Sam Bass

by Bryan Woolley

  Dad Egan and Junius Peak considered our raid a personal insult.

  By the middle of the morning it was raining hard, but the rain couldn’t dampen our spirits. Sam and I were complete again, he astride The Denton Mare, and I with my books and instruments and vials and black coat tied behind me. We welcomed the rain. The water would wipe out our trail. We traveled fast, to cross as many creeks as we could before the water rose, and we saw no law that day.

  Next morning, we weren’t so lucky. We headed toward Cove Hollow and soon encountered Dad and two other riders. They gave chase, although they were outnumbered, and we ducked into the bottoms of the Elm Fork of the Trinity and lost them and switched back to Pilot Knob, where we bought some canned meat at a store. That was a mistake, I guess, for within an hour we spotted two posses on our trail. We gave them a run. Their mounts tired faster than ours, but the rain that had befriended us had gone, and our tracks were plain as painted signs on the soft earth behind us.

  Denton Creek was swollen with brown, rolling water, but Sam and Jenny didn’t hesitate. Sam pulled his rifle from the saddle boot and raised it high above his head, and the mare plunged into the stream, the rest of us behind them. The posses dismounted on the bank, dropped to their knees and fired, but none carried rifles, or were too excited to think of them, and we made the far bank and dashed into the woods.

  Wet to the skin and caked with mud, we pushed on to Hardy Troope’s store, not far from Davenport’s Mill. The others stood guard while Sam and I went in. The storekeeper was showing two women a bolt of cloth. Sam called to him, and he replied, “In a moment, sir.”

  Sam shouted, “I’m Sam Bass, and in a hurry! You wait on me, by God!”

  “Certainly, sir,” the man said. “Excuse me, ladies.”

  We bought some more canned meat and coffee and a coffeepot and headed southwestward toward Tarrant County, hoping to find a secluded place to rest our horses. But another small posse saw us and blazed away. We had a long start on them and shook loose, but I felt like a dog tormented by a million fleas. When full dark came we doubled back and headed for Denton County and Hickory Creek. Our horses lifted their legs as if they were lead, and we were damp and miserable and hungry. Yet I hoped for more rain, for our trail was plain behind us, and I knew Dad Egan wouldn’t give up this time. It was near midnight when we reached the familiar bottoms of Hickory Creek. Afraid to make a fire, we had no coffee and ate our canned meat cold and crawled into our damp and stinking blankets.

  “Why do you think they’re trying so hard, when they didn’t seem to care much before?” Henry asked.

  “Four reasons,” I said. “Money, money, money and Dad Egan. They think the railroads are going to win, and they don’t want to be on the losing side anymore.”

  It didn’t rain.

  A posse was trying to charge our camp, but was held back by the undergrowth. We grabbed our guns and fired a volley into the woods and received a sharp reply. Arkansas grabbed at his neck, but ran for his horse. Henry’s horse was tied on the other side of our campsite, and he started toward it, blood blossoming on his left sleeve. Seab, already mounted, yelled, “Grab on!” and Henry grasped his hand and swung up behind him. We broke onto the prairie and headed at a run toward a farmhouse a quarter of a mile away. A horse stood tied to the fence in front. The rest of us kept riding, but Seab reined in, and Henry jumped down and untied it. “I’m borrowing your pony for a while!” he shouted at two terrified boys on the steps. We cut northeastward, passed behind the farm, and then were safe in the timbers and swamps of the Elm Fork.

  The whole week was like that, a crazy, blind game in which we, our pursuers and Mother Nature all had our moves. We dashed about the points of the compass, with Denton as the center, holding nothing in our minds but safety. Rain would fall and wash away our tracks. We would lose the posse behind us only to pick up another when the rain would stop and leave our hoofprints branded in the prairie grass and the mud of the creek banks. We had no idea how many men were after us or what their strategy was, if they had one. We rode three days and nights without a wink of sleep, nourished only by what little food we could grab at country stores and eat in the saddle. We talked little, and when we did we whined.

