Ole Devil and the Caplocks (29 page)

xxvi
A description of Tommy
Okasi’s archery technique is given in
Young Ole Devil.

xxvii
Daisho:
a matched pair of swords, comprising of a
tachi
with a
thirty-inch-long blade and a
wakizashi,
the blade of which was
eighteen inches in length.

xxviii
Until the visits in
1853-54 of a flotilla commanded by Commodore Perry, U.S.N., there
was little contact between the Western World and Japan.

xxix
How Dustine Edward
Marsden “Dusty” Fog made use of the tutelage which he received from
Tommy Okasi is told in the author’s “Civil War” and “Floating
Outfit” stories.

xxx
Traditionally, the
daisho
was carried through the
girdle. However, as he had had to spend long periods on horseback
since arriving in the United States, Tommy Okasi had found it was
more convenient to equip the sheaths with slings which could be
attached to his waist belt.

xxxi
Reverse-Wharncliffe
point: where the cutting edge joins the back of the blade in a
convex arc. The normal Wharncliffe, also called a “beak, “point —
said to have been developed by the Earl of Wharncliffe in the
sixteenth century, although variations of it had been in use since
Roman times — is mainly used on pocketknives and has the back of
the blade making a convex arc to the cutting edge.

xxxii
After the blade had
been shaped by fusing together numerous layers of steel, it was
ready to be tempered. A claylike material, for which every master
swordsmith had his own secret recipe, was applied to the whole of
the blade apart from an inch or so at the tip and the entire
cutting edge. After heating the blade to the correct
temperature—traditionally this was commenced in the half-light of
the early morning—it was plunged into a tub of cold water. The
exposed metal cooled instantly and became very hard. Being encased
in the clay sheath, the rest of the blade lost its heat gradually
and, remaining comparatively soft, was given a greater pliancy. To
prove that the finished article was capable of carrying out the
work for which it was intended, the smith beat it against a sheet
of iron and hacked to pieces the body of a dead criminal before
handing it over to its owner. This is, of course, only a simplified
description of the process.

xxxiii
Clip point: where the
back of the blade curves to meet the main cutting edge in a concave
arc five and a quarter inches in length. It is sharpened and forms
an extension of the cutting edge.

xxxiv
Cargador:
assistant pack master and second-in-command of a
mule train.

xxxv
The double girths were
necessary because Texas cowhands scorned the use of a “dally,” a
half hitch which could be released immediately in an emergency,
when roping Instead, being determined to retain anything upon which
they dropped a loop, they fastened the rope to the saddle
horn.

xxxvi
The Croodlom & Co.
“Duck Foot” Mob Pistol and similar weapons had four barrels fixed
side by side and splayed out in the form of a fan, so that its
bullets would spread when leaving the muzzles. They were popular
with prison guards and the officers of merchant ships as a means of
quelling an unruly crowd at close quarters.

xxxvii
The tragic
consequences of Colonel James W. Fannin’s decision are told
in
Get Urrea.

xxxviii
The first
practicable friction matches were marketed in 1827 by, among
others, John Walker of Stockton-on-Tees, England, who called his
product the “100 Sulphurata Hyperoxegenta Frict” match.

xxxix
“Instantaneous Light
Box”: consisting of a bottle containing sulfuric acid which was
used to ignite wooden slivers — known as “splints”—tipped with a
potassium chlorate, sugar and gum arable compound. In the United
States of America, a box with fifty “splints” retailed for two
dollars, or four cents a light.

xl
Nut-man: operator of a “shell game,” using a
dried pea and three walnut shells or thimbles, such as is described
in
The Law of the Gun.
As the game is purely a swindle, despite requiring
considerable manipulative skill, a nut-man was not regarded very
highly in gambling circles.

xli
Clonmel Code: twenty-six “commandments” laying
down the rules to be followed when fighting a duel, particularly
with pistols, adopted by the Summer Assizes at Clonmel, Tipperary
County, Ireland, in 1770.

xlii
A more detailed account
of the “high cavalry twist” draw is given in
Slip Gun.

xliii
* The “soda” and the
“hock” were the top and bottom cards of the deck when playing at
faro, a description of which is given in
Rangeland Hercules.
So the term
“from soda to hock” meant all the way, from the beginning to the
end.

xliv
Before their activities
had made the United States of America too hot to hold them,
Madeline and her husband had been actively involved in a white
slavery ring as well as operating a high-class, but notorious,
brothel and gambling house in New York.

