Outlaw Prophet: Part IV

Horace Finch

The Californian

April 8th, 1859

Although I had been singularly focused on catching up and joining Mr. Blackwood’s prophetic mission, he hadn’t invited me, and I hadn’t asked. Likely, he may not want me to accompany him, thus, I suspected I might have to hang back and watch things from afar. The day after my last entry into my journal, I came across a small group of settlers (two families) who had been set upon by bandits. Aside from the initial robbery and being roughed up, they were somehow able to fend off the more serious threats of having their womenfolk violated or worse, killed.

As it were, a stranger came across their dilemma before things went from bad to worse and began severely thrashing the bandits (all six of them). Clearly, Mr. Blackwood had been here and done another Good Samaritan deed before moving on unceremoniously. According to the settlers, this stranger was a tall man with long black hair who had come out of nowhere to their aid. As soon as the would-be attack was over, the terrified bandits left. The settlers emphasized the word “terrified” with animated wide-eyed, mouth-agape expressions. It appears that in the process of the skirmish, Samuel had given generous helpings of the hellfire touch to them, to which, these ne'er-do-wells lit out and never looked back. According to the settlers, as soon as the bandits were gone, so too was that mysterious stranger.

I told them who the mysterious stranger was, and although I didn’t go into all his backstory, I figured this would just be another notch in the belt of Mr. Blackwood’s growing mythos. I was able to help with getting their wounded bandaged up and setting their wagons back into somewhat working order. I warned them of the Indian tribes I’d come across on my journey east and recommended that they head back to Kansas City to hire some gunmen before heading back west. I left them there in the Flint Hills as they began to deliberate on what path they should take. As good as this was to help, it would set me back a full day which I would have to make up for in the days ahead.

I began to make my way towards Kansas City. I reckoned I wasn’t but forty miles or so, and I could resupply myself there and see if Mr. Blackwood had stopped, and to which direction (east, northeast, or north) he had set out upon. This was somewhat of a gamble, given he didn’t need to eat, sleep, and do the things the rest of us mortal men had to do. This is what made tracking him by evidentiary things like campfires and such, hard to track. However, the real evidence was mostly found in his interactions with people. Nevertheless, I wasn’t sure if this excursion would waste time or aid in helping me catch up to this enigmatic stranger.

In 1859, Kansas City was a thriving hub of commerce and cattle. With four saloons with rooms to let, two dry general goods stores, an iron smithy, a barber, a church, and plenty of cattle bins, Kansas City was an island of humanity in a sea of open plains. Finding Samuel in a place like this might prove difficult, but not impossible. To my surprise, it looked like a twister hit the place shortly before I arrived. Moving through, the locals were generous enough to cast me a wary eye as they continued picking up pieces of wood, wagon wheels, and various other materials that lay scattered across the thoroughfare.

            Getting off my horse and tying him up to a post, I sauntered over to one, visibly disgruntled store owner, and wiped the sweat from my brow.

“Say pardner, what happened?” I asked sheepishly, not wishing to add fuel to his already foul-looking demeanor.

“What do you think? Was a full-blown shoot out and I don’t know what’re to call it. Like magic and chaos had a baby and out came this dark stranger shooting fire from his hands.”

“Come again?” I asked. “You mean, like a wizard or something?”

“I reckon. Never seen anything like it,” he replied, never breaking a stride in loading the wagon with debris.

My mouth forgot to shut.

“What caused it? I mean, did he just ride into town with hands-a-blazing, or was there some kind of provocation that caused it?”

“Well, I didn’t see the beginnings of it, but from my store (he said pointing in a direction behind him) we heard the ruckus of the mob coming out to meet him.

“Mob of who?” I asked.

“Them heretical Mormons over yonder,” he said pointing down the street and spat loudly as if spitting out the saliva that carried the words to his mouth might exorcise his body.

“Oh, I see,” I said as I reflected on the bounty they put on his head sometime back. I pulled out my map and saw that Navoo was the old Latter-Day Saint enclave not too far from here.

“How could they know he would be here?” I asked, more to myself than the store owner.

“I don’t know if they knew he would be here. More like happenstance, I suppose. Kansas City is a major thoroughfare to the West. Last major city this side of the Rockies.”

