaming. I could not be sure.

  I ran forward & then I slowed & then I stopped.

  Finally I fell on my belly & crawled.

  My Indian ma was right. I should have shut my mind and hardened my heart.

  Now I am remembering what those five Shoshone did to them.

  It was awful.

  By the time I got there, the Shoshone were going through our possessions. They were taking some things & smashing others & throwing some down on the green prairie grass. Not far off, I could see Ma lying real still & also Tommy Three & Hang Sung.

  I watched the five Indians start to chop up the wagon. I saw them find Tommy Three’s secret jug of whiskey that he kept hidden from Ma in a bucket hung from the rear axle. I heard them laughing.

  It was night by now and they had made a bonfire of our wagon and were roasting hunks of buffalo meat on it. They feasted & drank & did drunken victory dances. I was like a mouse entranced by a snake. I just stared and stared.