The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones

by Charles Neider

  THE AUTHENTIC DEATH OF HENDRY JONES

  Charles Neider

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  About the Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

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  About The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones

  A stark and violent depiction of one of America’s most alluring folk heroes, the mythical doomed gunslinger. Doc Baker narrates his tale of the Kid’s capture, trial, escape and eventual murder. Set on the majestic coast of Southern California and written in spare and subtle prose, this is one of the great literary treatments of America’s obsession with the rule of the gun.

  To lovely Joan Merrick

  Contents

  Cover

  Welcome Page

  About The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  About Charles Neider

  Endpapers

  About the cover and endpapers

  More from Apollo

  About Apollo

  Copyright

  1

  Nowadays, I understand, the tourists come for miles to see Hendry Jones’ grave out on the Punta del Diablo and to debate whether his bones are there or not; and some of them claim his trigger finger is not there, and others his skull; and some insist the spot is no grave, that it’s just a little mound of abalone shells. Well take it any way you like.

  There was a fellow came up to me one day and said, “You’re Doc Baker I understand.”

  “That’s right.”

  And without introducing himself he started pounding away at me.

  “Now look Mister Baker,” he said, “I saw a trigger finger in a bottle of alcohol back in Phoenix and there was a label on it and it said it was the Kid’s finger. What do you say to that?”

  “I say it’s a damn fool who’ll believe every label he reads,” I said.

  “Well that’s all very well,” he said. “But you tell me how it got there.”

  “Mister,” I said, “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

  “You’re Doc Baker aren’t you?” he asked.

  “I am.”

  “Friend of the Kid’s?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well then,” he said, looking up at me, being shorter than I.

  “Mister your thinking has got itself shot up a little,” I told him, “if you catch my drift.”

  “Well how did it get there?” he demanded. “And tell me this. What about the story he never got killed at all?”

  “The Kid, my friend, is dead these many years,” I said.

  “Hmm,” said the fellow.

  “What’s that?”

  “Hmm.”

  “Oh. I thought you was cussing me out.”

  He looked at me queerly then, tipped his hat and walked off. And there was a fellow came up to me recently in the street and said, “You’re crazy, Doc.”

  I looked at him closely and saw he was a stranger.

  “Where’s the Kid’s skull?” he wanted to know.

  “You damn fool,” I said.

  “You’ll get yours one of these days,” says he and disappears in the crowd.

  Do you know where the old ghost tree on the Punta is? I don’t mean the one overlooking the cove, the one so weathercolored, and wired against the wind and thieves, the one everybody goes to gawk at and which is within sight of the grave. I mean that other one just beyond the natural bridge under which the tide roars in and out, on the Punta’s northern side, facing the old gaunt whitened rock rising out of the water like a great ship, where the gulls and cormorants nest. Well under that other tree, the ghost cypress rusting red on the bark and branches, is where we buried him and where he ought to be. But this was too far off the beaten path and dangerous for old folks and children because of the narrow way over the bridge and so they set up the stone marker by that other tree. That’s the truth to the best of my memory.

  And nowadays they talk of the Punta del Diablo as the Kid’s Country, and Devil’s Hill they call the Kid’s Hill. The Kid would have gotten a kick out of that. He was always looking into newspapers and going off to a corner to read about himself, though I wonder if it’s healthy for a man in his business to care what people think. And now the tourists come in the hope of finding some oldtimer to talk to about those days and to see the bullet marks on the town jail’s walls and to see just where Patron fell and where Dedrick got the buckshot blast and to hear the stories about the women who were Hendry’s sweethearts and the men his friends; and there are all these writers snooping around to find out what they can (and making up what they can’t) and people complaining that no outlaw should have a stone over his grave, and you can buy a hundred guns supposed to have been his and run into fifty old geezers who have walked in from the deserts or hills claiming to be the Kid himself.

  “I’m the Kid,” one of them said recently. “I got all the markings to prove it.”

  “What markings?” we wanted to know.

  “On my left leg and thigh. Acid burns.”

  “What burns?”

  “Somebody spilled a bottle.”

  We looked him up and down and said, “Where you been all this time Kid?”

  “Hear of Death Valley Scotty? Out in that part of the country.”

  “Sure enough. What made you come back?”

  “Wanted to put things straight kind of.”

  “What you mean kind of?”

  “Like I said.”

  “Now look mister,” we told him, “there never was an acid mark on the Kid.”

  “You fellows will be sorry,” says he, looking hurt.

  “Not this time bum,” we said. And with that he shuffled off.

  Well the years have got to bring their changes and I don’t mind. If that’s what they want these days it’s all right with me.

