The Branch and the Scaffold

by The Branch

  Nearing sundown, a wagon with a canvas cover hobbled in, creaking and clucking, and a woman in a bonnet and long dress stepped down from the driver’s seat and stretched her back. Heck knew Edith Doolin by sight. She went into the store, leaving the horse in the care of a man who came out carrying a feed bag. He stroked the animal’s neck and strapped on the bag, making no move to release the animal from its traces.

  “They ain’t stopping here.” Rufe Cannon turned his head and spat a brown stream onto the ground.

  Heck took back the glasses, looked, then gave them to Albert. He traded his Winchester for Cannon’s eight-gauge shotgun and told him to work his way down behind the house. “Shout out after me,” he said. “Don’t make a sound till then.”

  Heck Thomas’ report of what followed read like a story a man told the first time he told it, without colorful detail or interesting asides, and never took on any of those things all the times he told it afterward. With the moon shining bright and just off the full, Bill Doolin emerged from the shed, leading his horse with the reins wrapped loosely around his wrist and his Winchester held in front of him in both hands, ready for use. Later the manhunters learned that the people who’d been spying on Mrs. Doolin had been unsubtle and he was prepared for ambush. It was Bill for sure, skinny as a withered rail and favoring his left leg, which poor Lafe Shadley had broken when he’d shot Doolin’s horse out from under him in Ingalls, and for which he’d given his own life in return.

  Heck waited until Doolin was halfway between the shed and the road, then rose with the moon in front of him and behind the bandit. Albert rose with him. Heck shouted for Doolin to surrender. Rufe Cannon echoed the words from behind Doolin.

  The man with the horse fired from reflex. Heck heard the bullet chug into the ground in front of him. He swung the heavy shotgun to his shoulder, but he was unfamiliar with the weapon and fumbled at the hammers. Doolin fired again. By then Cannon and Albert had him in their crossfire and his second shot went wide. Heck’s palm found the hammers and raked them back. Doolin’s carbine sprang from his hands as if yanked by a wire; one of Cannon’s slugs had struck it. The bandit scooped a pistol from his belt. The others claimed later he squeezed the trigger, but Heck had no recollection of hearing the report or seeing the flash. The shotgun bellowed, punishing his shoulder.

  “. . . the fight was over,” Heck concluded.

  That was his account, the one that was accepted in Guthrie and by Judge Parker in Fort Smith, and he never wandered from it, not even when he was an old man and reporters and historians pressed him for a version with more color and closer risk. Another version, suggested first in Lawton near the scene of the shooting, spread rapidly through the Nations, carried in gusty whispers like an off-color joke, but found no life beyond the borders of Oklahoma until it stumbled into print in 1920, thirteen years after statehood and eight years after Heck’s death at age sixty-six. It went like this:

  When Heck got tired of waiting for Doolin to show himself, he posted his companions on lookout and went down to knock on Ellsworth’s front door. At length it opened; he pushed his way through the store to the living quarters in back, swept past Edith Doolin when she tried to block his path, and found Bill lying stripped to the waist on a mattress stained black with sweat and hemorrhage. The desperado’s arms were spread, his head was tipped back with the mouth open in mid-gasp and the eyes fixed on the ceiling. Heck felt for a pulse in his throat, which was still warm and moist to the touch. He took his hand away after a minute. Doolin’s consumption had stalked him to his end.

  Moments later, a shotgun blast rocked the house.

  When the body reached the undertaker’s parlor in Guthrie (the same one where Charley Pierce and Bitter Creek Newcomb had lain), Dr. Smith, summoned from the jail to conduct the postmortem examination for the record, counted twenty-one shotgun slugs in the chest and abdomen.

  “Not much blood,” he said.

  “A scattergun don’t give you much time to bleed,” said Heck.

  “Still.” But Smith signed the death certificate.

  The same photographer who had made immortal the remains of Pierce and Newcomb arrived with his box and tripod and case of glass plates. He had Doolin tilted forward on the wicker preparation table and struck his likeness, turkey-necked with his beard black as soot, with the round punctures vivid on his naked torso. At Edith’s request he took another in a display coffin with the corpse fully dressed in his Sunday suit of clothes. She had no other photos of him for the family album. Bill had avoided flash pans throughout his career.

