Sam Bass (11 page)

“A buffalo,” he said.

“A woodpecker. I caught him.”

“What the hell for?”

“Come help me get him.”

He made a face and stumbled on down the slope, and I said, “Stick your hand under there and grab him.” “He'll peck the hell out of me,” he said. “No, he won't.”

“I'll hold the hat, and
you
stick
your
hand under there.”

The bird did peck me pretty hard, but I held him. The pecker was a big one. His yellow-and-black eyes glared at me. He raised a terrible fuss and kept trying to get at me with his beak.

“Now what?” Seab asked.

“Get something to tie him with.”

Seab went to the cabin and returned with an empty coffee sack and a piece of twine, and I dropped the bird in and tied it shut.

Seab grinned. “You ain't nothing but a kid.”

“Well, how many people you know have caught a woodpecker?”

“Don't know none that wanted to,” he said. “I caught me a jay once. He flew in the house, and I slammed the door and chased him around till I stunned him with Mama's broom.”

“What did you do with him?”

“Made me a cage out of sumac sticks. Kept him for some time, too, before he died.” “Let's do that!” He laughed.

“It'll give us something to do.”

“It's your woodpecker.” “Will you help me?”

He raised his hands in an expression of helplessness. “All right.”

Sam thought we both were crazy, and Seab tried to lay off all the craziness onto me. “If I don't help him, he might get dangerous,” he said. But I knew he was enjoying my childish idea as much as I was, and we set about constructing the cage with enthusiasm and care. Seab and I went back to the creek and hacked down far more young, flexible sumac whips than we needed and shaved the bark off. I rubbed the strips of bark into several strands of crude string, while Seab gouged holes around the edge of a shingle that had blown off the cabin, to serve as the floor of the cage. We poked the ends of the sumac whips into the holes and tied them together at the top to form a sort of dome. Then Seab wove thinner branches in and out among them and lashed them with my string, leaving no opening big enough to allow the woodpecker to escape. He even made a small door and lashed it on. Sam sat ridiculing us while we worked, but I enjoyed it. It was the first careful work I had done with my hands since leaving Ben's shop, and it felt good. Maybe the potter in Seab felt the same way, for he stopped saying “he” and started saying “we” when responding to Sam's rawhiding. He even winked at me a couple of times, and a bond grew between us that never really broke. From then on, in any arguments or discussions, Seab was always on my side, except for one matter farther down the road.

We worked on the cage all day, and it was with a great deal of pride that we released the woodpecker into it and hung it from a rafter with the twine that had held it in the sack. The bird raised a ruckus, flapping about the cage, blinking at us with those yellow-and-black eyes. I don't know whether dumb animals feel hatred or not, but those eyes looked like they were full of it.

After all the work was done, Sam became interested in the bird, too, and would stick his finger between the bars and withdraw it when the woodpecker attacked it. “Does he have a name?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Honest Eph.”

Sam laughed, and Seab asked, “What does that mean?” “We used to call our chief that when he grubbed brush for Dad Egan.”

“That ain't no good,” Sam said. “Honest Eph won't never be behind bars.”

The name stuck, anyway. And during the long days of nothing that followed, that bird was a godsend. “What do woodpeckers eat?” I asked, and Seab said, “Bugs, I guess. That's probably what they're looking for when they hammer the trees.” So he and I spent hours crawling along the banks of the creek, looking for the few bugs to be had at that time of year. Maybe we
were
crazy. I don't know. I even tried to teach the bird to talk once, and realized how foolish I was when I saw my friends looking at me as if I were a freak.

When we had been in the hollow about a week, Jim Murphy rode up with the Dallas newspapers of several days before. We had created a sensation. The papers said several posses had gone to Allen but failed to pick up our trail. The Texas Rangers were investigating, and everybody was offering money for our scalps. The governor had posted a reward of five hundred dollars per man, which was matched by both the railroad and the Texas Express Company. “Fifteen hundred apiece. That almost makes it worth my while,” Jim said. “Two thousand for you, Sam, counting Nebraska.”

“I reckon nobody wants it,” Sam said. “I ain't seen nobody coming to get it.”

