Moses Amos Cohen

## Early Life

**Moses Amos Cohen**, was born in 1853 in the outskirts of Sacramento, California. Eldest son of Isaac Noah Cohen, a sunk pawnbroker from Indianapolis, and Hopoka K'esu, a Wappo basket weaver and herbalist from Napa Valley.

Cohen Residence, Sacramento California - 1842Older to two brothers and two sisters, Moses had learned early the responsibilities of adulthood. Moses' chores ranged from fetching water, cleaning and cooking to keeping the small lot of his family house safe from skunk and mice early on, and later on possum, squirrels, and the coyote that would come to eat them. During season where his mother would farm and till the land around their home, Moses would learn of and gather wild root and berry, and water crops both tend to them.

By the age of 13 and with the growing population of coyote in the area, Moses has joined the neighborhood watch; a group of children standing watch over their homes in the area, while their fathers went working. Through them, Moses has found his first interest and love of dogs as well as longstanding friendships with Charlie Fraser and Anand Raj, children of immigrants. With improvised bows and arrows, as well as other handcrafted weapons and traps, the three boys rid their homes of and even pushed plenty of coyote out. In doing this they have attracted other youth in the area, that would form to play out as the fantasy gangs of the old west. Unlike his friends, Moses did not grow taller over time, and this would cost him his honorable place at the lead of the watch, a constant scorn from the other kids, and no interest from the girls.

By 1868, the neighborhood watch has been recognized effective by the local law office and noted in praise in the local paper. This attention has drawn out several businesses to contact the boy's families in search of cheap fur and leather, and trouble for the boys themselves. Afterwards, Moses has been forbidden from participation and forced to work alongside his father in town.

Charlie, Moses, and Raj- 1871

## Adolescence

In 1860's post-rush Sacramento, Moses had seen the sorry state in which his father was. Indebted to the banks, the narrow room from which he ran his "pawn shop" and the constant threat of theft. Moses was tasked with watching the shop while customers were about. Never speaking, and never interrupting. His father was a hard and strict man that could never afford for him or his siblings education. However, being educated himself, he taught Moses reading and writing in both English and Hebrew with the plenty of maps, literature, and business catalogs that rested in the business.

To his father's distaste, Moses never took to numbers, and instead preferred to confront those customers who would make a scene for his father. (who much wanted a peaceful outcome in most occasions) He would find himself, too, replaced by his younger brothers when it came to his father's admiration. With this lack of attention, Moses was gradually left to his devices, and wandering off the shop became a usual habit for him.

By early 1873, Moses has become the 'Pawn Shop Boy', connecting and directing various hunters and trappers to their customers, and peddling maps and manuals taken from his father's shop to them. With his best friends at his side, the three slowly began mastering their newfound soliciting business, having a variety of goods pass through their hands, with some being less legal than the rest. These has set him and his father at a bad place, which only worsened once he managed $100 back home one day.

Diminishing his old man's effort in providing the family and trampling his ego did quick to win Moses a brief ticket out the door. But the young man went out to nature easily and came to meet with the same trappers he had done business with. In their company, Moses found no judgment as he did with his father or the youth of his neighbors. Instead, he was treated fairly despite his flaws and shortcomings and allowed to join the hunt itself. His mother secretly approved.

## The Mountain Man

Between 1873 and 1875, Moses spent more and more of his time among the company men and fur trappers that came by Sacramento and it's outskirts. He had learned plenty from their experiences and heard about the wide world from their stories. He participated in their trade and learned to hunt as the natives did, both wield a gun. His longtime friends quickly joined him and tried their luck, although by August of 1875, Charlie Fraser had left the trio going north to find his place in the army.

In the fall of 1876, both Moses and Raj decided to try their ply at trapping and leave Sacramento and the area for the Rockies, where they can make a living hunting and trapping. As independents, they held the absolute freedom of going where they pleased, seeing the land and the life in it for all it's glory and danger. But also to suffer great disparity at the hands of the Canadian trappers who would make their lives as hard as possible.

This hardship and consistent survival eventually broke the will of Anand Raj, who decided to part ways with Moses late 1880 and head east into greener pastures. The two would not meet for many years to come, and Moses would spend his days at the employment of small companies of fur trappers or under the employment of the dying Hudson Bay Company where it still held power. Traveling ever eastward, Moses traveled through much of central North America and has grown gradually disappointed with it's peoples and the technology they have been slowly coming to rely on.

