I, Jack Swilling: Founder of Phoenix, Arizona

PART I

THE EVOLUTION OF AN EXILE

THE BEGINNING

Looking Back at Life from a

Window in Death

ONCE I WAS AS AT home in the open as an antelope. Now I’m ending like a wounded groundhog, dying in a hole I haven’t the strength to leave. The doctor says that if I can manage to relax and rest, I’ll live until bail is raised for me. He didn’t learn in the medical schools of Philadelphia and Vienna what some thirty years on the border has taught me about the difference between a man who still sun-draws life and a man who has lost that power. I can smell degrees of vitality as well as he can read a thermometer; and the stink of death follows me from wall to wall of my niche in Yuma’s rock penitentiary.

Yesterday I was delirious, and the day before that, or several before that. Tonight, though, I seem to be aware of everything I’ve ever known, laudanum being the tricky thing it is. It’s dark, double dark because of the mist that August steams from the Colorado. Yet I can see almost every place I’ve ever been. And I can remember what was going on everywhere, as well as who was doing what.

All the men I liked are having drinks with me, or yarning around campfires scattered from the Appalachians to the Pacific Coast. All the enemies I’ve fought are visible beyond the muzzles of guns or the points of knives. All the horses I’ve ridden or shot to keep the Apaches from butchering them alive are galloping under me or kicking feebly on the ground. All the women I’ve wigwamed with, including the two who demanded the law’s blessing, are either smiling or showing they wished they’d never met me.

Not that I meant harm to any of them. But I could never be a proper mate for women who weren’t themselves on the wing. I had some of the qualities they sought, being always able to put a strong body and a fair education to the uses of making a good living when I wanted to. Yet these pillars of stability were overmatched by leanings which always ended by pulling the house down.

It was grand old Jake Snively who pinned a label on me, after first identifying himself as the same cross between Saint Bernard and wolf. A borderer, he called me, and that’s exactly right. I could never really belong to civilization, for once I had helped to create it, I yearned for a place on which it hadn’t laid an ordering hand. Contrariwise, I didn’t completely belong to the wilderness, as did Uncle Joe Walker, who itched whenever he slept behind walls.

But old Jake, Joe Walker, and all the rest who came along after my dough had already been baked will have to wait their turn. They’re the easy ones to place. But while the laudanum makes memories sprout like desert grass after rain, I’m going to tally the ones so far back in recollection that they don’t answer roll call very often.

The telescope doesn’t reach the house near Beaufort, South Carolina, where Mr. and Mrs. George Swilling produced a son named John William on June 29, 1830. I remember Macon, Georgia, though, and the plantation on the Ocmulgee where Matilda, Barry and I led the lives of children in happy circumstances. If I was sometimes dissatisfied, that was blood speaking in a voice heard earlier by my father’s brother, Dr. Barry Swilling. When I was ten he stopped by for a visit while on his way from South Carolina to the westward-pushing Missouri frontier. I can see him as he rides away, tall, big-boned, and fair-skinned — like about all the Swillings except a few I begot with the help of squaws and Mexicans — and I remember the instinctive fondness for him that was to have both fine and desperate fruit.

My admiration for the adventurousness of Uncle Doc was a poignant experience but not a shaping one. It didn’t prompt me to run away from a home marred by nothing of which I could fairly complain.

During the three decades before the War between the States, Georgia was the most prosperous in the Union, and we lived in a part of it where money literally popped out of the ground. Very comfortable livings were to be made by anyone able to exploit and manage large farms, and George Swilling had the energy and the knack for doing things well that he passed on to me. As he also had stabilities that he failed to hand down, his efforts produced a regular flow of wealth.

I can see him surveying his peach orchards, cotton fields, and stands of corn: a man I loved without feeling as sib to him as I had to my jolly uncle. Had I stayed to grow up near him, I think my father and I would have developed the easy footing we both wanted. As a boy, however, I couldn’t reach behind his dignity and find the warmth that made him popular with his contemporaries.

