by Peter Bowen
We went bold as you please up the steps and through a short hall and outside down a servant’s staircase and out through a gate in the hedge.
Klaas didn’t betray us, which I thought uncommon kind of him. He hung on to his wind till we was safe away and near a protective bunch of traced-up oxen.
What with our heavy boots I was worried we would be spotted, but inspecting other Mormon ladies we was right in style, except for the whiskers, at least in most cases.
In three hours we had snuck down to the southbound trail.
We was battered and starved and mad as hell, so when a pair of wagons loaded with rutabagas come along we come aboiling out of the brush and I leaped up on the first wagon and knocked the driver off. Klaas sat on the poor bastard and farted, fatal for the victim.
Mulebreath used the leaded butt of a blacksnake whip. We hid the bodies under the rutabagas and went on down the road, loudly forming the Great Salt Lake Rutabaga and Revenge Company.
Mulebreath got tired of us poking along and he passed us, jug to lips, and held ahead of us about two hundred yards.
“I no usually a vinchful man,” says Klaas, “but I vill haff blut for my banjo.”
There was a good place to water the teams, and while we hid the bodies in the brush the mules drank their fill. One mule got excited, and was dancing around bidding fair to foul all the rigging. Mulebreath sighed, put down his jug, and walked over to the mule, who was rolling his eyes by now. Mulebreath reached up and grabbed the mule’s ear and twisted it hard and pulled the mule’s head down and breathed in to the critter’s nose.
The mule stood there quivering. Both ears flopped down like drooping leaves. Its knees quivered and sort of collapsed together. The mule didn’t fall, but it looked like you could knock it over with a feather.
“Anny a tha rest a ya pissants makin’ trouble?” said Mulebreath.
The other mules looked right smart at him and seemed eager not to make trouble.
“I never seen that before,” I said, awed.
“Taint nothin’,” said Mulebreath. “That mule’ll be fine in ten minutes. Easier’n beatin’ on em.” He took a pull from his jug and handed it to me.
“Well, we’re out,” says Mulebreath. “Now where do we go?”
I hadn’t thought on it much.
We was all about ready to clean out Zion with an axe.
The rest of the day we took the wagons south. We’d have been discovered to have gone missing by now, and the bodies in the bushes would not stay hidden long. So about evening we each took a rutabaga for dinner and turned the mules loose and took off for the high country, without much of a plan. Ouray was too far south of us to help.
Around a meager fire that evening we toasted slices of rutabaga—didn’t help much—and it seemed that the only thing left was a life of crime, at least long enough to get a stake together. We needed all the gear the Mormons had took.
“Well,” says Mulebreath, “back in ’sixty-three when we was ...”
Klaas jammed an ashy slice of rutabaga in his mouth.
“We ought not rob no one but Mormons,” I said.
“Only veepon ve got iss Mulebreath’s breath,” Klaas observed.
Well, it would be grand in close quarters but otherwise not much help.
We gathered squaw wood for the fire and sort of moped at it. We was so far broke we hadn’t the stuff to rob anybody with. It was an annoying situation.
It was a damp and chilly night and we didn’t sleep much. Klaas had a bad cough and even his farts was diminished in range and force. We was so sorry that we couldn’t do much but laugh on our miseries. We slunk back down toward the road and stood around all day, but there warn’t anything we could manage come by.
That night we didn’t even have the rutabagas to complain about, which made it a gray evening.
18
WE DIDN’T WANDER OVERMUCH the next morning on account of starvation and blood loss. I made snares from some of my fringe but the gophers just chewed through the leather in no time.
We was resigned to starving to death in a copse of cedars while looking for large clouds of Mormon dust. The dismals had us all covered over. We was so hungry and wore down even Klaas’s farts had paled off into silence. Mulebreath was too unhappy to let us know how the Civil War come out.
I thought I saw some dust over to the west and I dropped flat on my belly and wriggled over to take a look-see. There warn’t much in the way of entertainment in camp, so Mule-breath and Klaas wriggled up, too. We was laid out like trout on a mossbank.
Suddenlike I felt this monstrous clamp on my neck, and I was lifted up bodily, feebly kicking my legs. I could barely see Klaas, who had been picked up, too.
