Isaac's Storm (12 page)

He
graduated
from
medical
school
on
March
29,
1885.
Five
days
later
General
Hazen
placed
him
in
charge
of
a
weather
station
at
Fort
Concho,
Texas.
The
nearest
town
was
San
Angelo,
whose
residents
described
the
place
as
hell
on
wheels.
Hazen
directed
Isaac
to
travel
by
rail
to
Abilene,
Texas,
and
there
to
catch
a
stagecoach
for
the
one-hundred-mile
journey
to
the
fort.
But
when
Isaac
checked
his
Rand
McNally
Railroad
Map
he
could
not
find
Abilene.

It
did
exist,
the
railroad
agent
assured
him.
It
was
just
too
new
to
be
on
any
map.
A
catde
boom
had
created
the
town
overnight.

As
the
agent
prepared
Isaac's
tickets,
he
told
him
a
story,
the
first
of
many
unsetding
stories
Isaac
would
hear
about
the
West
in
the
days
before
his
departure.

The
railroad
had
just
reached
Sweetwater,
the
agent
explained,
Sweetwater
being
another
spanking-new
town
some
thirty-five
miles
west
of
Abilene.
Just
a
few
days
earlier
half
a
dozen
Chinese
railroad
workers
had
been
gunned
down
by
a
group
of
drunken
cowboys.
The
sheriff
arrested
the
killers
and
brought
them
before
Sweetwater's
brand-new
judge,
who
had
also
opened
a
saloon.

The
judge
considered
the
case,
pursed
his
lips,
opened
a
couple
of
law
books
just
to
make
sure
his
first
bone-deep
feelings
about
the
case
were
correct,
then
issued
his
judgment:
"Gendemen,"
he
ruled,
"I
have
examined
the
laws
of
the
United
States
carefully
and
I
do
not
find
any
law
which
says
mat
a
white
man
shall
be
punished
for
killing
a
Chinaman."

The
judge,
named
Roy
Bean,
let
the
killers
go.

Isaac
paid
close
attention
to
one
fragment
of
advice.
"I
was
told
that
well-dressed
men
often
had
their
hats
shot
off
their
heads
and
their
good
clothes
pulled
from
their
backs."

In
Little
Rock,
Isaac
had
become
a
dandy.
He
had
adopted,
wholeheartedly,
the
fashion
then
in
vogue
among
the
city's
doctors.
On
his
rounds
at
Little
Rock's
Charity
Hospital
he
wore
a
Prince
Albert
brown
beaver
suit,
silk
top
hat,
and
kid
gloves.
And
carried
a
cane.

He
was
twenty-three
years
old.

He
was
as
good
as
dead.

When
Isaac
climbed
aboard
his
westbound
train,
he
wore
a
battered
old
suit
from
his
last
days
in
Tennessee.
He
could
not
bear
to
leave
his
fancy
clothes
behind,
however.
He
hid
them
under
the
false
floor
of
his
trunk.

ISAAC
ARRIVED
IN
Abilene
under
a
gunmetal
sky,
the
city
awash
in
mud
and
scented
with
horse
manure
and
fresh-sawed
lumber.
He
heard
the
torn-fabric
scree
of
ripsaws
and
the
sound
of
hammering
as
joists
and
beams
went
up
in
new
buildings
around
town.
Cowboys
strolled
around
in
high
boots
and
spurs
the
size
of
daffodils,
and
wore
pistols
shoved
into
their
waistbands.
He
had
entered
a
territory
as
alien
to
him
as
anything
he
could
have
concocted
in
a
daydream.
Here
before
him
was
the
West
of
Jules
Verne's
Around
the
World
in
Eighty
Days,
in
which
Phileas
Fogg,
an
Isaac-like
character
of
precision
and
rigor,
raced
across
the
Great
Plains
during
the
American
leg
of
his
journey
around
the
globe.

Isaac
learned
that
the
coach
to
San
Angelo
would
not
arrive
until
the
next
morning.
He
tried
Abilene's
one
hotel,
but
found
it
full.
A
railroad
agent
told
him
about
a
room
for
rent
over
a
saloon.

At
the
entrance,
Isaac
encountered
a
porter
mopping
the
wooden
sidewalk.
The
water
had
a
red
tinge
to
it.
Perhaps
joking,
Isaac
said,
"That
looks
like
blood."

"Yes
sir,"
the
porter
said
casually,
without
breaking
his
rhythm.
He
explained
that
four
cattlemen
had
gotten
into
a
gun
batde.
These
were
not
just
ordinary
cowboys,
he
said,
but
well-off
ranchers
with
large
herds.
Now
all
four
were
dead.

Isaac
stepped
past.
He
checked
in
and
climbed
the
stairs
to
his
room.

"My
head,"
he
wrote,
"did
not
rest
easy
that
night."

IN
THE
MORNING,
things
looked
better.
The
sun
was
bright,
the
air
cool
and
scented
with
bacon,
coffee,
and
sawdust,
the
fragrance
of
a
brand-new
country.
The
landscape
was
amber,
pierced
by
long
black
pickets
of
shadow.
Isaac
was
twenty-three
years
old
in
a
new
country
in
a
world
where
anything
was
possible.
He
was
in
the
thick
of
it
when
everyone
else
back
home
could
only
read
about
it
in
the
newspapers
and
in
Jules
Verne
and
in
the
thousands
of
dime
novels
about
Buffalo
Bill
Cody.
Isaac
was
a
pioneer
in
a
new
science,
a
prairie
Dampier,
at
a
time
when
an
ordinary
man
with
patience
and
a
knack
for
observation
could
change
forever
the
way
the
world
saw
itself.
Far
to
the
north
in
the
Bad
Lands
of
the
Dakota
Territory
another
young
man,
Teddy
Roosevelt
of
New
York,
was
busy
"pioneering"
along
with
other
East
Coast
blue
bloods
like
Frederic
Remington
and
Owen
Wister,
later
to
write
The
Virginian,
who
hoped
to
experience
the
frontier
life
before
it
disappeared.
Roosevelt
called
this
way
of
living
"the
pleasantest,
healthiest,
and
most
exciting
kind
of
life
an
American
could
live."

