by Emma Parker
Clyde aimed through the garage doors and let loose a blasting fire from his machine gun, riddling the car outside, and injuring one officer, Ben Thorpe, in the knees. This direct hit through the officers' armored car changed their minds about staying where they were. They backed away from the garage, which was just what Clyde wanted. W. D. ran and pushed the doors open, Clyde shot through them and W. D. jumped on the running board as the car went by. They emerged into a perfect hail of bullets. The darkness was sprinkled with spurts of flame. Clyde answered, firing with one hand; W. D.'s gun was going full blast. Several officers fell. A chance shell struck the horn on the armored car and short circuited it. It began to shrill wildly. The concealed policemen thought this was some sort of signal for help and rushed into the open to fight.
The way was open, but Clyde dared not leave. Buck and Blanche were still in the cabin. He had no way of knowing whether they had been killed or not. "I'll have to go after them," he shouted to W. D. Just at this moment Blanche staggered out, half carrying Buck. He had been shot twice through the head, and was unconscious, blood flowing from his wound. Blanche dragged him a few feet in that withering fire, and collapsed with him. "I can't do it," she screamed. "He's dying."
Clyde leaped from the car and ran to her recue. Between them they got Buck into the back seat with Bonnie. Blanche held him in her arms. Lead was pouring all around them in a stream, striking the machine, and their return fire was punctuating the night with flashes of fire. Clyde leaned low, shot the gas to the engine, and they roared through the barrage toward safety, the posse scattering as they came on. Bullets crashed through the windows, and Blanche screamed once, high and clear. They all heard her. She pitched forward over Buck's limp form, blood streaming from her face and her eyes blinded. There was no time to stop and attend the wounded.
Fifty, sixty, seventy! The speed indicator leaped up like a living thing. The pursuit was hot behind them. Telephone and telegraph wires hummed and buzzed with warnings, but the officers again miscalculated. They thought Clyde would try to go through Platte City and they concentrated their enforcements there. Clyde was no such fool. He cut out his lights and drove on in the dark, found a country lane, cut into it, and lost the pursuit.
Buck was still unconscious and Blanche was moaning constantly. Something had to be done for them. They turned off the country road into a field and stopped the car. They had nothing on which to lay Buck except newspapers, but they spread these out and lifted him from the car. Here in the glare of their headlights, Clyde saw for the first time the awful thing that had happened to Buck. The bullet had entered one temple and plowed through to the other. He could not see and was in great pain. The doctor's kit was called on for all it had. Hydrogen peroxide was poured into the wound — the worst thing possible, physicians said afterwards — and the head was bandaged.
Clyde knew his brother was in a serious condition and should go to a hospital at once, yet a hospital meant death in the end. Blanche, her eyes cut by flying glass, could see but dimly and was suffering a great deal, though her wounds were not serious.* They had nothing to put on her eyes except a pair of dark sun glasses to shield them from the light. Clyde did. bathe them with water from a nearby stream. Buck was still bleeding slowly. Blanche's dress was a mass of blood. They discarded it in the field where all these things were later found bearing mute testimony to the seriousness of their condition. Bonnie was unhurt, but badly shaken and frightened. They drove on in the night, not knowing where to turn nor what to do.
*Four operations have been performed on Blanche** eyes in the Missouri prison, and she is able to see out of only one of them.
By daylight Clyde had covered many hundreds of miles with his car of wounded people. Buck was running a high fever, and Blanche was in constant pain. The car held a horrible cargo of agony and death, and Clyde was half frantic about his brother. Again they were forced to stop. Bonnie's leg was causing her great suffering and needed dressing badly. Clyde wanted to make another attempt to do something to give Buck relief from the torture he was undergoing. Once more they left bloody bandages beside a country road. They did attempt to burn these, but a passing car frightened them so that they ran away and left them half-consumed.
