Buffalo Trail (5 page)

“You can talk about whatever you want. And when the spirits next call to me, I'll tell them that Quanah honors them too.”

“Thank you,” Quanah said, trying hard to sound abashed.

When they reached the Quahadi village Quanah told everyone about Isatai's magnificent shot, announced that it was the will of the spirits as revealed to Isatai that no one should kill skunks anymore, and insisted that one of the two hen turkeys be cooked in a communal stew so that everyone could have at least a small taste of Isatai's bounty. He neglected to say that he was the one who had killed the hens, and was so eloquent that Isatai felt no need to speak for himself. He stood to the side, nodding gravely as Quanah spoke. Those who remembered that Isatai was a wretched shot with a bow told themselves that the spirits had guided the arrow for him. It was further proof that he was their chosen spokesman.

Quanah and Wickeah ate the second hen, sharing with some others in adjacent tipis, and the fine male turkey was entirely reserved for Isatai and his wives, who gorged themselves. Afterward Isatai tried to use the bird's colorful feathers to fletch arrows, but he still couldn't do it well and most of the feathers stuck crookedly to the shafts. When Quanah noticed, he asked to take the feathers and fletch Isatai's arrows for him, since a man favored by spirits shouldn't waste his time on such small tasks. Isatai was pleased to oblige him, and considered it a generous thing for his friend to do. He went back inside his tipi to smoke and to decide what it was that the spirit of Buffalo Hump might have to say to him soon, since an edict not to kill skunks wasn't grand enough.

It dawned on Isatai that he was, in fact, a human conduit for the spirits. At first he had believed that the words were his own, spoken to end the mocking he had endured; but the more he thought about it, the more it seemed possible, even likely, that he was speaking on behalf of the spirits after all. They summoned and then blew into him just as he'd
said, maybe when he was dreaming, and the words that later came from his mouth were theirs and not something he was making up. And with that in mind, he decided to nap, giving any of the spirits—Buffalo Hump, maybe?—an opportunity to commune with him again. It was time. The villagers were impatient to hear more from the spirit world, and Isatai did not intend to disappoint them, his good friend Quanah especially.

I
n late 1873, Dodge City was unsightly and dangerous. Established just fifteen months earlier, when the railroad came through the area and offered a convenient means to ship buffalo hides east, the town was populated by merchants, railroad depot employees, cardsharps, and whores, with as many as two thousand hunters drifting in and out, depending on the season. The hunters preferred to be called hide men because it made them sound like the entrepreneurs that they considered themselves to be. With the Arkansas River and the Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe railroad tracks serving as anchors to the southern boundary of the settlement, and the old Santa Fe Trail just to the north, Dodge City's permanent residences consisted of sod huts and wooden shacks. Its businesses were located in long, low board buildings behind high false fronts. In between were rough streets of hard-packed dirt. The hide men slept in tents or under wagons on the outskirts of town. Thick coats of prairie dust were permanently plastered over everything. But nobody cared what the place looked like; aesthetics were secondary to commerce. The population wasn't particularly clean, either. There weren't many wells and bathwater was at a premium. Nobody bathed in or drank from the Arkansas River; like all the other rivers in the region, it was tainted with
gypsum, a powerful natural laxative. In Dodge City, a glass of potable water was often hard to come by.

Yet, despite its unattractive appearance, it was possible to buy every necessity and many luxuries in Dodge. The railroad freighted in whatever commodities town merchants ordered, and in 1872 and most of 1873 the buffalo herds were so extensive, and the hunting was so good, that everyone except the most sodden drunks had at least some money to spend. Besides its ubiquitous saloons, dance halls, and bawdy houses, Dodge boasted several dry goods stores, a gunsmith, a saddlery and harness shop, billiard parlors, a drugstore, several restaurants, a bottle shop selling fine wines and liquors, a blacksmith, a barbershop, stables, and even a fine hotel, the Dodge House. Rath & Company bought most of the buffalo hides, paying two or three dollars apiece for the best ones and shipping them off to sell to Eastern manufacturers at a substantial profit. New methods of turning the hides into leather belts for manufacturing equipment created a constant demand for buffalo pelts. In its earliest days, the Dodge City economy boomed.

So, constantly, did guns, in as well as outside of town. There was no law to speak of in Dodge. The town remained unincorporated, so there was no Dodge City marshal or court system. The hide men were a rugged bunch prone to constant quarrels, many of which quickly disintegrated into drunken brawling and gunplay. Most of the town businessmen, especially the saloon owners, were just as violent. An attempt to form a citizen's vigilante committee failed miserably when the vigilantes launched their own spree of indiscriminate killing. Dodge was part of Ford County, and after elections in June 1873 the county had a sheriff, Charlie Bassett, who was tough and honest. But Bassett couldn't be in Dodge all of the time, and even when he was, it was impossible for one man to completely suppress the violence. Killings continued, and Dodge needed a place to bury its numerous dead. Boot Hill, the place
chosen, was a barren bluff near the Arkansas River, not far removed from Front Street and Second Avenue, where most of the main businesses were located. Town wits gave the spot its name because most of those buried there expired in street fights rather than in bed, dying “with their boots on.”

