the Sackett Companion (1992) (13 page)

Buffalo roamed here in the thousands and even today antelope can be seen.

Uncle Dick Wootton, mountain man, established his station and toll road at Raton, and Governor de Anza pursued Cuerno Verde, the Comanche chief, through here and won a great battle near Ojo Caliente.

Not far to the north is Wet Mountain Valley where Jubal Sackett located his trading post, and the Greenhorn Mountains close by are named for that Comanche chief, Cuerno Verde. This area was also traveled by Flagan and Galloway Sackett. Their story is told in THE SKY-LINERS.

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THE LONELY MEN

First publication: Bantam Books paperback, May 1969 Narrator: William Tell Sackett Time Period: c. 1875--1879

When Tell Sackett rode into Mexico he believed he was riding to rescue young Orry Sackett from the Apaches, risking his life and the lives of his companions in the effort.

He had not known Orrin had a son until Laura Pritts Sackett told him so, but he knew of the marriage. Orrin was in Washington, D.C. and if anybody was going to rescue the boy it was up to him.

What he did not know was that he was about to become a victim of a woman's hatred, a woman who plotted to kill him because he was Orrin's beloved brother, and who cared not in the least that others might die as well.

Tampico Rocca, Spanish Murphy, and John J. Battles were the kind of men one was likely to find in places like Tucson, El Paso, or the border towns. Their kind might be found anywhere in the West, driving stage, serving in the army, prospecting for gold, or herding cattle. They had gotten together in Yuma and rode east for mutual protection, now that their casual meeting had been cemented by the smoke and blood of battle, and each had found much to respect in the others. When Tell Sackett announced his intention of riding into Mexico to find his nephew, they had no other thought than to go with him. His trouble was their trouble.

WILLIAM TELL SACKETT: Left the mountains of Tennessee to take part in the Civil War. Joined the Sixth Cavalry of the Union, served on detached service in other areas. Also in SACKETTS LAND, MOJAVE CROSSING, THE SACKETT BRAND, TREASURE MOUNTAIN, and LONELY ON THE MOUNTAIN, and briefly, as just another working cowboy, in DARK CANYON.

He could barely read and write, having attended school for only a few months on several different occasions. He could ride, rope, shoot any kind of a gun, and was skilled with stock. He grew up hunting, trapping, and fighting. Six feet three inches, he was lean, but broad-shouldered. Essentially a lonely man, he was shy with strangers. Accustomed to hard work, he preferred to be let alone to work at whatever he was doing, from punching cows to mining.

He liked women but was uncomfortable around them. At dances or parties he could usually be found somewhere in the background, simply enjoying the music and watching the others, and was content to have it so.

Of the great love of his life he rarely spoke, and even his brothers knew nothing of her. He met her and lost her during his Civil War days.

Although women were drawn to him he did not realize it and would not believe it if he was told. In fact, the suggestion would both astonish and amuse him.

FRONTIER WAYS: The skills Tell acquired were simply those of many such men who lived his kind of life. They learned to do by doing, repairing wagons, splicing rope, shoeing horses, building cabins or fence lines, repairing or altering their own firearms, treating minor cuts or abrasions on themselves or their stock. More serious wounds they would treat if there was no doctor near, and the nearest was apt to be a hundred or more miles away.

The frontier world was a do-it-yourself world, and if anything needed doing you simply did it. If you didn't know how, you sat down and tried to figure it out. If there was not a woman around, men mended their own clothes, often made their own shoes, and most could make moccasins. Nobody ever bought an axe handle in a store until around the 1880s. A man simply chose the right wood and whittled one himself. He sharpened his own axes, saws, and knives.

To Tell Sackett all this was not new. He had grown up in the Smoky Mountain country, where everybody did for themselves. Folks got together for barn-raisings, quiltings, corn-husking, and the like, but those were social occasions. If there wasn't a fiddler around, or a banjo or dulcimer, they could always sing their own accompaniment and dance to "play-party" songs like Green Coffee Grows on High Oak Trees, Skip to My Lou, or Hello, Susan Brown!

Aside from the goods peddled by occasional pack peddlers, everything was homemade.

LAURA PRITTS SACKETT: An almost beautiful girl, until you looked again. She idolized her father but the Sacketts helped to defeat his plans to seize land from the Mexican owners. To Orrin Sackett she had symbolized everything he wanted in a woman. He saw her beauty, and read into her what he wanted to find in a woman, never guessing it was not there.

They separated and her hatred grew until she was utterly possessed by it--a hatred not only for Orrin but for Tyrel as well, he who had always known her for what she was. Her hatred grew like a festering wound and when she saw Tell Sackett and realized he knew nothing of what had taken place she saw her chance. Jonathan Pritts had known how to handle rough men and she had some of the same facility, and with it the courage to face them.

