The Floor of Heaven (5 page)

The couple’s life together was short, and perhaps that was a mercy. Hannah took to bed a year after George was born and never left. When she finally died, it was as if Perry, too, had been struck down. The burdens of two young, motherless children and a hardscrabble ranch left him overwhelmed. Rose, a thin, sad-eyed girl of fourteen with tight black braids that reached past her waist, escaped by marrying James Watson, who at thirty-eight was the same age as her father. The photograph of the couple on their wedding day shows a seated Watson, dressed for the occasion in a black suit with a somber waistcoat, his thin, dark hair slicked down and a straggly walrus mustache dangling beneath a prominent nose. He’s not smiling, merely looking puffed up and self-important. Young Rose, in a calico dress with a bustling petticoat, stands next to him, her hand resting on her new husband’s shoulder as if to steady herself. She is staring out at the camera with a look of pure, wild-eyed fear.

Two years later, days after turning forty, Perry just seemed to have had enough of life and fell down dead. George’s sole inheritance was his father’s broken dream: One day he’d strike the mother lode.

GEORGE MOVED in with Rose and her husband, and although he was just eleven, a fifth grader, this was the end of his childhood. He had a sharp, inquisitive mind, voraciously reading whatever he could get his hands on, devouring dime novels and Shakespeare with equal zeal. He also liked to write poetry; it was his habit to wander off into the hills and then return with an earnest, if rather sentimental ode to the beauty and majesty of the rugged northern California countryside. And somewhere along the way he’d learned to play the piano. But once he moved in with his sister, his formal education came to an end.

Protective of her brother and proud of his talents, Rose tried to convince her husband that the boy should be allowed to continue his schooling. Her hope was that one day George would become a Baptist minister. To Watson’s way of thinking, however, school was just an idler’s pastime. Days were meant to be spent earning one’s keep, and now that he had turned eleven it was high time George started earning his. He put the boy to work tending his flock of sheep.

It was a lonely occupation, a life where George needed to depend on his thoughts for company if he were to pass the time without giving in to despair. What did he think about day after solitary day? The secrets that jump through a young boy’s active mind are forever stored in another sort of treasure room. However, there is a clue to at least one wishful daydream.

On George’s twelfth birthday, Watson allowed the boy to celebrate by holding a handful of gold nuggets; Watson had received them as payment for a freight shipment he had delivered in his wagon to a mine in the Sierra Nevada. Excited, his eyes shining, George cradled the pieces of gold. In their heft he felt the promise of a larger fortune. “When I grow up,” he vowed as though making a birthday wish, “I’m going to be a gold miner.”

Birthday or not, Watson had no mind to indulge any foolishness. “Well, son,” he said, quickly reminding George of the boy’s outstanding debt to him, “you’ll do exactly as I tell you until you’re twenty-one. After that you can do as you please.”

George obeyed. He measured out nearly a decade in dutiful service to the burly, self-confident man who had taken him in as a homeless child. When Watson arranged for neighboring ranches to hire the boy as a sheepherder for $15 a month, George did his work with a convict’s forlorn resignation. He grew to hate sheep. He loathed the foul smell, the incessant bleating, the constant shitting. He forced himself to find the reserves of character that would allow him to survive this particular hell. He was already living in the future, an imagined time and place where he’d be his own man, on his own journey, in pursuit of his own fortune. His father’s son.

A month after his twenty-first birthday, his debt finally paid in full, George made his long-anticipated move. His immediate concern was to find a way to earn the grubstake that would allow him to support himself while he lived the prospector’s uncertain life. He decided on what was, under the narrow circumstances, he told himself, a reasonable plan. George went to the nearby naval base on Mare Island, a skinny strip of land across from the northern California city of Vallejo, and announced that he wanted to join the marines.

The medical exam proved to be nothing more than a quick formality. The blanks on his chart were duly filled: Height: 5′9″. Weight: 160 pounds. Eyes: blue. Hair: brown. Complexion: light. The two months of training that followed were rigorous, but George, who had spent an active outdoor life, handled the challenges with skill and little complaint. Marine discipline, however, chaffed. For someone who had been on his own, who had fixed the meandering course of his shepherd’s days largely according to his whims, the constant barking orders and enforced schedule were a torture. Military life went completely against his grain. He gave serious consideration to sneaking out of the barracks late one night as his fellow marines slept their exhausted sleep. He’d get off the island and never return. Let them come looking. He knew places in the hills where nobody, not even the marines, would find him.

