The Saga of Henry Starr

by Robert J Conley

  “Take it easy,” said Henry.

  “I have very little cash here,” said Johnson, lying, “but you’re welcome—”

  Henry cut him off in mid sentence.

  “Hold on there,” he said. “I’m not here to hold you up.”

  “Uh, you’re not?”

  “No, I’m not. I’m here to do business with you.”

  “Uh, business?”

  Gooper Johnson was still not quite at ease.

  “A friend of mine,” said Henry, “told me that you are the most honest man of your profession in Tulsa.”

  “I, uh, do pride myself on my professional integrity,” said Johnson, his smile returning, his chest puffing out, and his hands coming back down to the counter before him.

  “Well,” said Henry, pulling some cash from his pocket, “I want to pay you for a funeral.”

  “May I ask—whose?”

  “Someday,” said Henry, “you’ll read in the paper that Henry Starr has been killed. When you do, give me a decent burial.”

  Papers were drawn, and money was paid, and Gooper Johnson felt himself to be one of the most fortunate of men just to be alive.

  Two days later Mae Morrison was walking down the main street of Nowata. As she approached a corner, Henry Starr stepped out and took her by the arm. He led her around the corner and back to a side street where Kid Wilson sat on the seat of a covered wagon, waiting. Henry helped Mae into the wagon, then climbed in after her, and Kid Wilson slapped at the team with the reins. The wagon lumbered out of Nowata heading north. The trip to Emporia, Kansas, was long, slow, and wearisome in a covered wagon, but there were no deputy marshals seen along the way, and the three travelers reached their destination with no incidents of concern. At Emporia they abandoned the wagon and purchased three railway tickets to Colorado Springs, Colorado. Henry was keeping his promise to Mae.

  18

  Mae Morrison stretched out on the hotel bed and sighed. She had never before been in such a large and luxurious bed. The hotel room seemed to her the height of opulence, and the hotel, itself, was the largest building she had ever been inside. In fact, it was the largest building Mae had ever seen. Her first impression on walking up in front of the hotel had been that she was approaching a castle. She had heard stories of castles. Of course, she had never seen a castle, but as she lolled on the fine bed, she thought that this must be exactly what it would be like to live in one.

  Mae was totally overwhelmed by Colorado Springs. She had never been in a real city before, and everything she saw in Colorado Springs was new to her experience. And it wasn’t only the city and the hotel. When she had climbed into the train at Emporia, Kansas, with Henry and his cold friend, she had embarked on the greatest adventure of her young life. The train ride with its dining car, the rapidly changing countryside, the great Rocky Mountains with snow visible up high, and finally the city and all its glamour—all this had Mae’s head swimming. And the best of it all was, Mae thought, that it was only just beginning. Tomorrow she would marry Henry Starr, the handsome young Indian who was also perhaps the most sought-after bandit of the day.

  The combination of the long trip from Nowata to Emporia by wagon and from Emporia to Colorado Springs by train, compounded by the intense excitement of it all, had worn Mae out. They had checked into the hotel, and Henry and Kid Wilson had suggested going out for something to eat. Mae had declined, deciding to stay in the room and rest. She also wanted to bask in the luxury alone for a while and had secretly welcomed the opportunity. Tired though she was, she couldn’t sleep, and she wasn’t sorry for that. It was enough to lie on the big, soft bed and rest. In a way, it would be a shame to sleep. Mae wondered what her parents were thinking. She wondered if they were frantic for her. After all, she had told them nothing. She had simply run away with Henry when he came for her. They must be worried. But thoughts of her parents were quickly followed by thoughts of home, and home was immediately compared to her present surroundings. Mae soon dismissed her worries and, in spite of everything, began to feel drowsy.

  She was not quite asleep when she heard the knock at the door. Rising slowly, she moved to the door, thinking that it must be either Henry or the Kid, and she opened it. Two strange men stood in the doorway. They appeared to be identical to Mae. They were large men, dressed in three-piece suits and heavy, dark overcoats. Each had a black handlebar moustache bristling under his nose, and a derby hat on top of his head. Each was holding out for Mae’s inspection an open leather wallet with a badge pinned to its inside.