  Arkansas had only been grazed in the neck, but Henry’s wound was more serious. The bullet had passed through the flesh of his upper arm, but had missed the bone. He was in pain and couldn’t use the arm well, but there was little I could do but keep the wound clean and bandaged. Playing fox in the woods had lost its charm for all of us.

  The people in the countryside, who had been friendly to us for so many months and had accepted Sam’s gold so willingly suddenly were hostile and frightened. Once after a heavy rain that we thought should protect us for a while, we stopped at the store in Bolivar, where we had traded many times, and Sam and I went inside. But the man stood motionless behind his counter. “Ain’t you going to wait on me?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t want to go to Tyler with the rest of your friends,” he said.

  Sam stared at him a moment, then began walking around the store picking up things and setting them on the counter in front of him. I stood in the middle of the store with my hand on my pistol butt, to make sure no hands disappeared under the counter. The man reached for nothing, not even a pencil to tally our bill. Sam laid a thousand rounds of ammunition in front of him, then a sack of flour, then several sacks of coffee and a stack of new, dry shirts and pantaloons. “How much?” he asked.

  The man didn’t move. “I ain’t selling you nothing,” he said.

  Sam pulled a pistol and cocked it and held it under the merchant’s nose. “Then I’m going to blow your head clean away,” he said.

  “Forty dollars.”

  Sam laid the money on the counter, and we picked up the supplies. “If any of them posses comes through, tell them to leave us alone,” he said. “I’m tired.”

  We rode into the woods and found enough dry wood to build a small fire and had our first coffee in days, and cold canned fruit with it. We changed into our new clothes and left our wet, mud-stained, blood-stained rags in a stinking pile on the creek bank and laid a rock on top as a kind of monument.

  “Why don’t we ride to Cove Hollow and get some sleep?” I asked.

  “Because that’s where they think we’re going,” Sam replied.

  I really had ceased to care. The thought of death as a long sleep had begun to hold a certain appeal. But we rode northward, out of the frying pan and into the fire.

  June 13, 1878. It’s a painful day to look back on. We were lounging in the brush on the bank of Salt Creek, trying to rest. I was lying on my back, my hat over my face. I was just beginning to doze when the shots and shouting came. I sprang up and fired my pistol before I even saw the huge party of men on the opposite bank. There must have been seventy or eighty of them. They were watering their horses when they noticed us, I guess, for all were dismounted, and several were lunging toward their saddles to get their rifles.

  Arkansas, who had lain beside me on the grass, jumped erect, then started to fall. Something wet hit my cheek, and I glanced down. A piece of bone lay at my feet, bits of skin and hair still clinging to it. Half of Arkansas’s face was gone. I was mesmerized by the awful sight, but Seab grabbed my arm. “Henry’s got the horses!” he said. “Let’s go!”

  I ran into the trees, then turned and fired again. The men across the creek were mounting and plunging their horses into the swollen stream. I ran again. Sam and Seab were ahead of me, and in the dark shadows I saw the horses. I stumbled and fell. I had tripped over the dead foreleg of the pony Henry took from the boys. Sam and Seab were grabbing at their reins, which were looped over the low branches of a tree. I grabbed my own and jumped for the stirrup. “Where’s Henry?” I cried.

  “I don’t know!” Sam replied.

  Sam urged Jenny through the thickest part of the undergrowth. Twigs and thorns tore at my arms and legs and face, and I plunged ahead in panic, my horse as desperate as
I. No gunfire sounded behind me, but I knew the posse was swimming the stream and would be on me soon. My back expected their bullets. Something did hit me, and I thought, Oh, my God, I’m dying, before I realized it was hailing. Hailstones the size of marbles pelted me and leaves and twigs fell around me. I prayed, actually prayed, that our hunters would drown.

  But there was shouting behind me now. Some of the riders had made it across the water. Sam must have heard them, too, for he cut toward the creek, and the mare plunged into it, and Seab and I followed. I thought we were doubling back across the creek, but Sam held Jenny near the bank and let her swim downstream, and we followed. I looked behind me and saw we were downstream from the posse, and a bend in the creek and the trees on the bank had put us out of sight of our hunters’ watering place. It was strange, lying on my horse’s neck, hearing nothing but the rush of the water, feeling nothing but its wet and the movement of the animal’s shoulders, as if trotting slowly, dreamily, with nothing for his hooves to touch.