They had had no food, and they dared not stop to buy any. Buck asked constantly for water and they had none. Buck's delirious ravings and pleadings were driving Blanche to insanity. She said she knew Buck was going to die unless he went to a doctor, and she wanted him taken to one. She didn't care what happened to the rest of them. Clyde tried to reason with her and show her that either course meant death, and that she would suffer a million times more if they took Buck in and let the state heal him so they could kill him in the name of justice. Blanche was past reasoning. She was in such pain herself and so wild with grief and love that she raved crazily. Buck regained consciousness during this tirade. He added his voice to Clyde's.
"We won’t give up, honey," he muttered. "We keep on driving."
"But you’re going to die," Blanche sobbed. "I’d rather we’d both spend the rest of our lives in prison than to have you die, darling."
Buck managed a weak grin. "I hadn't," he said. "I've been in jail, you see. You haven't. Besides, jail isn't what they'd give me if I got well. No, we keep on driving."
They kept on driving . . .
By late afternoon Clyde saw that they must stop. The crowded condition of the car with three wounded people was beyond human endurance. He turned into Dexfield Park, a plot of ground covering some twenty acres lying between Dexter, Iowa, and Reddings. Here they drove till they found a secluded spot hemmed in by dense woods and underbrush on all sides, and with a river nearby for water. Clyde and W. D. got out and made a bed for Buck, and one for Bonnie. Blanche refused to lie down, but insisted on sitting beside her husband's bed. She asked the others not to mention her injury to Buck, and it was easy to keep the news from him, as he could not see well himself.
The first consideration was for medical aid and food. They had had nothing to eat for two days. Clyde went into town for both, taking W. D. with him. They drove to Perry where W. D. stole another car, a sedan. They must have two cars if they were to travel with the invalids. Clyde also bought alcohol to sterilize Buck's wound and some sedative to ease his pain. He purchased five chicken dinners and the two returned to the hide out.
Here they stayed for three days. On the morning of the third day death was on Buck's face. Clyde began to pack. "Where are we going?" Bonnie asked him. "We aren't going anywhere," Clyde told her. "I'm taking Buck home to mother."
"You aren’t going without me," Bonnie said. "And why should you drive all that way to take Buck back? You know he’s dying, honey. He’ll be dead by night." "I’m taking him back because he’s dying," Clyde replied grimly. "I promised mother — we both promised her — for that matter, I promised your mother, too — if either of us died or was seriously sick, the other was to take him home. I’m keeping my word, that’s all." Blanche moved over to Clyde’s side, feeling her way along. "I’m going too," she said hoarsely. "I’ll never leave him, no matter what comes."
W. D. had nothing to say to all this. He was roasting weinies over the fire. Clyde had stacked the guns and cleaned them the night before. For some reason W. D. had no gun on him, and Clyde had only a pistol. The odor of the roasting weinies filled the air. Buck stirred and asked for water, and Blanche hurried back to him. It was early morning; things smelled good and fresh; the woods were quiet, and the only sound was the river, and some birds in a tree above the camp fire. Bonnie looked up and saw the officers coming toward them. Newspaper accounts vary as to the exact number — some say forty, some say two hundred. The woods seemed alive with them. Suddenly bullets were whizzing and screaming through the leaves, spattering into the camp fire, striking the cars and clipping twigs from trees. Bonnie screamed. Clyde snatched a machine gun and began firing; W. D. dropped his weinies and seized a machine gun too. The possemen broke and ran for shelter at the first blast from the oth
er guns.
"Get in the car," Clyde yelled. "Quick — get in one car, everybody." Clyde was always master of any situation.
Bonnie, who hadn't moved without help for two months, found herself running to the car unaided; such is the healing power of fear. Blanche kept trying to put shoes on Buck's naked feet so he could walk in the thorns. "Let his shoes alone," Bonnie screamed. "Come on." She could hardly see — poor Blanche — she kept fumbling with Buck's shoes. At last she got him on his feet and started dragging him along toward the car. Bonnie helped her in with him. Clyde and W. D. were busy with their machine guns; they didn't dare stop and help. The instant they were all inside, Clyde jumped in and started the motor and tried to make a get-away, but before he'd gone a dozen yards, a bullet struck his arm, he lost control of the wheel and ran the machine up on a stump. He and W. D. got out and tried to pry the front end off the stump with their machine guns, but it was useless. It wouldn't budge.
