Sam Bass (16 page)

“So you're Jackson.” I winked at him.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“How old are you?”

“Not as old as I hope to be, ma'am.”

“You'd better take Sam away, then,” I said.

“I didn't want him to come. That's why I came with him.”

It took me an instant to catch his meaning. “How are things in Denton County?”

“Crowded, ma'am.” He still held his gun under his hat. I knew he was watching the window.

Sam put his arm around my waist and walked me proudly, slowly, toward the horses. Jackson stayed in the shadows, his gun under his hat. Sam stopped and kissed me. “I guess I won't be seeing you for a while,” he said.

“No, Sam. Stay away.”

“I come to tell you about a proposition,” he said. “I have a plan. When this is over, I'm going down to New Orleans and buy me a boat and go into the hide business.”

“Yes, do that,” I said.

“I want you to come with me,” he said.

A shadow moved across the strip of light the kitchen lamp threw across the alley. Jackson moved his hat and cocked his pistol. The click was very loud. He glanced toward us.

“Will you?” Sam whispered.

“Yes! Now go!”

He kissed me quickly and motioned to Jackson. Frank sidled toward us, keeping his eyes and gun on the window. When he reached us, he uncocked the gun and returned it to his belt. He tipped his hat again. “Nice to meet you, ma'am,” he said, then swung into the saddle. He smiled down at me while Sam mounted. Sam gave me a little wave, and they walked their horses down the alley toward the lighted street. They turned into the light, and I held my breath, half expecting to hear gunfire, but there was none. I stayed in the alley for several minutes, listening. There was nothing.

In the kitchen I stood against the door, blinking against the light. Willie was sitting at the table, behind the lamp, his black face glistening. “You got anuthuh visituh, Miz Maude,” he said.

“Tell him I can't see him. Tell him I've got the curse.”

“He say he jus' want talk. He look mean.”

“All right, Willie.”

The Pinkerton who hated Southerners was standing by the parlor fireplace, his elbow on the mantel. He smirked when he saw me and extended his closed hand. As I approached, he slowly opened his fingers. A shiny 1877 double-eagle lay in his palm.

I smiled. “For me?” I said. After all, I am a whore.

Frank Jackson

The haul we got at Mesquite certainly wasn't enough to convince me to stay with Sam and the bunch. It was clear that railroad robbery was going to take me no closer to the life I wanted than Ben's shop would have, and Ben's offer, or some other job in town, would at least have improved my odds for a long life. But no, I didn't go back to Denton. Sometimes we make decisions that can't be reversed. A man standing on the bank of a swift river can decide whether he will try to swim across or walk along the bank until he finds a bridge. He can turn one way and walk, and if he doesn't like the scenery he can turn around and go the other. But if he decides to swim, he has to do whatever the stream makes him do to get to the other side. Once into the current, he can't change his mind. He just fights like hell and takes his chances. With a little luck, he might make it. But only God knows what the bank will be like where he lands.

I took four buckshot out of Seab Barnes' thighs, and by the time I knew for sure that his wounds were healing properly my chance to return to Denton was gone. If it had ever been there. When Sam handed me some newspaper clippings that Maude had given him and I saw that my name was on a federal warrant, I knew I was smack in the middle of the river, and way downstream from Ben and my sister and Dr. Ross. No matter how far they stretched, I was beyond their reach. And when I read the clippings to Sam, he said, “Well, pard, we're all you got now,” and he was right.

We were lying under the trees on the ridge above our cabin. Below us in the clearing, Seab and Arkansas were dressing a deer that Arkansas had shot that morning farther up the hollow. The trees were in full leaf now, and our hideout seemed even more remote from the rest of the world than it had in winter. Sam had a pair of field glasses and was leaning on his elbows, watching some riders out on the prairie while I was reading to him. The riders looked like ants to me. “They're Rangers, I think,” Sam said. “About thirty of them.”

We had spent most of our daylight hours for most of a week in this place, watching posses gallop around the fringes of our sanctuary. A couple of days before, Sam and Henry and I had watched two posses at the same time, one riding southward, the other northward. They spotted each other just north of the Clear Creek bottom, and each thinking the other was us, I guess, they opened fire. A member of the southbound posse grabbed his arm, and Henry said, “They winged the son of a bitch! The bastards are going to kill each other off.”

