It was late September of 1873 when City Councilor Anton Bergsdorf strode from his farm and blacksmithing business on the Plateau for a three-night jaunt in the Craggies. The harvest was in. Horses of his clients had been shod and no broken implement lay in the barn-yard hollering for the forge and hammer. He felt free to abandon responsibility for the carefree world of sleeping under the stars. He’d be back in time for Tuesday’s Warhaven City Council meeting.
He traveled lightly and walked briskly up the grade westerly into the Craggies, thinking of his patent explanation to anyone who cared to ask of his destination, “Oh, I wander from thal to berg, ober alp to turm.” Anton’s strong German accent only furthered the mysticism of his cryptic message. He climbed steeply over the ridge out of city limits into the wilds of New Hope County.
Who was this upstanding individual, this founding father of Warhaven?
Born in the Frankenwald of Bavaria in 1830, Anton Bergsdorf had always loved horses, their elegance, their freedom to roam and romp. Throughout his life, he sought what the maverick had.
For all the political and social upheaval of Europe in the late 1840s, Anton emigrated to America in 1849, landing in New York City to its melting pot of peoples. He wandered up the Hudson Valley, where he found work as a farrier at West Point for their cavalry and draft horse needs. It was not long after this he was befriended by Paris DuMont, a cadet at the United States Military Academy. They both dreamt of a life away from the hubbub of society. DuMont graduated and was commissioned and his career and rank rose, yet the two kept in touch through correspondence. Then came the war, that crystallizing annihilation we contentious Americans brought upon ourselves. Yet it solidified for both men that life could be better, closer to God, in the open reaches of the West.
After the war, Bergsdorf followed Paris and his wife Fanny to Warhaven, where he homesteaded a half section of land on the plateau to farm and to set up shop as farrier and blacksmith. While actively interested in local affairs, Bergdorf ceased to read city newspapers, stating frequently, “Ignorance is not bliss, but a kind of liberty!” He would learn enough from his customers and neighbors quietly listening about the impeachment of Johnson, the Russians and the Prussians, and his homeland’s own, crazy King Ludwig II. However, he did follow the new national craze of baseball, for he had a good strong and steady arm and could, on a wind-less, warm day, strike out the best of batters. You may have heard of him in Warhaven Big Sticks lore as Anvil Arm Anton. Perhaps you think the source of his nickname is obvious?
Bergsdorf served as city councilor from the council’s formation in 1870 until 1879. He loved the music of Beethoven and Schubert, the poetry of Schiller and Goethe, the romantic sentimental paintings of Bierstadt. In the rare moments when he could escape the bellows and anvil, he would grab his rucksack and fishing pole and traipse about the Craggies.
It was on this fine day in 1873 that Anton happened upon the hiding place of the outlaw, Jimmy Jack Bellankalf, and his gang, the Murderous Vipers. He had earlier ceased whistling a fifth symphony to trudge and scramble up a scree slope into a valley bowl possessing a lovely lake. He crested the hill and saw them before they saw him, recognizing their hallmark red bandannas and yellow sombreros. The group of six bandits had 10 horses, five he could identify as property of neighbors. “Horse thieves!” he mumbled. “Not good enough to clean my privy! Bunglers to boot.” He had no gun to defend himself and up on the rim he was a sitting duck, so he found cover quickly behind a thicket of ocotillo and cholla. He then dodged, descending, behind a plinth of basalt.
Anton was certain the gang were good followers, but inept otherwise in thinking for themselves. Anton surveyed his surroundings, finding several geodes, placing them in his pockets. He slowly stood, began anew his whistling, and descended the pitch, as if he was approaching a Sunday picnic.
Guns were not drawn, but as he approached there was a great tension in the air among the scraggly desperados. Playing the buffoon Anton said, “Oh, you must be the first of the sheriff’s posse to arrive for the fishing derby?”
Querulous airs wafted about, and any observer could see the immediate breaking of camp commencing.
Jimmy Jack came forward. “Nope, we’re surveyors prospecting for copper, but we’re done here.”
At the gang’s hurried departure, Jimmy Jack was bringing up the rear when Anton whirled and with one of the geodes, brained the outlaw at 50 yards, knocking him out cold. The blacksmith hurler then tied the waylaid bandit with the horse’s bridle, the gang never looking back.
Jimmy Jack in court, standing trial for mayhem and horse thievery and unlikely to escape the county’s hemp rope and gallows, stated in his testimony, “I don’t know what hit me. I felt like I’d been walloped by a flying anvil!”
•••
The City Council is a work of fiction, written by Jim Tindall, appearing every other week in Columbia Gorge News.
Commented
Sorry, there are no recent results for popular commented articles.