He was stretched on my sheets. His soft, pale body was absolutely still, and our brief exertion hadn’t disturbed a hair of his oily, center-parted hair. But for his spent sex lolling against his thigh, you would have thought him dressed and relaxing in an office.
I didn’t reply. We hadn’t been talking about Sam.
“It’s a plot,” he said. “Against the North. The United States.” He smirked, but there was no humor in his eyes. “You Rebs never give up, do you? Bass is out there raising money for another try at us, isn’t he? And he’s not the only one.”
“That’s ridiculous!” I laughed, but he didn’t.
“The South is full of men like him. Texas is the worst. Nothing but thieves and brigands from Marse Robert’s ragtag mob, hating our guts and waiting for another try.”
I pictured him in some Chicago saloon, his feet crossed on the table, saying these things. “I was at Second Bull Run,” he said. “I’ve never forgiven them. I never will.”
I got out of bed and started dressing. “It may interest you to know that Sam Bass is a Yankee,” I said.
He cocked his eyebrow. “Oh? Where from?”
“Indiana.”
“There are many Copperheads in Indiana.” He swung his heavy legs out of the bed and reached for his underwear. “A Copperhead’s a Northerner who believes in your holy Southern cause,” he said. “In other words, a snake.”
“Sam’s too young to be a soldier or a Copperhead or anything else,” I said.
“You called him by his first name.” He was buttoning his collar in front of my mirror.
I felt myself blush. “I’ve heard a lot about him.”
He said nothing else until he was dressed and had laid his hand on the doorknob. Then he gave me the closest thing he had shown me to a smile. “Do you know what Southern women are?” he asked.
“What?”
“Whores.”
The man frightened me, and when the Herald said William Pinkerton, the great detective himself, had come to Texas to capture Sam, I was sure he was my customer with the oily hair and the heavy legs, and I worried that I had told him something important. I told Norene I wouldn’t entertain any more Pinker-tons. She was a little angry, for they paid well.
I don’t know why the Mesquite robbery upset Dallas so much more than the others. Sam got little out of it. Maybe it was all the gunplay and the wounding of the conductor. But Sam’s name was everywhere in the saloons, in the stores and hotels, the livery stables and the streets. The banks hired extra guards, for everybody believed Sam planned to dash into the city and strip us of our last dollar. The newspapers wrote of little else, sometimes spreading the wildest rumors and alarms, sometimes crowing that all the law and guns congregating in the city would bring poor Sam to a quick and bloody end. I figured they might be right. The vision of Joel dead on the Kansas plain with a love poem in his pocket haunted me, and it wasn’t hard to substitute Sam’s image for Joel’s in that scene.
Maybe Major Jones concluded that his Frontier Battalion regulars weren’t sufficient to do the job. Or maybe they refused to stoop to pursuit of a train robber. The governor commissioned Junius Peak as a second lieutenant in the Rangers and authorized him to recruit thirty men for a month’s service. Cowboys and buffalo hunters and even hotel clerks hurried to enlist, so they could brag forever that they had been Rangers.
I knew June Peak, though not professionally. He had just been elected city recorder, but his past was full of jobs not so meek. He had served in the war with both Morgan’s Raiders and Forrest’s cavalry and had been wounded twice at Chickamauga. He had been a deputy sheriff in Dallas, and later a city marshal. A few years back, he had been hired to wipe out a ring of cattle rustlers in New Mexico, and had done it. He had hunted the buffalo, too. His face wore a mild smile befitting a city recorder, but he was a dangerous man, and the bankers and merchants and newspapers were pleased with the governor’s choice.
A U.S. marshal and a federal district attorney arrived from Tyler and issued a warrant for Sam and Jackson and Barnes and Underwood for the Mesquite robbery. Dad Egan volunteered to serve it. And a Pinkerton was working as a bartender in the Wheeler Saloon in Denton. That I got from Callie, who hadn’t stopped entertaining Pinkertons. She liked them and called them “suave.”