How did others see her? Lieutenant Jack Davis was a very young officer and there were few women on the frontier. To him, Laura Pritts Sackett seemed the embodiment of grace, culture, and all a young woman could be. Captain Lewiston reserved his opinions and was a bit more skeptical. Mrs. Wallen had no doubts but she was also puzzled. What was such a woman doing in this Arizona town in the heat of summer when she might be elsewhere? Tucson in the early 1870s was a town where people came for a reason or passed on quickly, going either east or west. Mrs. Wallen found herself liking that tall, easy-moving young man called Tell Sackett. He did handle himself well but gave the impression of being awkward, and he was obviously shy. And Mrs. Wallen was worried. There was something about that Laura that bothered her.

TAMPICO ROCCA: Part Spanish, part Apache; a tough, hard-working man who had never known anything but the rough side of things. A top-hand on any man's outfit, scout for the army, shotgun messenger, cowhand, sheepherder, a good friend, a dangerous enemy, but a man without malice.

You never looked to see where he was because he was always where he was supposed to be, right where he could do the most good.

SPANISH MURPHY: Spanish was not a nickname; his mother named him that because it sounded right. He was Black Irish, and none of that nonsense about the Black Irish having Spanish blood. The number of Spaniards who got ashore after their Armada ships were wrecked on the Irish coast was never enough to make a difference. There were Black Irish in Ireland a thousand years before the Armada, maybe two thousand. The Armada story was a quick explanation for those who did not look any further. Some of those who settled Ireland were from Miletus in the eastern Mediterranean, and some of them had stopped in Spain but that was before there was such a thing as the Spanish people we now know. There were Iberians there, and some Phoenicians, but even the Visigoths had not arrived yet, and the Moors, who contributed their blood for seven hundred years, had not yet moved out of Arabia into North Africa en route to Spain.

Spanish Murphy was a good hand in any kind of a fight, a top-hand when he worked but he worked only when he needed the money. He liked women and he liked cards, although he drank sparingly and never smoked at all. Once in a while he lit a cigarette, but when he did you knew he was stalling for time or thinking about something. He was a man with quick hands and a natural skill with a rope, cards, or a gun. JOHN J. BATTLES: From New England, a young businessman on his way up--until he killed a man over a girl. It had been self-defense, but when the trial was over and he was acquitted, he was no longer welcome in town, nor at his girl's house. He sold his business and rode west. He had driven stage, ridden with a cattle drive, and had been a deputy marshal in a wild cow town. One brother was a banker, another a teacher, and that was what Battles had really wanted, to teach. It was a case of being shot down by a drunken man or shooting in self-defense. He won the gun battle but lost everything else.

Like many another who came west he found himself liking the rough, hard life and the wild frontier towns. Men like Spanish Murphy, Tampico Rocca, and Tell Sackett were his kind of people, and when his girl wrote to him and wanted to join him he could no longer even remember exactly what she looked like, nor could he imagine himself returning to the easier life in Vermont. He remembered the leaves turning and the crunch of snow underfoot, and sometimes he thought of returning, just to visit.

Yet he found himself liking far horizons and a good horse between his knees. He knew riding into the Sierra Madres was taking a chance, but who lived forever? And if Tell Sackett was going down there, why, he'd just ride along to be sure he got out alive.

PETE KITCHEN: The consummate Arizona pioneer; there are a hundred stories about Pete, most of them true, and all of them might be. He was one of the men who built the state into what it has become.

The Apaches used to raid Pete's place quite often, but he kept a few expert riflemen behind a parapet on his roof, and after they buried a couple of dozen Apaches, the rest just rode by and saluted him. He had proved himself as a warrior and enough was enough.

He raised melons, fruit, cabbages, potatoes, grain, and such, and his home was a noted stopping place along the trail from Tucson to Nogales. For those unwise enough to attempt stealing his horses or cattle, he maintained his own boot hill graveyard.

He was a man possessed of all the virtues and vices of the frontier, noted for his honesty as well as his courage.

Every state has its pioneers about whom there are stories no fiction writer can surpass, and Pete was one of them.

THE SHOO-FLY RESTAURANT: Operated by Mrs. Wallen, the Shoo-FIy was patronized by everybody who came and went
in Tucson around 1869 and for some years after. The menu was limited in scope but answered to healthy appetites and was remembered fondly years after by many a hungry traveler. It was a low-ceilinged room of adobe, and the ceiling was of stretched muslin. It served beef, beans, and chili, fruit occasionally and eggs most of the time. The floor was of hard-packed earth, the tables of pine. The seats were benches or hide-bottomed chairs, the latter usually reserved for the "regulars." Common talk over the eight or nine tables covered range conditions, Army affairs, the state of the nation, the latest gun battles, or what the Apaches were up to. It was not only a place to eat but a place to pick up information on just what was actually happening in Arizona and along the trails in or out.