“Yeah, and they would have been heading west to Utah-territory,” I said still trying to take in all the damage. “But a mob?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they saw him, and it was one of those targets of opportunity moments.”

“That would make the most sense. Given the bounty the Mormons have put on his head, that would have made them heroes by the time they showed up to Utah territory,” I added.

“Yessir,’ didn’t work out quite like they expected I suspect,” he said in his dry-midwestern sarcasm.

With that, I turned back and unhitched my horse, and continued on my way. A little further down the street, I saw about a dozen Mormon men, who were alive but looked worse for wear, being attended to by their women. Most had dazed looks in their eyes, clothes shredded, and bleeding from various parts of their bodies. I wanted to keep riding, but my journalistic nature got the better of me and I stopped to ask them what happened.

“Howdy folk. My name is Horace Finch, and I’m a reporter for The Californian newspaper out of San Francisco. Can you tell me what happened?”

“It was that outlaw heretic,” the man sitting on the ground managed to say while still wiping the blood from his bloody mouth.

“So he just came up and attacked you fine folk?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Well, you see, we saw him and knew he had a bounty on his head. We thought we would cash in on that.”

Looking around, he counted about 15 men in varied states of hurt. He had learned to sketch back in California to help aid his memory when recalling stories he had covered. His hand furiously recreating the scene in a rudimentary fashion.

“That man’s possessed by the devil hisself,” a female voice rang out from behind me.

“Did he show you hell?” I asked, turning to see a Saloon Girl with a surprised look on her face.

“You’ve seen it haven’t you?” she asked.

“I have. A couple of weeks back, I asked him to show me if the rumors were true.”

She looked visibly shaken. Like she’d woken up from a nightmare. The Mormon men started to get up slowly and coalesce around me and the Saloon Girl.

“We seen it too,” four of them chimed out in almost perfect unison.

“Shop owner down the street said he saw lightning shoot out of his hands. Can you corroborate that claim?”

“Ol Jedidiah over yonder pulled a rifle on him after he put the beating on five of the brethren,” one of the bruised and battered Mormon settlers said as he pointed toward a man still lying in the street. “As soon as he brought his long iron up, that Samuel fella done spun around and did some wizardry and shot lightning from his fingertips.”

This was a new claim I hadn’t come across out West, nor had the man hisself (as the Saloon lady would say) decided to divulge that information when we sat around the campfire not too long ago.

“He’s got the devil in him,” the Saloon lady reiterated.

“No, quite the contrary,” I said. “He says he’s on a mission from God.”

“Beating up the brethren is a mission of the divine?” one of the Mormon settlers asked.

“I could be wrong, but I don’t think this would have happened had you not tried to collect the bounty on his head by way of the mob.”

“He claimed Joseph Smith was a fraud, and that we were all being deceived. That is blasphemy!”

Quickly recalling their lingering sensitivity about Joseph Smith's death and the Nauvoo uprising a few years back, I noticed their rising anger as the cheeks of those around him flushed a deeper red.

They may have been afraid of Mr. Blackwood now, but I was an easy target they could take their frustrations out on. I started to inch my way back out of the center of the circle of men who had slowly made their way around me.

“Look," I said cautiously as I put my empty hands up slowly, "I ain’t looking for trouble. I’m just a reporter trying to see what is fact and what is fiction. I ain’t defending the man,” (as he clearly demonstrated he could do). "I will say this though, you got that fella all wrong.”

“How’s that?” one of the brawnier settlers said as he stared at me unblinkingly out of his non-blackened and swollen eye.

“Well, y’all know him as Samuel Blackwood, some drifter prophet. But his real name is Cartaphilus, the man who served Pontius Pilate and helped crucify Jesus."

"That would make him," one of the settlers said counting on his fingers while the others turned to look at him, "dang near' eighteen hundred and fifty years old," he said proudly to the group.

While they were looking at the man counting, I was nearly to my horse when I heard them turn back to see I was gone. Several of them started to chase after me but their wives came out of nowhere and shut that down quickly. Although I could no longer hear what they were saying out of the sound of my horses galloping hooves, I like to think their hitting their husbands with brooms was the equivalent of, "You idiots, hadn't you learned your lesson already!"

Horace Finch