I can see Lilian Swilling, my mother, not pretty but with a vivacious charm that was supposedly a legacy from Huguenot ancestors. I can see Matilda, showing promise of Father’s good looks and Mother’s winning manner when last seen at twelve. I can see Barry, halfway between us; a somewhat sober youngster and not seeming at all a likely victim in a murder I would feel called on to requite.

Inside and out I can see the white house overlooking the Ocmulgee in which we all lived and which I, as the elder son, expected to inherit. The customs of the region called for lavishness on the part of those who could afford it. Successful farmers — or, to use their own term, planters — erected mansions liberally staffed with slaves, maintained expensive coaches and riding horses, imported wine, clothes, and books from France and England, and sent their sons to academies that prepared them for college. George Swilling did all those things.

The ability to ride well was one of the two useful arts that I brought from this comfortable mode of living into buckskin country. A boy was expected to learn to shoot, and in Bibbs County he was offered a wide range of targets, most of them smaller than men but all of them fast-moving eye-sharpeners.

I can look along my sights at the first deer I killed; but I wasn’t the only boy with a passion for it in a region where hunting was sport’s ace of spades. Perhaps the difference was that I liked the outdoors for itself alone, where others might have been in the woods purely because game was there rather than behind walls. Yet there were no pointed indications that I was so separate from my fellows that I was bound to leave them to their way of life and find my own in rough country.

Watching the parade of events now, I can see the origin of the steps that took me from the white mansion to a cage in Yuma rock in four moves which would appear to have no connection but did; for all of them commenced wrapping a coil of circumstances around me in my fifteenth year. The first of these was the involuntary one of shooting up so fast that I was already six foot one, lacking but two inches of my present height.

One consequence of this seemingly innocent fact was that my eyes peered at the world from a level higher than the lookouts of most grown men. Taking note of that fact, I had more assurance than my experience entitled me to; a confidence which was the prompter of the three active moves. These combined to give me a reason to leave Georgia and the wherewithal to make departure easy. But I’m taking things in order, and the beginning of this particular thread of destiny was the Presbyterian Church, where the Swillings were in attendance four or five Sundays to the month.

STEP 1 TOD MILLINGTON

POSSIBLY I’D BE in Bibbs County yet if the dull minister I’d listened to for years in harmless apathy had not been replaced by the Reverend Joseph Brewster. There he is, looking remarkably like a fox terrier and bouncing up to the pulpit with something of a terrier’s ability to create his own excitement.

It was less clear that the Reverend Brewster favored virtue than that he hated sin, to the limits of his understanding of it. Many eagle-plume sins that I have since encountered the minister had never heard of. But the ones he knew about he came down on like a flash flood sloshing off the Mogollon Rim. Having a flair for oratory, he made me listen, where I had formerly pickled myself in dazed endurance while a sermon was in progress. And his most thrilling effort was the tirade he launched against grog shops.

I have often wondered where the minister found the saloon with which he fascinated me then. In intervening years I’ve been in border cantinas where a slain patron was casually tossed into the same alley in which the cuspidors were emptied; and in San Francisco there were mantraps gaudy enough to have made a suitable hangout for Nero. Yet nowhere did I ever afterward find the combination of sink, deadfall, and sinful circus that was behind the doors opened and held wide for me by the Reverend Joseph Brewster.

The insidious part of it was that he offered it as the type portrait of all taverns. Not for a moment questioning the authority of the cloth, I had to accept the fact that the astounding things he jammed into my consciousness must be going on in Macon’s drinking spots, too. At fifteen I was served a glass of port on state occasions, but I had never thought about saloons, one way or the other. Now they became a restlessness in my mind that ended by leading me to Macon’s small but busy water front. There were other taverns in town, but in those along the river I felt less likely to encounter a friend of the family who might be disposed to turn informer.

