The Men of "Wagon Train"
by Sevenstars
Introduction: This isn't exactly a fic, but I hope that people writing in the Wagon Train universe, or just curious about it, will find it of use. It's a collection of biographies of the seven regulars, as assembled from the bits of their history thrown out over the course of the eight canonical seasons of the series, with occasional editorial comments based on that information. Each factoid is keyed parenthetically to the episode in which I found it (wagonloads of thanks to Timeless Media for making this classic program available complete on DVD!), and a list of those episodes will be found at the end.
A note about dates: Despite their well-crafted stories, superior acting talent, and sympathetic characters, the Westerns of TV's "Golden Age"—approximately 1955 (the year Gunsmoke and Cheyenne, two of the earliest "adult" Western series, had their debut) through 1970—all suffered from a tendency not only to mix up history (and sometimes geography) but to be confused and inconsistent about their own dates. With some, like Have Gun Will Travel, Wanted Dead or Alive, Cheyenne, The Texan, The Rebel, even Sugarfoot, which focused on the travels and adventures of a single character, you could ignore it, assuming that the writers were simply telling stories randomly chosen from a long career. Among those which seemed to be sequential, Laramie was one of the least so plagued: a very early segment establishes that the year is 1870 (five since the end of the Civil War), and apart from Jess Harper's mention, in the fourth-season episode "The Replacement" (presumably 1873), of it having been six since he was taken prisoner by the Seventh Michigan Cav (possibly a scriptwriter error), a few mentions of towns (Abilene, Tascosa, Amarillo) that seem to have come into existence before they did in our reality, and (in "Deadly is the Night") reference to the Jameses and the Youngers having passed through Tolliver Station "years ago" (which is actually plausible, because Jesse James is generally held to have begun his career as an outlaw leader in 1867, three years before Jess came to Laramie), it remains consistent throughout the run.
Wagon Train, on the other hand—though I love it dearly—is one of the most egregious offenders in this regard, especially when you remember that each season is supposed to chronicle a single journey from St. Joseph to the Coast (probably taking a good six months—about May through October—first to last). Its writers couldn't even seem to keep track of which year they were supposed to be in during any given season. In the second, the year is variously given as "six years" since the end of the war[=1871], "five years" since its early stages[=1866], and "ten years" since 1860[=1870]; but Flint McCullough also speaks of "this bein' an election year" and of Grant being in the running for the nomination, so it could be either '68 or '72. In Third, mention is made of "Porfirio Diaz, the hope of Mejico" (probably engaged in his revolt against Tejada, whom he overthrew in 1876), the Boer War[=1899-1902!], Custer's Last Stand[=1876], and Ben-Hur[=1880], but the year is also once said to be 1868, another time 1869, and in yet a third instance negotiations are under way to buy Alaska from Russia. In Fourth, "The José Morales Story" is at least 1866 (José and Roke both say it's been 30 years since the Alamo, though they may be understating or approximating, as people often do when dealing with long periods of time, and it could well be 40 or nearly so, as both men look as if they could be in their late 50's or early 60's); "The Cathy Eckhardt Story" is definitely dated 1870 (grave markers); "The Colter Craven Story" takes place sometime during Grant's Presidency (which term isn't specified); "The Candy O'Hara Story" displays a newspaper with the headline, "Custer will punish Cheyennes" (probably the Washita, November 27, 1868—well after any prudent wagonmaster would be safely in California!); in "The Earl Packer Story" there's mention of John Wesley Hardin (active 1868-75), Clay Allison (active as a gunfighter 1870-80, after which he turned to ranching), and Hickok (who fought the McCanles Gang at Rock Creek Station in '61 and continued active till he was shot in the back in Deadwood in '76); "The Jed Polke Story" is "four years" since Lee's surrender (1869), "The Tiburcio Mendez Story" about 1868?, and "The Nellie Jefferson Story" definitely then.
Fifth Season references Pasteur's discovery of bacteria (in "The Kitty Albright Story"), c. 1865, and the gold at South Pass ("Maude Frazer"), disc. 1866 (the lodes were pretty well worked out within 10 years), and Colorado is still a Territory (it was admitted to the Union in 1876), while "Clementine Jones" and "Jenna Douglas" are flatly dated 1868, "Baylor Crofoot" c. 1869, "Jud Steele" 1871, and "Amos Billings" (working from internal hints) about 1877—but the closing episode, "Heather Mahoney," sees Chris Hale presented with a watch from the passengers of "the wagon train of 1868." In Sixth, "Madame Sagittarius" and "Abel Weatherly" find Nebraska still a Territory (i.e., before 1867), "Johnny Masters" is dated 1867, "Naomi Kaylor" 1868, "Lisa Raincloud" and "Heather & Hamish" 1869 (the newlyweds from the latter reappear in "The Last Circle Up," about a year later, and Hamish then says they've been married nine months), "Sam Darland" c. 1870-1, and "Shiloh Degnan" sometime in Grant's presidency (again, which term isn't specified). "Molly Kincaid" (7th Season) is dated 1869, yet in "Sandra Cummings" Cooper Smith, speaking of his quest to avenge his kid brother Jefferson, who died during the war, specifically says, "It's been a lotta years and a lotta miles"—which suggests the date is well into the '70's, and even perhaps past mid-decade. "Zebedee Titus" seems to support this, since Zeb is flatly stated to be 80, and says he was out West as early as 1812—and a good many mountain men entered that trade in their teens, so the year could be as late as '77. "Stark Bluff" centers on a town that grew from a fur-trading post established (says Coop) "50 years" ago, which, again, would set it in the mid-'70's or later. In "Santiago Quesada," Quanah Parker, who surrendered in 1874, is active, but in "Jed Whitmore," it's been 20 years since a train robbery that took place east of St. Joe around the beginning of the Civil War. Later, in the eighth and final season, "Brian Conlin" references an apparently ongoing potato famine in Ireland (apart from the infamous one of 1847-50, there was a round of potato-crop failures and evictions in the late '70's and early '80's, so a post-War date works), by internal evidence "Clay Shelby" occurs in 1874, and "The Silver Lady" 's framing story is well after 1881, but "Little Girl Lost" begins in Sept. 1869, and "Katy Piper" is the same year. Yet if Coop was hiring his gun out in Kansas "ten years ago" (as stated in "Bob Stuart"), and if he'd had two or three years since the war to get a reputation (as he almost must have, to have been leading "the biggest gang of guns for hire" in that dispute and to have been well-known enough to draw up to $500), that season must be at least 1877.
