Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen (27 page)

The newcomer mulled this over while the barkeep wandered off to the other end of the bar to serve a dusty cowpoke. The man had taken off his tall-crowned hat and set it on the bar top, exchanged a few words with the bartender. It appeared they knew each other. Then they both looked down the bar at him.

He looked down at his beer and felt his cheeks redden. Damn, he hated to be humiliated. Was this what the West was all about? People doing their best to embarrass you? To gouge you? To cheat and steal from you? He thought he'd outrun that back East when he left Boston.

He looked up to see the bartender and the cowboy both smiling and sidling down the long length of the bar toward him.

“Say, tell me this story ain't true and I'll listen to what you have to say.”

Pegleg jutted his stubbly chin and scratched a moment, considering the proposition. “Seems like I can't lose with a suggestion such as that, now can I?”

“I reckon not.”

“What is it you wanted to know?”

“I heard that at one time you used to steal Indian children, then sell them south of the border. That can't be so, can it?”

To the young man's surprise, the man called Pegleg let out a sharp bark of a laugh, smacked his twill trousers, releasing a cloud of dust that he didn't even seem to notice. His mouth had split into a smile, cracking his round bearded face. “Why, boy, that is about the most funny thing I've heard all week. No, no, all month!” He wagged his shaggy head. “Yep, I do believe you've been talking to folks who are plumb jealous of me, yes, you have, and all my successes in life. You see . . .,” he leaned forward then, all trace of mirth vanished. “You are young and not so used to the finicky ways of the world as I am, because I have lived longer than you. I will say that I have also lived more dangerously and more thrillingly than any man you are likely to meet.” He leaned back as if he'd just revealed an amazing truth, and nodded as if that was all there was to say on the topic.

The young man sat still a moment, regarding Pegleg. Finally he said, “I do believe I am beginning to understand what it is you are all about, Mr. Smith.”

“Oh, and what's that, young man?”

“You are everything people have said, and more. Much more.”

“How's that?”

“I was warned if there was a question you weren't inclined to answer that you would talk circles around it until the person asking the question was addled and befuddled.”

“And are you befuddled, boy?” Pegleg laughed again, leaned back, quaffed a couple of sips of the warming brew on the bar top beside his elbow, and considered a moment. “I'm not quite sure how to take these bold accusations, young man. On the one hand, you seem to have made up your mind about me, and that without having heard my entire life's story—which I daresay will take considerably more than a glass of beer to get through. It's dry work, I tell you. Dry work.”

“What's the other hand?” said the young man.

“Huh? Oh, yes, ah, well, I'm a more complicated character than you will give me credit for, no doubt.”

“Well, let's say we start at the beginning, then, Mr. Smith.”

“Well now, could be I'd be up for such a session of jawbonin' and chinwaggin', provided the person doing the listening was . . .” He hoisted his glass and the young man saw the reedy old throat work back the last of the beer. “Provided,” he said through a thunderous belch that brought a smile to his face and headshakes from a few folks seated nearby. “The man doing the listening was also doing the buying.”

The young man smiled and nodded. “I'm buying.”

“Good. Then let's get started.” Pegleg rapped his knuckles on the bar top and beckoned Ned.

“Where should we start, sir?”

“Why, boy, you have to start where every good story starts . . . at the beginning! I was born at a very young age. . . .”

“How did you come by the name Pegleg, Mr. Smith?”

“Now how do you think I come by it? I can assure you it was honestly.”

The bartender snorted. “That'd be about the only thing, eh Pegleg?”

“You hush up, Ned. I want any contributions from you, I'll tap your shoulder. Until then you just keep those opinions to yourself, you hear me? Now, where was I?”

“Your leg . . .” said the young man.

“Oh yes, ‘the incident,' as I like to call it. You see, I was guiding for Le Grand, you heard of him? Alexander Le Grand's expedition? Yeah that one. Oh, they were heady days for a youngish man,” he winked. “First expedition to trap down around Santa Fe, and we made the most of it.”

“Is that when you were injured?”

“I'm getting to that, I'm getting to that. Hold your peace, will you? My word, these younger generations sure are in a hurry. And if there's one thing I can't abide it's someone in a tizzy to get a story up and over with. Takes the steam out of a thing, if you know what I mean.” He stopped and stared at the young man before continuing.

“Well sir, one day I was out rousting up them flat-tails along the Platte River when we come upon a passel of Injuns, I don't recall what stripe they was. Me and St. Vrain, that's who I was trapping with, surely you've heard of Ceran St. Vrain, hell of a man, not much of a gut for blood, but a decent sort, good in a pinch. Though in hindsight, maybe not that day. You see, we spooked one of those rascal savages and he opened fire on me. There I was, one second talking to St. Vrain—might be we were arguing about the best way to scent a beaver set, might be we was jawing about other things, I don't rightly recall—when all of a sudden I see a flash of something, that was the Injun, and smoke belched at me! Next thing I know I'm in a welter of blood and agony, rolling on the ground like a stuck pig, howling and wondering just what happened. Turns out the rascal shot my leg south of my knee and north of my ankle hinge.

“Well sir, I took a good long look at that mess that had been my leg and I said to St. Vrain and the others, I said, ‘Boys, you got to cut it off. Else it will set to mortifying and I'll be dead in a day, maybe two.'”