“They ain't identified you,” Jim said. “But life's getting livelier. They picked up Spotswood yesterday, and the express messenger identified him. They just walked up to his wagon and arrested him. His little boy was with him, too.”

We were too stunned to speak. We glanced nervously at each other and at the ground until Jim said, “I wish I hadn't sent him up here. I didn't do nobody no favor.”

“Did he have the money on him?” Seab asked.

“Just twelve dollars.”

“Well, they'll never convict him on just the messenger's say-so,” Seab said. “It was dark.”

“Maybe. You never can tell about juries.”

After Jim left, the three of us sat around the cabin, saying nothing. We were scared, I guess, and I was empty inside, without hope and angry. In a fit of rage I grabbed a stick and jumped up and jabbed it between the bars of the woodpecker's cage, trying to hit the bird with it. “Hey, Honest Eph! You damn train robber!” I yelled. “Stand around there, boy! Stand around there, son! This is what Dad Egan's going to do when he catches you!”

Sam leapt up and jerked the stick from my hand and whipped it across my belly. The stick broke, and a piece of it flew across the room and almost hit Barnes. Sam's hand was trembling. He flung the other half of the stick out the door and made a fist in my face, his eyes black with fury. “Don't never say that!” he screamed. “You'll be in
hell
before they put Sam Bass behind bars!” Then he grabbed the cage and tried to yank it down. The twine held, but a couple of the bars broke, and the woodpecker was out and gone in a flash of red and blue.

Sam's eyes and mine were locked on each other, unable to move. We didn't move a muscle, and neither did Barnes. It was deathly quiet. And suddenly I felt sad and thought that if something didn't move I would cry. Then Sam's eyes softened. He breathed out a big breath and laid his hand on my shoulder. “I'm sorry, pard,” he said. “There wasn't no call for that.”

“I shouldn't have done what I did, either,” I said. “I was just nervous.”

“We're all nervous.” Then he threw up his hands and laughed. “Hey! Tomorrow we'll find us another train!”

Seab was in front of the fireplace wearing his coat and hat, hugging himself. The fire was huge, roaring up the chimney. “I'm freezing,” he said. “Something's wrong with me.”

I stepped over Sam, who was still rolled in his blankets, and Seab turned and looked at me. His face was drawn and pale, his eyes very bright. His teeth were chattering. “Something
is
wrong with you,” I said.

“I ache all over. My head hurts.”

His lips and fingernails were blue. I pushed his hat back and laid my hand on his forehead.

“What's wrong with me?” he asked. “I ain't never felt so.”

“Some kind of fever, probably. We'll know soon. If it's fever, you'll get hot.”

“I wish I was getting hot now. I'm freezing.”

Sam stirred, then sat up. “Seab's sick,” I said.

“Bad?”

“Don't know. I just got up.”

Sam stretched and got up himself. He looked at Barnes and said, “Jesus, you look like hell.” “Your bedside manner isn't the best, Dr. Bass,” I said. “Well, you're the great healer. Do something.” I arched my eyebrows at him. “I will, Dr. Bass.” “It ain't funny,” Seab mumbled.

I opened the saddlebags that Dr. Ross had given me and pulled out McGown and Eberle and flipped the pages to the sections on fevers. “You're cold, ache all over, and your head hurts, right?”

“Yes.”

“Anything else?”

“Like what?”

“Well, let's see. He's pale and shivering. Do you agree, Dr. Bass?”

“I do, Dr. Jackson.”

“His lips and fingernails are blue. Do you agree, Dr. Bass?”

“Yes, indeed, Dr. Jackson. Very blue.”

“It ain't funny, damn it,” Seab said.

“Are you thirsty, Mr. Barnes?”

“Yes.”

“Is your mind confused?”

“His mind's always confused, Dr. Jackson,” Sam said.

“Have you pissed this morning, Mr. Barnes?”

“Yes.”

“What color was it?”

“What color was it? Yellow.”

“Pale yellow or bright yellow?” “Are you funning me, Frank?”

“No. I'm trying to find out what's wrong with you.”

“Well, I don't know what kind of yellow it was.”

