Hell's Half-Acre

by Nicholas Nicastro

  “Their first victim was a minister of the cloth, picked right off his milking stool. They went on, house to house, demanding the male members of each family come out and face justice. When the fathers and brothers came out, they shot them through the head. If they didn’t come out, the bushwhackers broke in, fetched them, and shot them through the head. Some of the young ones they shot while still in their mothers’ arms. They shot another man while he was holding an infant daughter. They saved ammunition by having their victims stand back-­to-­back, shooting through the forehead of one and out the forehead of the other. Some, they just kicked over and over, knowing from experience that there’s only so much kicking a skull can take. In four hours they killed near two hundred men and boys. After, there were deep red puddles in the mud of Massachusetts Street, like it had rained blood.

  “I came to Lawrence that morning to buy oats and coffee. When the shooting started, the shopkeeper ran out of the general store. He left me and another customer—­a boy no older than thirteen—­hiding out in the storeroom. We listened to them shooting ­people for more than two hours. We heard the women and children screaming, and the bushwhackers laughing, enjoying how the victims begged for their lives. I heard of a young wife who pleaded with Quantrill to spare her husband, a man she claimed had proslavery sympathies and had no use for Jim Lane and his jayhawkers. To that, Quantrill promised he, personally, would not harm a hair on the man’s head. Then he walked away and let one of his lieutenants blow the man’s brains all over his wife’s dress.

  “Soon they came into the general store, looking for men in hiding. I heard them ransacking the stock—­men with Missouri accents, others from Kentucky and Tennessee and Texas. They broke glass display cases. They busted open the storeroom door, though it wasn’t locked. Then they started going through the boxes, looking for loot.

  “I was sure I was about to buy a bullet; I wasn’t sure what the boy hiding in the room with me felt, but I could guess. They were coming closer. I was armed with an old Colt that was good for only four shots. It was enough to take a few with me, if was lucky. But I just wasn’t one for futile gestures.

  “I could see where the boy was hiding behind a cask about ten feet away. Slipping a spare bullet from my belt, I tossed it at him, letting it skip along the boards in his direction. The bushwhackers heard the noise, followed it, and found the boy. Without so much as a single question, the leader took out his gun, cocked it, and shot him between the eyes.

  “They left the body where it lay. Thinking the room was cleared, they never looked for anyone else. I stayed in that spot for two more hours as the boy’s blood pumped out of him, covering the floor. I can tell you exactly when his heart stopped, to the very second: it was when the flow became a slow leak, like a pot of ink dumped on a blotter. It took longer than you’d think, considering how piecemeal his head was.

  “Half a day after they came, Quantrill’s gang withdrew. They left all of Massachusetts Street in flames, except for a saloon—­and the general store I was hiding in. Turns out Jim Lane got away, running half naked through a cornfield. And I came through without a scratch. I came out to join the survivors as they stood on the street, too struck with their survival to do more than stare at the fires. My knees were bull’s-­eyes of gore, from crouching in the puddle of blood of that boy. The boy I’d deliberately given up to save myself.

  “I’ve never told anyone else that story, not even my wife. What I did, I’ve had to live with for ten years. I’ve had to live with it, explain it to myself, try and fail to come to terms with it. Sometimes, when I dream, I still see the boy’s face—­though I can barely remember the faces of old friends I rode and fought with. I have no doubt his will be the face I see when I close my eyes for the last time. And the shame I’ll feel for the rest of my days, at what I did.”

  After being still for the duration of his story, Leroy sat up straight.

  “Sheep among the flock, you say? That’s the man you’ve playing at love with. And that’s who I am to judge you.”

  When he came out, the Pinkerton asked, “You get what you came for?”

  “I might ask that of you.”

  McDonnaugh raised an eyebrow.

  “Better tell your employer,” Leroy continued, “whatever you stole from that girl is owed the families of the dead men. Every penny will be accounted for.”

  “What makes you think anything was taken? The word of a murderer?”