And we heard gunfire another time, apparently in the bottom, for we could see no riders. The shots echoed up the hollow, but they were so far away that we knew they weren't fired at us. “Posse work sure is dangerous,” Sam said.

So we weren't worried. The riders that Sam thought were Rangers were so small and silent and seemed to move so slowly across the greening prairie that they were of another world, as distant as the moon from Sam and me on the ridge and Seab and Arkansas and the dead deer. Seab and Arkansas were cutting the skin away from the carcass, their knives working quickly, an inch or two at a time. Then Arkansas grabbed the big flap of skin that they had cut away and yanked downward. The skin peeled away with a ripping sound loud enough for me to hear. Henry was moving down the slope from the cabin. When he stepped into the clearing the sun was brilliant on his red underwear. He had surprised us and washed his clothes in the creek the day before. The Rangers on the prairie meant nothing to us.

The bullet hit the rock near my shoulder and zinged off into the sky. It hadn't come from the Rangers. I rolled onto my back, levering a cartridge into my rifle as I went. I fired blindly, before I even saw the riders on the ridge across the hollow. Sam fired, too, and we wriggled on our bellies down the slope to thicker cover. Sam fired again. The riders were dismounting, crouching, running, seeking cover. “It's old Dad,” Sam said.

They were about two hundred yards away, and out of sight now. A buzzard, stirred from his roost by the gunfire, was circling. Our clearing was empty, except for the naked deer hanging in the shade. I could see no one. Sam fired again, blindly. “Hey, Dad! This is Honest Eph! Come fight me!” His high voice echoed through the hollow. A volley of rifle fire crashed over our heads, sending shreds of leaves down upon us.

“They see us,” I said.

“No. They're shooting at the sound.”

“Stop yelling, then.”

Another volley cracked, and leaves and twigs fell to the right of me. Henry dropped with a grunt behind a tree not far away. “You all right?” I asked.

“Yeah. How many is there?”

“About a dozen, I think. Where are Seab and Arkansas?” “Below us a ways.”

“Hey, Dad! Why ain't you out grubbing brush?” Sam hollered. The posse replied with another volley, closer this time. “Woo! They're laying down the lead!” Henry said. “Sam, shut up!” I said.

“Hey, Dad!” Then bullets sliced all around us. I buried my face in the dry leaves and heard a slug thump into my tree. “Oh God, they hit me!” Sam groaned. I crawled to him, but found no blood. Beside him, his Winchester was a wreck. “A bullet hit the stock,” I said.

“I can't feel nothing in my arm.”

“You're all right. I wonder what those Rangers are doing.”

“Rangers?” Henry asked.

“About thirty of them, north of here.”

“Oh God!” Henry said.

We lay squinting across the hollow, watching for targets and finding none. I wished Sam hadn't left the field glasses on the ridge. Dad's men must have been wondering where we were, too, for there were no more shots. I guessed they were near the ridge, above the limestone bluff that rose above the trees across the chasm from us.

“It's a cinch they ain't going to ride down from there,” Sam said. “And if they tried it on foot, we'd pick them off.”

“Let's get out of here,” Henry said.

“Hey, Dad! We're going home!” Sam hollered. “Go learn your brush-grubbers how to shoot!” “Damn it, shut
up!”
I said.

No shots came. We lay there for some time, but none came, and we saw nothing. “Reckon they're gone?” Henry said.

“Maybe,” Sam said. “Wouldn't old Dad get a kick, thinking I spent the night up here on my belly?”

“I'm
staying
on my belly till I get to that cabin,” Henry said.

We all did. We wriggled through the woods. Rocks and sticks poked us in the guts. We slid right onto the stone ledge where the cabin stood. Seab and Arkansas were sitting by the door with their rifles across their laps. Seab grinned. “Hey, Arkansas, did you ever see three snakes crawl out of the woods at the same time?”

“Never did. Reckon we ought to pop their heads?” “Naw,” Seab said. “These ain't poison.”

Sam said, “If enough of them posses get together, they might come right up the creek and in the front door.”

“A lot of them would die,” Seab said.

