The Restless Land by John H. Culp

Author:John H. Culp [Culp, John H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Criminals & Outlaws, Rich & Famous, Social Science, Ethnic Studies, Native American Studies, History, United States, 19th Century
ISBN: 9781787201705
Google: nV9ODQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2016-10-21T04:20:24+00:00

We found Abilene almost the same as last year, sunning itself on the Kansas plain. Across the Smoky Hill River, it hadn’t changed a great deal, only to spread out and grow and attract more dust and spurs and cowhands, cow pens and locomotive whistles, train smoke, soiled doves and gamblers, and—of course—outcries at Texas orneriness from righteous folk.

It had a redheaded Irish policeman now, Bear River Tom Smith, who used his fists instead of guns. You left your guns in camp or checked them. But the bawdy houses, the spindly shacks of old lumber, the trash piles full of pink corsets and beer bottles and busted garters had been removed from Texas Town to Mud Creek, which had come by its name honest, and with a heavy flood a few days after we got there, it seemed hell-bent—with fancy ladies fleeing and holding their skirts garter high—to live up to it. There were no casualties except one drunk cowhand who nearly drowned in bed, which was at creek-top level in Lucy Kanako’s shanty—in other words, a pallet on the floor.

We’d made it up the trail without trouble, except for some ill will between Stuttering Sam and Jeffcoat, who had angered Sam with some remark about María. But we had been more put out by Frank Kitchell. Before we left the Concho, he’d had a letter from a girl back home, and all he did on most of the drive was to loaf blank-eyed or ride around in a daze. At night he stretched out and dreamed at the stars.

“It’s got me beat,” Pegleg said in Kansas, the day we crossed the little Ninnecah. “I never saw anyone so useless. I thought getting close to a cow town might change him, but he’s worse than ever.”

Riding drag on the long trail through the Territory, I hadn’t been much better. I still thought of the settlement. I’d been seeing Deshi King’s eyes in the camp-fire smoke, with once in a while Mattie Mae Watkins’ face hovering around the edges. More than that, in a decision I had to make, I knew I’d never go back to Cowbell. That much was final.

On the Cimarron we ran into bands of Comanches and Osages trading rifles and horses. It was the commerce of the plains. Near the Kansas line, in the Round Pond Creek country, we were held up by long rains and endless buffalo herds, and a million frogs and blackbirds sang and screeched in the water-filled lowlands. Prairie dogs and owls were waterlogged. When we neared the spot where we had captured the Kiowa scalp lance, Clendenning began to brood. He wasn’t himself any more. He became as distant as Frank Kitchell.

But from Red River to the bluffs on the Kansas line, it had been Herr Dofflemeier who made life interesting, fair weather or foul—he and his merry face and his beer wagon. He popped out of more hollows and around more hills and scrub-oak clumps in the Territory more times than a prairie dog town has holes.

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