So, as the old saying has it, "You pays your money and you takes your choice." The choice I take starts out from the First-Season two-parter, "The Major Adams Story," the earliest segment in which a definite date is shown (on a gravestone); its framing story takes place "three or four years" (says Charlie Wooster) after the death (1869) of Rainie Webster (who hadn't seen Adams in "eight years" (when he went off to war in '61)), making it 1872 or '73. (Since Adams, severely wounded in the latest stages of the war, literally had to learn to walk all over again after the Surrender, it seems probable that he didn't take his first wagon train west till the season of '66.) To synch the series with Laramie (something I wanted to do from the time I began writing fics in the latter), I decided to use this as my benchmark, ignoring or repositioning such dates and historic happenings as are mentioned, then push it back by one year and assume that Charlie should have said "two or three." This means that First Season (which isn't Adams's first train west) takes place in 1871, Chris Hale took over the train in 1874, Coop Smith signed on in '77, and the last filmed season was in '78.
And now, on to the biographies!
Seth Adams
Seth Adams, "Major, U.S. Army, Retired," as he sometimes describes himself, was probably born about 1816; he almost certainly comes from humble beginnings, since his grammar isn't always perfect. He had "a terrible hankerin' for the sea" as a boy (32), and suffered a siege of smallpox in his childhood (16). We know nothing of his immediate family, but he has an Aunt Abigail who was still living in 1872 (30).
At some point in his youth, Adams joined the Army; in antebellum days it was entirely possible to obtain a commission without attending West Point (and no evidence suggests that he ever did), presuming that you or your family knew someone with influence in Washington. (One of Robert E. Lee's sons, for example, did two years in college, then obtained a vacant second-lieutenancy in a Western regiment, and would probably have stayed on till retirement age if he hadn't resigned, like his father, to follow Virginia in the Civil War.) He very probably served in the Mexican War, though this isn't confirmed, and definitely on the frontier in various locations: in 1853, at the time of Benito Juarez's first civil war, he was stationed "down in Texas" (8), and has "spent some time" there (23) (he personally knows at least one young Comanche chief, Sharp Knife (15)); in 1854 he probably served in Cheyenne country, and as an officer, since he knew, on a first-name basis, Nat Burkett, then a lieutenant, who warned a village of Cheyenne noncombatants of a planned attack by the Cavalry (46). This is supported by his assertion that he's "known Mr. Hanford [a wealthy Indian trader who was married to a daughter of a Cheyenne chief] many years") (7). At some point during this period his C.O. was Dan Benedict, whom he has known since before Benedict's son (age c. 16 1873) was born (39). He also "presided over quite a few court-martials when [he] was in the Army" (43), which makes it plain that even during his first hitch he was an officer (a presiding officer need not be of a high grade, only a ranker at his post).
It was probably the Burkett incident which soured Adams on the army and moved him to resign (or, if he'd been 20 years in, retire); by 1855 he had settled in Galena, Ill., and met Bill Hawks (who then had dark hair), and the two of them had established "a little lumbering business" (55). It must have prospered, as in 1859 they spent some time in New York City, getting into the prizefighting game and managing a pugilist called "the Tinsmith" through 12 matches, until he was KO'ed in a Staten Island bout by New York Constable Dan Hogan, dubbed by Adams "the Fastest Fist in the World" (11).
As sectional tensions heated up, Adams formed a militia unit to train for the conflict he foresaw. There weren't enough men in it for him to be an officer, but he did become Sergeant-Major "because I could lick every man in the outfit." Despite previous experience, however, he was a total washout as a drillmaster, and couldn't get his men to perform adequately until an old friend of his, Sam, another former officer, came to his aid and practically took over the entire group (55). At this time he was in love with a woman named Rainie Martin (66), who was apparently quite well off, as she lived in a two-storey Southern-Colonial house; a few days before he was due to leave he asked her to marry him, but she wouldn't, implying that she was afraid to be left a widow (10). (What he didn't know was that she had already been diagnosed with tuberculosis and was actually unwilling to leave him alone (66).) When he was reported missing in action, she married a man named Webster (who possibly had been courting her for some time, taking advantage of her breakup with Adams), moved to Pennsylvania, and was widowed anyway, five days before Appomattox. In 1869 she and Adams reconnected when she joined his train on her way to live with her sister, but by that time her disease had become critical, and she died soon after reaching her destination (10).
When war broke out, Adams's outfit (including Bill and Mexican-War veteran Tim Malloy, a father of three) was mustered into the Second Illinois Volunteers, an infantry outfit, and he was made first lieutenant (he chose Malloy to be his second) (55). He served under Sherman and knew the General's favorite scout, Bill Tawnee, an Indian raised on a Kansas reservation (6). He was also reunited with Benedict, probably by then a Colonel, and he and Hawks served under him "about three years" (39)—most likely after being transferred to Virginia [see the battle list below]. He fought at Shiloh (3), entering the first day's fighting with 223 men and coming out with only 17. (His unit may have been the 7th, 8th, 9th, 11th, 13th, or 14th Illinois Infantry, all of which were present there.) That night he went out alone with a lantern to see if he could locate any of his wounded (some, including Malloy, he of course knew to be dead), and found instead his old Illinois friend Sam, now better known as General Ulysses Simpson Grant, who gave him a battlefield promotion to Major (55). Subsequently he and his surviving men were merged with some other unit, according to the custom of the day (probably the 19th Indiana, which was present at all his later engagements except for Vicksburg, where he may have been [see Charlie Wooster] temporarily attached to Grant's personal staff), and he was at Second Manassas (8/62) (26), Antietam (9/62) (26), Fredericksburg (12/13/62) (14), Gettysburg (1) (this may be a scriptwriter error)/Vicksburg (32, 33, 39) (both 7/63), The Wilderness (5/5-7/64) (39), and Cold Harbor (6/1-3/64) (2), as well as a "skirmish at Harpers Ferry" at which, according to Wooster's later reminiscences, "not a shot [was] fired" (17). He was in "an epidemic outside'a Richmond" (36), though he doesn't specify what sickness was involved. His outfit was on guard duty, though without him, at Appomattox (25).
At some point late in the war, in a nighttime engagement, Adams risked himself to rescue the wounded Hawks, who had been caught in the crossfire while returning from a reconnaissance, and got him back behind their lines, but was then hit by a charge of canister. His unit was routed before they could rescue him, but he was found and taken to a Union field hospital, where a doctor told him that both his legs were so torn up that they would have to be amputated if he hoped to live the night. Adams refused to permit the operation, and somehow he survived and began to recover. Hospitalized in Savannah (possibly the one in Ohio, to which he might have been transferred by rail and riverboat), he was found, after the surrender, by Hawks and Wooster, who helped him learn to walk again. At this point he resolved to go West, marrying Rainie if she'd have him, and they eagerly offered to go with him. She, however, had by this time married and gone, so he began guiding wagon trains for a living (10). By 1872 he could say he had "been over this [Southern] trail four times" (27). In 1874, after some shrewd manipulation by his distant cousin Horace Best, the two went into partnership (45), which may have been the beginning of the Western Trails Company. He can play chess—quite well (41).
