Sam Bass (2 page)

I was amused at the bitterness of his complaint, which he spoke in a high, nasal twang that made him sound even younger than he was. “Most people come here expecting more than there is,” I said, “especially since the war. But they get used to it. Most even like it after a while.”

“Oh, I don't mind the
place
so much,” he said. “But I'm a sorry cowhand.”

“Who says?”

“Carruth's told me I ain't going on the drive to Kansas. He says I got to learn the tricks before I can be any use on the trail.”

“Well, he's right,” I said. “If you don't know what you're doing, you'll get yourself killed on the trail. Or get somebody else killed. Be patient, son. You haven't been here long, and you've got all the time in the world to get whatever you want.”

Sam squinted through the smoke of his cigarette. “No, I ain't,” he said. “What if I spend a year or two learning to rope a cow? What am I then? Just a cowboy. Nothing. Them longhorns ain't nothing but misery, and I ain't going to wear myself out on them.”

His face was flushed, perhaps by the alcohol, and I thought he was going to cry. I felt sorry for him, so young and alone. “Why don't you do something else?” I said.

“I'm going west to hunt buffalo,” he said. “Hides is bringing up to two dollars apiece, and a lot of boys is going out to get them.”

“Are you good with a rifle?” I asked. “Not very good,” he said quietly.

“Have you ever skinned a buffalo? It's the hardest, filthiest work there is. Worse than working cows. And if you're not good with a rifle, you won't get many hides.”

Sam stared at the dust at the foot of the steps for some time, then pulled off his hat and swiped his brow with his sleeve. “Well, Dad,” he said, “is there nothing here for me?”

“Sure there is, son. Maybe something in town. Maybe you could get work in one of the stores.”

He shook his head. “I can't read or write or do numbers.”

“Well, what can you do?” I asked. “What do you like in this imperfect world?”

“Horses,” he said. Then he told me about the dream.

The Widow Lacy hired him. She ran the Lacy House, the biggest and best hotel in Denton, a two-story, white frame structure on the square. She had a fine well, too, and could water as much stock as you brought, which was one reason her place was so popular. That and her cooking. But she had had a hard time of it since her husband died, and she looked worn down by the worry of it. Business was too good. The inside work kept her hopping, and she was having trouble keeping a man around to do the lifting and carrying and taking care of her customers' animals. The pay was low and her tongue was sharp, particularly when she was tired, which was most of the time, and no male helper of hers stayed more than a few months, despite her food. I saw her one evening, drawing and carrying the water for the stock herself. Her hair was coming unpinned, and the hem of her skirt was spotted with manure. I hurried to help her, and while I carried the water buckets I told her about Sam. “Lordy, Dad, if he's got two arms and a back, I'll take him,” she said. “I won't even ask for legs.”

They hit it off well. Sam worked hard and didn't have to be told what to do. He didn't complain about the work or the wages. The hotel's customers liked him. Some said their horses and mules looked better after a day or two in Sam's care than they'd ever seen them before. That was high praise, because animals are important around Denton, and most men consider themselves better than most at handling them and taking care of them. But Sam had such a special way with them that people could compliment him without taking anything away from themselves.

It's a strange thing. Most people don't think of cleverness with animals as a gift of God, because everyone has to deal with them in one way or another. But some are so much better at it than others that you have to consider it a special gift. And Sam had the gift. That made him popular with the Lacy House customers, and valuable to the Widow. She knew it, and treated him nicer than she had his predecessors. She would save a piece of pie from supper and give it to him right before bedtime. She would buy him a new shirt or a new pair of pantaloons occasionally, and would fuss when he didn't wear them. He did look scruffy much of the time, letting his black hair grow almost to his collar, wearing old patched clothes and going for a week without being shaved. “I ain't no preacher,” he would say when the Widow suggested improvements, and she would shrug and let him go, since his appearance didn't harm his good standing with her customers.

