THE CONKLE FARM
NEAR CLARKSON, OHIO, OCTOBER 22, 1934
Alongside every outlaw who survives beyond brief days hover this nameless legion whom the law does not know or may not touch. Call them his protective angels if you like.
—WHEN THE DALTONS RODE (EMMETT DALTON)
Charley Floyd ran for the trees and the freedom that lay beyond. If he could just get across the field of corn stubble to the tree line, he would be safe. The weeds and the wild grapevines, the honeysuckle and the brambles would grant him yet another reprieve. He would race into the woods and down the slopes, up the steep hills and across the crumbling masonry of abandoned canal locks filled with water from the recent autumn rain.
He was known to some as the Sagebrush Robin Hood, to others as the Phantom Terror. But he was most commonly called Pretty Boy Floyd—public enemy number one. He was invincible, and he always got away.
The weather was warm on this October afternoon. Charley’s white shirt and silk underwear were soiled and sweaty, and he needed a shave and bath. His dark blue suit was stained and covered with hundreds of tiny thistles, Spanish needles, which ran the length of his sleeves and trousers. He was a country boy dressed in a city slicker’s clothes. A farmer’s wife had given him ginger cookies and apples that morning, and he stuffed them in his suit coat pockets. He grasped a .45 pistol in one hand, while his other pistol was tucked in the top of his trousers.
Just moments before, he had chatted with Stewart Dyke and his wife, Florence. The farm couple had kindly agreed to give him a lift up the road a ways in their automobile, away from the farm owned by Dyke’s sister, Ellen Conkle. Charley had passed an hour with Mrs. Conkle. She had just fed him a hot meal. Inside the farmhouse, she still held the dollar bill the stranger had insisted she take in exchange for the plate of spareribs. Ellen Conkle watched him wolf down the dinner she had prepared. He sat in a rocking chair on her porch and ate in silence. Afterward, she saw him pacing around, waiting for Stewart and his wife to finish with their cornhusking. Charley fingered the keys in the car’s ignition, deciding not to steal the machine. He waited for the farmer to come along.
Just before the Dykes walked out of the cornfields, Charley pulled out his pocket watch. It was almost four o’clock in the afternoon. Sunset was about an hour and a half away. He stared at the fifty-cent piece attached to the watch fob. Ellen recalled that he smiled when he rubbed some dirt off the cameo ring he wore. No one knows, but perhaps he thought about Ruby, or Dempsey, or the cotton fields of Oklahoma and the times before he went on the scout.
An airplane, an unusual sight in those parts in 1934, droned overhead. Charley turned his face toward the cloudy sky. The rains of the past few days had disappeared, and even though it was deep into autumn, there were smells of new life in the woods where the maples showed their true colors. Soon, killing frosts would give way to snow that would enrich the land.
Ellen Conkle watched as the stranger climbed into the backseat. Her sister-in-law got up front as Ellen’s brother started his automobile. They waved goodbye, and she went back to the kitchen chores. Suddenly, she heard machines driving up to the front of her house and the sound of car doors slamming shut. When she looked out the window again, she saw a band of men in suits, carrying guns. They began fanning out over her property. The stranger jumped from her brother’s car behind the corncrib and began his run across the field toward the trees.
The run only lasted a few seconds. It must have seemed forever to Charley. Maybe it was like one of those dreams, filled with monsters, that seem to last forever in slow motion. Many years later, a federal agent remembered that Charley ran like an athlete, that he cut and dodged in a broken field sprint. Cookies and apples fell from his pockets and bounced on the ground. Someone yelled for him to halt. Then gunfire erupted and the bullets bounced up puffs of dust around his feet. He ran on toward the trees.
He gulped in mouthfuls of freedom as he ran.
Chester Smith, a policeman from East Liverpool and a sharpshooter who had proudly fought in France and Belgium, knew the man running away was Charley. There was no doubt in his mind.
It was now ten minutes past four. Smith shouldered his .32–20 Winchester rifle. He took aim at the man running in zigzags across the field. When he had Charley in his sights, Smith wrapped his finger around the trigger. He took a breath and held it. He slowly squeezed.