Fort Dodge, an Army station, was several miles east of town. But its commander and troops had all that they could do trying to defend against the roving Indian bands that plagued the area. By treaty, the Cheyenne and Arapaho were confined to their agency below the Cimarron, with the Kiowa and Comanche on a reservation even farther south. The wild Indians who refused to live on agency lands and under agency rules rampaged farther off to the west and south. White men had the exclusive right to hunt above the Arkansas River, and the red men had the same rights below it, but both sides resented the restriction and neither abided by it, try as the Army might to enforce the boundary. There were plenty of Indian raids, in Kansas and Texas and the Oklahoma panhandle, wherever white hunters and settlers could be isolated in small groups and attacked. Dodge City was no exception. There were periodic ambushes outside of town, and corpses were left scalped and mutilated in ways that nauseated even the most hardened frontiersmen. The Indians especially loathed the hide men, and the hatred was mutual.

Dodge City and its rough-and-tumble residents were unpopular with virtually everyone. Newspapers in other Kansas towns like Topeka and Wichita denigrated the town on a regular basis, deriding its constant violence, its lack of social sophistication, and particularly its horrific stink. Especially during the hot summer months, when hunting was at its peak, stacks of buffalo hides—many of them dozens of feet high—towered along the railroad lines south of town. Every day they were loaded onto freight cars and shipped east, only to be instantly replaced by new piles that smelled of blood and animal funk. There was usually
a brisk wind, and if it blew in from the south, people in Dodge were obliged to hold handkerchiefs over their noses when they ventured outside. Everyone put up with it because the stench represented an influx of money. But by late 1873 the smell was becoming less of a nuisance because there weren't as many hides brought into town and piled up for shipment. What would have seemed impossible just a year earlier became too obvious to ignore: the hide men had been too efficient in their slaughter. The buffalo, at least in the vicinity of Dodge City, were almost wiped out. Those that survived shifted south of the river, down into the forbidden territory where the Indians held sway. For the first time, the town economy was in jeopardy.

•   •   •

W
ILLIAM AND
H
ANNAH
O
LDS
operated a boardinghouse in Dodge City. A few blocks removed from the saloons and dance halls, it wasn't much, just a square plank structure with living quarters for the owners in back and a half-dozen tiny cubicles in front. Cash McLendon and Bat Masterson shared one of the cubicles, which had just enough space for two rickety cots and a battered dresser with a washbasin, a pitcher, and a kerosene lamp on top. They paid a dollar a day to live there, fifty cents apiece. The walls were thin and they could clearly hear every snore, belch, or fart from those occupying adjacent cubicles. There was also a cramped kitchen for Mrs. Olds and a dining room where boarders could join their hosts for dinner if they had twenty-five cents to pay for the meal. McLendon usually didn't, preferring to dine in his cubicle on a few pennies' worth of crackers and cheese. He wanted to save every cent he could for train fare to the West Coast. His goal was to lose himself in one of the main cities there—San Francisco, maybe, or San Diego—where he might have a decent chance to make something of himself. Crowded Eastern cities offered anonymity but little opportunity. Mrs. Olds
sometimes took pity on McLendon and let him eat for free if he looked particularly tired and hungry. Whenever McLendon joined his landlords for a meal, William Olds ate silently, belching softly after every swallow. He was rumored to have some sort of stomach disease that sapped him of most of his strength. In contrast, Hannah Olds chattered constantly, leaving her food untouched while she took advantage of the opportunity for conversation. McLendon felt sorry for them both.

Most evenings when he and McLendon returned to town from a long day's bone collecting, Bat Masterson headed directly to the Sherman dance hall or, less frequently, to some other Dodge saloon. McLendon would use the washbasin in their cubicle to clean up, buy his dinner from one of Dodge's several general stores, and then lie on his cot, reading and thinking. Almost two years after fleeing the civilized streets of St. Louis for the stringent life on the frontier, he still hadn't completely adjusted to long days of grueling physical labor, and his lean body always hurt, his back and knee joints especially. His cot was uncomfortable. The tick mattress was lumpy and the blankets—there were no sheets—were threadbare and unevenly patched. But he stretched out on it anyway, because he badly needed to be off his feet and there was no chair to sit on. He and Bat had been roommates for almost four months, and as much as he enjoyed his friend's company, McLendon longed for the day when he would leave Dodge City and the boardinghouse behind. By his calculations, train fare to California and a grubstake would require a minimal $350, and to date he had accumulated a little over $80 in the poke sack that Jim Hanrahan let him store in the office safe of his billiard hall and saloon. Bone picking provided minimal income during winter; after paying for food, lodging, and the occasional beer, McLendon was lucky to save three dollars a week. But when spring came and the hide men resumed shooting, he thought that things would pick up. Then McLendon had hopes of finding indoor employment, maybe
helping out at Rath & Company or Hanrahan's, working behind the counter in an establishment where the hide men liked to trade, and where the money he earned might be better. McLendon hoped to escape Dodge City by sometime in midsummer. He heard a lot of talk about how the buffalo had moved south and the town economy might collapse, but he tried not to dwell on it. Nobody wanted the buffalo back in great numbers more than him.