  Henry Starr and Kid Wilson were walking the night streets of Colorado Springs looking for a likely place to eat. Henry thought that he had spotted a place in the next block and across the street and was about to say something when a woman appeared from out of a doorway and stepped out to meet the two men. She had a highly suggestive smile on her face to match her equally suggestive dress. Her face was heavily painted. Kid Wilson stopped in his tracks, and the lady stepped up close to him. Wilson put a hand out and touched the lady’s cheek. She put her hand on his and pressed it against her powdery skin.

  “Suddenly I ain’t hungry,” said the Kid. “You go on. I’ll see you later back at the hotel.”

  Henry slapped Kid Wilson on the back and chuckled, then headed for the place he had spotted a moment before. It was an all-night café, and he went inside. Finding an available table, Henry sat down. A waitress soon came to his table.

  “Coffee?” she asked.

  “Never touch it,” said Henry, “but I’d like a menu.”

  “Sure thing,” said the waitress, turning to amble off somewhere.

  Henry looked around at the people in the café, taking note of the difference in their appearance from that of the folks back home. He noticed four men in business suits come in through the front door, stop and converse briefly, then walk on in past him, presumably for a table somewhere beyond. In another minute two uniformed policemen came in. Henry felt just a bit nervous at the sight of the cops, and he tried to keep his eye on them while attempting not to seem concerned. Suddenly he felt his arms seized from behind. He struggled to his feet and tried to pull himself loose, but the grasp from behind was firm. Henry looked over his shoulder and saw that it was two of the four men he had seen enter who now held him fast. The other two stepped around in front of him and showed him badges, and the uniformed policemen were also moving toward him. He stopped struggling, and one of the men produced a pair of handcuffs.

  “Who do you think you’ve got?” said Henry.

  “Henry Starr,” said the man with the manacles.

  Henry shrugged.

  “Well,” he said, “you’re right. What can I say? Let’s go.”

  While Henry Starr was being led from the all-night café in handcuffs by four plainclothesmen and two uniformed policemen, four other policemen quietly stood in the hallway of a sleazy hotel less than a block away and drew their service revolvers out from under their long coats. At a nod, one of them threw himself against a flimsy door, and the four of them were inside in a flash. There was nothing in the dingy room but a bed. In the bed a naked woman screamed and pulled a dirty sheet up in a vain attempt to cover herself. Beside her, also naked, Kid Wilson looked up and knew that the spree was over.

  “Don’t shoot,” he said. “You can damn well see I ain’t armed.”

  19

  Henry Starr took his second train ride. This time he rode in handcuffs, accompanied by a deputy United States marshal, and he rode from Colorado Springs, Colorado, to Fort Smith, Arkansas—back to the Fort Smith jail where Cherokee Bill sat awaiting execution, back to the jurisdiction of Isaac C. Parker, sometimes known as “the Hanging Judge.” On the long ride back, Henry thought about the jail at Fort Smith. This would be his third stay there, and he knew what to expect. He also knew that this time, as the last, he had it coming. He thought about the trial. This time, he figured, there would be no bail. And he thought about the reputation of the judge. It was rumored that Judge Parker longed to
be remembered as the judge who had sentenced one hundred men to hang, and it was well known that he was well on his way to that number. Henry was not just charged with robbery. He was charged with murder. He, himself, did not consider that he had committed a murder. A man had shot at him on a public road with no warning, without identifying himself, and Henry had defended himself. That was no murder. No one had been killed in the course of any of his robberies. He had been careful of that.

  Henry also thought of Kid Wilson, arrested separately. He wondered what would become of the Kid and whether their paths would ever cross again. It was strange, he thought, that he cared so much about the Kid. He thought of himself as a man without friends, as a bandit leader with a gang of men gathered around him for his own convenience, but somehow this young white man had gotten to him. He liked Kid Wilson. He hoped that the Kid would get off easily. And he thought of Mae.

  Mae, he decided, would be better off if she never saw him again. Whatever else happened, he told himself, he would not go around the Morrisons again. He would not try to see her. His life had been laid out for him, and it was the life of a lone outlaw. He must learn to adjust to it, to accept his fate.

