John Gregory Bourke - On The Border With Crook

“SEE yar, muchacho, move roun’ lively now, ’n’ git me a Jinny Lin’ steak.” It was a strong, hearty voice which sounded in my ears from the table just behind me in the “Shoo Fly,” and made me mechanically turn about, almost as much perplexed as was the waiter-boy, Miguel, by the strange request.

“Would you have any objection, sir, to letting me know what you mean by a Jenny Lind steak?”

“A Jinny Lin’ steak, mee son, ’s a steak cut from off a hoss’s upper lip. I makes it a rule allers to git what I orders; ’n’ ez far ’s I kin see, I’ll get a Jinny Lin’ steak anyhow in this yere outfit, so I’m kinder takin’ time by the fetlock, ’n’ orderin’ jes’ what I want. My name’s Jack Long; what mout your’n be?”

It was apparent, at half a glance, that Jack Long was not “in sassiety,” unless it might be a “sassiety” decidedly addicted to tobacco, given to the use of flannel instead of “b’iled” shirts, never without six-shooter on hip, and indulging in profanity by the wholesale.

A better acquaintance with old Jack showed that, like the chestnut, his roughest part was on the outside. Courage, tenderness, truth, and other manly attributes peered out from under roughness of garb and speech. He was one of Gray’s “gems of purest ray serene,” born in “the dark, unfathomed caves” of frontier isolation.

Jack Long had not always been “Jack” Long. Once, way back in the early fifties, he and his “podners” had struck it rich on some “placer” diggings which they had preëmpted on the Yuba, and in less than no time my friend was heralded to the mountain communities as “Jedge” Long. This title had never been sought, and, in justice to the recipient, it should be made known that he discarded it at once, and would none of it. The title “Jedge” on the frontier does not always imply respect, and Jack would tolerate nothing ambiguous.

He was bound to be a gentleman or nothing. Before the week was half over he was arrayed, not exactly like Solomon, but much more conspicuously, in the whitest of “bailed” shirts, in the bosom of which glistened the most brilliant diamond cluster pin that money could procure from Sacramento. On the warty red fingers of his right hand sparkled its mate, and pendent from his waist a liberal handful of the old-fashioned seals and keys of the time attracted attention to the ponderous gold chain encircling his neck, and securing the biggest specimen of a watch known to fact or fiction since the days of Captain Cuttle.

Carelessly strolling up to the bar of the “Quartz Rock,” the “Hanging Wall,” or the “Golden West,” he would say, in the cheeriest way:

“Gents, what’ll yer all hev? It’s mine this time, barkeep.” And, spurning the change obsequiously tendered by the officiating genius of the gilded slaughter-house of morality, Jack would push back the twenty-dollar gold piece with which he usually began his evenings with “the boys,” and ask, in a tone of injured pride: “Is there any use in insultin’ a man when he wants to treat his friends?” And barkeeper and all in the den would voice the sentiment that a “gent” who was as liberal with his double eagles as Colonel Long was a gent indeed, and a man anybody could afford to tie to.

It was the local paper which gave Jack his military title, and alluded to the growing demand that the colonel should accept the nomination for Congress. And to Congress he would have gone, too, had not fickle Fortune turned her back upon her whilom favorite.

Jack had the bad luck to fall in love and to be married—not for the first time, as he had had previous experience in the same direction, his first wife being the youngest daughter of the great Indian chief “Cut-Mouth John,” of the Rogue River tribe, who ran away from Jack and took to the mountains when her people went on the war-path. The then wife was a white woman from Missouri, and, from all I can learn, a very good mate for Jack, excepting that prosperity turned her head and made her very extravagant. So long as Jack’s mine was panning out freely Jack didn’t mind much what she spent, but when it petered, and economy became necessary, dissensions soon arose between them, and it was agreed that they were not compatible.

“If you don’t like me,” said Mrs. Long one day, “give me a divorce and one-half of what you have, and I’ll leave you.”

“’Nuff sed,” was Jack’s reply, “’n’ here goes.”

