Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen (26 page)

But he was not the only creative caretaker in the wild and woolly days of the hospitality trade on the frontier. An exemplar of frontier felony, Conrad “Happy” Horlick, much like Hotchkiss, employed the abilities of another creature most ubiquitous on the frontier. His critter-in-crime was a packrat who lived in his establishment. Sensing a fellow thief, Horlick was able to parlay the rat's need for collecting shiny tokens into a profitable sideline, all the while keeping himself a safe distance from the actual act of thievery. Each night the packrat, which Horlick had nicknamed King, made the rounds of the flophouse floor, scavenging items such as rings, pocket watches, knives, coins, small pokes of gold dust, and more. Horlick periodically relieved the rat's nest of the choicest items and over years amassed quite a haul for himself.

I
f ever there was a man most deserving of the appellation “swindler,” it was Thomas L. “Pegleg” Smith. Although he wouldn't hit his swindling stride until adulthood, even from his humble beginnings Smith's life is a well-documented and storied series of classic early-West experiences. Born in Crab Orchard, Kentucky, on October 10, 1801, he longed for a life of adventure from an early age. As a teenager Smith ran away from home and hopped a flatboat on the Mississippi River. When the boat reached St. Louis, Missouri, the fabled jumping-off place for all points west, young Smith landed a job as a genuine mountain man, trapping fur in the Rockies alongside such now-famous men as Kit Carson and Jim Bridger.

Years later, while out scouting for Alexander Le Grand's expedition in New Mexico Territory, Smith gained the reason for his colorful nickname. In a skirmish with Indians, Smith was shot below the right knee, necessitating the amputation of that portion of his leg. In some stories he claims to have performed the operation himself with a knife. As he was with fellow trappers, it's unlikely—but highly entertaining.

Tall tales aside, Pegleg Smith was not above breaking laws, moral or man-made, as when in the 1840s, he found a brisk trade in kidnapping Indian children, then selling them to wealthy Mexicans as slaves. Finally, facing increasing danger from Indians who were hunting him, Pegleg joined forces with a couple of his trapping chums, Jim Beckwourth and Bill Williams, and for a decade operated what was considered the largest horse-rustling ring in the entire Southwest. One memorable run had Pegleg leading 150 Ute Indians over the Sierra Nevada, wrangling hundreds of horses they stole from Mexican ranches.

But it is his prospecting ventures in one of several regions, including the Santa Rose Mountains and the Borrego Badlands, where he claimed to have discovered a vast, rich deposit of gold-bearing quartz. . . .

On a warm spring day in the late 1840s, in a craggy wash in the Borrego Desert, Smith wandered alone with his horse and burro, farther and farther into the bleak country, yearning for a pull on his canteen but pacing himself, knowing he had at least another hour to go before he could indulge in a sip. He traveled slowly, stumping along on one good leg and one wooden leg, leading the animals and eyeballing an outcropping of quartz for sign of color.

And by gum, wasn't that just what he found himself looking at? More promising quartz he'd never seen. Struck through with the telltale dull coloring of raw gold ore, or he wasn't Pegleg Smith! And all around him, scattered like they'd been tossed by some giant baby, lay curious little black nuggets that for some reason he just couldn't ignore. He'd been stuffing them into his pockets and possibles bag, something in the back of his mind telling him they were more than they appeared to be. But what? High-grade ore, dare he hope?

Then he stopped short and dropped low—the tough old cob of an Indian fighter felt something whistle by, feather soft but too close. He knew just what it was. An arrow, and the only thing that let loose with an arrow at another man was an Indian. All this he deduced in the time it took him to pull in a sharp breath and hold it.

Instead of whipping upright to scout for the offending sender of the arrow, Smith dropped to his knees, his wooden peg leg scraping and clunking the rock he'd been inspecting for sign of gold.

And just when he'd found it, the Indian had found him. Smith clawed at his old cap-and-ball pistol, his preferred weapon of choice and damned dependable in a pinch. He low-crawled a half-dozen feet downslope, in part to check on his horse and burro. Yep, the horse stood quietly, head down, nosing for a snack and coming up empty. And the burro, that ornery beast, stood flicking an ear and looking about ready to doze off and fall over, oblivious to the fact that an Indian attack was in the offing.

Pegleg also low-crawled to keep himself from being punctured and looking like a buckskin-covered pin cushion. When he figured he'd gone far enough, he risked a glance up over the shelf of rock that had partially protected him. His new position had not been suspected, so he was able to see four men—Apache, by the looks of them—loping low and steady away from where the arrow had come. So there were at least four of them.

He leaned back and thought of his canteen longingly. He was panting hard and didn't like the feeling one bit, priding himself as he did on rarely exerting himself in such a manner. But then again, it had been a while since he'd been shot at. There was nothing for it—too many of them. He'd have to wait them out.

After a while of stewing in the heat, he realized he had one piece of luck in his favor. A short scramble down a knobby, twenty-foot declivity stood the horse and burro. If he could make it down to the beasts, he might be able to sneak on out of there and put ground between himself and the Apaches—enough so that he might live to come back to that promising outcropping another day.