  At a place where the bank was high and the stream had cut a cavelike depression into the earth, Sam headed for shore, and we followed. The cave was scarcely large enough to hold the three of us and our horses, but we huddled there, holding our hats over our beasts’ muzzles to muffle any signal they might nicker to the horses behind us. The earth above, held in place by dead and gnarled roots that hung around us like grotesque moss, gave us some shelter from the storm. But I knew that if any of our pursuers had remained on the other bank and decided to ride downstream, we would be visible to them and naked to their fire.

  We stood for what seemed hours, listening for sounds of men or animals amidst the thunder and the rushing water and the crash of hailstones into the woods above us. Before our itching eyes the grass on the opposite bank turned white, as if it had snowed, then green again as the hail stopped and the pelting rain melted the stones. I kept wanting to look at my watch, to guess how long we had been there, but I was afraid to risk its music. At dusk a man walked on foot down to the edge of the creek, about a hundred yards upstream. I dropped my hat and raised my rifle. “Shall I kill him?” I whispered.

  “Not unless he turns this way,” Sam replied.

  The man was tall and cradled a rifle in the crook of his elbow. I guessed from his bearing that he was a Ranger. He stood gazing at the opposite bank, then glanced upstream, then turned and disappeared. Sam sighed, and I lowered the rifle.

  We stood in that muddy depression until full dark, and then stood some more. But sometime during the endless night Sam whispered, “Let’s go,” and climbed onto Jenny and slipped quietly back into the water.

  Jim Murphy

  It was a hot afternoon, but cool in the shade. I was sitting in my rocking chair on the porch of my Cove Hollow place, and I seen them coming while they was still some ways off. When I first seen them they was so far away I couldn’t tell they was only three. Then they dipped below a little rise, and I didn’t see them at all for a while. When they topped the rise I seen they was only three, and I wondered why. They was coming real lazy, at a walk, and the tails of their horses was switching. It was only the fifteenth of June, but the flies was already bad. I knowed who they was. I mean, I knowed who one of them was, as soon as they topped that rise. I’d recognize the gait of that mare even if she was on the moon. When I seen they was only three, I stood up and squinted at them coming, trying to see who wasn’t there. I felt fluttery in my belly, and the closer they come, the worser the flutter got. I seen that Arkansas and Henry wasn’t there. Jackson and Barnes, they was there. And Sam, of course, on that mare.

  They was a mess. Their clothes was tore and covered with dry mud. Their horses was covered with mud, too, and all their rigging. Their faces was all scratched up, like they’d been in a fight with a wildcat or a woman. They pulled up by the fence and just set there, slumping in their saddles, looking at me. They looked older than I remembered them, and I never seen nobody tireder. They was a bunch of hard cases, all right.

  “Well, look what the cat drug in,” Sam said. His voice was thin and weak, like somebody that had been sick a long time.

  “You’re the ones the cat drug in,” I said. “I ain’t never seen a sorrier looking bunch.”

  They got down and tied their horses to the fence. They come up on the porch and flopped down against the wall. “Well, old fellow, how do you like the Tyler jail?” Sam asked.

  “Not at all.”

  “How’d you get out?”

  “Jumped bail.”

  “And your daddy?”

  “Him, too. We just hopped a train to Dallas and then hired us a buckboard and come home.”

  “Well, they’ll be after you,” Sam said.

  “Not for a while. It’s you they want.”

  Jackson and Barnes wasn’t saying nothing. They’d took off their hats and laid their heads against the wall. Their eyes was closed. I thought they was asleep.

  “Is Sarah Underwood still at your daddy’s place?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t know. I left him in Denton.”

  He peered off into the sun and didn’t say nothing else, so I said, “How about a drink of whiskey?”

  “Fine,” he said, still looking off in the distance. So I went in the house and got the jug and four glasses and brung them out. Barnes opened his eyes and said, “We don’t need no glasses.”