  People streamed in from Kansas and east Texas and from as far away as Doolin’s birthplace in Johnson County, Arkansas, to file past the bier where the King of the Oklahoma Outlaws lay in state. His hair was combed, his beard trimmed, and a small piece of gutta-percha had been inserted beneath his upper lip to give him a hint of a smile, as if he were dreaming of easy banks and slow-moving trains. A bouquet of blue lupine, handpicked by Edith, stood in a pot on a metal stand. Beside the registration book lay a wooden strongbox with a slot cut in the top for coins and banknotes to be deposited for the widow and Doolin’s small son; it was said Mrs. Doolin had spent her last penny on the funeral arrangements. Heck Thomas, who had shared with his posse a reward in the amount of $1,435 offered by Wells, Fargo, the Missouri State Legislature, and various citizens’ groups for Bill Doolin’s death, never responded to the rumor that half his cut wound up in the box at Doolin’s services.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “Where’s papers?” Cherokee Bill asked.

  Ike Rogers, turning from the door to follow Bill’s swinging stride through his front parlor, hesitated; as always, his visitor bore with him a brimstone stench of burnt wood, leather, horse, and spent powder. He carried his Winchester in one hand and slung his bedroll into an upholstered chair with the other. Snow slid from it, thawing on contact with the red velvet seat and staining it as dark as ink. “What papers are those?” Rogers said.

  “Newspapers, what you think? I ain’t seen one in a month.”

  “I used them to start a fire.”

  Bill bit back a curse. Rogers had family in the house and he considered himself a gentleman bandit. “The marshals got the telegraph to tell them what I’m about. What’ve I got to tell me what they’re about, except the papers? You knew I was coming. You sent word.”

  “I guess there’s some in the outhouse.”

  Bill went out through the back. When he didn’t return in two minutes, Rogers figured he’d stopped to take a shit. He wasn’t fooled by any excuse Cherokee Bill might offer about his interest in the press; he just wanted to see if he was mentioned. Right now there would be three or four cheap novels with his name on the covers rolled up in his blanket and slicker.

  Sitting on the icy seat with his trousers down and his flap unbuttoned, his breath curling, Bill slid his finger down the smudged columns smelling of mildew. There was a stack of them on the floor for a man to wipe his ass with when the corncobs in the bushel basket ran out. The basket was empty, and Rogers seemed to be partial to front pages. He looked in vain for his name. He read that Bill Doolin was in custody in Guthrie. With Jim Cook on the run and Bill Cook on his way from New Mexico to Fort Smith in shackles, he’d hoped to join up with that bunch, but not if Doolin was absent. The great Ned Christie was dead; Henry Starr, the latest road agent to bear that celebrated surname, had been taken in Colorado. It was up to Cherokee Bill to keep the war going against order in the Indian Nations.

  It was the central tragedy of Crawford Goldsby’s life that he’d been born too late to “ride the high country” during the Golden Age of frontier banditry. He’d been just seven months old when the Jameses and Youngers were shot to pieces by squareheads in Minnesota, by which time old Wild Bill, who for all his service to the law and the Yankee army had tinkered his share with the life of the road agent, had been dead barely a month, slain in cowardly fashion from behind. Give him just ten years and Crawford would have prevented Bob Ford fro
m killing Jesse in that same yellow mode, or at least avenged him face up, with both of them armed and a bullet in Ford’s black heart when he wavered, as cowards did without fail, and another in his white liver to show the world his intention.

  Concealing himself from his father’s wrath, behind the barn with wick turned low and his face two inches from the rough sawtooth page, young Crawford had read of these atrocities in Beadle’s Dime Library and fantasized about “calling out” the brutal old man who had sired him, “throwing down” on him with the “hogleg” he wore high on his hip, and blasting him into hell; after which he would go “on the scout,” separating high-interest banks and arrogant railroad barons from their soiled coin and distributing it among their victims, or failing that into his own pockets and saddle pouches and living the “high life” in saloons and “dance-halls,” where beautiful women in brief costumes admired his straight legs and square jaw and told him of the men who had “ruined” them (he knew not just how, only that the act was disgraceful and its effects permanent), whereupon he sought the blackguards out and deprived them of their lives. There was usually profit involved; invariably the men were thieves who lived in close proximity to their “ill-gotten booty,” and didn’t it say somewhere in Scripture that robbing a thief was no sin? If it didn’t, it should have.

