Butchery of the Mountain Man

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“All right, Wes, we’re ready to go again,” Professor Armbruster said into the little intercom box.

“Very good, sir,” Wes replied.

“Now, Smoke, if you are up to it, we’ll continue with where we left off.”

“Yeah,” Smoke said. “I wasn’t gone very long. By the second day I had found most of my herd and I closed them up in a canyon, keeping them there until I could find the rest of them. Then, late in the afternoon of the second day, I thought I heard gunfire. But when I stopped to listen, I didn’t hear anything, so I figured it must just be wind blowing through the trees.

“I started back home on the third day and . . .” Smoke stopped and shook his head, “I don’t know how to explain it, but I suddenly got the strongest feeling of dread. I knew something had happened.

“When I got there, I saw one of them, a man named Grissom. I shot him. Then I saw someone just pushing open the door to the outhouse, and I shot him. The next one was a young punk, would-be gunman who called himself Kid Austin.

“When I ran to the back of the house I saw”—Smoke paused and took a deep breath—“I saw my baby, lying dead in the grass. He had just been tossed out like trash.

“Someone started taunting me from inside the house. I had Preacher’s Sharps with me. I wasn’t worrying about hitting Nicole; I knew she was dead. So I fired through the wall, and heard someone screaming. I found out later that the big Sharps had torn his arm off.

“A moment later, several men rode off at a gallop. But there was one left, a man named Clark. He was taunting me from the house, but he was crouching, looking out the back door, when I came in through the front. I got the drop on him, and when I saw Nicole, and what they had done to her, scalping her, partially skinning her, I felt an anger unlike anything I had ever felt before or since.

“Clark was on his hands and knees, begging me for mercy. I kicked him in the side of head, and knocked him out. Then I took him outside, stripped him naked, smeared his body with honey, and staked him out over a big hill of fire ants.

“I could hear him screaming the whole time I was digging a grave for Nicole and the baby. He was still screaming when I rode off, and I could hear him for at least half a mile.”

“So you set things right. You avenged her murder.”

“Nicole had been raped, murdered, scalped, and partly skinned. My boy was killed and tossed out the back door of the cabin like so much trash. There’s no way you can make that right.”

“I’m sorry, of course I didn’t mean it like that. But you did kill the ones who murdered your family, did you not? I don’t mean just the ones you killed at the cabin. I mean, one of the stories about you is how you tracked down and killed all the others as well. Is that true, or is it all a myth?”

“The story is true.”

“Because of the research I’m doing, I have a repository of books about you, many of them pertaining to that very event. And of course, there is the Jack Holt movie about it . . . Where There Is Smoke, There Is Fire.”

Smoke chuckled. “It was Sally who came up with that title. A couple of the people associated with the film didn’t like the title but Jack loved it, and he is the one that managed to get it through.”

“It is a clever title,” Professor Armbruster said.

“I think so,” Smoke agreed.

“The problem with all these accounts, the movie, the books, the many articles, is that they vary so widely. Some say you killed fifty men that day, some say a hundred. I don’t suppose anyone knows for sure.”

“I know.”

“Well, how many was it?”

“Eighteen.”

“Eighteen?”

“I killed four of them there at the cabin. Then I went after the others and caught up with them at the silver-mining camp near the Uncompahgre. The four I killed at the cabin, and the fourteen more I killed in town, make eighteen.”

“That’s quite an accomplishment. I can see why so much has been written about it.

“After your wife and son were killed, you remarried though. I believe she was a schoolteacher?”

“Yes, but that wasn’t for two more years.”

“And you had two children?”

“We did. We had twins, Louis Arthur and Denise Nicole.”

“I’m sorry to keep bringing up unpleasant memories, but they are both deceased now, aren’t they?”

“Yes. They went to Europe to be educated. Denise died and was buried there. When Louis came back, he decided to stay East with Sally’s family, where he became a lawyer. Sally and I didn’t see much of him after that. We were never actually estranged, we just sort of went our separate ways. Ironically, Louis also died in France, and is buried there.”

“Yes, I have done some research. He was a pilot who received the Medal of Honor.”

[I have located the citation which accompanied the Medal of Honor award, and post it here for the edification of the reader:

“After having previously destroyed a number of enemy aircraft, Captain Louis Arthur Jensen voluntarily started on a patrol after German observation balloons. Though pursued by eight German planes which were protecting the enemy balloon line, he unhesitatingly attacked and shot down in flames three German balloons, being himself under heavy fire from ground batteries and the hostile planes. Severely wounded, he descended to within one hundred fifty feet of the ground, and flying at this low altitude near the town of Murvaux, opened fire upon enemy troops, killing six and wounding as many. Forced to make a landing and surrounded on all sides by the enemy who called upon him to surrender, he drew his automatic pistol and defended himself gallantly until he fell dead from a wound in the chest.”—ED.]