Mountain Living - 1882

## Far Fetched

In September 1883, Moses have met with a traveling band of outlaws and hobos under the leadership of James "Feller" Andrews, a wanted man who robbed and prayed on bank coaches traveling west through the mountains. Having been offered a place to stay and live a simple life, he became the camp's choice call for food supply.

And through constant persuasion and nagging, both lack of better judgement, Moses would too participate in the craft of ambush and robbery of the armored cars when they came.

It was through this band that he had also come to meet with and love Tara Ling, the daughter of an immigrant Chinese family who fled her life of ethnic prosecution in the west. The two have formed a quiet strong love, and cared for many of the band's animals together. When pregnant with child, a special day was marked throughout the band and an informal union was conducted by the band's leader.

Unfortunately, merriment was only fleeting for both Tara and her chosen Moses. Such that their son was to be stillborn. Beyond this, the weathered man, who was now in his early thirties, knew only a slowly growing remorse and despair from his mountain wife. Until it was too much to bear. And by the spring of 1886, Tara had left the band without much candor. This had left Moses in ruins, allowing James to easily persuade him towards more illegal and more dangerous pursuits.

## Know Remorse

In the time to come, Moses had seen himself shooting less game and more servants of the government. Honing his skill at long range rifling, the man had watched his criminal accomplices from an array of vantage points. Seeking to find some reason for his misfortune with each pull of the trigger. Though none came besides that which was printed on paper. Moses has seen the band of fringe-folk he had met that September change into a band of thugs. He had seen the death of the man who convinced him his direction then in life, James Andrews, hang by the rope in the winter of December, 1894 at Bent's Fort, and his successors; Carolina Ruthford and Sam Parish, try to fill his shoes. But the band had withered by then, and so was his desire to partake.

Initially, at his inclination of departure, both Carolina (who was a hot tempered woman) and Sam had made clear to Moses his freedom and life had been viewed as a courtesy to the departed Andrews. That he was growing too old to do anything but shoot his old rifle from the trees. That he would know a good deal was to stay than to tempt them to come after him. It would not be enough. By some notion of information, the two green leaders of the troupe had decided a good idea was to rob the federal train as it moved westward across the Colorado portion of the Santa Fe R.R. And so, on the early morning of the following month, March 13th, 1895, as the train was coming down the railway and those "brothers and sisters" he had robbed and stole with were jumping aboard, springing the ambush, Moses did nothing.

He did nothing but watch. Nestled in well and far, it was for the first time he was truly grateful for technology, which had allowed him to observe in such a distance, and only thanks to a tube of steel and a pair of glass lenses. The men and women that had grown to be his strangers were shot down by the Gatling and those who survived were gunned down by those federal agents who remained. And when they had stopped to search the area, it was then that Moses came out of hiding, in the pretense of a mountain man who heard commotion.

Moses was arrested and charged as witness, his name was taken in record to the incident, but his involvement was not. His belongings were confiscated as evidence to what has occurred, but he was left unscathed. Dropped off at the nearest station, without anything left but the clothes on his body and his memory of distant love and a small grave in the mountains.

## An Addled Pauper

After that, there was nothing left. A life on the streets of different towns, saloons and their momentary reprieves. Loose women and troubled men. Gambling and debt, and a hundred punches. This short man had cared for none, and took them as they came. Caring less and less for himself in the eyes of others, and in his own eyes too. Over time he had grown to care for the dogs on his path, for they have never held an opinion of him. And soon he too would turn to live as they did, in the present and timeless. The winters came and went, his body started getting stiffer in the mornings, and sorer in the evenings. Moses ceased his search of his own benefit. Instead, he now turned to wait for his passing. As he did, he found passing his old friend: Anand Raj, who had in his mind to pursue a new place of opportunity called Saint Denis, in Lemoyne.

The two have traveled on, living as hobos among others like them who have lost their trade thanks to the advancement of industry, or have been running from the law someplace far, or those who simply had not found a fit in society. As they arrived into the county, Raj has decided to explore his fortune within the streets of Saint Denis, while Moses, who had a distaste for the noise and smog of factories and the overflowing populace, preferred to read out into the countryside and try his luck at the only thing he's ever known: Hunting.

## Old Man Moses

Now taking on to make a clean new slate for himself, the aged man is once again taking up honest work, in a world changed by industry and progress. In hopes of finding a place to make his home, finally.

New Hannover - 1899