by Judy Alter
Sundance, Butch and Me
Real Women of the American West
Book Two
by
Judy Alter
Award-winning Author
SUNDANCE BUTCH & ME
Reviews and Accolades
"...meticulously researched... a skillful first-person narrative."
~Publishers Weekly
~
"...a realistic portrayal of historic events that touches the imagination and stirs the spirit."
~The Literary Times
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ISBN: 978-1-61417-226-0
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Thank You.
For my brother John, who, like me, left behind a Chicago childhood to live in the American West and fall in love with its spirit, its life, and its history.
Chapter 1
No one knows where I came from—some say Wyoming, but most think it's Texas. I used to hear rumors that I was a teacher, even a Sunday school teacher, or that I was the runaway daughter of a rich cattle baron. Some say I died last year, struck by an automobile in El Paso. Others still believe I died in that hail of gunfire in Bolivia, when Butch and Sundance were supposed to have been killed. I once heard that I died of appendicitis in a Denver hospital. But none of it is true. I am here in Fort Worth, Texas, living as Eunice Gray and running the Waco Hotel. Still, everyone remembers Etta Place... and whispers follow me to this day.
Just yesterday I met that talkative cattle buyer, Luke Moriarity, on the street. He had with him his son, a child of five or six perhaps—who am I to judge the age of children?—and he poked and prodded the child to speak politely to me. Finally the little one said, "Good morning, Mrs. Gray," and I smiled and said, "Good morning."
But Moriarity must believe deafness comes with age, for as I turned away I clearly heard him tell the child, "Always remember, son, that you've said good morning to Etta Place."
"Who's that?" the boy asked.
"Never mind," replied his father. "Someday I'll tell you the story."
Well, I don't want to wait for someday. I want to tell the story now, tell that I didn't die in El Paso or Bolivia or Denver, tell that I was believed to be Mrs. Harry Longabaugh and still have the wedding photograph to prove it. And perhaps most of all I want to tell where I came from and what happened that could make me live outside the law. To my mind, loving a man isn't enough reason for some of the things that I did when I was young and wild.
* * *
I wasn't always called Etta Place. Fact is, I was born Martha Baird in a dogtrot cabin near Ben Wheeler in East Texas. How I came to be called Etta Place comes later, but my story really begins in that cabin in 1891.
Ben Wheeler wasn't in the Piney Woods where those tall trees give a sort of grace to the land and deep lakes make you know Texas has some pretty parts. No, our trees were a tangle of cedar and oak and hackberry, so thick that clearing the land to plow was a chore for any man and more than my father wanted to take on. It was a land of certain weather—certain to be unbearably hot and muggy in the summer, certain to be bitter and cold in the winter, and you could count on torrential rains in the spring and fall.
Ben Wheeler was a strange name for a town, but Mama told me the town changed its name—who knows what it was before?—after the Civil War, in honor of a postman who refused to carry the mail for the Confederacy.
Ephraim Baird, my father, had come to Texas from Kentucky long after what he called the War of Northern Aggression. He wasn't any happier with the Confederacy than Ben Wheeler had been. Though he was a man more given to laziness than anger, he was bitter about being driven from his home by the war. Of course, Pa was just a boy when the war was over, so it wasn't as though he was directly driven from his home, like so many who boarded up their houses and wrote "GTT" for "gone to Texas." It was just, he said, that a man couldn't make a living back there in Kentucky. I never understood why he complained so about East Texas, since life back home in Kentucky was no more than a shack in the mountains from all I heard, a shack not much better than what we had in Texas.
Of course, he didn't make a good living in Texas, either. Pa grew corn and sorghum on our little patch of East Texas, but he was as likely to spend the day fishing or hunting as he was working his crops. Then he'd send me out to pull the weeds, muttering about a girl having to earn her keep.
When he wasn't fishing or hunting, Pa was often in the saloon at Ben Wheeler. It wasn't much of a town—a general store, a livery stable, a Methodist church, a saloon, and perhaps ten houses, all looking as hastily built as ours. Mama had heard that the town was about to build a schoolhouse and hire a teacher, but Pa said it would only cost money and she could go on schooling us. "Don't take much schooling nohow," he scoffed. Since we didn't go to church or school, I knew no one in town except the Newsomes, who ran the store. To most of the town, I was simply "that Baird girl."
In the saloon a man could sit and talk about the indignities of life, about how by God no one was going to push him around. And others who had come to Texas from Kentucky and Tennessee would pound their fists on the table and agree with him. Pa would come home in what Ma called "a mood."
"A man oughta be able to grow a crop," he'd growl, sitting at our rickety, homemade table and drinking from the bottle of whiskey on which he'd spent what little cash he had. "It ain't right, I tell you!" His fist would rise in the air, then fall hard on the table, and we children—my little brother Ab and I—would scamper to the far corner of the room in fright. Mama just went about her cooking, trying to ignore him, but I could always see a trace of fear in her eyes.