  The early move from Texas to Fort Gibson, on the western boundary of the Cherokee Nation, had made a showdown with his father unnecessary; but it had exposed him to the truth of his Native blood and opened his ears, at the impressionable age of ten, to whispers of Ned Christie’s war against the United States. When the marshals set fire to his cabin in Rabbit Trap Canyon and shot out Ned’s eye, the boy had transferred his hatred to Fort Smith, and longed to join Christie in his new fortress, defying the government in Washington with his private army and vast arsenal; when after seven triumphant years Christie fell and his body was dragged to the federal courthouse for exhibit, Crawford asked his acquaintances to address him as Cherokee Bill and laid an elaborate plan to assassinate Judge Isaac Charles Parker. The thing seemed easy enough; it was said that in his arrogance the old murderer paraded up and down Garrison Avenue with neither weapons nor bodyguard, in full view of God and the Devil, openly inviting disaster. The bullet that sent him to hell would assure immortality to the man who fired it. Why no one else had thought of it was one of those mysteries that alienated generations.

  He came across a social piece about Parker uniting a young couple in “wedded bliss,” and considered the ease in which a personable young man dressed for the occasion might produce a short-barreled Colt from a shoulder rig beneath his swallowtail coat and unite the man holding the Bible with the men he had sent to the scaffold. What a reunion that would make in the pits of Hades.

  But business had become too confining for all that. (He had read The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid, attributed to Bonney’s slayer, Sheriff Pat F. Garrett, and consigned to memory the Kid’s response to Garrett’s call for surrender: “Can’t do it, Pat. Business is too confining,” and yearned for the day when he could make it his own.) Bill had slain a man at a dance over some little thing, and “lit a shuck” toward the outlaw life with the Cooks, as stupid a pair of brothers as had ever taken to the outlaw trail, although he’d admired the viciousness of their dedication. Notoriety had followed hard, depriving him of the anonymity necessary to stalk the streets of Fort Smith unnoticed. And so he’d taken his vengeance by proxy, preying upon the institutions the carpetbagger in the courthouse held dear. The situation carried its compensations, right enough; every ounce of gold diverted from Parker’s salary spent sweetly in the brothels of the city that had sprung up around McAlester’s store, where Bill experienced at firsthand the results of the “ruination” he’d read about, to his immediate satisfaction, and with each double eagle he spent toward his education scored deeper his contempt for organized society. Compromise signaled manhood as much as pubic hair and the muscles that spread a man’s shoulders and strengthened his resolve. Let Parker hand down his decisions and wait timidly for confirmation on high. In the Nations the name Cherokee Bill, with weapon in hand, carried certain death, with no appeal between it and the Prince of Darkness. He saw himself the judge’s dark twin.

  “I thought you fell in,” said Ike Rogers, when Bill reappeared in the parlor.

  “Where’s Maggie?”

  “She’ll be here directly. Her people have her on a close halter.”

  Maggie Glass had aroused the bandit’s interest. A handsome combination of Negro and Cherokee, she was the sixteen-year-old daughter of Christian folk who placed little faith in the men who came to their door requesting her company. Ike, who was a quarter white, was a cousin who enjoyed their trust, and therefore the opportunity to open his home to rendezvous between her and Cherokee Bill. (Bill had first heard the term from Maggie, who read novels dolloped heavily with passages in French; he liked the sound, which if you broke it into thirds came out like Cherokee.) The bandit supposed he’d ruined the girl, although she didn’t seem to hold the fact against him.

  Bill appeared to consider what Rogers had said. He still had on his deerskin coat and flat-brimmed hat and was holding his Winchester. At that moment Rogers’ wife, a full-blood Cherokee, came to the door that led into the kitchen and announced that supper was on the table.