But as his basic training came to an end and his plans to become a fugitive took firmer shape in his mind, he learned something that overrode all his previous misgivings. In fact, what he discovered immediately convinced him that he had made the correct, even a providential, decision by enlisting. He was filled with a sudden but deep and irrepressible joy. His platoon, he was informed, was to set sail for Alaska.

FOUR

f George Carmack sailed north to Alaska for adventure, Charlie Siringo had only to walk down Main Street and into the parlor of the Leland Hotel to find himself in a momentous, life-altering experience. Posters had been appearing around Caldwell for days heralding the arrival of a celebrated phrenologist. A man of scientific distinction! A disciple of the famous Fowler! A public demonstration! All were invited! Your true character revealed through an analysis of the lumps, bumps, and configurations on your head!

Normally, Charlie had no truck with this kind of shenanigans. It struck him as the worst manner of tomfoolery, nothing but, as he put it, “wind and graft.” Despite all the fancy talk, phrenology, he was certain, was simply one more sly game, and a phrenologist just another bunco man trying to exploit the gullibility of rubes. (Of course, this mild, good-spirited comparison would be knocked for a vengeful loop once Charlie crossed paths with Soapy Smith and his life was on the line; but that encounter was still down the road.)

Yet on this afternoon Charlie, without so much as even a grumble, found himself heading into the spacious parlor of the Leland Hotel. He was still downright skeptical, but two strong reasons had persuaded him that he might as well see what the celebrated visitor to his town was up to.

First, there was his downhearted mood. Charlie was at a crossroads: A merchant’s sedentary routine, he’d come to realize, was the wrong fit for his heart. Charlie missed his previous life—his, as he was proud of boasting, “fifteen years on the hurricane deck of a Spanish pony.” And yet a cowboy’s rough-and-tumble existence sure wasn’t suitable for a man with the responsibilities of a wife and young daughter. Each new day behind a counter selling oysters and cigars in bustling Caldwell brought him further proof that the West he’d known was rapidly disappearing. He felt a vast unhappiness over what had been taken from him; and, churning this painful loss, he had a desperate feeling that he would be unable to find his way in a changing, unfamiliar world. It wasn’t that he was expecting a phrenologist to provide the answer that would show him a path through his predicament. Rather, Charlie was looking for something, anything, to fill at least an anxious hour or two, and maybe in the process ease for a short spell the turmoil he was going through.

The other compelling reason was a lot simpler: Mamie had her heart set on watching the performance. And no matter how low his mood had sunk, Charlie was still head over heels for his child bride. If Mamie wanted to go, he’d take her on his arm.

So with Mamie by his side, Charlie found two seats in the rows of chairs that had been arranged in the hotel parlor. In the center of the room a single wooden chair had been placed like a throne, only there was no sign of the phrenologist. But just when the crowd—and it seemed to Charlie as if all of Caldwell had turned out—was getting restless, the great man made his entrance.

He had taken only a few steps into the room, his cane tapping as he made his tentative way, before Charlie realized he was blind. Charlie was taken by surprise; and this was, he told himself, one more reason not to have much confidence in what lay ahead. But as the fine-looking old man began to address the crowd in his ringing, confident voice, Charlie decided that it really didn’t matter much whether he could see or not. The speaker clearly possessed an immense vitality. And his skill, after all, involved feeling the bumps on people’s heads, not looking at them. Besides, the phrenologist seemed well cast for the part. He wore an eastern suit with a watch chain strung across his vest and had a thick hatch of white hair. The man had a respectable appearance; like a college professor, Charlie immediately decided, although he had never met one.

After finishing his preliminary remarks extolling the “science of phrenology,” the speaker found his way unassisted to the chair that had been placed in the center of the parlor. Grasping its back with his two hands, he announced in his clear, rich voice that he would like someone to come forward and sit down in front of him. A volunteer? he asked.