Had I not been as large as I was, I probably wouldn’t have had the nerve to indulge my curiosity, and I certainly wouldn’t have been served. The last thing a saloonkeeper in a settled community wants is a tadpole customer, so well dressed as to indicate that his parents might have the influence to make trouble for him. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t served at the first place I approached, for I hadn’t worked up the cardboard to enter. Upon reaching a nearby one, though, I saw an unfiendish-looking old man about to go in, and I let him break trail into anticlimax.

There were no ruins of what once were men, expiring on the floor and begging forgiveness of the wife and small children wailing beside them. Nobody climbed on a table to hurl the curses at Heaven for which it would later square accounts in a manner gruesomely described by the Reverend Brewster. No ragged bundle of depravity was going about on all fours, bent on licking up the drops of liquor spilled by those who hadn’t yet reached his state. No toss-potted maniac took the life of a fellow image of God and then doubled up with laughter.

What let me down even further was the absence of the shiny side of evil that I had been promised. Portraits of sumptuous women, smiling where they would have been better advised to show grief at their nakedness, did not poison my hopeful eyes. No diamond-studded gambler slapped me on the back and offered to buy me a drink. No girls, as alluring as Venus and nearly as short of clothing, tried to make me forget the teachings of wise and loving counselors.

I can see the quiet, wainscoted premises, not recently painted, and the scattering of variously dressed inmates, none of them women. It was so disappointing that I would have backed out except for a boy’s certainty that everybody was watching, ready to laugh at any show of nervousness. As it was, I pranced up to the bar and called for a glass of wine.

To the business of looking manfully accustomed to my surroundings I devoted so much gravity that I must have seemed like the proverbial strong man in agony. In any case it wasn’t long before another solitary patron undertook to move his glass toward mine.

If she’s fouling the channel, he offered, I’d kick her out of bed and take on something I could handle without running aground.

I looked at my accoster uncertainly. What I saw then I see now, a well-set-up, blond man of about twenty, on his rugged features an expression that told me he was willing either to be friends or snap back at me if I didn’t take kindly to his impertinence.

I had scrambled feelings myself. On the one hand I was pleased at the implication that I was old enough to be keeping a mistress. Yet working against this consideration was the suspicion that my dignity would suffer if I smiled.

You’d better let me decide what to do about my women, I had the effrontery to declare.

At that his eyes glinted like those of a pack mule who’s hoping you’ll be fool enough to step where he can kick you. Listen, Mr. Man, he purred, if I’m good enough to cut you a chew from my plug of advice, I expect you to put it in your mouth and start working on it.

It was then that I found out something about myself that I hadn’t known before. The desire to meet his challenge not only erupted in me like uncorked champagne but provided the instinct for effective action. Lurching closer to him instead of standing clear to swing, I hooked one of his legs with mine and threw my weight behind the forearm with which I snagged his chin.

I know now that if he’d been able to get up, he would have dissected me, for although considerably shorter, he was coordinated, while my strength was still loosely strung over too much frame for it. He didn’t get up, because his head struck a spittoon. I can see him lying there, with the small puddle of blood, which looked like a lake to me, spreading from behind his right ear. And I can see the cigar-chewing barkeep casually examining him and answering my frightened look with one of not unfriendly contempt.

Go outside, if you want any more of him when he comes to, he suggested, but I’ll warn you that gents not so lucky as you generally find once of Tod Millington enough.

STEP 2 MARTHA MARIE

THAT INCIDENT was long without a sequel, but two months later, or in March of 1846, I made an investigation that can’t be blamed on the Reverend Brewster. Like most boys of my age I had talked a great deal about sex, comfortable in the feeling that I wouldn’t be expected to put my shadowy knowledge to practical use. But as spring sent the sap surging through me in my fifteenth year, we were visited by a business connection of my father’s, together with his wife.