Flint McCullough
Flint McCullough was born in Virginia, probably about 1839-42; he may have come of a farming family, as he knows how to plow and plant (37), and he almost certainly lived in a rural or small-town environment: his father used to take him fishing on summer afternoons, and sometimes told him stories (40). That he avoided the measles until manhood (70) supports the idea of a farm upbringing. When he was eight years old, the family joined the westward migration, and Flint was "adopted" by Jim Bridger after his parents were killed by Indians (quite possibly Utes; Bridger would never tell him, but "used to say to me, 'Boy—you keep your eye peeled for them pesky Utes' "). Bridger found him "tryin' to dig a grave to bury his Ma [who may have been in fact a stepmother; see below] and Pa," took over the job, helped him lay them to rest, and then said, "Well, it looks like I found me a son" (74). Bridger took his responsibilities seriously and didn't hesitate to "wallop" young Flint when he deserved it, such as the time he drew a beard on an illustration in Bridger's Harper's Weekly (87), but even after Flint was grown, Bridger called him "[my] boy" and "my adopted son." (Flint, in turn, spoke of Fort Bridger as "my home," and strangers sometimes called him "Mr. Bridger's son.") (18) "20 years" before his fourth season with Adams [i.e., 1854] he "was a kid taggin' along after Jim Bridger" (58); given the birthdates above, he'd have been between 12 and 15.
During his years at the Fort, he met such frontier characters as prospector Cliff Grundy (a noted tall-tale-teller who also served with him during the War) (4) and Gabe Carswell (a former mountain man who had been adopted into the Arapaho tribe about 1841) (5), and "Mr. Bridger" (as Flint calls him) taught him "every stick and stone in [the country]" (18). He's also literate, and did "a lot of reading" when he was a boy, though not so much now (19). He can quote the Bible (61) and Thomas Moore (62) and is familiar with the music of Strauss (44). As a boy, Flint "grew up with" a girl named Allie (Allison, surname unknown), and also knew her parents; they used to race to a rock at the corner of the schoolyard (he'd give her a count of 10 and always won, which suggests he was older and had longer legs), and he would carry her books home. (As one of the earliest schools in Wyoming Territory was established at Fort Bridger, this isn't unplausible.) Allison was sent to "high school" (probably an Eastern seminary) and got married straight out of it, and Flint lost track of her for many years; he didn't know she was living in Boone Center till he "ran into [her] folks in St. Louis," probably in the spring of '74, and they asked him to stop by and visit her when the wagon train was in the neighborhood (49).
Among the closest relationships of Flint's early life were formed at Fort Young, where he and Bridger "used to spend a lot of time." Here he met Bowman Lewis, a boy of about his own age, the son of Harry Lewis, who kept the trading post a couple of miles out, and his Comanche wife, a woman known to all as "the Princess," hence probably a chief's daughter. Bowman was, says Flint, "like a brother to me," and Harry's close friends, Col. James Harris and his wife Charity, who had no children of their own, "had a big hand in raisin' me"—and Bowman too, after his father died and his mother took over running the post. (Flint called Harris "Colonel Jim" and described him as "almost a father to me," and Charity as "the closest thing I ever had to a mother" (which suggests that his real one died when he was very young and he wasn't close to his stepmother if any).) Sometime before the War, for unspecified reasons, he stopped visiting the Fort, and about 1863 Harris was transferred out; it was probably around this time that Bowman went to live with his mother's people, among whom he took the name of Red Bow and over the next 10 years rose to be a respected and powerful chief (42).
Quite different was Flint's relationship with Artie Matthewson, his "foster brother," whom he has apparently known since he was quite young ("For 20 years [1875] you've always been around to get me out of trouble"). Artie's mother, a widow, must have lived close to Fort Bridger, as he says "she raised me... [and] was the only mother I ever knew;" she called him "my son" and said that "Whenever I called Artie you were always [there]," and he called her Mom. Although the two boys "used to have some good times... [and] were pretty thick," Flint always hated the way Artie was with his mother, and as they grew older he began to see that Artie was a user, though able to charm most people into thinking otherwise. In their young manhood, Artie once left a girl waiting at the altar, and another time let Flint spend six months in jail for something he'd done. And once it cost Flint $2000 to get Artie out of an unspecified "jam;" it may have been at this time that he told Artie that "if he ever went crooked again I'd kill him." They had probably not seen each other since the late '60's, though this is never specified (82).
At 14 Flint met a young Sioux named Curly Horse when the latter visited Fort Bridger, and the two became friends and "grew up together," teaching each other their languages, "hunting, fishing, wrestling;" Flint made Curly Horse a bead necklace with a copper penny on it, and Curly made him the beautiful beadwork belt he wears to this day (31). By the time the War broke out (he'd have been 19-22), he had fallen in love with a Mormon girl, Jean Yates, daughter of farmer Tom and his wife Martha, and she with him, though her father was dubious about her marrying outside her faith; he proposed, but she was uncertain. Then he was recruited by Col. Jason Taylor, CSA, who was assembling a mounted guerrilla unit intended to intercept gold and silver shipments east, and wanted a man who knew the area. Flint, who still considered himself a Virginian, felt an obligation to follow his state, but was deeply traumatized when Taylor ordered the Yateses barricaded in their cellar and the cabin burned over them for helping a wounded Union soldier. Taylor was eventually sent to prison (by what authority is unclear) (18), and Flint apparently made his way east (perhaps with Cliff Grundy's help, though he claims not to remember very much "for a long time" after the fire) and joined the legitimate Confederate Cavalry; he says he served with it, and caught smallpox—a lot of the men in his unit died from it (20). In later years, asked what side he had fought on, he once said, "I'm tryin' to forget" (13). He was at Shiloh (69), and it may have been at this time that he "knew a corporal who thought he was Napoleon" (24). He spent some time in Richmond (apparently just after the war), where he became involved with a girl named Eleanor Harrison (she says he "loved" her, and he called her "darling"), but he wasn't ready to marry; he said he "had to get the taste of war out of his mouth" (76). There was some thought among his friends that he would marry the daughter (possibly Eleanor) of an unspecified general (4), perhaps his own C.O., but he wasn't ready to settle down yet (when asked, six or seven years later, whether he'd ever been in love, he replied, "No, not really" (28), but he also says "I haven't always wanted to escape [marriage], I guess I just never stayed in one place long enough" (35)). Instead he began scouting for wagon trains immediately afterward (20)/befriended Caleb Jamison, whose father owned a stagecoach line, and they drove together "right after the war;" Flint adopted a distinctive outfit of shiny black boots, black shirt and pants, and a yellow bandanna knotted just so, and "Even among the drivers [he] cut quite a figure" (35). He also did [winter] stints as a hunter and trapper (25), and spent some time in New Orleans, where he studied swordsmanship for over a year with a Creole instructor (78).
