PROLOGUE
Oct. 29, 1928
Mr. J. Carlton Blander, Editor
Livermore and Beedle, Publishers
New York, New York
Livermore and Beedle, Publishers
New York, New York
Dear Carl,
Thank you so much for pointing me
toward this Fury story! I know you didn’t mean for me to get a
“wild hare” (or is that “wild hair”?) and just go charging out to
Arizona at the drop of your not-inconsequential hat, but that’s
exactly what I did. The story runs deeper than you could have
known—or the sketchy reference books say, for that matter—and I
found a number of the participants still alive and kicking, and
best of all, talking!
As you know, the story actually begins
long before the events you provided me to spin into literary
fodder. They begin in 1866, when famed wagon master Jedediah Fury
was hired by a small troupe of travelers to lead them west, from
Kansas City to California. Jedediah was accompanied on this mission
by his twenty-year-old son, Jason, and his fifteen-year-old
daughter, Jenny, they being the last of his living family after the
Civil War. Jedediah was no newcomer to leading pilgrims west. He’d
been traveling those paths since after the War of
1812.
I have not been able to ascertain the
names of all the folks who were in the train, but what records I
could scrounge up (along with the memories of those still living)
have provided me with the following partial roster: the “Reverend”
Louis Milcher, his wife (Lavinia) and seven children, ages five
through fifteen; Hamish MacDonald, widower, with two half-grown
children—a boy and a girl, Matthew and Megan, roughly the ages of
Jedediah’s children; Salmon and Cordelia Kendall, with two children
(Sammy, Jr. and Peony, called Piney); Randall and Miranda
Nordstrom, no children, (went back East or on to California—there
is some contention about this—in 1867); Ezekiel and Eliza Morton,
single daughter Electa, twenty-seven (to be the schoolmarm) and
elder daughter Europa Morton Griggs, married to Milton Griggs,
blacksmith and wheelwright (no children); Zachary and Suzannah
Morton (no children), Zachary being Ezekiel’s elder brother; a
do-it-yourself doctor, Michael Morelli, wife Olympia, and their two
young children (Constantine and Helen); Saul and Rachael Cohen and
their three young sons. There were a few other families, but they
were not listed and no one could recall their names, most likely
because they later went back East or traveled farther
west.
The train, which contained livestock in
the form of a number of saddle horses and breeding stock, a greater
deal of cattle, goats, and hogs (mostly that of Hamish MacDonald
and the Morton families) and, of all things, a piano owned by the
Milchers left for the West in the spring of 1866. It was led by
Fury, with the help of his three trusty hirelings. I could only dig
up one of the names, here: a Ward Wanamaker, who later became the
town’s deputy until his murder several years later (which follows
herein).
Most of the wagon train members
survived Indian attacks (Jedediah Fury was himself killed by
Comanche, I believe, about halfway west, several children died, and
Hamish MacDonald died when his wagon tumbled down a mountainside,
after he took a trail he was advised not to attempt), visiting wild
settlements where now stand real towns, and withstanding highly
inclement weather. About three-fifths of the way across Arizona,
they decided to stop and put down stakes.
The place they chose was fortunate,
because it was right next to the only water for forty or fifty
miles, both west and east, and it was close enough to the
southernmost tip of the Bradshaws to make the getting of timber
relatively easy. There was good grazing to be had, and the Morton
clan made good use of it. Their homestead still survives to this
day as a working ranch, as do the large homes they built for
themselves. Young Seth Todd, currently the last of the Mortons (and
Electa’s grandson) owns and runs it.
South of the town was where Hamish
MacDonald’s son, Matthew, set up his cattle operation, which had
been his late father’s dream. He also bred fine Morgan horses, the
only such breeder in the then-territory of Arizona. His sister,
Megan, ran the bank both before and after she married, she having
the head for figures that Matthew never possessed.
For the first few years, everyone else
lived inside the town walls, whose fortresslike perimeter proved
daunting to both Indians and white scofflaws, and the town itself
became a regular stopover for wagon trains heading both east and
west.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. What
concerns us here is the spring of 1871, the year that gunfighter
Ezra Welk went to meet his maker. Former marshal Jason Fury (now a
tall but spare man in his eighties, with all his own teeth and most
all of his hair, and, certainly, all of his mental capacities) was
very much surprised that I was there, asking questions about
something “so inconsequential” as the demise of Ezra
Welk.
“Inconsequential?!” I said, as
surprised by his use of the word as its use in this
context.
“You heard me, boy,” he snapped.
“Salmon Kendall was a better newsman than you, clear back fifty or
sixty years!”
I again explained that I was a writer
of books and films, not a newspaperman.
This seemed to “settle his hash”
somewhat. However, it was then that I changed my mind about the
writing of this book. I had planned to pen it pretending to be
Marshal Fury himself, using the first person narrative you had
asked for. However, in light of Marshal Fury’s attitude (and also,
there being other witnesses still living), I decided to write it in
third person.
And so, as they say, on with the
show!
Sincerely,
Bill
Bill