The Saga of Henry Starr

by Robert J Conley

  Soon the guards had clustered up at the opposite end of the hallway from Cherokee Bill, and the remaining prisoners, including Henry Starr, were caught between the guns of the young condemned outlaw on one hand and the guards on the other. Guards fired a few random shots down the hallway. There was really nothing for them to fire at, as Bill had ducked back inside his cell. From inside his cell, which was practically at the end of the row near where the guards were huddled, Henry could make out the voices of the guards between gunshots.

  “Who the hell is it, anyway?” he heard one guard ask.

  “That’s Larry that’s down,” said another.

  “Larry, is it?” answered the first voice. “Then I think …”

  As he spoke, the guard slowly peeked around the corner to get a look down the hallway, and as he did, Cherokee Bill sent another pistol shot in that general direction. The guard didn’t finish his sentence, as he quickly jerked himself back behind cover.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s Cherokee Bill.”

  “Where the hell did he get that gun?” said another guard.

  “How do I know?” said the first. “We found one in his cell just the other day and took it away from him.” Then he turned to yet another guard, one who had thus far kept quiet. “Go get some shotguns,” he ordered.

  The quiet guard, glad for the opportunity to leave the immediate vicinity, raced away in obedience. He was soon back, however, and each guard had a shotgun.

  “Let him have it,” someone shouted, and shotgun blasts resounded down the corridor and into the cells. Henry thought that it sounded like a small war. Pellets ricocheted up and down the hall and into the cells, and the already stuffy atmosphere was filled with thick smoke and the smell of burnt powder. The shooting stopped when the guards had all fired their initial blasts, and there was a moment of silence while they were busy reloading. Cherokee Bill jumped out into the hall and fired three pistol shots into that silence, then jumped back into the safety of the cell. Then there was a second roar of shotguns. Henry huddled far into the corner of his cell until the calm of the next reloading period. Then he eased himself close to the cell door.

  “Guards,” he called out. “Guards. It’s Henry Starr.”

  “Keep back out of the way, Starr,” came the answer.

  “Listen to me,” said Henry. “Hold your fire a minute. Let me go talk to him.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Didn’t you say that was Cherokee Bill?”

  “Yeah, it’s him all right.”

  “Well,” said Henry, “let me go talk to him before you all kill everyone in here.”

  The guards were quiet for a moment. They looked at one another with questioning expressions on their tense faces. Finally one spoke.

  “Hell,” he said in a low voice to his comrades, “it can’t hurt anything.” Then, in a louder voice, shouted out to Henry, he added, “All right, go ahead.”

  Henry took a deep breath and scootched out into the hallway. He stood still for a moment, his heart pounding so that he imagined it could be heard by the guards and Bill and everyone in between. No shots were fired. He began to walk down the long corridor toward the cell that was the latest home of Cherokee Bill. Suddenly Bill leaned out into the hallway, gun in hand. Henry stopped still. His heart stopped pounding. It just stopped.

  “Bill,” he said. “Don’t. It’s Henry Starr.”

  “What are you doing here, Henry?” said Cherokee Bill.

  Henry resumed his movement toward Cherokee Bill and quickened his pace.

  “I came to talk you out of this,” he said.

  “Shit,” said Cherokee Bill, as Henry stepped inside the cell to join him.

  The two Cherokee outlaws sat down on the floor of the cell, Bill where he could look out into the corridor.

  “What do you think you’re doing, anyway?” asked Henry. “You can’t get out of here.”

  “Well,” said Bill in a sullen voice, “I can take a few of them with me.”

  “How many? How many shells have you got for that thing?”

  Bill didn’t answer. His eyes avoided those of Henry Starr.

  “Bill,” said Henry, “your mother wouldn’t want you to do this.”

  At the other end of the hallway, the guards nervously awaited some sign of what might be happening in the cell of Cherokee Bill. They held their shotguns ready in anticipation of whatever might befall them. They looked anxiously at one another and down the hallway.

  “What the hell are they doing down there?” said one, not really expecting an answer.