“Yeah, but they might do it. Or they might just squat in the mouth of the hollow and starve us out.”

“I wonder if those Rangers were regulars or Junius Peak's bunch,” I said.

“What's the difference?” Arkansas asked.

“A lot of difference.”

“I'll say!” Henry said.

“Let's get out,” Sam said. “Tonight.”

We toted our remaining supplies up the slope and buried them under rocks at the foot of the bluff. We packed little to take with us. Henry said, “Wait a minute. I ain't going to waste all that venison.” He went down to the creek and returned a few minutes later with the backstrap of the deer. He wrapped the meat in a flour sack and rolled it up in his blankets.

We rode silently in the darkness, alert for sight or sound or smell of a posse's camp, but there was none. Jim Murphy's house was dark, but the black forms of several horses moved about the corral. We dismounted and left our horses with Arkansas and moved quietly to the fence and examined the beasts, to make sure they weren't a posse's mounts. We recognized them all as Jim's. “Remember them,” Sam whispered. “We might need them.”

Henry insisted on seeing his family before we went wherever we were going, so we headed over to Henderson Murphy's place, keeping to the roads. We felt sure the people in the few lighted houses along the way would assume we were a posse heading home from the hunt. When we reached Henderson's house Sam took some gold from his belt and gave it to Henry. The two of them dismounted and walked toward the house. A lamp shone through one of the two front windows.

“Who is it?” The voice came from the shadows in the yard. It coughed a hard, rattling cough.

“Sam Bass, Mr. Murphy. And Henry.”

“Step into the light.”

The old man came around a bush, bearing a shotgun under his arm. He stopped and coughed long and hard into a large handkerchief. “Hello, Sam,” he said. “Hello, Henry.”

“We're getting out, Mr. Murphy,” Sam said.

“Don't blame you. Three posses passed today. Where you going?”

“Don't know.”

“No, I guess you can't.”

“Henry wanted to see his family.”

The old man's face was dark and wrinkled, framed by a mop of white hair that glowed in the yellow light from the window. His stoop was worse than Sam's. His chest seemed caved in. “The kids is asleep,” he said. “Sarah!”

The door opened immediately, and a tall, skinny woman came down the steps. Her face was as wrinkled as the old man's, but pale. Strings of hair hung down her forehead. Without a word she hugged Henry and kissed him. They spoke in low voices, and Sam and Mr. Murphy walked away from them, to us. “Evening, boys,” the old man said. He looked us each in the eyes. “Ain't met this one,” he said, indicating Arkansas.

“Arkansas Johnson, sir.”

“Ah, yes.” He laid his hand on my stirrup. “How are you, Frank?”

“Fine, Mr. Murphy.”

He nodded at Barnes. “Seaborn Barnes, right?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Murphy,” Seab said.

Mr. Murphy nodded. “Be careful, hear?”

Henry kissed his wife again and laid the gold in her hand. “Thank you, Sam,” she called.

“Henry earned it, ma'am,” Sam said. He and Henry mounted, and we trotted away.

Instantly I knew it was a gun muzzle against my cheek. I reached for my pistol, but the cold metal pressed deeper into my skin, and the quiet voice said, “Don't.” I moved my hand away from my gun, and the cold metal left my cheek, and I turned my head on my blanket. His face, hideous, was grinning. Hair almost white hung to his shoulders. His short beard across his broad chin was whiter. Only three teeth, all of them brown, all in the lower jaw, rose from red gums that glistened wetly in the early sun. One eye squinted, yellow as a cat's. The other was gone, its socket covered by a greasy black patch. A Confederate infantryman's overcoat, too warm for the season, sagged from his narrow shoulders. The heavy shoe near my head was split just above the sole, and I saw the pink toes. Where the other shoe would have been, a homemade wooden peg stood. The grimy hands held a double-barrel shotgun inches from my eyes. “Morning,” he whispered. I moved my head carefully, looking for my companions. “They're asleep,” he whispered.

“Who are you?”

“Wetsel. This is my place.”

Now I saw the tiny log cabin fifty yards behind him, and a barn farther back, unnoticed when we unrolled our blankets, too tired and wary to build a fire or even eat. “Who are
you?”
he asked.