One night there was a commotion outside Callie’s room, across the hall from mine. My customer covered his head with the sheet, and I opened my door a crack. June Peak himself was standing at Callie’s door with a gun in his hand, and two men with him. Norene was with them, too. She saw me and motioned behind her skirt for me to close my door. I did, but put my ear to the wood and listened. “Come out!” June Peak said.
Apparently the door opened, for I heard Callie say, “What is it?”
June Peak said, “We don’t want you, ma’am.” Then he said, “Is your name Scott Mayes?”
Some reply was mumbled, and June Peak said, “You’re under arrest for harboring Sam Bass. Get dressed and come.”
I learned later that Scott Mayes was one of Sam’s oldest friends. They had come to Denton together years ago. But he was no robber. June Peak was just rounding up everybody in Dallas who had ever known Sam. I was worried that it might happen to me, and I asked a lawyer friend if it was legal, and he said it was.
Every morning a bunch of June Peak’s greenhorn Rangers left their tents at the Fairgrounds and rode off toward Denton. And the two-bit officers and bounty hunters sat in the saloons and dreamed of their future wealth until they were drunk enough to mount up and try to beat the Rangers to their prey. Denton County must have been full of them.
What the Pinkertons were doing, besides screwing everyone in our house except me and Norene, God only knows.
The news that Union Pacific gold was circulating in Dallas alarmed me. Each time Sam had come to me he had left four or five of the 1877 double-eagles behind. I knew where he had got them, of course, and I had been careful about disposing of them. A friend of Norene’s named John McElroy ran a saloon not far from our house. Each time Sam left me, I sent Norene’s nigger Willie to McElroy with the gold, and he gave me silver for it. I warned Willie never to tell anyone about the gold, where he got it or what he did with it. To ensure his silence I always let him keep the shiniest silver dollar of the change he brought back. “If you tell, no more money,” I would say.
I never told McElroy the source of the gold, either. Not because I thought he might tell, for John McElroy was no friend of the law. I thought he would recognize the coins and cache them in a safe or strongbox. But the fool had banked them! And it suddenly occurred to me that if only John McElroy was depositing the double-eagles in the bank, and if he was getting them all from Willie, it wouldn’t take the detectives long to trace them straight to the top of my bureau.
I folded the newspaper and laid it on the table beside my rocking chair. Norene was playing the piano, and two Pinkertons, both a little drunk, stood at her shoulder, trying to sing the song she was playing. They were waiting for their turn upstairs, and one glanced at me, then whispered something to Norene. “She’s got the curse,” Norene said aloud, and he said, “Oh.”
I rocked and listened and worried. One of our new regular customers, a deputy sheriff from somewhere, stumbled down the stairs and tipped his hat to Norene and went out the door.
Beth came into the parlor and took one of the Pinkertons away. The other, who had the better voice, huddled with Norene, flipping through the songbook for a tune he liked. Willie appeared at the door and glanced at them, then at me. “Oh, there you is,” he said. He crooked his finger, and I followed him to the kitchen. “You got visituhs, Miz Maude,” he whispered, nodding toward the back door. “I knowed better’n to show dem in.”
I laid my hand on the doorknob and took a deep breath to slow the pounding of my heart. I opened the door only wide enough to slip through into the alley. Sam was in the shadows, just out of reach of the light from the kitchen window. Another man stood deeper in the shadows. Do
wn the alley, two horses stamped and snorted. I ran to him. He said, “What’s the matter?”
“The house is full of law. You can’t come in.”
“Can’t we sneak up the back?”
“No. Pinkertons are everywhere.”
The other man drew a pistol from his belt. Sam said, “This here’s Frank Jackson.”
Jackson, still in the shadows, tipped his hat and bowed slightly. “Howdy do, ma’am,” he said. His voice had a sad, musical quality. I stepped deeper into the shadows. Jackson took off his hat then and held it near his waist, over the hand with the gun. His hair was light and curly, his eyes so deep-set I couldn’t see them.
“So you’re Jackson.” I winked at him.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How old are you?”
“Not as old as I hope to be, ma’am.”
“You’d better take Sam away, then,” I said.
“I didn’t want him to come. That’s why I came with him.”