  *

  Now if you’ll just be patient I guarantee you’ll get your money’s worth but it’s the truth I’m getting at and if you’re not interested I suggest you run along to the stores and pick up one of the little books full of lies about the Kid’s life, written by some smart-aleck easterner that never sat in a western saddle, never smelled good horseflesh or a campfire dying in the hills and yet is ready to tell the country all about the Kid. I was there and I know what happened. With a little patience you will know it too before long, for what I aim to tell is exactly how and why the Kid died, when there was no reason for him to have died at all.

  Some people have told me I ought to tell about the Kid’s early life, who was his mother, who his father, where he went to school, how he killed his first man, how he got to be so good with the gun, the great fighters he met and knew, the women he had, the men he killed, the way he cleaned out the faro bank in the Angels that time. But I see no point in going into all that. If you don’t know about it you can find it in ten or twenty books and anyhow I can’t swear to the truth of it and a lot of it sounds like bull to me, such as his cleaning out the twenty Navahos around Gallup, his race to save his dying friend (no horse can run like that for so long), his love for his mother (he never talked much about her but I got the feeling he hated her) and much more that I’m glad I’ve forgotten. What I’m telling is what I actually know and I’m telling it to set the record straight before it’s too late, although it may be too late already judging by how they’ve got his story running now.

  There was this fellow I met in Watsonville one day and he says to me, “I unders
tand Mister Baker that you’re aiming to conconct a story.”

  “I’m not aiming to conconct anything sir,” I says.

  “About the Kid.”

  “I heard you the first time.”

  “Well that’s what they say over in Castroville.”

  “I don’t care what they’re saying in Castroville sir,” I said, “nor in Pacific Grove nuther.”

  “It’s important to me what they say.”

  “I see.”

  “What I heard tell is you’re going to cover the ground,” he said.

  “Amen,” I said.

  “Let’s have a drink,” says he.

  “Here in Watsonville?”

  “Hell,” he said, “Watsonville’s as good a place as any.”

  *

  The Kid was considered in that time, and by men who ought to have known, by the only men who could judge such matters adequately, as the greatest gunman alive at the time of his death.

  Take Dad Longworth:

  “The Kid’s in a class by himself.”

  Or Wyatt Earp:

  “There never was a gunfighter like the Kid.”

  “What about Billy the Kid?” I once asked Wyatt.

  “The Kid would have cut Billy in two.”

  “How about you Wyatt?”

  He just smiled and shook his head.

  Or take Buffalo Bill:

  “I’ve known some galoots but none like the Kid. Best allaround gunman of my time.”

  “What gave him his class?” a fellow once asked him.

  “Terrific nerve boy and a surefire finger.”

  “Eye?”

  “He had it.”

  “Muscle?”

  “Of a cat.”

  “Speed?”

  “He had everything,” Bill said, pulling at his goatee.

  “Would he have made a good buffalo hunter?”

  “Too light,” Bill said quickly.

  “Meaning?”

  “The kick of the gun would have ruined him boy. You know how many buffalo I killed in my time?”

  “Ten thousand,” the fellow said.

  “Come again.”

  “Twenty?”

  “Once more.”

  “A hundred thousand.”

  “Don’t be bashful son.”

  “A million?”

  “That’s right boy. That’s it on the head.”

  That was old Bill for you.

  Billy the Kid was already dead. Billy was fast on the draw and had great luck too but Hendry was very fast and had even greater luck and besides he was steady in a way Billy never was, steady in the way of Wyatt, capable of walking up to an armed mob and telling them off, then turning his back on them and walking away; capable of going up quietly to a fellow, yanking the fellow’s gun and clubbing him with it. That was not the sort of fellow Billy was, although I’m not here to run Billy down.

  Wild Bill Hickok was dead too. I don’t say Hendry could have beaten Wild Bill but I do say that for two men of that class to have shot it out would have been suicide for both. The same thing would probably have happened if Hendry and Wyatt had fought it out, although I would have put my money on Hendry. Wyatt was very good and the most dangerous thing about him was his nerve but the Kid had nerve too and gunmanship and luck and he had what Wyatt didn’t have: wild imagination that Wild Bill had and which made him unpredictable. I don’t think any other gunfighter had it outside of those two. The men who judged these things knew what they were talking about and they decided that Hendry was the greatest gunman alive at his death and one of the very greatest that had ever lived. Which is about the way I would have put it too.

  *

  There were four of us then in that summer of 1883. There had been more of us only a little while before then, before Hendry’s capture and trial, but after his capture most of us scattered and that, really, was the end of our gang, for afterward we only hung around waiting to go into business again but after the escape the Kid was too wrapped up in whatever was taking his mind off real work. Once there had been twelve of us, a great bunch of boys, and we could have licked any part of that country. We had enough guns and ammunition cached out in the hills to keep us safe half a year and we had spots up there from which we could pick off a small army with our Winchesters and Sharps guns. But when they got Hendry they scattered us. We were a good bunch all right. Most of our names you’ve never heard of. We got killed before we made a name for ourselves or got tired of being hunted and took off for good. But a lot of us were good boys and you could have fun with us all right.