  “Let’s blast them both the hell out,” said another.

  Just then they saw at the far end Henry Starr step out into the center of the corridor. He was holding both hands high above his head, and in his left he held by its barrel a pistol.

  “I’m coming out,” he called.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said a guard.

  From that day, Henry was not only popular with the other prisoners, he was almost a hero to the guards, and he was treated very well—as well as one locked in a small, filthy, bug-infested cell can be treated. But Henry had not taken the gun from Cherokee Bill in order to ingratiate himself to the guards. When he thought about it, he wondered, himself, why he had done it. To save lives? The lives of the guards or of the other prisoners? Perhaps, though he didn’t really think so. To save his own life? The chances of his being hit by a ricochet while he kept well back in his cell had been remote. Perhaps he held out some hope for Cherokee Bill as for himself that the sentence of hanging would not really take place—that there would be some kind of reprieve. If Bill had kept up his gunfight, he would surely have been killed, and then there would be no hope—not for Bill. So Henry had gone to the cell of Cherokee Bill to save Bill’s life? No. That was not likely either. Since having been sentenced to hang, Bill had killed Larry Keating with no warning and for no apparent reason. And unlike Henry, Bill had killed often and unnecessarily in the course of his robberies. No. Henry Starr could not for the life of him figure out why he had done what he had done to become a hero to the guards at the Fort Smith jail.

  21

  Two guards walked grimly past the cell of Henry Starr and down the long corridor to stop on almost the precise spot where Larry Keating had fallen dead. One produced a ring of keys and unlocked the door to the cell of Cherokee Bill. They stepped inside and bound Bill’s arms behind him; then, one on either side of the condemned man, they walked him back down the length of hallway. Inside his cell, Henry Starr, in the company of his attorney, saw them pass. Cravens, who had been talking, saw the spectacle that momentarily absorbed Henry’s attention, and observed a brief but respectable period of silence until the guards and their charge had passed on through the doorway at the end of the hallway, and he had heard the heavy door clank shut behind them. Only then did he resume speaking.

  “Henry,” he said, “under the circumstances, I think I have to say that we won the case.”

  Henry stood staring vacantly out the cell window.

  “I got fifteen years,” he said.

  “Yes,” admitted Cravens, “but you won’t hang.”

  Outside in the courtyard before the great gallows, a vast crowd had gathered. They surged and pushed against one another. Even from the distance of his cell window, Henry could see their mouths watering and their eyes bulging in anticipation of the event they were about to witness—or at least, he imagined that he could. On the other side of the tall fence that surrounded the courtyard, the unfortunate ones who could not gain entrance to the courtyard had clambered up onto the roof of a small shed so that they might see over the fence. The crowd noise suddenly increased in volume, and Henry knew that the guards had stepped out into the courtyard with Cherokee Bill. As Bill and his escorts came into Henry’s view and so approached the thirteen steps leading up to the fateful platform, the crowd grew quiet. It was then that Henry noticed a dark-skinned woman in front of the crowd just before the gallows. She was weeping. As
Cherokee Bill approached the bottom of the stairway, the woman stepped forward, as if she would go to him. Bill paused as he drew abreast of her, and his voice was remarkably clear to Henry up in his cell.

  “Mother,” Bill said, “you hadn’t oughta be here.”

  Then he climbed the steps.

  “That trick you pulled with Cherokee Bill certainly didn’t hurt our case either,” said Cravens.

  Henry didn’t seem to hear the colonel. He continued to stare down onto the scene below. The hangman had adjusted the noose around Bill’s neck and was standing ready with the black hood. A deputy marshal was speaking.

  “Do you have any last words?”

  The crowd was absolutely silent, anticipating the final speech of the dying man. It was one of the major attractions of a public execution. Cherokee Bill knew that. He knew that he was the star attraction of this show and that his audience eagerly awaited his soliloquy. Well, he thought, a wry smile forming on his heavy lips, they going to be disappointed in me again.