“You probably have an intermitting fever. We'll know for sure if you get hot. Dr. McGown says hardly anybody dies of intermitting fever. You're lucky, Mr. Barnes.”

“Can you fix him?” Sam asked.

I had seen Seab's symptoms many times on my rounds with Dr. Ross, and I thought I knew what would happen to him. “Yes, I can.” The words gave me a feeling of immense power. I opened the medicine side of my saddlebags and got the quinine and laudanum. “Give me a cup, then go get some water.” Sam jumped to obey, and I poured what I guessed to be about fifty drops of laudanum into the cup. McGown didn't say whether the laudanum and quinine should be given separately or together, so I assumed it didn't matter and dropped what I guessed to be about ten grains of quinine into the laudanum and stirred it with a stick and gave it to Seab. “Drink this.”

He obeyed and made a face. “Sam's getting some water,” I said. “Sulphuric ether would make you better faster, but I don't have any. This will do it, though.”

“Do you know what you're doing?” Seab asked.

“Yes,” I said, not really sure.

Sam brought a bucket of water. I dipped Seab's cup into it, and he drank gratefully. “Now roll up in your blankets and lie down,” I said. “You're going to get hot and then go to sleep and then start sweating, but don't worry. You'll be all right.”

Without a word he did as I told him, and a few minutes later he was asleep. Sam and I sat watching him. “Well, no trains will run today,” Sam said.

“Not for several days,” I said. “It takes a little time.”

“Could he die?” Sam's eyes were full of respect.

“No. He'll be all right.”

Suddenly I understood all that Dr. Ross had told me. My real knowledge of Seab's illness was scarcely deeper than his own or Sam's. But because I could read and because I possessed and had administered the medicines and was answering Sam's questions with an air of confidence, I was a doctor. I found myself wishing I had a beard, and pretending I was chilly, I put on the black coat that Sam had bought me in Fort Worth. I
was
a physician, for I had a patient and a concerned friend, a relative of the patient almost, who needed comforting and believed whatever I said.

My professional reputation grew when Barnes became feverish and then broke into a sweat, as I had predicted. I bathed his head and neck in cold water, gave him draughts from the cup, and followed the nursing procedures dictated by McGown and Eberle with a great deal of ceremony, barking orders to Sam to fetch whatever I needed. By nightfall Seab was feeling better, and he smiled weakly at me and said, “You ain't so dumb.” I gave him more quinine and laudanum and a little calomel and said, “You're not through it yet, but you're going to be all right.”

Sure enough, the chill-fever-sweat cycle recurred during the night, but with less intensity and shorter duration. I reckoned that my diagnosis must have been right and followed the instructions of McGown and Eberle to the letter, wishing that Dr. Ross were present to judge my performance. I remained at Seab's side until he lapsed into his sweat. Then I went to sleep, since there was nothing to be done at that stage, and I knew it would be followed by remission.

In the morning Seab asked, “What made me sick, Frank?”

“It could be any number of things,” I replied casually. “My guess would be miasma.”

“What the hell's that?”

“Bad air from swamps or marshes. You've been sleeping in too many creek bottoms lately.”

“It's the best place for them that's in our trade,” Sam said.

“He'll be all right,” I said.

In four days Seab was up and around, though still weak and shaky. Sam asked if it would be safe to leave him alone and ride out to scout our next job, and I said it would.

We left that morning and spent the next three days scouting the Houston and Texas Central through Collin and Dallas counties. We struck the railroad just south of Allen and rode southward in a leisurely manner, sticking to the roads most of the time and stopping and talking to people whenever and wherever we liked. We posed as ranchers looking for land to buy, bought drinks and shared tobacco with men lounging at crossroads stores and talked about cattle, weather and, of course, trains. Sam could be a good talker when he wanted to, and his generosity with his money made many whiskey-jug friends who were eager to tell him everything he wanted to know about anything under the sun.

We chose the village of Hutchins, about eight miles south of Dallas, as the site of our next adventure. The layout there was almost identical to Allen, and the southbound train arrived about ten o'clock at night, which would give us the advantage of the darkness again.