•   •   •

O
N THE
N
OVEMBER NIGHT
after they'd encountered the starving Indian boys, Bat disappeared in the direction of the dance halls and McLendon wearily plodded back to the Olds boardinghouse. They'd only gotten two dollars for their load of buffalo bones. To compensate, McLendon decided to skip dinner entirely. He was so tired that he thought he would tumble on to his cot, reread a few pages of
The Last of the Mohicans
, and try to fall asleep—he suffered from chronic insomnia. But it was apparently to be a night of frustration, too, because when McLendon tried to light the lamp in his cubicle it was out of kerosene. Sighing, he carried it back into the kitchen, where Hannah Olds was working at the stove.

“I need some kerosene, Mrs. Olds,” McLendon said. “I know you're too busy just now to get the can and spout. So if you don't mind I'll fetch them from the cupboard and fill this lamp myself.”

Hannah Olds, a nervous woman in her mid-forties, wiped her hand across her sweaty brow. It was cold outside but stifling in the kitchen. The woodstove was throwing out tremendous heat. “Help yourself, Mr. McLendon,” she said. “I know how you like to read at night. A drummer who moved out today left behind some newspapers from Wichita, if you'd like to have those. Give me a moment to get this stew stirred and I'll find them for you.”

The stew smelled good. “Beef?” McLendon asked as he filled his lamp.

“No, buffalo. Mr. Mitchell at the grocery had expected a few cattle brought in from Wichita, but there was apparently some delay. You seem tired. Would you like to share supper with Mr. Olds and me? No charge.”

Like everyone else in town, McLendon was sick of eating buffalo. The thought of its strong taste repulsed him, and he decided that if Mrs. Olds was cooking buffalo stew rather than beef, he'd rather skip supper as planned rather than choke down any more of the gamy meat. “Thank you anyway. I think I'll just stretch out on my bed and read.”

“Well, if you change your mind, there'll be plenty. Here's that newspaper.”

Back in the cubicle, McLendon lit the oil lamp, pulled off his boots, and glanced at the Wichita paper. Like most frontier publications, it combined local gossip with months-old national news. Its front-page feature was a story about a woman assassin who the reporter claimed was known as the Witch of the West. Operating mostly in California and Arizona Territory, she allegedly hunted down victims on behalf of her clients and, according to the reporter, killed them in ingenious feminine ways—a knitting needle through the ear, a strangler's noose fashioned from corset strings . . . No one seemed able to describe her, and, despite the writer's feverish insistence, there was no concrete evidence to link any one of the nine murders cited to another. Several of the killings—a shotgun blast from ambush, two knifings—seemed completely unrelated in terms of the Witch's supposedly preferred methods. Frontier newspapers like the
Wichita Gazette
, trying to build a base of steady subscribers, often resorted to exaggeration or outright falsehoods to attract notice with sensational stories. McLendon suspected that the Witch of the West fell into this category. He smiled ruefully; unlike the fantasy figure in the
Gazette
, the assassin on McLendon's trail was far too real.

Patrick Brautigan, nicknamed Killer Boots for his habit of kicking victims to death with his steel-toed footwear, had been hunting McLendon since February 1872. Prior to that, both men worked for Rupert Douglass, an unscrupulous St. Louis businessman willing to murder competitors who wouldn't agree to let him buy them out. It was glib Cash McLendon's job to persuade reluctant rivals to take his boss's money and leave town. If he failed, Brautigan became involved.

McLendon, who grew up as a homeless, illiterate orphan on the St. Louis docks, earned Rupert Douglass's favor by working first as an informant, then as Douglass's right-hand man. In his off-duty hours McLendon courted Gabrielle Tirrito, the daughter of a small-time Italian merchant who stubbornly refused to sell his shop to Douglass. Gabrielle taught McLendon how to read and gave him
The Last of
the Mohicans
, the first book he'd ever owned. But in spring 1870 he put the kindhearted, high-spirited young woman aside to marry Douglass's only child, Ellen, taking his place as heir apparent to the burgeoning family empire. Gabrielle, hurt and furious, left St. Louis with her father for Arizona Territory.

Because he believed McLendon wasn't tough-minded enough, Douglass brought in Patrick Brautigan from Boston, where the hulking Irishman had gained a considerable reputation for violent union-busting. McLendon was repulsed by Brautigan's bloody acts on their employer's behalf, and shaken to learn immediately following his marriage that Ellen was mentally ill and prone to violence against herself. In early 1872, when his carelessness resulted in Ellen's suicide, McLendon took $2,000 from Douglass's safe and fled St. Louis, assuming correctly that his grieving, vengeful father-in-law would set Killer Boots on his trail.