Blood and Gold

The driver up on the box was short and thin, a battered, flat-crowned hat on his head, a black beard, shot with plenty of gray, falling over his narrow chest. As he got closer, I saw dark eyes, bright as those of a bird, peering at us from under a pair of shaggy eyebrows, taking in everything, missing nothing. He looked to be about sixty years old.

“Hold up, Rosie,” the man said, hauling on the reins, stopping just beyond the circle of the firelight. He looked around him. “How did I find your camp?” he asked finally. “Did I not smell your coffee from a long ways off?”

“Coffee’s all gone,” I said. I felt no threat from the peddler and decided to be friendly. “Sorry.”

Rosenberg nodded. “No need for sorrow. I have coffee. Arbuckle coffee, fresh in the sack. Got sugar too, if that’s to your taste.”

Beside me, I saw Reeves think this through. Then he made up his mind as I had done earlier and holstered his Colt. “Peddler, I guess you’ve come to the right camp because we’re fresh out of everything. That is, if your prices are honest.”

“Honest?” Rosenberg asked. “And why would my prices not be honest?”

Reeves’ smile was thin. “Out here, where there ain’t a general store for miles around, a man could get to thinking he can get mighty rich mighty quick.”

“Rich, he says,” the peddler snorted, “out here in this wilderness where a man hears nothing but the howl of the wild beasts. Look at me. Am I not a poor man? Those most in need have no money to buy, and those with money have no need. Who then gets rich?”

Reeves’ smile widened. “Well maybe so. Unhitch that pony and show us what you have in your poke.”

I helped Rosenberg put up his horse, liking the way the man’s quick movements were practiced and precise as he undid the traces, with no wasted effort.

The little man was a Child of the Book, one of hundreds of Jewish peddlers who wandered the West selling their wares, mostly dry goods like needles and thread, calico cloth, pots, pans and ladles. Most carried packs on their backs, trudging for miles across the prairie to isolated ranches and farms, but a few, like Amos Rosenberg, were successful enough to afford horses and wagons.

Peddlers also traded with the Indians and one I met had spent six years living with the Cheyenne and had him an Indian wife.

Most ranch and farm women warmly welcomed the peddler, not only for his goods, but because of the news he brought from the cities. I reckoned if put to it, Rosenberg could tell us how the women of fashion in Cheyenne were wearing their bonnets and how big were the bustles of the Abilene belles and how sheer their fine silk stockings.

The pioneer woman isolated amid an empty sea of grass for months and years at a time did not know or care that the latest fashion in Abilene was already a year old back in the East and two years out of date in Paris. It was all new and exciting to them, so no wonder the visit of the peddler was a welcome thing, eagerly anticipated.

Rosenberg seemed to be a shade more prosperous than the rest, because in addition to his dry goods, he carried a small supply of bacon, salt pork, flour and coffee. Arranged around the floor of his wagon, crammed beside bales of calico and muslin, were small kegs of vinegar, sugar and molasses. He had a glass jar of pink candy sticks and another of black-and-white-striped peppermint balls. To my joy he also carried sacks of tobacco and a supply of .44.40 shells in boxes, enough to replenish the ones I’d fired off so freely on the trail.

Between us, me and Reeves spent close to fifteen dollars on what the peddler had to sell. My major purchase was a new cotton shirt, but it seemed my free-spending ways did little to impress Amos Rosenberg. He glanced at the coins and crumpled paper money in his hand, shook his head and muttered:

“And now you know why I am a poor man. It’s because I buy dear and sell cheap.” He shook his head again. “Oy, I fear you have taken advantage of me.”

I doubted that very much, figuring he’d made a more than fair profit, but I held my tongue. I was well aware of how merchants loved to complain. Like sodbusters, they were quick to plead poverty while all the time having sacks of money stashed under their beds.

I filled our pot at the creek and soon had coffee boiling. Having a young man’s appetite and still being mighty hungry, I fried up some bacon and pan bread and me and Reeves finally ate our fill. Rosenberg would have no part of the bacon, but ate a couple of strips of his own antelope jerky, which he washed down with coffee, strong and boiling from the pot, sweetened with molasses.

After we ate and got to smoking, the little peddler brought out a battered pipe and lit it with a brand from the fire. Every now and then, he’d stretch out his left hand, contemplate his pinkie finger and let out with a deep sigh, usually followed with a shake of the head and a muttered: “Oy, oy, oy.”

“Finger broke?” Reeves asked with scant interest.

“Why would my finger be broke?” Rosenberg asked. “Who has a broken finger?”