  At the Fort Smith depot a large crowd gathered, anticipating a glimpse of the notorious Henry Starr. Many robbers and killers were brought into Fort Smith on a regular basis, but few were genuine celebrities like Henry. The crowd included reporters and photographers, and it also included some lawmen. As the train pulled in, the excitement in the crowd mounted. A few passengers disembarked and shoved their way through the throng. Then Henry and his escort came down the stairs. The mob surged around them. Though the crowd noise was high, Henry could make out a few of the questions that were being hurled at him.

  “Henry Starr,” shouted a young reporter, “how did you get started on your life of crime?”

  “Who was the young lady with you in Colorado?” shouted another.

  Henry started to answer the second, but the questions were coming too fast.

  “Who have you employed as counsel?”

  Henry held up his manacled hands in a call for silence, and though he did not get silence, the questions shouted from the reporters did stop coming at him so fast. The newsmen whipped out their notepads and pencils and waited anxiously for some word from the infamous robber.

  “Hey, fellows,” said Henry, “I just got here.”

  Henry’s keeper took him by the arm and tried to move forward through the crowd.

  “Look out now,” he said in his gruffest voice. “Let us through here.”

  A man stepped out of the crowd and blocked the path of Henry and the deputy. He was holding open his coat to reveal a badge.

  “Deputy,” he said, “let me talk to Starr. I ain’t no reporter. I’m the sheriff of Benton County, Arkansas, where he robbed a bank.”

  Before the deputy could answer, Henry spoke up loudly.

  “A man of my reputation and dignity,” he said, “cannot afford to be seen holding a conversation with the sheriff of a backwoods county in Arkansas.”

  Then he turned to the deputy who had him in tow.

  “Let’s be on our way, Deputy,” he said.

  The crowd roared with laughter, and the reporters scrawled on their pads as quickly as they could. Henry was hustled on through the mob by the deputy and soon found himself renewing his acquaintance with the interior of the Fort Smith jail. It was as he remembered it—filthy and rank smelling. It was, as before, crowded. But this time Henry was known, and he was treated with respect by the other inmates. This time, too, he knew that he could take it.

  Finding a lawyer was no problem. Several of them came around looking for work, even the redhead who had cheated Henry out of his horse and saddle earlier. Henry ran him off in record time and settled on Colonel William Cravens, a man known to be an almost constant thorn in the side of Judge Parker.

  “It’s not going to be easy, Henry,” Cravens told him. “The man you killed was a well-liked man in Fort Smith, and he’s left a widow here.”

  “He tried to kill me,” said Henry.

  “That’s not going to matter much in the courtroom, I’m afraid,” said Cravens. “He was a former deputy marshal, and at the time you shot him, he was working for the railroad as a detective. You were wanted for robbing the railroad. They’re going to make out that he was killed in the line of duty.”

  “What do I care if he carried a tin badge?” said Henry. “He started shooting at me without a word of warning. He didn’t identify himself. I didn’t even know who he was, and I shot back. I just happen to be a better shot than he was.”

  “Well,” said Cravens, “I want you to know that I’ll do everything I can for you, but knowing Isaac Parker and his court, I don’t want to give you any false hopes.”

  Cravens did, indeed, know the court and the judge. The trial went as the lawyer expected it would. He fought hard, but Parker controlled the courtroom proceedings and, apparently, the jury. Cravens had told Henry that Parker used a panel of handpicked “professional” jurors. The verdict was guilty. Isaac Parker looked sternly at Henry Starr.

  “Henry Starr,” he said, “you have been judged guilty in the first degree of the crime of murder. The cold-blooded taking away of the life of another human being is a terrible thing—an act which can only be accomplished by an inhuman monster.”

  Henry had heard of the delight Parker took in his moralistic tirades against the guilty, and he decided that he didn’t have to listen to this one. After all, they could only hang him once. He interrupted the judge in a strong and clear voice that betrayed no emotion other than annoyance with Parker’s tediousness.