At some point c. 1866 Flint went back East (Virginia? Missouri?), where he somehow acquired (perhaps by inheritance) a house—a pretty impressive Southern Colonial, though only half the size of that belonging to the mother of the girl (Nancy Lee Davis, age 20) he became engaged to marry. Both Nancy and her mother were killed the night before the wedding by three thieves after the wedding presents (probably chiefly the silver). Flint tracked the trio out to cattle country (the trail was getting cold by then), killed one and distracted another long enough for someone else to do so, but thought the third dead till 1875 (97). Having no reason to go back East, he spent the next few years chiefly on the frontier. He was apparently a regular visitor to Fort Hastings, commanded by Maj. P. S. Barham, until c. 1870, as Barham's daughter Martha "used to like him" until she somehow became convinced that he was "a renegade" (31). He once passed through Abilene, where his life was saved by Bill Strode, a 30-year lawman who cleaned the town up; details are wanting, but Flint saw Strode deal with some pretty tough men (60). He says that "One of these days I'll settle down, get myself a spread...[ranching] is a good life" (34). He can use a bow and arrow with facility (47), and besides Sioux probably speaks Comanche (58). He joined the Adams train in 1871.
Bill Hawks
Probably born c. 1830/1 (and therefore only in his early 40's, despite his striking gray hair, when we first encounter him), Bill Hawks was "just a little kid" when the Alamo fell, but has always worshipped as heroes the men who fought there, and couldn't believe it when he learned that one had left before the final assault (50). He must have lived in the country, since at the age of five he had a pet wolf cub he'd found in the woods; his father eventually turned it loose (40). He probably grew up around horses, since he's an expert rider, able to slide out of his saddle, bring his mount down for a breastwork, and almost immediately climb back onto it and bring it to its feet, all in one movement (52). But he also went to a good school, where among other things he learned Marc Antony's oration from Julius Caesar (43). He also seems to have picked up some kind of shorthand, since he can function as a court stenographer (43). He knows what a Beethoven violin sonata is (111), but is unfamiliar with Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat (120).
Like his friend Adams, Bill probably did an antebellum stint in the Army, most likely as a young man: he was a sergeant in the Second U.S. Cavalry, and at this time knew an Indian who was also in it, named Swift-as-the-Deer-That-Runs-From-the-Hunter; they saved each other's lives, and Swift called Bill "my only friend." One day he asked Bill to teach him to write his name, but "besides bein' a full sentence long, he was afraid people might laugh at him," so Bill gave him leave to call himself Bill Hawks instead (115). It may have been during this period that he spent some time in the Southwest, as Adams acknowledges that he "know[s] somethin' about Apaches" (12).
At some point before the outbreak of the war, Bill lived "back in Missoura" (106); this may be where he married his wife Emily, who, to judge by her speech, was probably a native of the upper South, Virginia or Kentucky, and who went with him at least on the wagon trains of 1869 and '71. At this time he knew a tinhorn gambler named Jeremy Stanton (151). Eventually they moved to Illinois, where Bill met Seth Adams. In the Army he served as Adams's senior sergeant (10), and "used to be a pretty good free-style [wrestling] man" (Charlie says he was "the best in the company") (15); he also served as a courier, carrying many messages written in invisible ink (152), and was present at Lee's surrender (69). Though still referred to as "a married man" in "Around the Horn" and "The Jenny Tannen Story" (the first and last episodes of 2nd Season), we see nothing further of Emily; in 3rd Season he's still wearing his wedding ring, but is no longer called so.
"Eight years" before Fifth Season [=1867] Bill and Charlie had some kind of tangle with the Utes (99) (which suggests that they were by then helping Adams head up wagon trains); Bill took a wounded brave prisoner, and this youngster eventually went to law school. He has been described as "a strong hand and a stout heart" (52) and "muscle every inch" (45); Adams calls him "a good guide" (50), and he often leads small parties splitting off from the train, or acts as a short-range scout. He's also a more-than-adequate tracker (51), able to slip stealthily in and out of the train's camp at need (57), and can read sign sufficiently to tell what tribe's tracks he's seeing (53); Adams once said he could "teach you somethin' " about reading sign (64), and on another occasion said, "You think more like me than any man I know" (66). He knows (or claims to know) Morse code (99), can follow Indian sign-talk and interpret smoke signals, paddle a canoe, and use a bow (65). He's fought Indians, but is also devoted to the notion that they should have whatever their treaties stipulate (99). He says he "[doesn't] know how to pray... [it's] for womenfolk and the hopeless and the helpless" (120). Asked if he "ever shot anybody [he'd] gotten to know," he doesn't exactly say yes, but implies that he has (144).
Charlie Wooster
Charles B. Wooster, generally known as "Charlie" or "Chuck," was born in Mound City, Illinois (10), though he has also lived in Missouri (58); he was the youngest of eight children and has his family Bible to prove it. His father "had rheumatism s'doggone bad, you couldn't hardly read his writin'. And it got worse every year." In consequence by the time Charlie was born, the date as recorded was nearly illegible, though it was probably c. 1817 (156); in 1876 he says he'll "never see 50 again" (103), and is described as about 55 (109); he's "had those whiskers for 30 years." He was raised in an intact family, having parents, "brothers and sisters, and an Uncle Osmont" (38), but he also ran away from home several times, the first when he was nine and his mother caught him with a plug of chewing tobacco (39). (Her name may have been Mary, as this was what he chose to call the orphaned infant he once absconded with (56).) He has at least one brother, Bill, who "doesn't look a thing [like me]" (91). His "old Uncle Orville" taught him to make flapjacks (48), and his "old Grandpappy" taught him that to see three seagulls flying together is a sure sign of trouble, which suggests a seafaring connection (54). He also had a "rich old Aunt Tillie" (probably a well-married sister of one of his parents) who could always be depended on to give him a nickel for candy (130). His father kept a still, until it burned out (63). He says he "never had no pets" (85), and claims he "raised himself" (86), which argues that his family was large and his parents had little attention to spare for him (which, if he was the youngest, in turn is plausible). This is further supported by his claim that during the family's Missouri period he once ran away from home for at least a month—and his mother didn't miss him (90). (On the other hand, he also says once (112) that he was orphaned at a very early age and, though he knew he had two brothers and two sisters, never met them.) He says he "never went to school" (43) (Bill claims it took him three years to get through the third grade (155)), and as late as Second Season he was unable to read (27), but by the beginning of Fourth, though he admits he never got through McGuffey's Fourth Reader (72), he could work story-style arithmetic problems ("If one man eats seven sacks of potatoes in 140 days, how many do thirty men eat?") (45), and claimed he had read "most of" the Bible (59), though Bill, at the beginning of Fifth, still insisted he "can't read," to which Charlie retorted that he had "friends who can read for me." (79).