The young man held his pencil poised above the half-filled page in his notebook. “What did you do then, Mr. Smith?”

“What could I do—lordy but this is thirsty-making work.” He made a face and stuck out his tongue as if it were somehow offending him.

The young man nodded to the barkeep, who had been slowly moving close and listening in on the mounting story. He fetched a beer.

“I couldn't raise hide nor hair of effort out of those lily-livered so-called friends of mine. Well, ol' Martin Sublette—you recall him, don't you? Well, Marty, he lent a hand. I'll admit he was less of a cringing babe than the rest. So I had them fetch me a butchering knife and I commenced to cut off my leg as neat as I could muster. I passed out twice, they revived me, and I set to work again. Blood was a-squirting everywhere, the bone kept poking at me, slowing my progress, but I got her cut clean through. Then we swaddled it up in fine shape and I set to drinking to take the fiery edge off the situation. Now boy, you look plumb skeptical, but I tell you now that was the truth. But the deal was far from over. The boys finally lent a hand and yarned me overland to our winter hidey-hole along the Green River.

“Once she commenced to heal, she pained me something awful. I had to rub it with bear grease and a hot-tempered liniment just to keep it from waking me in the middle of the night with chills and howls. Finally I felt around there with my fingers and found I'd not gotten all the bones out of there, so Sublette grabbed hold of them with a bullet mold—don't tell me you don't know what that is—and tugged and dragged and nearly upended me, but we got 'em out. Course she commenced to bleed again.

“But my woman, a Flathead, with the finest set of . . . oh you never mind that now, she had her Injun ways and means and herbs and tinctures and she'd go out gathering roots and berries and leaves and grind 'em and heat 'em and mix 'em with this and that—family secrets you know—and soon enough I was on the way to healing once again. Finally, along about springtime, just in time to set to work again, I had carved a decent stomper for myself out of a length of firewood. Strapped it on and I never looked back. Even rigged up a special stirrup for my saddle, I did. Now, is that something that a man could just make up, I ask you? Naw, I'll answer for you, boy, naw, I say!”

“I heard you also, ah . . .”

“Out with it, boy. You won't get anywhere in life if you don't give full vent to your thoughts and opinions. If you can offend me, why I'll eat this here beaver hat.” He thumped the battered topper resting like a lopsided old fungus atop his balding head.

“Okay then,” the young journalist cleared his throat. Perhaps emboldened by the whiskey and his companion's increasingly chatty behavior, he asked the question he'd been dying to ask for hours. “I've heard you—remember you told me I could say anything to you, now!” He smirked and held up a finger in semi-comedic warning. “It's back to my question of earlier: I heard you stole children from Indians and sold them as slaves to Mexicans. And furthermore . . .,” he quickly gulped down the last of the fiery whiskey. “I was also told that you have stolen more horses than any man alive.”

“Well now,” said Pegleg, puffing up and not looking offended in the least. “As to the latter accusation, I'll gladly admit that there is not, nor has been, nor ever will be a man who has liberated as many horses as the very man you are looking at right this minute, youngster!” He slapped a knobby hand on the bar top and fumbled for his nearly empty glass.

“And as to the former, all I can say is that the morals of the time made me do what I needed to do. Hell, that was the way of the world then. You do what you need to do. Don't make more or less of it than it needs. They were there and I was in need of money and that's the way it was. You got me? Business, it's all business. Like when a hungry wolf takes down a pretty young pronghorn. You don't cry and moan about it and say, ‘Oh boy, that critter had such a long and lovely life ahead of it,' now do you? Aw, you don't neither. You say, ‘Well at least that wolf had his belly filled and he'll be around for another sunrise.' That's the way of the world.”

He slapped his hand on the bar top, thrust out his bottom lip. “Now, back to the matter of horse stealing—that's a serious accusation, mister. But one I am fully willing to admit to, and willing also to defend. You see, come 1840 or so, which is roundabout the time all this fancified horse thievery is said to have taken place, the hind end of the beaver-fur market dropped out from under all us so-called mountain men. We preferred to call ourselves mountainous men, by the way. So what was a man to do when the one thing he'd been good at, the one thing he'd been counting on doing for purposes of putting food in the mouths of his bairns and womenfolk, just dried up?”

The young reporter shook his head, knowing he was about to hear another prime justification of the swindling lifestyle. And also knowing that Smith knew that he knew.

“Why, a man had to do something to make a living. Man has to have a rhythm going in life, you know what I'm on about, pup?”

The young man looked at him, not at all sure what it was he was ‘on about,' but nodded anyway.

Pegleg sighed and shook his head. “You don't have a notion at all as to what I'm yammering about. Why, I'm talking about this here,” he grunted as he bent low and rapped knuckles on his wooden leg.

“I am afraid I will admit I don't understand what you're, as you say, on about.” The young man hated to admit it, as he knew doing so would open him up to all manner of chatter for hours to come, but blast it, Pegleg Smith was so unnervingly engaging.

“I knew as much. When I talk about a rhythm, I mean with an ax as much as with anything in life. You take a man swinging an ax, see?” He paused, an expectant look on his lined, hairy face. “I was standing atop a long log one day, see? Swinging for all I was worth, doing what men with axes do to long logs—making them into smaller logs!” His laughter bubbled out of him, interrupted by a coughing spasm he quelled with a sip from his beer stein.