Red Lands Outlaw: the Ballad of Henry Starr

by Phil Truman

  In the last years of the tough and woolly land called Indian Territory, and the first of the new state of Oklahoma, the outlaw Henry Starr rides roughshod through the midst of it. A native son of “The Nations” he’s more Scotch-Irish than Cherokee, but is scorned by both. He never really wanted to journey west of the law, yet fate seems to insist. He’s falsely accused and arrested for horse-thieving at age sixteen, then sentenced to hang at nineteen by Judge Isaac Parker for the dubious killing of a deputy U.S. marshal, but he escapes the gallows on a technicality. Given that opportunity, the charming, handsome, mild-mannered Henry Starr spends the rest of his life becoming the most prolific bank robber the West has ever known.

  “Author Phil Truman captured a slice of Indian Territory history and has woven it into an interesting period novel. Anyone who loves the history of the West will enjoy Red Lands Outlaw: the Ballad of Henry Starr.” -- Tammy Hinton, author and winner of the Will Rogers Medallion Award for Unbridled

  “Red Lands Outlaw: The Ballad of Henry Starr is a well-conceived yarn about one of the last of Oklahoma’s horseback-riding outlaws. A good read.” -- Dusty Richards, a Spur and Wrangler Award winning author

  Red Lands Outlaw

  The Ballad of Henry Starr

  Phil Truman

  Roots & Branches

  Denton, Texas

  Roots & Branches

  An imprint of AWOC.COM Publishing

  P.O. Box 2819

  Denton, TX 76202

  ©2012 by Phil Truman

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  ISBN: 978-1-62016-012-1

  Visit the author’s website and blog at:

  http://philtrumanink.com/

  http://philtruman.blogspot.com/

  Author’s Note

  This book is largely a work of fiction. It’s termed a historical novel, because it’s set in the turn of the 20th Century land known as the Indian Territory and young state of Oklahoma. Henry Starr actually lived and breathed as a son of those places and times. He was a Cherokee, a cowboy, a fugitive, a lover, a husband, a father, a movie star, a thief, and a notorious outlaw. Most of the events in this story happened on a macro level—the armed robberies, the wanderings, the prison stays, the movie-making, some of the relationships. All the details in between, and many of the characters—or, at least, their conversations—I made up. For example, I don’t know if Henry ever met and dined in the Star House with the great Comanche leader Quanah Parker, but it’s not out of the realm of possibilities. They were contemporaries in the same land, and it suited my theme to have them encounter one another and interact. And respected non-fiction writing historians corroborate that the famous lawman Bill Tilghman had dealings with our hero. He also made a silent movie about some of the law-breakers with whom he dealt. So there you go.

  I felt, and still do feel, Henry Starr was kind of a poetic figure, a tragi-comedic man, stranded between two worlds and left there as an anachronism.

  Phil Truman

  March, 2012

  To my brothers and sisters, in the order of their appearance: Patricia Joyce, Donald Lavelle, Gary Duane, Lynn Michele

  Chapter One

  Late Winter 1915

  Northeastern Oklahoma

  As usual, Henry didn’t have a clue; only a bold idea.

  “Now… why you wanting to do this, Henry?” Lige Higgins asked him.

  “Because it ain’t never been done, Lige.”

  “Way I hear it, it has,” Bud Maxfield said. He paused to lean leftward and spit out a stream of tobacco juice toward a spittoon nestled in the saloon floor sawdust. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, then passed that residue onto the right leg of his jeans before he continued. “Old Bob Dalton and his boys tried it up in Coffeyville back in ’92, only it didn’t work out so well for them.”

  “How’s that?” Lige asked. He looked anxiously to Bud, then Henry. Twenty-year-old Lige’s birth had come three years past 1892.

  “Him and two of his brothers and a couple others got shot through the head,” Bud said. “Town knew what they was gonna do, and ambushed ’em before they could get out.” He leaned left and punctuated the end of his story with another brown spit.

