“But I saw in the paper,” Harry said, “that everything was peaceful along the Pacific Railroad.”
“I read that,” Sweasy admitted. “But it’s likely temporary.”
Like the rest, I wanted to see real Indians. Herds of buffalo rolling like thunder over the plains. The Wild West—even now already sensationalized and romanticized.
“On the Washita River, not three hundred miles due south of here,” Sweasy went on—he’d obviously done his homework—“is where Sheridan took on Black Kettle last November. Sent Custer to surprise ’em in their winter village. Left a hundred savages dead in the snow.”
“No women or children, of course,” I said.
“They went in a-shootin’,” he said. “At anything that moved—and some as didn’t.”
It got a laugh.
“Are we supposed to cheer about a massacre?”
He looked at me coolly. “They didn’t stay on their reservations like they’re supposed to.”
“Like we say they’re supposed to.”
This produced a general silence.
“You Quaker?” Sweasy demanded.
“Why?”
“You talk like a John Injun-lover.”
At that point Champion, who seldom participated in our conversations, moved down the aisle. “I’ve studied military tactics,” he said. “I’m certain that Sheridan ordered a winter attack because the Indians’ lighter ponies could outdistance cavalry mounts in summer, laden as they are with weaponry and equipment.”
Thanks, General, I thought. Go back and play with your toy soldiers. “A tactical consideration,” I said, “but morally—”
I stopped as Harry touched my arm. “They haven’t developed the land, Sam.” His tone was mollifying, the voice of reason.
I took a breath, realizing I was up against the century’s dominant ethos: progress—meaning whatever could be profitably exploited.
“One of the Empires knew California Jack personal,” said Allison, changing the subject.
It drew immediate interest. Recently a Pennsylvania bank had been relieved of twenty thousand dollars by a robber of that name.
“Said he lived only a few doors away,” said Allison. “Wife and kids, right there in St. Louis.”
The notion of a bank robber having a family life stirred discussion. Gould claimed that the country’s first train robbery had happened outside Cincinnati in the spring of ’65, when a gang of roughs derailed a baggage car and looted its safe.
“Anybody heard of Billy the Kid?” I asked. Nobody had. I tried the Jameses, Youngers, Daltons, Wyatt Earp, Calamity Jane, Joaquin Murietta, Bat Masterson. None got a glimmer of recognition. Either it was too early or the Stockings were abysmally ignorant. “Zorro?” I tried.
“Sam, you’re talkin’ queer,” said Andy.
In northern Missouri we crossed level prairies thatched with wild strawberries and freshened by clear streams. For lunch we had catfish—fried, breaded, served with corn fritters—in Hannibal, the town where Twain had grown up. It had doubtless changed a good deal since he left fifteen years ago. The railroad’s arrival had brought a booming lumber business. Sawmills crowded the foot of town, along the river. New buildings stood everywhere.
I walked to the Mississippi. In the distance kids shouted as they jumped from a half-submerged log, splashing into placid water, which looked leaden on this blazing day. It was weird to think that Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn hadn’t yet been written. I looked around, considering the sluggish river, the drab frame structures and dusty trees, the buzzing flies. Maybe it was idyllic to be a boy here, but for me it would be brain-killing, stifling, a long deadly summer of monotony. Small wonder Twain romanticized but seldom revisited his roots.
We swapped our spacious sleeping car for a dilapidated Hannibal & St. Joseph coach that swayed and lurched so crazily we could scarcely stand up. Glasses and books and decks of cards were thrown periodically to the floor. Sweating through the heat-blasted Missouri landscape, we were hardly comforted by the evidence of past wrecks along the tracks. In one place seven smashed cars formed a triangular heap, their locomotive nose-down in a swampy hole.
Our slow pace worried me. The Pacific Railroad began at Omaha, jumping-off point for all transcontinental traffic. It was a likely place for McDerrnott to intercept me. Was he already there, waiting with Le Caron? We poked through St. Joseph, crossed into Iowa, dragged westward. Twenty-four hours on that wretched line.
At last the conductor called, “Council Bluffs! All for Omaha change to the stage!”
We changed with a vengeance, stampeding to omnibuses lined before the station. Andy and George got choice seats inside; Brainard, Gould, and I—the lead foots—had to sit on top with the luggage. For one solid bone-rattling hour we were jolted and tossed as a four-horse team moved over muddy ruts—“defects in the road,” the driver termed them. We climbed down shakily at the ferry landing on the Missouri River. Before us on the opposite shore, set on a hill and crowned by a white-domed capitol, lay Omaha City.
We crossed Big Muddy’s silt-laden current on a flat-bottomed steamer—it was hard to comprehend these boats journeying two thousand miles up the Missouri, farther than we still had to go to San Francisco—and we duly disembarked in Nebraska, proud new thirty-seventh state.
The Union Pacific depot was a scene of vast and boisterous confusion. There were dandified easterners in stovepipe hats, their women richly bonneted and shawled, children cavorting on piles of luggage; haggard miners; loudmouthed agents pitching stocks and myriad get-rich-quick schemes; Jewish pack peddlers; soldiers; hucksters who shilled for saloons and gambling houses; hunters carrying long Sharps rifles; German and Irish and Swedish emigrant families.
That day’s Pacific Express to Sacramento was packed to the last inch of space. Worse yet, nearly a thousand would-be passengers waited to pay higher rates for an express with guaranteed Pullman cars—exactly what we wanted. I felt the old tension in my shoulder blades. We would be stuck here for some time. I pressed close to the others and kept a nervous watch. Le Caron could be
