|
George Nason was a man that nobody knew. Some business associates would think they did for a while, but they would be wrong. Even his appearance might change by the next week, let alone his word. He was agnostic, immoral, and thoroughly lacking in any redeeming qualities. He had none of what most people know as character.
Born in Bolton, Massachusetts, his mother had died of tetanus when he was three, and he was raised by a holier-than-thou father who in truth cared only about money. He even fretted about what it cost to outfit George with the most basic clothing and the blandest food. The boy was quick to feel the whip if he asked for anything else at all.
When he started school and met other children his own age, his eyes were opened to the unfairness of his treatment. The first time he asked his father for the money for new pencils, he was treated to a strap across his bare back, and he was given a stub his father was ready to throw away. After that he asked for nothing; instead he found ways to cheat and steal.
When the other kids would stop at the general merchandise store after school to buy candy, he would tag along. He couldn't buy anything, but he could steal, quite deftly, in fact. He became a very fast shoplifter, taking only what he wanted to satisfy his minor cravings. He would try to wait until a disturbance was created by some other kid dropping his candy or spilling his drink before making his move.
He came to be suspected, but he was never caught. He overheard conversations like, "Poor kid: being the son of Old Man Nason, I can see why he has to steal."
"But, Silas, that don't make it right."
"Never you mind, Emily, if I catch him I catch him, but I kind of hope I don't."
Young George never made the mistake of bragging of his conquests. If he got a couple of pieces of candy, he went off and ate them by himself without sharing the information with another soul.
When he was twelve, two things happened to shape his life. The first was his job. When a new store opened on the town line, he was first in line and got a job. The owner had no way of knowing of the basic dishonesty of the boy; he just saw a lad of obvious intelligence in need of some newer clothes.
The second change was Sarah. Deep blue eyes coupled with rich blond hair brought about a change in George that he hadn't known was possible. He dreamed of her day and night and frugally saved all his wages so that he could someday run off with her and live happily ever after. He never dared confide his dreams with her. If he had, she, also being twelve, probably would have loved the idea.
George never stole from the till, for it would be too obvious where the money had gone. Instead, he watched the farmers and their wives when they brought in produce to sell or barter. Many of them were illiterate, and the ones that had no clue of mathematics he started to cheat. Just a penny or two here and there, small enough that he could claim to have made a mistake if questioned.
His father had him bring goods home from the store to save himself an extra trip. The money for such purchases was carefully counted out, and the goods received had to match to the penny. One day his father's coins slipped through a hole in his pocket, and he was unable to make the expected purchase. George gave no thought to using his own money to buy the goods, for he reasoned that it was his father's fault that he was wearing such old clothes that were full of holes.
Sarah had been on the porch of the store when he got off work, and she walked home with him. He had finally got up the nerve to tell her he liked her and how pretty she was. When they crossed the covered bridge she held his hand, and he thought his heart would burst with delight.
His father was reading a day old paper on the perch when they approached, and when the old man saw that he didn't have a sack of groceries he flew into a rage. When George explained the reason, the rage deepened and he pulled down George's pants and whipped him with a belt. This was in full view of Sarah, and the old man really gave the boy a beating.
When he was done George just laid there in the walk, way beyond crying or talking or any other relief. Sarah knelt beside him, and George saw the concern in her eyes, which for some reason angered instead of comforted him.
"Get out of here. I never want to see you or any other girl ever again," George screamed, and he apparently stuck to his word. While Sarah tried to make advances of conversation to him for a long time, George continually shunned her until she finally took up with someone else. It was not just her. He was never known to make any advances to any woman for the rest of his life. If he felt any hidden desires, it was a well-kept secret.
As his strength and stature grew, he left the store and worked part- time for a short line stage outfit. He stayed in school, though, for he knew his future lay in his brains and not his brawn.
On the day he graduated at age sixteen he already had his plans made. These included a ticket on the train to New York City. This he had purchased the previous week.
When he came home that evening, his father offered him a job in his small woolen mill, adding that now George could start paying his board as well as a little extra for the money his father had spent in raising him. In reply George took down the Brown Bess that had been in the family for over a hundred years.
He had checked it for spark and put in a new flint and powder, so he knew it would go off. The Bess is a smoothbore of .69 caliber, and when loaded with shot it makes a fair shotgun. George had loaded it with a hefty charge of buckshot, and when he pulled the trigger half the old man's guts were blown across the floor.
That chore over with, George went to bed and actually got a pretty good night's sleep. In the morning he packed his bag and caught his train; right on time.