  “Hell,” he said in a booming voice, “I came here to die, not to make a speech.”

  The hood was adjusted, the hangman’s knot checked, Cherokee Bill was moved onto the trap, and the trap was sprung. Henry jerked as Cherokee Bill plunged into darkness. He took a deep breath, then, responding to the last thing he recalled from Cravens’ conversation, he said, “No, Colonel, at least I won’t hang.”

  Cravens left shortly after that, and Henry was alone with his feelings regarding the spectacle he had just witnessed. They were mixed feelings and strange.

  22

  Mary Scott Starr Walker was only one-quarter Cherokee by blood, and she did not particularly, as they say, show her Indian. Her first husband, George, known as Hop, had shown his, and of their children, Henry showed his more than the rest. In fact, Henry could easily pass for a full-blood, although he was actually only three-eighths Cherokee by blood. So the people in Washington, D.C., did not notice Mary Walker as being Indian. In fact, Mary thought, they acted pretty much as if they did not notice her at all—as if she were not even there.

  Washington was intimidating, almost overwhelming to Mary. There were too many buildings, and the buildings were too big. The traffic was absolutely frightening and even menacing. Mary had a paranoid sensation that people were trying to run into her and over her, though she realized that the feeling was paranoid. (Of course, she did not know that word. In fact she did not put any word to the sensation she felt and analyzed.) She was not a voracious reader like her son, Henry. She was not much of a reader at all, and she had never understood his passion for books and for words. She vaguely wondered if that passion was not what was really at the bottom of all this—if the books were not responsible for Henry’s wildness—if the excessive reading was not the reason she was wandering the strange and hostile streets of Washington, D.C. And the people seemed to be rushing everywhere. Anyone not rushing, and Mary seemed to be the only one who fit that category, was in grave danger of being run down and trampled and of not even being noticed in the process. Mary told herself that once she had accomplished her task, nothing would ever drag her back to this city, yet, until she had accomplished her task, nothing could drag her away from it.

  She had been in the capital city of the United States of America for an entire month, and her money was running out. She stayed in a cheap, run-down hotel, and she ate only enough to keep her going, yet her funds were nearly depleted. She had written a letter to C. N. Walker asking him to forward her some more money, even though she knew that C.N. was far from sympathetic to her cause. Still, C.N. was her husband, and he would probably send her the money. Even if he did not, Mary had resolved that she would stay. If she had to, she would find work in order to pay her keep. She had determination. She had a cause. Even though he had left home because of her second marriage and even though she knew that he would never come back to her, she had a son, and he was in trouble. He had been in worse trouble, but it was still bad.

  Mary had gone to Fort Smith and had consulted with Colonel Cravens. He had done all that he could. She was convinced of that. She liked him and she trusted him. She was grateful to the colonel, for he had saved her son from the gallows, but there was more work to be done yet. The colonel had told her that he had reached the end of his abilities. He had appealed the case to the highest court. There was no more recourse, nothing more to be done. Nothing else could be done, he had said, except …

  “Except what?” Mary had demanded.

  Colonel Cravens had felt a bit foolish. He had almost wished that he had just kept his mouth shut, but it was too late for that. He had given her that slight hope, and he had to follow it up.

  “Except an appeal direct to the President of the United States for a pardon,” he had said.

  So Mary had scraped together all the money that she could get her hands on, and she had gone to Washington to see the President, but she had discovered that getting to see the President was not an easy task to accomplish. On her way to Washington she had worried about what she would say to the President, she had worried about how the President would react to her tale of woe, she had worried about what kind of man the President would turn out to be. He was known to be a tough one. “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” he said. She worried that the President would have no sympathy for a mother’s tears, but it did not occur to her to worry about whether or not she would even be allowed to see him.

  So Mary found herself in the same office day after day, facing the same expressionless face behind the same desk. She did not know the man’s name, nor did she know his title. She only knew that the office in which he sat was the closest she had been able to get to the President’s office and that, in order to see the President, she had to somehow get past this man. He seemed immovable.