WILLIAM S. OURY: Former Texas Ranger, first mayor of Tucson, pioneer rancher. As in the case of Pete Kitchen, books might be written about his life and adventures.

DORSET BINNY: In my story she rode into Mexico to find her sister, and found help in Tell Sackett and his friends, who were on the same sort of mission.

KAHTENNY AND TOCLANI: Both are actual characters, Apache Indians known in their time. Toclani served as a scout with Emmet Crawford, one of the most noted Army officers in the wars against the Apaches.

ARCH AND WOLF HADDEN: Two very tough men on the outlaw side who were considered bad men where they came from. The trouble was, they traveled too far and got into a country where people took nothing for granted. They had to be shown.

HARRY BROOK: A child prisoner of the Apaches; when they grew up on the frontier they learned to survive, and Harry was a survivor.

SIERRA MADRES: The Mother of Mountains. A range that lies along the border of Chihuahua and Sonora. Very rugged country, and the last refuge of the Apaches.

RANCHERIA: The name given to an Apache village, often temporary.

DESERTED RANCHOS: In northern Sonora and Chihuahua there were, at the time, a number of deserted ranches that had formerly been occupied by Mexican ranchers. The Spanish and the Mexicans had been fighting the Apaches long before the Americans came on the scene. A few of the officers leading the fight were very efficient and skillful fighting men who understood such fighting. Unhappily, much the same situation existed in Mexico City as existed in Washington, D.C. The national government simply did not understand conditions on the frontier and often the best efforts of Mexican officers were defeated by rulings made from desks far from the Apache country.

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GALLOWAY

First publication: Bantam Books paperback, July 1970 Narrator: Flagan Sackett Time Period: c. 1875-1879

Flagan and Galloway Sackett were just looking for a place to start ranching. It was a big, wide, lovely country and lovely country and there seemed to be room enough, unless, of course, one was greedy--and the Dunns were. Flagan and Galloway were brothers from Tennessee, descendants through Kin-Ring Sackett from old Barnabas, the first one of the family in America. They were cousins of Tell, Orrin, and Tyrel Sackett. First off, Flagan was taken by Apaches, and by the time he escaped he was in pretty rough shape. Just surviving left him in even worse condition and unready for any kind of trouble, and Curly Dunn was determined to make the trouble.

WILD COUNTRY: The La Plata River runs down a canyon of the same name, gathering its waters as it travels away from its beginning up in the Cumberland Basin. Here and there other small streams join it, a couple of them making miniature waterfalls as they tumble down the slopes through the pines.

Nowhere are the wild flowers more beautiful, and there's good grass for grazing. Deer and elk haunt the forests, and there are beaver in the streams again. It's high up country, over ten thousand feet when you get to the Basin, and the rim of the Basin is up to over eleven thousand. The La Platas were named for the silver found there, and they were named by the Spanish even before Rivera rode north in 1765.

The true limits of exploration by the Spanish and French are unknown, and we must remember that all history of the time is based upon reports, many of them official, made by those who returned safely. As far as the Spanish are concerned, I am quite sure that in the years to come reports will be discovered in Spanish archives of travels yet unknown. But we also know that much travel was clandestine, carried out by fur traders or prospectors who did not want to share their discoveries. Any gold they found was theoretically the property of the King, and all travels were supposed to be with permission from the governor or someone in official capacity. Men being what they were, many evaded that permission, knowing it was rarely granted. Hence, many rivers and mountains were named before the official discoverers arrived.

French officials were more lenient than the Spanish, and much exploration was carried out by fur traders or trappers who left few if any records behind. Elsewhere I have mentioned the colony of Frenchmen who left Illinois for the Pacific Northwest several years before Lewis and Clark. The only report of them I have so far seen was that by David Thompson, the Canadian explorer who met some of them in the Northwest in 1797.

Flagan's survival in this instance was not unusual for the time. Of one thing I am sure: if one is determined to survive, no matter what, a human being is almost impossible to destroy. I have read every story of survival I can find, and many of them surpass belief, but survival is more a matter of the mind and of character than it is of the physique. Certainly health and strength are important, but the sheer will to live is most important. The well-known stories of Hugh Glass and John Coulter are cases in point, but one can list hundreds of others, many of them in our own time.

JOHN COULTER: Also, Colter. (1774-1813) Member of the Lewis & Clark Expedition. On the return, he left them at the Mandan villages and returned to the Rockies with two trappers, where he spent four years, including two dramatic escapes from the Blackfeet Indians. On one of these he was scheduled to run the gauntlet, running between two lines of Blackfeet, each striking him with whatever weapon they wished until he was beaten or cut to death.