  “Like I say,” Henry said. He paused to reach forward, scooping in the two cards he had asked the dealer to send his way. He held a pair of eights with the ace of spades kicker, and when he inserted the drawn cards into the middle of the others splayed in his hand, he saw he had gotten the ace of clubs and the jack of hearts. That gave him two pair, aces and eights, all black… dead man’s hand. Henry raised his right eyebrow slightly, and then finished his sentence to Lige Higgins and the rest of the group gathered around the table. “It ain’t been done,” he said.

  “Still, it don’t make no sense to me.” Higgins persisted, “Why you want to rob two banks at the same time, Henry?”

  Henry sighed, and grabbed a blue chip from his stash. “Because that’s where they keep the money, Lige,” he told him. Henry tossed the chip onto the pot.

  “Bet a dollar,” he said.

  * * *

  The gang of men rode up to a stream two miles east of the town of Stroud, and stopped to let the horses drink. Henry stood in his stirrups and looked around. He knew the spot, because he had located it back in February when he first came to Stroud to check out the banks. “Let’s camp here,” he said to the group.

  The swarming sky had the color of a gun barrel, and a thick, cold wind stabbed forcefully out of the northwest, cutting through their clothing like a blade of ice and trying to yank their hats from their heads. Lige Higgins didn’t seem happy about their situation. He didn’t much like camping out in the cold, and Henry hadn’t convinced him a simultaneous double bank hold-up was such a good idea.

  Henry and Lewis Estes rode off early the next morning to check things out one final time. Henry had already cased the banks several months back, but he said he wanted to make sure no added lawmen had showed up. As they rode, Henry got a germ of an idea. He thought it’d be sorta funny if he stopped by the post office there in Stroud to mail postcards to the banks letting them know in advance they were going to be robbed. He decided it was a good idea, but they probably wouldn’t be delivered in time. It was typical of Henry Starr—more audacity than good sense.

  * * *

  When they arrived at the stockyards in Stroud, Bud Maxfield stayed with the horses, as planned, while the rest of the men split into two groups, and walked to their respective target banks a couple blocks away. Bud was the oldest member of the gang, an odd choice for lookout. He could not see nor hear all that well. On the other hand, Henry had thought Old Bud might be more of a liability if a shootout should occur. It was six of one and half a dozen of the other.

  Starr led one group; Lewis Estes, the other. Once they reached their objectives on Main Street, a block apart, Starr signaled Estes and the others. They all entered the banks at the same time.

  Inside the Stroud State Bank, Starr pulled a scatter gun from under his long coat, leveled it to a spot between the one teller on duty, a customer at that window, and a wool-suited rotund fellow sitting at a desk to his left, behind a waist-high oak railing. Henry said in a calm voice, “This here’s a hold-up. I’d be obliged if you’d hand over your cash drawer to my friends here, and open that safe.”

  The teller took a step back and put his hands above his head. The bank customer did the same, backi
ng toward the side wall of the lobby. The man at the desk stood up halfway, raising both his arms, too. Lige Higgins and Claude Sawyer, Starr’s two cohorts, stood apart on either side of Henry, their pistols drawn.

  “Come on, now,” Henry said, waving his shotgun back and forth between the teller and the bank officer, but without animosity to any of the three fear-frozen men. “Just do as I say, and won’t nobody get hurt here.”

  “I’m Henry Starr,” he added, as if having his victims know this would reassure and calm them. In all his robberies, he had never shot anybody.

  The teller moved to his drawer and quickly started emptying cash into the bag Lige Higgins held open through the window. Henry swung the barrel of the shotgun from the suited man to the safe door in a motion to indicate the man should open it.

  The bank officer, sweat appearing on his bald head, started to speak, hesitated, then tried again. “Uh, I’m afraid I can’t open the safe, Mr. Starr.”

  “Beg pardon?” Henry asked with a little irritation in his voice.

  “It’s time-locked. I can’t open it ’til this afternoon at closing time,” the man explained.