He was popular in the town, too. Although he rarely spoke and wore a sad, vaguely troubled expression on his face much of the time, people who saw him around the square learned that he wasn't unfriendly, and after he had a drink or two, he could be congenial. He drank moderately and gambled moderately, and when he lost, he didn't rail against his own bad luck or curse the good luck of others or mumble of cheating as some did. He accepted his losses with grace, and when he won, he always bought a drink or two for the other players, thus taking some of the sting out of their ill fortune or bad sense. Because of that simple courtesy, cowboys and townspeople sought him out for their games.

And he made three special friends. Frank Jackson, who was about five years younger than Sam, seemed to worship him. To this day I don't know why. Frank was a tinner, and worked in the shop of his brother-in-law, Ben Key. He was a blond, gentle boy who read every book he could find and said he wanted to be a doctor. In appearance, manner and mind he was Sam's opposite. Yet he hung on Sam's every word as if it came from an oracle, and sometimes he even aped the peculiar stoop that made Sam appear to be carrying some invisible burden. I've watched them pitch hay and carry water to the Lacy House stock together, Frank babbling of what he had been reading in some book or newspaper, and Sam working silently, maybe listening to Frank's words, maybe not. Frank was only fifteen or sixteen then and didn't have many willing listeners to his book learning, I guess. Maybe Sam's silence was what Frank treasured in him.

The reasons for Sam's friendship with the others were more obvious. Henry Underwood was from Indiana, like Sam, and had worn the Yankee blue in the war, like Sam's older brother, who was killed in Kentucky. Maybe he had known Sam's brother or served under the same commander. I don't know. Anyway, they had Indiana in common, and strangers in a place are always glad to happen onto someone who shares something of the past with them. Henry was married and made his living hauling firewood and driving freight between Denton and Dallas, but I considered him a shiftless sort. He spent too much time in town, drinking and gaming at the Parlor Saloon, and his wife's life was a hard one.

The Parlor was run by Henderson Murphy, and it was there that Sam met Henderson's son, Jim. Although I consider saloon-keeping a questionable way to win a livelihood, no town could ask for a better citizen than Henderson Murphy. He served several terms as alderman, and outside the town he owned even more land than I did. He sired the first white child born in Denton, and several others afterwards. That was lucky for him, for he suffered terribly from consumption and needed all the help he could get to tend his property. And no man could ask for a more helpful son than Jim was, particularly around the saloon. He was blessed with that cheerfulness and gift of talk that makes Irishmen such perfect hosts and a skill with his fists that enabled him to keep order without calling for the law. If the other saloonkeepers in Denton had been as well equipped for their calling as young Jim was, my lot would have been a happier one.

Sam and his friends were an odd bunch. Frank Jackson wasn't far beyond childhood, hardly old enough to need a razor. Henry Underwood was at least a dozen years older than he, and a family man besides. And Jim Murphy, despite his jolly manner, was a man who took his responsibilities seriously, especially his duty to his father, while the others didn't seem to have a care in the world. I think if Sam hadn't been around, they wouldn't have paid any attention at all to one another. They weren't really friends of each other. But each, for his own reasons, was Sam's friend, and whenever he was around, they moved to him like horseshoe nails to a magnet. So the four were often in each other's company, and the town got used to seeing them together. Sam had a charm of some kind, I guess, but I can't say what it was, and he lived with me for three years.

He came to work for me very like the way he had gone to the Widow Lacy. Out of pure restlessness. I was sitting on the courthouse steps one evening as usual, and he sat down beside me, just as he had when he was working for Bob Carruth. He breathed a sigh and slumped forward. “Lord,” he said, “that hotel is getting the best of me.”

“The Widow's getting her money's worth, is she?” I said.

“She is. I don't know whether I'm coming or going. And the worse thing is, I'm staying in the same place.”

The remark didn't make sense to me, and I asked him what he meant.

“I mean I ain't
going
nowhere,” he said in that high-pitched twang that he employed when complaining. “I've been around that damn hotel all day and most of the night for nearly two years now, and every time I get out of sight of it, that widow woman hollers so loud you can hear her all over the square. She might as well tie me up like a dog.”

“She likes you,” I said.

