Mari Sandoz - Son of the Gamblin Man: The Youth of an Artist

Books by Mari Sandoz published by
the University of Nebraska Press

The Battle of the Little Bighorn

The Beaver Men: Spearheads of Empire

The Buffalo Hunters: The Story of the Hide Men

Capital City

The Cattlemen: From the Rio Grande across the Far Marias

Cheyenne Autumn

The Christmas of the Phonograph Records

Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas

The Horsecatcher

Hostiles and Friendlies: Selected Short Writings of Mari Sandoz

Letters of Mari Sandoz

Love Song to the Plains

Miss Morissa: Doctor of the Gold Trail

Old Jules

Old Jules Country

Sandhill Sundays and Other Recollections

Slogum House

Son of the Gamblin Man: The Youth of an Artist

The Story Catcher

These Were the Sioux

The Tom-Walker

Winter Thunder

Copyright 1960 by Mari Sandoz
All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Sandoz, Mari, 18961966.

Son of the gamblin man.

1. Cozad, John JacksonFiction. 2. Henri, Robert,
18651929Fiction. I. Title.

[PZ3.S2174SoI2] [PS3537.A667] 813.52 76-17066

ISBN 0-8032-0895-2

ISBN 0-8032-5833-x pbk.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8032-8410-4 (electronic: e-pub)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8032-8411-1 (electronic: e-mobi)

Bison Book edition reproduced by arrangement with the Mari Sandoz Corporation from the first edition published in 1960 by Clarkson N. Potter, Inc.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content .

The Family

JOHN JACKSON COZAD, the Gamblin Man and community builder by his true name, but only one of several that he used during his career.

THERESA GATEWOOD COZAD, the wife of the gamblin man.

J OHNNY , J OHN A., the elder son.

R OBERT H ENRY , second son, often called the son of the gamblin man in his boyhood.

G RANDFATHER R OBERT , old Robert Gatewood, father of Theresa.

G RANDMOTHER J ULIA , Mother Gatewood, mother of Theresa.

T RABER , A. T. Gatewood, brother of Theresa.

J OHN R OBERT , cousin of the Cozad boys, son of Van Gatewood.

T HE D AVID C LAYPOOLS , niece and nephew of John Jackson Cozad.

All names of people in this book are those the characters were reported as using in life .

To the early settlers who lived through those trying and turbulent times of the old Cozad and Plum Creek region, and to all those, well over one hundred, who contributed information and encouragement through repositories and by interview, letter, and telegram, I offer my grateful acknowledgement .

MS

Preface

A T THE AGE of twelve John Cozad decided to be a gamblin man. He became one of the handsomest, most elegant, and violent, of his kind, so adept at faro that he was barred from many places and consequently traveled under various names and gave out varying stories of his life and loves. He had worked river boats, the plush palaces from San Francisco to Canfields in New York, the rudest smoking cars and the rough gold camps of the West. Union Pacific railroad land agents, old faro tramps homesteading in northwest Nebraska, and the cowboys of the lawless man who dominated the whole Cozad region of the Platte River spoke of him less as a man fabulous at faroat bucking the tigerthan as a determined community builder. But not even they knew that he was also a very lucky father, and lived to see one of his sons grow into greatness as an artist, and a teacher and leader of artists, a son he condemned to live and die under a fictitious name and biography.

More than twenty years ago Dr. Robert Gatewood, nephew of John Cozad, the closest remaining relative of the gambler and his artist son, approached me to write the story of the two men. By 1942 I had completed enough research to go to the Cozad region to interview the old-timers. Several there must have known the towns connection with the world-famous artist but they studiously avoided any mention of this.

If the story had been one of exploitation of the helpless, or appropriation of the nations lands and resources, I could not have hesitated, but in this I had to respect the community reluctance. I put the book aside until the story began to leak out. Van Wyck Brooks revealed the gist of it in his John Sloan in 1955 and the next year Harry B. Allen gave a brief account of it to the Cozad Local . So I felt free to tell the story that John Cozad, in letters to my father in 1903, characterized as a most unusual one, and yearns for a Romantic Pen. Unfortunately he left his trail too shadowed and confused for the complete clarification demanded by non-fiction. I have kept to the facts available and only filled in the few holes necessary to reconstruct something of the crucible in which the dross of the sons youth was burned away and the gold of it freed to find itself.

MS

I

T HE SUN BEAT DOWN on the frock coat and tall silk hat of the man striding westward across the prairie. It glinted on the gold head of the cane he carried as jauntily as though he were moving through a thousand watching people. But there was no one to see him, or to know that the mans special square-cut diamonds were gone from his cravat and his fingers, tucked carefully away. There was no habitation any-where in sight, nothing much except the dusty old wagon trail under the mans feet and the laddered steel of the railroad track that stretched along beside him, following its line of telegraph poles toward the shimmer and heat of the far western horizon.

Back at the boxcar that served as a railroad station a scattering of men had watched the newcomer set out this morning, the two who had been sawing up logs for the fireboxes of the engines straightening their backs with their fingers as they looked after him. Their eyes followed this man as eyes always did, often soft handsome ones, with fluttering lashes. It had been so ever since he grew out of his awkward cowhide boots into that proud and arrogant cane-bearing stride that carried him through so many tight spots since.

It was one of the dog days of August, the earth dry and baked, but this man had been in hot sun before. One summer noontime back when he was twelve and restless under the hand of his second stepmother, he had suddenly thrown down the tedding fork, wiped the clinging dust of the Ohio hay-field from his sweating face with his sleeve and left to find an easier way to make a living. He got away before his fathers astonished anger could remind him of his duty as a son and as a member of a good, God-fearing family.

Since that day the man had never looked back. His high-bridged nose, the elegant goatee he grew, and his long slender fingers had led him through years on river boats, out upon the ocean to South America, around to California and back through the gold camps of the western mountains. He had worked the plushier cars of the railroads of all the nation, too, including the one whose tracks passed him here on the prairie. During the years his fingers had become so agile, so swift, or, as he preferred to think, his eye so shrewd across the card table, that one house of chance after another had barred him, particularly from faro.