“HENRY BROWN,” a voice shouted, and at once many in the audience chimed in to second the suggestion. “Henry Brown, Henry Brown,” the animated chorus continued to chant. However, Henry Brown, Caldwell’s marshal, was reluctant to come forward. Shaking his head with an obstinate conviction, the marshal made it clear he didn’t want to volunteer. The prospect of anyone “feeling” his head and getting an inkling of what was stored inside was not for him. And Charlie was the only person in the room who understood why.

Most of the town’s citizens thought Brown was a genuine hero. They’d eagerly pinned the marshal’s gold star on his chest after Brown, a newcomer to Caldwell, had demonstrated his courage and his lethal skill in just a few busy weeks. Not only had he killed a couple of hell-raising gunnies who’d been in the process of shooting up a saloon, but he’d also ridden with the posse that had hunted down Spotted Horse, after the Indian chief had attacked a family of settlers. The whole town seemed to think they had found the perfect man for a dangerous job. But when Charlie had first landed in Caldwell back in ’82, the sight of Henry Brown wearing a shiny gold star had struck him as damn peculiar.

He knew Henry Brown. Only the Henry Brown he had met had been riding with the outlaw Billy the Kid. Back in ’78, when Charlie was foreman at the LX spread down in the Texas Panhandle, Billy and his gang had camped out on the ranch for a while while they were selling a herd of ponies they had stolen in New Mexico. During that time, the Kid and Charlie had grown chummy. Of course, Charlie wasn’t under any illusions. He knew the Kid was a killer; in the blink of an eye this jovial young man could suddenly turn terse and steely, and then murderous. But there’d been a target-shooting contest at the ranch and Charlie, to the Kid’s surprise, had matched the outlaw shot for shot. And when the Kid had taken a cotton to Charlie’s new ten-dollar meerschaum cigar holder, Charlie had let him try it, and then offered it as a present. In return, Billy had presented Charlie with the finely bound novel he’d just finished reading, and in a further gesture of friendship he’d written an inscription on the title page and signed his name. It was this new friend who had introduced Charlie to several of his men—including Henry Brown. That winter, though, Brown and a half-breed Indian had quit the gang and ridden on to Indian Territory.

Come spring, Billy and the rest of the gang had headed out, too. But in October, after branding season was over, they’d returned to the LX and made off with a passel of cattle. Friend or no friend, Charlie wasn’t about to let anyone get away with rustling Mr. Beal’s cattle. He picked five “fighting cowboys” and went after the Kid and his gang.

The LX crew headed for the mining town of White Oaks, where, Charlie reckoned, the lure of rich prospectors would attract the Kid. But as they made camp after a hard day’s ride, Pat Garrett, the sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico, rode in. He was forming a posse to go south, down the Pecos River, in search of Billy and his gang. Charlie reckoned this was the wrong direction. Neverthless, he respected Garrett; Charlie had once seen the sheriff wing a drunk in the arm rather than shoot him down. So he turned over two men of his men to the posse and wished Garrett luck.

By the time Charlie and his outfit got to White Oaks, the Kid had fought off an angry mob, killed a deputy sheriff, and escaped. And it was just a week later that Pat Garrett trapped the Kid and his gang in a one-room stone cabin up by the Los Portales road. After a day without food and water, the Kid surrendered.

Charlie hadn’t given Brown another thought until he rode into Caldwell and saw the outlaw sporting a lawman’s gold star. Figuring it would be best to deal directly with this odd turn of events, Charlie went straight up to Brown and shook his hand. Next thing Charlie knew, Brown was asking—begging him, really—not to give him away. I’m a reformed man, he insisted.

Charlie listened, not saying a word. It wasn’t his nature to judge people too harshly. He knew that in the West a man down on his luck might find himself doing a lot of things he’d one day regret; and besides, Brown hadn’t been part of the gang that had stolen LX cattle.

Your secret’s safe, Henry, he finally told the marshal. No need to worry about any kind of loose talk from me. For more than two years, Charlie had kept his promise. Still, that afternoon he could understand full well the marshal’s hesitation.

So Charlie was taken aback when Brown jumped up from his seat and headed for the chair in the center of the room. Perhaps the marshal didn’t want to seem as if he had anything to hide. Or perhaps he’d decided he really didn’t have much of a choice; they’d keep yelling his name until he “volunteered.” Whatever the reason, Charlie watched with a curious anticipation as Brown took his place in front of the blind phrenologist.