Mulebreath was looking at something behind us and he looked awed and terrified. I could see the shadows of me and Klaas out on the ends of huge arms, and a shadow of the gent holding us, and I choked and swore humans don’t grow that big.
Klaas and me was slowly turned around, to face the biggest man I ever seen in my life. And that was how I met Liver-Eatin’ Jack Johnson.
“WHICH ONE A YEW BOYS IS KELLY?” says Jack, in a voice so deep it damn near shook the hobnails out of my boots.
“Meeeeeee,” I whined. Jack dropped poor Klaas on to poor Mulebreath, making them unconscious. Jack set me down gently. I’m three inches over six feet and I was craning up a lot just to see the top of the son of a bitch. Jack allowed to seven feet but I think he was taller. He had thick, coarse black hair, beard up to his cheekbones and half down his chest, and a pair of pale green, sort of soapstone-colored eyes, flecked in black and flat as death.
His clothing was heavy buckskins and moccasins, all over beads and quills, and as greasy as bacon flitches. He had a Green River knife no more’n three feet long in a gold-worked black leather sheath, and a Hawken .60 with a curly maple stock and gold and stones worked into the wood. Jack always wore a sorrowful expression, like he’d been called and couldn’t come, but he didn’t lack humor, most of which was designed to drive his friends to the madhouse.
“BRIDGER SAID YOU UZ SORRY,” said Jack. “JACK, SAYS BRIDGER, HE’S SORRY AND WE GOT TO HELP. MEANIN’ JACK GOT TO HELP. NOW THAT I SEED YOU, I WONDER WHAT THE USE IS IN ANY OF IT. ’NUFF TO MAKE A FELLER WANT TA END IT ALL.”
“Huh?” I said intelligently.
Jack lowered his voice to what amounted to a whisper, it was just loud enough to shatter the larger rocks around.
“Even muh old pard Spotted Tail was holdin’ back when he told me you’d eat mouse turds for beans and yuh couldn’t find yer way up a woman if you was follerin’ a salmon. Coulda made a decent picket rope out a that boy’s hide, says Spotted Tail, but he’s so pitiful I didn’t, I don’t know why. Goddamn the pair of ’em, leave it to Jack, let Jack take care of it, he’s big and dumb.”
“Wha?” I says.
“He’s off tryin’ to diddle the Mormons is what Big Throat and the Tail tell me. They say, ‘Jack, we’re fond of that boy, we don’t know why neither, and would you go see him all right before them Mormons got him married off to forty wives and fucked to a standstill?’ They tell me ya got the morals of a goat had an accident with the locoweed. Rides like a turd hit with a club and if it wasn’t for them as took care a this hopeless pilgrim, least they ain’t guilty a lettin’ ya die a starvation and pox.
“SO THEY GIVES ME A BUNCH A WHISKEY AND TELLS ME THAT I’D BEST THINK OF THE DUMBEST THING TO DO I WAS IN YER BOOTS AND FOLLER THAT SIGN TILL I SEES YA.”
“Gunh?” I said, my usual smart reply.
“Ain’t got enough sense to roll out from under a horse that’s pissin’ on him, they say, if ignorance was a dick he could stand in New York and piss in California.”
“I love yer aria,” I says, “but is there a point to all this?”
“POINT? POINT? POINT?” Jack roars. “YA SUCKED-UP LITTLE PISMIRE, YA FUCKING LITTLE PIECE A IRISH DOGSHIT YA DAMN NEAR GOT YERSELF KILT. OUT-TREACHERIZING BRIGHAM YOUNG? YOU THINK I LIKE HAVING
TA SKIN TWELVE MORMONS OUT TO FIND YER SORRY, BLEEDING DUMB SHIT ASS? I DON’T LIKE IT!”
Well, all this criticism about knocked me over. I felt proud of what I’d done and here Jack was saying I shouldn’t have been caught in the first place. It was a good point. It hurt. I felt a twinge of shame. It was the last time, but there it was.
“DON’T KNOW WHY TAIL AND BRIDGER THINK YER WORTH SAVIN’,” Jack roared. “BUT I’LL DO MY GODDAMNED BEST. WHO’S THE FAT DUTCHY AND THE DRUNKEN SKINNER?”
Mulebreath and Klaas was toppled together and out cold.