"The other car," Clyde yelled. "Pile out — for God’s sake, pile out!"
Bonnie helped Blanche again with Buck. They ran for the other car. Buck fell twice. He was shot in the back. Buckshot had spattered Bonnie all over her body, but she said afterwards she didn't feel them at all — didn't know she was hit till she looked down and saw her dress was red with blood. W. D. received another head wound and the blood was pouring down his face.
Clyde's arm was bloody and useless. They reached the other car, but the possemen beat them to it. They riddled the car from rear axle to front fender. In five seconds there wasn't a window left in it; two tires were shot away; gas poured from a dozen holes in the tank. Buck fell again. "Take Blanche and run for it," he cried. "I'm done for anyway. Run for it."
"I’ll go and get another car," Clyde promised. "Hide —they can’t find you in these thickets. I’ll get back."
"Take Blanche," Buck begged, but Blanche was down beside him with no intention of leaving.
"Take care of Bonnie, W. D.," Clyde said. Then he dived into the underbrush. Bonnie and W. D. dashed into the woods. The guns of the possemen redoubled their volume now. Buck kept begging Blanche to go, but she wouldn’t. She crouched down beside a stump for shelter, and pulled Buck’s bloody head over on her lap. Bullets struck him again and again — he had five wounds in his back when they took him to the hospital. Why they didn’t kill Blanche is beyond comprehension. She began screaming at them above the noise:
"Stop, for God’s sake, stop. Don’t shoot any more — you’ve already killed him."
"Make him throw up his hands, then," someone called, and Blanche answered them with a burst of tears:
"He can’t throw up his hands — he’s dying."
They closed in then, warily, stalking their prey and not trusting Buck. I don't blame them. Horrible as the whole thing was, I still don't blame them. In their place, I'd have been scared to death, too. I still dream of Buck lying there, that awful hole in his head, while bullets thudded into his defenseless back, Blanche sitting there, holding his head in her lap and begging them not to shoot him any more. I do blame them for tearing Blanche away from Buck, with her begging him, "Daddy, don't die — don't die — don't die!" I blame them for locking her in a prison and refusing to let her see him before he died. He lived only six days, and asked for her constantly. It couldn't have hurt anything to let her be with him in death, after the way she'd stood by him in life. I find it in my heart to understand or make an attempt to understand the attitude of the officers and the public about almost everything concerning the criminal careers of my two brothers, but I say this freely and without compunction: Their conduct on this occasion was subject to criticism. They could have acted with more human feeling and lost nothing in the final accounting, for Buck was beyond their holding now, and Blanche was safely in the hands of justice. But it's all over now, and who am I to ask for justice?
Bonnie told us so graphically of their escape that I shall try and set it down as she related it later.
Bonnie Tells of Their Escape
Clyde left us, running through the woods toward a house over the bridge where he thought there might be a car. Because Blanche and Buck stayed behind, they were off our trail for awhile, and we had a chance to crawl away and hide. W. D. was blinded by blood, but he helped me as much as he could. We had no guns — nothing with which to defend ourselves. We knew we were lost if caught. I was bloody from head to foot, and briers and thorns had torn my bandages away and the burn was open again. Blood ran from my leg at every step. We came to the river and stopped. We crept back into the underbrush and crouched down. The firing had died away. We knew they had captured Buck and Blanche — that was why we had been able to get away. The minutes dragged like hours. Every sound was like a footstep. Even little lizards running over leaves made my heart stand still. I didn't know where Clyde was, how he'd find us, or where we'd go if he did. Clyde could always do the impossible, but I didn't believe he could get back into the park with a car. I didn't believe it was possible — not with the woods full of officers.
Suddenly the firing broke out again, louder and closer. The air was filled with the noise of it, men shouting and running, pistols popping, the rattle of machine gun fire. Then it was still again. I knew they'd got Clyde. My heart turned to ice. Nothing else mattered — my wounds — my leg — death — nothing. They'd got Clyde. We lay there in the leaves quietly, neither of us moving. At last, after a long time, W. D. said: "They got him this trip, Bonnie."
I said: "I wish I had his gun, that's all."