The
stage
arrived
clotted
with
mud,
then
set
off
again
in
a
great
jangle
of
energy,
pulled
by
four
horses
and
rocking
on
its
springs
like
a
bark
in
heavy
swells.
The
coach
was
scheduled
to
cover
the
one
hundred
miles
to
San
Angelo
by
late
afternoon
with
a
team
change
every
thirty
miles,
but
a
rain-engorged
stream
halted
the
journey.
The
driver
told
Isaac
and
his
fellow
passengers
they
would
have
to
spend
the
night
alongside
the
creek
until
the
next
scheduled
coach
could
arrive
from
the
opposite
direction.
The
driver
would
then
ferry
the
group
across
the
creek,
using
a
boat
kept
at
the
crossing
for
just
such
emergencies.
The
fresh
coach
would
return
to
San
Angelo.

The
sole
female
passenger
slept
in
the
coach;
the
men
found
places
on
the
ground.
About
midnight,
Isaac
heard
a
rattlesnake.
It
terrified
him,
"in
fact
so
much
that
I
ran
and
jumped
on
top
of
the
stage
coach
and
scared
the
woman
into
hysterics."
She
thought
the
wagon
was
being
attacked
by
Indians.
Isaac
stayed
on
the
roof
the
rest
of
the
night.

The
Abilene-bound
coach
arrived
the
next
day,
as
expected,
and
soon
Isaac
found
himself
skimming
over
a
sea
of
wildflowers.
Cartographers
of
the
day
called
this
the
Great
American
Desert,
but
to
Isaac
it
seemed
they
had
gotten
it
wrong,
for
here
was
"a
carpet
of
flowers
such
as
words
will
not
describe.
The
flowers
rolled
in
the
wind
like
varicolored
waves."
Flowers
north,
south,
east,
and
west
—
"the
most
beautiful
vision
in
nature
my
eyes
have
ever
beheld."
This
did
not
last.

THE
SKY
TURNED
cloudless
and
blue,
the
prairie
brown.
The
flowers
died.
The
Concho
River
went
dry,
although
underground
flows
somehow
kept
portions
of
the
bed
flush
with
water
and
fish.
The
weather
showed
itself
prone
to
fits
of
violence.
A
tornado
followed
him
along
a
road.
A
"blue
norther"
caught
him
in
the
midst
of
a
hunting
trip
and
dropped
temperatures
from
hot
to
freezing
in
minutes.
He
experienced
heat
like
nothing
he
had
known
before.
During
a
visit
by
the
freak
dragon
winds
that
periodically
blistered
the
Texas
plains
he
recorded
a
temperature
of
140
degrees
Fahrenheit.

One
evening
in
mid-August
he
was
walking
toward
town
along
his
usual
route,
crossing
the
footbridge
over
the
riverbed,
when
he
heard
a
roar
from
somewhere
far
upstream.
Not
thunder.
The
roar
was
continuous,
and
got
louder.
He
saw
a
carriage
carrying
a
man
and
two
women
descend
into
the
riverbed
at
a
point
where
wagons
and
horsemen
often
crossed.
An
escarpment
of
water
that
Isaac
estimated
to
be
fifteen
or
twenty
feet
high
appeared
beyond
the
carriage.
Isaac
began
to
run.
The
water
caught
the
carriage
broadside
and
ripped
it
from
the
soil.
Isaac
reached
the
other
side
of
the
riverbed
just
as
the
water
surged
past
him,
the
carriage
tumbling
like
a
tree
stump
in
a
spring
flood.
The
wagon
passed.
Rescue
was
impossible.

His
heart
racing,
Isaac
looked
upstream.
Men
had
gathered
and
with
their
bare
hands
were
plucking
fish
from
the
water.
Large
fish.
As
Isaac
walked
toward
the
men,
he
saw
a
fish
two
feet
long
drift
slowly
by.
He
moved
closer.
The
fish
did
nothing.
He
reached
for
the
fish.
It
kept
still.
Isaac
thrust
his
hands
into
the
water,
and
two
things
happened:
He
caught
the
fish;
he
froze
his
hands.

It
was
August
in
Texas
but
water
had
abruptly
filled
the
riverbed
and
this
water
was
the
temperature
of
a
Tennessee
creek
in
January,
so
cold
it
paralyzed
fish.

But
where
had
the
water
come
from?
Isaac
scanned
the
skies
for
the
rolling
black-wool
cloud
typically
raised
by
blue
northers,
but
saw
nothing.

Days
later,
townsmen
recovered
the
bodies
of
the
carriage
driver
and
his
two
female
passengers.

A
week
later,
the
mystery
of
the
ice-water
flood
was
solved.

Visitors
from
the
town
of
Ben
Ficklin
fifty
miles
up
the
Concho
came
to
San
Angelo
and
reported
that
a
monstrous
hailstorm
had
struck
about
ten
days
earlier,
the
day
of
the
flood.
The
storm
discharged
stones
the
size
of
ostrich
eggs
that
killed
hundreds
of
cattle
and
fell
in
such
volume
they
filled
erosion
gulches
and
piled
to
depths
of
up
to
three
feet
on
level
ground.
The
ice
melted
quickly.