“Them’s my partners, Klaas Vipsoek and Mulebreath Mucklebreech. They are even less than they look at the moment but you know how it is with partners.”
Jack picked them up, each by a foot, and carried them both to a spring come out of the slickrock wall. There was a good deep pool there. Jack dunked them both and kept hold of one ankle on each of them. After a moment the water began to foam and dance, as Klaas and Mulebreath tried to come up for air. Finally Jack pulled them out and dropped them on the grass.
Klaas hacked and coughed and spat and then he started to cuss in High Dutch. I couldn’t understand a word of it, but then there ain’t a hair’s difference what a man says at a time like this from Armenian to Zulu.
Jack looked at Klaas and Mulebreath and shook his head. Jack, I was to learn, always looked so sorrowful that the rumor was when he killed somebody he apologized for it.
Poor Klaas sat up, moaning and holding his head and rocking side to side. He’d been worse handled than us other two and his busted teeth was paining him something awful.
He made the mistake of complaining about it, so Jack, with a sorrowful expression, produced a small pair of pliers from his possibles sack and started in removing the offending roots. Mercifully Klaas passed out soon from the pain. For a few minutes Klaas had flopped bravely out on the end of Jack’s arm, even kicking Jack a time or two in the belly, which Jack didn’t notice. Finally he laid poor Klaas’s tormented carcass back out on the grass.
“He’ll be feelin’ better now,” says Jack. “Be turrible them teeth gone and got infected.”
“I ain’t never in need of dental work,” I says. “Got teeth hard as agates. If my jaw swells up, I’m just storing nuts there for the winter.”
“Sorry about yer friend there,” said Jack. “But if I hadn’t tooken them roots out he could die on us. Damn them Mormons anyway. What’d he do to them?”
“He pissed on their book.”
“Good fer him,” Jack says. He pulled a worn leatherbound book from one of the many pockets on him and commenced reading the poetry of Keats. Now, that’s a book.
Then Mulebreath struggled up from his sleep and he looked at Jack a bit and then Mulebreath fished out his jug and had a few snorts. He looked again and Jack was still there so he shrugged and stood up.
Jack walked up a little hill and whistled hard and shrill, a note like a shrike’s, and pretty soon a gigantic Shire horse with a saddle on him looked like them howdahs you see on elephants and further had ten mules in a train tied to his tail.
Now, draft horses ain’t usually seen saddle-broke, but considering that Jack weighed nearly five hundred pounds I thought it clever of him to find a horse bigger than he could eat at a single sitting.
Jack’s horse was also the biggest damn horse I have ever seen and weighed close on to a ton and a half. His hooves was the size of big dinner plates. He was black as coal save for a white mane and white stockings and tail and a blaze down his nose. I’m tall and I couldn’t see over the back of him.
Mulebreath and me heaved Klaas up on a saddle mule—there was four of them, I wondered who else Jack was rescuing this time—and we got on the others and Jack pointed his mammoth horse east and we soon was climbing up to the pines. It was high summer now, and only the distant mountains had snow on their peaks.
Jack stopped at the first ridge and looked back the way we had come. There was a big cloud of yellow dust back there maybe ten miles.
“Ain’t but a dozen or so of ’em,” says Jack. “Appeteezers. But we’s to run, not fight.”
I was sudden hot. I wanted a lot of blood for my troubles. I was very young. I am fairly old now and I still want the same.
“Wull,” says Jack finally, “I guess we’ll set a surprise for ’em at Parker’s Cut.”
Parker’s Cut proved to be a narrow passage through a blue and yellow mountain seventy miles long that rears up from a baked plain. We went on through and then up a nasty switchback trail and finally out on the rim of the cliff four hundred feet above.
Then Jack got off his monstrous horse and commenced in to tossing chunks down into the cut. Rocks no more’n half a ton were just casually kicked over. He rolled bigger ones. Klaas and Mulebreath struggled to help and I went over to a horn of stone and up it to look at our pursuers.
The water that had cut a path through the rock had wandered some on its way down, and we couldn’t see how it piled up. After a good two hours of heaving stone over the side Jack pronounced himself satisfied. The last boulder he rolled into the chasm was the size of a bungalow.
