Short Stories & Tall Tales
THE FROG
Don Chenhall
William “Frog” Edwards jerked conscious, gripped in panic. He had dreamed of torture, where he was spread-eagled in the blazing sun while ants crawled over him. He tried to wet his flaking, peeling lips with his swollen tongue, but there was no wet. Sprawled on his back on a gentle incline of fist-sized rocks, he vaguely considered that he no longer felt discomfort from their sharp edges.
With enormous effort, Frog raised his hand to his face to shade his eyes. His crimson lids fluttered and slowly opened. Panic returned as his desiccate eyeballs beheld naught but white light. He blinked furiously and let out a long, low moan. Indistinct colors returned first, and finally, definition.
Prospectors will tell you there are three things a man must have in the desert: water, shade, and a pistol. A single shot pocket pistol will do; it’s for when you can’t find water and shade. Two of those things were available a mile down-slope, where a thin fringe of green could be seen clinging to a narrow band of brown slick that cut through the barren waste. Frog reached into his vest and stroked the smooth lump of steel.
He dropped his gaze and blinked until he could focus close-up, and gagged. He had used his knife to slit his trouser leg up to the knee during the night, but this was his first look. His right calf was twice its normal size, the skin purple and split. Small insects feasted on the liquid that oozed from two adjacent puncture wounds. He tried to swallow the bile that came up, but it dry-stuck in his nose and throat.
Frog switched his focus back to the river, where blue-coated riders could now be seen working their way in and out of the willows as they moved downstream. Rattlesnakes come out at night, he knew that. He also knew he would hang if the bluecoats caught him, which they surely would have done had he gone down during the day. He had taken his chances, and he had not been lucky, the story of his life. He patted the little pistol again. Heroes don’t hang, they disappear.
“This whole thing started at a Knights of the Golden Circle meeting in San Francisco in the fall of 1861. Dan Showalter talked to us. You heard of him?”
Rufus had not only heard of the notorious secessionist, he had heard the story itself several times. He was tempted to tell the wart-faced, beetle-browed little cracker to muzzle it, but the man was cranky and unpredictable. Rufus flopped down on a pallet in the corner of the dirt-floor cabin they shared and said nothing.
“Dan,” Frog continued, “said the plan was to gather up a group of brave and dedicated men who were loyal to the Confederacy, outfit us good and arm us to the teeth. We’d ride to Yuma quietly, without attracting attention, and cross the Arizona desert on the old Butterfield Stage road along the Gila River. Go on over to New Mexico and join up with our brother Texans and kill us a batch of Yankees.”
Rufus yawned. “Where’d the money come from for the outfit?”
“That’s a secret,” Frog replied belligerently.
“You don’t know, do you?”
“Damn right I do. Rich people in Los Angeles, important people who was betting on California joining the Confederate States of America, that’s who. And when it happens, they’ll remember patriots like Dan and us for the price we paid.”
“What price would that be?”
“Well, fifteen of us was on our way, proud as you please. We lay over one night at John Winter’s ranch in the San Jose’ Valley. A posse of Yankees surrounded us, California Volunteers they was, the outfit Colonel Carleton put together to put the boot on sesesh. Cavalry and infantry aplenty, too many to take on, and we had to give it up. They put us in irons and hauled us to the prison at Yuma.”
Rufus sat up and rolled a cigarette. “How’d that work out?” he asked with a grin.
Frog stared out the clapboard shack’s lone window, although it was too grimy to see anything. “Not worth a damn. The food and conditions was awful, and they done all manner of things to torture and humiliate us.” He shook his head and bared his yellow teeth. “One of the guards, I’d kill him with my bare hands if I got the chance.”
“That so?”
“Just so,” Frog answered. “Billy Semmilrogge. He taken a flesh wound to the shoulder from a Confederate rifle out east of Yuma a ways, place called Stanwix Station. He was skedaddling, never fired a shot. After the rebs pulled out of Arizona, he started crowing that he was the only wounded in the furthest west fight of the war. Taunted us terrible, said the history books would remember him a hero, and us, no-account traitors.
“How’d you get loose?”
Frog grimaced at the memory. “The worst humiliation. They made us sign oaths that we’d be loyal to the United States of America.”
Rufus pulled himself to his feet, walked over and looked out the door. “Reckon you got a chance to prove up on that, Frog. The Esmeralda just turned the corner with a barge in tow, be landing in a half hour and needing stoke wood. Yankees on deck. Make a true-blue U.S. citizen like you proud.”
Frog leaped to his feet with clenched fists, but Rufus was already gone.
