Back to the Future in Bleeding Kansas
an excerpt

Chapter 2: The Legend of Katherine Bloodsaw, the Half-Breed Yakima

If you were to ask any miner, logger, trapper, frontiersman or frontierswoman about the Legend of Katherine Bloodsaw, the Half-Breed Yakima, they would recite for you the legend with no hesitation. The plot points are known to all people living West of the Great Divide, though the details may vary from homestead to homestead, mine to mine, campsite to campsite.

This is how folk legend works:

Three drunk prospectors sit around a fire at the campsite on the claim they have been prospecting for the rich fool who bought the claim and hired them to pan. They make good prospectors because they are not curious men, and they are not brave men, but they have the virtue of being able to put up with tremendous physical discomfort for hours on end as they stoop by the creek with their pans.

They are bored tonight, as every night, when one of them, Joe, asks if they heard anything lately about things outside the camp. At first, the other two, Shelby and Dobbin, think that Joe is insane, for what more would they know about the outside world in the past three days than they? None of them had left the others' sites accept when nature called them to do so, and those few moments of solitude were not ones in which any of them gained any great wisdom of the Wide World at large.

But Joe continues to look at them, imploring them to play along, and they finally get the game. Shelby says;

"Naw, Joe, s'why don't you illucidate us on matters foreign to this here creek?"

"Well," says Joe, "Perhaps I shall.

"In my trips to answer Nature's pressing calls," Joe continues, "I heard many strange things on the wind."

"And smelt many more, I'm sure," offers Shelby.

"Be that as it may, the words of the wind are far stranger in their uncanny knowledge of what has been in the world than my own winds are strange with the beans we have uncanned." Joe pauses here until the other boys are done parsing his syntax and let out satisfied guffaws.

"Take for an instance," Joe begins, "the things I have heard about the opening of a passage through the waistline of Central America! It'll happen sooner than any of us will expect!"

"Awww! That's just some old toss!" says Shelby. He's not implying Joe has been up to extracurricular activies during his Nature breaks. He just recognizing the fact that this is an old story used to scare frontiersman These old mountainmen like to think of themselves as being unreachable, and the prospect (pardon the pun) of shortening the sea voyage from New York Harbor to San Francisco Bay by half is to them what the prospect of having monsters in the closet is to five-year-old children.

"Don't believe me?" asks Joe, feigning incredulous. But he is just getting started. "Maybe you'll believe the news I have heard of the Northern Gold Fields!"

"What news?" asks Shelby. "We all know there's gold in the Klondikes, but it's nearly impossible to git to! Ain't that right, Dobbin?"

"S'right," says Dobbin.

"Fine fine fine," says Joe. He is frustrated with the lack of imaination his compatriots seem to have at the moment. Couldn't they simply imagine that all the things Joe had to tell them were new to their ears? That would be the friendly thing to do, after all. But Joe knew that the other two, who were younger, viewed Joe as nothing more than an old coot who had heard to many stories, but only remembered how to tell three. Why, back in Joe's hey-day, it weren't nothing to keep a campfire full of men (two or three dozen men, for in Joe's day, fires were big, as he remembers)--to keep such a butt-to-butt packed gang of men captivated with nothing but a few stories of Pecos Bill or Katherine Bloodsaw. Sadly, so thought Joe, those days were over.

"Say, Joe, why don't you tell us about that Katherine Bloodsaw?" asked Shelby.

"Gosh, that old story?" said Joe, coy.

"Well, why not? Haven't you heard a few new twists during your trips out to the hole by the aspen tree?" (Aspen trees have delicately soft leaves.)

"Well," said Joe, "maybe I have. That is, if you fellers don't mind me gabbing away about her again?"

"Shoot, naw!" said Shelby.

Dobbin, whose lack of verbiage the others found in turns comforting and unsettling, merely nodded.

"Well then, the ayes have it!" Joe repositioned himself against his log and pushed his rucksack up under his armpit.

"You know," continued Joe, "I saw Kate Bloodsaw, the Half-breed Yakima with mine own eyes once." The Fellers nodded. They had heard this before, and it was all they needed to hear to believe every word that came from Joe's mouth. Joe, in fact, had never in his life been within 50 miles of Kate Bloodsaw, but his cousin Edgar had sworn to seeing her one time in Truckee, and that was all Joe had to know to to believe every word that came out of Edgar's mouth. And there was no way the Fellers would listen to him he said he heard it from his cousin, for they didn't know his cousein the way he did, and could not attest to his character. So he had to relate his cousin's observations as his own. Now, naturally, Edgar had never laid an eye on Kate Bloodsaw, but his pelt supplier had, and that was all he needed to know. And in this eye-witness-by-proxy way did the Legend of Kate Bloodsaw, Half-Yakima spread throughout the lands.