The next mutter was liable to be "If I didn't have you'uns to take care of..." The threat would drift off, and I would wonder secretly what life would be like without Pa. By the time I was ten I was firmly convinced we would be better off, and I prayed for something to happen to him. The Lord, I reasoned, would forgive me. He knew what Pa was like.
The dogtrot we lived in stood a bit askew. Like everything else he did, Pa built it with little effort and less care. On either side of that central breezeway or dogtrot was a room of medium size, with space for one window cut out in each wall. There was no glass in the windows, and the only way to see out or let fresh air in was to go outside and lift up the heavy wooden shutter. Winter winds whistled through the cracks in the walls, and spring rains leaked through the roof so that Mama forever had to put buckets all around, even on the open dogtrot itself. And Pa had bui
lt in a low place, so that when it came a heavy rain the ground around became a lake. Once I remember the water edged up onto the floor of the dogtrot, and Mama stuffed sheets in the doorways to keep it from seeping inside.
Pa provided us with the essentials—a tin plate and cup for each of us, an iron pot for Mama to cook in, and a big pot for washing, which was done out of doors. Mama had a spider, that funny skillet that sat on three legs, that she used to make hot-water corn bread, and a gridiron, and once, as a great treat, Pa had brought her a coffeepot. Beyond that our provisions consisted of sugar, dried beans, rice, salt, and, when it wasn't too dear, coffee. Sometimes we had cornbread, sorghum, and milk for breakfast, dinner, and supper, and Mama counted us lucky that Pa hadn't sold the milk cow. We ate wild greens and, when Pa's aim was true and steady, fried rabbit or squirrel stew. But Pa would only hunt rabbit in months that had the letter R in them, a bit of Kentucky superstition to which he clung.
Mama was a puzzle to me... or maybe it was Pa—certainly, it was how the two went together. Where Pa was loud, sometimes profane, and not given to thinking much, Mama was quiet, soft-spoken, and always a little afraid of Pa. Not that she hadn't good reason. When he'd been too long in town and come home to find his supper cold, Pa had been known to take his anger out on her. More than once she kept her head turned from me, trying to hide the red print of a hand across her cheek.
One particular time stands out yet in my mind, maybe because it eventually had something to do with the direction of my life. A traveler had come to the cabin, late on a stormy night, lost and hungry. Pa was in town, but Mama had done what hospitality dictates—she welcomed him, fed him, and offered him the dogtrot as a place to sleep, whispering to me that Ab and I would sleep in the kitchen with the door closed. While the visitor ate corn bread and fried rabbit—Pa had some luck the day before—he told us he was headed for San Antonio, what he called the Queen City of Texas. As he raved on about the city, streets of brick turned to gold in my mind, and I saw San Antonio as the most wonderful place ever. It was instantly the center of my dreams.
When Pa came home from town, unsteady on his feet, he tripped, literally tripped, over this stranger on his floor. At first, frightened, he let out a yowl. Then his fear turned to anger, which vented itself in profane hollering. I lay silently on my pallet and held out a hand to reassure Ab. The next morning, both Pa and the stranger were gone, and Mama wore a scarf pinned awkwardly around her neck. Her voice was hoarse, and she spoke little to us, but when the scarf momentarily slipped, I saw angry red fingerprints around her throat. San Antonio, like all dreams, was maybe not worth the price paid.
Where Pa had no schooling, Mama had an education. She spoke perfect English and insisted that Ab and I also did, and she taught us our lessons. By the time I was ten, I had a good understanding of mathematics and could write handsomely. Of literature, I knew only what she told us, for the Bible was the only book we had. Pa used it to frighten us, citing a vengeful God. Mama, though, told us about a loving and forgiving Lord, and I chose to believe her.
Mama was pale and fair and had probably once been pretty, though now she was just tired, with dark circles under her eyes and that haunted, scared look in them that I recognized even as a child. I marveled at the rosy color of her cheeks, but that was a childish misunderstanding—I didn't know Mama had consumption. Her name was Elizabeth, but Pa always called her "Lizzie," and I fancied she shied just a little every time he said it.
"Lizzie, you'll have to milk the cow. I done hurt my back," and he'd plop himself down on the cornshuck bed, moaning in misery, though to my mind he didn't look one bit miserable.
Or maybe he'd say, "Lizzie, this ain't fit to eat. Why can't you put a decent meal on the table?"
And she, pale and obedient, would apologize, when I wanted to shout, "If you'd provide better staples, Mama could put a better meal on the table!"
I asked Mama boldly one time why she had married Pa. She raised her chin in the air and stared out the doorway of the room that served as kitchen and living quarters. "The war..." she said vaguely. "I had no one to take care of me. It was time to get married." I wanted to suggest she might have done better taking care of herself than she had counting on Pa to do the job, but I kept my tongue.
