Oklahoma Scoundrels

Back before television, kids read books, played ball or went to the movies. Ah, the silver screen! Movies were cheap—especially if you were a kid—and a big bag of popcorn cost only a nickel. Invariably—at least during Saturday matinees—you got to watch a double feature, plus an installment or two of Buck Rogers, a newsreel, the previews, one or two episodes of the Road Runner outwitting Wile E. Coyote, sometimes a travelogue and the ads for the local Chevy dealer and the plumber and whoever else your folks might need locally. You got a whole lot of entertainment for thirty cents, and you got to sit with your friends.

One end of the double feature was sure to be a western; sometimes both, if you were lucky. That’s where we learned all about the Old West, or at least we thought we did. All of us kids figured the singing cowboys—Gene Autry and his like—were phony, but the others looked real. We learned of a lot of history (we thought) from the heroics of Lash Larue and Randolph Scott and other straight-shooters. Youthful dreams don’t die easily, and it took me a lot of years to learn that a lot of what I saw in the matinees was hogwash.

One of my most precious memories was of Belle Starr, played by Gene Tierney, by any standard one of the loveliest women ever to appear in film. In the minds of us kids, Gene was Belle Starr, the Bandit Queen, the leader of a daring gang, galloping about the countryside without, of course, a hair out of place. Back in the ’40s, I discovered Belle/Gene, and I think I fell in love immediately.

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Belle Starr—big horse, big pistol. Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries .

Sadly, as I got older and found out what Belle was really like, another treasured illusion vanished forever. It was sad to learn that Belle was hardly the Bandit Queen. On her best days, she was a small-time horse thief, a sort of criminal moll who cast a long shadow with very little substance behind it, something like the Wizard of Oz. Physically, she was no rival to Gene Tierney to start with, but as the years went by, she gradually morphed from reasonably pretty girl to truly ugly harridan, the kind of woman westerners would say had been “rid hard and put away wet.”

Still, her legend is far too solidly established to ever pass away. And in fact, she had much to do with real outlaws in her time, not the least of whom was her father-in-law, the formidable Old Tom Starr. And she married a couple other outlaws, too, both of whom died of terminal lead poisoning. And according to legend, Belle dallied with an assortment of other hard cases along the way. That includes Cole Younger, who, western legend says, fathered her daughter, Pearl, something Cole denied to his dying day. And in this, at least, Cole was probably telling the truth.

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Belle, armed to the teeth. Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries .

Still, Belle has probably inspired as much mythology as any other outlaw in the history of the West, which is saying rather a lot. Part of her legend is that she was Cherokee (she wasn’t), that she had Cole Younger’s child (no, she didn’t) and that she galloped about carrying messages for Missouri guerrillas during the Civil War (probably not).

Still, since Belle lived in a time when any sort of female outlaw was a sensation, some of the florid prose about her reached epic proportions. For example, this marvelous drivel written by “Captain Kit Dalton”:

A more winning smile never illumined the face of a Madonna; a more cruel human never walked the deck of a pirate ship…this phenomenally beautiful half savage…a maroon Diana in the chase, a Venus in beauty, a Minerva in Wisdom .

A similar bit of hyperbole appeared in something called Remarkable Rogues: The Careers of Some Notable Criminals in Europe and America . This fairy tale titillates and horrifies the reader with the revelation that, at fifteen, Belle killed her first man, a camp robber, strangling him “with her small white hands.”

In S.W. Harman’s Hell on the Border , Belle is “a sure shot and a murderess,” and “of all the noted women ever mentioned by word or pen, none have been more brilliantly daring nor more effective in their chosen roles than Belle Starr, champion and leader of robbers.”

Many years later, even some old-timers in Indian Territory spun fanciful tales of Belle. One of them went like this:

I remember one time the law was after Belle and she stopped at a Negro cabin; she made the Negro woman hide her. She dressed up in a black dress with a white apron and shawl, blacked her face, and when the law came in she was rocking in a chair with a cob pipe in her mouth .

That fable, like the others, is about as believable as one of the tales of Mother Goose, but it was only one of the bizarre stories told of the Bandit Queen. In fact, the truth is at once stranger and more prosaic.