Charlie worked as a butcher, saloon swamper, livery-stable hand, and chief cook for the Benton Mining Company (10), and must also have gone West at least once, as "20 years" prior to Fourth Season [=c. 1854] he saw what was left of a wagon train after a Comanche attack (58), while "17 or 18 years ago" [=c. 1861-2] he worked at Pierce's Bend, a wagon stop (possibly near the Green River) dominated by a fur-trading post run by hard-fisted Jarbo Pierce, sometimes called "the Reverend," and he has probably had wagon-train experience before we meet him, since he says he "never knew a ramrod yet that would give in to somebody that knew more'n he did" (157). He may also have done some buffalo hunting; he owns a buffalo coat and fur cap which he wears when he tries to sneak out of camp to join a hunting party (85). Just before the war he was in Cincinnati, where he saw the actress Nellie Jefferson in Our American Cousin, and was her devoted fan ever after, attending every play she appeared in whenever he happened to be in reach of one (72).
When the fighting broke out, Charlie enlisted in Company F of the 17th Regiment (presumably of Illinois Volunteers); he still has a scrapbook emblazoned with that affiliation (72). He was at Pea Ridge (probably First, 3/8/62), and claims he was hit three times between the right elbow and shoulder (89). About a week before the Battle of Shiloh (10), he joined Adams's outfit as a replacement, and another week after the engagement, having briefly gotten a glimpse of the man who stole a pair of silver spurs out of Adams's tent (apparently he didn't realize at the time that the intruder had larceny in mind, as he didn't turn him in) (3), he was brought to his commanding officer's attention when he got in a fight with a man from another unit who distracted him during a poker game. Upon learning from Hawks that he was "such an awful shot" on the battlefield, Adams attached him to his personal staff as a cook, and in this capacity he served out the rest of the war (10), although he once "buck[ed] for Corporal in the General's mess" (67). Subsequently Hawks reported that "In spite of conditions in the field, he still maintains a competent and clean mess," and recommended him for a promotion to Corporal, which he received (10). He "fixed [Gen. Grant] a big breakfast that day we reached Vicksburg" (33). He also has what Adams describes as "a natural genius" for doctoring (9), and has pulled through many a sufferer who might otherwise have died.
Despite a good deal of teasing from his counterparts, he's apparently quite competent at what he does, as various guests at the ramrodders' mess have complimented his food, and even Flint once admitted, "We kid him a lot about his cookin' but he's kept us alive the better part of four years" (71). He has shown great courage on several occasions, including once when he attacked a former prizefighter twice his size to defend Nellie Jefferson (72). He's familiar with "Enoch Arden" (103), and is a demon horseshoe-pitcher (92) and a cutthroat player of two-handed poker who once claimed he'd "got all [Hawks's] money—leastwise all his wife'll let him play" (21). He has been in Santa Fe, though whether with Adams isn't clear (22). He also visited San Francisco four years before Fourth Season (54). He and Hawks were at Chattanooga in 1864 (105), and were once in New Orleans and had their fortunes told by a Choctaw woman, who told him he'd "come into a lotta money" and "get mixed up in bad company" (she "came real close a couple'a times" with Hawks) (95). He calls Bill "the best friend I got in the world" (72), and Bill calls him "the most honest man I ever met" (109). He says "the wagon train is the only family I got" (154), and tells Cooper Smith that when Coop signed on with it he became part of a family, "just like you had blood ties" (150). He has rheumatism (147), and once had double pneumonia (55).
Christopher "Chris" Hale
Christopher Hale was born c. 1821; he's half Irish, but neither Scot, Presbyterian, nor Southern (73), although he says he has Scottish blood (possibly McIntire) (114). (Hale is an English name, so the Irish must come from his mother.) He describes himself as from St. Louis, but has kin near Salem, Mass., and c. 1868 he and his family visited them (109). He had a brother, Levi, 10 years his senior, who went west as a young man and at the age of 24 was scout for an expedition led by Jim Bridger; Duke Shannon's grandfather, Old Henry Shannon, was cook for the outfit. Eventually Levi married Gray Dove, the daughter of a Pawnee chief, and had by her one son, Grayson (called Gray for short), who didn't look at all half Indian; he was "tall... well-favored," with yellow hair and light eyes. After the fur trade bottomed out, Levi (like probable fellow mountain man Joe Meek) turned to keeping the law, and became, as Duke's grandfather told him, "one of the greatest lawmen the West has ever known" and a famous town-tamer; his career culminated as U.S. Marshal for the whole of Nebraska and Kansas. His closest friend, Will Rudge (who once took a knife a Paiute threw at him), served as his deputy, and perhaps as a natural consequence of their fathers' tightness, Gray eventually became engaged to Rudge's daughter Milly. What no one (except perhaps his Uncle Chris) realized was that Gray wasn't sane; he never grew out of the unthinking cruelty common to young boys, and he drowned Milly but was found not guilty. A mob of 20, led by Rudge, hanged him to the tree his father had planted the day he was born; Levi went wild and killed three of them, including the sheriff, before he was caught (circa First Season) and given a life sentence without possibility of parole in the Wyoming Territorial Prison (3-4 wagon days from the Utah line). Rudge later became Sheriff at Rock Springs (104)[=c. 1874, i.e., after Jess Harper was there]. Another Hale brother, Andrew, became a minister of the Gospel and a "spellbinding" preacher, and may have spent some time as a missionary to the Indians, as he was very familiar with their traditional herbal medicines; in 1872 he led his congregation West (29).
Chris was brought up in the town of Little Falls [there is one in New York State, located on the Erie Canal, an environment which might well tempt a young man to follow the stream of travellers west], and in his youth claimed he "would never leave" it. As a young man he was in love with Charlotte "Chottsie" Gubenheimer, the popular daughter of the town's German barber; he "would fight anybody he thought meant [her] harm," and once "thought very seriously of marrying her," but her parents thought they "were too serious too young" and sent her away to New York (153). He has never seen Niagara Falls (151), but he attended college (which one isn't specified), and spent several years as a surveyor on Government parties, which "was when I fell in love with this beautiful country, and decided to spend as much time in the great big middle of it as I possibly could" (100). He surveyed the mountains beyond "the desert," probably the Sierras (123), and almost certainly the Arkansas country, as he used to hunt along that river with the half-Kiowa chief John War Bow (125).