  “Why not? She’s been more cooperative to this investigation than you.”

  The Pinkerton fetched up the kind of easy smile brawlers do at the prospect of a fine, clarifying fight.

  “That’s enough, boys,” said Parsons, interposing. “This ain’t the way.”

  There was a surprise waiting for Leroy at the telegraph office: an answer from George Majors. The posse turned out not to be far away at all, having paused to rest and resupply at Junction City. Majors wired back: “Will make the fifty miles by tomorrow P.M.” Majors, of course, would not give a fig for whatever letter Captain McDonnaugh waved about. Backed up by the judge of the relevant jurisdiction, Leroy was sure they would have no trouble taking custody of the suspect from the Pinkerton.

  “Just to see the look on that dandy’s face will be satisfaction enough,” Parsons said.

  “We may never get to see it if he catches the first train out tomorrow.”

  “That’s what I got deputies for,” the other replied with a wink.

  That night, thanks to the sheriff, Leroy slept for free in the finest room in the Pacific House. The room was finer and grander than his bedroom at home, but its size only made him feel the absence of Mary Ann more keenly. Nor did he sleep much, with the face of that dead boy in the storeroom in Lawrence refreshed in his mind. Lying awake, staring at the plaster medallion on the ceiling, he regretted he disliked gambling. Poker players always had an alternative to suffering through insomnia.

  In case McDonnaugh tried to slip the prisoner out of town early, Parsons had his deputies posted at the courthouse and the train station. The Pinkerton wasn’t on the first train east, nor on the second, around ten. By early afternoon they had watched seven trains come and go, without McDonnaugh showing his face.

  The Harmony Grove posse pulled up in front of the jail shortly before 5:00 P.M. Leroy was glad to see them, but tension hung heavy on the reunion. George Majors seemed unable to look at him without showing disapproval. Acidly, he remarked, “Good to catch up with you, Leroy. Though you might have told us you planning to strike it freelance . . .”

  Leroy caught the eyes of all the riders in turn—­Billy Toles, looking exhausted but also excited; Moneyhon, who was standing up in his stirrups, looking for a saloon; Silas Toles, whom Leroy didn’t know very well, looking back with faint curiosity. No doubt they all had heard his disagreement with Majors over what do to about Biyu. Nor would it have taken a genius to figure out where he had gone.

  “Did you happen on those two skeezicks on your way, Morris and Crane?” Leroy asked.

  “We most certainly did. They seemed mighty chaffed when we found ’em. Seems they was robbed of certain of their property, including a girl and a horse.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “It is indeed.”

  “If it’s all the same to you two pards,” said the sheriff, “I think it might be time to head to the courthouse.”

  “You don’t need to ask me twice,” replied Leroy, and shot George Majors a look that said, I may have struck it freelance, but it was me who found her.

  THEY RODE LINE-­ABREAST to the courthouse, forcing other traffic aside as they blocked the street. Tying up, they gathered in silence and seriousness, as if they were about to hang Kate Bender, not take custody of her. Parsons and George Majors engaged in a subtle struggle to march at the head of the party, walking fast but not fast enough to seem eager for the distinction. Parsons managed to be first through the d
oor and first up the stairs. For his part, Leroy Dick thought he had as good a claim on the lead as anybody, but had no taste for petty jockeying.

  Bringing up the rear, Leroy was last to see that the office where McDonnaugh had kept his prisoner was empty.

  Parsons circled the room like a lunging horse, as if he could conjure up the two by wearing a circle in the floor. Majors crossed his arms, pushed his hat up on his head and guffawed.

  “Seems the she-­wolf grew wings!”

  “Never figured you for the spiteful type, George,” said Leroy.

  “They ain’t gone yet,” growled the sheriff, and shoved the others aside as he went out.

  They rushed to the train station, where Parsons’s deputy—­a slight, pin-­striped banker type whose badge seemed too big for him—­was posted.

  “How long you been here?”

  “Going on three hours,” said the deputy.