Belle was a Missouri girl, born plain old Myra Maybelle Shirley on a farm up near Carthage, Missouri. That was in 1848, and Belle’s father was a successful man in that year and a slaveholder. Myra Maybelle—if a picture purporting to be the lass in fact is her—was quite attractive in those far-off days. Then came the horrors of the Civil War, casting their long, ugly shadow across the land, and all of the peaceful life changed. The family was then living in the town of Carthage, where Myra Maybelle got an education at the Carthage Female Academy.

The stories about her tell that she received something most girls did not—an excellent education for the time, including foreign languages—and also became an accomplished musician. Her father was still prospering, now in the innkeeping business, but the war would largely ruin him just as it destroyed so many others.

His eldest son, Bud Shirley, joined a band of Missouri bushwhackers and was killed, and the town of Carthage was burned. There are all sorts of stories about young Belle’s heroics during the war, “fired to deeds of valor” by “her hot Southern blood,” as one sensational writer put it. Legend even has Belle galloping about the countryside carrying messages for her brother’s guerrilla band or even acting as a spy. She was “frequently with Cole Younger and the James boys,” the story goes, even though the Younger brothers and the James boys rode with different guerrilla units.

With Bud’s death and the loss of much of his property, the senior Shirley had enough of the vicious border war and moved his family south, settling near the town of Scyene, Texas, now a part of Dallas. Belle grew to womanhood there and, in 1866, married a hoodlum called Jim Reed, who was already on the run from the law. Two years later, a daughter appeared and was named Rosie. Belle called the girl “her pearl,” however, and Pearl she remained for the rest of her days. Pearl would grow up to a sort of eminence as both prostitute and madam, but that was far in the future.

The Reeds lived for a while under the protection of tough Old Tom Starr, on his spread down on the Canadian River in Indian Territory. However, in 1871, they were living in California, where their son Ed was born. Reed was a professional criminal and by this time was wanted for murder. There are tales that Belle was his confederate in crime, at least to the point of fencing horses her husband had stolen. The legends about her robbing and murdering—which have no solid foundation—are probably no more than a part of the mythology surrounding Belle’s life.

One major source of the undying myth about Belle and her “gang” is S.W. Harman’s Hell on the Border , a rousing book purporting to be a history of Judge Parker’s court at Fort Smith. Belle, Harman says, collected a set of “admirers as reckless as herself,” each becoming her lover, according to Harman, seriatim. These adoring desperados, according to Harmon, included Jim French, Jack Spaniard and Blue Duck, all truly nasty pieces of work. These hard cases “stood ready to obey the woman they admired yet feared, who could out ride, out jump and out shoot them all, who could draw her pistol from its convenient holster at her side in a twinkling and who never missed a mark.”

Two 1874 incidents are probably the best known of her so-called outlaw career. The first was the robbery of the San Antonio–Austin stagecoach. There is no real evidence that Belle had anything to do with the crime, let alone that she was part of the holdup itself. The second crime in which Belle is supposed to have played a part was Jim Reed’s robbery of a wealthy Indian, stealing a purported $30,000, an enormous sum of money for the time.

It was an especially nasty crime. The victim, Watt Grayson, at first refused to tell Reed and two other bandits where he kept his cash. They then threw a noose around Grayson’s neck and hoisted him clear of the ground until he nearly strangled. When this cruelty produced no result, his tormentors turned on Grayson’s wife and began the same torture.

Grayson was plenty tough, but he would not let his wife suffer, so the bandits got his money. Again, there is no real evidence that Belle was even present, although her husband Jim Reed probably was part of the robber gang.

Reed lasted until the summer of 1874, when he came in second in a Paris, Texas gunfight with a deputy. There is a charming tale that Belle refused to identify what was left of Reed in order to deny the officer the reward carried on Reed’s head. Nice story but again without foundation. Belle was now a widow, but being Belle, she wouldn’t remain that way for long.