In time Chris married a woman named Janet, who suffered frequent attacks of "the fever" (probably chronic malaria), and they had two surviving children, Jeff (b. c. 1857) and Marie (1861), who lived with their mother in St. Joseph while Chris was on the trail (77). He "used to drive gold trains to Deseret" (95), passing through Fort Bridger for the first time in 1857 (129), at some point bossed a train of 67 wagons out of Santa Fe for Fort Yuma and San Diego (73), and served in the Union Army (106). 10 years before Fourth Season [=c. 1864; he may have been captured and paroled, or given a medical discharge after being wounded], he began ramrodding wagon trains to California for a living, and gained a reputation as "one of the very best" wagonmasters, "always in demand" (71). Two years into this period, a man named Jud Benedict joined his train and tried to take it over; Chris whipped him in hand-to-hand combat and threw him off. (Benedict became a wagonmaster on his own account three years later, and got a name as a hard driver with an ugly personal reputation.) (71) "The last time" he went through Ute country (probably Third Season), he lost 11 wagons and 23 people (74).
After a decade as a wagonmaster, Chris's wife persuaded him to take her and the children to California and settle down. Accompanied by Chris's brother Josh and sister-in-law Ada, they all set out together. While passing through the territory claimed by a band of Indians led by Chief Red Cloud, with whom Chris had a private treaty, they were invited by the chief to settle there instead. Chris was at first reluctant, but Janet was suffering another bout of fever, and seeing that she couldn't go on, he agreed. His passengers raised a house and barn for them, and Janet insisted that he fulfill his obligations by getting them to the Coast. On the very day he was expected home, a little band of malcontents who'd broken away from Red Cloud appeared there and ordered his family to "leave land." Rebuffed, they attacked, killed the family and burned the house. Chris arrived to find all but Janet dead, and Janet lived only long enough to tell him that renegades, not Red Cloud, had been responsible (77). (Jeff was "just about [17]" at this time (149).) Grieving and bitter, he buried them and remained by the graves, mourning, until Flint McCullough found him and took him, half-starved, back to his own outfit. Resolved never to ramrod again, he gave only his first name, knowing that anyone in the wagon-train business would be aware of his reputation (this was when Charlie began to call him "Mister Chris"), but when Benedict was wished on the outfit as its new wagonmaster by Western Trails and locked Bill and Charlie, whom Chris had come to see as friends, in the prison wagon, he eventually challenged Benedict for leadership. Nearly beaten, Benedict snatched a passenger's sixgun and would have killed his old rival, but a friend had slipped Bill a pistol during the fight and he got in the first shot from the prison wagon. Benedict was killed, his four gunmen were driven out, and Chris became wagonmaster (71).
It was probably soon after this that Chris either met or reconnected with Kate Crowley, who ran Crowley's Freight & Stage Company out of Kincaid, Kans. (121); she was the daughter of a Union Infantry vet whose cap she wears and who left her his freight company when he died ("it was the only thing I knew how to do") (135). By 1867 she said they'd had "nearly four years of holdin' hands" (Duke said they'd been kissing each other "for years") (135), and he was a bit sensitive about their relationship (121). (In extremity he even admitted to Duke that he was "in love with [her]" (135).) He has been to Delmonico's in New York (72); Duke says he's "educated... knows how to act in society... used to the finer things" (135), and certainly he casually uses words like "vicariously" and "lugubrious" (74). Yet he can "sit a cowpony while he's cutting out steers" (100), and hunt buffalo from the saddle at full speed (125). He seems to be fluent in Comanche, as he speaks a non-English language to the Comanche chief whose party has taken Coop hostage for ransom (141). (This is not at all implausible, as we know he's spent time on the Southern Plains (the Arkansas country), and Comanche, with Spanish, was one of the two stock trade languages of that region; most Indians you met could get by in one or the other.) He also suffers from lumbago: "more than 20 years ago" (Seventh Season, i.e., c. 1857 or earlier) a "sour-tempered old stallion... spooked at a badger hole and stacked me up" (130).
Duke Shannon
Duke Shannon was born c. 1849/50, but was orphaned at a very early age and raised by his grandfather, Henry Shannon, later known as "Old Henry," who was about 50 at the time. (The boy's great-grandmother—probably Henry's mother—was named Stella (113).) They lived "right at the foot" of Outlook Mountain, where Henry had resolved to find a gold mine he knew to have been discovered and worked by one Old Man Baldwin; the latter wasn't seen after 1849, but Henry kept on going back up the mountain every year, "except a couple of years when my grandson was a baby" (75). He taught Duke to shoot a Winchester carbine when the boy was 11, and they used to go deer-hunting together (96); Duke also learned to track and became a tolerably fast draw as well (75). He acquired enough schooling that he has some familiarity with Shakespeare (98).
Duke says he was raised in Apache country (100), but he has also spent so much time around Fort Willoughby, in Modoc territory, that "it's almost like home." (Possibly Henry moved them there when the war broke out and the withdrawal of the Army from the Southwest made it a very dangerous place to stay.) Here he was close to Clarence Mullins, who described Duke as his "best friend" and said he "was my friend all through my growing-up years," and whose father Harvey called him "my boy;" the two "found out not too many years ago that Indians weren't as different as grownups had always told us." Major Gaston, the fort's CO, "always regarded [Duke] as good [Army] material," but in the end it was Clarence who got commissioned a Second Lieutenant—and was ordained as a minister two months before; he tried to get an assignment as a chaplain and couldn't, and was sent to Willoughby (probably because he knew the area well), but was eventually drummed out of the Army and went to live with the Modocs, spending a year preaching to them (116).
When he was 12-going-on-13 Duke went to school with a 10-year-old girl named Lily Hogue ("He used to dip my pigtails into the inkwell, and I used to kick him in the shins at recess"). Lily had no mother, and her father "was stone drunk most of the time." When she told Duke she was his, he "told her to beat it or [he'd] put a mouse in her desk," but she persisted, carrying his books home while he walked ahead of her and "tried to make the back of his neck look as if it didn't know me." Then one day he took all the books (his and hers) and "carried that whole library all by himself!," and from that point on they were sweethearts. When she moved away, he wrote to her "almost every day" and sent her an engagement ring of "14k. solid brass" with "a red stone in it that turned white in time." But her father kept moving, and they lost touch (107). It was probably also at this time that Duke lived in the town of Oak Bluff, which he considered his "home," though he hadn't been there since 1871. Among his other close friends were Jim Whitlow and Margaret Linley, and he and Jim were "inseparable" from the time an old wagon fell on Jim's right hand when he was eight and crushed it so badly that it had to be amputated; Duke "stood by [Jim] for 11 years," protecting him. Before he left he had established a little ranch, Shannon's Glen, which he left in Jim's care. Jim married Margaret the year after (she was 17, and probably in love with Duke all along), bought up notes on three other ranches, and built up the Glen to 10,000 acres, including sheep and contract tenant farmers (25 of them on 5000 acres). At some time in this interval he also began practicing ("just for [Duke]") to teach himself a fast left-hand draw (it took him three years to master), and having done this hired a gunman as his foreman ("He took my orders because I was better than he was at the only thing he understood"). Not till 1876—five years after last seeing him—did Duke come to realize how much Jim resented him (117).