  Henry stared hard at the man for several seconds and then sighed before he spoke again. “What’s your name, mister?” he asked.

  “It’s Patrick, Samuel Patrick,” the man responded still holding his hands above his head. “I’m, uh, the vice president of this bank.”

  “Well, Sam, let me tell you something. I ain’t never shot a man during all my bank robbering, but there’s always a first time. So, unless you want your widow to read in tomorrow’s paper about your head being blowed off, I suggest you get on to opening that safe.” Henry cocked one of the hammers back on his shotgun, pointed it at the man’s jaw, and smiled at him.

  Patrick paled and dropped his hands onto his desktop. “Mr. Starr, believe me I don’t want to die, but there ain’t nothing I can do. That safe and its time lock are designed for… situations just like this. We open it first thing in the morning to get out our operating cash, and then again at the end of the day to put everything away. There’s just no way I can get around it… until four this afternoon.”

  “Stupid banker’s hours,” Clyde Sawyer offered.

  Henry rubbed his chin with his left hand. He looked over at the safe door, then back at Patrick. Still keeping the shotgun trained on the banker, he walked over to the safe door and looked it over, squinting at the time mechanisms protruding from it. He tried the handle and pulled on it to no avail. “Well, hell,” he said.

  “How much cash you got in that bag, Lige?” Henry asked.

  Higgins looked inside the bag. “It ain’t all that much, Henry. No more ’n ’bout five ’r six hunnert I’d say.”

  Henry turned again to Patrick and pointed the cocked shotgun at the bankers chin. “Is there more ‘operating cash’ out here somewheres?”

  “You got all the bills. There’s some coins sacked up under the counter,” the teller said.

  “Pull ’em out,” Henry ordered.

  The teller did as told, placing two bags onto the counter with a heavy clunk, then did the same with two more bags. Lige tied two of the bags together and slung them over his shoulder. Henry grabbed the other two with his free hand, but one slipped out of his grip and crashed to the floor, splitting open and spilling its contents of quarters.

  “Well, hell,” Henry said. He tossed the other bag to Sawyer.

  The bank door creaked open causing Lige and Sawyer to swing their pistols in that direction. A small girl in a bonnet and a wool coat walked in. She looked over the scene but didn’t say anything.

  “Get that door,” Henry said with some vexation. Sawyer leapt over and slammed it behind the girl causing her to jump and move further into the bank. Her eyes spread wide with surprise, but she didn’t look scared, only perplexed. She appeared to be about eight or nine.

  “Why’d you come in here?” Starr asked her in a gruff voice.

  Then the girl started to look frightened, tears forming in her eyes. Startled at his tone, she said with a sniff, “Looking for my daddy.”

  “Is one of these men your daddy?” Henry asked. He softened his voice a bit.

  The girl shook her head negatively, then started sucking in air for sobs.

  Henry walked over and knelt in front of her. “Now hold on, darlin’,” he said in as kindly a voice as he could. “There ain’t no need to cry. Ain’t nobody going to hurt you. What’s your name?”

  “Lorrie,” she said with a quiver in her voice. She sniffed again, but didn’t stop her crying.

  “Well, look here, Lorrie. Me and these other men are going to leave by that side door over there. Now what I’d like for you to do is sit right here in this chair,” he guided her to a captain’s chair against the far wall. “You can do that, can’t you, Lorrie?”

  The girl nodded, her crying then reduced to just sniffling.

  “That’s a good girl. Now I want you to stay sitting right here until your daddy comes to get you. Okay? Don’t go outside, no matter what you hear. Can you do that for me, Lorrie?”

  The girl looked up at Henry and gave him a small nod, brushing her tears away with the back of her hand. Henry smiled warmly at her and patted her on the shoulder. Then he turned to the others.

  “Sawyer, you and Lige hang on to them bags of money. Let’s go out that alley door with these fellas in front of us in case there’s anybody waiting.”

  They all moved to the door, the robbers behind the other three men, their guns stuck to their hostages’ backs. Just before Henry exited the door, as the last to leave the bank, he stopped and said to the others, “Hold on, a minute.”