The wood gang sweated in the humidity of the river air, carrying and stacking willow for the sternwheeler’s boiler. Frog was surprised when the barge load of lumber was moved up to the rickety wharf. Everything had been going upriver to the recently re-garrisoned Fort Mojave. Too late, he recognized the soldier he spoke to, one of his guards at the Yuma stockade.
“Why, I declare, it’s the Frog,” the soldier replied with a wide grin. “Billy Semmilrogge sends his love. They gave him a medal, you know. Promoted him, too.”
Frog hung his head to hide his clenched teeth.
“Answer your question, this here lumber is for the new fort they’re building right over yonder,” the soldier said, gesturing. “Camp Lincoln, they’re calling it. You remember, don’t ya, Frog? Who you pledged to. Abraham Lincoln.”
The plank Frog carried was too long and heavy to wield as a club. He turned and slunk off like an abused dog.
“Everywhere I go, Yankees,” Frog shouted across the stifling shack. Rufus held his hand up to forestall the rant, but to no avail. “Nobody would hire sesesh in Yuma, so I make my way down to Port Isabel, at the river mouth on the gulf. I hump cargo from big ships out of California ports over to the riverboats. Bluecoats start showing up thick, a regular infestation of Yankees. I come up here to La Paz, nice little mining town, and it happens again.”
“Thing I can’t work out,” Rufus said, “is how you white trash hollow dwellers and stump farmers figure on getting ahead in this scrap. Even if your side wins, which ain’t likely, you’ll never have enough money to buy a slave.”
Frog yipped like a coyote, wagged his head and drawled, “Wouldn’t expect a fool from Kansas to understand.”
Two days after the Esmeralda sailed back down the muddy Colorado, the sternwheeler Cocopah hove into view. It tied to the wharf late in the afternoon, to take on supplies and stoke wood before departing upriver for Fort Mojave the next morning. Frog had just finished bracing the wood stack when the riverboat’s captain sidled up to him.
“Hey, secesh,” he said in a low voice. “I got something make you plenty cheerful.” Frog eyed him warily, but said nothing.
The captain pulled a newspaper out of his coat and tapped a finger on the headline. “VICTORY AT CHANCELLORVILLE FOR RBT. E. LEE”. Frog tried to snatch the paper away, but the captain held it up out of his reach. “Keep your grubby mitts off it, sweat hog.”
“When?” Frog asked, his voice shaking and reedy.
The captain squinted through the twilight at the top of the single sheet. “Paper’s dated May 6, 1863. Two weeks ago.”
Rufus was paralyzed with dread. The usual evening stillness, the insect hum and bullfrog croaks, had been replaced by the sound of gunshots and shouts, and a few minutes later, horses’ hooves throwing hard-baked mud as they pounded past. He sat by the single candle listening, unable to move.
After perhaps ten minutes, a number of people reined up outside, their horses blowing and tack jingling. Two soldiers with drawn pistols threw the door open. They dragged Rufus to his feet, and one yelled, “Lieutenant Hale.”
A young officer entered, peered around the dim cabin and wrinkled his nose at the close smell. “Where is he?” he barked.
“Don’t know,” Rufus responded. “What happened?”
“Three of my men, escorts for the cargo on the Cocopah, lounging around a lantern in front of Cohn’s store. Someone ambushed them from the dark. Killed one, wounded two.”
Rufus put his head in his hands and groaned, “God Almighty.”
“Tell me,” the lieutenant commanded.
“Frog busted in all excited, wide-eyed and shaky, shouting and carrying on fierce. Said the South was rising, couldn’t be stopped, and it was time to step up. Brave men on the far West front, heroes, destiny, and I don’t know what-all. It was crazy. He grabbed his canteen and rifle, and out he went. That’s it.”
“Was it a repeating rifle?” Lieutenant Hale asked.
“Yes. It was a Henry,” Rufus responded.
An orderly knocked and came through the door of the adobe. “What is it, Sergeant?” the officer at the desk asked without looking up.
“Fellow outside, prospector. Says the storekeep told him to come talk to you.”
“About what?” the officer asked irritably.
“He found a body in the desert.”
The officer’s head snapped up. “Send him in,” he ordered.
The prospector was of indeterminate age, with a grey beard that was chew-yellowed at the corners of his mouth. He shuffled in and idled before the desk. The officer looked him over briefly, stood and offered his hand. “Captain Charles Atchisson.”
“Pleasure,” the prospector said, extending his hand for one brief shake. “Goren Green.”
“Please, have a seat,” Captain Atchisson said, indicating the lone straight-back chair next to the desk.
“Prefer standin’,” Goren Green mumbled.
The officer sat down and leaned back, a smile spreading across his face. “I abide prospectors,” he said. “Acquainted a few up at Fort Mojave.”
The prospector nodded, but said nothing.