“But I'm too old for that kind of work now. Hotel work is boy's work. And women's. A man's got to move around. In all the time I've been in Texas I ain't been no farther from this spot than Carruth's place.” He lapsed into a kind of reverie, just staring into the evening for some time. Then he said, “I shouldn't never have listened to you. I should have went buffalo hunting.”

“Well, you'd probably be dead now.”

“Dead is better than what I am.”

“Pshaw, Sam!”

“Well, I believe it,” he said. Then he fell back into his silence.

It was full dark when he spoke again, and the saloon lamps were casting an inviting glow onto the sidewalks around the square. “Come have a drink with me,” he said.

“You know I don't drink, son.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“Let me drive for you, then.”

At that time, besides being sheriff, I had started a small freighting business. Just two wagons that I ran between Denton and Dallas and Sherman to fetch goods from the railroad depots whenever there was call to. Although I had competitors in Henry Underwood and others, my business was growing, and I employed two teamsters. But I didn't need another one.

I did need help, though. In addition to the family ranch west of town, where my brothers did more than their share of the labor, and my twelve-acre town place west of Bolivar Street, where my dear wife was too heavily burdened with the care of our large garden and the domestic animals, I recently had bought a hundred-and-sixty-acre place to the northwest that was in need of improvement. As I said, I'm a man of property. But the growth of the town and the troublesome times were demanding more of me than I had expected when I was persuaded to run for the sheriffs office, and I was proving a neglectful steward of what the Lord had given me. So I said, “I've got no place for another teamster now, but I do need some help.” And I told him about the new place and all that needed to be done there, and offered to let him live with Mrs. Egan and me at our town place. I also promised that if one of my teamsters quit, he could have the job.

He accepted my offer with enthusiasm, and wanted to move his belongings into my house that very night, but I refused. “It would be unfair to the Widow,” I said. “Tell her what you're going to do and give her a few days to find somebody to take your place.”

“She ain't going to like this, Dad,” he said.

“No, she won't.”

“Will you tell her? She'll kill me.”

The prospect of telling the Widow Lacy that she was losing her right hand didn't thrill me, either, but I agreed to do it. Sam wanted me to go to her right then, but I decided to wait until morning, when the woman wouldn't be so tired.

The Widow gave me unshirted hell. She even wept, and accused me of stealing the boy away from her. But I told her Sam was so restless that she was bound to lose him soon, anyway. And she had begun to suspect that, and finally told me that if she had to lose him, she was glad he was coming to me. She implored me to treat him right, and I promised that I would. She took my hand and pressed it and wiped her eyes, and that was that.

A few days later, Sam moved his gear into the little room off my back porch. I rode out to the new place with him and my younger brother Armstrong, who is called “Army,” and showed Sam the work he would have to do, with Army's help. The prospect would have disheartened almost anybody. Nobody had lived on the place in years, and the cabin was in ruins. I didn't care about that, since I didn't plan to live there anyway, but the land was on the verge of ruin, too. The fields were overgrown with weeds, and the brush was making a vigorous comeback in the pasture, and the fences would have to be rebuilt. The improvements I wanted were minimal, since I intended to use the land for grazing and for the firewood I could get out of the bottom on the back side of the place. But Sam and Army would have to spend days in the pasture with grubbing hoes and axes, hacking at the brush and snaking timbers out of the woods and splitting them to rebuild the fences, and chopping and hauling the firewood. Just looking at it made my back ache, but Sam and Army regarded it as nothing. Youth is wonderful.

Within a month they had the fences up, and I bought a few head of stock and moved them there. The boys cut enough firewood to last the whole winter and hauled it to town. Then Army went back to the ranch and left Sam alone with his grubbing hoe and ax and the brush. Every morning Mrs. Egan fixed him bacon and biscuits to take with him, and he would saddle the little buckskin and ride out just after daylight. He would stay out there all day by himself, working like a nigger, and ride back in time to milk our cow, gather the eggs and do anything else he could to help my wife. He would dandle my daughter Minnie on his knee, and let little John ride him piggyback. He called John “Little Pard.” He made a lot of progress on the pasture, too, and I guess he would have grubbed brush all winter if Billy Chick hadn't quit.