This was not the first time he had been attacked by local tribesmen. But as much as it pained him to admit it, it would be the last—at least for a while. He had to get on out of there, get back to civilization, and find out if these peculiar black nuggets were really the high-grade ore he suspected they were. He'd be back, he swore it to himself as he grunted his way downward.

And as he finally made his way, none too quietly, back down the odd escarpment to his waiting beasts, Pegleg Smith kept glancing back at the rocky terrain above and beyond him. He wanted to avoid being sneaked up on by a bloodthirsty Apache. He scrambled down the last bit and hoisted himself into the saddle, awkward as ever, in part due to his wooden pin, in part due to his paunch. Then he rode away at the fastest clip he could muster, glancing back to emblazon in his mind the exact spot of what he was sure was the find of his life. The one he'd been searching for all along. And now, thanks to the dang Apaches, he had to leave it. Not fair.

As he rode he spied arms, heads, then men waving, shouting at him from the rocky ridgeline. He was still close enough to see they were drawing back on their bows. Pegleg urged the horse into an all-out gallop back toward civilization, the burro working its little legs double-time to the horse's, but keeping up, nonetheless.

Getting run off by the Apaches might not be fair, but it sure as hell was fun. And good to be alive! He'd be back . . . back with a vengeance. But just now, he couldn't wait to hit a saloon—no one was going to believe this story.

“The information I'm about to tell you is something we need to keep betwixt you and me, you understand?” The chubby prospector winked but didn't smile.

“I beg your pardon,” said the young man to whom the prospector spoke. “I never asked you for any advice.”

“Not the point, fella,” said the first. “I'm offering it. And what's more, I'm offering something you will never hear again from another of the likes of me.”

The man looked the fat man up and down. “I certainly hope not.”

“Judge me if you will, but I'm not going to let the matter drop that easy. I'm here to offer you untold wonders that wealth will bring.”

“Wealth, you say?”

That seemed to trip some switch, as if the prospector had known just how to make the man's eyebrows arch.

The brief moment of surprise popped like a soap bubble with the slamming on the bar top of an empty beer glass. “Pegleg, knock it off, huh? I warned you yesterday and the day before that.”

“Aww, Ned, you know I don't recall such things. After all, I'm a wounded man. And here I've got a business transaction in the offing!”

“No you don't, Pegleg. You have one minute to drag your sorry hide out of my bar.”

The chubby prospector glared for long moments at the barkeep, who returned the hard look, his bent nose and bunched cheek muscles adding menace, until Pegleg had to look away. His gaze lightly raked the stunned newcomer he'd been chatting up. Then the prospector slid off the barstool, planted his foot, and winced as he set his other leg down. It was then that the newcomer noticed the man he'd been talking to had a peg leg. He'd thought the bartender was just being cruel. But no, this man was truly missing a limb.

Pegleg leaned briefly on the barstool, then glanced again at the bartender, who shook his head and jerked his chin toward the door. The gimpy prospector stumped his way to the batwings, and just before he shoved through them to the hot afternoon outside, he looked back and said, “See you tomorrow, Ned.”

The bartender had resumed wiping the bar top and without looking up said, “Same time, same place, Pegleg.”

The newcomer was stunned. “What might I ask was that all about?”

The bartender smiled, finished wiping the length of the bar top, then walked slowly back, folding the rag. “Can I get you another?”

“Sure,” nodded the visitor, hoping that a second beer would help the bartender come out with the story.

“That man,” said the barkeep once he'd set the freshly filled glass down in front of him, “was Pegleg Smith, the one and only.”

“Should I know who he is?”

“Not if you aren't from this town or haven't been taken for a ride by him before.”

“How's that?” said the man, sipping the cool beer. It was a welcome sensation on such a hot day in this tiny dust-choked California town.

“You know,” said the barkeep, “you should be thanking me.” He said it with a grin, but the newcomer felt there was a ring of truth in it. “You see, he was about to put the touch on you.”

“The touch?”

“Yep. He owns a mine and he was about to sell you shares in it.”

“How is that putting the touch on me? In fact, how do you know that what he was about to offer isn't just what I came out west for? It's why I left my job as a journalist back in Boston! Why, you might have ruined my very first opportunity to get in on the ground floor of something I've been searching for.”

“Oh? Tell me, what is that?”

“It's a career in the mining industry.”

“And you figure this is the place to do that, eh, friend?”

“Yes, it surely is,” he said, sipping the beer.

“Tell me, if it's so easy to strike it rich out here, how come it is that I'm tendin' bar?”

“Well . . . but you own your own establishment, right?”

The barkeep laughed, nodded. “Yeah, it's a real daisy, this place. And tell me this, if Pegleg's mine is so valuable, why does he look like he's been rode hard and put up wet?”

“I don't follow you.”

The barkeep sighed. “I'm telling you that while Pegleg Smith might or might not have a claim somewhere, the thing ain't paying much. If it was, he'd not want to fracture it by selling it off piecemeal to every stranger and drifter who's unlucky enough to wander into this two-bit town.”

The newcomer sipped his beer. “As bad as all that, eh?”

“As far as I know . . . yep. Heck, he hasn't paid for a beer in months. I feed him one a day, if I'm feeling generous. Other than that, I'll tolerate him, but I'm tired of him peddling his tall tales of fabulous wealth in here. Seen too many innocent, dewy-eyed folks get the touch put on 'em.”