It took me an instant to catch his meaning. “How are things in Denton County?”
“Crowded, ma’am.” He still held his gun under his hat. I knew he was watching the window.
Sam put his arm around my waist and walked me proudly, slowly, toward the horses. Jackson stayed in the shadows, his gun under his hat. Sam stopped and kissed me. “I guess I won’t be seeing you for a while,” he said.
“No, Sam. Stay away.”
“I come to tell you about a proposition,” he said. “I have a plan. When this is over, I’m going down to New Orleans and buy me a boat and go into the hide business.”
“Yes, do that,” I said.
“I want you to come with me,” he said.
A shadow moved across the strip of light the kitchen lamp threw across the alley. Jackson moved his hat and cocked his pistol. The click was very loud. He glanced toward us.
“Will you?” Sam whispered.
“Yes! Now go!”
He kissed me quickly and motioned to Jackson. Frank sidled toward us, keeping his eyes and gun on the window. When he reached us, he uncocked the gun and returned it to his belt. He tipped his hat again. “Nice to meet you, ma’am,” he said, then swung into the saddle. He smiled down at me while Sam mounted. Sam gave me a little wave, and they walked their horses down the alley toward the lighted street. They turned into the light, and I held my breath, half expecting to hear gunfire, but there was none. I stayed in the alley for several minutes, listening. There was nothing.
In the kitchen I stood against the door, blinking against the light. Willie was sitting at the table, behind the lamp, his black face glistening. “You got anuthuh visituh, Miz Maude,” he said.
“Tell him I can’t see him. Tell him I’ve got the curse.”
“He say he jus’ want talk. He look mean.”
“All right, Willie.”
The Pinkerton who hated Southerners was standing by the parlor fireplace, his elbow on the mantel. He smirked when he saw me and extended his closed hand. As I approached, he slowly opened his fingers. A shiny 1877 double-eagle lay in his palm.
I smiled. “For me?” I said. After all, I am a whore.
Frank Jackson
The haul we got at Mesquite certainly wasn’t enough to convince me to stay with Sam and the bunch. It was clear that railroad robbery was going to take me no closer to the life I wanted than Ben’s shop would have, and Ben’s offer, or some other job in town, would at least have improved my odds for a long life. But no, I didn’t go back to Denton. Sometimes we make decisions that can’t be reversed. A man standing on the bank of a swift river can decide whether he will try to swim across or walk along the bank until he finds a bridge. He can turn one way and walk, and if he doesn’t like the scenery he can turn around and go the other. But if he decides to swim, he has to do whatever the stream makes him do to get to the other side. Once into the current, he can’t change his mind. He just fights like hell and takes his chances. With a little luck, he might make it. But only God knows what the bank will be like where he lands.
I took four buckshot out of Seab Barnes’ thighs, and by the time I knew for sure that his wounds were healing properly my chance to return to Denton was gone. If it had ever been there. When Sam handed me some newspaper clippings that Maude had given him and I saw that my name was on a federal warrant, I knew I was smack in the middle of the river, and way downstream from Ben and my sister and Dr. Ross. No matter how far they stretched, I was beyond their reach. And when I read the clippings to Sam, he said, “Well, pard, we’re all you got now,” and he was right.
We were lying under the trees on the ridge above our cabin. Below us in the clearing, Seab and Arkansas were dressing a deer that Arkansas had shot that morning farther up the hollow. The trees were in full leaf now, and our hideout seemed even more remote from the rest of the world than it had in winter. Sam had a pair of field glasses and was leaning on his elbows, watching some riders out on the prairie while I was reading to him. The riders looked like ants to me. “They’re Rangers, I think,” Sam said. “About thirty of them.”
We had spent most of our daylight hours for most of a week in this place, watching posses gallop around the fringes of our sanctuary. A couple of days before, Sam and Henry and I had watched two posses at the same time, one riding southward, the other northward. They spotted each other just north of the Clear Creek bottom, and each thinking the other was us, I guess, they opened fire. A member of the southbound posse grabbed his arm, and Henry said, “They winged the son of a bitch! The bastards are going to kill each other off.”