She is said to have dallied with Bruce Younger up in southern Kansas, maybe even marrying him, but whatever the relationship was, if any, it did not last. And then, in the summer of 1880, she married Sam Starr down in the Cherokee Nation. Sam was the son of Old Tom Starr, one of the really ferocious fighting men of the territory, and the couple settled on his property.

Somewhere along the way, Old Tom’s spread came to be called Younger’s Bend, which produced still another legend: that Belle named the place, still carrying a torch for Cole Younger who, according to legend, was the father of her Pearl. This seems to be no more than yet another folk myth, for the place was named by Old Tom himself, who apparently entertained some admiration for the Missouri outlaw.

In 1883, Belle and her new husband did a short stretch at the Detroit House of Correction for horse stealing, but when their time was up, they returned to Younger’s Bend. And then, in 1886, Sam Starr ran into a hated adversary, one Frank West, while attending a dance. The two wasted no time in reaching for their guns, and in a few minutes, both men were dead. That was probably a good thing for the general population, but Belle was once more a widow.

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Belle Starr with lover Blue Duck. Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries .

Here the mists of mythology close in again. Belle was moved to continue her budding career as bedfellow to various disreputable outlaw types, although it’s not entirely clear who all her lovers might have been. She is quoted as having said, “I am a friend to any brave and gallant outlaw,” and sure enough, she was. She was more than a friend to a whole passel of outlaws, if legend is anywhere near accurate. A host of stories has her cavorting with a veritable who’s who of luminaries in the local outlaw world, including—at least—Jack Spaniard, Jim French, Jim July (who ended up calling himself Jim Starr) and a man much younger than the now-aging Belle, one Blue Duck.

Although Belle was no longer a ravishing beauty—if she ever was—she seems to have carried on with her bed-hopping career. When she wasn’t so engaged, she still indulged in her second passion for having her picture taken à la outlaw, armed with at least one gun and sometimes posed on a very tall horse.

Whatever carnal delights Belle may have indulged in, she also paid attention to her home at Younger’s Bend. And that was probably what ended her life prematurely. For she had at least one sharecropper tenant: a thoroughly worthless criminal called Ed Watson. He had come out of Arkansas but was originally from Florida, where he was wanted for murder, among other things. Belle seems to have found out about Ed’s nasty past—and it was too much knowledge for her health.

Belle and Watson had a major falling out when Belle, afraid of more trouble with the authorities if she were discovered harboring a fugitive, told Watson to leave her land and sent him a letter returning his rent money. The two argued, and Belle made the mistake of telling the man that while federal marshals might not be interested in him, “the Florida officers might.” It was an unwise thing to say. Although others were suspected as her killers then and afterward—including her own son—it seems pretty clear that a furious Watson determined to close Belle’s mouth forever about his dirty career in Florida.

Either Watson or somebody else waylaid her and blew her out of the saddle with a shotgun. And so, in February 1889, Belle passed to her reward, whatever that might be. She was buried at Younger’s Bend, according to legend, with a revolver in her hand. The myth was off to a good start.

Watson was charged but never tried. There simply was not enough evidence against him to empanel a jury. But knowing that Jim July Starr would almost certainly try to kill him, Watson left the state and at last ended up back in Florida, where he went on killing, running up a tally of as many as ten or twelve people. In time, he ran afoul of some tough peace officers who filled him full of holes.

Meanwhile, in December 1896, Belle’s son, Ed Reed, got full of tarantula juice in a saloon run by a man named Tom Clark. Reed got rowdy and began “brandishing his six shooter in a very careless way and abusing the bystanders and shooting up the place generally,” as the Muskogee Phoenix matter-of-factly put it. Clark was understandably upset, and some hard words passed between the men. Reed left but came back with a Winchester and threatened Clark. It turned out to be a bad idea, for Clark was quicker and shot Reed twice, whereof he expired.

As for Belle’s “Pearl,” she carried on with her prostitute/madam career. Finally exiled from Fort Smith after repeated arrests, she drifted west, dying in an Arizona hotel in the summer of 1925.

It was just as well that Belle was not around to see the end of her children, but she sure would have enjoyed Gene Tierney’s sterling performance.