This unlikely couple had produced the two of us. Even as a youngster, I knew just exactly how they had produced us, too. Summer nights Ab and I slept outside on the dogtrot to catch whatever breeze might stir through the mugginess, but in winter we slept on pallets before the cast-iron Franklin stove. If there was any warmth left in the day's fire, we'd get it. No matter the season, Mama and Pa slept in the room across the dogtrot, but on all but the coldest nights, the doors to the rooms stood open. Thus they had a certain visual privacy... but I could hear clearly. What I heard was Pa grunting like a wild hog does when it's rooting, small sounds that build to one long, louder one, and then within minutes the sound of his snoring. Mama never made a sound.
* * *
While I, with what I considered misfortune, favored Pa with his dark hair, Ab took after Mama, right down to the paleness and the rosy cheeks. Pa was hard on Ab, even when he was five or six years old. "Boy's got to learn to take it," he'd thunder. "Nothing in his life is easy." He'd send poor Ab out in a thunderstorm to check the milk cow, with Mama warning, "He'll catch his death of cold," and he'd send him out at midday in the midst of summer to gather kindling for fuel for the outdoor fire over which Mama cooked in the hottest months, even though she would protest, "I have plenty, Ephraim. It can wait till the evening cools some."
"It'll toughen him," Pa said, and brooked no argument.
Ab never seemed to get any tougher. If anything, he grew weaker, more afraid of Pa, more anxious to please. By the time he was eight, it was obvious, even to me, that everything was hard for him. I'd do his chores when Pa wasn't watching, and I'd look out for him as best I could, but I couldn't protect him every minute. When Pa took the belt to Ab's legs, I could only watch, shaking with fury. "Where are you, O Just Lord?" I wanted to cry out.
When I was fifteen and Ab nine, he didn't get up one winter morning.
"Get him outta bed," Pa said. "Gets movin' around, he'll be all right. You're babyin' that boy, not doin' him any favors."
"He's burning with fever and barely conscious," Mama answered, her eyes filled with tears. "I doubt he'll last the day."
Pa just scoffed and stomped off into the woods, calling to me to check the cow, gather twigs, tend the stove, and clean the cabin—my chores and Ab's, which I did willingly all the time anyway.
Mama sat by Ab's bed all day, some of the time with her head bent over to rest on his small chest, as though she could not get close enough to him.
"Can I go for the doctor?" I asked, desperate to be of help and to stave off what seemed an inevitable tragedy marching toward us.
"There's no doctor can do him any good now," she said softly, and I detected resignation in her tone.
"I don't care. I'll go for Doc Mason in Ben Wheeler," I protested. "He's a doctor. He can do something!" My tone rose in desperation.
She reached a hand for mine. "No, Martha, the doctor would not do anything I'm not doing. You stay with me. I need you."
And that filled me with pride... and a certain measure of acceptance. "Can I bring you something, Mama?" I must have asked that question twenty times that day.
Once she said, "Some fresh water, as cool as you can get it, for his head."
Pa, with the help of some of his friends from the saloon, had dug a well not far from the house. The water was a little brackish but the best we could do. One of my earliest lessons was that it was easier to carry two buckets of water—one in each hand—than to try to balance one. This day I ran to the well and hauled furiously on the buckets until I had two half full of water. Then I walked carefully without spilling a precious drop.
"Thank you, Martha," Mama said, rising to put her arm around me briefly. "This will ease him some."
Ab didn't se
em to be in any pain. Indeed, he was asleep most of the time. Sometimes Mama could spoon a little broth into his mouth. She'd killed a chicken and stewed it, once Pa was safely out of sight, and I was hoping he'd be too drunk to count the chickens when he came home.
"Mama, drink some of the broth yourself," I said, handing her a cup.
She nodded absently and took a few sips, but soon the cup was put aside, her hands busy stroking Ab's head.
Toward evening he opened his eyes and said softly, "Mama?"
"Yes, Ab, I'm right here."
"Good," he murmured. Then a deep sigh, and he closed his eyes again.
Mama began to sob ever so quietly, still clutching his hand in both of her own.
"Mama?"
"He's gone," she whispered, "gone to the angels."
Mama sat there a while longer, and then, businesslike, she rose. "We must dress him," she said, and we put on one of his better white cotton shirts, a pair of coveralls, and the scuffed boots that were almost too small for him. "Can't have him going to heaven barefoot," she told me, with a slight smile.
"Pa did this," I said angrily.
"No, Martha, Ab had the consumption. I knew all along we could not keep him forever. Your father had nothing to do with it."
But in my heart I knew better. If Pa hadn't been so hard on Ab, if he hadn't tried to "toughen" him, I'd still have had a brother.
Pa came home late, noisily, but I pretended to be asleep on my pallet. I heard Mama talking to him in low tones and heard him say with the most grace he could muster, "Sorry about the boy, Lizzie."
Within minutes, the grunting started. Nothing, apparently, not even death, deterred Pa. I hoped the Lord was listening.
Next day Pa took some used boards, with which he always intended to build a barn—or so he said—and fashioned a coffin. It was rudely put together, but I think he tried. He grunted and sweated but managed to dig a small grave at the edge of the clearing that held our cabin, and then he went to Ben Wheeler to bring back the Methodist preacher. Mama and I sat silently by that small coffin. There was nothing more for either of us to say.