"The thing I remember most about Kate Bloodsaw," said Joe, "was the cold look in her eye. Here eyeballs were like grey orbs of slate carved as bullets for an Injun to sling at a hawk and take it down. Those eyes could kill a hawk, and they nearly dropped me dead when she turned to look at me!"

"She looked at you, Joe?!" Shelby asked, elated. This was a detail Joe had somehow left out of his last account.

"Well sure she did, idiot! I was younger back then, and just about every lady I knew had their eye out for to catch a sight of Joe!"

"Settle down, Joe. I weren't questioning your comelyness. Just go on and tell us more about Good Katey Bloodsaw."

"Alright, then. Well, we had known she was coming through to the loggin' camp that night, because all the crows around that place were flying due south, and the crows NEVER all flew in the same direction before. But they say that Kate knew the secrets of herding crows, and that was how she'd announce her presence. That's why a watchful eye will always have an eye out for the activities of crows."

Shelby nodded solemnly. Dobbin grinned.

"So when she came into the came, everyone was aware of who she was and what she was about. But non one was prepared for her sheere presence.

"To host Kate Bloodsaw in a frontier outpost is to host a queen in a European Court, only with more chance that someone's head will be rolling by the end of the night.

"We did our best to host the Queen for the Frontier. We knew the proper orders, but they were tough orders to fill. At any given logging camp, she required that the unbroken barks of three old redwoods be laid out as a carpet upon which to walk, and that her mules, Thunderclap and Marcus, be stabled with virgin fillies. Then there were the pancakes: a thousand-hundred to be served to her and the camped simultaneously and fresh, and so that the steam of each cake would rise from the tables and create a dreamlike cloud, as those in a Finnish bath. Though it taxed our jacks, and cooks, and fillies, we were able to accomodate these requests.

"But the final test was the one over which we had the least control, and the most to lose. The heart of our camp was the mill, and the cockle of that heart was the Saw. You may recall the business Kate Bloodsaw had with the saw. . ."

"I do well recall that business, Joe!" piped up Shelby, enthralled by the tale and eager to add to it. "She roams the frontier searching for the saw that killed her Pappy, Chief Whats-his-face!"

"Elder Jules LeRoche," corrected Dobbin.

"'Sright!" added Shelby.

"You boys know this part then? That Elder Jules LeRosche, Half-Yakima-Half-Frenchman was the cunningest leader ever to lead the Indian peoples of Oregon, and that his wife, Running-Doe Abernathy, Half-Yakima-Half-Campbell" (here, Shelby spit on the ground reflexively) "was the most beautiful Indian woman since Sacajewea. Together, the two of them fought both England and France in the name of the Yakima, the Hugeunauts, and the Scots.

"Until one day, Jules ran afoul of a small camp of loggers. None know why--some say he owed them money, some say they owed him wood. Either way, they tussled, and Jules got split down the middle like a cord of oak. Running-Doe her gun at them and told them to stop, but it was too late. Her husband was dead.

"She revealed to them that she was with child, and the loggers became so remorseful that they promised to do anything she wanted to atone. Still holdin' that rifle at their heads, she asked them to kill each other, and that's what they did, right there, with their bare hands. That gun's name is now Squawshorn, and anyone holding Squawshorn may not be refused!

"Running-Doe gave birth to a lovely quarter-French, quarter-Yakima, quarter-Scots, quarter-Yakima baby girl, and that baby girl was--"

"Good Katherine Bloodsaw, Half-breed Yakima!" said Shelby. Joe was a little peeved that Shelby took such a liberty by betraying the pact between storyteller and storytellee that states that those listening to stories must remain silent, especially when the storyteller is getting down to the big reveal.

"Yeeeeeeeah. That's right. Good for you, Shelby. I can't get anything past you, can I?" asked Joe. Shelby proudly shook his head.

"Well, little Katherine, named for her grandma Abernathy, grew up loving both her parents, though she never met her father. Running-Doe passed on, and left Squawshorn to Kate. And to this day Kate roams the lands looking for the last guilty party in the story of her father's death."

"The Saw!" said Shelby.