  “Don’t try to stare me down, Old Nero,” he said. “I’ve looked many a better man than you in the eye. Cut the rot and save your wind for your next victim.”

  Parker’s brows drew together in a hard knot, and his face turned a deep red.

  “If I am a monster,” Henry continued, “you are a fiend, for I have put only one man to death, while almost as many men have been slaughtered by your jawbone as Samson slew with the jawbone of that other famous ass.”

  Henry was proud of the appropriateness of his literary allusions, and they were also obviously much enjoyed by the crowd, most of whom, after all, came to the trials for entertainment. Judge Parker furiously banged his gavel down and called for order. In all his days on the bench no prisoner had ever spoken to him like that. What was worse, he knew that he could do no more to Henry than what he had already planned to do. His next line was rote. He had used it many times before, but he couldn’t think of a better one, so, instead, he simply delivered it with as much fury as he could muster, leaning forward as if he would leap over his desk at Henry’s throat.

  “Henry Starr,” he said, his voice trembling with rage, his eyes fastened with hatred on Henry, “I sentence you to hang by the neck until you are dead—dead—DEAD.”

  20

  Having been tried and sentenced, Henry was placed in an individual cell to await his execution. Symbolically, the cell window offered a commanding view of the famous Fort Smith gallows, the gallows built to accommodate six condemned men at once, the gallows with the thirteen steps to climb, the gallows that had sent so many men to untimely deaths, some perhaps deserved, others perhaps not; the gallows by means of which, it was persistently rumored, Isaac C. Parker longed to send one hundred men to their individual eternities. In spite of his better judgment, Henry spent a good deal of his time looking out the window upon that notorious instrument of death. He was standing in this particular posture thinking the thoughts that the view naturally inspired when he heard footsteps in the hallway followed by a rattling of keys just at his back. He turned to face his cell door as it was opened by a guard.

  “You have a visitor, Starr,” said the guard, stepping aside to allow the entrance into the cell of the portly Colonel Cravens, then shutting and locking the door again behind the lawyer.

  “Hello, Henry,” said Cravens.

 
Henry noticed the long look on the face of the colonel.

  “Hey, Colonel,” he said, “it’s okay. I know you did what you could. And I did kill the man.”

  Cravens expelled a long and deep sigh, then helped himself to a seat on the wretched cot that served as Henry’s bed.

  “You’re not going to hang, Henry,” he said. “At least, not for a while. I have taken out a writ appealing your case to the United States Supreme Court on the basis of nine procedural errors. So don’t give up hope yet. I haven’t.”

  “You mean there’s a chance,” said Henry, “that I won’t help old Parker on the way to his goal of stretching one hundred necks on his gallows?”

  “There’s a chance,” said the lawyer. “There’s a chance.”

  Time passed slowly in the prison. The routine was always the same. Most of the time Henry, like the other prisoners, spent alone in his small cell, either lying in his cot or staring out the window. At regular, though not frequent, intervals, the convicts were let out of the cells and marched single file by prison guards outside to an exercise yard where they were allowed to mill around more or less freely, although under very close scrutiny, for a brief period of time, before being marched back into their cells the same way they had been brought out. On one such occasion Henry had just stepped back inside his cell and was waiting for the guard to latch the door behind him when a shot rang out somewhere out in the hallway. Henry turned on instinct, and the guard had vanished. The door remained unlocked. Chaos erupted in the corridor.

  At the far end of the hallway eighteen-year-old Crawford Goldsby, known as Cherokee Bill, also awaiting execution, had stepped obediently into his cell and somehow produced a six-shooter from somewhere. Before the guard behind him had a chance to react, before any of the guards in the corridor had closed the doors behind any of the prisoners, Cherokee Bill had spun and fired, killing the guard, Larry Keating, instantly. Keating had dropped in his tracks. Guards and prisoners alike were looking, trying to see what had happened, as Cherokee Bill thrust his head and right arm out of the cell and fired a second shot down the crowded corridor. A few guards had figured out where the shot had come from and were running toward the far end of the hall, but when Cherokee Bill had fired the second shot, they scurried quickly around and retreated. The prisoners had all sought the safety of their cells.