“Thirt’ mile to the next break in the mountain,” says Jack. “They’ll just turn back now. But that Brigham’s a dangerous one. You’d best not go near Utah for a long time. And don’t never trust strangers you ain’t been properly introduced to, could be some of his damn Sons of Dan.”
I already knew the Sons of Dan, their theological arguments was pretty cheap.
’Tis true I ain’t the most moral feller you will ever meet, mind you, the sins I have committed are all of them but for molesting children and voting Republican. But these here Mormons was nothing more than a gang of crooks and such respectability as they got is boughten. Buy enough of it, I guess it works just about as well.
We turned south and went by back trails and a week later we come on a camp that had Ouray in it, and Ouray had the checkerboard out with a partly played game on it, which he told me was the same game we’d been playing till just before I left. Could we please get on to these more important matters? After death, murder, dungeons, and so forth I find myself back playing checkers with a crazy Injun. Of course, what he was really pointing out was that life was doomed to continue and whinin’ about it would help absolutely nothing at all.
By and by as Ouray was whacking his kings over my prostrate reds Jack wandered by with a stooped, small, gray-haired feller moved slow on account of a stiff knee. I give them barely a glance and commenced into trying to salvage my checker fortunes—I was about half interested in winning the game—and didn’t pay no nevermind and Ouray pounced anyway, clacking over the last of my pieces and saying, “comes back even dumber,” and other cheerful and endearing things. I was often having thoughts of things other than killing Mormons and it was good of them to distract me. (Not a good idea if you’re going out to do some serious slaughtering to be much set on the outcome, makes you still in your reactions.)
Jack walked over to me with the small, gray gent beside him.
“This yere sorry pup is that Kelly ejit,” says Jack, pointing at me like I was a smear on a newly whitewashed wall. “The one ol’ Spotted Tail and Big Throat say seems likely. I think they both gone simple from age, myself.”
The small, slender old man offered his hand, it was long and slender with very long fingers.
“Kit Carson,” he said, “and I’m pleased to meet you, Luther Kelly.” His eyes was pale blue, with a lot of humor dancing in them. I stood gapemouthed, for I would have thought Kit Carson would be only slightly smaller than Jack. The man had the frame of a twelve-year-old boy.
Only reason I’m alive today is because men who knew things kept me from dying of stupidity. I was ready to ride back and charge that Lion House alone, and of course I’d have died before I got through the gate.
“Luther,” says Carson, “time you left this country. Seems Gus Doane could use you. He’s going down the Snake River, by boat.”
“What the hell do
es he need me for?” I says. I was thinking on having the Prophet slow-roasting over a fire before long. “Rivers is generally wet and can be counted upon to flow downhill. Even a damned army officer ought to be able to figger that.”
Smart-mouthed male children occasionally get what they most need. In my case, I got the back of Jack’s hand across my flapping mouth. I have been kicked by mules and have it hurt less. I sort of went end over end about forty feet before fetching upside down against a wickiup, my feet in the brambles, bleeding out my nose and seeing shooting stars in whole batches. Jack come and picked me up by my belt and walked to the creek and held me under till I began to thrash. Then Jack pulled me out and carried me back to Carson. Kit reached in my shirt and took the packet of letters I wanted Brigham to know I owned.
Carson carefully opened the packet and took out the letters and he read them one by one and dropped them into the fire. I started to splutter but Jack picked me up by the scruff of my neck and waved his fist in front of my face, so I quit.
When the last bit of blackened ash collapsed into the coals Kit sighed and said that any truth in these matters was no longer of any value to anyone.
“Churches ain’t about truth anyway,” says Carson.
It took me years to figure it out, why Carson burnt them letters, but I finally did. We ain’t even ten feet from the jungle and death is very close.
“When you finally know that revenge is best as a late, cold supper then you will be ready to take on the damned Mormons,” says Kit. “But now you need to get shy of this country.”
“Headwaters of the Snake is pretty close to Zion,” I said.
Carson looked at me for a long time before sighing and shaking his head a couple of times, and then looking up at Jack. Jack took a swing at me and missed.
“You win,” I said, holding my hands palm up.
“Plummer’s gold,” said Carson. “Now have a cup of this here coffee and pay attention. You are about to repay all this good kindness so many folks have given you.”