  “And you’re sure the Pinkerton and the girl didn’t come through?”

  “I’m not much for shootin’ and ridin’, Luke, but I can keep my eyes open.”

  Still not satisfied, Parsons interrogated the ticket agent. The latter had been at his desk since eight in the morning, but he’d seen no one resembling the description of the dandified McDonnaugh and Kate.

  Parsons had one more stop to make. He had a man outside the livery too, who had likewise seen nothing. But the man in the barn had indeed met a silver-­haired man—­not that morning, but the previous evening, before Parsons had posted his watch. McDonnaugh had retrieved his own horse and purchased one other. In fact, he bought the very same chestnut mare Leroy had sold after bringing in Biyu.

  “Well, they’re somewhere out there, and they got a day’s head start,” said George. He indicated the prairie beyond the town limits with the resignation of a man referring to the contents of a sunken ship.

  “We know they’re headed to Topeka,” Leroy began. “If we don’t stop—­”

  “He’s not likely to take a direct line. If you know where to start, I’m glad to hear it,” replied Parsons. In a gesture that signaled his defeat, he removed his hat and laid it at his side.

  Chapter Twenty-­Eight

  Saline

  What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

  —­Attributed to Chief Crowfoot, Siksika First Nation (Canada)

  Also quoted by Perry Edward Smith, multiple murderer, in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood

  MAY 7

  THE FIRST DAY out of Salina they struck northwest along the course of the Saline River, following Indian trails where possible, deer trails when necessary. The Pinkerton’s head was covered by a hat with a brim the diameter of a barrel lid, shielding him from the elements and covering his telltale silver locks from distant observers. Its gray color made Kate wonder if she was wrong about his captaincy. It might have been earned after all, and not necessarily in the army that won the war.

  “You ride in ser­vice of old Jeff Davis?” she asked him, by way of conversation.

  “Shut up.”

  “Not hard to feature why you wouldn’t want to advertise that fact. The Pinks weren’t precisely friends of the Confederacy, is my understanding. Not that anyone would who signed your commission, with so many cheats and frauds around . . .”

  No answer. Observing the sun for a moment, she remarked, “I suppose you know we’re headed west, away from Topeka.”

  “Will you shut up?” he repeated, steering his horse closer to hers. “Or do I need to gag you?”

  Under ordinary conditions, conversation would help keep her warm as the clouds massed and the wind picked up before the rainstorm. Before they left Salina he had put a cattleman’s duster around her shoulders that protected her from the dust but held little heat. The intention, she gathered, was much like the hat he wore: to obscure her figure from a distance. Warm or not, she sank her head into the canvas as far as she could as the shadows deepened and the trail stretched for mile upon dreary mile before them. In short, though she preferred to talk, conditions were not ordinary.

  The clouds soon opened, casting down heavy drops that slapped the ground. The storm became a deluge, obscuring the atmosphere like a fog, turning the wool traveling bonnet on her head to a supine, sluglike thing. She went on like this for some time, drenched, until McDonnaugh looked back through the plunging sheets and took pity. Coming up beside her, he gave her his hat and donned his usual one. Her bonnet he crumpled and stuffed in his coat pocket.

  They trudged onward for several hours more as the storm climaxed, then moderated into a steady downpour. Her horse ambled with eyes half closed, ears folded back to keep the water out. Fatigue made Kate slump and struggle to keep her sidesaddle position. She wanted to excoriate McDonnaugh for rushing her out of town, for disposing of all her clothes to “save weight.” But she didn’t, for he would only tell her to shut up, and possibly stuff a handkerchief in her mouth.

  Late in the afternoon the sun ducked beneath the layer of cloud and shone through the drizzle with a brief, golden radiance. By some obscure process of decision-­making, the Pinkerton elected to take them under some trees by the river and camp for the evening. He helped her down from her mount with unwonted—­likely habitual—­courtesy, but ignored her thereafter as he hobbled the horses and laid out his bedroll in the only dry spot. He did not gather kindling.