After half a minute, the officer leaned forward, tapped a pencil on the desk, and said, “Tell me about the body you found.”
Goren Green cleared his throat. “Me and Lord and Whiff was headed up a gulch toward the hills,” he began.
Captain Atchisson interrupted. “Lord?”
“My burro.”
“I see. And Whiff?”
“Dog. Farty little critter.”
“Ah,” the officer said. “Where was this?”
Goren Green skewered him with steely blue eyes. “Couldn’t say, exactly.”
The captain didn’t register surprise. Prospectors never revealed where they were going, or where they had been. “When was it?”
“Three, four weeks ago.”
“Why didn’t you report it?”
The prospector shrugged. “We was headed out with a full kit. Seen buzzards workin’, went over for a look. Whiff taken off for the hills. Me and Lord foller Whiff, no debate.”
Captain Atchisson nodded. “Did you inspect the carcass?”
“Some,” Goren Green responded. When he didn’t continue, the officer held his palms up and raised his eyebrows.
“Rattlesnake had got him, leg black to the nuts, big as your belly. Face minced. Guts pulled out and dragged all over.”
“Fresh?”
“No, plumb rank.”
The captain shook his head. “I mean, had he been dead long, do you think?”
The prospector considered. “Prob’ly not. His guts wasn’t et yet.”
Captain Atchisson stared out the window at the Colorado River below. “Thing like that, you’re within your rights to keep what you find.”
Goren Green nodded warily, but said nothing.
“What’d you find?”
The prospector hesitated before responding. “Little single-shot pistol next to him, been fired. Dead buzzard. Hard to figure a man doin’ that.”
“What else?”
“A few coins. Knife. Empty canteen. This.” He pulled a square of paper out of his pocket.
“What is it?”
The prospector shrugged. “Can’t cipher. Looked serious, so I kep it.” He handed it to the captain.
The officer unfolded and read the paper. He let out a deep sigh, leaned back and called out, “Sergeant.” When the orderly stood in front of him, he said. “Show Mr. Green out. Take his statement. Find Lieutenant Hale.” He released both men with a curt nod.
When Lieutenant Hale came in, Captain Atchisson handed him the piece of paper without comment. After scanning it, the lieutenant said, “It’s a standard U.S. Loyalty Oath, signed by one William Edwards.” He looked it over again and said, “Where’d this come from, sir?”
“Prospector. Took it off a body he found in the desert a while back.”
Lieutenant Hale placed the piece of paper on the desk, but continued to stare at it. “I guess our search is over,” he said.
The captain got up and strolled around the room, his hands clasped behind his back. He began speaking softly, haltingly. “Between you and me, Lieutenant, and meaning no disrespect, Colonel Carleton should have left that Showalter bunch alone.” After a lengthy pause, he said, “Look at the bottom of the paper.”
Lieutenant Hale squinted at the pencil scrawl and read out loud. “I never believed this. They made me.” He looked up at the captain. “Signed, ‘Frog’.”
The lieutenant waited, and Captain Atchisson finally made his point. “Should have let them join their kin in New Mexico and do what they believed in.”
“Shoot three soldiers here, or shoot three over there in a battle, comes out to the same,” the lieutenant said. “War is a filthy business.”
Captain Atchisson slammed his fist on the desk. “Blast it, Hale, don’t you see the difference?” he shouted. “This wasn’t war, it was murder.”
Lieutenant Hale didn’t wait for his angry superior to dismiss him. He offered a parting shot as he hustled out the door. “Depends on which side wins, Captain.”
Frog had the little pistol in his hand. It had taken his last shred of resolve to bring his other hand over to cock it. His leg and head throbbed with unspeakable pain, far worse than he had ever known or imagined. His eyelids were glued shut, and his swollen tongue stuck out of his mouth like a thumb.
He tried to think of something nice to hold in his thoughts at the instant of death. He slipped into a trance, where he was laid out in a coffin draped with a Confederate flag. Gray-coated soldiers stood behind and his family in front, sisters, brothers, and his dear mother. She fanned his face as she leaned over, shading him from the noonday sun. A hideous, putrid odor suddenly crawled into his nostrils, and his eyeball was plucked out. With a silent scream, he stuck the pistol into the feathered mass on his chest and fired.
The shade was gone, and the fanning stopped. Revulsion and agony quickly turned to an all-consuming dread as his fuzzy mind began to grasp the circumstances. He tried to pray, to ask God to let him die quickly, but his terror was too great to concentrate. Several minutes went by, and he again felt the pressure on his chest, the fanning and the shade, and smelled the putrid odor. His head began violently thrashing from side to side. It abruptly quit when his tongue ripped loose from the back of his throat. His heart stopped a few beats later.
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