  “Put down your rifle, Bill,” said Rogers, “and let’s eat.”

  “That’s something I never do.”

  Rogers wanted to say, What, eat?, but didn’t. In their acquaintance he’d never known the highwayman to smile at a joke or tell one of his own. He wondered if he saved his humor for those he trusted. It was a source of doubtful conjecture that Bill remained unaware of Rogers’ official connection with Fort Smith. He’d been commissioned a deputy marshal by Colonel Crump, with rewards attendant upon the capture or death of Judge Parker’s chief object of interest that season. A peaceable man by nature, Rogers had of late taken to carrying an antique ball-and-percussion revolver beneath his clothes wherever he went, and kept loaded the Stevens ten-gauge shotgun mounted above the stone fireplace in his parlor. Reluctantly he left that dependable piece where it was and preceded his guest into the kitchen. Bill was good with that Winchester indoors and out, handled it with the ease of a pistol; Rogers couldn’t hit a gallon jug at close range with anything but a scattergun.

  Maggie came in while they were seated around the oilcloth-covered table. January was in full charge, rattling the frosted panes with gusts loaded with needles, and her color was high beneath the brown pigment as she untied her bonnet and removed her cape. Bill stood up quickly, nearly tipping over his chair, grasped her by the wrist, and hauled her toward the bedroom, carrying his rifle in his other hand. She made some pretty noise of outrage but offered no resistance.

  Rogers accepted a bowl of potatoes from his wife and lowered his voice to a murmur. “He knows.”

  “If he don’t, Maggie’s telling him. I saw the second she came in she suspects.”

  Bill returned, too quickly even for a man who’d gone months without feminine companionship, and sat down in his chair. He’d removed his hat and coat, but he still had the rifle. He leaned it against the table. Rogers saw all over again how big a man he was. People who didn’t know him took him for a Mexican through and through, but his size was against it. He was strong, too; Rogers had seen him hoist the carcass of a two-hundred-pound elk and hold it while Rogers finished tying it up to a limb to gut and drain. That was before the commission, before he’d gone and had that rifle grafted to the end of his arm. Rogers watched him tear a piece off a loaf of bread with his big, heavy-veined hands.

  “Where’s the kids?”

  “In bed. It’s late, Bill.”

  “I thought maybe you’d sent them away.”

  The Rogerses exchanged a look. “No, they’re in bed.”

  Bill got up and carried the Winchester out of the room. The door to the children’s bedroom squeaked. Rogers started to rise, but then Bill returned and t
ook his place with the rifle close to hand.

  Maggie came in, smoothing her skirt. When she sat down, Mrs. Rogers placed a plate of fried chicken in front of her, took a pitcher of milk from a windowsill where it kept cold, and poured her a glass. For a time the only sound was the click and scrape of flatware on crockery. Rogers pushed the food around on his plate, then shoved himself back from the table.

  “Not hungry, I guess,” said Bill.

  “I don’t eat as much as I used to.”

  “Stay put a bit.”

  Rogers rested his hands in his lap. The butt of the big pistol was gouging a hole in his back. Maggie nibbled at a chicken leg and drank some milk. Bill sopped the grease from his plate with a piece of bread and ate in silence. Outside, the wind hummed around a corner of the house.

  The host leaned down from his chair. Bill stopped chewing and watched him lift a jug from the floor.

  “You know I don’t drink, Ike.”

  “I thought I’d have one myself, but I changed my mind.” He returned the jug to its place. “How about a hand of cards?”

  Maggie helped Mrs. Rogers clear the table while Rogers dealt from a dog-eared pack. They played several hands without any conversation unrelated to the game. Afterward they adjourned to the parlor, where Bill’s bedroll had been removed from the chair and placed in a corner. Rogers sat in the chair and his wife knitted in the rocker while Bill and Maggie sat together on the settee, talking in low voices with her head on his shoulder and his arm around both of hers. His other hand rested on the Winchester leaning against his knee.

  “It’s a rotten night, Bill. Why don’t you stay over?”

  When Bill smiled, nothing moved but his lips. He had fine teeth. “Why, I believe I will, Ike. I’m obliged you asked.”