"Will you shut up???" inquired Joe. Shelby did. Joe continued, but he seemed a little hurt by Shelby's antics and didn't really want to finish the story properly:

"Yeah, so, the saw she's lookin' for's got guilty blood on it, so she calls herself 'Bloodsaw', 'stead of LaRoche. She travels from lumber camp to lumber camp and expects to be lavishly received, she bein' the Queen of the Frontier and having a Magical Gun and all. She inspects the blade of each mill to see if it's the one what killed her pappy. But the one at our camp wasn't so she left, and that was that."

The three prospectors listened to an owl catch a small animal, and then listened some more to the night to see if anything else might happen. Nothing did.
"But you forgot one part of the story, Joe!" said Shelby.

"I ain't gettin' into that part. It's bad mojo to speak of that part," said Joe.

"Scared of a Story, Joe?" asked Dobbin, who was alert and clearly wanted to hear more.

Joe shrugged. "Well, Dobbin, I s'pose it's childish of me to be scared of a story, but seeing as you're such an expert on storytelling (you mute mutt) why don't you tell us about the love of Katherine's life: The Asshole Robert Gale?"

Here, Dobbin turned out his empty palms, fingers down, and shrugged his shoulders. He wasn't up for telling stories, or perhaps he just didn't know the story well enough to tell it good.

"Oh, I'll tell it!" Shelby volunteered. He stumbled up to a standing position and stepped toward the fire so the other two could see him clearly.

"The Asshole Rober Gale," began Shelby, "was the lowliest Asshole the frontier had ever known! He was documented and certified by those that document and certify such things as being just that much of an Asshole. He had, I once heard, recorded against him 20 dozen pelt-stealing offenses, and so offended the French trappers, that he was banned altogether from any woods known to contain beaver by the French government. He is a known gold thief, pickpocket, footpad, poacher, grifter, filcher, burglar, stealer of small animals, horse thief, pony pincher, cattle rustler, scoundrel, shin-kicker, ankle-biter, hob-nobber, Jut, party-pooper, scumbag, toss pot, gladgrind, liar, and cheat.

"Also: he smells bad.

"Despite all this--and perhaps because of all this, since sometimes the best women love the worst men--Good Katherine Bloodsaw, Queen of the Frontier, fell madly in love with him.

"Now, aside from all of his felonious activities, which can be prosecuted by the laws of most governments what have interestes west of the 100th meridian, The Asshole Robert Gale was also one to play games with a woman's heart.

"As we all know, finding a woman's heart in the frontier is a much scarcer prospect than laying claim to her nethers. The quality of woman that finds her way onto logging camps, mines, and trading outposts is not the way they are bread in Baltimore." (Shelby was from Baltimore and here thought of his dear old mum.) "Most of the women out this way must be bought, and men who partake of their services often end up with damaged goods." (Here, all three shifted uncomfortably.)

"So, to encounter a woman as pure as Good Katherine, whose whole life was spent in the pursuit of Justice, and who stayed chaste from pursuits to which her heart did not call her, was rarer than tapping into a. . . um. . . magical lode of liquid imagination."

"What are you keeping in that tobacco poke of yours, Shelby?" asked Joe.

"Tobacco." said Shelby, an continued, "So of course, all men of pure and honest hearts loved Good Katherine like a Catholic loves the Pope; and all men of nefarious disposition were drawn to her like a snake to the warm and fluttering pulse of a field mouse."

"Quite the analogy, Mr. Shelby," said Dobbin the mute, clearly moved. Shelby blushed a little in the firelight and kicked at the dirt. For a good long moment he forgot what he was doing, so bashful was he to receive the compliment.

But eventually, he composed himself:

"Yeah, so, anyway: The Asshole Robert Gale, as we have well-established, was the sneakiest-snake in the garden--that is, the Frontier, but I'm saying 'garden' to emphasize a Biblical connection, as a way of demonstrating the epic scope of all this." One compliment had turned Shelby into a professor. Dobbin kept quiet so as not to encourage further apologetics.

Crickets chirped. Shelby coughed. Perhaps he was not an academic.

"Well, The Bastard Robert Gale ingratiated himself to Katherine Bloodsaw, and made himself appear respectable in her eyes. But to him she was merely a conquest, as Troy was a conquest to the Kings of Greece."

"That's a horrible analogy!" Joe spat. "The Trojan war was not a war for conquest, it was a war for Love."