And we heard gunfire another time, apparently in the bottom, for we could see no riders. The shots echoed up the hollow, but they were so far away that we knew they weren’t fired at us. “Posse work sure is dangerous,” Sam said.
So we weren’t worried. The riders that Sam thought were Rangers were so small and silent and seemed to move so slowly across the greening prairie that they were of another world, as distant as the moon from Sam and me on the ridge and Seab and Arkansas and the dead deer. Seab and Arkansas were cutting the skin away from the carcass, their knives working quickly, an inch or two at a time. Then Arkansas grabbed the big flap of skin that they had cut away and yanked downward. The skin peeled away with a ripping sound loud enough for me to hear. Henry was moving down the slope from the cabin. When he stepped into the clearing the sun was brilliant on his red underwear. He had surprised us and washed his clothes in the creek the day before. The Rangers on the prairie meant nothing to us.
The bullet hit the rock near my shoulder and zinged off into the sky. It hadn’t come from the Rangers. I rolled onto my back, levering a cartridge into my rifle as I went. I fired blindly, before I even saw the riders on the ridge across the hollow. Sam fired, too, and we wriggled on our bellies down the slope to thicker cover. Sam fired again. The riders were dismounting, crouching, running, seeking cover. “It’s old Dad,” Sam said.
They were about two hundred yards away, and out of sight now. A buzzard, stirred from his roost by the gunfire, was circling. Our clearing was empty, except for the naked deer hanging in the shade. I could see no one. Sam fired again, blindly. “Hey, Dad! This is Honest Eph! Come fight me!” His high voice echoed through the hollow. A volley of rifle fire crashed over our heads, sending shreds of leaves down upon us.
“They see us,” I said.
“No. They’re shooting at the sound.”
“Stop yelling, then.”
Another volley cracked, and leaves and twigs fell to the right of me. Henry dropped with a grunt behind a tree not far away. “You all right?” I asked.
“Yeah. How many is there?”
“About a dozen, I think. Where are Seab and Arkansas?” “Below us a ways.”
“Hey, Dad! Why ain’t you out grubbing brush?” Sam hollered. The posse replied with another volley, closer this time. “Woo! They’re laying down the lead!” Henry said. “Sam, shut up!” I said.
“Hey, Dad!” Then bullets sliced all a
round us. I buried my face in the dry leaves and heard a slug thump into my tree. “Oh God, they hit me!” Sam groaned. I crawled to him, but found no blood. Beside him, his Winchester was a wreck. “A bullet hit the stock,” I said.
“I can’t feel nothing in my arm.”
“You’re all right. I wonder what those Rangers are doing.”
“Rangers?” Henry asked.
“About thirty of them, north of here.”
“Oh God!” Henry said.
We lay squinting across the hollow, watching for targets and finding none. I wished Sam hadn’t left the field glasses on the ridge. Dad’s men must have been wondering where we were, too, for there were no more shots. I guessed they were near the ridge, above the limestone bluff that rose above the trees across the chasm from us.
“It’s a cinch they ain’t going to ride down from there,” Sam said. “And if they tried it on foot, we’d pick them off.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Henry said.
“Hey, Dad! We’re going home!” Sam hollered. “Go learn your brush-grubbers how to shoot!” “Damn it, shut up!” I said.
No shots came. We lay there for some time, but none came, and we saw nothing. “Reckon they’re gone?” Henry said.
“Maybe,” Sam said. “Wouldn’t old Dad get a kick, thinking I spent the night up here on my belly?”
“I’m staying on my belly till I get to that cabin,” Henry said.
We all did. We wriggled through the woods. Rocks and sticks poked us in the guts. We slid right onto the stone ledge where the cabin stood. Seab and Arkansas were sitting by the door with their rifles across their laps. Seab grinned. “Hey, Arkansas, did you ever see three snakes crawl out of the woods at the same time?”
“Never did. Reckon we ought to pop their heads?” “Naw,” Seab said. “These ain’t poison.”
Sam Bass Page 12