  “Mrs. Walker,” he said, his voice irritable, “President Roosevelt is a very busy man. He has many more important things to see about than your problem.”

  “It’s about my son,” said Mary. “It’s important to me.”

  “The President cannot afford to take time to visit with every mother in the country who is worried about her son.”

  “Not every mother in the country who is worried about her son has traveled clear to Washington from the Cherokee Nation and stayed a month to see the President,” said Mary.

  “Did you say ‘the Cherokee Nation’?” said the bureaucrat.

  Just then another man stepped into the office. Mary had not seen him before, but she could tell by his dress and his bearing that he, also, was someone of some official stature here in the capital. Whatever his business was, he seemed to put it aside for a moment to eavesdrop on what Mary was talking about. He stepped back out of the way and waited for Mary’s answer to the other man’s question.

  “Yes,” she said. “I came here all the way from the Cherokee Nation to see the President. It’s the only hope my son has.”

  “Mrs. Walker,” said the man behind the desk, his voice a bit triumphant, “are you an American citizen?”

  “I’m a citizen of the Cherokee Nation,” answered Mary.

  “Do you mean to tell me that you’ve been in here pestering me half to distraction every day for well-nigh onto a month to try to get in to see the President to get a pardon for your son, and you’re not even a citizen? You’re not even a voter? Mrs. Walker—”

  Here the eavesdropper injected himself into the conversation.

  “Mrs. Walker,” he said, “what did young Mr. Walker do to get himself put in prison?”

  “Oh,” said Mary, turning to the new speaker, “excuse me, sir. My son is not named Walker. Mr. Walker is my second husband. My first husband left me a widow with three children. My son’s name is Henry Starr.”

  “Henry Starr. Henry Starr,” repeated the newcomer. “The name sounds familiar to me. Wait a minute. That’s right. Is that the young man who disarmed a fellow inmate down at the federal facility in Fort Smith, Arkansas, some time back?”

  “Yes,” said M
ary. “Henry took the gun away from Cherokee Bill before he could kill any more guards.”

  “Mrs. Walker, come with me, please. I have an idea that Mr. Roosevelt will be happy to see you.”

  As Mary followed the man out of the office, the other tossed his unruly blond curls off of his forehead with a haughty jerk of the head and sat back down to his paperwork.

  23

  It was January 1903. Henry Starr, twenty-nine years old, had been in prison for nine years. After all of the appeals had been exhausted and the issue had finally been settled, Henry had been sent to the federal prison at Columbus, Ohio. He had used his time in prison to his advantage. He spent much time in the prison library, and he secured a job in the prison bakeshop. He was a model prisoner and was well-liked by guards and the warden, as well as other inmates. All in all, he took his prison time well, but it had been a crucial nine years. Henry was no longer a kid. He even had a touch of gray hair. And the world had changed around him. While Henry was still at the Fort Smith jail, Judge Parker had been deposed by his political enemies. For that, Henry had rejoiced. Parker had not lived long after his loss of power, and Henry had been sent to Columbus by the Hanging Judge’s replacement, Judge Rogers.

  It was 1903. The Cherokee Nation had a new Principal Chief, Samuel Houston Mayes, and the Cherokee courts had been abolished by an act of the United States Congress. The Cherokee voters, most of whom were of mixed blood and known as progressive, as opposed to traditional and mostly full-blood, had voted in favor of the allotment of tribally owned lands to private individuals. It would be the major step in the dissolution of the Cherokee Nation. In Europe, Bismarck, Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll, and Queen Victoria had died. In the United States Stephen Crane had passed away. The Boxer Rebellion came to an end, and the Boer War began and ended. Joseph Conrad published Lord Jim. Gorky’s The Lower Depths and Strindberg’s A Dream Play were produced, and the United States Supreme Court ruled that it was perfectly all right for the Congress to ignore Indian treaties if it is in the best interest of both the United States and the Indians to do so. Of course, Indians would not be consulted in the process of determining whether or not such an action would be in their best interests.