Subject to recurrent malaria, Robert Powers had an attack which at once prolonged their stay and left Martha Marie Powers without an escort. Moved up from the junior ranks, I was drafted on occasions ranging from playing whist to going riding with her.

Here again I think my size was mistaken for more years than I had tallied, making me, in the eyes of a sexually restless woman, acceptable as a stand-in for her ailing stallion. However that may have been, she flirted with me, because she couldn’t help flirting with anything male, and ended by casting her eye on flirtation’s ultimate goal.

My attitude toward her was in the meantime going through several stages. Actually, she wasn’t yet thirty, but my initial reaction had been that she was attractive for one well along in years. Yet when she treated me as though she found me a stimulating adult, I aged in my own estimation, while at the same time finding her younger than I had thought. Finally it occurred to me that she might well expect me to kiss her. This was the sum of my goal when I suggested a tour of the garden upon returning from school one afternoon.

We took that walk, and I’m taking it again. I can see her pert, brunette features sparkling up at me and looking delightfully amused at everything I said. I can feel the pleasant warmth of her fingers as they punctuated the remarks of either one of us by tightening on my arm; and I can feel the even warmer moments when mirth so overcame her that she leaned her head against my biceps.

All in all, the time seemed a favorable one for my dashing experiment. It worked out as planned, too, but after I had kissed her a few times, our stroll was interrupted. Of a sudden she buckled, startling me by the extra weight imposed on my forearm. Next she looked at me with a mixture of pain and annoyance.

It’s that no-account left ankle of mine, Jack, honey. It’s been that way ever since I was knee high to a gallinipper. Isn’t that silly?

She managed a laugh, but I was concerned. I had never as much as glimpsed a woman’s leg. It was a feminine member kept out of ken by fashion and by the pen name of a limb; and injury to one belonging to so fragile seeming a person struck me as disastrous.

Don’t aggravate it by putting any more weight on it than you can dodge, ma’am. I’ll help you to the house and then gallop for a doctor.

You’re a sugar lump to be willing to do that, but it won’t be necessary. She shook her head emphatically. I know from experience that it’ll be all right pretty soon; the only thing is that I shouldn’t walk on it at all for a while.

Of course; I wasn’t thinking. I hesitated, because I didn’t know how she’d take the only alternative that occurred to me. I’ll carry you to the house.

No, that’s too far for even somebody as big and powerful as you, darling. While I glowed and waited, she peered about, finger to lips and leaning heavily against me. Finally she pointed toward a stream that coursed through the grounds and which we had chanced to be nearing when lightning struck. The other day I noticed a little old patch of grass on the other side of those redbud bushes that would make a nice place to rest, if you’re sure it wouldn’t be too much trouble.

Raising her slight form was no problem, though I did find some difficulty in moving forward after she’d snuggled against me. Where do you want to sit? I asked, when we had arrived where lush greenery, polka-dotted with flowers, bordered the creek.

I can feel her breath against my cheek as she answered, perhaps no warmer than any other breath, but making my blood simmer. Like I told you, this has happened to me plenty of times before, Jack, lamb, and I’ve found the best thing to do is to stretch out till my ankle gets over its sulks. So if —

Intent on lowering her to earth with the utmost gentleness, I let her unfinished sentence dangle. If what? I then asked.

Propped on one elbow, she picked a flower with her free hand and seemed to be at once studying it and looking shyly at me. I know this is a lot to ask, when you’ve already done so much for me, but would you lie down, too, so I can lean my head against you and rest my arm? I can’t run like Miss Muffet now; and I don’t think I’d wait a single second to die, if I saw a spider crawling through the grass toward my face.

You can rest your arm till ripe cotton’s black, I swore.

I thought then that nothing could be as exhilarating as coming between her and the terrors of the ground. Not half an hour later, though, I learned that it was more delightful for her to perform that service for me.