  We’d go to cockfights and to the bearbaiting fights in the hills and we’d drink and gamble and whore around and live on the fat of the land. When things were quiet we could always shoot up a town or pick a fight with someone we wanted to kill or start a stampede or a small war. We never thought that some day we would be slowing down and none of us ever thought, I reckon, that maybe we’d get killed. We acted as though we’d live forever and when one of us got killed he was so surprised it had happened to him. That was just one of the ways in which we were different from the Kid. The Kid was never surprised about getting killed, despite the way it happened. He knew he was going to get killed and was waiting for it, I think, the day and the hour, and would have been disappointed if it hadn’t come.

  I’ve had people ask me why we turned outlaw. I’ve had them come up and say, “Baker, what you want to be against law and order for?”

  “Man who’s against it? What you saying?”

  “You are,” this one fellow said.

  “Were man,” I said.

  “Same thing.”

  “You’re a damn fool if you don’t mind my saying so,” I said. “That was before the amnesty. The general pardon. I’m the hottest law and order man in the state.”

  “Is that so?”

  “You can bet on it mister,” I told him. But I don’t think it made any difference at all.

  Hell, we never turned. Those things just happened. One fellow went one way and another another and the first thing you knew one of them was called an outlaw and the other was running a faro bank and was protected by the sheriff and, if need be, the whole damned U.S. army. You must remember that in those times things weren’t all figured out the way they are now. There were times for example when a rustler was not a rustler but a fellow who made a living rounding up unbranded strays and who was a good and necessary hand in the business—until somebody got it into his head that it didn’t pay to have him around any more and passed a law and armed a lot of men and went sneaking around looking for branding irons that it was death from then on to have found on you. I never met one outlaw, including the Kid, who had studied to be one. But I will admit that once you became one you were likely to continue being one. And why not? Who wants to be fenced in if you don’t have to be? There was plenty of stray beef around and plenty of loose money and land, and women for the asking. So that in a nutshell is the story of our turning outlaw and if it makes you unhappy why write me a letter and I’ll see what I can do about it for you.

  In that summer there were four of us, and Harvey French got killed by Longworth in an accidental shot meant for the Kid, and Bob Emory got killed by the Kid in about the only killing the Kid was ever sorry about. Which left just the Kid and me for the end.

  *

  About this fellow the Kid is supposed to have been afraid of just before his death: we may as well get that part of the record straight too.

  There was this new kid coming up down around the Angels—and the thing of it was that he was killed by a thirdrater a couple of months after Hendry was killed—and about the time Hendry was running downhill there was talk coming through about how great this new kid was, how he outclassed Hendry and was going to come north and finish him off. It got through to Hendry, for this new kid was all the talk at that time, the way a new boxer will be in these days, and although Hendry tried not to let it bother him I could see it had him thinking and that some of his thinking was not good. He
was feeling old, although he was only twenty-five. The new kid was nineteen, fresh, very fast, with several killings to his credit and with little to lose in the way of reputation and therefore likely to be reckless and dangerous. His name was Andy Somethingorother (he didn’t even stick around long enough to get properly remembered)—and he was flashy: a gunfanner, a two-gunman and a fellow who even tried hipshooting when the mood hit him. People figured that Hendry was now rolling downhill (which was true) and that the new kid would take over. Hendry wouldn’t talk, about it much but when he did he would say, “Well let him come. There’s only one way to settle this kind of thing.”

  The rumor was that Hendry had lost his nerve. But as I said, this new kid turned out to be a bum who had had a streak of luck and he never got a chance to be killed by the Kid. Hendry must have known that tired and rundown as he was he could have killed ten such bums as that fourth-rate kid.

  *

  As for Dad Longworth, you know he’d been a pard of the Kid’s a couple of years past in Arizona, that they’d rustled and lived together until Dad got the notion he had to be a sheriff, with a wife and kids, and so took off for the Monterey country, where he was not too well known in a bad sort of way. I figure, although I’m not sure of it, not having heard the Kid tell of it, that the Kid followed him out there to make him sorry he’d ever turned sheriff. That was the story as I heard it at the time and I have no reason to doubt it now. You can understand that the Kid’s continuing to be in that territory was poison to Dad and that if he didn’t clear him out pronto he would find his sheriffing days had disappeared from under him. He had met Hendry secretly several times and asked him to leave the country but Hendry had only smiled and said,

  “It’s a free country Dad.” Dad had said,

  “Look Kid I’m asking you to leave I’m not telling you to,” and Hendry had said,

  “I got some work to do here.” Dad had said,

  “Well think it over,” and Hendry had said, smiling,

  “Sure Dad why not?” but he had no intention of thinking it over, his mind being set on what he wanted to do.