  He went back to where the bag of quarters had spilled onto the floor, and stooped to gather up a handful of coins. He walked over to where little Lorrie still sat obediently.

  “Hold out your hands, Lorrie,” he said. When she complied he dropped the quarters into them. “Tell your daddy you met Henry Starr today. Tell him I wanted you to have these.”

  Lorrie looked at the quarters overflowing her held-together palms, then up at Henry. She smiled, nodded, and sniffed.

  Henry rejoined the group waiting outside the side door of the bank. “Let’s move on out to the street so’s Estes can see us,” he said, and the group pushed the trio of hostages before them. Once there, Henry waved his free hand above his head in a pre-arranged signal, and shortly thereafter the other group emerged from the First National Bank with their own collection of captives. Both groups started heading back to where old Bud Maxfield waited with their horses at the stock pens.

  Shouting began to rise on the street as citizens began to recognize what was going on. A gun shot popped some fifty yards to the Starr group’s left front, and a wad of mud exploded from the street a yard in front of banker Patrick’s feet. Another shot sounded to their right, the bullet piercing one of the bags of coins Lige had slung over his shoulder. Dimes began streaming from it like a cascading flow of water. Claude Sawyer and Lige fired their pistols in the general direction from whence the shots had come. Another gunshot exploded from somewhere behind them, the bullet almost immediately snapping over their heads. The hostage who’d been the bank customer bolted from the group, and ran flat out toward the store front to his right.

  “Hey!” Sawyer yelled, and fired a shot into the air. “Get back here!”

  The man didn’t even slow down, crashing through the store’s door and disappearing from sight. Sawyer moved next to Lige to share the latter’s shield of the bank teller.

  Henry, using Mr. Patrick as his screen, turned in circles to discourage the increasing gunfire coming in around him. Sawyer and Lige began to fire indiscriminately up and down the street, as did those in Estes’s group as they made their way closer to their horses.

  There came a boom, and a big chunk of wood blew away in splinters from a corner post on a building just in front of Henry and Patrick. Starr spun himself and Patrick toward the sound. A man wearing a vested suit and derb
y hat, carrying a double-barreled shotgun, stood at the corner of a building directly to Henry’s front. Starr caught a glimpse of a tin badge pinned on the man’s vest. Henry pushed Patrick aside, knocking him down, and said, “Look out, Sam, I believe that man means to shoot us.” Patrick took that as his cue and scurried away on all fours.

  The lawman raised the shotgun again and pulled a trigger, but the hammer only clicked against the firing pad. Henry aimed his Peacemaker at the man and fired back. The bullet zinged across the man’s wool vest, leaving a six-inch smoking track there, continuing on to blow a quarter sized hole through the back of his coat. The lawman leapt back behind the building. Henry threw his head back and laughed. By that time Lige, Sawyer, and the bank teller had advanced to the corner leading to the stock yard, and their getaway, well ahead of Henry.

  Across the street to Henry’s left, and slightly behind him, a rifle shot cracked and almost simultaneously a blow, something like a mule kick, hit him in the butt and sent him sprawling sideways. On the ground, Starr found himself stunned and unable to move his legs. He tried to rise at the waist to fire back at his assailant, but when he looked up, a tall skinny adolescent stood over him pointing a short barrel .22 rifle at his nose.

  “Drop that pistol, mister!” the kid said to him.

  Henry started to bring his pistol around to bear, but stopped. He held it pointed at the sky three feet to the boy’s left. He looked quizzically at the teen and said, “Why, hell, you’re just a boy.”

  “That don’t mean I won’t shoot your ass,” the kid said.

  Henry grinned, laughed, then winced. “Hell, son,” he said. “I believe you already done that. ’Sides, that ain’t where you got that hog shooter pointed.”

  “I said drop it!” the kid repeated.

  Henry threw his pistol away and let his head fall back onto the street. “I believe you’ve crippled me, boy. I can’t get up.”