Unlike my encounter with Tod Millington, this discovery had a prompt sequel. Prior to the arrival of Martha Marie I had been bashful with girls at such rare times as I was alone with one at all. The result of assisting an invalid didn’t turn me into a ranging rooster overnight; but after the departure of Mrs. Powers some days later, I was ready for occasions, and the first one was Laura Whitcomb.

I can see her now, her empty face so literally doll-like that it’s hard to understand why she spoke to my lechery; and before I’d learned about shielding nervous womanhood from spiders, she hadn’t. As she was the daughter of the plantation overseer, I had often passed her house without taking notice of more than the fact that she returned my wave with an eager smile. She was about a year younger than I but my knowledge of her had broken off there.

After the recovery of Mr. Powers shut off my connections with his wife, however, I saw in Laura’s chubby figure grounds for further acquaintance, and in her frank amity the possibility of bringing it about. As she turned out to be an anxious scholar, I was able to pass on to her the learning that Martha Marie had imparted to myself.

But Laura Whitcomb’s importance to my life was not manifested then, or even nine months later. Having learned what she wanted to know, she lost interest in me, lacking anything in the way of a genuine drive, emotional or bodily. Having the latter, at least, I was disposed to haunt the vicinity of her house, like a dog doing sentry-go in front of a bitch-housing barn’s door, but only briefly. In May of 1846 my thwarted physical passion was replaced by a spiritual one.

STEP 3 FANNIN’S AVENGERS

I STILL REMEMBER the sense of glorious dedication with which the news of the war with Mexico filled me. At that time I had never seen a Mexican, but I hated them, thoroughly and happily.

During the Texas Revolution a detachment led by a Georgian with the surname of Fannin had been massacred while prisoners of a Mexican force. Adding these elements, some genius produced the idea that Georgia should recruit a regiment of volunteers with the resounding title of Fannin’s Avengers, for service against Mexico.

I have pushed through desert California all day with a dry canteen, but I never craved water as much as I thirsted to belong to that wondrously named military unit. Breaking the news to my parents that they had a warrior for a son didn’t turn out to be the glad occasion I had visualized. To myself, though, I stubbornly insisted that I was going off to the front.

Because others had credited me with extra years, I confidently applied to the recruiting officer who finally showed up in Macon. Lieutenant Huskinson, as I later discovered, was a lawyer in private life and in the habit of looking at people more carefully than most. Clad in the gaudy dress-parade uniform chosen by the founders of Fannin’s Avengers, he seemed godlike to me. Peering at him now, I see him as a young man with an unusually high forehead riding above prominent eyes. They were sharp ones, and a corner of his mouth twitched as he ran them over me.

How old are you, boy?

I had intended to claim twenty years, but his manner made me shave the lie down. Eighteen, sir.

Eighteen, Balaam’s ass, and mine, too. Thirteen’s more like it.

Like hell! I mean I’m lots older than that, sir. Hit below the belt, I was glad to settle for reality. I’m fifteen, but I’ll be sixteen next month; and I can shoot and ride and — As every youth of my acquaintance could also boast those accomplishments, I broke off in an effort to think of something less commonplace. Pouncing on the lucky shove that had quelled Tod Millington, I stretched it into a generality. I’ve whipped fellows a good few years older than I am.

We’re looking for men of Mars, he agreed. Then his lips twitched again, and he frowned. My God, youngster! You’ve set me a problem. I can’t tell you to go home and grow up, as I’ve done to other warlike spirits in diapers, because you top me by five inches. Nevertheless, we can’t take anything that’s as near being still in the egg as you; and that’s the door slammed, with you outside.

Awed though I was by his magnificence, I so hankered to wear the uniform and the name of an Avenger that I dared to talk back. You have no right to turn down a man that’s able to fight for his country, sir. Then I followed through with an adage usually voiced with reference to women: Isn’t it true that when they’re big enough, they’re old enough?

I’ve said that, he admitted. He considered me broodingly before his face lighted. "You’re sure big enough, so we’ll enter a nolo contendere on the old-enough count. However, the regiment