Tales from the Journey of the Dead: Ten Thousand Years on an American Desert

14. Two Writers of the Purple Sage

159 14. Two Writers of the Purple Sage captain jack crawford Just a few weeks after Victorio’s battle in the San Andres Mountains, thirty-three-year-old John W. Crawford, already well known by his stage name Captain Jack, rode east from Fort Craig onto the Jornada. The popular stage entertainer and scout had been hired by the U.S. Army to help search for the renegade. He rode all morning so that by midafternoon he had crossed the lava badland, the malpais, and had entered a particularly desolate part of the Jornada just under the Oscura Mountains. A little while later he saw a single horseman crossing the desert from the east. Captain Jack rode toward the horseman at a steady pace, the clipped, hollow ring of hooves on the packed sandy desert the only sound. Too long ago to change the way things now stood, each man in his own way had forsaken a sweet mother’s warnings and taken a path that eventually led him here, to a chance meeting on the desert. There had been no mistaking the lone rider. Only a strong and brave man, or a desperate man with nothing to lose, faced the parched basin alone. When Captain Jack met Billy the Kid on the Jornada del Muerto, the boy was already the most notorious outlaw in the West. Dime novels had already emblazoned his legend onto the hearts of millions who hungered for romance and adventure while trapped in the smoke-chocked cities of the East. When Captain Jack met him, Billy the Kid – alias the Kid, alias the Billy Kid, alias Billy Bonney, alias Billy Antrin, alias Henry McCarty, alias Henry Antrim – had already killed twelve men. He was just a kid, Jack saw right away, not much older than his own son – it was just that this boy was on the other side of hope. 160 Two Writers of the Purple Sage The boy slouched in his saddle and grinned. He chewed on a twig fifty miles from the nearest tree. Captain Jack too knew the Apache method of slacking a thirst, but he still had plenty of water in his canteens . The Kid took the o√ered water, then reached into a saddlebag and pulled out some jerked deer meat. The men sat on their horses, shared what they had, and talked. Billy loved fiddle music, he told Jack. The worst thing about running , he said, was that he hated to miss a single baile on the Ruidoso River. He sure did like the way them cousins, the Coe boys, fiddled. They’d saw out ‘‘Arkansas Traveler,’’ ‘‘The Irish Washerwoman,’’ or ‘‘Fisher’s Hornpipe’’ on their fiddles and stomp the wooden floor with their heavy boots in time to the music. ‘‘I’m a mighty fine dancer,’’ Billy said. ‘‘I like that tune ‘Turkey in the Straw.’ I always yell to ole Frank Coe ‘Don’t forget the gaillina.’ ’’ This was no legendary romantic but simply a young man who liked to twirl the young ladies on a sawdust-covered dance floor. This was no dastardly dime-novel outlaw waging a private war for freedom, with double-barrels blazing fire and a sleek pony to carry him like the wind, but just a kid who’d let his own reckless desires drive him so far away that he could never find his way back home. ‘‘Whiskey done it,’’ the Kid said. ‘‘That and the boys I joined up with.’’ He stuck the twig back between his buck teeth and turned in the saddle to look behind him. ‘‘Seems I been at war ever since.’’ The boy seemed about to say something else, but he drew back and said simply that no one would ever believe the real truth of matters. Captain Jack nodded and o√ered the canteen again. The Kid refused it. It was said of Billy the Kid that he was unscrupulous, that he would sacrifice the lives of a hundred men who stood between himself and freedom. You can say of Billy the Kid that he was a cunning, selfrighteous , daring, desperate, smooth-talking, cold-blooded killer. The earth tipped slowly away from the blistering sun. On the desert plain, their shadows grew longer. Purple mountains lined the far horizon. The Kid cocked his head a notch and smiled. ‘‘Obliged,’’ he said. He prodded his horse awake and moved aside, waiting. Two...