At some point in his young manhood, Duke apparently began to wander afield. He once went to Arizona, where his horse was stolen and he had to track the thief down on foot—but he tracked him, and brought him in alive (83). He crossed the desert to the Bitterwood Mountains, where he was befriended by a middle-aged couple, George and Martha Gresham of Eagleville (88); he's been to the Pecos country (110), once wintered with the Blackfeet (93), and has also "fought Comancheros... [and] known some personally" (102). It was probably during this period that he became what Chris describes as "a well-known scout" (136); he says of himself that "Scoutin's all I know" (114). He never really forgot Lily, nor she him; in 1873 she was working at the China Hat Saloon in St. Louis when he came in for a drink, and she recognized him and hid backstage till he left. Soon after this she and her father moved to Galesburg (possibly the one in Illinois?), "near the rail line," where he died of consumption, possibly as a direct result of a fight he was in (over her) with "that redheaded fella." Duke, who had learned of their presence there, had arrived in town the day before and seen the fight; he was at the funeral, and meant to "come back and get [her] and we'd be married," but she had left with the redhead the night before. Not for three years did they reconnect, and by that time she was manifesting consumption too (107).
Though he never claims to have fought in the war, Duke's family must have had Southern leanings, as he once refers to "good Yankee dollars" (140). At least once he took a girl on a hayride (80), but by the time he was grown up (and living near Outlook Mountain again), Henry had to travel to Ortonville (a week away by wagon train) for supplies (75). Then, 25 years after Baldwin's disappearance, Henry became convinced that he knew the mine's location. Returning home with two mule-loads of supplies, he joined the Hale train, befriended Charlie Wooster, and persuaded him to go partners in the search. They slipped away in the night but were followed by a trio of opportunists from the train. Duke, anxious because his grandfather was overdue, backtracked him, found the train, and was joined in his search by Bill Hawks, who was concerned for his old trailmate Wooster. The claim-jumpers meanwhile had captured the two old men and forced them to lead the way to the mine; when it proved to be worked out, they sealed Henry and Charlie up in the shaft. Duke and Hawks caught up right afterward and in the ensuing gun battle the trio were killed. Charlie and Henry got out by way of an escape hole Baldwin had dug at the back of the mine, and Charlie left his friend to rest while he circled around to see what the situation was. He found Duke and Hawks frantically trying to clear the debri away from the adit. When Duke went back to get his grandfather, he found Henry peacefully dead, with a smile on his face. Bill offered him a job with the wagon train, and he became its second scout (75).
Duke doesn't take well to jail; he's "used to bein' outdoors" (83). He calls Bill "as good a friend as I got," and Charlie says "there's nobody else he looks up to" as he does to Bill (84).
Barney West
Barnaby West, Jr., was born in Virginia (in Sixth Season, when he's introduced (118), he says he's 13-going-on-14, which would make his birth year 1862; but in Seventh (120) he says he's 16, which makes somewhat better sense, and in Eighth (149) he and Chris both say he's 17 (before the train reaches Denver)); his father, Barnaby Sr., was in California at the time, hunting for gold, not having known that his wife was pregnant. She died when young Barney was a baby (having apparently insisted on naming him after her husband), and her mother, who had probably never approved of the match, only wrote Barnaby Sr. of her death, not of their son's birth. She raised the boy until her death, letting him think that his father was dead too, but told him the truth before her demise, and urged him to go to California and make himself known to the man. Barney set out afoot, dressed in a cut-down Confederate uniform and carrying all his worldly goods in a knapsack on his back, infantry-style. (Among his most precious possessions was a dime novel describing the adventures of a frontiersman with a dog named Wolf; with a young boy's natural romanticism he soon came to think that this must be what his father was like, and by the time he met Bill Hawks he spoke of the man as if he'd known him.) At some point early in his journey he saw a farmer beating a dog; after the animal was left for dead he nursed it back to health, named it Rusty, and took it along.
Forging westward, Barney and Rusty crossed the Missouri and headed for the Coast; Rusty guarded Barney's camp at night and rustled small game for him, thus sparing the boy precious rifle cartridges. Late in their journey they struck the back trail of the Hale wagon train, and since it was going his way Barney decided to follow it. Eventually his campfire was seen, and Bill Hawks was sent back to investigate. Although both boy and dog were deeply suspicious of him at first, they soon bonded—even Rusty obeyed him—and Barney accepted Chris's offer to travel along with the train, but only if he was allowed to camp apart. Then, one night, Rusty attacked some chickens belonging to a passenger woman; when she tried to drive him off, he turned on her, and her husband was compelled to kill him. Deprived of his only real friend, Barney was brought much closer to Hawks, and their friendship deepened.
In Sacramento, Barney found his father, who owned a prospering store and had remarried and fathered another son (about 11 or 12)—named Barnaby West, Jr.! Disillusioned because the man wasn't what he'd imagined, and confused by the existence of his same-name half-brother, Barney fled (he said it was because he was "almost 14" and by the time they got used to each other he'd be old enough to go out on his own), and just managed to catch the riverboat Bill was on before it left for San Francisco (118). From that point on Bill became his unofficial foster father, and indeed once said (120) that he was "as close as you got to a father." But the main disciplinarian in Barney's life was Chris, who kept him at his schoolbooks (including algebra) and once rebuked him for trying to buy a gun with his own money ("Little boys don't [wear them]"). (Barney naturally found this somewhat irksome, since after all he'd walked all the way across country the previous year.) (119) He spent a year as errand rider and Charlie's chore boy, then at some point over the intervening winter was given a handgun and a paint pony and became Coop Smith's apprentice-scout; before long Coop could say of him, "You liked [scoutin'] and you were gettin' good at it!" (156)
Cooper "Coop" Smith
Cooper Smith comes from a small town called Piney Flats, Tex., where turpentine is made and there are "no pine trees left" (150). He says he "was born under an open sky... hunted buffalo... and antelope... caught mountain trout for his breakfast... [and] spent his life on a horse" (145). As a boy of 12 or so, he was friends with another youngster named Richard Bloodgood, who, after reading about "the Arapahoes and the Apaches," suggested that they become blood brothers, which they did. One day when they "were just kids" they were scuffling, Coop hit Richard too hard and he fell and hit his head on the ground, and his vision got worse and worse. Circa 1873 they were in China Hat, Nev., where they both fell for a bar girl called Janet Rose, but Coop soon saw her for what she was, and became more and more suspicious of her, while Richard just fell deeper in love. This climaxed when Coop went to her room one night to confront her with what he'd learned about her. Richard, who thought she was pregnant with his baby, found him there and gave him three seconds to draw. He was so blind by then that he couldn't see Coop wasn't wearing his gun, and when he fired, his bullet ricocheted off the brass bedstead and killed her (150). After this Coop and Richard apparently broke up, and didn't meet again for five years.
