Journal of a Cowboy

The hermit leaves Council Grove, Kan.

As they were wending their way through Council Grove, Kan. on the following day, Jean-Luc and Jacques were still smiling at the warm reception they had received at their first house of ill-repute. They had been rather taken by the ingenuity of the human spirit whenever it was deprived of its basic human needs. The human being was a social animal that relied on the companionship of a partner to help him make it through the day. A few dollars had bought them a little comfort with no responsibility.

They discovered that Council Grove was founded only recently, in 1840, after its commissioners had negotiated a treaty with the Osage chiefs in 1825. Along the way, though, the cowhands happened to stumble upon a rocky cave that had been the dwelling place of a religious mystic from Italy. The local populace had referred to him as “Don Francisco,” perhaps because of the fact that he had been a Franciscan

friar. His pseudonym had been “Matteo Boccalini.”

Jacques Duval thought that perhaps it was a name contrived to shield his actual identity along his travels. He waited for the more experienced cowboy to continue.

“Those who really got to know him, called him ‘Giovanni Maria Augustini-Justiniani,’” Jean-Luc said at length. “He has been born in the Piedmont in northern Italy in 1801. Back home, he had become disheartened by some Jesuit priests, who had opposed his appointment as secretary to the Pope Pius VII. In America, he had wandered from one Indian tribe to the next, administering the sacraments to them and teaching them the gospel along the trail. Rumor held that he never ate anything but a few grains of dried corn and that he had a special talent for healing the sick and, perhaps, even raising the dead.

“The hermit had kept pretty much to himself, preferring the strength that comes from selfimposed solitude,” Jean-Luc continued. “He was pleasantly plump, despite the fact that no one ever saw him eat. He shunned companionship and his lifestyle was markedly different from that of the men who sought out human beauty at the local bordello. His