  “Are we to have a fire? My clothes are wet.”

  “There’ll be no fire.”

  “I’ll have to lay them out.”

  “Suit yourself. But keep in mind that if I shoot you for running off, I still get paid.”

  So much for courtesy. She proceeded through the bushes, to the riverbank and disrobed. There was no doubt that he was watching. She thought, in a merely theoretical way, that she might turn this exposure to her advantage, to use his desire to put him off his guard. As she stepped out of her petticoats, she was tempted not to stop at her chemise—­which was dry—­but to offer herself naked to him. After all, wasn’t that what a true she-­wolf would do?

  Alas, although she saw the use in it, she couldn’t play that kind of temptress. It had too much of an odor of Almira about it, the crude stripping and posing, as she had seen her do a thousand times for her johns in the work camps. The memory filled her with a disgust that banished all capacity for deception.

  She returned with a blanket around her shoulders. McDonnaugh, who was sitting with a hand mirror and some scissors, looked at her and fetched up a grunt. “Thought you’d try to use your cunny to beguile me. It wouldn’t have mattered, I’m almost disappointed you didn’t try.”

  “You’ve got the gun. Do your worst.”

  “I decline. You’re not to my taste with them small titties. And the murderin’ and all.”

  He went back to his mirror, angling the sun’s last rays as he trimmed his moustache. She watched him at this for a while, then closed her eyes and began to shiver. This gradually became more violent until spasms coursed through her body. Her teeth chattered. The sound drew the attention of the Pinkerton, who put down his mirror and watched, bemused.

  “If you’re trying to tell me you’re cold, I got another blanket.”

  She opened her eyes. Still shaking, she raised her arm, and with a crooked finger pointing, rasped, “You will die ugly. I foresee it.”

  He shrugged. “If I die, I die. But I won’t leave an ugly corpse. And why don’t you tell me this, Professor Kate: if you can truly see the future, how is it you didn’t see me coming to get you on that train?”

  “The gift is not given to serve us. We are given to serve it.”

  “Seems to me your time of ser­vice is almost done.”

  Overnight, the temperature dropped to near freezing. Sometime after they retired—­it co
uld have been thirty minutes, or three hours—­a half-­moon rose. In its weak light she slipped out of her bedroll and went to the bushes to pee. When she came back she could see the glint of the captain’s open eyes as he waited for her to come back. His held his pistol cocked on his chest.

  After an exhausting sleep, Kate was back on her horse with her dress still half wet. At least the sun was shining, driving away the mists from the hollows as it mounted higher and hotter. Cursed by awareness, she filled the empty hours with pointless observations—­the color of a mantis perched on a stalk, so vivid green it almost glowed, and the number of objects made by the hand of man that floated on the Saline. She noted an old fence post and a cracker tin like the one Almira kept their stash. The money, she was reminded, that had disappeared when the Pinkerton yanked up her skirts to search for a weapon. At either act, assaulting a woman or stealing her money, he showed no particular pleasure. She found herself thinking fondly of John Junior’s good-­natured simplicity. Junior, who still had his share, and was probably five hundred miles away. Who was sorry now, she thought, that she had left him behind?

  “I’m hungry,” she declared.

  He reached into his pack and came out with a round, flesh-­colored object. When she reached for it, he withheld it until he could say, “Odd that you didn’t foresee eating this stale biscuit!”

  Whatever warmth the sun cast by day was gone by sundown. The cold, her damp clothes, and the hunger began to tell on Kate’s body. It started with a headache that engirded the base of her skull, squeezing it until she felt as if her brains were leaking down her neck. Her shoulders began to ache and a sweat stood on her brow that never seemed to dry no matter how often she wiped it with her sleeve. When the wind blew across her face, she became conscious of the fever, rising in intensity until her head seemed to blaze. The hopelessness of it all—­the knowledge that she faced not only a long trail but a noose at the end of it—­affected her like some poison she had swallowed, making her decline steeper.