“Do you know what I find particularly fascinating about your son receiving the Medal of Honor? I mean other than the obvious intrepidity he displayed.”

“What is that?”

“There were no American witnesses to his action. All the facts of his heroism, including notarized eyewitness accounts, were from the Germans themselves. I find it fascinating that the details of his heroism were sent through the lines, along with his body, by the German army. They were that impressed with his bravery.”

“I spoke to one of the Germans who was there that day,” Smoke said.

“You did?”

“Yes. Last year Sally and I crossed the Atlantic onboard the ocean liner Homeric.”

“That must have been fascinating.”

“It was. But, Professor, we are getting way afield here. Don’t you think we should get back to John Jackson?”

“Yes, of course. Where did we leave off with Mr. Jackson?”

“He and Claire had just built themselves a cabin.”

Upper Missouri River

John began chopping down trees and sizing the logs, and Claire debarked them, using a crowbar and a spud, which was like a hoe . . . but with a straight blade. John used ropes and his horse and mule to pull the logs into position, then, when he had the walls up, Claire chinked in between them with twigs and mud. While Claire was filling in between the logs, John made a roof of smaller-diameter limbs. When the roof was completed, it was covered with sod.

The cabin had a single room that was twelve feet square. The floor was dirt, but John promised that they would have a wood floor as soon as he could get around to it. There was only one door and no windows. John put the fireplace at one end of the cabin and built the chimney of wattle and daubed mud. Stone and clay were used for the hearth and the interior of the fireplace.

It took a lot of hard work, but two weeks after the first log was cut, they were able to spend the night in their own house. For the next month, John and Claire built furniture for their house, a bed, a table and some chairs, and some shelves.

By the time the first snows came, they were warm and snug in their house, and Claire announced that she was pregnant.

“Wow! Then we have to celebrate!” John said. “You know what? I think it must be nearly Thanksgiving. Yes, I’m sure it is. I’m going to kill us a turkey, and we’ll have an old-fashioned Thanksgiving Day dinner, just the two of us.”

John did kill a turkey and the aroma of it cooking filled the inside of the little cabin so that by the time it was ready to eat, they were both ravenous. John smiled as he carved up the turkey for them.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” he said.

“What is Thanksgiving?”

“You’ve never heard of Thanksgiving?”

“No.”

“Well, then I’ll tell you the story.”

For the rest of the afternoon John told the story of the Pilgrims, and their voyage to America on the small ship, the Mayflower. He told of the men and women who left England in search of religious freedom.

“They thought they were going to the Virginia Colony, where some Europeans had already settled, but in November, they reached Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

“There were a hundred and two passengers on the ship,” John said. “And the ship remained at anchor while they built cabins where they could live.”

“Like this,” Claire said, taking in their cabin with a proud smile.

“That first winter was brutal, and more than one-half of them died the first year, from starvation and disease. The Pilgrims held secret burials for the ones who died, so that the Indians wouldn’t realize how few were remaining.”

“Indians?” Claire asked. She pointed to herself.

“These were Wampanoag Indians. And they eventually began helping the Pilgrims, because if they hadn’t, I believe every one of them would have died. And think how that would have changed history.”

“And they ate turkey?” Claire asked, not making the connection between the Pilgrims, half of whom had died, and the turkey they were eating now.

“Yes. You see, after almost dying of starvation, they had a good harvest, and to celebrate the harvest, and the fact that at least half of them were still alive, they held a feast. And the Indians came to join them,” John said. He smiled, and made a motion with his hand to take in the two of them.

“It’s like us,” he added. “Indian and white man coming together to give thanks.”

“The baby will be a Thanksgiving thing,” Claire said. “The baby will be Indian and white,” she added, touching John on the face, then putting her hand on her stomach.

“Yes, it will indeed be a thing for thanksgiving,” John said.

John ran his traps every day that winter, beaver traps in the water, and marten traps hanging from trees near the water. The reason the marten traps had to be hung from trees was to prevent rodents from chewing on the martens once they had been caught.

The trapping was bountiful, much more even than he and Smoke had brought in the year before. He would skin the beaver, and hang the meat out so the wild animals couldn’t get to it. Claire would scrape and clean the hides, then stack them. She also cooked the beaver meat, sometimes frying it, sometimes baking it, sometimes grilling it over the open flames of the fireplace. She also boiled the beaver and made a soup, cooked with wild onions, mushrooms, cattail, and sun root tubers.

John kept a close count of his furs and before winter was half over, had over a thousand dollars’ worth of pelts, based on the prices they paid the previous year. But he had also heard that the St. Louis market paid twice as much, and at that rate it would be worth his while to go there.