Coop fought in the war, but says "I like to think [which side] doesn't matter" (128). He was at Second Bull Run (8/18-9/1/62) (after which he had to tell "my buddy's mother" that he'd been killed) (156), and the Second Battle of the Wilderness (5/6/64), and "flat on my back in a hospital" afterward—with a next-bed mate he describes as "a Yankee. A Scotty. And... as Scotch as plaid bagpipes" (137). (The two got to be good friends while they convalesced.) This tends to suggest that he was a Confederate (and that the hospital was Southern), as does the fact that his "kid" brother Jefferson (known as Jeff, and fair-haired to his brunet) was 19 and guarding the Southern POW camp at Shelbyville (probably the one in Tennessee) when he let Union spy Sandra Cummings escape and was executed by a firing squad. Coop took this very hard; for years he couldn't "face the truth" that it was "on the record that [Jeff] died a traitor," and he looked for Sandra for "a lotta years and a lotta miles" (128).
About 1869 (which suggests that in 1877 he must be around 32-33), Coop, according to former Marshal "Shotgun Bob" Stuart, "led the biggest gang of guns for hire in the Kansas range wars," at a time when "men like [him]" were getting up to $500. Coop himself says he "lost my taste for drawin' gun pay a long time ago"—according to Felix Colton (who, with Tom and Keith Lance, rode with him at this time) because of Stuart, who had then been a lawman 25 yr., and who shot him in the back (with a shotgun) from ambush, killed two of his men, and fractured Keith's skull, leaving him speechless and mentally disabled. It was apparently this experience, and the hospital stay it led to, that made Coop stop selling his gun. His temper outbursts took longer to cool at this time, but he wasn't a "badman:" he claims that the only reason Stuart got a shot at his back was because he had turned to tell his men that this was a lawman, and not to put up a fight (143). Yet he also says, "I've had to kill for a lotta reasons. I've never killed for fun and I've tried not to in anger. Never once felt good about any kinda killin'." (150)
About 1870 Coop passed through Stringtown, where a mob got the idea that he'd killed a rancher and was about to lynch him; Sheriff Frank Lewis, who had tamed the town (and married Jean, widowed mother of Patsy) two years earlier, made them give him up, against odds of 20-to-1, and then went out and found the real killer. Lewis has been one of Coop's closest friends ever since, and says they "have been down the pike together" (133). Coop has probably scouted extensively for the Army: he knows one Sergeant currently at Fort Pierce (in Cheyenne country) who calls him by his first name (122), has "spent enough time on the Staked Plains..." (121), knows something about Apache hunting methods (125), can read smoke signals (138), and has gained a considerable reputation (frontiersman John Bouchette, on first meeting him, said he "ain't hardly old enough to do all them stunts I heard about!") (125). He's familiar with the mining town of Mineral City (126), and has probably spent time along the Border, as he drinks tequila Mexican-style, with salt and lime (138). (He can't have been there long, however, since he mentions "the little bit of Spanish I remember" (150).) He was in California "a few years ago" and passed through an Indian village "that had just been wiped out" (148) (he doesn't specify by whom). But he also has some familiarity with the Midwest; he says Sacramento "puts me in mind of towns in Ohio and Indiana" (139). (Quite possibly he was on a cattle drive or two to these regions before the war.) He's a good poker player, but his favorite gambling game may be dice, since that's what he urges Duke to join him at (140).
Coop says he knew a Randy Stanton who "got hisself gunned down in Abilene," a Sam McCutcheon ("the gran'pappy of a gal I useta run around with... 95 years old about six years ago"), and a James Rossiter who "died'a the plague in New Orleans" (151). (Since he's talking to Charlie when he mentions them, he may be joshing.) He also claims he's "done a lot of ramroddin' in my time... a knack for handlin' workers," and is equipped to "teach... all I know about runnin' a spread this size [200,000 acres]" (124). He says he has "a burnin' desire to see things grow under my direction... say, 1000 acres," and about 1872 passed through a certain tract of country "lookin' for a piece of land to homestead," but the best land—a big green valley—had already been claimed by "an Irishman named O'Rourke" (124). In 1874 he travelled the 200-mile Fragua Cutoff, a stretch of vicious desert (134), and in '77, while passing through northern New Mexico, reconnected with Lance Starbuck, a young Indian horse rancher and former Army scout raised by Maj. Starbuck of Fort Fillmore, who also calls him by his first name (138), suggesting that Coop had scouted for him too at some point. He says he "was in love, once... just didn't work out" (145). But he also believes there's a girl waiting for him; "[I] just haven't found her" (146). He says "I know what it's like to be alone" (148). He "still walks like a panther" (150).
Just before he joined "a wagon train," almost certainly Chris's, Coop paid a brief visit to Hell's Kitchen (the Brooklyn waterfront); he was just off a boat (on board which he had cleaned out a crewman in a crap game), with saddle, carbine, and blanket roll (126)—from where is never specified. This was probably the time of "that incident in St. Joe [involving Charlie] that I never told Chris about" (132). He says he's "known a lotta wagonmasters, but when I met [Chris] I knew I wanted to work for him" (121). Chris, when called his "boss," says "First of all his friend," (130) and Coop calls Chris "an old friend," whom he's "seen with tougher goin' than [the desert] before" (134). Once when he's delirious he cries out for Chris—"I can't stand the pain any more, you gotta take it from me!" (145) At the end of his first season with Chris, he says, "If he thinks I've done what I've done this trip for money—!" (140)
Coop may be related to the O'Rourkes of Ireland, though he probably was never really aware of it (124). It's likely that he had siblings of both genders, as he knows that "brothers sometimes act like fathers... want to protect their sisters" (126). His mother used to require clean hands and nails "or go to bed hungry," and he's "better educated than you pretend:" he understands the word "peripatetic" (124), can correctly use "retaliate" and "vendetta" (138), yet says "ain't" and "aren't," "them" and "those" interchangeably (125), and has referred to himself as a "cowboy" (142) and "this here hired hand" (140). He can pick out a melody (one-fingered) on a piano (128). And he sips wine—he doesn't gulp it (124). In 1877 he claims he can't dance ("I got two left feet") (132), but by the following season he's pretty good at it (146). He says he's "not a philosopher... not even sure I know what the word means" (150), and he's not a religious man: he says he's "never really prayed for anything in my whole life... I didn't know how" (130), which suggests he came from a fairly well-to-do Southern family—many such were deists and barely observed churchly conventions. He also says he "never learned to keep a tight rein on my temper" (131), which supports the possibility of Irish blood.
Reference Key
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