  “Well, it’s Sunday,” I said. “We might as well do it polite.” While I was pouring the whiskey I asked, kind of casual, “Where’s old Henry, anyways?”

  “Don’t know,” Sam said. “He left us.”

  “I ain’t seen him,” I said.

  Jackson opened his eyes and picked up the glass I’d set beside him and took a pull. We all was drinking for a while, not saying nothing, then I said, “Where’s Arkansas?”

  “Dead,” Sam said. “Salt Creek, two days ago. The day Henry left.”

  “Who done it?”

  “Rangers.”

  “Bastards,” I said.

  “That’s the truth,” Barnes said.

  Sam said, “So we need a good man, Jim. Why don’t you come with us now? We have lots of fun and plenty of money in our camp.”

  I could tell how much fun they’d been having, but I said, “I been thinking on that. But I been thinking on going back to Tyler and facing the music, too. They ain’t got nothing on me.”

  Sam laughed a bitter little laugh. “The hell they ain’t! You’re a friend of mine, and that’s all they care about. The best thing for you is to come with us and make some money.”

  “You the ones that cleaned me out?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I owe you,” Sam said. “We lost all your horses but that one Seab’s riding. Can you wait?”

  So I could tell how much money they’d been making, too. “No hurry,” I said.

  “How long you been back?” Jackson asked.

  “About two weeks. I camped down on Hickory for a long time, figuring I’d run into you.”

  “Surprised you didn’t,” Jackson said. “We been in and out of there.”

  “You been other places, too. I read in the paper you was way over in Stephens County.” “Yeah, we been everywhere.”

  “The papers has been raising hell with June Peak,” I said. “They say it’s time for you and him to fight.”

  They got a laugh out of that, and we passed the jug around again. “It may have been Peak that jumped us at Salt Creek,” Sam said.

  “Bad?” I asked.

  “They just got lucky,” Sam said. “You coming with us, Jim?”

  I rocked for some time and stayed quiet like I was thinking. Then I said, “I promised Daddy I’d help him thrash his wheat. If you can wait till I’m through, maybe I’ll go.”

  Sam stood up. “All right, we’ll wait. We need you in our business. Our horses could use a rest, anyways.”

  He went down the steps, and Jackson and Barnes dragged theirselves up and followed him. “We’ll be up the hollow,” Sam said.

  “I’ll be there
,” I said. The fluttery feeling was worser.

  Daddy’s cell was a ways down from mine, but I could hear him coughing. He coughed all day and all night, but it was worser at night. I thought he’d never stop, and prisoners would yell, “Shut up!” and “Cut that out!” Of course there wasn’t no way he could quit. I worried when he coughed, and I worried when he didn’t, afraid he was dead. “My daddy’s got the consumption,” I would tell the jailer. “He needs the sunshine.”

  “Well, Jim, this here’s a jail, not a sanitorium,” the jailer would say.

  “But he’s innocent,” I would say. “There ain’t no reason for him to be here.”

  “And are you innocent, too?” the jailer would say. “Yes,” I would say.

  The jailer would put his hand on his hip and look at me kind of disgusted and shake his head. “You know, Jim, this is the damndest jail,” he would say. “Every man in it’s innocent. How you reckon them Rangers keep on making so many mistakes?”

  It went like that for almost two weeks. Then one day June Peak come with the key in his hand. “Major Jones wants you,” he said, and he unlocked the door and taken me to a little office. Major Jones was setting behind the desk, but he got up and waved to a chair and said, “Set down, Jim.” I taken one chair, and June Peak taken another, and Major Jones set down again. I’d never laid eyes on him before. He was big, big as me. Heavy, you know. With a big brown mustache and little black eyes. “The jailer says you been raising hell about your daddy,” he said.

  “Daddy ain’t done nothing wrong,” I said. “He didn’t know what Sam Bass was doing. He’s a good man. Everybody in Denton will tell you that.”

  Major Jones smiled. “Don’t know nothing about nothing, eh?”

  “No.”

  “Do you?”

  “No.”

  Major Jones looked at June Peak, and they laughed. “He hid on your place,” Major Jones said. “He come and went at your house whenever he wanted to. You even got his supplies for him.”