To be on the safe side George switched trains in Hartford and went to Albany. From there he went west into Pennsylvania to get lost amongst the many Westward bound travelers.
He tried his hand at Mississippi gambling but found that was not the life for him. He did not like to gamble—he tried to make all his shady dealings a sure thing. He would have liked to cheat, but he lacked the skill, and he could tell that he could easily become a dead man if caught.
Moving on into Texas, he was chagrined to find that the carpetbaggers had about everything sewn up. Lord, he thought, if he could have been there a few years earlier, what a time he could have had. As it was he managed to buy and sell a couple of small stolen herds.
When he tried this trick a third time, it turned out to be a herd already claimed by a carpetbagger, one who had the local law in the palm if his hand. He happened to hear the conversation between the two from his open hotel window, and heard himself described as "that man in the Eastern tweed suit." Quickly he ran out back to a wash line and stole the clothes of a similar sized cowboy.
Nason cut in back of the line of stores to the corner, then walked back up the street in the direction of the hotel. To his amazement, neither the marshal or the herd owner even glanced in his direction. He quickly removed his few belongings from his room and went back to the street to watch proceedings. Even the inn keeper couldn't remember his leaving, and his whereabouts stayed a complete mystery.
It was a lesson he learned well. Clothes may not make the man, but they certainly do identify him. He never forgot that lesson, and sometimes completely changed his appearance several times a year, often without any concrete reason.
He then went North, interested in the stories about the Jayhawkers. These men were levying a tax of a dollar head on cattle herds coming up out of Texas, but it was completely unofficial, just a large scale mugging that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. Nason thought he saw an opportunity, so he changed his appearance again and called some of the Jayhawker bands together.
For his new garb, he picked a Western style suit and an honest to god top hat. He had seen some people dressed like this, and the cowboys seemed to look up to them. George didn't know that the cowboys actually looked on some of these guys with quiet amusement, considering them to be dudes but polite to them just the same. At any rate they were ready to listen to him, and he promised them more and better if he was at their head.
He had contacts back in Texas notify him when each and every herd left and on what trail. He organized the greeting parties so that they were in full battle formation and outnumbered the drovers by many times. He always changed into dusty work clothes before confrontations, and if he was never at the front in cases of battle, nobody seemed to notice. He was known as bloodthirsty only because he had no qualms about giving wounded Texans a bullet in the head. In the heat of battle he took no chances, only shooting when he was sure of his safety.
As the unofficial leader he claimed an extra share of the take, and this was not questioned. It was when he started trying a fast count that trouble developed in paradise. Some of these run-down looking cowpokes were a lot sharper that those New England framers that he used to cheat, and he was almost lynched before lying his way free. He didn't waste any time moving on, he only stopped long enough to kill and rob a couple of the more successful Jayhawkers, and then he was heading further west.
He hit every booming mining town that he heard of, selling some sucker a bogus claim and then moving quickly on. His only major expense was clothes, for he changed appearance with every sale and threw away all his used wardrobe. Because of this, his accumulation of wealth was quite large, and he really had no dreams of what to do with it. He would have been surprised that in a way he had become just like his father—amassing money just for the sheer love of it.
Going to the west coast, he entered the fur business in the form of sea otter pelts, but there was no good way to cheat the hunters except by paying them unfairly low prices. He was able to make no inroads into the profits of the established traders, and it angered him considerably. He did not understand that the established men had a steady clientele that trusted them. It was a concept that he could not fathom.
Before leaving the area, he shot and killed the largest buyer of pelts that he knew of. When he found that the last shipment had been traded for dry goods instead of money, he was even more furious. The waste of his time! The waste of human life would have been a foreign concept. For the first time in many years, he was actually angry, and he burned the merchant's place of business before moving back into Colorado. He managed to sell a couple more salted claims, but the booms were getting scarcer, and he went north to Salt Lake City to look for opportunity.
Nason was glad to get a job clerking for the territory. He would be privy to information on any new mining strikes, and if all else failed he could probably steal a lot of money out of collected tax revenues.
When Jess Clay came into the office, Nason could smell possibilities. Clay was hard working, intelligent and open. Nason knew that good luck seemed to follow such people around. He didn't realize that such people tend to make their own luck rather than wait for it to come to them.
George acted more brashly than was usual, ripping up Clay's papers and replacing them with his own. The company name was bogus, of course, with him as president and a man who had abetted him in the past named Amos Heskins listed as vice-president. Heskins had no idea of his part in the proceedings. Nason made a mental note to keep it that way, or the unruly old man was apt to demand some money.
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
|