The sum total in the Long exchequer was not quite $200. Of this, Jack laid to one side a double eagle, for a purpose soon to be explained. The remainder was divided into two even piles, one of which was handed over to his spouse. The doors of the wardrobe stood open, disclosing all of Jack’s regal raiment. He seized a pair of trousers, tore them leg from leg, and then served in much the same way every coat, waistcoat, or undergarment he owned. One pile of remnants was assigned to the stupefied woman, who ten minutes previously had been demanding a separation.

Before another ten had passed her own choicest treasures had shared the same fate, and her ex-liege lord was devoting his attention to breaking the cooking stove, with its superstructure of pots and pans and kettles, into two little hillocks of battered fragments; and no sooner through with that than at work sawing the tables and chairs in half and knocking the solitary mirror into smithereens.

“Thar yer are,” said Jack. “Ye ’v’ got half th’ money, ’n’ yer kin now tek yer pick o’ what’s left.”

The stage had come along on its way down to Sacramento, and Jack hailed the driver. “Mrs. Long’s goin’ down th’ road a bit ter see some o’ her kin, ’n’ ter get a breath o’ fresh air. Tek her ez fur ez this’ll pay fur, ’n’ then she’ll tell whar else she wants ter go.”

And that was Jack Long’s divorce and the reason why he left the mining regions of California and wandered far and near, beginning the battle of life anew as packer and prospector, and drifting down into the drainage of the Gila and into the “Shoo Fly” restaurant, where we have just met him.

There shall be many other opportunities of meeting and conversing with old Jack before the campaigning against the Apaches is half through, so we need not urge him to remain now that he has finished his meal and is ready to sally forth. We return heartily the very cheery greeting tendered by the gentleman who enters the dining-room in his place. It is ex-Marshal Duffield, a very peculiar sort of a man, who stands credited in public opinion with having killed thirteen persons. How much of this is truth and how much is pure gossip, as meaningless as the chatter of the “pechotas” which gather along the walls of the corral every evening the moment the grain of the horses is dealt out to them, I cannot say; but if the reader desire to learn of a unique character in our frontier history he will kindly permit me to tell something of the only man in the Territory of Arizona, and I may say of New Mexico and western Texas as well, who dared wear a plug hat. There was nothing so obnoxious in the sight of people living along the border as the black silk tile. The ordinary man assuming such an addition to his attire would have done so at the risk of his life, but Duffield was no ordinary individual. He wore clothes to suit himself, and woe to the man who might fancy otherwise.

Who Duffield was before coming out to Arizona I never could learn to my own satisfaction. Indeed, I do not remember ever having any but the most languid interest in that part of his career, because he kept us so fully occupied in keeping track of his escapades in Arizona that there was very little time left for investigations into his earlier movements. Yet I do recall the whispered story that he had been one of President Lincoln’s discoveries, and that the reason for his appointment lay in the courage Duffield had displayed in the New York riots during the war. It seems—and I tell the tale with many misgivings, as my memory does not retain all the circumstances—that Duffield was passing along one of the streets in which the rioters were having things their own way, and there he saw a poor devil of a colored man fleeing from some drunken pursuers, who were bent on hanging him to the nearest lamp-post. Duffield allowed the black man to pass him, and then, as the mob approached on a hot scent, he levelled his pistol—his constant companion—and blew out the brains of the one in advance, and, as the story goes, hit two others, as fast as he could draw bead on them, for I must take care to let my readers know that my friend was one of the crack shots of America, and was wont while he lived in Tucson to drive a ten-penny nail into an adobe wall every day before he would go into the house to eat his evening meal. At the present moment he was living at the “Shoo Fly,” and was one of the most highly respected members of the mess that gathered there. He stood not less than six feet three in his stockings, was extremely broad-shouldered, powerful, muscular, and finely knit; dark complexion, black hair, eyes keen as briars and black as jet, fists as big as any two fists to be seen in the course of a day; disputatious, somewhat quarrelsome, but not without very amiable qualities. His bravery, at least, was never called in question. He was no longer United States marshal, but was holding the position of Mail Inspector, and the manner in which he discharged his delicate and dangerous duties was always commendable and very often amusing.