"You couldn’t do any good with it," W. D. told me weakly, his head lying in a pool of blood.
"I could do all the good I wanted to do with it," I replied. "I could kill myself. He’s finished and I don’t want to live." I began to cry. W. D. reached out and patted me on the shoulder clumsily and said, "Don’t, kid, don’t."
Again we lay there a long time. We heard a rustling in the underbrush and a soft hiss. We lay like dead people, we were so scared. Soon the soft hiss came again. W. D. wanted to answer it but I wouldn't let him, for I was afraid it was only a ruse from the cops to get us to break cover, so we lay still and said nothing. After a long time it came again, close now, and then, crawling on his all fours, his arm hanging useless, his clothes soaked with blood — he had four bullet wounds — Clyde came toward me. I just lay there and looked at him, and all the world became the most beautiful place I'd ever known.
"Are you all right, honey?" Clyde asked me softly. I nodded. "Are you all right?" I asked.
"I’m o. k.," he said. He sank down beside me in the leaves and slipped his good arm under my head and kissed me. We lay there and clung to each other and never said a word for a long time. It was the happiest moment I’d ever known in my life, and nothing else mattered now. We were together again.
"I got a car all right," he whispered finally. "But they were waiting for me at the bridge. They wrecked it so I couldn’t cross, and they almost got me. But we’ll get over the river and get one. Can you make the river, kid?"
W. D. said he could. We crawled down the river bank and waded into the water. There wasn't much use of any of us trying to help the other, for we were all in a bad way. I had no idea we'd ever get away alive and I didn't care. Clyde and I were together. We left bloody ripples behind us as we swam.
Midway in the stream the posse sighted us again and the bullets began whizzing overhead and plunking in the water. Something struck me in the shoulder. I remember screaming and going under. When I came to, W. D. had me on his back and we were coming up the bank. The guns were still blazing on the opposite bank and Clyde had nothing to fire back with, for his pistol was water soaked and useless. We could only run. We had one advantage. The river was between us now, which was something.
Clyde left W. D. and me in the cornfield and went on up to a house on a hill where three men were standing on the porch watching the fight. Using his useless gun to frighten them, Clyde got the keys to their car. He whistled to W. D. and we came out of the field. Clyde made
two of the men lift me off W. D.'s shoulders and put me in the back seat. I remember feeling the seat cushion beneath my face and hearing one of the men say to Clyde: "She's dead." Then I lost consciousness and when I came to it was dark, and W.D. was at the wheel, driving at breakneck speed. Clyde was moaning in the front seat beside him. I wanted to get up and help Clyde, but I couldn't. I passed out again, and then it was daybreak. W. D. had stopped the car somewhere in Iowa down a country lane beside a little stream. We were as bloody as slaughtered animals and had no clothes to change to. Obviously, we couldn't be seen on the highway like we were.
We got out and crawled down to the water and washed ourselves as best we could. Then I took off my dress and the boys removed their shirts. Lying on my uninjured side, I washed the blood from them by soaking them a long time in the clear cold water. We lay there, saying nothing, while they dried. Clyde was awfully sick. His arm was useless and was paining him. The other wounds were hurting, too. W.D., with the luck of one charmed, had only a scalp wound. He was better off than either of us, and the only one able to drive. We put our clothes back on when they had dried. We felt we must get out of that part of the country as quickly as possible, and decided to head toward Denver.
We stole a newer and better car at Polk City, Iowa, the next day, for speed was imperative. Clyde, concealing his wounded arm, swung his useless gun on a filling station attendant and took what money he had. We had neither clothes, money, nor guns. We took to the road again. Our wounds still bled, but we had neither medicine nor bandages and we didn't dare stop to buy any. Newspapers stated that Clyde tried to get a doctor and bought a hypodermic in Dennison, Iowa. This is untrue. We weren't in Dennison. We were headed for Denver. We drove all day Wednesday, and on Thursday we were almost to Colorado City. W. D. stole a newspaper from a country mail box. It said I was in Denver in a hospital seriously wounded. The trail was too hot. We dared not go on. We turned and ran for it once more.