xlv
Although Ole Devil Hardin had known Madeline as
“de Moreau” and believed her husband’s surname to be “Galsworthy,”
they were Mr. and Mrs. Buttolph. However, to avoid confusion, the
author will continue to refer to her by her maiden name, which she
and her husband had elected to use since arriving in
Texas.

xlvi
Pepperbox: a
multi-barreled repeating firearm where all the barrels rotate
around an axis instead of, as on a revolver, only the cylinder
holding the firing charges.

xlvii
Some details of “Ram”
Turtle’s later career are given in
Set
Texas Back On Her Feet.

xlviii
Although the Patent
Arms Manufacturing Company was being established by Samuel Colt,
with Elias B.D. Ogden (later Judge) as President, and Colt’s
cousin, Dudley Selden, as Secretary and General Manager, at
Paterson, Passaic County, New Jersey, early in 1836 and would
receive its charter on March 5th — and have it amended twice in
1839 — it would be another year before the first of the “Paterson”
revolving cylinder rifles and pistols — the name of the latter
becoming shortened to “revolver” — were available to the
public.

xlix
Invented in 1813 by
Elisha H. Collier at Boston, Massachusetts. An early and
comparatively successful attempt to create a firearm, utilizing a
single barrel and a hand-operated cylinder rotating with the firing
charges, which could fire several shots in succession. Lack of
patronage and production facilities in the United States of America
caused him to cross the Atlantic and manufacture his arms in
England. In spite of Ole Devil’s misgivings, a number of the
weapons were purchased for use by the British Army in the Colonies.
Although there is no evidence of the fact, it has been suggested by
some authorities that — having seen examples while serving as a
seaman on a ship which put in at Calcutta, India, then a part of
the British Empire — Samuel Colt, q.v., used the Collier Repeating
Pistol as the basis for the mechanism of his first “revolving
cylinder” firearms.

l
Pastern: part of the horse’s leg immediately
above the hoof.

li
Travois: a primitive form of sledge, although not
restricted to use on snow, constructed of two poles for shafts with
a frame upon which the load is carried and drawn by a single
animal.

lii
Aparejos:
a type of
packsaddle designed for heavy or awkwardly shaped loads.

liii
House-Indians: unlike
the nomadic tribes, the Hopi, Zuni and kindred nations tended to
make and live in permanent homes instead of transportable lodges or
tipis.

liv
Warrant and non-commissioned officers of the
King’s African Rifles also frequently had this trait. One with whom
I worked for several months during the Mau Mau Uprising had been to
England and taken the Drill Instructor’s Course at the Brigade of
Guards’ Depot, Pirbright, Surrey, shortly after World War II. He
could read and understand verbal instructions which were in
English, but would only speak Swahili, the lingua franca of most
race in Kenya, unless he knew the person he was addressing very
well.

lv
Pronounced “Hey-Soos.”

lvi
As with the majority of Indian tribes, the Hopis
considered that the older and more experienced warriors had already
had many opportunities to earn acclaim and loot. So they could
allow those who were less fortunate to have the first opportunities
by leading the attack.

lvii
Another example of just
how serious the flintlocks’ fault could be is given in
Ole Devil at San Jacinto.

lviii
Just how great an
effect the firepower of the Browning Slide Repeating Rifles had
under suitable conditions is told in
Get
Urrea.

lix
Madeline de Moreau had not deliberately misled
Colonel Alarcon about the Texians’ armament. The information which
she and her husband had received was merely that a shipment of new
rifles was to arrive and the nature of their mechanisms had not
been mentioned.

lx
The throwing stick of the Hopi and related tribes
of North American Indians is a similar device to the war and
hunting boomerang of the Australian aborigines, but is neither
designed nor expected to return to the thrower if it misses its
target. This does not make it any less effective as a weapon.
American author, Daniel Mannix — who, in Chapter 7, “The Boomerang
— The Stick That Kills” of his book
A
Sporting Chance
covers the subject
thoroughly — has thrown one a distance of five hundred and forty
feet and it still retained sufficient force at the end to crack an
inch-thick limb of a tree.

lxi
Grulla: a bluish-gray horse much the same color
as a sandhill crane.

lxii
The fastest recorded
rate of fire for a manually operated double action mechanism
occurred on January 23, 1834, at the Company “K” 163rd Infantry’s
Armory, Lewiston, Montana. Using a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson
Model 1899 revolver, No. 640792, Ed McGivern fired five shots into
a playing card at eighteen feet in two-fifths of a second; not, of
course, starting with it holstered.