In the “The Missouri Schoolmarm” Grey has a group of cowboys arguing about who has been writing to the teacher they’re all in love with. One of them, apparently, broke ranks and wrote to her on the sly. Looking at her return letter, one of them tries to argue that she simply wrote it on her own. “How do we know that?” asked Tex suspiciously. “Shore the boss’ typewriter is a puzzle, but it could hide tracks. Savvy Pards?” Really? Savvy Pards? It’s difficult to slog through even one page of this kind of writing, with characters named Tex and the like. Tex? How many cowboys with that name are there roaming around the West? All this kind of writing does is deal with stereotypes, two-dimensional characters with Southern drawls and clichéd language. But when Louis L’Amour has Angie Lowe tell the Apache leader, “I shall not leave,” there’s a dignity to the language which then translates to the character. There’s a respect to giving characters this kind of language that is light years from something like, “I ain’t a-goin’ anywheres, Chief. Ya git me?” This respect for character, which really gives them humanity, even extends to the natives that L’Amour writes about, and this is what sets even the simplest stories he writes apart from the rest of the pack.
After Angie stares down Cochise with a shotgun in her hand, he respects her strength and fighting spirit and what she’s done. But he still believes his people should be able to drink from her spring and says she is unnecessarily depriving them, to which she replies,
“Cochise speaks with a forked tongue,” she said. “There is water yonder.” She gestured toward the hills,
where Ed had told her there were springs. “I have no wish to fight your people. I live in peace when I am
left in peace. But if the people of Cochise come in peace they may drink at this spring.” The Apache
leader smiled faintly. Such a woman would rear a nation of warriors.
From that point on, his people not only leave her alone but leave her gifts after drinking from her spring. At this point L’Amour provides backstory on both Angie and Ed. Her father was from New York and her mother a Cajun from New Orleans. She was born en route to Santa Fe and married Ed Lowe after her parents died when she was only seventeen. They had travelled south looking for land and Angie picked out the spot, “Here there were grass, water, and shelter from the wind . . . The house was built in a corner of the cliff, under the sheltering overhang, so that approach was possible from only two directions, both covered by an easy field of fire from the door and windows.”
L’Amour writes the story from the omniscient point of view, with the first section going back and forth between the thoughts of Angie and of Cochise, and later between Ed and Ches Lane. After providing the backstory, the second section deals with Ed Lowe. Angie wasn’t sure she really loved him, but he was nice enough, and felt bad for him because he missed the conversation of other people. So when he gets to town and buys his supplies, he heads for a saloon and some pleasant conversation. When an argument breaks out at a poker table, Ed becomes interested. It turns out Ches Lane was unknowingly playing cards with three brothers of a man he had killed in a fair fight. Too late he realizes they deliberately cheated him in order to provoke an argument and be able to kill him just as fairly. But then, “Ed Lowe moved suddenly from the bar. ‘Three to one is long odds,’ he said, his voice low and friendly. ‘If the gent in the corner is willin’, I’ll side him.” Ed’s hope was that making the sides more even would get the brothers to back off, but one of the brothers fired first. All three of them died in the fight, but unfortunately Ed took a shot to the stomach. His dying words were of Angie. The only thing the bartender knew is that he had lived up north, in Apache country. And then Ches Lane makes a fascinating decision. “A man had died to save his life, and Ches Lane had a deep sense of obligation. Somewhere that wife waited, if she was still alive, and it was up to him to find her and look out for her.”
Ches takes along Ed’s horse, loaded with the supplies, and his own and he heads north to look for Angie. “Actually, West Dog Canyon was more east than north, but this he had no way of knowing.” If there’s a spot in the story that strains credulity it’s here, where Ches winds up fighting Indians all along the way and never gives up.
He rode north, and soon the Apaches knew of him. He fought them at a lonely water hole, and he
fought them on the run. They killed his horse, and he switched his saddle to the spare and rode on.
They cornered him in the rocks, and he killed two of them and escaped by night . . . Grimly, the
Apaches clung to his trail. The sheer determination of the man fascinated them. Bred and born in a
rugged and lonely land, the Apaches knew the difficulties of survival; they knew how a man could
live, how he must live. Even as they tried to kill this man, they loved him, for he was one of their own.
But eventually his luck runs out and after falling asleep hard one night, he was too late waking up and found himself surrounded by Apaches. Ironically, their leader was Cochise. L’Amour does a nice job here of creating suspense because of what the audience knows and the characters don’t. Cochise knows Angie. In fact, he had been to the cabin recently to tell her she should give it up and live with their tribe. Though it was obvious by now that Ed was never coming back, she couldn’t leave. Had Ches told Cochise who he was looking for the story might have been resolved there, but Ches had no way of knowing that. When the Indians take him to a hill of red ants to tie him down and torture him to death, he confronts them with everything he can, calling them women and insulting them in order to die an honorable death. Finally, his words hit home. “‘Give me a knife, and I will fight!’ Ches turned on Cochise, as the Indians stood resolute. ‘You are afraid! Free my hands and let me fight!’ He demanded ‘If I win, let me go free.’” Cochise finally agrees and one of the brave picks up a knife to challenge him. But Ches has no illusions, as Cochise says, “I promise you nothing but an honorable death.” Now Ches knows, “He had not only to defeat this Apache but to escape.” He wins the fight, but decides not to kill his opponent. When he get on his horse the Apache’s don’t let him leave, though they let him keep his knife. Then they begin taking him somewhere and refuse to tell him the destination. Finally they show up at Angie’s.
The conclusion to the story is another delight. This, then, is the title of the story. Ches is the gift that Cochise gives to Angie, and though this offends our Western sensibilities of love, L’Amour does a beautiful job in ending the story in a way that makes perfect sense and leaves the reader incredibly satisfied. This story is less a typical “western” than it is a frontier story, which is also what makes it so good to read. L’Amour doesn’t spend any time on the battles that Ches Lane has with the Indians as he makes his way north, because that’s not the point. One of the other nice aspects to the story is the verisimilitude in using Cochise, an actual Chirichua Apache from southern Arizona. The Apaches had a fierce reputation as killers in the Southwest, but then that is only from the perspective of the white man. As Cochise himself said when he finally gave up his battle, “When I was young I walked all over this country, east and west, and saw no other people than the Apaches. After many summers I walked again and found another race of people had come to take it. How is it? Why is it that the Apache wait to die?” For so many natives, fighting back against white incursion was the only choice they had if they weren’t going to completely give up and, in the words of Cochise, “wait to die.” Louis L’Amour’s “The Gift of Cochise” is a tremendous piece of writing, and one of my favorites of his stories.
Thanks! I really like this short story as well
ReplyDelete