"In any event, Joe, we can all agree that what The Bastard Robert Gale was after was not Good Katherine's heart. It may not even have been her bed, or the subtler pleasures cruel men take in mystifying women in love. What he was after was Squawshorn, the Rifle of Satisfaction."

"That's right!" said Joe, for her perportred to know much about Squawshorn. "For whosoever hold Squawshorn must be obeyed! One need not fire a single round with that magnificent rifle! You point it at a man and tell him to drop his own gun, and he will. You can point it at a bird and tell it to drop from the sky. You can point it at a beaver and tell it to drop its pelt, or ask the Earth itself to give up its gold!

"And I know the story of how The Asshole Robert Gale managed to lay his hands on that mighty gun in the first place," continued Joe, glad to be back in the saddle again. "I hear that Good Katherine Bloodsaw, Half-Blood Yakima, asked The Asshole to marry her (for that was the custom of her people) and they did in the manner of the Yakima: the Sun served as Parson, and the crows as Ushers (they serve as both Ushers and Undertakers in the rituals of the Yakima). And that night when she brought him to her bower to consumate the nuptuals (for some customs are the same the world over) The Asshole wasn't able to transmogrify his snake into the Rod of Aaron. With her desperate to become his wife, and him desperate to relieve himself of that shame peculiar to men, she leant him Squawshorn. He aimed that Great Gun at his, the lesser, and commanded it to stand at attention. They then finalized the marriage, and then he ran out on her with Squawshorn in tow, leaving Good Katherine broken-hearted and powerless, for he'd stolen Good Katherine's greatest asset from her, and to this day he roams the Frontier using it to take what he wants and leaving a path of woe in his wake."

Silent reflection. One of the logs in the fire crumbles and topples the others in a crash.

"What an Asshole," said Shelby.

There is a period of quiet where the prospectors consider the wide world, so full of too many assholes with too much power, and they thank God for their lack of curiosity and good knees that allow them to prospect and stay away from all that nonsense.

"I think," said Dobbin after the moment had passed, "that you fellers forgot a few things in the telling of your stories." Joe and Shelby looked at the mute, for they thought he was going to take the reigns as the Storyteller, and they wanted to see if he could string more than seven words together.

"First of all, you forgot that the Trojan War was a fought for both conquest AND love.

"Secondly, you forgot to mention that in addition to being Good, Katherine Bloodsaw was also Beautiful. She had hair the hue of burnt chestnuts--it was severe and soft and straight. And you were right, Joe: her eyes were slate grey when she was full of wrath; but they were all the foggy gold of San Francisco Bay when first she'd wake. Her skin benefited from the best of her heritage: creamy as French coffee, swarthy as Oregon topsoil, and her nose and cheeks were foothills bespeckled with those violet Highland blooms. Her every word was Summer long and tobacco rich; and every laugh all Easter bells and Alleluias. Her scrimshaw fingers were nimble, strong, and fine; her thighs invited dreamers but rebuked too-watchful eyes; and her bosom was an aerie: proud and safe. She loped when she walked, and galloped when she ran; and in those unwonted moments (you'd have the luck of the Devil to catch one) when she was moving not a bit, she captured all the graceful logic of the Spheres.

"And you forgot to mention that when The Asshole Robert Gale left Good Katherine in the wedding bowyer, he could have done the honorable thing by pointing Squawshorn at her and telling her to forget about him and never worry herself by thinking of him again. But he was such a selfish asshole that he couldn't stand to think of her forgetting what they shared.

"But," said the suddenly verbose Dobbin, rising to his feet, "you gentleman are a different affair." He walked to his stuff and rustled around until he pulled out his gun, a late model rifle with a well-worn stock and severe gaze, which leveled back and forth between the two prospectors, and continued, "Because you all going to hand over all your gold and other valuables, and then you are going to go to sleep. When you wake up, you'll forget I was ever here, and you'll forget everything you ever heard about The Asshole Robert Gale."

"Goddamn you, The Asshole Robert Gale!" said Joe as he handed over his stuff.

"Yeah! Why don't you just point that thing at the stream and tell it to give up its gold, like the story says you can?" said Shelby as he gave up his.

'Dobbin' glared at Shelby and took the gold.

"Squawshorn is powerful, but it ain't the powerful," he said, his voice tired of explaining such things (for it wasn't as if he hadn't attempted this feat after hearing the stories). "See: that's just a Tale Tall."

The Asshole Robert Gale packed up the goods, and got on his horse, and rode off, just as the prospectors lied down to fall asleep.